Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) is not done convalescing after being laid out for over three months with an alleged bad case of the shingles. Nevertheless, after missing 91 votes, she made her return this week so that her Democratic colleagues can resume pushing their agenda.
The sickly 89-year-old former mayor of San Francisco was put into a wheelchair outside the Senate Wednesday, then carted inside.
“Where am I going?” she asked her handlers wearily, reported the Huffington Post.
After saying, “Hi everybody,” Feinstein proceeded to cast her first two votes since Feb. 16, helping Glenna Wright-Gallo secure the position of assistant education secretary. Despite technically being back in the game, NBC News reported that Feinstein still managed to miss two votes on her first day back.
A statement attributed to her said, “I have returned to Washington and am prepared to resume my duties in the Senate. I’m grateful for all the well-wishes over the past couple of months and for the excellent care that I received from my medical team in San Francisco.”
Feinstein indicated that notwithstanding unresolved “side effects” affecting her vision and balance, as well as advice from her doctors to adopt a “lighter schedule,” she was looking forward to resuming her work on the Judiciary Committee.
The Sacramento Bee stressed that Feinstein’s return is important for Democrats, who control only 51 of the 100 seats in the Senate and have a one-person advantage on the Senate Judiciary Committee. Extra to advancing liberal judges, Feinstein may prove instrumental in getting President Joe Biden’s labor secretary nominee Julie Su confirmed.
Dianne Feinstein, 89, returns to the Senate after being absent since February and recovering from shingles pic.twitter.com/FcMJr7ddni
The senior Democrat was first diagnosed with shingles on February 26, then hospitalized until March 6. She has reportedly been in recovery ever since.
While there was bipartisan concern over Feinstein’s fitness to serve, several Democrats expressed concern not with what the illness was doing to their colleague, but what it was doing to their political ambitions.
In April, Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) tweeted, “It’s time for @SenFeinstein to resign. We need to put the country ahead of personal loyalty. While she has had a lifetime of public service, it is obvious she can no longer fulfill her duties. Not speaking out undermines our credibility as elected representatives of the people.”
Khanna suggested that Feinstein’s absence meant pro-abortion judges weren’t getting approved and called on the public to apply pressure to have the senator step down.
Democratic Rep. Dean Phillips of Minnesota concurred with Khanna, calling it a “dereliction of duty” for Feinstein to remain in the Senate.
Earlier this month, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) claimed Feinstein’s “refusal to either retire or show up is causing great harm to the judiciary,” calling for her to retire.
Some Republicans highlighted Democrats’ utilitarian streak and denounced their apparent efforts to strong-arm Feinstein into retiring for short-term gains, reported CNN.
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said, “She’s a dear friend, and we hope for her speedy recovery and return back to the Senate,” claiming that Sen. Chuck Schumer’s efforts to replace Feinstein were really “about a handful of judges that you can’t get the votes for.”
Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley said Democrats “should leave her alone. She’s sick. She needs to get well so she can get back to work,” adding that “the people that are trying to shove her out the door after her years of service ought to hide their heads in a bag. She’s being treated very shabbily and that really disappoints me.”
Some critics reckon Feinstein’s pressured return to the Senate this week indicates Democrats’ prioritization of power over their colleague’s well-being.
Sebastian Gorka, a conservative commentator who serves as deputy assistant to former President Donald Trump, suggested that the images of the sickly senator making her return on Wednesday “is your Democrat Party. Power at all costs. ALL COSTS.”
Democrats have not been sheepish about this fact.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) said that with Feinstein back, “Anything we do in the Senate that requires a majority is now within reach.”
For instance, while ostensibly unwell and addled by memory loss, Feinstein may help Democrats raise the debt limit, which now only requires 51 votes.
Durbin previously stated, “There are things we cannot call for a vote. … There are measures we cannot debate and vote on until we have the majority advantage.”
Now that their power has been restored, Democrats might have the confidence to debate the issues.
The senator has indicated she will not run for re-election in 2024.
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Republicans on the Committee on House Administration held a hearing Thursday highlighting the importance of political speech and Americans’ confidence in U.S. elections.
“Our Founding Fathers enshrined the First Amendment in the Constitution. Unfortunately, in our highly politicized, political culture, and climate, the First Amendment has been under attack through the use of misinformation czars and cancel culture,” said Chair and Wisconsin GOP Rep. Bryan Steil. “As a result, many Americans have grown concerned that their voices will be suppressed or that their beliefs will be weaponized against them.”
As an example, Steil cited the IRS’s targeting of conservative organizations during the Obama administration. About 10 years ago, it was revealed the IRS intentionally delayed applications for “tax-exempt status from right-of-center organizations” leading up to the 2012 election. Numbering in the hundreds, these groups were “improperly subjected to baseless investigations, invasive and improper demands about their donors, and lengthy delays in processing routine paperwork.” The Department of Justice ultimately settled with dozens of these groups over the scandal in 2017.
In order to uphold the First Amendment and boost voter confidence in elections, Steil said he is focused on introducing the American Confidence in Elections Act (ACE Act), which he claims is a “federalist approach” to increasing integrity and confidence in elections. According to Steil, the bill would “prohibit the IRS and any other federal agency from asking for an organization’s donor list, creating ad-hoc standards, and applying them to ideologically opposed groups.” A version of this legislation was previously introduced during the 117th Congress.
The House Admin Committee heard from several witnesses during Thursday’s hearing, including Harmeet Dhillon, a lawyer and Republican National Committeewoman who challenged Ronna McDaniel to become RNC chair earlier this year. In her remarks, Dhillon discussed the “coordinated efforts” between the federal government and private actors to influence the outcome of elections, specifically the “expanding government efforts to censor core political speech online” and “increasing use of private funds to run public election operations.”
According to Dhillon, The Twitter Files reveal “extensive shadowbanning to limit certain opinions that are disfavored by the government. Twitter relied on government actors and nonprofit partners to identify the speech it then chose to censor.”
Other Big Tech platforms, such as Facebook, have also been busted for colluding with the federal government to interfere in elections.
In addition to online censorship, Dhillon testified about the concerning nature of “Zuckbucks.” During the 2020 election, nonprofits such as the Center for Tech and Civic Life received hundreds of millions of dollars from Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg. These “Zuckbucks” were poured into local election offices in battleground states around the country to change how elections were administered, such as by expanding unsupervised election protocols like mail-in voting and the use of ballot drop boxes. To make matters worse, the grants were heavily skewed toward Democrat-majority counties, essentially making it a massive, privately funded Democrat get-out-the-vote operation.
“Distrust in elections is not a partisan issue. Both Republicans and Democrats have expressed a historic level of distrust in our elections, and I hope that a renewed commitment by Congress to protecting freedom of speech in elections will help alleviate that trend and increase public confidence in America’s elections,” Dhillon said.
Predictably, House Democrats used Thursday’s hearing to play political games, attacking Republicans and spreading numerous falsehoods regarding conservative-led election integrity efforts. During their respective questioning times, Reps. Terri Sewell of Alabama and Norma Torres of California repeated the debunked claim that Republican-backed election integrity laws are suppressing the ability of Americans to vote. While Sewell falsely asserted such laws disproportionately suppress racial minorities and disabled voters, Torres went on to bizarrely invoke the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol, saying it was a “really dark day in Americans’ history.”
Meanwhile, ranking member and New York Democrat Rep. Joe Morelle used his time to further the left’s ongoingsmearcampaign against originalist U.S. Supreme Court justices, specifically Associate Justice Clarence Thomas. During his opening statement, Morelle referenced ProPublica’s non-story about Thomas having a wealthy friend and suggested the justice’s prior rulings on cases involving financial disclosures weren’t based on proper jurisprudence but on nefarious, personal bias. The New York Democrat also wasted his time attacking just-indicted GOP Rep. George Santos and interrogating witnesses on whether they believed Joe Biden won the 2020 election.
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
The interim report of the House Intelligence Committee and Weaponization Subcommittee released Wednesday established extensive coordination between the Biden campaign and those behind the statement signed by 51 former intelligence officials that painted the Hunter Biden laptop as Russian disinformation. More explosive, however, is the fact, first reported on Tuesday by The Federalist, that a Central Intelligence Agency employee solicited a former CIA officer to sign the statement.
Yet there is still much more to unravel to expose the breadth and depth of the info op painting the infamous laptop as Russian disinformation and the government actors involved. Here are five threads that will lead to the truth.
Subpoena All 51 Signatories
As its title stated, the House’s report focused on “How Senior Intelligence Community Officials and the Biden Campaign Worked to Mislead American Voters.” While the October 2020 letter signed by the former intelligence officials is only part of the scandal, it’s a solid entry point to learning the identity of many of those involved.
The report already established Secretary of State Antony Blinken — then a senior adviser to the Biden campaign — contacted Obama’s CIA acting director, Mike Morell, to discuss the New York Post’s reporting on Hunter Biden’s laptop. Morell also testified that speaking with Blinken spurred him to craft the letter in question so Biden could reference it during his final debate against then-President Trump.
The House report highlighted several other plays involved in gathering signatories for the letter and revealed that at least one CIA employee solicited an individual to sign the letter.
The House stressed its investigation is continuing but that neither Blinken nor the CIA have yet to provide documents requested by the committees relating to both the statement and the interactions between its signatories and the CIA. The committees also reportedly scheduled interviews with former CIA Director John Brennan and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper.
But it is not merely Brennan and Clapper who should be interviewed. While they are two of the most prominent former intelligence officials to have signed the letter, every signatory should be questioned and asked to provide relevant communications. If they refuse, subpoenas should be served and enforced.
Specifically, Brennan, Clapper, and other signatories should be asked to identify anyone they communicated with, or tried to, about the laptop or the letter to reveal the identity of the “nine additional former IC officers” who were unnamed but represented as supporting the letter’s conclusions.
Those 60 people should be asked about everyone with whom they spoke or attempted to speak about the laptop or the letter at any time,including those connected to: 1) the Biden family, 2) the Biden campaign, 3) elected officials, 4) the Democrat Party, 5) politicians opposed to Trump, 6) the media, 7) current government officials, 8) other signatories, 9) foreign governments, and 10) anyone else. All related communications should be obtained.
Based on those findings, any individuals not previously known should be added to the list of those to be questioned and subpoenaed. Those names will likely include many members or allies of the Biden campaign. We already know former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense and Biden adviser Michael Carpenter and Andrew Bates, then a Biden campaign spokesman and the director of his “rapid response” team, were involved in pushing the “Russian disinformation” narrative.
Additionally, from Morell’s testimony to House investigators, we know the head of Biden’s campaign, Steve Ricchetti, was involved, given that he arranged to personally thank Morell for the letter. Morell also said Jeremy Bash, whom Morell knew through Beacon Global Strategies, arranged Morell’s conversation with Ricchetti, raising the possibility that Beacon Global Strategies played a role in the plot.
These individuals should be further questioned on their roles related to the letter: Did they draft any language? Propose revisions to the language? We know some of this already from the House report, but there’s more to probe.
Furthermore, all of the signatories should be asked: Had they read the New York Post articles? Did they know of the existence of the laptop or the FBI’s seizure of it? Why did they supposedly believe it was Russian disinformation? Did they have any doubts? Did they watch the final Trump-Biden debate and, if so, did they believe Biden had accurately described their letter? What about Politico’s infamous “Russian disinfo” article? Did they believe Biden or Politico had misrepresented their letter? If so, to whom, if anyone, did they express their concerns? If not, why not?
Probe FBI’s Involvement
The aforementioned strategy is a good starting point, but because members of the Biden campaign and others involved outside the government may not know — or be honest — about who inside the government participated in the election-interference scheme, investigators should simultaneously work from the FBI out.
Congressional oversight committees should start by interviewing and obtaining all relevant documents, voluntarily or by subpoena, from the FBI agents with knowledge of the laptop. They should begin with those who first learned of its existence when the father of John Paul Mac Isaac — the owner of the computer repair store where Hunter had abandoned his laptop — contacted the agency.
According to Mac Isaac, in October 2019, his father, a retired Air Force colonel, reported the laptop to FBI agents in the Albuquerque, New Mexico field office. Mac Isaac’s father spoke with an agent, telling him that his son had “the laptop of the son of a presidential candidate” and that it “has a lot of bad stuff on it, and he needs your help.”
Mac Isaac’s father also told the agent the hard drive contained pornographic material and content that was “geopolitically sensitive,” including “dealing with foreign interests, a pay-for-play scheme linked to the former administration, lots of foreign money.” And while Mac Isaac’s father offered the FBI a copy of the laptop, the agent instead asked to review the repair contract.
After reviewing it, the agent reportedly “consulted with a regional legal officer,” then told Mac Isaac’s father they should “lawyer up” and not “talk to anyone about this.” The agent then directed the repairman’s father to the door.
An agent later reportedly contacted Mac Isaac’s father, who provided the agent with his son’s contact information. Then, “on December 9, 2019, the FBI served a subpoena on John Paul for the computer, the hard drive, and all related paperwork,” which Mac Isaac provided.
Mac Isaac would later claim one of the two FBI agents who retrieved the laptop from his Delaware store suggested he keep quiet. According to Mac Isaac, as the agents were leaving, he quipped, “Hey, lads, I’ll remember to change your names when I write the book.”
At that point, Mac Isaac claimed, “Agent DeMeo paused and turned to face me,” replying: “It is our experience that nothing ever happens to people that don’t talk about these things.”
After seizing the laptop, the “local FBI leadership told employees, ‘You will not look at that Hunter Biden laptop,’” according to multiple whistleblowers. The whistleblowers further alleged that “the FBI did not begin to examine the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop until after the 2020 presidential election — potentially a year after” retrieving it.
These details give congressional investigators ample leads to uncover who in the FBI knew about the Hunter Biden laptop, beginning in Albuquerque and then moving to the FBI’s Baltimore field office, which holds jurisdiction over Delaware-based investigations.
The agents involved should be questioned to learn what they knew, what they did, and with whom they spoke, including whether they communicated with any member of the Biden family, campaign, or media. Investigators should also obtain the various FBI reports, the subpoena, the warrant used to obtain the subpoena, the chain of custody for the laptop and other seized material, and all written or electronic communications.
Focusing on the FBI is especially important because the day after the Post broke the laptop story, Russia-collusion hoaxer Ken Dilanian, ran an “exclusive” at NBC, reporting that “federal investigators are examining whether emails allegedly describing activities by Joe Biden and his son Hunter and found on a laptop at a Delaware repair shop are linked to a foreign intelligence operation.” The next day, USA Today similarly reported the FBI’s supposed involvement in investigating whether a Russian influence operation was at play. On Oct. 17, 2020, USA Today reiterated that the “federal authorities” are investigating whether the laptop is “disinformation pushed by Russia.”
However, the FBI was not investigating whether the laptop was related to a “foreign intelligence operation,” but instead was investigating Hunter Biden. This FBI leak nonetheless furthered the “Russia disinformation” narrative. In fact, Blinken went on to share one of the USA Today articles with Morell. Then Morell referenced the nonexistent FBI investigation as a justification for the letter, as a text included in the House report shows.
Specifically, Morell texted Marc Polymeropoulos, a former CIA acting chief of operations, saying, “I’m thinking of writing something that says the FBI is investigating whether there is Russia involvement in this thing and that makes sense because it has the feel of a Russian op.” Morell asked Polymeropoulos if he wanted to help with the effort, leading the duo to draft the initial version of the statement together.
Questioning the FBI agents with knowledge of the laptop and obtaining relevant communications would help establish who was behind the leak and whether anyone from the FBI communicated with the Biden campaign, the CIA, or any of the letter’s signatories. Likewise, this line of inquiry would establish if anyone with knowledge of the laptop cautioned social media companies — or suggested other FBI agents warn Big Tech — to expect a “hack-and-leak” operation.
Probe DEA’s Involvement
A third line of inquiry requires looking to the Drug Enforcement Administration and its role in executing a search warrant on the Massachusetts office of Hunter Biden’s former psychiatrist Keith Ablow.
On Oct. 30, 2020, NBC News first reported that during a February 2020 DEA raid on Ablow’s office, agents reportedly recovered a second laptop belonging to Hunter Biden from a safe in Ablow’s basement. The DEA then returned the computer to Hunter’s lawyer George Mesires.
For a year, Ablow had reportedly “made repeated efforts to persuade Hunter Biden to retrieve his computer.” But then the DEA raided Ablow’s office just a few months after the FBI had seized Hunter’s other laptop from Mac Isaac.
The DEA agents involved should be asked whether they knew Ablow possessed the laptop and whether that fact motivated the execution of the search warrant. Did the DEA agents speak with any FBI agents? Did the DEA know of the Delaware U.S. attorney’s investigation into Hunter? Did agents review the laptop before returning it? If not, why not? If so, what information did they discover, and why was the laptop not retained as evidence?
This line of inquiry may prove a dead end, or it could reveal more election interferers.
Dig Into Biden Briefings
Next, investigators should review the intelligence briefings provide to Biden since October 2019 when the FBI first learned of the laptop’s existence. Given the incriminating evidence contained on it, the intelligence briefings should have alerted Joe Biden to the national security risk.
If the briefings included details about the laptop, the individuals involved should be questioned and documents subpoenaed to learn who knew what and did what with the information. But if the briefings did not mention the laptop, investigators should ask those responsible for putting together the briefings about their knowledge of the laptop and their explanation for omitting mention of it.
Investigate the Giuliani Investigators
A fifth line of inquiry should look to those behind the investigation of Rudy Giuliani.
The New York Post’s Miranda Devine previously reported: “[T]he FBI spied on the former mayor’s cloud for two years from May, 2019, a month after he began working as then president Donald Trump’s personal attorney. … So the FBI had access to all Giuliani’s emails and iMessages for two years,” meaning it’s possible the FBI saw Bob Costello’s Aug. 27, 2020, email to Giuliani “telling him of Mac Isaac’s ‘amazing discovery.’”
In that email, Costello wrote: “I am arranging to get a complete copy of the hard drive as it contains lots of materials beyond the Ukraine stuff according to the owner. … The five emails he sent show that Hunter was directly involved in orchestrating his father Joe Biden’s intervention to stop the Ukrainian investigation of Burisma.” The email continued: “I believe that we are on the verge of a game changing production of indisputable evidence of the corruption we have long suspected involving the Biden’s and Ukraine — but there is more.”
The joint committees’ investigation should run down the possibility that those investigating Giuliani had access to his emails and learned of the laptop before the Post’s stories. If so, with whom did the agents share that knowledge? Again, interviews and documents are necessary to determine if any of these FBI agents were responsible for the leaks or communicated with the Biden campaign or Big Tech.
Wednesday’s report provides crucial details about the info ops run on Americans, but there is much more left to investigate to uncover all of the players who helped interfere in the 2020 election.
Margot Cleveland is The Federalist’s senior legal correspondent. She is also a contributor to National Review Online, the Washington Examiner, Aleteia, and Townhall.com, and has been published in the Wall Street Journal and USA Today. Cleveland is a lawyer and a graduate of the Notre Dame Law School, where she earned the Hoynes Prize—the law school’s highest honor. She later served for nearly 25 years as a permanent law clerk for a federal appellate judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Cleveland is a former full-time university faculty member and now teaches as an adjunct from time to time. As a stay-at-home homeschooling mom of a young son with cystic fibrosis, Cleveland frequently writes on cultural issues related to parenting and special-needs children. Cleveland is on Twitter at @ProfMJCleveland. The views expressed here are those of Cleveland in her private capacity.
President Joe Biden is fueling the raging fentanyl epidemic, a true national public health emergency warranting immediate action. As a new wave of the Biden border crisis is boiling over with the end of Title 42, this administration has shown little interest in actually solving it. One thing is clear: America needs new leadership.
Across this great country, I hear time and time again the pain of families who have lost a loved one to fentanyl. Every community has felt the impact of the grueling epidemic, and it’s something that has hit close to home for me. A friend of mine, Alan Shao, buried his 27-year-old son and namesake who died from fentanyl earlier this year. Alan’s painful story serves as a stern reminder there is no family in this nation that is immune to this tragedy.
The epidemic does not discriminate. In Biden’s America, every town is a border town and anyone at any time can fall victim. President Biden’s failure to secure our border is directly responsible for the escalating number of deaths the American people are facing due to fentanyl.
This problem will only be magnified as the Biden administration allows Title 42 to expire, something even Secretary Mayorkas admitted in 2022 will only cause the number of migrants showing up along our southern border to surge. The administration’s inaction will not only result in more fentanyl being flooded into our communities, but it will also put more felons, human traffickers, drug dealers, and known terrorists on the streets and among our families’ neighborhoods – a tragic story we’ve witnessed before on President Biden’s watch.
The reality is bleak under his leadership, but we have an opportunity to change course right in our own hands. It’s time for us to take bold and decisive action. It starts with securing our border and dismantling the criminal cartels trafficking fentanyl into our country. Here’s how we do it:
First, let’s pass my legislation – the Alan T. Shao II Fentanyl Public Health Emergency and Overdose Prevention Act – to utilize powers similar to those under Title 42 and apply them in response to the new public health emergency: the fentanyl epidemic. Today, more Americans between the ages of 18 and 45 die from fentanyl than from COVID-19, car accidents, cancer and suicide combined, making fentanyl the leading cause of death among adults. To treat this with any less rigor than our COVID-19 response would be an injustice to grieving families and loved ones.
Next, let’s pass my Securing Our Border Act. This important piece of legislation redirects $15 billion the Biden administration previously designated to hire an army of 87,000 IRS agents and instead funds critical border security initiatives. These funds would give our border agents the tools and incentives they need to do their job effectively, finish construction of the southern border wall, and end the Biden administration’s disastrous catch-and-release policy.
March 29, 2023: Border Patrol agents encounter over 1,000 migrants in El Paso, Texas (Customs and Border Protection)
Finally, Congress must pass the FEND Off Fentanyl Act to curb the flow of money powering these cartels by tapping into the economic security tools at our disposal and empowering law enforcement to do their job. It would enact the toughest sanctions regime on criminal cartels in American history, freeze the cartels’ collective and individual assets, and curb their ability to conduct their dealings in the United States and abroad.
Together, my three bills form a three-pronged approach to address and finally solve our border crisis and fentanyl epidemic.
The solutions are right there in front of us. It’s time for a president to implement them. With new leadership, guided by an optimistic vision of what America can be, I know we get the job done to keep our streets safe, secure our southern border, and put this country on a path towards a better and brighter future.
Consider these quotes from two of our nation’s Founders.
“We have no government armed with the power which is capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate for the government of any other.”— John Adams, U.S. president 1797-1801
“We have staked the whole future of American civilization, not upon the power of government, far from it. We have staked the future of all of our political institutions upon the capacity of mankind of self-government; upon the capacity of each and all of us to govern ourselves, to control ourselves, to sustain ourselves according to the Ten Commandments of God.”— James Madison, U.S. president 1809-1817
It’s not hard to imagine what Adams and Madison would think of where the cherished society they helped build is headed. Some would say we are headed for hell, and while that is likely true for some, what I want to talk about is a different kind of hell on our horizon — tyranny.
Freedom without morality leads to tyranny.
Let’s look at the path.
That we are no longer able to “control ourselves” is apparent everywhere but let’s start in Salem, Massachusetts, where last month the Satanic Temple celebrated its 10th anniversary with “SatanCon 2023.”
The opening ceremony featured the destruction of “symbols of oppression” which — no surprise here — included the Holy Bible. And among the lectures attendees flocked to hear was one titled “Sins of the Flesh: Satanism and Self Pleasure.”
This “temple” claims to have 700,000 adherents globally, but they are always looking for new minds to warp. Just this week, the After School Satan Club, sponsored by the Satanic Temple, opened in a school in Pennsylvania that fought hard to keep the club out.
A federal judge ruled that the “sanctity of the First Amendment’s protections must prevail.”
Temple members demand unbridled freedom without any moral norms.
That’s exactly what our Founders said would destroy our republic.
The Founders took a calculated risk in giving citizens of the United States so much freedom, by allowing sovereignty to reside among the people. But if we’re going to govern ourselves without destroying ourselves, we have to know the difference between right and wrong.
That’s where religion comes in; it teaches us that crucial difference. Where we find ourselves now is somewhere darker than the in-between of right and wrong. We’ve entered a space where too many think there is no right and there is no wrong. It’s up to us, each individual, to arrive at our own (im)morality.
The Satanic Temple is fulfilling the worst fears of the Founders, and it’s not just that group. There are lots of others at work undermining our society, including the Democrat party that has heartily embraced a godless world view. Everything goes, everything gets redefined, everything gets hijacked by the radical left and there is no such thing as truth. This world view is why the Democrats can’t respect life, and why they are so in deep with the abortion industry.
The constitutional republic can’t survive if we get to a point where the people are no longer rooted in faith, and where those who are so rooted are required to choose between following that faith or following the law. And while most Americans can agree we don’t want to live in a tyrant state, that’s exactly where we will find ourselves, and very quickly, if we lose the anchor of our Constitution. Unbridled freedom that allows people’s passions to rule them inevitably leads to those people to trample on the rights of others.
The culture of “I do what I want” leads back to tyranny because the strong oppress the weak and if we have to rely on a strong government to rein in our worst urges, we have handed power to a tyrant.
We see the beginnings of our turn toward tyranny with abortion. The strong are oppressing the weakest and insisting — at least in certain abortion-friendly states that everyone has to get on board with this view that the unborn are not part of the human family and thus not entitled to the same rights as those of us lucky enough to make it out of the womb.
As St. John Paul II wrote so presciently in “The Gospel of Life,” 1995, when a government legalizes abortion, “The State is no longer the ‘common home’ where all can live together on the basis of principles of fundamental equality, but is transformed into a tyrant State, which arrogates to itself the right to dispose of the life of the weakest and most defenceless members . . . when this happens, . . . the disintegration of the state itself has already begun. . . This is the death of true freedom” (#20).
It’s time for every citizen to take up again, with fervor, the mantle of our Founding Fathers, and their commitment to both freedom and faith!
Frank Pavone is one of the most prominent anti-abortion leaders globally. Read Frank Pavone Reports — More Here.
Liberals were left fuming over CNN’s town hall with Donald Trump as the former president firmly took control of the event. The town hall, hosted by CNN’s Kaitlan Collins, aired Wednesday night from New Hampshire. Progressives such as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., directed their anger squarely at CNN.
She tweeted Wednesday: “CNN should be ashamed of themselves. They have lost total control of this ‘town hall’ to again be manipulated into platforming election disinformation, defenses of Jan 6th, and a public attack on a sexual abuse victim. The audience is cheering him on and laughing at the host.”
And the Democrat group, Call to Action tweeted: “OUTRAGEOUS. CNN’S Town Hall has only been on a few minutes and Trump: Repeated election lies at least a dozen times. Says Ashli Babbitt was a patriot and calls the officer who shot her a ‘thug.’ Says he will pardon a large portion of January 6 insurrectionists. Called E. Jean Carroll a wack job TO AUDIENCE LAUGHTER. Seriously, F*** CNN”
And Twitchy noted that you can tell things went well for Trump “by how much froth we’re seeing spewed by our Lefty friends on Twitter. Imagine allowing one politician to have so much power over the way you feel … the hatred is just ridiculous.”
The DC Enquirer noted the instant standing ovation Trump received from the town hall audience, prompting Collins to remark: “You’ve got quite a crowd.”
And The New York Times‘ Jonathan Swan wrote during the town hall: “Advisers to Trump are thrilled at how this is going so far for him. They can’t believe he is getting an hour on CNN with an audience that cheers his every line and laughs at his every joke.”
The Times also reported CNN Chair Chris Licht defended the network from the backlash it is receiving.
On a network-wide editorial call on Thursday, Licht complimented Collins, on “a masterful performance,” the Times noted. “We all know covering Donald Trump is messy and tricky, and it will continue to be messy and tricky,” he said. “But it’s our job.
“I absolutely, unequivocally believe America was served very well by what we did last night. People woke up and they know what the stakes are in this election in a way that they didn’t the day before. And if someone was going to ask tough questions and have that messy conversation, it damn well should be on CNN.”
CNN issued a statement to Newsmax praising Collin, saying:
Kaitlan Collins exemplified what it means to be a world-class journalist. She asked tough, fair and revealing questions. And she followed up and fact-checked President Trump in real time to arm voters with crucial information about his positions as he enters the 2024 election as the Republican frontrunner. That is CNN’s role and responsibility: to get answers and hold the powerful to account.
President Joe Biden has “officially abolished what remained of America’s borders and turned the United States into a dumping ground for illegal aliens from all over the world” with the ending of Title 42, former President Donald Trump said Thursday.
“On day one of my new administration, I will end this travesty and restore the sovereign borders of the United States of America. We will immediately resume expedited removals of people that are crossing illegally, our border,” he added in a statement released by his Make America Great Again PAC.
The U.S. has used Title 42 of a public health law to expel migrants with no chance at asylum 2.8 million times since March 2020 on the grounds of preventing the spread of COVID-19. The policy ends Thursday at 11:59 ET and the U.S. is putting into place a set of new policies that will clamp down on illegal crossings while offering migrants a legal path to the United States if they apply online through a government app, have a sponsor, and pass background checks.
Biden said his administration was working to make the change orderly. “But it remains to be seen,” he told reporters. “It’s going to be chaotic for a while.”
Trump, in the statement, said the U.S. has become a “Third-World nation.”
“At this very moment, illegal aliens are lined up by the tens of thousands, ready to break into our country, knowing that even if they are caught, Joe Biden will order them immediately released into American communities and many of these people are very dangerous,” he said.
“Under Biden, our border is gone, our sovereignty is gone. Our national security is gone. And we are quickly becoming that Third-World nation that I’ve been talking about for so long. It’s happening to us if you can believe that. The United States of America is now a Third-World nation.”
Whatever you had planned to do for the rest of the day, please drop it and read this right now: Heather Mac Donald’s new book, “When Race Trumps Merit: How the Pursuit of Equity Sacrifices Excellence, Destroys Beauty, and Threatens Lives.”
It seems that in the hysteria that followed George Floyd’s death in 2020, we agreed to destroy all of Western civilization — law, music, art, education, policing, science and medicine — to make up for black people not doing well on standardized tests.
Mac Donald cites not hundreds but thousands of institutions that have flung aside standards in order to more fully dedicate themselves to the sole, driving purpose of our nation: boosting black people’s self-esteem.
To consider just one arena, I don’t think you’re going to like the medical care you’ll be getting under the new regime. Just like in the wildly successful Soviet Union, science must be subordinated to politics, specifically “racial justice.”
The American Medical Association, the American Association of Medical Colleges and the American Association of Pediatrics (AAP) have all agreed that medicine is racist.
The New England Journal of Medicine “presents a nonstop stream of articles on such topics as the ‘Pathology of Racism,’ ‘Toward Antiracist Allyship in Medicine,’ and ‘How Structural Racism Works — Racist Policies as a Root Cause of U.S. Racial Health Inequities,’” Mac Donald writes.
And “Scientific American produced a ‘special collector’s edition’ on ‘The Science of Overcoming Racism.’”
(It’s fantastic that scientific organizations are finally dedicating themselves to something important like racism, and not something boring, like cancer or Alzheimer’s disease — Unpack your privilege!)
The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) aired a podcast in 2021 in which the deputy editor, Edward Livingston, suggested that inequities in medical care be addressed without accusing doctors of “racism.” Both he and JAMA’s editor in chief were promptly denounced and fired, the editor replaced with a black woman.
Black leaders now head the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, the Cleveland Clinic Taussig Cancer Center, the University of Chicago Comprehensive Cancer Center, the University of Pittsburgh Division of Medical Hematology/Oncology, the Wake Forest School of Medicine, Virginia Commonwealth University’s School of Pharmacy, the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, the Massey Cancer Center at VCU, the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine and the Department of Medicine at UCLA’s medical school.
What could go wrong? Most of America’s largest cities have black mayors, and everything is fine.
But at least your doctor will be able to diagnose your disease correctly and you won’t die on the operating table, right? … RIGHT? (Anybody else remember the affirmative action doctor who took Allan Bakke’s place at the University of California Medical School at Davis and ended up killing his patients?)
In 2021, Mac Donald writes, “the average score for white applicants on the Medical College Admission Test was in the 71st percentile … The average score for black applicants was in the 35th percentile — a full standard deviation below the average white score.”
Naturally, therefore, medical schools responded by dropping the MCAT for black and Hispanic students, offering them admission on the basis of their “strong appreciation of human rights and social justice,” as the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai puts it.
Things don’t get better at medical school, where black students again score a full standard deviation below white and Asian students on Step One of the United States Medical Licensing Exam (USMLE). This is the test given after the second year of medical school to evaluate students’ knowledge of anatomy, biochemistry, pharmacology, physiology and so on. It is multiple-choice and graded by computer.
Conclusion: The computer is racist. In January 2022, the USMLE dropped grades for Step One altogether and converted it to pass/fail.
On one hand, no one will get a bad grade. On the other hand, there will be no way to distinguish one medical student from another, whether black, white or Asian. Research laboratories, residencies, hospitals and medical centers, like the Mayo Clinic, will just have to roll the dice. (Playing hide-and-seek with the most promising scientific minds should turbo-charge medical discoveries!)
Luckily, learning to identify and treat disease isn’t such a big deal at today’s medical schools, anyway. Instead, the faculty are charged with teaching about “systems of power, privilege and oppression.” More than half of the top 50 medical schools now require students to take courses in systemic racism, Mac Donald notes. I’m sure that will be a huge relief when doctors miss your brain tumor.
In 2021, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute announced that it would spend $2 billion … to find a cure for brain cancer? Parkinson’s disease? Heart disease? NO!!! The $2 billion would go to promoting “diversity and inclusion in science.”
In 2022, the National Cancer Institute, funded by you, taxpayer, decided to change its mission from conquering cancer — and really, who cares about that? FIRST WORLD PROBLEMS! — to guess what? Yes!!! Promoting diversity! Instead of Outstanding Investigator Awards being granted solely on the basis of merit, the gender and race of the researchers would have to be considered.
All this has done wonders for the morale of doctors. Mac Donald quotes one cancer researcher: “It’s the end of the road for me as a Jewish male doctor.” A UCLA doctor told her that the smartest undergraduates in science labs are saying, “Now that I see what is happening in medicine, I will do something else.”
In response to this dystopic future, Mac Donald asked an oncologist, “When would white and Asian male scientists fight back? How much longer would they continue to allow their hard work and accomplishments to be disparaged and sidelined?”
He emailed back: “We value our jobs. We need our jobs. Our peers will turn on us. Speak out, lose job forever, be quickly forgotten and abandoned.”
That’s why, Mac Donald says, it falls to the rest of us to never shut up about the tearing down of standards, to put forth “unapologetic defense(s) of color-blind standards,” and to “relentlessly provide the data that explain the lack of racial proportionality in meritocratic institutions.”
To paraphrase Orwell: If there is hope, it must lie in the uncancelable.
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 Trump.
There is little evidence that the founders advocated for a free-for-all, open-door immigration policy.
From the very beginning, even in the absence of immigration law, the founders knew America had to set boundaries. Their top three concerns were the qualifications, assimilation, and allegiance of newcomers. The founders emphasized the moral character and contributions newcomers would bring.
Not only should new migrants have good moral character, but they should also place “high importance to the respectability and character of the American name” and do their best to “preserve its good fame from injury,” as Rep. James Jackson, a Democratic-Republican from Georgia, said in 1790. The founding generation didn’t want convicts and criminals as new immigrants.
George Washington preferred skilled new immigrants, such as “useful mechanics and some particular descriptions of men or professions.” James Madison wanted the “worthy part of mankind to come and settle amongst us,” so they can “increase the wealth and strength of the community; and those who acquire the rights of citizenship, without adding to the strength or wealth of the community are not the people we are in want of.”
How can a new immigrant increase the wealth and strength of a community? Rep. John Laurance clarified:
Every person who comes among us must do one or the other; if he brings money, or other property with him, he evidently increases the general mass of wealth, and if he brings an able body, his labor will be productive of national wealth, and an addition to our domestic strength. Consequently, every person, rich or poor, must add to our wealth and strength, in a greater or less degree.
Assimilation Strengthens and Protects
The United States was founded upon specific ideas and moral principles, as expressed by the eloquent words of the Declaration of Independence. Thomas Jefferson believed that “it is for the happiness of those united in society to harmonize as much as possible in matters which they must of necessity transact together.”
He feared that if new immigrants believed different ideas, then “with their language, they will transmit [them] to their children. In proportion to their numbers, they will share with us the legislation. They will infuse into it their spirit, warp and bias its direction, and render it a heterogeneous, incoherent, distracted mass.”
Benjamin Franklin shared Jefferson’s concerns. Some people today accuse Benjamin Franklin of being anti-immigration because of the disparaging words he said about German immigrants. In fact, Franklin was anything but opposed to immigration. He published the first German newspaper in America, the Philadelphische Zeitung, in 1732. Franklin was not against immigration; he was concerned that a lack of assimilation would be harmful to immigrants’ happiness and damning to the unity and longevity of the republic.
George Washington expressed a similar concern: that immigration does not benefit America when immigrants congregate and “retain their language, habits and principles (good or bad) which they bring with them.”
Instead, he firmly believed that new immigrants or their descendants should, “by an intermixture with our people … get assimilated to our customs, measures and laws: in a word, soon become one people.”
Immigrants Must Pledge Allegiance
No matter what drives them to America, some immigrants retain residual loyalty to their countries and cultures of birth. To become Americans, the founders believed immigrants needed to give up prior allegiances and pledge an oath of fidelity to the U.S. In Alexander Hamilton’s words:
The safety of a republic depends essentially on the energy of a common national sentiment; on a uniformity of principles and habits; on the exemption of citizens from foreign bias and prejudice; and on the love of country which will almost invariably be found to be closely connected with birth, education, and family.
John Quincy Adams, in an 1819 letter to Moritz von Furstenwarther, a German citizen who was considering moving to the U.S. and had asked Adams for a job, stated that the U.S. is a land “not of privileges, but of equal rights.” Thus, Adams warned Furstenwarther that new immigrants like him:
Must cast off the European skin, never to resume it. They must look forward to their posterity, rather than backward to their ancestors; they must be sure that whatever their own feelings may be, those of their children will cling to the prejudices of this country, and will partake of that proud spirit.
Citizenship Isn’t Cheap
While some founders believed an oath of allegiance and a declaration to stay in America were sufficient for citizenship, others did not want to give out citizenship too cheaply.
They pointed out that some foreign sailors had voted in Philadelphia’s assembly elections after taking oaths of allegiance and then left America, having never intended to stay. This kind of practice not only results in election fraud but also threatens the “safety of a republic” because a foreigner who rejects American principles and ideas would vote against them.
Therefore, some founders thought “some security for their [immigrants’] fidelity and allegiance was requisite besides the bare oath.”The additional security the founders sought was property ownership or residency.
Property ownership has been used to distinguish citizens from aliens since the Roman Empire. Some founders wanted to “see the title of a citizen of America as highly venerated and respected as was that of a citizen of old Rome.”
During the House of Representatives debate on immigration law in Philadelphia in 1790, the majority of the founders regarded it as essential that an individual have a period of residency in the U.S. prior to gaining citizenship. Residency achieved two purposes, according to Rep. Michael Stone:
First, that he should have an opportunity of knowing the circumstances of our Government, and in consequence thereof, shall have admitted the truth of the principles we hold. Second, that he shall have acquired a taste for this kind of Government. And in order that both these things may take place, in such a full manner as to make him worthy of admission into our society.
Founders extensively debated how long residency should be. Some suggested two years, while others suggested five years or even longer. But all agreed the residency requirement should be long enough to “give a man an opportunity of esteeming the Government from knowing its intrinsic value,” which “was essentially necessary to assure us of a man’s becoming a good citizen.”
Hamilton, the most famous immigrant to America, opposed limiting any congressional office to either native-born Americans or immigrants who met the residency requirement. People suspected later that he was trying to make himself eligible for the U.S. presidency.
Hamilton’s actual argument at the Constitutional Convention showed he was more concerned about ordinary immigrants. He pointed out, “Persons in Europe of moderate fortunes will be fond of coming here, where they will be on a level with the first citizens. I move that the section be so altered as to require merely citizenship and inhabitancy.”
The majority overruled Hamilton’s proposal by requiring future U.S. House Representatives to meet a seven-year residency requirement, U.S. senators a nine-year residency, and presidents a 14-year residency.
President Joe Biden and his family are at the center of an influence-peddling scheme in which they traded the patriarch’s decades of time in political offices to line their own pockets and then tried to cover up their profiteering with a myriad of complicated transactions and accounts, the House Oversight Committee confirmed during a press conference on Wednesday.
With the help of whistleblowers and congressional subpoenas, Republicans are confidently reporting that the Bidens received at least $10 million worth of diluted payments from foreign companies during and after the president’s time in the Obama White House.
These payments were diced up and transferred to a spread of Biden bank accounts within weeks of significant political action by the then-vice president in the country of the transactions’ origins.
“These complicated and seemingly unnecessary financial transactions appear to be a concerted effort to conceal the source and total amount received from the foreign companies,” the Oversight Committee’s latest memo warns.
At least nine Biden family members including the president’s son Hunter Biden, his brother James Biden, James’s wife, Hunter’s ex-girlfriend who is also his brother Beau Biden’s widow, Hunter’s ex-wife, Hunter’s current wife, and at least one grandchild and a couple of nieces and/or nephews profited from the funneling of funds.
“That’s odd,” Oversight Committee Chair James Comer said. “Most people with grandchildren, who work hard everyday, doesn’t get a wire from a foreign national or anything like that.”
The latest round of records, obtained by the Oversight Committee from four of the Bidens’ 12 apparent banks, detail yet another round of these payments — this time from China and Romania to the Bidens.
One $3 million payment came from the company of Gabriel Popoviciu, who is the subject of a criminal corruption probe in Romania, to the accounts of Biden family associate Rob Walker mere weeks after Biden, then-vice president, welcomed Romanian leaders to the White House to discuss “anti-corruption efforts” and just more than a year after Biden lectured in Romania about the threat corruption poses to national security. Those transactions were quickly funneled to Owasco (one of Hunter’s 15 companies), a Biden associate’s company, one of Hunter’s personal bank accounts, Hallie Biden, and “an unknown Biden bank account.”
The Romanian payments, the Oversight Committee alleges, further prove that the Bidens’ influence peddling operation was in full swing while Biden facilitated foreign policy discussions, especially in Eastern Europe, during the Obama administration.
The newest Romanian payment dilution strongly resembles how the Bidens appeared to use their more than a dozen companies to coordinate with Chinese nationals suspected of close ties to the Chinese Communist Party and “engage in financial deception.”
“The purpose of all these companies being created is to conceal money that the Biden family has been gaining because Joe Biden has been sitting at the upper echelon of our politics for almost five decades. That is the entire purpose here,” Rep. Byron Donalds explained on Wednesday.
These companies receiving funds from foreign nationals, the Republican asserted, serve no legitimate purpose other than enriching the president, his family, and his business associates.
“Joe Biden has no business, except his position in politics,” Donalds concluded.
“If it looks complicated and sounds complicated, it was intentionally made to be complicated so you could not follow the money,” Republican Rep. Nancy Mace added during her talking time. “What we’re trying to do today is show you how to follow the money.”
During a presidential debate in October 2020, Biden told the nation that neither he nor any of his family members profited from overseas business deals with companies connected to communist China.
“My son has not made money in terms of this thing about, what are you talking about, China. I have not had—The only guy who made money from China is this guy [Donald Trump]. He’s the only one. Nobody else has made money from China,” Biden said.
COMER: “President Biden has claimed since the 2020 election that his family has not received money from China. That was a lie in 2020 — and he continues to lie to the American people now.”
Despite the fact that the Oversight Committee has repeatedly proven Biden’s denials wrong with bank records detailing millions of dollars worth of transactions from foreign shell companies to the president’s family, the White House refuses to do anything but double down on the lie.
“House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer is loudly and proudly broadcasting a press conference today to continue his long pattern of making absurd claims that President Biden has made governing decisions not in the interest of America, but of the Chinese Communist Party, using baseless claims, personal attacks, and innuendo to try to score political points,” White House spokesman Ian Sams told Fox News, after smearing the committee’s latest memo as an “absurd innuendo [that] ignores reality.”
The Oversight Committee once again rejected these claims on Wednesday and refuted them with hard evidence that several Biden family members, including Hunter, James, Hallie, an unknown “Biden,” and companies linked to the family “collectively received $1.3 million in payments” from Walker, whose company was paid millions by Chinese firm State Energy HK Limited, implicating the family in selling political favors to China.
The Biden family received the money via several bank transfers within six months of the vice president departing the Obama White House. Comer said in April that his committee still did not know who the unnamed Biden was in the China transaction because the Biden family holds so many bank accounts and LLCs.
“The Biden family needs to answer for this and the DOJ needs to get off its ass and investigate. We’ve done the work for them so that they can’t screw it up. Now, if these allegations, any of these allegations are proven true then someone with the last name Biden needs to be charged, prosecuted, and maybe spend a little time in prison,” Mace said at the conclusion of her remarks.
Last week, Republicans Sen. Chuck Grassley and Comer subpoenaed the FBI over a document they say alleges a criminal scheme between now-President Joe Biden and a “foreign national” during his years in the Obama White House.
The Oversight Committee led by Comer, who previously warned it “doesn’t look good for POTUS,” promised to continue investigating whether Biden sold out the American people to the nation’s foreign enemies to line family’s pockets.
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.
Some Loudoun County, Virginia residents — including one community member who spoke out against teaching LGBT practices in local schools — has received death threats online, according to WJLA.
“It shocked me,” Loudoun County resident Mark Winn said after he learned of messages threatening his life and his livelihood from a Facebook group called “Loudoun Love Warriors.”
Winn wasn’t the only person affected by the online threats. “They went after my job,” Scott Mineo, a Loudoun County parent said. “That happened in early February. They referred me to the FBI, IRS, and DHS all because they don’t like my opinion.”
“They’re probably going to sit back and celebrate the fact that I’m unemployed,” Mineo told WJLA. “I’m having a hard time finding a job. And who knows what’s next with the IRS and the FBI? I don’t know. But they’ve done more than just put me out of a job. It’s impacting my family, my kids.”
“It shocked me,” Loudoun County resident Mark Winn said after he learned of messages threatening his life and his livelihood from a Facebook group called “Loudoun Love Warriors.” (Screenshot / WJLA)
Some of the angry and threatening comments in the “Loudoun Love Warriors” group included ones like these, according to WJLA.
“Lives needs to be ruined beyond repair,” read one comment.
“Lets actually destroy them. Grind them,” another person wrote.
“If he had said that s— about black kids or autistic kids I would shoot him,” someone else posted in the group.
The “Loudoun Love Warriors” group includes people who appear to be associated with Loudoun County Commonwealth’s Attorney Buta Biberaj, County Supervisor Juli Briskman, School Board Chair Ian Serotkin, school board member Brenda Sheridan, school board member Atoosa Reaser, school board member Erika Ogedegbe, school board candidate Anne Donohue, sheriff candidate Craig Buckley, and Chair Phyllis Randall. None of these elected officials personally made any threats.
A spokesperson for the Loudoun County Public Schools directed Fox News Digital to statements that some Loudoun County officials have made in public regarding the controversy.
“Violent threats are never acceptable and at times can be criminal. I personally condemn all violent language and my office will be investigating whether a crime was committed. Due to the possibility of a criminal investigation, I can not comment further at this time,” Loudoun County Commonwealth’s Attorney Buta Biberaj said in response to the news.
Loudoun County Commonwealth’s Attorney Buta Biberaj told WJLA that she condemns “all violent language” and that her office “will be investigating whether a crime was committed.” (FOX 5)
Winn and other Loudoun County community members were attacked after they criticized local schools.
Winn said at a school board meeting back in Dec. 2022 that “[LGBT] behaviors should never have been promoted, taught, or encouraged in the schools that you oversee,” before paraphrasing Jesus in the Gospels.
“If any man or woman causes one of these little ones to stumble, it would be better for [them] if a millstone to be put around your neck and thrown into the lake,” Winn said, adding, “Get back to reading, writing and arithmetic and quit grooming and pimping.”
At the time, Winn’s comments provoked 19-year-old Loudoun County community organizer Andrew Pihonak to start a petition banning “hate speech” at future school board meetings.
Pihonak’s petitiongained nearly 1,000 signatures and says statements like Winn’s “empower people to commit acts of violence” against the LGBTQ+ community.
“Platforming hate speech like this empowers people to commit acts of violence against oppressed groups of people, and causes people like me in the LGBTQIA+ community to be bullied (often into suicidal ideation or suicide), tortured, and killed. I demand policy in the School Board that requires them to cut off a person speaking during public comment the second hate speech is spoken,” it concluded.
Fox News’ Kristine Parks contributed to this report.
Jeffrey Clark is an associate editor for Fox News Digital. He has previously served as a speechwriter for a cabinet secretary and as a Fulbright teacher in South Korea. Jeffrey graduated from the University of Iowa in 2019 with a degree in English and History.
Tucker Carlson, the former Fox News prime-time host who was ripped from the airwaves last month, announced Tuesday he will be taking his show to Twitter.
“There aren’t many platforms left that allow free speech,” Carlson said in a three-minute video he tweeted. “The last big one remaining in the world, the only one, is Twitter, where we are now.”
Carlson gave few details about the “new version” of his former Fox program but added, “We’ll be bringing some other things too, which we’ll tell you about.”
“But for now we’re just grateful to be here,” Carlson said. As of Wednesday morning, the clip has racked up 78 million views.
Twitter CEO Elon Musk clarified the platform signed no official agreement with Carlson, which could have potentially violated the cable news host’s contract with Fox. The network sidelined its No. 1 prime-time host two years before the expiration of Carlson’s employment agreement, meaning they will be paying him $20 million a year not to do his show.
“On this platform, unlike the one-way street of broadcast, people are able to interact, critique, and refute whatever is said,” Musk wrote in a tweeted statement. “I also want to be clear that we have not signed a deal of any kind whatsoever.”
The exact reasons for Carlson’s abrupt departure remain unknown. Carlson’s last public appearance before going off the air was in the outskirts of Washington, D.C. The 53-year-old broadcaster gave the keynote speech for the Heritage Foundation’s 50th-anniversary gala. Carlson criticized Big Tech’s influence over public opinion by way of censorship.
Twitter, however, “has long served as a place where our national conversation incubates and develops,” Carlson said in his Tuesday video. “Twitter is not a partisan site, everybody’s allowed here, and we think that’s a good thing.”
Carlson’s ouster from Fox News last month triggered an immediate nosedive in network ratings. Meanwhile, leftists celebrated, and a far-left member of Congress cheered “deplatforming works.”
“Tucker Carlson is out at Fox News. Couldn’t have happened to a better guy,” New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez told her 8.6 million followers on Instagram. “Deplatforming works and it is important, and there you go. Good things can happen.”
AOC on Tucker “Deplatforming works and it is important.”
Tristan Justice is the western correspondent for The Federalist and the author of Social Justice Redux, a conservative newsletter on culture, health, and wellness. He has also written for The Washington Examiner and The Daily Signal. His work has also been featured in Real Clear Politics and Fox News. Tristan graduated from George Washington University where he majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow him on Twitter at @JusticeTristan or contact him at Tristan@thefederalist.com. Sign up for Tristan’s email newsletter here.
House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer, R-Ky., on Wednesday outlined what he called a “pattern of influence peddling” by President Joe Biden’s family, revealing information the committee obtained showing that the “family, their associates, and their companies received over $10 million from foreign nationals and their companies.”
“Some of that money came from a Chinese company and went to Hunter Biden’s company,” Comer said in a press conference, referring to the president’s son. “Other transfers occurred with money from foreign entities to the Biden family, with many of the wire payments occurring while Joe Biden was vice president and leading the United States’ efforts in these countries.”
Comer noted that the committee has had subpoena power for just four months, and has made “astonishing progress” in uncovering information on Biden family members.
While much of the information centered around connections with China, other countries were also involved, Comer said.
“First instance, Vice President Biden was lecturing Romania on anti-corruption policies,” said Comer. “In reality, he was a walking billboard for his son and family to collect money. Hunter Biden and his associates capitalized on a lucrative financial relationship with the Romanian nationals who were under investigation for and later convicted of corruption in Romania. The Bidens received over $1 million for the deal.”
Comer added that 16 of 17 payments to an associate’s account that “funneled” the money occurred while Biden was the vice president, and “the money stops flowing from the Romanian nationals” soon after Biden left the vice presidency.
The committee also provided information on the Biden family’s relationship with China, posting its outlines on its Twitter account during the press conference. In one chart, the trail of the money is shown coming from Chinese President Xi Jinping and heading through several levels and accounts before eventually reaching payments to Hunter Biden, the president’s brother and his wife, James and Sara Biden, to Hallie Biden, the wife of the president’s late son, Beau, and to an “unnamed Biden.”
Comer said the committee is particularly concerned with Ye Jianming, former chair of the Shanghai-based CEFC China Energy conglomerate, who “had close ties to the highest levels of the Chinese Communist Party and operated a multibillion-dollar energy company with access to large sums of money.”
“The Bidens’ foreign entanglements are breathtaking and raise serious questions about why foreign actors targeted the Biden family, what they expected in return, and whether our national security is threatened,” Comer said in a media statement posted to the House Oversight Committee’s website, in which the new findings are outlined.
“We will continue to pursue additional bank records to follow the money trail and inform legislative solutions to prevent this type of corruption. Americans deserve answers, transparency, and accountability.”
Meanwhile, Comer said the president has claimed since 2020 that his family never received money from China.
“That was a lie in 2020, and he continues to lie to the American people now,” said Comer. “The Bidens have received millions of dollars from China. It is inconceivable that the president did not know it.”
Comer added that he subpoenaed the FBI a week ago for a document a whistleblower says shows that Biden, as vice president, received payment in a pay-for-play scheme, but that document has not yet been turned over.
“Chinese nationals affiliated with the Bidens created limited liability companies in the United States and then in a short period of time transferred their interest to a Chinese company that sent money to the Bidens,” said Comer. “This is not normal. Hunter Biden and his associates courted business in countries that correlated directly with Joe Biden’s work as vice president. This is also not normal. It is not ethical. And this is why we need legislative solutions.”
Meanwhile, the House Oversight Committee is crafting legislative solutions to strengthen reporting requirements related to certain foreign transactions involving senior elected officials, and evaluating the Bank Secrecy Act and money laundering laws, Comer said.
Comer said that with the information released Wednesday, the committee is moving its investigation into a new phase, and that he will issue a new round of subpoenas to banks for specific-targeted information.
Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., also speaking during the press appearance, explained in further detail some of the information the committee uncovered, including how the Bidens used an associate, Rob Walker, “to bring in millions of dollars” from China and Romania through Walker’s limited liability company, Robinson Walker LLC. Biggs said the company paid the Biden family members more than $2 million after foreign money hit his account.
“For example, on March 1, 2017, only two months after Joe Biden left office, Robinson Walker received a $3 million wire from State Energy HK,” said Biggs. “The next day, one-third of that money, $1,065,000, went to the bank account in Abu Dhabi of the company, EIG, which was controlled by James Gilead, another Biden associate.
“Over the next three months, Robinson Walker LLC sent 16 incremental payments to over five different Biden accounts totaling $1,065,692.”
White House spokesman Ian Sams, in a memo provided to Fox News Digital early Wednesday, accused Comer of “loudly and proudly broadcasting a press conference today to continue his long pattern of making absurd claims that President Biden has made governing decisions not in the interest of America, but of the Chinese Communist Party, using baseless claims, personal attacks, and innuendo to try to score political points.”
Comer told Newsmax’s “The Record with Greta Van Susteren” Tuesday night: “What we have is something no one else has ever been able to produce.”
“We have bank records, we have evidence that shows that the Biden family was involved in this extensive influence peddling thing,” he said. “It wasn’t just the president’s son — it was the entire family, so this is of the utmost concern to our committee.
“We’re concerned about our national security and we’re wondering whether or not this president is compromised because of the millions of dollars his family’s received from our adversaries around the world.”
Sams said the press conference shows that the investigation is running into problems and that the investigation into Hunter Biden’s business dealings has yet to result in an indictment. Sams also claimed House Republicans, not the Bidens, are guilty of boosting China’s interests, saying they have “taken positions that benefit the PRC and its leaders, and worked to erode America’s ability to compete with China,” including denying legislation that would help finance semiconductor plants in the United States.
“Instead of floating evidence-free innuendo, and making absurd attacks on the President and his family to try to score political points, Chairman Comer and House Oversight Republicans should answer the question: Why have you repeatedly sided with PRC interests over American workers and the American economy, instead of joining President Biden to put in place a strong agenda to create more American jobs and make us more competitive with China?” Sams wrote.
Comer and Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, last week subpoenaed a document from the FBI and Justice Department that a whistleblower says describes a pay-for-play scheme involving Biden, when he was vice president and a foreign national.
Democrats on the committee are also pushing back on Comer’s claims.
“There’s a lot of innuendo and a lot of gossip taking place and much of it is recycled from prior claims,” Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., the Oversight Committee’s top Democrat, told Politico.
Wednesday’s press conference won’t be the end of Comer’s investigation, as he also is reportedly planning to reveal his next actions, likely including more third-party financial records.
President Joe Biden’s administration on Thursday will begin denying asylum to migrants who show up at the U.S.-Mexico border without first applying online or seeking protection in a country they passed through, according to a new rule released Wednesday. It’s part of new measures meant to crack down on illegal border crossings while creating new legal pathways, including a plan to open 100 regional migration hubs across the Western Hemisphere, administration officials said.
While stopping short of a total ban, the measure imposes severe limitations on asylum for those crossing illegally who didn’t first seek a legal pathway. The rule was first announced in February, but the finalized version takes effect Thursday. More than 50,000 people commented on it, but in the end it didn’t appear to substantively change. It’s almost certain to face legal challenges. In 2019, then-President Donald Trump pursued similar but stricter measures, but a federal appeals court prevented them from taking effect.
The administration painted the rule as a way to reduce the number of migrants showing up at the border while still allowing people with legitimate claims a chance at asylum. Officials also emphasized the complex dynamics at play when it comes to immigration that at one time consisted largely of adults from Mexico seeking to come to the U.S. They could easily be returned home. Now migrants come from nations across the Western Hemisphere and beyond.
“Economic and political instability around the world is fueling the highest levels of migration since World War II, including in the Western Hemisphere,” the rule said, with known crossings from Mexico reaching an all-time high last year due to an “unprecedented exodus of migrants at different times from countries such as Brazil, Colombia, Cuba, Ecuador, Haiti, Nicaragua, Peru and Venezuela.”
The rule was immediately met with criticism. Groups that help immigrants called it “ludicrous,” “life-threatening” and “misguided.”
“With its new rule formalizing sweeping restrictions on asylum access, the Biden administration is putting border politics ahead of the safety of refugees,” said Jeremy Konyndyk, the president of Refugees International.
The rule does include room for exceptions for anyone with “an acute medical emergency” or facing “imminent and extreme threat to life or safety, such as an imminent threat of rape, kidnapping, torture or murder.” It does not apply to children traveling alone but will apply to families.
U.S. officials also said they had plans to open regional hubs around the hemisphere, where migrants could apply to go to the U.S., Canada or Spain. Two hubs were previously announced in Guatemala and Colombia. It’s unclear where the other locations would be. The administration officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss ongoing border plans that were not yet public.
The measures are all meant to fundamentally alter how migrants go to the U.S. southern border. COVID-19 pandemic-related restrictions that are ending this week had allowed border officials to quickly return people — and they did so 2.8 million times. But even as the restrictions, known as Title 42, were in effect, border crossings rose to all-time highs. Congress has failed to make any major immigration law changes in decades.
U.S. officials are bracing for large numbers of migrants who may try to cross the border this week, possibly to circumvent the new rules. Others were waiting until after Title 42 goes away, thinking their chances might be better. Once the change happens, migrants caught crossing illegally will not be allowed to return for five years, and they can face criminal prosecution if they do. The administration said in the new rule that as many as 11,000 migrants per day could try to cross the border after Title 42 lifts, absent any changes.
Roughly 24,000 law enforcement officers were stationed along the 1,951-mile (3,140-kilometer) border with Mexico. An additional 1,500 active-duty military troops are being sent to back up U.S. Customs and Border Protection but will not interact with migrants. And 2,500 National Guard troops are already there, tasked to help out CBP.
Biden said Tuesday his administration was working to make the change orderly. “But it remains to be seen,” he told reporters. “It’s going to be chaotic for a while.”
The Democrat administration will return migrants from Haiti, Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua to Mexico if they do not apply online, have a sponsor and pass a background check. It will admit 30,000 per month from those nations to the U.S. with legal papers to work for two years. Mexico will continue to take back the same number who cross illegally.
In the Mexican border city of Reynosa, across from McAllen, Texas, groups on Tuesday handed out flyers that explained in English and Haitian Creole how to register for the CBP One app, which the U.S. has been using to allow migrants to schedule an appointment to try to gain admittance. Authorities plan to increase the number of appointments amid widespread frustration, and they’re prioritizing people who have been waiting longest for appointments.
Standing in Reynosa’s central square, Haitian migrant Phanord Renel said he would not risk deportation to cross. “We don’t want to go back there (Haiti) because the situation is very complicated there,” he said. “If we can’t cross, we have to put up with it here. Maybe the government will do something for us. But cross illegally — no.”
Immigration officials are also planning to deploy as many as 1,000 asylum officers to conduct expedited screenings for asylum seekers to more quickly determine whether someone meets the standard to stay in the U.S.
Most of the people going to the U.S.-Mexico border illegally are fleeing persecution or poverty in their home countries. They ask for asylum and have generally been allowed into the U.S. to wait out their cases. That process can take years under a badly strained immigration court system, and it has prompted increasing numbers to go to the border hoping to get into the U.S.
Even though many ask for asylum, the legal pathway is narrow, and most do not meet the standard.
Authorities have spent months setting up interview rooms and phone lines at facilities along the border to facilitate screenings, part of a broad effort to expand the use of expedited removal proceedings aimed at migrants who forgo legal pathways to come to the U.S.
Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
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
A letter from attorneys representing Tucker Carlson accused Fox News of fraud and breach of contract weeks after he left the cable news channel.
Sources told Axios that the letter was sent to Fox News before Carlson posted an announcement on Twitter that he would be continuing his show in a new format on the popular social media platform.
Carlson’s attorneys argued that Fox News promised not to settle with Dominion Voting Systems in a way that would “indicate wrongdoing” on his part. They also accused the network of leaking “his private communications to the media.”
Accusing Fox News of breach of contract would allow Carlson to argue that his announcement to broadcast a show on Twitter would not be breaking the contract.
“Starting soon, we’ll be bringing a new version of the show we’ve been doing for the last six and a half years to Twitter,” he said in the video posted to Twitter.
“We’ll be bringing some other things too, which we’ll tell you about. But for now we’re just grateful to be here. Free speech is the main right that you have,” he added. “Without it, you have no others.”
Carlson’s contract with Fox News runs until January 2025, which would prevent him from any new media endeavor. He has already received numerous offers from other media outlets.
A separate report said that Carlson was floating the idea of moderating a presidential debate and that he had already talked to former President Donald Trump about the possibility.
Dominion Voting Systems told Axios that it did not insist on Carlson’s firing as a part of the settlement made with Fox News worth about $787.5 million.
Here’s more about Carlson leaving Fox News:
Tucker Carlson’s POWERFUL message after leaving Fox News www.youtube.com
[Ed. Note: This article has been updated with additional information.]
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The left doesn’t hide its goal of running our elections in secret. After all, democracy today effectively means “rule by Democrats.” The first step in transforming a free republic into a dictatorship is to brand the party’s enemies a security threat to the regime. The objective is to establish a police state built on terror with the power to arrest its critics on the pretext of national security.
New legislation would do exactly that: empower Democrats to bar poll watchers, brand Trump voters domestic terrorists, and use the Justice Department to remake local law enforcement into tools of the security state.
Whether they succeed hinges on whether conservatives will stand against the left’s lies.
Potemkin Villages
In late April, Senate Democrats introduced the Election Worker Protection Act to direct Justice Department funds for “the identification and investigation of threats to election workers”; expand the definition of “voter intimidation” laws to include “the counting of ballots, canvassing, and certification of elections”; and encourage the removal of “poll observers who are interfering with … the administration of an election.”
These measures are designed to bar conservatives from overseeing and, when necessary, challenging election results — a fundamental element of fair and impartial elections — using “security” to mask the country’s transition to despotism.
Operatives know that the bill isn’t likely to pass the Republican-controlled House. So they’ve turned to a tried-and-true tactic: pressure campaigns designed to fool and browbeat lawmakers into believing there’s a wave of popular support for a measure ginned up by Activism Inc.
Take the bill’s endorsees.
There’s the American Federation of Teachers.
the anti-super PAC End Citizens United (itself a super PAC).
Issue One and Democracy 21, both fans of stifling free speech through campaign finance restrictions.
Voices for Progress, a front for the multibillion-dollar “dark money” Tides Nexus.
and the phony “faith” group NETWORK Lobby for Catholic Social Justice, among others.
Fifteen secretaries of state — all Democrats — also back the bill.
Anatomy of a Campaign
But the lead driver is the Committee for Safe and Secure Elections (CSSE), an astroturf coalition created to bully Republican lawmakers into rolling over for activists seeking to gut our elections and even imprison those who fight back.
CSSE presents itself as a grassroots, “cross-partisan” effort by concerned citizens, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. CSSE is run by the Brennan Center, a front for election “reforms” ranging from felon voting, to banning free speech as “disinformation,” to using taxpayer funds to register new Democrats.
The committee claims one right-leaning supporter among dozens: the sometimes-libertarian R Street Institute, a think tank often employed as a gun-for-hire for the left’s election “reforms.” The rest of CSSE’s backers are gilded denizens of the swamp.
That list is topped by ex-Pennsylvania Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar, who oversaw the commonwealth’s last-minute election law changes under cover of Covid-19. Lori Augino formerly led the National Vote at Home Institute, the group responsible for making vote-by-mail an article of faith among Democrats. Edgardo Cortes, a Brennan Center adviser, previously ran Virginia’s elections under Democrat Gov. Terry McAuliffe and was an activist for the left-wing Advancement Project.
The Elections Group is a consulting firm run by ex-Chicago election chief Noah Praetz and Jennifer Morrell, who previously advised eBay founder and Democratic mega-donor Pierre Omidyar’s philanthropy, Democracy Fund.
The Protect Democracy Project was created in 2017 by ex-Obama staffers to litigate the Trump administration into oblivion. Its counsel and CSSE representative, Orion Danjuma, is a former ACLU racial justice attorney.
States United was formed to counter Trump’s election lawsuits months before the 2020 election took place, battling state audits and issuing the first legal brief explaining why Mike Pence had no authority to reject electors. It’s a front for the Voter Protection Program, which fights voter ID laws and lobbies for automatic and same-day registration policies.
PEN America supports free speech in classrooms — so long as “free” means promoting critical race theory and hypersexualized gender ideology. The Alliance for Securing Democracy is a front for the German Marshall Fund, an international left-wing funder, and is led by Obama and Clinton cronies including John Podesta.
Despite its name, the Bipartisan Policy Center was seeded by the left-wing Hewlett Foundation and is almost entirely led by Democrats. Similarly, the Committee of Seventy is a supposed conservative watchdog group that’s actually run by Never Trumper Al Schmidt and promotes the left’s redistricting policies.
Hypocrisy on Display
None of these groups operate in the mainstream conservative movement, nor are they actually “nonpartisan.” Yet the left is masterful in lending its political groups unfounded credibility thanks to its control of the media and government.
In March, for instance, the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC), a federal organ meant to help states administer their elections, hosted a glowing panel discussion on CSSE featuring “cross-partisan” panelists, each hailing from activist groups.
The EAC is overseen by two Democrats and two Republicans, one of whom (Ben Hovland) is a CSSE member. Hovland, a Democratic Trump appointee, blasted the president for challenging the 2020 results. He supported the $400 million “ZuckBucks” scandal that juiced voter turnout in Democrat-heavy districts with private funding from a partisan billionaire. (Twenty-four states have since banned the practice, and the House is weighing a similar measure). Hovland’s also appeared in policy events run by leftist advocacy organizations and in chummy interviews with the Center for American Progress.
Yet it was the EAC’s other Republican commissioner, Donald Palmer, who was recently castigated by the left for attending a confidential meeting of Republican secretaries of state on election policy. If the meeting had been run by Democrats, Palmer would be a hero, not a villain.
Policing the Police
CSSE produces advisory content for law enforcement to crack down on supposed threats to election workers. Its pocket guides for Georgia and Utah, for example, remind officers of state laws protecting administrators from harassment, yet the CSSE name and logo marked prominently on the documents remind one more of propaganda than helpful cheat sheets.
CSSE’s bizarre “training videos” are like the television show “24” for leftists. One video, darkly titled “What Election Violence Could Look Like,” sets up a scenario in which a bearded white man (the Proud Boy-esque Trump supporter) makes vaguely ominous comments to a female elections official (the victimized person of color), complete with finger guns in a slow-motion drive-by. Only a strong female cop, probably equipped with her standard-issue CSSE election law guide, can put an end to his reign of terror.
The whole scenario is absurd political theater meant to establish a smokescreen for passing unpopular and extreme measures that would further federalize our elections. And perhaps that’s the point. Democrats have long played upon imaginary fears to instill unity in the ranks before launching a major policy push.
It’s much easier to repress the opposition when they’re dehumanized. Will conservatives be next?
It’s an age-old question that philosophers, theologians, and average Americans like you and me have tried to answer for centuries. Ponderance about theodicy, the vindication of God’s goodness despite the existence of evil, manifests even more prominently in the wake of tragedies like the recent shooting at an Allen, Texas outlet mall that left eight dead and at least seven others wounded.
For Christians, the deaths of eight legally innocent people are a grave reminder that, as Ephesians 6:12 states, “we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.”
Deranged and demonic people doing deranged and demonic acts are something Christians are warned to expect in a world controlled by evil. Moments of apparent hopelessness like this one are soothed by the promise of an eternal end to death, suffering, and mourning. The fact that God himself plans to wipe away our tears brings a certain kind of peace to worried and weary souls.
For the ruling class, however, shootings like this one are terrifying because they are an enigma. In a desperate plea to satiate their endless hopelessness, leftists try to blame life’s trials and tribulations on what they claim to be the biggest problems society has to offer.
Despite the fact that these “threats” are temporary and fall short during any level of scrutiny, leftists continually invoke sexism, racism, homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia, and other labels to interpret adversity.
False Gods
If you do not understand the inherent presence of sin in the world, someone being possessed by an evil so grim that he will maliciously end lives boggles minds and souls. Followers of Christ certainly don’t know all the specifics on why a 33-year-old man decided to gun down unsuspecting families over the weekend. We do, however, have a moral framework that rationalizes seemingly irrational behavior and grants us unwavering hope all at the same time.
The same cannot be said for the political left and their allies in the corporate media who put blind faith in the things of the world to decipher disaster. That’s why, mere hours after the Allen shooting, unnamed sources and eager corporate media outlets rushed to link the Hispanic gunman to “white supremacy.” That point made zero sense from the beginning but media mouthpieces latched onto it like a drug.
Idolizing false religions like race as the lens through which everything must be looked at will never explain why a Hispanic man opened fire in a predominantly white suburb. Understanding that evil has long crept its way into the crevices and cracks of human souls does. Bad things happen to good people because Adam and Eve ushered in an era of turmoil. Every man, woman, and child who is born and lives in a broken world is afflicted by a spiritual war. If they aren’t fighting against evil forces, they are overcome by them. Unfortunately, as evidenced by the revolting reactions offered by the left following the Nashville shooting at the Covenant School, the left’s scrambling to manipulate tragedies to blame their favorite political targets invites further evil to replace compassion.
Thoughts and Prayers
Leftism is a false religion that hampers not only a person’s ability to understand human suffering but also the remedy for our sorrows. Their visceral reaction to “thoughts and prayers” evidences this. Every time tragedy strikes, social media pages are flooded with comments from the faithful promising to pray for the bodies, minds, and souls of those affected. Unfortunately, this sincere gesture is frequently met with angry squawking that “thoughts and prayers” are excuses for inaction that mean nothing. For people who understand that evil exists and calamity is inevitable, however, “thoughts and prayers” mean everything. To reject the divine power of prayer is to sentence one’s soul and mind to the fear and anxieties about death that plague the sinful human condition.
We live in a broken world populated by broken people in need of a savior. No one can even begin to wrestle with the concept of the death of innocents until they understand that basic principle. There is but one remedy for evil and its name isn’t anti-racism or gun control. It’s Jesus.
The burden of saving the world was lifted from our shoulders more than 2,000 years ago. That doesn’t mean we should opt for complacency in times of crisis but it also doesn’t mean we must rush to disarm ourselves of our best spiritual and physical defenses, as so many try to do after tragedy.
There is redemption and there is hope for those who want it. Let us pray that those weary, searching souls discover there is no fear in death if you live a life with Christ.
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.
The more obvious it becomes that our domestic political struggles are actually part of a much larger spiritual war over the fate of western civilization, that we are today engaged not so much in a political fight as a religious battle between good and evil, the stronger the urge seems to be among Republican politicians to deny this reality and take refuge in the comforting political narratives of the past.
A perfect case in point was a tweet last week from Kari Lake’s permanent campaign, which managed in one fell swoop to channel the deeply misguided political analysis of the entire neocon Washington establishment: “No one is saying not to fight the culture war. But it’s simply not the most critical issue heading into 2024.”
“The GOP must show the country how it plans to turn the economy around & prevent World War 3,” she added. “We need to take this country back from @JoeBiden before we can take our culture back from his friends.”
Ah, yes. The comforting fiction that if we can just show voters how we plan to turn the economy around, surely then we’ll regain power, surely then we’ll have a mandate from the people — and then (and only then) we can “take our culture back.”
With apologies to Lake, who before the midterms seemed to have a bright political future in the emerging populist GOP, this is absolute nonsense. On the one hand, it’s a desperate cope, the embodiment of the stale, low-energy politics that have kept conservatives out of power in Washington for most of the last three decades. On the other, it’s a textbook neocon talking point, pretending the culture war is a distraction when in fact it’s the only war whose outcome really will decide the fate of our country.
Ironically, it’s also an example of the kind of politics that Lake herself purported to defy. She made a name for herself during the midterm cycle by taking on the political establishment and attacking the corporate media’s false narratives about 2020 and much else. Lake isn’t the politician you’d think would fall into this trap, yet she did. Why?
The best explanation has nothing to do with Lake in particular but with the tendency of all politicians to want to explain the problems we face and offer practical solutions. The economy is bad, here’s how we fix it. The cities are filled with dangerous lunatics, here’s how we make our streets safe again. The border is overrun with illegal immigration, here’s how we crack down and secure it.
Republicans are more naturally susceptible to this way of thinking because, unlike Democrats, they tend to be less rabidly ideological and less committed to fundamentally altering America and bringing about political and social revolution. But this way of thinking — that our most pressing problems just need common-sense policy fixes that normal people support! — is woefully inadequate for our current moment.
Put simply, the big mistake in thinking the culture war isn’t the most critical issue heading into 2024 is that all of American politics is now one big culture war. The culture war is the only issue because the cultural war is everything now. When one side stakes its claim to political power on offering abortion up until birth and transgender operations for 8-year-olds, and holds out these policies as proof of its moral authority, we’re way past arguing over how to get the economy back on track. There’s no going back to that kind of politics.
Tucker Carlson hit on this at the end of his big speech at Heritage recently. He compared the values of the political left to the values of the Aztecs, who sacrificed children to their bloodthirsty gods — and he wasn’t wrong. Our politics, he argued, have shifted profoundly in a relatively short period of time. Instead of arguing over the best means to bring about an agreed-upon common good, we no longer agree about what the common good is. Forget about whether Republicans or Democrats are right about the ideal marginal tax rate. We can’t even agree on whether men and women exist as meaningful categories. And if we don’t get that question right, you can forget about economic prosperity, much less anything like a republic or a constitutional system of government.
What the neocons and establishment politicians don’t seem to understand is that the culture war has become a grinding war of attrition that will end with the complete destruction of one side. There is no way to reconcile the vision of the common good espoused by the transgender movement, on the one hand, and orthodox Christians, on the other.
The culture war in America is not some luxury good that Republican politicians can sample now and then. It has consumed our politics by revealing deep, uncrossable chasms in our national life. So, we now find ourselves in a different kind of struggle. Call it a culture war, a religious war, a battle between good and evil, or all of the above. It’s a war for survival between two competing and irreconcilable visions of what America should be.
Any politician on the right that doesn’t understand that, who thinks we just need to show voters our plan for getting the economy back on track, needs to step aside and make room for leaders who know what time it is, that the hour is late, the day now far spent, and the time for fighting has come. The culture war is now the big tent. Those who embrace it, who delve into the fray without apology, will be the next crop of leaders on both the right and the left.
Keep this in mind as we march toward the 2024 election cycle. The cast of buffoons and egomaniacs on the Republican side will feature mostly candidates who don’t understand or don’t want to admit what’s happening. They will say things like, “No one is saying not to fight the culture war. But it’s simply not the most critical issue heading into 2024.” And when they say that, they’ll be doing you a favor. You can then safely ignore whatever else they say because you’ll know at that point they’re either a fool or a coward, and all they have to offer is defeat.
John Daniel Davidson is a senior editor at The Federalist. His writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the Claremont Review of Books, The New York Post, and elsewhere. Follow him on Twitter, @johnddavidson.
The jokes seemed to write themselves last week after the Biden administration announced Vice President Kamala Harris, known for her vapid word salad speeches and obvious gaslighting, would now run point on artificial intelligence. Even I jumped in on the action, noting on FOX Business that Harris was more associated with the word “artificial” than the word “intelligence.”
All joking aside, the future of AI technology is a serious issue. With her approval ratings in the toilet and President Biden showing obvious signs of age-related decline, Kamala Harris (and by that I mean the Democratic Party) urgently needs a way to rehabilitate her historically unpopular image ahead of the 2024 presidential race. This is not the way.
On this issue, like so many before it, Harris is out of her depth. Her past attempts to talk about complicated policy issues often sound like they’ve been dumbed down for a kindergarten audience. Her incoherent speeches have repeatedly gone viral. It’s not just Greg Gutfeld getting mileage out of Harris’ viral gaffes and ramblings.
Kamala Harris urgently needs a way to rehabilitate her historically unpopular image ahead of the 2024 presidential race. (Reuters/Hannah Beier)
Her poll numbers reflect voter concerns that she simply hasn’t performed well in her job. Having already fared poorly in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary, earning zero delegate support, Harris is even less popular now. She has a net negative favorability rating as vice president. Her home state newspaper, the Los Angeles Times, reported last week that 53% of voters have an unfavorable opinion of Harris, for a net negative of -12 percentage points.
Beyond concerns about her lack of depth are even more serious questions about her integrity. The American people simply do not trust her. Beyond the revolving door of unhappy Harris staffers and allegations of a negative work environment, Harris’ dishonest assessment of the border problem is still fresh on voters’ minds.
In September 2022, as a record 2 million people were crossing our borders and drug cartels were expanding their profitable trafficking and fentanyl operations, Harris twice told an incredulous Chuck Todd on NBC that, “the border is secure.” Of course, at that point, she hadn’t bothered to even go there.
Border security is a problem that has gotten exponentially worse on her watch. But given that a Biden victory may very well depend on raising Harris’ poll numbers, it’s safe to assume this latest assignment is simply a political move intended to boost her popularity.
Vice President Kamala Harris speaks during the Democratic National Committee Women’s Leadership Forum in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 30, 2022. (Leigh Vogel/Abaca/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Just last month, Bloomberg’s Julianna Goldman offered a helpful suggestion published in the administration-friendly Washington Post. “One way to boost Harris would be through her policy portfolio, to put her in charge of an important issue beyond immigration or abortion,” Goldman wrote, referencing Democratic strategists who suggested Harris would need to “own it” and “show some progress.”
It looks like the Biden administration reached the same conclusion. They seem to believe all of Harris’ problems with the public are simply a reflection of voters’ inherent racism and sexism, as former Biden chief of staff Ron Klain has claimed. Or that she just hasn’t gotten credit for the things she’s done.
But Biden may rue the day he tapped Harris for this important responsibility. Like the albatross of her failure as the nation’s border czar, this assignment is fraught with risk, not just for voters, but for the administration.
The complexity and the stakes involved in this rapidly advancing technology call for a deep thinker, not a party loyalist. The president needs to treat this like the important issue that it is. The American people deserve more than the perfunctory lip service and agenda-driven gaslighting Harris is likely to give it.
Joe Biden and Kamala Harris during a campaign event on Aug. 12, 2020, at Alexis Dupont High School in Wilmington, Delaware. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster, File)
Artificial intelligence technology poses serious risks to the economy. It is a threat to cybersecurity. It may force fundamental change to our business models and job markets. It’s not an artificial election-year ornament to be draped around the person whose poll numbers need a boost.
By shining this light on Harris, the administration hopes to convince a skeptical public that Harris is ready to take over for the oldest president in history if needed. But if these attempts to make Harris look intelligent actually are artificial, they risk proving just the opposite.
A 20-year veteran Chicago prosecutor quit his job and wrote a blistering letter to his colleagues on his way out Friday, blasting the city’s “stupid” leaders and declaring they set the city “on a course to disaster”
Jason Poje, a felony trial attorney, put in his two weeks’ notice with the city at the end of April. Before he left, however, he sent a goodbye letter to 85 colleagues to explain that the city’s insistence on following a “popular political agenda” has made Chicago more dangerous for everyone.
“The simple fact is that this State and County have set themselves on a course to disaster. And the worst part is that the agency for whom I work has backed literally every policy change that had the predicable, and predicted, outcome of more crime and more people getting hurt,” Poje wrote, referring to the office of Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx.
“Bond reform designed to make sure no one stays in jail while their cases are pending with no safety net to handle more criminals on the streets, shorter parole periods, lower sentences for repeat offenders, the malicious and unnecessary prosecution of law enforcement officers, overuse of diversion programs, intentionally not pursuing prosecutions for crimes lawfully on the books after being passed by our legislature and signed by a governor, all of these so-called reforms have had a direct negative impact, with consequences that will last for a generation,” he continued.
Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, who recently lost her reelection bid, was extremely unpopular among police and law enforcement groups. (Kamil Krzaczynski / File)
Chicago police vehicles arrive at a crime scene. (FOX32 Chicago WFLD / File)
While Poje’s letter did not mention Foxx by name, it did reference “stupid State’s Attorney policies.” Foxx’s office did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.
Poje also remarked on how he respected his colleagues who were willing to stay in the city despite the difficulties. Poje said he needed to leave for the sake of his family’s safety.
“Many years ago, my family found a nice quiet corner of the suburbs. Now my son, who is only 5, hears gunfire while playing at our neighborhood park, and a drug dealer is open-air selling behind my house (the second one in two years),” Poje wrote.
“I will not raise my son here. I am fortunate enough to have the means to escape, so my entire family is leaving the State of Illinois. I grew up here, my family and friends are here, and yet my own employer has turned it into a place from which I am no longer proud to be, and in which my son is not safe,” he added.
State’s Attorney Kim Foxx has lost several prosecutors over her policies. “I have zero confidence in leadership,” one wrote.
“I wish I could stay,” he wrote in July 2022 “However, I can no longer work for this Administration. I have zero confidence in leadership.”
Anders Hagstrom is a reporter with Fox News Digital covering national politics and major breaking news events. Send tips to Anders.Hagstrom@Fox.com, or on Twitter: @Hagstrom_Anders.
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy on Tuesday ruled out the possibility of a short-term debt ceiling extension until the end of this fiscal year, narrowing the options available to President Joe Biden and Congress as they look for a way to increase the federal borrowing limit before the government runs out of money to pay its bills. McCarthy, R-Calif., gave reporters a firm “no” at the U.S. Capitol when asked whether he’d agree to such a measure Tuesday at his White House meeting, which would line up debt ceiling talks with negotiations over next year’s spending levels.
“We shouldn’t kick the vote. Let’s just get this done now,” the speaker said.
It comes hours before he is set to meet with Biden and other House and Senate leaders on the debt ceiling. Last week, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen warned that the U.S. government is projected to run out of cash to pay its bills as early as June 1.
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy is rejecting a short-term delay on the debt ceiling and says that Congress and the White House need to find an answer in the next few weeks. (Alex Wong) (Getty Images)
“I hope it’s different than it’s been for the last 97 days,” McCarthy told reporters, noting how long it had been since his last formal sit-down with Biden on the debt limit. “On Feb. 1, I went to see the president and sat down with him, saying we should work on the debt ceiling so we wouldn’t get to this point.”
No concrete solutions are expected to come out of Tuesday’s meeting, but Wall Street and other financial sectors are anxiously watching to see if the five principals can agree to keep working on some kind of deal that allows the government to keep paying its current obligations.
Biden and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., have led Democrats in opposing a compromise on lifting the debt limit while enacting future spending cuts, something Republicans have demanded.
President Joe Biden (Evan Vucci / File / AP Newsroom)
The GOP House majority and their counterparts in the Senate have coalesced around McCarthy’s Limit, Save, Grow Act, which passed the lower chamber along party lines and is now being put forward as Republicans’ starting point in negotiations. But Democrats argue that a “clean” debt ceiling increase is an obligation of the federal government rather than a bargaining chip. They’ve also attacked Republicans’ spending cut proposals as a non-starter, accusing the GOP of holding the country “hostage.”
“We’re going to stay focused on what Congress needs to do here, their congressional duty, which is to prevent a default,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said during her briefing on Tuesday when asked about the upcoming meeting.
“If House Republicans get their way, it could also … trigger a recession. And we’ve listed over and over again what this could be, if they continue to hold the American economy hostage. That’s going to be our focus. That’s going to be the president’s focus today, to make that clear to the leaders … that they have to do their congressional duty. And that’s what’s expected.”
A 46-year-old man was fatally shot by a fellow campaign staffer while handing out flyers for a progressive political group in Philadelphia ahead of the city’s upcoming mayoral race.
The death on the campaign trail occurred late Monday afternoon in East Germantown in the 2000 block of Church Lane when two staffers reportedly ran into one another on the street around 4 p.m. Both staffers, who remain unidentified by police, were carrying guns when they crossed paths. According to police, the two got into an argument on the street that quickly turned deadly when the 22-year-old drew his gun and shot the 46-year-old canvasser. The unnamed 46-year-old victim was not pronounced dead until 4:24 p.m., when he reached Albert Einstein Medical Center to be treated for a gunshot wound in the left armpit, according to police.
Police investigate the scene of Monday’s fatal shooting. (Fox Philadelphia)
Philadelphia Police Staff Inspector Ernest Ransom, recently appointed head of the Homicide Unit, suggested this was not the staffers’ first meeting, telling the Philadelphia Inquirer they “had always had a beef.” Police are investigating the shooting and whether self-defense was involved. The alleged shooter, who at the time was legally carrying a firearm, was immediately taken in for questioning and has reportedly been fully cooperative with police.
One PA, a progressive political group in Pennsylvania, confirmed the victim was one of its staffers.
The unnamed victim was reportedly handing out campaign flyers for a progressive political group at the time of the shooting. (Fox News)
“Today, a One PA team member tragically lost their life,” OnePA Executive Director Steve Paul said in a statement released after the incident. “We are mourning this senseless loss and continuing to gather the facts and investigate what happened.”
The fatal shooting occurred just days before the city’s May 16 Democratic mayoral primary election with issues of public safety are top of mind among candidates vying for the nomination.
I was devastated to hear about the tragic death of a canvasser today. My thoughts are with the family of the victim, the One PA community, and everyone impacted by this irrevocable loss. Though the canvasser was not part of our campaign, this loss is deeply felt by all of us.
“I was devastated to hear about the tragic death of a canvasser today. My thoughts are with the family of the victim, the One PA community, and everyone impacted by this irrevocable loss,” Gym wrote. “Though the canvasser was not part of our campaign, this loss is deeply felt by all of us.”
Aubrie Spady is a Freelance Production Assistant for Fox News Digital.
The anti-abortion activist group Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America came out of a meeting with former President Donald Trump Tuesday praising him for his anti-abortion positions despite a falling out last month over his affirmation of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision reversing the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling that allowed abortions nationwide, reverting it back to the states to decide individually.
“This afternoon I joined Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Tony Perkins for a terrific meeting with President Trump. His presidency was the most consequential in American history for the pro-life cause,” SBA Pro-Life America President Marjorie Dannenfelser said in a statement Tuesday. “During the meeting, President Trump reiterated his opposition to the extreme Democratic position of abortion on demand, up until the moment of birth, paid for by taxpayers — and even in some cases after the child is born.
“President Trump believes such a position is unworthy of a great nation and believes the American people will rebel against such a radical position that aligns us with China and North Korea.”
The organization said it is a “network of more than 1 million pro-life Americans nationwide” that is dedicated to ending abortion by electing national leaders and advocating for laws that save lives.”
“President Trump knows the vast majority of Americans oppose brutal late-term abortions when the child can feel pain and suck their thumbs,” she said in the statement. “President Trump reiterated that any federal legislation protecting these children would need to include the exceptions for life of the mother and in cases of rape and incest.
“Protecting unborn children capable of feeling pain would align America with the civilized world and with 47 out of 50 European nations.”
While speaking positively about the meeting at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, calling it “terrific,” Dannenfelser said she was also speaking with other GOP candidates about their positions, The Associated Press reported.
“I am not aligning with Trump,” Dannenfelser said in the report. “I’ve had similar conversations with all other GOP presidential hopefuls.”
The meeting comes two weeks after the organization expressed displeasure with Trump’s stance on the Dobbs decision, claiming the court “got it right” by allowing the states to decide the issue individually.
According to the AP report, she said Trump held a “morally indefensible position for a self-proclaimed pro-life presidential candidate.”
“Saying that the issue should only be decided at the states is an endorsement of abortion up until the moment of birth, even brutal late-term abortions in states like California, Illinois, New York and New Jersey,” she said in a statement April 20. “The only way to save these children is through federal protections, such as a 15-week federal minimum standard when the unborn child can feel excruciating pain.
“We will oppose any presidential candidate who refuses to embrace at a minimum a 15-week national standard to stop painful late-term abortions while allowing states to enact further protections.”
The White House blocked the New York Post from covering a Monday public event with President Joe Biden, according to the paper, a sign the president’s team is increasingly sensitive to coverage of the president’s son, Hunter Biden, and could be cracking down on media access after the launch of his reelection campaign.
The Post, which first revealed the existence of Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop in October of 2020, said the White House rejected its request to attend Biden’s press event discussing airline policies with Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg. The decision comes as federal prosecutors are wrapping up a tax investigation into Hunter Biden, which could result in criminal charges in the coming days.
Photos from the event show there were about 20 empty media seats, undermining the explanation from the White House press office for the decision to block the Post.
“We are unable to accommodate your credential request to attend the Investing in Airline Accountability Remarks on 5/8,” the White House press office told the Post. “The remarks will be live-streamed and can be viewed at WH.gov. Thank you for understanding. We will let you know if a credential becomes available.”
Biden—who has held the fewest press availabilities of any president in two decades—in February blew up at a Post reporter after the reporter asked during a similar media event about the first family’s financial dealings with China. “Give me a break, man,” Biden said, ignoring the question. “You can come to my office and ask a question when you have more polite people with you.”
Steven Nelson, the Post reporter who was denied access, told the Washington Free Beacon that Biden’s staff are “setting an anti-press freedom precedent by prescreening journalists allowed to attend large indoor events. These spaces were open to all reporters on White House grounds in the past.”
He noted that White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre promised last July to end a much-criticized COVID-era screening process that gave Biden’s press office control over which reporters were allowed to attend presidential remarks. Reporters accused the White House of arbitrarily enforcing the policy, saying it was “done without any transparent process into how reporters are selected to cover these events” in a letter last June.
“The White House Correspondents’ Association also has called on the administration to restore large indoor spaces to their historical status as open to all,” added Nelson. “If the Biden White House continues to discriminate against large outlets such as the New York Post, future administrations can do the same to other newspapers. It should end now.”
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The White House Correspondents’ Association also did not respond to a request for comment.
Update 5:34 p.m.: This piece has been updated since publication.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre claimed Monday there have been more than 200 mass shootings in the United States this year alone. Not only did Jean-Pierre claim there has been more than one mass shooting per day, but she blamed Republicans for gun violence.
“Today is Monday, May 8. That mean it is the 128th day of 2023. And yesterday, according to leading accounts, we witnessed the 201st mass shooting in this country this year,” she claimed.
“That means we are averaging more than one a day. More than 200 mass shootings in 128 days. Credible estimates show that more than 14,000 people have died this year from gun violence,” she added. “This is a crisis. It is a crisis that the Republicans in Congress are refusing to address. We are talking about the number-one killer of kids in America, and Republicans in Congress are saying there is nothing that we can do about it.”
05/08/23: Press Briefing by Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre www.youtube.com
Unfortunately, Jean-Pierre did not elaborate on what “leading sources” she used to derive her figure, nor did she define what constitutes a “mass shooting.”
Around the same time Jean-Pierre made the shocking claim, the Associated Press published a story reporting a much lower number of mass killings this year.
From the AP:
Over the first four months and six days of this year, 115 people have died in 22 mass killings — an average of one mass killing a week. That includes the bloodshed Saturday at a Dallas-area mall where eight people were fatally shot.
Every death is tragic. Still, nuance is necessary, because the White House is using the most recent atrocity to advance its agenda on firearms. For example, the AP explained that the perpetrator in some of those 22 incidents used weapons other than firearms, and the contexts of the mass atrocities are different, “from family and neighborhood disputes to school and workplace shootings to explosions of gunfire in public spaces,” the AP reported. Even murder-suicides compose a fraction of the numbers.
The way that Jean-Pierre presented her figure, its validity notwithstanding, suggested that every mass killing happens the same way with the same motive: one deranged perpetrator randomly mowing down innocent people. But, as the AP reported, that simply isn’t true.
While it remains unclear where Jean-Pierre got the number, Mathew Littman, executive director of pro-gun reform organization 97Percent, went on CNN early Monday and claimed that there have been more than 200 mass shootings in 2023. That calculation includes incidents in which no one died.
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A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including NewsMax, Fox News, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Rep. Devin Nunes, Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Chris Salcedo, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and Presiden
Contrary to misleading headlines, none of the eight electors granted immunity in Fulton County’s anti-Trump war ‘said anything … incriminating to themselves or anyone else.’
“At Least Eight Trump Electors Have Accepted Immunity in Georgia Investigation,” headlines uniformlyblared on Friday. The legacy outlets echoing that narrative, however, buried the lead, which is that Fulton County’s get-Trump district attorney can’t even find incriminating evidence against the former president when she grants immunity to targets of her criminal investigation. A strong secondary story, also ignored or downplayed by the left-wing media, reveals multiple incidents of alleged misconduct by the D.A.’s office.
The attorney representing eight Republicans targeted by the Fulton County D.A. filed a scathing response on Friday to the D.A. office’s motion to disqualify her from continued representation of her clients. Kimberly Debrow’s 28-page response detailed several previously unknown instances of questionable conduct by prosecutors targeting Donald Trump, his lawyers, and several high-profile Georgia Republicans. And contrary to the misleading headlines of the last several days, Debrow revealed that none of the eight individuals granted immunity “said anything in any of their interviews that was incriminating to themselves or anyone else.”
How We Got Here
Debrow’s response began by providing an important backdrop to Fulton County D.A. Fani Willis’ motion to disqualify Debrow from the still-ongoing probe into supposed “coordinated attempts to unlawfully alter the outcome of the 2020 elections in this state.” Willis’ probe began in earnest in January of 2022, when she obtained permission from the chief judge of Fulton County to impanel a “special grand jury.” While the “special grand jury” lacked the authority to indict anyone, it had subpoena power and was also charged with issuing a report making “recommendations concerning criminal prosecution.”
The special purpose grand jury issued its report earlier this year. Although much of the report remains under seal, in February a state court judge authorized the release of limited excerpts, including the grand jury’s conclusion “that perjury may have been committed by one or more witnesses testifying before it.” However, as I detailed when the story broke, that conclusion is meaningless without context, and the context makes clear that Willis misrepresented to the grand jury — and the American public — the substance of then-President Trump’s telephone call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger on Jan. 2, 2021.
Specifically, Willis falsely portrayed Trump as asking Raffensperger to “‘find 11,780 votes’ in the former President’s favor.” As the transcript of Trump’s conversation with Raffensperger established, however, the then-president did nothing of the sort. Instead, during the call, Trump’s lawyer explained to Raffensperger that “the court is not acting on our petition,” and sought an investigation into several categories of votes that appeared cast in violation of Georgia law.
While Willis branded Trump’s call to Raffensperger a “central focus” of her investigation, as Friday’s court filing reveals, the Fulton County D.A. also targeted Republicans named as “Trump electors” from the 2020 presidential election. Initially, the D.A.’s office told those electors, all 11 of whom were jointly represented by Debrow and fellow attorney Holly Pierson, they were “solely witnesses in the investigation.” Under those circumstances, they voluntarily agreed to be interviewed by Willis’ team. In late April 2022, Nathan Wade, a “private attorney” Willis hired to be special prosecutor, interviewed two electors and then canceled a third interview before unexpectedly subpoenaing the Republicans to testify before the grand jury.
A legal dispute between Wade and the defense attorneys ensued over the extent to which the Fifth Amendment’s right against self-incrimination protected the electors from being forced to respond to questions before the grand jury. Before the court had a chance to rule on the matter, however, Wade informed the court that the D.A.’s office intended to offer immunity to one or more of the electors.
Immunity Talk
While not identifying which of the 11 electors the D.A. would offer immunity to, Wade represented that the D.A. was prepared to offer “full immunity from prosecution for any acts taken related to the December 14, 2020, meeting at the Georgia State Capitol to execute purported electoral college votes in favor of former President Donald J. Trump and former Vice President Michael R. Pence.”
In response, Pierson and Debrow wrote to each of their clients, explained the existence and implications of the potential immunity offers, and noted whether a conflict of interest existed because the lawyers represented all 11 electors, but the D.A. would only be offering some of them immunity. The defense attorneys gave their clients a follow-up 13-page, single-spaced memo that comprehensively detailed the issues and then spoke with each client individually. All 11 electors opted to continue with joint representation and rejected the D.A.’s suggestion of immunity.
At the time, the defense attorneys informed both the court and the D.A.’s office of their clients’ decision, noting first their fundamental distrust of “the motives and intentions of the DA and the investigative team in this case,” and “their perception that this investigation into their lawful conduct is not based on (or even interested in) the facts or the law but instead is politically motivated.”
The defense counsel further noted their clients had “grave concerns” that if they testified truthfully “that neither they nor the other electors committed any illegal act or engaged in any sort of conspiracy with regard to the 2020 election the DA and your team would not accept that truth…” The electors thus feared prosecutors would “charge them with perjury or false statements to law enforcement officials or similar after their truthful, immunized testimony merely because the immunized witness is not in a position to tell the DA’s Office or the grand jury the story they want to hear.”
After the electors rejected the prosecutors’ overtures, the D.A.’s office responded by filing a motion to disqualify Pierson and Debrow, which would force the electors to hire new attorneys. In late November 2022, the court held that joint representation was permissible for 10 of the electors but that a conflict of interest required Chairman David Shafer to be separately represented. The electors and their attorneys then decided Pierson would represent Shafer and Debrow would represent the 10 remaining electors, and the court ruled such representation was permissible, over the D.A.’s objections.
Soon after, Debrow emailed the D.A.’s team to discuss a potential immunity deal, but it was not until April 4, 2023, that prosecutors responded. On April 7, 2023, Wade, the attorney Willis hired to be special prosecutor, provided draft immunity agreements for eight of the 10 electors. The two not offered immunity opted to obtain new legal representation, and Debrow’s remaining eight clients then accepted the revised immunity offers. Thereafter, seven of the eight electors sat for recorded interviews with Wade questioning them on behalf of the D.A.’s office and with Debrow representing them. The final elector was out of the country and thus has not yet been interviewed.
Manipulation and Intimidation
During Wade’s questioning, Debrow claims he attempted to mislead and confuse her clients by suggesting the D.A.’s office had previously made an actual offer of immunity in late 2022, as opposed to merely floating the potential for an immunity deal. In one case, Debrow detailed how, when she attempted to clarify for her client Wade’s misleading questions, the prosecutor threatened to leave, rip up the immunity agreement, and indict the elector.
The D.A.’s office then filed a second motion to disqualify Debrow, falsely representing to the court that “some of the electors represented by Ms. Debrow told members of the investigation team that no potential offer of immunity was ever brought to them in 2022.” The Fulton County D.A. knew that representation was false, Debrow stressed in her response, highlighting the evidence previously presented to both the court and prosecutors that detailed the extensive discussions Debrow had with her clients about the initial immunity outreach.
Willis also sought to force Debrow off the case by arguing some of her clients “stated that another elector represented by Ms. Debrow committed acts that are violations of Georgia law.”
“This statement is categorically false, and provably so,” Debrow countered. Here, Debrow first detailed her extensive legal experience, including her service as an assistant district attorney in three Georgia counties, before stressing she was present for every interview and would have recognized any such incriminating testimony. “Nothing even similar to any such statements were made by any of the interviewed electors,” Debrow said, adding that the transcripts confirmed her representation.
Significantly, Debrow told the court that “none of the interviewed electors said anything in any of their interviews that was incriminating to themselves or anyone else,” meaning they also had not implicated Trump, his lawyers, or any of the other potential targets of Willis’ criminal investigation. That fact was lost on the reporters, however, who since Friday have focused instead on the mere fact that the eight electors had accepted immunity agreements — implying that meant they had dirt to dish.
Ignoring the Real Story
The corporate media were likewise content to ignore the allegations of serious misconduct. Those included Willis’ misrepresentation to the court about whether the electors’ attorney had informed them of the prior immunity discussion and Wade’s alleged attempt to mislead and intimidate one of the witnesses by threatening to indict him.
Wade’s involvement here is particularly ironic given that a Fulton County judge held the special prosecution team could no longer investigate one of the electors, then-state Sen. Burt Jones, because Willis had hosted and headlined a fundraiser for Charlie Bailey — a Democrat seeking to challenge Jones in the general election for lieutenant governor. Wade, like Willis, had donated to Bailey’s campaign.
Noteworthy too is Wade’s work with Willis, as Wade was a private attorney whom Willis specifically hired to work on 2020 election investigation. Willis bringing on a pit bull to further her get-Trump efforts smells disgustingly similar to Manhattan D.A. Alvin Bragg’s use of outside “special assistant district attorneys,” including three from a high-powered, Democrat-connected law firm, to help find a way to indict Trump.
Also appalling is the attempt by Willis’ office to force Debrow off the case — a tactic sadly seen sometimes when a prosecutor proves unable to manipulate a witness into saying what the government wants.
The trial court has yet to rule on the Fulton County D.A.’s motion to disqualify Debrow, and maybe there will be something more of concern that the prosecutor omitted from the motion. But the detailed excerpts included in Debrow’s response brief appear to doom Willis’ attempt to force the electors to hire new attorneys. And if, as Debrow’s represented, the electors said nothing “incriminating to themselves or anyone else,” much more of the Fulton County D.A.’s case is likely doomed too.
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.
If the veteran who restrained the homeless man is prosecuted, it will establish a right to terrorize subway passengers and help revive the ‘anti-racist’ assault on justice.
Daniel Penny is not going quietly to the slaughter. The 24-year-old Marine Corps veteran who took action when fellow subway passengers were being threatened by a maniacal homeless person has lawyered up and will need all the legal help he can get if he hopes to avoid spending decades in prison.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg has assigned Joshua Steinglass, a veteran prosecutor who led the trial team in the case that prosecuted former President Donald Trump’s family business, to conduct the probe that will determine whether Penny will be put on trial for killing Jordan Neely. But the decision won’t be made in a vacuum. The liberal commentariat is already damning Penny as the civilian version of Derek Chauvin. Leftist politicians such as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., are accusing him of having committed a “murder” and Democrat and New York Gov. Kathy Hochul is saying Penny’s actions were unjustified and demanding that “justice” be given Neely’s family.
Neely, the 30-year-old homeless person who died during an incident on a New York City subway train on May 1, had a record of mental illness. He had been arrested 44 times for criminal conduct and had an outstanding warrant for felony assault. On an F train stopped at the Broadway-Lafayette Street subway station in Manhattan, he allegedly began acting in a threatening manner to other passengers. It was at that point that Penny restrained him and put him in what appears on a cell phone video of part of the incident to be a chokehold.
In doing so, it could well be argued that he prevented Neely from committing another crime against a fellow passenger. Video released Sunday also seems to show Penny put Neely in a recovery position after Neely was subdued and appeared to be OK.
But the reason this case is already a cause Celebre, leading to leftist demonstrations in the subways and an endless stream of articles in corporate media, is that Neely’s fate is blamed on the supposed indifference of the public to the lives of the homeless.
Broader Racial Ramifications
Penny’s fate will, as Peachy Keenan wrote in The Federalist, be a test of whether young American men should dare to act courageously when others are in peril. But there’s even more at stake in this case. With Neely being anointed as the new George Floyd, the questions of whether Penny was right to restrain Neely or if he used inappropriate force to do so are merely sidebars to a broader narrative about American racism.
Floyd’s death became a metaphor for a myth about systemic police racism. Floyd’s actions the night of his death, his criminal record, and the fact that his body was full of what might have been a lethal dose of fentanyl were dismissed as irrelevant. The only thing that mattered was that he was a black man and that the cop who had, in an act of undoubted callous brutality, snuffed out his life was white. In the name of a belief, however mistaken, that Floyd’s death was just one of countless incidents in which blacks were being slaughtered with impunity, millions took to the streets in “mostly peaceful” riots that shook the nation.
More than that, it set off a moral panic in virtually every sector of American life that elevated the woke catechism of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) to a new secular religion — since accepted by the Biden administration as mandatory for every government agency and department — that treats color-blind policies and even the goal of equal opportunity as forms of racism that must be eradicated.
Parallels to 1984 Case
Penny’s actions might, for those with a long memory of controversial New York subway criminal controversies, have more in common with those of Bernhard Goetz than of Chauvin. In 1984, Goetz opened fire on four black teenagers he said were trying to mug him on a No. 2 train. In an era of rampant crime, Goetz was largely supported by public opinion and acquitted of attempted murder, though he was fined and sentenced to six months in prison for illegal weapons possession. One of the people he shot, who was paralyzed in the incident, later won a $43 million civil judgment against Goetz that, as late as 2017, still hadn’t been paid.
As racially charged as that incident was, nearly 40 years later, we are living in a very different post-Black Lives Matter world. Any New Yorker who rides the subways knows how dangerous they have been made by authorities’ willingness to tolerate the presence of threatening people. But someone who isn’t a “person of color” is always going to be assumed to be in the wrong in any violent confrontation today, when the claim that America is an irredeemably racist nation is treated as inarguable by the chattering classes.
The prosecutor in the Kyle Rittenhouse case told him that “everybody takes a beating sometimes” and that he had no right to defend himself against lethal threats from armed BLM rioters in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Penny’s chances of winning a trial in a New York City courtroom in 2023 are immeasurably lower than were Goetz’s.
Leftist Campaign Against Justice
As such, and regardless of the facts of the case, the campaign against Penny must be viewed as merely the next stage in a long-running leftist campaign against the justice system in which pro-criminal prosecutors like Bragg, elected with the help of leftist billionaire George Soros, are in the forefront. The sympathy for Neely, which is framed as compassion for the homeless, is akin to the so-called decarceration movement that takes it as a given that too many nonwhite people are being jailed for crimes and calls to defund the police.
The prosecution of the ex-Marine will not just establish a precedent that there is a “right” of a deranged, drug-addicted person to terrorize others with impunity. It will also, like Floyd’s death or that of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, or a dozen other equally dubious cases, be routinely cited from now on as proof of American racism and a reason for doubling down on woke policies that will further divide and racialize the nation.
Talk about our indifference to the lives of the homeless is gaslighting, since it is the policies of the political left that have allowed such persons to camp out on streets or in subway cars rather than be taken by police to shelters and hospitals. The freedom for the homeless that has been established in New York — where the “broken windows” policing of the administrations of Mayors Rudy Giuliani and Michael Bloomberg has been abandoned — means the rights of other citizens to a livable city are abrogated. When people like Neely can harass people into buying their safety with donations in honor of performances like his Michael Jackson imitations or violent rants, then the rule of law is dead.
Leftists believe that, like Floyd, Neely died for our sins as a racist nation. That is why he is now being elevated to the status of secular saint regardless of or perhaps even because of his dysfunction and willingness to threaten others. The Floyd case led to de-policing throughout the country as cops, the only defense minority communities have against the black-on-black crime that afflicts their neighborhoods, have backed down in the face of prosecutions and demonization.
Penny’s prosecution will now pump new life into the BLM movement and ensure that public discourse about race and crime will continue to ignore the facts in favor of ideological myths that will send America’s cities into even greater squalor, violence, and racial conflict.
Jonathan S. Tobin is a senior contributor to The Federalist, editor in chief of JNS.org, and a columnist for Newsweek. Follow him on Twitter at @jonathans_tobin.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott on Monday announced a new Texas Tactical Border Force ahead of the expiration of the Title 42 public health order, which helped block migrants from entering the U.S. In response to “Joe Biden’s reckless border policies,” the Texas National Guard is loading Black Hawk helicopters and C-130s to deploy specially trained National Guard members to “hotspots along the border to intercept, to repel and to turn back migrants who are trying to enter Texas illegally,” Abbott said at a press conference from Austin-Bergstrom International Airport.
In a statement, the Texas National Guard said it activated 545 more service members at locations around the state Monday to “reinforce the border mission in anticipation of the end of Title 42 immigration restrictions.”
Gov. Greg Abbott shakes hands with members of the Texas National Guard as they prepare to deploy to the border in Austin, Texas, Monday, May 8, 2023. The Title 42 policy is set to expire Thursday. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)
“These additional forces will bolster the thousands of Texas National Guard service members already assisting local and state law enforcement agencies to secure the border; stop the smuggling of drugs, weapons and people into Texas; and prevent, detect, and interdict transnational criminal behavior between the ports of entry,” the Texas National Guard said in a statement Monday. “We have expanded our capabilities to include boat teams that patrol hundreds of river miles, drones and helicopters that detect illicit activity from the air, and brush teams, security points and roving patrols that block and interdict illegal smuggling (drugs, weapons and people) into Texas.”
Abbott was joined by Texas Border Czar Mike Banks, Texas National Guard Adjunct Gen. Thomas Suelzer and Texas Department of Public Safety Director Steve McCraw in making the announcement.
Members of the Texas National Guard install barbed wire on the border between El Paso, Texas, and Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, on May 3, 2023. (AP Photo/Christian Chavez)
“President [Joe] Biden is laying down a welcome mat to people across the entire world saying that the United States border is wide open, and it will lead to an incredible amount of people coming across the border illegally. President Biden’s open border policies is going to cause a catastrophic disaster in the United States,” Abbott said.
“According to the Biden administration itself, they anticipate about 13,000 people coming across the border illegally every single day,” the governor added. “If you extend that out over the course of a year, it means it will be about 4,700,000 people coming across the border a year. That will mean there will be more people coming across the border illegally than there are residents of the massive city of Chicago.”
Gov. Greg Abbott holds a news conference as members of the Texas National Guard prepare to deploy to the border. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)
The Texas Tactical Border Force is meant to bolster Operation Lone Star, which Abbott said has turned back 37,000 people who already came across the border illegally, arrested about 27,000 dangerous criminals, including “cartel gang members” who are wanted for crimes like murder, and seized “enough fentanyl that would have been enough to kill every man, woman and child in the United States.”
Danielle Wallace is a reporter for Fox News Digital covering politics, crime, police and more. Story tips can be sent to danielle.wallace@fox.com and on Twitter: @danimwallace.
Florida GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis officially signed a trio of bills Monday to stop Chinese Communist Party influence in his state. The bills limit Chinese-tied land buys of farmland, near military bases, or critical infrastructure, protect against Chinese forced technology transfer, and prohibit funding tied to China for education institutions in the state.
“Florida is taking action to stand against the United States’ greatest geopolitical threat — the Chinese Communist Party,” DeSantis said Monday.
“I’m proud to sign this legislation to stop the purchase of our farmland and land near our military bases and critical infrastructure by Chinese agents, to stop sensitive digital data from being stored in China, and to stop CCP influence in our education system from grade school to grad school.
“We are following through on our commitment to crack down on communist China.”
In a Friday interview with Newsmax‘s John Bachman, DeSantis hailed the Florida Legislature GOP supermajorities for being able to get an aggressive agenda passed to root out Chinese influence in his state.
“This is trailblazing for the nation,” DeSantis told Bachman in an interview that aired on “Eric Bolling The Balance.” “Certainly, when you talk about CCP, they made a concerted effort to buy farmland, and so we’re very cognizant of that. We’re not going to let that happen in Florida, but we’ve gone even farther and said we don’t want them near any critical infrastructure.”
Interests of Foreign Countries (SB 264) restricts governmental entities from contracting with foreign countries and entities of concern and restricts conveyances of agricultural lands and other interests in real property to foreign principals, the People’s Republic of China, and other entities and persons that are affiliated with them. It also amends certain electronic health record statutes to ensure that health records are physically stored in the continental U.S., U.S. territories, or Canada.
“Food security is national security, and we have a responsibility to ensure Floridians have access to a safe, affordable, and abundant food supply,” Commissioner Wilton Simpson said Monday. “China and other hostile foreign nations control hundreds of thousands of acres of critical agricultural lands in the U.S., leaving our food supply and our national security interests at risk.
“Restricting China and other hostile foreign nations from controlling Florida’s agricultural land lands near critical infrastructure facilities protects our state, provides long-term stability, and preserves our economic freedom. This bill is long overdue.”
Agreements of Educational Entities with Foreign Entities (SB 846) prohibits state colleges and universities and their officials from soliciting or accepting any gift from a college or university based in a foreign country of concern. It also prohibits state colleges and universities from accepting any grant from or participating in any agreement or partnership with any college or university based in a foreign country of concern. The bill also prohibits the ownership or operation of any private school participating in the state’s school choice scholarship program by a person or entity domiciled in, owned by, or in any way controlled by a foreign country of concern.
Prohibited Applications on Government-issued Devices (SB 258) requires the Department of Management Services to create a list of prohibited applications owned by a foreign principal or foreign countries of concern, including China, which present a cybersecurity and data privacy risk.
The bill requires government and educational institution to block access to prohibited applications on all government servers and devices in Florida and requires public employers to retain the ability to remotely wipe and uninstall these dangerous applications from government issued devices.
Arizona’s largest elementary school district has shifted course, voting to allow students from a Christian university to teach there once again, Alliance Defending Freedom announced Thursday.
“This is a complete vindication of the rights of our students to be able to participate as student-teachers in a public school district without fear of religious discrimination” said Arizona Christian University President Len Munsil in a statement.
The Washington Elementary School District voted 5-0 March 9 to end an arrangement in which ACU students completed their student teaching and practical coursework at WESD, as TheBlaze reported. Board members at the time cited ACU’s stance on lifelong, monogamous, heterosexual marriage as presenting an “unsafe” condition.
After Alliance Defending Freedom sued WESD, the board apparently saw the error of its ways, with four of its five members voting at Wednesday night’s meeting to enter a new agreement with ACU. The district was slapped with $25,000 in attorneys’ fees as part of the settlement.
Wearing cat ears to a February 23 WESD meeting, board member Tamillia Valenzuela expressed her opposition to ACU students helping mitigate the national teaching shortage and recruitment difficulties.
“At some point, we need get real with ourselves and take a look at who we’re making legal contracts with and the message that is sending to our community. Because that makes me feel like I could not be safe in this school district,” Valenzuela said.
Valenzuela was referring to ACU’s promotion of “Biblically-informed values that are foundational to Western civilization, including the centrality of family, traditional sexual morality, and lifelong marriage between one man and one woman.”
Another WESD board member, Kyle Clayton, alleged at the February meeting that “proselytizing is embedded into how they teach.”
“There are plenty of Christian denominations that are LGBTQ friendly,” Governing Board President Nikkie Gomez-Whaley said prior to ADF’s lawsuit, adding that for her, “this is not a concern about Christianity.”
Wait, wait, wait. What kind of person feels “not safe” in a school just because Christian university students are teaching children? What worldview these university students have, are NOT being taught in the grade schools. They are just teaching the basics, not the woke indoctrination of the LGBTQ+ agenda.
What does this say about the woke culture today? Is the LGBTQ+ agenda so important, that dumbing down our children is of no concern?
One lawsuit and two months later, WESD is singing a markely different tune.
“We obtained everything we wanted in this new agreement, without any sacrifice or compromise to our beliefs and our university’s religious purpose. We look forward to a continued beneficial partnership that serves ACU student-teachers and the students, faculty, and staff of the WESD,” ACU President Munsil also said.
“By discriminating against Arizona Christian University and denying it an opportunity to participate in the student-teacher program because of its religious status and beliefs, the school district was in blatant violation of the U.S. Constitution, not to mention state law that protects ACU’s religious freedom,” said ADF Senior Counsel David Cortman.
WESD released a statement to KNXV-TV on having “mutually agreed to resolve their dispute.”
“We are pleased that the case against the WESD has been dismissed. We look forward to continuing the work of creating welcoming and accessible education spaces that meet the needs of our students, staff, and community,” Governing Board President Nikkie Gomez-Whaley said in the statement.
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Actor Richard Dreyfuss lambasted Hollywood’s diversity standards and America’s failures in civics education on PBS’s “Firing Line” Friday.
“They make me vomit,” Dreyfuss said of representation and inclusion standards put in place by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for Oscars eligibility in the Best Picture category.
“This is an art form … no one should be telling me as an artist that I have to give in to the latest, most current idea of what morality is … I don’t think that there is a minority or a majority in the country that has to be catered to like that.”
The standards require a certain percentage of cast and crew come from underrepresented racial and ethnic groups, are women, are non-heterosexual, or have cognitive or physical disabilities.
“Firing Line” host Margaret Hoover also asked the Oscar winner about whether he thinks there is is a difference between representation in general who is allowed to represent other groups, including the use of blackface.
“There shouldn’t be … Because it’s patronizing. Because it says that we’re so fragile that we can’t have our feelings hurt,” Dreyfuss answered, in part.
Moving to the topic of civics education, Dreyfuss was equally blunt.
Dreyfuss told Hoover a story of his own education in civics. He explained that his mother, a “communist, and she wasn’t kidding” raised him in a very leftist community. His mother and one of his middle grade teachers, a Republican who “never tried to keep her GOP atmosphere away from her teaching,” would debate American history.
Dreyfess identified “the honor of dissent” as a pivotal missing element in today’s civics education.
“The idea that you sought the truth in history and you didn’t fool around about it. You told the truth. Period. And that was that. You don’t stop at the water’s edge and not commit to critical analysis,” he said.
Dreyfuss developed his Dreyfuss Civics Initiative curriculum in 2006. On DCI’s website, Dreyfess explains why he believes prioritizing civics education is crucial.
“Teach our kids how to run our country, before they are called upon to run our country … if we don’t, someone else will run our country.”
Dreyfuss and Hoover delved deeper into his concerns about both civics education and civility generally.
“People confuse being exposed to an opposing view on any subject with being a traitor or with being a subversive. And that’s a kind of nonsense that is so immature that it’s beyond the immaturity of normal adults,” he said.
“I think we’re cowards … the idea that a parent would walk into a public school and say, ‘I don’t want my children exposed to opposing views,’ That’s wrong. That’s wrong of the parent.”
“I think we’re in the endgame right now,” Dreyfuss also said.
“I think that we could let slip the greatest idea for governance ever devised, and we won’t even know that it happened.”
Watch Margaret Hoover’s interview with Richard Dreyfuss on PBS’s “Firing Line” below.
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A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including NewsMax, Fox News, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Rep. Devin Nunes, Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Chris Salcedo, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and Presiden
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
Remember when we all went around saying “it takes a village to raise a child”? I do.
I remember hearing Whitney Houston belt it out—
I believe the children are our are future Teach them well and let them lead the way Show them all the beauty they possess inside Give them a sense of pride to make it easier Let the children’s laughter remind us how we used to be Everybody searching for a hero People need someone to look up to….
I grew up on that message. And you can bet your bottom dollar I tried to raise my kids as part of a village that loves and supports them. But instead of learning basic human goodness, leftists have decided to use education to destroy our children.
CRT, unicorns, and other works of fiction.
It’s bad enough that CRT infiltrates public schools with its revisionist history and racist undertones. But leftists just had to add unicorns and gender benders. It’s a terrible web that traps the masses.
Critical race theory is an idea that originated in universities and law schools under the name “critical theory”. Its supporters added “race” in the 1970s, clever scoundrels that they were.
The addition of RACE bastardized a 1930s European theory birthed by communist academics. They knew that RACE would SELL this nonsensical concept. Further, they knew that Blacks in America would readily buy the concept.
The communists of the time targeted Blacks due to our LEGITIMATE grievances. Because Blacks during this time were treated as second-class citizens. That treatment led to angst in the Black community. Thus, many Blacks succumbed to the communist ideology. They believed we would all be treated equally; that’s the lie communism proposes.
The objective of Critical Race Theory was to tear down, even erase the history of ideas that created Western culture. Particularly American Western culture.
America was too good for its own good, the communists believed. Too good to be true. So they put her to the test. For decades, America proved that capitalism and free markets work; moreover, Marxism and Communism fail.
Tenets of CRT reject ideas such as a “color-blindness” and even advancement based on meritocracy. Black people aren’t successful in America because they work hard and dismiss the noise of the Left. They succeed by pure luck.
In other words, CRT doesn’t value people by the content of their character, nor does CRT value hard work. Ibram X. Kendi wrote: “The language of color blindness … is a mask to hide racism.”
Unbelievably, CRT openly criticizes the Civil Rights movement; a movement that created millions of successful Blacks in America.
While CRT acknowledges the success of individual Blacks in America, ironically, it criticizes successful Blacks for joining the system. The theory puts Blacks in a no-win situation. CRT supporter Derrick Bell alludes that successful Blacks “are passing” as whites. Because being successful according to Bell, is succumbing to the white man’s orthodoxy.
We could try to ignore the inconsistencies and idiocy of the flawed concepts of CRT. However, we do so at our peril. Because CRT impacts all areas of society. CRT demoralizes K-12 students. And if it hasn’t sunk in by the end of K-12, CRT attacks in college, polarizing higher ed students.
Post-college, CRT guilts working Americans and condones “cancel culture”. In the end, CRT stokes grievances with the purpose of creating victims.
A proponent of Critical Theory, Herbert Marcuse, famously wrote, “All liberation depends on the consciousness of servitude”. And like a cult, the CRT revolution enslaves the minds of the people who adopt it. And the concept is blatantly and unapologetically racist.
When racism wasn’t enough to divide America, leftists brought in the unicorn.
Parents are no longer the ultimate authority when teaching their children about race, sexual preference, or even gender. Instead, our kids are taught to ditch their God given pronouns and choose their gender.
If a kid feels saddled with a penis they don’t really like, the school is willing to step-in and help the child obtain hormone therapy in preparation for a sex change. No parental consultation necessary. Yet, you need to sign a permission slip for your kid to go the zoo or a museum. Seriously folks! How are these asinine hypocrisies not glaringly evident to those who put these leftists in charge of our schools? I’m not even going to dive into the boys playing girls’ sports– we’ll just save that for another day. Because today, I stumbled across a headline that literally made me want to throw up.
This morning, the Fox News website had this to say:
West Virginia teacher who raped freshman kept ‘Top 10’ list of most attractive students: lawsuit
Lawyers said Ronald Paul Harris may have sexually abused other victims, and the school district allegedly “turned a blind eye”.
A now-convicted pedophile raped a freshman while he was a teacher in a West Virginia school district. That district and the school’s former principal are now facing a lawsuit for allegedly “turned a blind eye” to the ongoing abuse.
Ronald Paul Harris, who is now 63, admitted in criminal court to molesting a 14-year-old student while he was a history teacher and basketball coach at Oak Glen Middle School in Hancock County, West Virginia.
…
“This case is a parent’s worst nightmare,” said Mary Pat Statler, who’s representing E.H. (the victim) and her parents, along with P. Zachary Stewart.
“To learn that your child was groomed and sexually abused by a teacher is beyond awful. It’s made even more terrible knowing that the administrator at the time of the abuse was in a position to stop the abuse or prevent future instances of abuse and instead turned a blind eye.”
Harris pleaded guilty last September in criminal court to sexual abuse by a person in a position of trust and is serving a 10- to-20-year prison sentence and must register as a sex offender. As part of the deal, five other felony charges were dropped.
The details are so disturbing, I feel the need to warn you.
Iowa Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley is demanding transparency from an agency with no interest in transparency.
On Thursday, the Iowa lawmaker went to the Senate floor to demand FBI compliance with a congressional subpoena compelling documents related to a criminal scheme involving the president and a “foreign national.” Grassley joined House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer in issuing the subpoena Wednesday.
“We believe the FBI possesses an unclassified internal document that includes very serious and detailed allegations implicating the current President of the United States,” Grassley wrote. “What we don’t know is what, if anything, the FBI has done to verify these claims or investigate further. The FBI’s recent history of botching politically charged investigations demands close congressional oversight.”
In his Thursday floor speech, Grassley spoke about his tenure conducting constitutional oversight of federal law enforcement agencies.
“In many of those floor speeches, I’ve discussed legally protected and unclassified whistleblower disclosures made to my office relating to the Hunter Biden criminal investigation,” Grassley said. “Those disclosures have a very common theme: the Justice Department and FBI have allowed political infection to take root within each agency’s decision-making process. Such an infection is an existential threat to any government agency.”
The latest whistleblower cited in Republican lawmakers’ demands to the FBI on Wednesday alleges President Biden engaged in bribery while serving in the Obama administration.
“The allegations my office has received are very precise, very direct, and very consistent. Accordingly, they’re highly credible,” Grassley said Thursday. “Not once – let me emphasize that again – not once has the Justice Department or FBI substantively disputed the whistleblower allegations that I’ve made public.”
“Simply put, did the Justice Department and FBI treat this information like they would if we, the people, were implicated, or did they sweep it under the rug to protect then-candidate Biden and President Biden now?” Grassley added. “If the Justice Department and FBI have any hope of redeeming their once-trusted position with the American people, Attorney General Garland and Director Wray must answer. Their credibility is on the line.”
Tristan Justice is the western correspondent for The Federalist and the author of Social Justice Redux, a conservative newsletter on culture, health, and wellness. He has also written for The Washington Examiner and The Daily Signal. His work has also been featured in Real Clear Politics and Fox News. Tristan graduated from George Washington University where he majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow him on Twitter at @JusticeTristan or contact him at Tristan@thefederalist.com. Sign up for Tristan’s email newsletter here.
By describing woke ideologies and their fruits at face value, conservatives felled the left’s self-conferred monopoly on how, when, and where the term could be used.
The Associated Press Stylebook, a once-respected linguistic guide for journalists, conceded the definition of the word “woke” to conservatives on Thursday, in an update instructing writers to “use quotes around the slang term.”
“Woke” was originally popularized by left-wing proponents of identity politics to flatteringly refer to their own “enlightenment or awakening about issues of racial and other forms of social justice,” as the AP explains. Conservatives have used it to describe those same people and their ideas.
Those ideas more often than not, demand revolutionary social changes that prejudge people based on their secondary physical characteristics. If, like the vast majority of America until about five seconds ago, you think such identarian prejudices are a bad thing, you might use the word “woke” in a less than fawning manner. Apparently, the AP’s staff can’t handle that.
AP’s concession of the word is hilariously thin-skinned, but it’s also a rare win for conservatives in the war of words. Just by describing woke behavior as such, we’ve held a bit of ground against the unhinged language police who are mad that the right is using their terminology against them. Unintentionally, it seems we’ve ended up with command of the word altogether, if left-wing outlets like the AP are henceforth refusing to use it.
While there are times individual ideologies require a more specific description — queer theory, or socialism, for example — “woke” is a completely fair and often helpful term to use when speaking generally about the coalition of people on the left who want to see meritocracy replaced by identity politics. As my colleague Samuel Mangold-Lenett noted recently in these pages, “what other slogany-sounding word really works as a catch-all for what leftism has become?”
“They lost complete control of the English language,” he added, “and the word they used to indicate their radicalism to one another is being used to expose that radicalism to the rest of the world.”
The apparatus of left-wing media outlets, cultural celebrities, and tech platforms that drives our modern discourse has a majority share in defining the language we use. From headlines to search engines to literal dictionaries, activists manipulate the tools of debate. In any debate, the first step is defining your terms — if your definitions are off, you’ve already lost.
That’s why it’s incumbent upon conservatives to be intentional, honest, and straightforward with the words we use. That includes defending the legitimacy of disfavored-but-accurate terms (like “woke,” or “woman”) and refusing to use inaccurate language.
Take the nonsense phrase “gender-affirming care,” for example. The diction dictators have effectively standardized the term, to the point where even people who disapprove of such procedures will glibly repeat it. But nothing about the phrase is tethered to reality.
The whole idea that people have “genders” beyond their natural sex is pseudo-science crafted to further an ideology. Procedures that attempt to inhibit or reverse the physical realities of a person’s sex are not “affirming” that sex, but actively rejecting it. And deformative surgeries that involve amputating healthy body parts and creating Frankenstein-esque “penises” and “vaginas” with scraps of carved-up skin are certainly not “care.”
To use the phrase “gender-affirming care” is to give up the entire argument before it’s even begun. Or, as George Orwell put it, such nonsense terms “construct your thoughts for you,” and “perform the important service of partially concealing your meaning even from yourself.”
The same goes for using improper pronouns to describe sexually confused people: calling a man “she” or a woman “he.” Doing so indulges a delusion. Having physical reality on your side does little good if you concede it away by the very words you use.
Concurrent with the effort to mainstream invented euphemisms such as “gender-affirming care” is an effort to cannibalize established English vocabulary. Other victims of the AP Stylebook’s recent crusades include “riot,” “mistress,” “crazy,” and “pro-life.” Proper grammar is also a victim, with the redefinition of the plural pronoun “they” to refer to individuals who are in denial of their natural sex.
Tech monopolies such as Google instruct their employees to avoid terms like “man hours” and “blacklist.” The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has nixed “criminal” and “foreigner.” From journalism to medicine, terms such as “mother” and “woman” are replaced by dehumanizing lingo like “birthing parent” and “person who menstruates.” Merriam-Webster has redefined “anti-vaxxer,” “sexual preference,” and “assault rifle” to further the editors’ ideological ends.
By describing woke ideologies and their fruits at face value, conservatives felled the left’s self-conferred monopoly on how, when, and where the term could be used. But the same people policing the word “woke” are appointing themselves the arbiters of the rest of the English language, too.
For those of us who prefer our words to reflect reality, there is nothing to be gained by good-naturedly going along with linguistic charades. On the other hand, there is the entire discourse to be lost.
“The worst thing one can do with words is to surrender them,” George Orwell wrote in his 1946 essay, “Politics and the English Language.” Orwell protested not just sloppy use of language, but intentional misuse of language for political purposes.
“Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable,” he said. “Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness.”
Politicians and dishonest media propagandists today use inaccurate language to frame narratives and foster a leftist perspective. Inadvertently, even well-meaning audiences sometimes internalize this language and end up propagating the very ideas and framing they fundamentally reject. Don’t let that be you.
In every debate, it’s vital to start by defining your terms. If conservatives want to counter the radical left’s agenda, we have to begin by using words that accurately reflect what we mean — not words that actively mean the opposite. Here are just 10.
1. ‘Mainstream Media’
The public communication cartel headed by The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, CBS, and MSNBC does not represent mainstream Americans. Earlier this year, Axios (another culprit of heavy-handed political spin) reported that 56 percent of Americans believe “Journalists and reporters are purposely trying to mislead people by saying things they know are false or gross exaggerations.”
Big Media has engaged in deception through false and misleading “reporting” on Georgia’s election laws, the trespass and unrest at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, and more. Embracing “Russiagate” and the allegations of the Steele dossier against President Trump was one indicator of crumbling credibility. The cover-up of the Hunter Biden laptop story just before the 2020 presidential election was another.
Even more recently, CBS’s “60 Minutes” invented a scandal about Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, while giving minuscule coverage to New York Democrat Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s cover-up of COVID-19 nursing home deaths his policies caused.
Leftist propaganda outlets who are running cover for Democrats and spreading inaccurate opposition research on conservatives don’t deserve to be called mainstream. Instead, use “Big Media,” “corporate media,” or — as DeSantis says — “smear merchants.”
2. ‘Gender,’ When You Mean ‘Sex’
Words have gender; people are one sex or another. For Latin and in many of the languages that have grown out of it, gender is a linguistic term indicating which word endings a term should possess. Gender is either feminine, masculine, or neuter. The phrase “la boulangerie,” for example, is French for “the bakery,” and its gender is feminine.
Male and female, on the other hand, refer to sex. Sex is a biological category that reflects a person’s physical characteristics and reproductive systems, and also manifests in certain broad behavioral differences that distinguish men and women.
3. ‘Sex-Reassignment Surgery’
Further, sex is not assigned, at birth or ever. If it is not “assigned,” it cannot be reassigned. Surgical procedures that remove or conceal the outward appearance of a woman or man’s reproductive organs, are most accurately described as genital mutilation or amputation.
4. ‘Democracy,’ When You Mean ‘Republic’
A democracy is direct rule by the supreme will of the people: the highest law is that of the loudest mob. Derived from the Greek “demos” (people) and “kratia” (power), democracy involves no higher law than popular consensus, and subjects the majority will to no checks and balances but itself.
In Book VIII of “The Republic,” Plato lists democracy as the social structure directly followed by tyranny. Democracy, Plato theorized, “comes into being when the poor, winning the victory, put to death some of the other party, drive out others, and grant the rest of the citizens an equal share in both citizenship and offices.” He continued, “that is the constitution of democracy alike whether it is established by force of arms or by terrorism.”
The American system was established as a constitutional republic. The highest law of the land is the U.S. Constitution, to which all public servants are (or should be) accountable. Additional laws are made by elected representatives of the people. Further, the American system is a federal republic, meaning power is divided between federal, state, and local governments, all of whom serve as the guarantors of the people’s sovereignty and rights.
5. ‘Abortion Doctors’ and ‘Abortion Clinics’
Doctors protect life; they don’t willfully take it. The Hippocratic Oath, written by the ancient Greek physician Hippocrates and long respected as a noble description of a doctor’s vocation, includes a commitment to “not give to a woman an abortive remedy.” Doctors are also obligated to, as far as it is in their power, “do no harm.” (This phrase is commonly attributed to the Hippocratic Oath, but actually comes from another work of Hippocrates, his book, “Of the Epidemics.”)
Similarly, clinics are medical facilities where people receive help and care. We do not call the room in which a prisoner on death row is executed a “clinic,” and neither should we use the term to describe the place where preborn babies are killed and dismembered. Call abortionists and abortion facilities what they are.
6. ‘Antidiscrimination’
Often, “antidiscrimination” policies actually refer to legal preferences based on sex, race, socioeconomic status, or some other category. The Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, for example, released an “Antiracist Agenda For Medicine” earlier this month that would provide “preferential care based on race” for black and Latino patients.
In another example of discrimination under the name of its opposite, Yale University unlawfully discriminated against white and Asian students, according to a two-year Department of Justice investigation. Instead of using the leftist buzzword “antidiscrimination” to describe these policies, call them legalized preferences, or simply the discrimination they are.
7. ‘Undocumented Immigrant’
“Undocumented” is the term used by people who don’t want to call breaking immigration laws “illegal.” However, most illegal immigrants have identification documents from their home governments. Further, 16 states — California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Utah, Vermont, Virginia and Washington — as well as Washington, D.C., issue drivers licenses to illegal aliens, giving them U.S. documents as well.
8. ‘Equity’ Or ‘Equality,’ When You Mean The Other
Equity and equality sound similar, but have widely different implications today. Noah Webster’s 1828 dictionary defines “equality” as “The same degree of dignity or claims; as the equality of men in the scale of being … an equality of rights.” The Declaration of Independence’s assertion that “all men are created equal” recognizes this equal value and dignity in personhood of each human being.
Equity has traditionally been a common legal term, referring to civil remedies; it can also mean the “impartial distribution of justice.” But in the jargon of identity politics, equity describes a policy that “recognizes that each person has different circumstances and allocates the exact resources and opportunities needed to reach an equal outcome.” See the above entry for “antidiscrimination” for an example of how equity-driven policies usually work.
9. ‘Cisgender’
Cisgender is an unnecessary word and assumes that sex is a result of human choice. A cisgender man is a man; a cisgender woman is a woman. Only added to the Oxford English Dictionary in 2015, “cisgender” was invented to represent the opposite of “transgender” in the 1990s.
10. ‘Pro-Choice’
“Pro-choice” is a euphemism to get around having to call yourself pro-abortion. But just as we don’t use “pro-choice” to describe supporting a person’s decision to murder another, we shouldn’t use it here. Abortion denies giving the unborn baby the choice to live; in that sense, it is violently anti-choice.
“This invasion of one’s mind by ready-made phrases,” Orwell continued, “can only be prevented if one is constantly on guard against them.” Sloppy, inaccurate phrases will “construct your thoughts for you,” he says, and “perform the important service of partially concealing your meaning even from yourself.”
Don’t let corrupt media and politicians design your words and supplant your meaning. To win the culture debate, you better first define your terms.
Elle Purnell is an assistant editor at The Federalist, and received her B.A. in government from Patrick Henry College with a minor in journalism. Follow her work on Twitter @_etreynolds.
Parents in a Texas school district are demanding answers from school officials after first-graders allegedly forced their 6-year-old classmate to perform a sex act while they filmed it despite a teacher being in the classroom.
Parents and community members angered by the situation at Plainview South Elementary School in Plainview gathered outside the administrative office of the Plainview Independent School District (ISD) on Monday, according to the Plainview Herald, which noted the protest swelled to as many as 30 people throughout the day.
Family members of the girl involved are planning another protest at 6 p.m. Friday at local Broadway Park, local NBC affiliate KCBD reported.
“A 6-year-old was exposed to things that even adults would have a hard time overcoming,” a protesting parent of another student at the elementary school told the Herald. “This is trauma at its worst, and it is a trickle-down effect because it affects everyone around them.”
Parents and community members angered by the situation at Plainview South Elementary School in in Plainview, Texas, are demanding answers from school officials. (Google Maps)
Parents who were protesting Monday reportedly learned about the alleged April 19 incident after the school district called the parent of the first-grade girl. After receiving the call from the district, the child reportedly told her family that another student had pressured her to perform a sex act.
Heather Gonzales, an older cousin of the 6-year-old girl, told KCBD that the girl’s family noticed a sudden change in her behavior amid indications of distress and complaints of a stomach ache.
The girl reportedly revealed that a boy had exposed himself to her in the school lunch line and that she had also been pulled under a desk and pressured to perform a sex act while another student recorded with a district-issued iPad.
“She said she was hitting him with the poetry book,” said Gonzales, noting that the video showed her cousin did her best to fight back. The girl reportedly claimed the incident did not stop “until they let me go.”
Students play outside Plainview South Elementary School in Plainview, Texas. (Plainview South Elementary School/Facebook)
Gonzales claimed the school district has not provided adequate answers.
“Everything was ‘no comment, I cannot tell you, no comment,’” Gonzales said. “So, you mean to tell me abuse has been happening for a week and a half and these kids are still at the same desk? My cousin is still at a desk with all boys, having to see her abusers every day?”
The students have reportedly since been moved to separate classrooms.
Plainview ISD Superintendent H.T. Sanchez told KCBD that the school made a report and contacted Texas Child Protective Services (CPS) when school officials discovered video of the incident a day after it happened. He said a state investigator came to Plainview the next week and has been working with local law enforcement.
“He had asked that we hold confidentiality because he wanted to be sure that he was able to get the full story from each of the students, the minors, that were involved,” Sanchez said. “All of the steps that we’re required to take, we took.”
The district also released an extensive statement explaining that because minors are involved, “the school system must be very careful in the information it provides,” according to the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal.
The statement assured that Sanchez, assistant superintendent Yesinia Pardo and South Elementary principal Jennifer Hughey “have visited with the parents/guardians of families involved in a recent incident at South Elementary that is under Child Protective Services and law enforcement investigation.”
The statement also noted that the alleged incident “occurred away from the full vision of the teacher” while she was working with other students.
When the teacher collected the students’ iPads the next day, she noticed one of them had been locked with a password and took the device to the campus administrator. “Inappropriate content was discovered” on the iPad after a tech from the technology department unlocked it, according to the district.
The teacher involved has since been placed on administrative leave pending the outcome of the investigation, the district said.
“My daughter comes home with bruises and rashes if she doesn’t participate in these little boys’ sick games.”— Plainview South Elementary School parent
Parents who spoke to the Herald during the Monday protest outside the school district’s administrative office claimed the incident with the 6-year-old is not an isolated one.
“There have been multiple moms coming out about stuff that has been happening all year and nothing is being done about it,” one parent said. “It’s hit its peak and that’s why we’re here today, to get answers.”
“My daughter comes home with bruises and rashes if she doesn’t participate in these little boys’ sick games,” another parent at the protest said. “They will punch her, give her Indian burns, they’ll call her names and cuss at her.”
Other parents at Plainview South Elementary claimed the alleged incident with the 6-year-old girl is not an isolated one. (iStock)
“You can’t have your kids in a classroom like that,” one parent said. “You’re worried about the education they are receiving and what they are being exposed to. A lot of parents have parental controls on what their kid is able to watch and see at this age, and we do all of that just for them to go to school and be exposed to stuff they should’ve never seen.”
A spokesperson for Plainview ISD told Fox News Digital that “CPS is continuing its investigation, and we continue to cooperate with CPS and law enforcement, by their request we are not able to comment any further than we have shared.”
Jon Brown is a writer for Fox News Digital. Story tips can be sent to jon.brown@fox.com.
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including NewsMax, Fox News, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Rep. Devin Nunes, Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Chris Salcedo, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President.
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
New York Daily News / Contributor, Spencer Platt / Staff | Getty Images
Jordan Neely’s dad abandoned him in childhood. Neely’s stepfather strangled and disposed of his mother when Neely was just 14 years old. According to people who knew Neely, the murder of his mother and the abandonment by his father caused Jordan Neely to fall into depression and mental illness. With his family support erased, in recent years Neely became a schizophrenic, homeless nuisance terrorizing the streets and subways of New York.
Neely’s life ended in inevitable tragedy Monday afternoon. He menaced the wrong group of New York subway riders. A former Marine wrestled Neely to the ground from behind and applied a choke hold to restrain him, and at least one other passenger helped subdue Neely. The 30-year-old vagrant lost consciousness and died.
On Wednesday, the medical examiner’s office ruled Neely’s death a homicide, stating neck compression as the cause of death.
Political opportunists and corporate and social media appear ready to turn Neely into the next George Floyd, a heroic martyr and symbol of American unfairness, an excuse to riot and loot.
Say his name! Jordan Neely.
According to social media pundits, the Marine and the black man who helped subdue Neely maimed and lynched innocent Jordan Neely, a Michael Jackson impersonator, a young man with a bright future, had white supremacy not reared its ugly head.
After hours of careful Twitter deliberation, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez posted her verdict. “Jordan Neely was murdered,” she wrote. “But [because] Jordan was houseless and crying for food in a time when the city is raising rents and stripping services to militarize itself while many in power demonize the poor, the murderer gets protected [with] passive headlines + no charges. It’s disgusting.”
AOC is a lawmaker, sworn to uphold the constitution and our agreed-upon laws. She does not believe in our “innocent until proven guilty” standard of law. What she sees on Twitter is more than enough to prove murder.
For the record, homicide and murder are two different things. There is justifiable and legal homicide. Murder can’t be justified. Murder is always a crime. Homicide is not.
We’ve murdered truth and nuance.
Jordan Neely is not the second coming of Emmett Till. He’s a victim of the widespread destruction of family. Not just his family, but the destruction of the American family.
New York is a lawless hellhole captured by the demons created by the breakdown of family and attack on authority. Unparented children and adults control the Big Apple’s streets and subways. Neely’s untreated mental illness made him a ticking time bomb in a city where law enforcement has retreated and chaos and disorder have escalated.
Vigilante justice is a natural outgrowth when law enforcement retreats to safety. Untrained, frustrated citizens will make mistakes. Opportunists will capitalize on those mistakes.
More than likely, the white Marine will be sacrificed so that politicians, corporate media, activists, clergy, and Neely’s own family do not have to deal with their role in his tragic life and death. We all played a role in cultivating the toxic, anti-family culture that killed Jordan Neely. The people most passionately seeking to punish the Marine are the most guilty.
AOC participated in the defund-the-police insanity. She helped loose the criminal lunacy torturing NYC. Black Lives Matter conspired with New York’s Democratic politicians and prosecutors to prioritize the welfare of criminals above law-abiding citizens. The black church centered racial justice and government assistance over preservation and promotion of the family. Corporate media rewards and revels in racial controversy.
Jordan Neely’s father unleashed the first deadly strike to Jordan’s soul when he abandoned his son. Neely’s stepfather fired the fatal shot when he killed Neely’s mother. Jordan Neely’s been in a coma for 16 years. The white Marine pulled the plug.
Had the former Marine been black, all the people feigning outrage would treat Jordan’s death as a merciful abortion. No one would care. And I mean no one.
Black gang members will kill men no different from Jordan Neely across America today. None of it will make national news. There will be no protests. No calls for justice. Most of the murders will go unsolved. No-snitch culture will protect the killers.
No one has truly cared about Jordan Neely since his mother died 16 years ago. No one cares today. People care about the color of the former Marine who choked Jordan Neely.
Black life does not matter. White perpetrators of black death are what really matter. They’re scarce and valuable. Political opportunists and social media clout chasers pounce on these situations regardless of circumstance. It’s political gold.
Lawyers chase ambulances. Liberals chase coroners, hoping to find a dead black body killed by whites. They bribe the coroner investigating the death and hire a media mortician who can make the body look as angelic as possible. Al Sharpton performs the eulogy, and Ben Crump passes the collection plate.
The opportunists have no interest in a solution. Solutions would undermine their ability to profit from the deaths of black men killed by white men.
Charging the white Marine with murder won’t solve or improve anything. It will make the wannabe hero just another victim of America’s broken family structure. Restoring the family is the only hope for America.
I recently wrote about the current wave of rainbow-flavored “insurrections” sweeping through America’s red statehouses. I called them part of a color revolution. Color revolutions, you will recall, are traditionally “popular uprisings against authoritarian regimes, such as those that took place in former Soviet countries such as Ukraine and Georgia in the early and mid-2000s.”
In our American color revolution, the script has flipped. Here, red states are the only rebels standing strong in the face of increasingly authoritarian central power — wrapped, of course, in the rainbow flag.
Tennessee recently made a star out of State Rep. Justin Pearson, the code-switching preacher man with the afro who just a few years ago was a repp tie-wearing prep at Colgate, but this year led an invasion of screaming gun-control protesters into the Tennessee Capitol, shut it down, and got himself expelled (temporarily, of course. Plot twist: The lead characters on this show always win in the end!)
We’ve now seen color revolutionaries take to state capitols in Tennessee, Montana, Kansas, Kentucky, Florida, Oklahoma, and Missouri. This week, the color revolution came to Texas. The radicals are on top. And (if you will excuse my French), thanks to their total effete ineffectuality, red states are getting bottomed, hard.
The Best Little Statehouse in Texas
Showrunners set this week’s episode of “Transurrection” in Texas. Why? They can’t turn Texas blue, right? …Right?
Twitter soon filled up with clips of the state Capitol in Austin getting overrun by a shrieking mob of LGBT cuckoos waving transgender flags and shutting down voting on an important bill. They’ve been keeping Austin weird for years, biding their time, and it finally paid off.
A Texas Republican state delegate on the scene tweeted a video of the mob and reported, “Trans activists are losing their minds, shoving signs into [a Texas conservative’s] face, and allowing spit to spew from their mouths while they scream ‘no place for hate.’” You have to admire their shamelessness, frankly. “No place for hate!” they scream, as they bludgeon their enemies.
The “hate” bill in question, naturally, would ban genital mutilation of children statewide. As we know by now, the idea of not being permitted to permanently sterilize and castrate kids makes sterilized and castrated adults very, very mad. How dare you not let us ritually initiate your son into our family-friendly extreme body modification cult!
A local newspaper reported on the action: “More than one hundred protesters rallied at the Capitol in opposition to the bill Tuesday in anticipation of the floor debate, engaging in chants including, “Protect Trans Kids!” and holding signs reading, “Let Trans Kids Grow Up.”
Am I the only one who notices the irony here? They want to “let trans kids grow up” — by putting them on irreversible puberty blockers that literally stop them from growing up. Logic — like charm, charisma, and good looks — is not this group’s strong suit.
But, as always, their ugly tactics work. “As protesters were removed from the House gallery, Democrats in the House on Tuesday successfully delayed debate on Senate Bill 14, which would ban certain gender-affirming medical treatments for transgender minors. Using a procedural tactic … the bill was sent back to the House Committee on Public Health, then voted out of the committee again Tuesday evening,” the paper reported, emphasis mine.
They may still lose in the end, but they survived the day.
I feel like I’m watching a new streaming docudrama show on Netflix: “Game of Throngs.” “The Transmandalorian.” “Sex Reassignment in the City.”
Last week’s episode was set in Montana and guest-starred an unknown man in a dress, an impish scamp named Zooey Zephyr. Zooey is not your typical social media starlet; he’s got a strong jawline, a prominent Adam’s apple, and a deep voice. His script, however, follows the Tennessee storyline virtually line for line. Zooey led his “transurrection” over a new Montana bill that would outlaw transgender interventions for children. Just like in Tennessee, he broke the rules, caused a riot, got ejected, and then used the ejection as a battering ram to take down the Republican leadership. Here’s how Fox reported it:
‘The only thing I will say is if you vote yes on this bill and yes on these amendments, I hope the next time there’s an invocation when you bow your heads in prayer, you see the blood on your hands,’ Zephyr said when debating SB99. Critics demanded an apology. However, after refusing to do so, Republicans led the chamber in a 68-32 vote last week to bar Zephyr from accessing the House floor. Zephyr cannot enter the anteroom or gallery but can vote remotely. (Emphasis mine)
Even when they lose they win!
How many times can they run this same storyline? Answer: At least 50 times, one for each state that requires it.
I seem to remember some other event a few years back, when protesters holding flags entered a capitol to stop lawmakers from voting on something. If I recall correctly, a lot of them were sentenced to years in prison for daring to block a vote. I will pray none of the nonbinary furries in the Texas Capitol suffer the same fate! They don’t look like they could last five seconds away from their cats.
The foundation of modern American democracy is that all Americans deserve some kind of representation in the rooms where law and policy are made. Not content to control those rooms in states where they dominate the political scene, some Republicans have said, in essence, that representation is a privilege for communities whose chosen lawmakers don’t offend their sensibilities. (Emphasis mine)
I like to picture flustered Republicans hitting the smelling salts and the fainting couch, like Scarlett’s Aunt Pittypat, when the winsome Zoey Zephyr and his merry band of rebels made a bit of noise during working hours.
Hilariously, the title of Bouie’s column is “A Sinister New Page in the Republican Playbook.” Maybe I shouldn’t say this out loud, but: The Republicans don’t have a playbook.
I wish they had a sinister playbook! How can we get them a sinister playbook and teach them how to use it? Because they absolutely do not know what to do in the face of mob rule. They are off balance. Unprepared. And it will only get worse.
One of these was an almost-10-year-old Cassandra Robinson, who in the photos looks like a muscular little boy with long hair dyed green, and wore “a T-shirt that read: ‘inspired by the STRONG WOMEN in my life.’” There is no 10-year-old on Earth who would dream up a sentence like that and want it on a T-shirt. Is his name a cry for help?
End Game
So, what’s the end goal? This is not just about gun control, or the “right” to castrate 8-year-olds.
Here’s what I think it’s obviously about: performing a radical mutilation surgery on the Constitution. Neutering it, for good — irreversibly even. This is the ultimate prize. Of course, it’s incredibly hard to change the Constitution, with good reason. That’s why it’s rarely been done in our history.
There are a few ways to rewrite the Constitution, but all the paths go through the states. You need three-fourths of states to ratify a new amendment. Insurmountable? Democrats already have 20 to 22 blue and purple states. They need 37, and that means the South is the juiciest prize, especially with its rapidly changing demographics.
Even in red states like Tennessee, they’d only need to flip 10 percent of the voters to win the state house. Age and heart disease will take care of the boomer-aged bitter clingers. College indoctrination will take care of the rest. Every four years a new crop of teenage voters arrives ready to make their “voices heard.” Time is on their side, not ours. And they’ve got all the time in the world.
Well, color me reacquainted! “Our Constitution is one of the most difficult in the world to amend. … But the remoteness of the possibility of formal constitutional change today may be as much a product of constitutional culture as constitutional structure: Several generations of Americans have lost the habit and muscle memory of seeking formal constitutional change.” (Emphasis mine)
Got that? The color revolutionaries are developing new muscle memory they will get to flex again and again as they continue dominating us in their weight class. Meanwhile, hordes of radicals are greedily gnawing through the country’s aging superstructure.
The Color of Money
The “tranissaries” of the revolution are obviously well-funded and blessed with a loyal army of loudmouth fanatics willing to win by any means necessary.
Are you?
I don’t know exactly who is directing and funding the revolutionaries. But it’s clear the country’s largest foundations and NGOs have these unsuspecting states in their sights. They have arrayed the full might of their billions squarely at “voting rights” and “defending democracy.” In other words, they are the architects behind activist mobs and the skilled ballot harvesters that have so far netted them win after win — including the White House.
The Macarthur Foundation and Ford Foundation, which funds dozens of grassroots activist groups including something called the “Texas Civil Rights Project,” are on the case with their billions. The Carnegie Foundation is doing its part for the cause, too. And there are many others. These massive bloodless megaliths are cleverly wrapping themselves in the cozy civil rights issue of the day — poor little trans kids (or election overhauls favored by candidates who love that issue) — and winning enormous popular support.
The wealth of America’s greatest old families is being used to systematically strip the place bare, and they’re looting it of everything that’s not nailed down. Including any stray toddlers. Viva la rainbow revoluçion!
It’s time to build a counterrevolution, fast.
Peachy Keenan is a contributing editor and regular essayist for The American Mind, a publication of The Claremont Institute. She is the author of “Domestic Extremist: A Practical Guide to Winning the Culture War” (coming June 6th from Regnery). She also writes at peachykeenan.substack.com , and you can always find her on Twitter @keenanpeachy, at least until she is canceled.
Evidence is mounting that both the Biden campaign and the federal governmentinterfered in the 2020 election by running an info op to convince voters the Hunter Biden laptop was Russian disinformation. Missouri and Louisiana have unearthed some of the most damning evidence in their First Amendment lawsuit against the Biden administration, but a close analysis of the court filings suggests the FBI is not being forthright in identifying the players involved.
As part of the lawsuit Missouri and Louisiana’s attorneys general initiated, the states obtained limited initial discovery. Among other things, the plaintiffs obtained a list of government officials who communicated with Twitter about so-called content moderation and the deposition testimony of Elvis Chan, the assistant special agent in charge of the FBI’s San Francisco Cyber Branch.
In his deposition, Chan testified that he is one of the “primary” FBI agents who communicates with social media companies about so-called disinformation. During the 2020 election cycle, Chan coordinated meetings between the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force (FITF) and at least seven of the major tech giants, including Meta/Facebook, Twitter, Google/YouTube, Yahoo!/Verizon Media, and Microsoft/LinkedIn. Those meetings occurred at first quarterly and then monthly and weekly as the election neared.
In questioning Chan, attorneys representing Missouri and Louisiana pushed him on several points related to the censorship of the Hunter Biden laptop. The lawyers succeeded in eliciting testimony from Chan that the FBI regularly raised the possibility of “hack and dump” operations with senior officials at the various tech companies. Those discussions included the FBI warning the companies of a potential hack-and-leak occurring shortly before the 2020 election, like the Democratic National Committee hack and WikiLeaks that occurred in 2016.
The plaintiffs also quizzed Chan on the names of any government officials who discussed “hack-and-dump Russian operations” with the tech giants. Chan mentioned Section Chief Laura Dehmlow, “among others.” But Chan then danced around who those others were, saying he couldn’t recollect. Chan eventually identified four FBI officials that attended Department of Homeland Security Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) meetings at which the FBI discussed the risk of hack-and-leak operations. These officials were Brady Olson, William Cone, Judy Chock, and Luke Giannini.
Regarding whether anyone within the FBI suggested Chan should raise the possibility of Russian hack-and-dump operations with the tech giants in 2020, Chan repeatedly said he could “not recall,” but at one point acknowledged, “They may have, but I don’t recollect at this time.”
The plaintiffs in Missouri v. Biden claim Chan’s “I do not recall,” is not credible. They say it is “facially implausible that Chan does not recall whether other federal officials discussed warning platforms about ‘hack-and-leak’ operations during 2020, especially after the fiasco of censorship of the Hunter Biden laptop story.” Furthermore, the plaintiffs added, “the only aspect of [Chan’s] internal discussions with the FBI about hack-and-leak operations that he does not recall is whether someone from the FBI suggested or directed him to raise the issue with social-media platforms.”
Uncovering whether someone — and if so, who — directed Chan or other FBI agents to warn tech companies about a potential hack-and-leak operation is necessary to unravel the extent of the government’s info ops. Did FBI agents with knowledge of either the Hunter Biden laptop or the existence of damaging communications possessed by other governments, such as Ukraine or China, prompt Chan and others to warn of an impending hack-and-leak to protect the Biden family from any fallout?
Chan also appeared less than forthcoming when questioned about whether he had discussed the 2020 election with any of the people involved in the DNC hack. Here, an unnoticed tidbit from Chan’s deposition proves interesting: Chan testified that he served as the supervisor for the Russian cyber squad that investigated the DNC server before the San Francisco office handed it off to FBI headquarters.
When asked whether “subsequent to the 2016 investigation of the hack of the DNC server,” he had “any communications with anyone involved in that investigation about the possibility that a hack-and-leak operation” could happen prior to the 2020 election, Chan initially provided a misleading response, saying he did “not remember discussing the potential for a 2020 election with any of the FBI personnel because they had moved on to different roles.”
Catching Chan’s narrowing of the question from “anyone” to “FBI personnel,” the plaintiffs’ attorney quickly queried, “and people outside the FBI?” Chan then noted he would have discussed national security cyber investigations involving Russian matters with Sean Newell, a deputy chief at the DOJ National Security Division who also worked on the DNC hack. But Chan refused to say whether Newell or anyone else who worked on the DNC hack had raised the issue of a 2020 hack-and-release repeat.
Chan’s reticence raises red flags. But piecing together two exhibits filed in the Missouri v. Biden case reveals a thread to pull to start getting some answers.
Exhibit 23 used during Chan’s deposition includes a series of emails related to the DNC hack that were filed in the special counsel’s criminal prosecution of former Clinton campaign attorney Michael Sussmann. In addition to Chan and Newell, the emails include names of about another dozen government agents.
When those names are cross-checked against the names of the federal officials with whom Twitter “had meetings or discussions” about so-called content moderation issues — a list Twitter provided the plaintiffs in Missouri v. Biden in response to a third-party subpoena — two names overlap: Chan and Jonathan Sills.
Sills, an attorney with the FBI’s Office of General Counsel, appeared in several emails in which Sussmann and the FBI discussed logistical details for conveying a copy of the DNC server data to the FBI. Given Sills was only added to the email threads when they discussed whether the FBI would pay CrowdStrike to make a copy of the data, it seems unlikely Sills had a broader involvement in the DNC hack-and-release investigation.
But why then was Sills communicating with Twitter about so-called content moderation issues? Was it about payments to Twitter? Or something else?
Recall we still don’t know the identities of the “folks in the Baltimore field office and at HQ that are just doing keyword searches for violations,” as then-Twitter legal executive Stacia Cardille complained in a Nov. 3, 2020, email to Jim Baker, the then-deputy general counsel for Twitter. “This is probably the 10th request I have dealt with in the last 5 days,” Cardille noted.
Remember also that the FBI’s Baltimore field office provided coverage to the Delaware U.S. attorney’s office out of which the Hunter Biden investigation was being run — to the extent FBI headquarters allowed.
When reached by phone in his D.C. office, Sills told The Federalist he was not authorized to comment on the matter, which is unfortunate because the people who can comment seem not to recollect the most pertinent points. A follow-up email to Sills went unanswered.
Eventually, though, these threads will all be pulled when discovery occurs in Missouri v. Biden. While some will lead nowhere, as the initial discovery proves, there is much to learn about the government’s involvement in the Hunter Biden info ops and its role in censoring speech on social media.
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.
Republican official Amy Drake cited the FBI’s definition of domestic terrorism: ‘Appearing to be intended to influence the policy of government by intimidation or coercion.’
A South Bend, Indiana, branch of the NAACP held a press conference Thursday at 6:30 a.m. outside the house of Republican County Councilwoman Amy Drake to protest her criticism of Indiana’s public health bureaucracy. A May 1 press release and social media posts proclaimed the group’s intent to protest outside Drake’s home, where she lives with her husband and seven children.
South Bend NAACP Chairwoman Trina Robinson told The Federalist Wednesday that after internal pushback she decided to switch the “peaceful demonstration” to a press conference, still outside the Drakes’ home at 6:30 a.m. Drake, who has written opinion articles for The Federalist, told The Federalist that holding any demonstrations outside her home is a form of “domestic terrorism” intended to influence her votes by harassing and threatening her family.
Drake cited the FBI’s definition of domestic terrorism: “Appearing to be intended to influence the policy of government by intimidation or coercion.” She and her husband spent three days before the event calling police, fielding calls from constituents and friends, and making plans to ensure their children’s safety.
“There is no such thing as a peaceful protest in front of a person’s home. Protests in front of homes are designed to intimidate and frighten,” Drake said in a press release.
Robinson told The Federalist the goal of visiting Drake’s home was indeed to put pressure on her and express displeasure at Drake’s public record, since their public comments at city council meetings did not move Drake to vote as the group wants. “The NAACP are not here to make people uncomfortable,” she said this morning on the sidewalk across from the Drakes’ home while a school bus picked up children in the background.
Drake ran for office in 2022, motivated by Republican Gov. Eric Holcomb’s extensive lockdowns and their associated public health fiascos. She has been an integral part of increasing the fundraising and effectiveness of the local Republican Party, bringing in conservative energy, volunteers, and ideas. That has made her a top target of local Democrats and the public health bureaucracy.
South Bend is where Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg was mayor from 2012 to 2020. Buttigieg’s parents were professors at Notre Dame University.
The demonstration fits a pattern of confrontational political actions against conservatives and Republicans, including mob action in the state capitols of Tennessee, Texas, Montana, Kentucky, Kansas, Florida, Oklahoma, and Missouri. U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito told The Wall Street Journal this week that the five constitutional justices remain under constant threat of assassination.
Robinson says she considers showing up at a public official’s home a form of “free speech” and said local police told her the group could show up at Drake’s home so long as they stayed on the sidewalk. Drake says she asked for police presence to ensure everyone’s safety and was told they might send an unmarked car. On Thursday morning, Drake said she couldn’t see any police outside as the press conference commenced.
The Saint Joseph County Police Department’s communications officer did not respond to two voicemails requesting comment Wednesday. Sheriff William Redman’s official bio says he is a “Westside Democratic Club Lifetime Member.”
According to a live-streamed video on Facebook, about 10 people showed up to support the South Bend demonstration. Two were black, including Robinson, and eight were white. One appeared to be local Democrat Party Vice Chairman Don Westerhausen, according to on-site sources. The demonstrators held signs stating: “Amy Drake voted no $$$ for -behavioral crisis center -Motels4Now -Portage Manor,” “Lead Testing Protects Children,” and “We Support Opioid Crisis Relief Funding.”
Jonah Bryson, associate press secretary for the national NAACP organization, took The Federalist’s comment request at 3 p.m. ET Wednesday but failed to return comment on whether NAACP as an organization supports demonstrations outside politicians’ homes.
With her toddler grandson’s coos in the background, Robinson explained to The Federalist on Wednesday her thinking behind demonstrating outside Drake’s home.
“When you take on responsibilities to be a leader of a community, sometimes people are not going to agree with you. That pretty much comes with the territory,” Robinson said. “We’re not wanting to disrupt her children or anything, we would never disrupt her family.”
When asked whether Robinson was aware that Drake and her husband were alarmed for their children’s safety and they’d said so publicly on Facebook, Robinson said she was not: “I am not friends with her on Facebook.” Robinson also emphatically denied any desire to provoke violence, saying she was concerned the Drakes might respond to the demonstration outside their home with violence.
“Just because people disagree with you doesn’t necessarily mean they come to do bodily harm,” Robinson said.
Drake told The Federalist she and her husband decided against any kind of counter-demonstration to avoid “escalating.” They also adamantly opposed violence of any kind. But they considered the local activists’ decision to personalize politics by showing up at their home at the time their children go to school to be an act of hostility.
The Federalist asked Robinson about that several times. She said protesting on a public sidewalk is an American right, and that people in South Bend have protested at local representatives’ homes before.
“This isn’t Germany, this isn’t Russia,” she said. “We’re Americans, we can speak out. That’s a right we have.”
Robinson then directed her focus to the desperation she and others feel at many South Bend residents’ tragic conditions. Like many other American cities, South Bend has highly visible homeless, generational poverty, and drug problems. For years, visitors and residents have seen shocking scenes on the many emaciated streets of South Bend, common to cities across the United States. Trillions of taxpayer and private dollars poured into these problems since the 1950s have not improved conditions in most cities. In many cities, things are worse: dirtier, filled with even more homeless people and addicts, more violent, and uglier. Robinson equated Drake’s opposition to expanding ineffective government bureaucracy with leaving desperate citizens without the resources to make better lives.
“You can’t say you oppose a mental health crisis unit when here in South Bend a man in a mental health crisis was gunned down in front of his mom. And we don’t need a mental health crisis unit?” Robinson said. “We have homeless in this town. If you don’t have another solution for them, why are you opposing them being where they are? At least they’re not on the street downtown in tents.”
When asked if she had ever talked with Drake about these concerns one on one, Robinson replied: “No, we haven’t had a conversation. I spoke at the council meetings. She has never come up to me. I haven’t approached her either, so that goes both ways. So, we’re both to blame for that. I’ll take responsibility for that.”
Robinson said she would be willing to go out to lunch or coffee with Drake. She invited Drake to call her and said if Drake didn’t want to do that, she’d call Drake.
When The Federalist asked Drake her response, she discussed it with her husband and sent back this via text: “[Robinson] needs to admit domestic terrorism is wrong. She needs to apologize for creating fear in my family and causing us to interrupt our lives to put protective measures in place. After a month cooling off period, we can have a civil discussion.”
After the recent collapses of regional banks amid rising interest rates and inflationary pressure, about half of Americans are worried about the safety of their deposits in banks, according to the latest Gallup Poll released Thursday. The findings in the poll are similar to the concerns expressed during the 2008 financial crisis, as 19% are very worried and 29% are moderately worried, a combined 48% concerned.
That’s worse than the 2008 Great Recession. Lehman Brothers’ bankruptcy in 2008 was the largest in U.S. history, at which time Gallup found 45% of U.S. adults said they were very or moderately worried about the safety of their money.
The new poll was conducted before the third bank collapse this year had First Republic Bank being taken over by JPMorgan Chase. First Republic Bank is the largest bank failure since 2008. Like Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank that had collapsed in President Joe Biden’s economy, First Republic Bank was a California specialty lender catering to “rich coastal Americans, enticing them with low-rate mortgages in exchange for leaving cash at the bank,” CNBC reported.
“After several recent high-profile bank failures in the U.S., about half of Americans are concerned about the safety of the money they have in banks or other financial institutions,” Gallup Poll’s Megan Brenan wrote in the analysis’ “bottom line.” “This is on par with the level of worry measured during the financial crisis in 2008 when financial institutions previously believed to be ‘too big to fail’ collapsed.
“And while Gallup has not measured this during calmer times for the banking industry, the December 2008 reading showed slightly diminished concern after the crisis had been addressed, suggesting high worry about the security of deposits may not be the norm for Americans.”
The concern is not level across party affiliation. A majority of Republicans (55%) and independents (51%) are at least moderately worried, while just 36% of Democrats are. That’s the inverse at the beginning of the 2008 financial crisis under then-President George Bush, when 55% of Democrats were at least moderately worried compared to 34% of Republicans.
The Gallup Poll was conducted April 3-24 among 1,013 U.S. adults and has a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.
From some of the world’s most iconic views to offering poop maps, San Francisco now disappoints on a Herculean level.
Check out San Francisco now.
Arguably the most beautiful big city in America looks more and more like a ghost town as San Francisco learns yet another painful real estate lesson.
The Wall Street Journal reported on a “fire sale” on the 22-story office tower known as Union Bank. The retail cost of this building should be around $300 million. However, the building will likely sell for about one-fifth; as little as $60 million.
Tenant vacancies have caused the commercial real-estate triage in the City by the Bay. But there is more to the story.
This particular building located at 350 California is 75 percent vacant. Moreover, renovation costs could exceed $50 million. Still a bargain if you could get occupants. Sadly, San Francisco’s government is pushing tenants away rather than attracting them.
“We’re all really on the edge of our seats to see the first office trade in San Francisco,” real estate services executive J.D. Lumpkin told the WSJ. A real estate lawyer warned the paper that the 350 California fire sale could prove “a bellwether for the value destruction in the urban office market nationally,” and not just for San Francisco’s (formerly?) ritzy Financial District.
To blame are high-cost structures based on pre-pandemic valuations, the local tech industry’s embrace of remote work, and what some people euphemistically call “quality-of-life issues.” That’s what honest people call “aggressive panhandlers, violent crime, and open-air drug sales and abuse.” Oh, and sidewalks festooned with poop and dirty syringes.
As I mention on my radio show from time to time, the last time I was in San Francisco, I had about $1000 worth of equipment stolen from my car along with a leather jacket I purchased earlier that day. When I went to the police station to file a report, the officer said “What do you expect me to do? Look for a well-dressed bum taking pictures?!”
I couldn’t help but laugh. But I made that chump fill out my report. I would be damned if they didn’t log the crime against me.
While admittedly the scamdemic caused some problems in commercial real-estate, this bubble burst was expected long before work-from-home hit.
The article continues,
According to the Journal, nearly “$80 billion worth of loans backed by U.S. office buildings come due this year,” and “most will need to be refinanced, at a time of higher interest rates and lower occupancy, threatening lenders with losses.”
City governments have been driving corporations out for decades. Homeless and drug addicts swarm formerly iconic downtowns. There was a time when city leaders kept the riff-raff from these areas. Now they condone it.
Corporate America responded.
Many corporations either have abandoned these cities or they plan to. And who could blame them? Clearly, a state without respect for law and order is no place for corporations to plant their valuable investments, i.e.. headquarters. As we see in San Francisco and elsewhere, when corporations leave, cities begin their death spiral.
Add these corporate losses to the loss of private citizens and it’s a one-two punch that could stop Gavin Newsom’s presidential run before it even gets started.
Remember, I recently predicted Newsom plans to run in 2024? Which is why he’s suddenly vested in the fate of San Francisco.
Operation De-Leftization
Things are so far-gone in SF, Newsom deployed the National Guard to assist in the policing and cleanup efforts.
Newsom unveiled the unprecedented collaboration between the California Highway Patrol (CHP), California National Guard (CalGuard), San Francisco Police Department (SFPD), and the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office (SFDA) to combat the escalating fentanyl crisis in the city. This move comes as a dramatic response to the severity of the situation, highlighting the urgency with which the state government is addressing the issue.
Newsom said his administration will focus on “dismantling fentanyl trafficking and disrupting the supply of the deadly drug in the city by holding the operators of large-scale drug trafficking operations accountable.”
“Two truths can coexist at the same time: San Francisco’s violent crime rate is below comparably sized cities like Jacksonville and Fort Worth—and there is also more we must do to address public safety concerns, especially the fentanyl crisis,” Newsom said.
“We’re taking action. Through this new collaborative partnership, we are providing more law enforcement resources and personnel to crack down on crime linked to the fentanyl crisis, holding the poison peddlers accountable, and increasing law enforcement presence to improve public safety and public confidence in San Francisco,” he added.
Newsom understands that Leftist Democrats look bad, particularly on drugs and crime.
“The San Francisco Police Department has been working hard to stop drug trafficking by making countless arrests and narcotics seizures,” said San Francisco Police Chief Bill Scott.
“Despite our ongoing work and close collaboration with the District Attorney, the fentanyl crisis has contributed to hundreds of drug overdose-related deaths.
“We welcome the support of our state partners because when we work together we can make a significant difference to make our city safer.”
“The CalGuard is seeing significant success supporting multiagency task forces interdicting fentanyl across our state,” said Major General Matthew P. Beevers of the California National Guard.
“We expect to achieve the same success working with our partners in San Francisco,” he added.
Currently, the carnage of San Francisco rests squarely on the shoulders of Democrats. However, one or two more conservative-like initiatives and Newsom will be ready to throw his rainbow hat into the ring, If nothing else, reviving the city will give Newsom an actual accomplishment, something Joe Biden STILL doesn’t have. Of course, if Newsom fails, his campaign will be a “no go” at launch.
Having failed to destroy Clarence Thomas 32 years ago with preposterous sexual harassment charges (disbelieved at the time by 60% of Americans), now the left is resorting to attacking the ethics of a man vastly more honorable than the collection of degenerates reviling him.
The sole purpose of the media’s sudden fixation on the Supreme Court’s “ethics” is to morally intimidate conservative justices by reminding them that the left controls the culture. Since they lost abortion, liberals have been in a panic that the court will junk other liberal sacraments, like gay marriage and affirmative action, too. That’s the reason for the stream of calumnies directed at the justices.
As usual, the main target of the left’s rage is Thomas. We’re supposed to be appalled that Thomas’ billionaire friend Harlan Crow took the justice and his wife on a vacation that (the media claim) would have cost Thomas more than $500,000!!!
Well, yeah, but Thomas and his wife, Ginny, weren’t going alone. They hadn’t just won a cruise sweepstakes. They were joining Crow on a vacation he was taking anyway. Cost to donor: a few extra chicken cutlets and string beans.
Crow sounds like a great guy, but when you’re going on vacation with a benefactor, it isn’t like he’s handing you an expensive bauble. You are the expensive bauble.
We went on a cruise on my private yacht in Indonesia and served Jeroboam of Chateau Mouton Rothschild 1945.[Meh.]
We went on a cruise on my private yacht in Indonesia and Justice Clarence Thomas was our guest. WINNER!!!!
Cui bono? Everybody!
The media want us to believe that generosity from personal friends is an ethical issue, but that’s because that’s not how liberals bribe government officials. They bombard their targets with the sort of public adoration that money can’t buy — or the sort of public hate that money can’t block. Your choice: Be beloved from every corner of society or be subjected to nonstop ridicule.
Adored: Anthony Fauci, BLM, Michelle Obama, Trevor Noah, transgenders, Ukraine, black people, pot, Elon Musk (pre-Twitter), Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Hated: Ron DeSantis, the Proud Boys, Melania Trump, Dave Chappelle, Christians, Russia, white people, cigarettes, Elon Musk (post-Twitter), Clarence Thomas.
Thus, during her quarter-century on the court, Ginsburg was showered with alms from the media, Hollywood, universities, television, publishing, the music industry, museums, clothing manufacturers, the U.S. Navy, the U.S. Post Office and an array of nonprofits.
It’s a miracle she ever had time to write opinions with the constant procession of awards, retrospectives, portraits and honors — the Berggruen Prize for Philosophy and Culture; the LBJ Foundation’s Liberty & Justice for All Award; the World Peace & Liberty Award; a lifetime achievement award from Diane von Furstenberg’s foundation; the 2020 Liberty Medal by the National Constitution Center; and the World Peace & Liberty Award from the World Jurist Association and the World Law Foundation.
I would wager that most people would prefer ceaseless public praise to a cruise, no matter how nice the yacht.
The U.S. Postal Service produced an RBG “Forever” stamp; the U.S. Navy named an oiler the “Ruth Bader Ginsburg”; Los Angeles’ Skirball Cultural Center put on a large-scale exhibition on her life; the Cleveland Museum of Natural History named a species of praying mantis after her; she was slobberingly interviewed by Stephen Colbert; a Sam Adams beer was named in her honor; and she received honorary degrees from literally dozens upon dozens of universities.
Say, did any of these outfits have an interest in cases that might come before the court? Perhaps MSNBC could look into that.
It’s curious that the very cultural institutions bestowing all these goodies on liberals don’t see them as “gifts” at all. There are no somber invocations of “ethics” when the Sundance Film Festival features a North Korean-style documentary about Ginsburg. Nor when The New York Times gushes that Ginsburg was “a trailblazing feminist … [continuing] to point the way toward greater equality … she never wavered in her commitment to the court as a vehicle for a more just and more equal America. She was a dogged, tireless fighter … [gag, gag, gag].”
Try to imagine that string of accolades being given to Thomas, much less the Tiger Beat worship — the coloring books, documentaries, bobbleheads, and so on.
It’s inconceivable. In fact, the “honors and recognition” section on Thomas’ Wikipedia page contains a single item: “In 2012, Thomas received an honorary degree from the College of the Holy Cross, his alma mater.”
The only reward a conservative titan like Thomas will receive in this lifetime will be his friends spending their own money to enjoy his company. So the media have decided that’s a conflict of interest. Fawning media coverage worth millions of dollars: not a conflict of interest.
Let’s compare!
Value of private supporters’ gifts to Justice Thomas over the years: Maybe a few million dollars — and that’s according to liberals, although the donor was going on these vacations with or without Thomas, so the cost to him was minimal.
Value of liberal institutions’ gifts to Justice Ginsburg over the years: approximately $3 trillion.
It’s been a long time coming, but we finally have a Supreme Court that isn’t dying to impose faddish liberal ideas on the country by claiming to discover never-before-seen constitutional rights. If anything, the Dobbs opinion should have calmed lefties. Abortion is no longer a “constitutional right,” so now it’s up to the states. And guess what, liberals? Americans are voting to allow abortion!
But Democrats are mostly neurotic women, so “calm” is not their middle name.
Contrary to the left’s self-advertisements as huge fans of democracy — Democracy Dies in Darkness! — the last thing they want is people voting on their crazy ideas. That’s why they’ve got to discredit the current court.
If all goes according to plan, Trump will lose another election for the GOP next year, handing Democrats super-majorities in Congress, whereupon they will pack the court. Finally, liberals will have their magical Supreme Court back! How much is that penumbra worth to you, New York Times?
American Family Association
American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
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American Family Association
American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
American Family Association
American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
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American Family Association
American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
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American Family Association
American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
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