America First Legal demands answers after the Justice Department under President Joe Biden intervenes in a Virginia school district’s adoption of Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s policies centering parental rights on transgender issues. Pictured: Attorney General Merrick Garland, head of the Justice Department, speaks Aug. 11 at the agency’s headquarters in Washington. (Photo: Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL—America First Legal is demanding answers after the Justice Department under President Joe Biden intervened in a Virginia school district’s adoption of Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s policies that center parental rights in transgender issues.
“The Department of Justice seems to suggest that protecting the constitutional rights of parents and students will lead to ‘hate crimes,’” Ian Prior, senior adviser at America First Legal, told The Daily Signal in a written statement Monday. “Once again, we are witnessing the top law enforcement organization in the land come unglued from reality and unmoored from its core functions, all in the name of opposing anyone that doesn’t approve of its state-approved message.”
America First Legal filed a Freedom of Information Act request Monday demanding Justice Department records related to Virginia’s Roanoke County Public Schools.
On July 27, the Roanoke County School Board discussed the Virginia Department of Education’s model policies on transgender issues, finalized July 18 under Youngkin, a Republican. The state policies require schools to refer to each student by his or her legal name and sex, unless a parent submits a legal document substantiating a change in either. The policies also require schools to use sex, rather than gender identity, as the benchmark for bathrooms, intimate spaces, and sports reserved for boys or girls.
Pro-transgender activists reportedly disrupted the school board meeting. Police arrested two vocal protesters who refused to leave and repeatedly yelled, “Protect trans lives” during the meeting.
Although local law enforcement and the school board were addressing the disruption, Hannah Levine, a staffer at the Justice Department’s Community Relations Service, sent a July 31 email offering “conflict resolution services.”
Her agency in the Justice Department “serves as ‘America’s Peacemaker,’ preventing and responding to community tensions and hate crimes, bias, bullying, and discrimination committed on the basis of race, color, national origin, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, religion, and disability,” Levine wrote in the email, which The Daily Wire first reported.
“CRS is aware of ongoing community tensions in Roanoke County following the release of the new model policies for transgender students,” Levine said in the email to the Roanoke County school system. “I’d like to connect to see if we might be able to offer support and services as you work to manage conflict in the community related to this.”
America First Legal contends that the email from Levine and the Justice Department’s Community Relations Service is suspicious.
“It is unclear why CRS would inject itself into an issue that is properly one for the Commonwealth of Virginia and Roanoke County Public Schools,” reads America First Legal’s request to the Justice Department for related records. “What is clear, however, is that CRS has positioned itself not as a neutral arbitrator of issues related to transgenders but as a government entity that is fully behind the Biden administration’s radical transgender agenda.”
The Community Relations Service says it trains law enforcement on “engaging and building relationships with transgender communities.” The agency’s home page features the White House’s “fact sheet” on actions “to protect LGBTQI+ Communities.”
America First Legal also noted the Biden Justice Department’s record of opposing parental rights in education.
In October 2021, the DOJ issued a memo asking the FBI and U.S. attorneys to investigate parents who spoke out at school board meetings. The DOJ memo followed a letter from the National School Boards Association comparing parents who protest school district policies to domestic terrorists and encouraging Biden to use the Patriot Act against those parents. Documents revealed later that the White House had worked with the school boards association to draft the letter.
The Justice Department ultimately rescinded the memo and the National School Boards Association apologized for the letter. However, the Biden White House has worked with the Southern Poverty Law Center, a far-left organization that recently put parental rights organizations on a “hate map” with KKK chapters. America First Legal has demanded DOJ documents citing the SPLC.
Pointing to this history and Levine’s email, America First Legal demanded DOJ documents related to Roanoke County Public Schools and Youngkin’s model state policies.
“Attorney General Merrick Garland doesn’t appear to have learned any lessons after his 2021 memo directing U.S. attorneys and the FBI to investigate parents speaking at school board meetings,” America First Legal’s Prior said in a written statement on the request. “Now, the Department of Justice is seeking to intervene in another purely state and local matter, namely the Roanoke County School Board’s adoption of the Virginia Department of Education’s model policies that prohibit schools from forcing students, parents, and teachers to sacrifice their constitutional rights in the name of transgender ideology.”
“America First Legal will continue to serve as a watchdog over the Department of Justice’s continued attempts to interfere with parental rights on local issues,” Prior added.
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 Trump.
Three large healthcare groups — the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American College of Emergency Physicians, and the Emergency Nurses Association — issued a joint letter Wednesday warning of an ongoing and worsening crisis: children presenting in emergency rooms with mental health issues that hospitals are not equipped to handle.
According to the report, “Emergency department (ED) visits by children and youth with mental and behavioral health (MBH) emergencies in the United States have been increasing over the last decade. At the same time, there has been an increased prevalence of depression and suicide in pediatrics.”
The report states that the problem is especially acute among black school-aged children, who have a suicide rate that is two times higher than white children.
Most troubling, the report notes that emergency rooms “have a wide variation in their capability to care for pediatric patients with MBH conditions,” and that “There is often inconsistent screening for self-harm risks and substance use in patients presenting for both mental health concerns and other complaints.”
Dr. Willough Jenkins, medical director of emergency and consultation psychitry at Rady Children’s Hospital in San Diego, told NBC News that the number of kids seeking psychiatric emergency care in her ER has increased thirty-fold in recent years. “The volume is astronomical, and I don’t know that people fully understand how many people are struggling,” Jenkins said.
The policy statement issued by the healthcare groups called for a lengthy list of reforms and additional sources of funding, including drastic expansion of telehealth services for psychiatry, better communication among hospitals, and better training for hospital personnel on how to handle kids with mental and behavioral health issues.
Dr. Mohsen Saidinejad, professor of emergency medicine and pediatrics at the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles, told NBC News, “The scope of this problem is really great, but our ability to solve it is not there.”
Other studies, including a February study from the CDC, have also noted the skyrocketing rates of mental health issues among those under the age of 18 in America. Many studies have also noted that these trends increased sharply with the COVID-19 pandemic and associated lockdowns, which are believed to have had a seriously deleterious effect on mental health overall.
A lovely woman of color who understands the value of Donald Trump, will vote for Donald Trump, and says she loves Donald Trump because of who he’s proven to be. pic.twitter.com/qWRqvDoUfa
This little girl didn’t know was racism was, she was never aware of color. This little girl simply wanted to share her cookie with her new neighbors. This little girl now knows what it is to be a victim of racism in Barack Obama’s and Joe Biden’s America! pic.twitter.com/tDFD0fLuAQ
“Children should not be indoctrinated about anal sex. They should not be taught that changing their gender is fun. They should not be afraid that their father will just at any moment turn into a woman.” 🔥🔥🔥 pic.twitter.com/ay2Vczq1gy
“I thought that in the end I could become a man but all I became was a mutilated and abused version of myself”
Detransitioner Katie Lennon who transitioned at 18, including hormones, a double mastectomy, and a full hysterectomy at 21 years old, testifies in Concord, NH in favor… pic.twitter.com/IwjW3ZpJOJ
A Canadian man recently learned the hard way that electric vehicles have significant disadvantages compared to gas-powered vehicles. On July 27, Dalbir Bala packed his wife and three children in his truck — a 2023 Ford F-150 Lightning Lariat that he purchased for $85,000 (or $115,000 in Canadian currency) in January — for a business trip to Chicago, the CBC reported.
Along the 1,400 mile trip from his home near Winnipeg to the Chicagoland area, Bala planned to stop at three charging stations. The truck’s range, when fully charged, is about 320 miles.
Bala’s stop at the first station in Fargo, North Dakota, was successful — albeit inconvenient because it took more than two hours to recharge the battery to 90%. But at the second station in Albertville, Minnesota, Bala discovered a charging station that did not work. After unsuccessfully calling for help, Bala drove to a nearby charging station in Elk River, Minnesota — but that one didn’t work either.
With just 12 miles remaining on his battery, Bala made the decision to have his truck towed to a nearby Ford dealership, where he also rented a gas-powered Toyota 4Runner to complete his trip to Chicago. He picked up his electric truck on the return trip.
Now, Bala is telling his story and warning other consumers about the problems with electric vehicles.
“People have to make the right choices. I want to tell everybody to read my story,” he told Fox Business. “Do your research before even thinking about it and make a wiser choice. … The actual thing they promised is not even close. Not even 50%. And once you buy it, you’re stuck with it, and you have to carry huge losses to get rid of that. And nobody is there to help you.”
The nightmare trip is not Bala’s only problem with the truck.
He explained in a social media post that not long after purchasing it, he was involved in a “minor fender bender” with a small amount of damage. Shockingly, it took six months for the damage to be repaired because of a parts shortage.
“It was in [the] shop for 6 months. I can’t take it to my lake cabin. I cannot take it for off–grid camping. I cannot take [it] for even a road trip,” Bala wrote on Facebook. “I can only drive in city — biggest scam of modern times.”
In a statement, Ford Motor Corp. said Bala’s story demonstrates the need for more charging stations:
This customer’s experience highlights the urgent need to rapidly improve access to public charging across the US and Canada. Ford’s EV-certified dealers will install public-facing DC fast chargers at their dealerships by early 2024, providing alternative charging options to those available today. Ford was also the first in the industry to gain access to over 12,000 Tesla Superchargers for Ford drivers.
‘BIGGEST SCAM OF MODERN TIMES’: Man ditches $115K EV during family trip www.youtube.com
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A Democrat group is launching a multi-million-dollar initiative to provide election offices with private security ahead of the 2024 elections and police so-called “disinformation,” according to a new report.
On Tuesday, The New York Times revealed the Democratic Association of Secretaries of State (DASS) is gearing up to launch Value the Vote, a new nonprofit organization purportedly designed to pay “for private security for election officials of both parties, register[ing] new voters,” and fighting what the group claims to be “disinformation.” The $10 million initiative is reportedly aiming its “initial[]” focus at five key battleground states: Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, North Carolina, and Wisconsin.
The venture has already raised $2.5 million, according to DASS Executive Director Travis Brimm.
As indicated by The Times, the founding of Value the Vote is based on the debunked lie that there is a growing, widespread problem of Republicans threatening election workers across the country. Of course, the lack of evidence to support such an assertion hasn’t stopped legacy media from regurgitating their Democrat allies’ phony narratives in order to paint Republican voters as extremists and dissuade conservatives from partaking in legitimate forms of electoral oversight.
In their remarks to The Times, Brimm and DASS officials claimed Value the Vote “will provide equal funding opportunities to both Democratic and Republican election officials, but how the distribution will work in practice is unclear.” Brimm also indicated “election officials could request grants to pay for private security themselves and that Values the Vote would also proactively offer private security.”
According to Hans von Spakovsky, a senior legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation, the group’s issuance of private grants to election offices could very well be unlawful. “Most states make it illegal for anyone to be stationed in a polling place except for election officials and designated poll watchers, and that ban would include ‘private’ security guards,” von Spakovsky told The Federalist.
Von Spakovsky further contended the stationing of private security guards at election offices and polling sites could constitute a violation of section 11(b) of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which states that no one “shall intimidate, threaten, or coerce, or attempt to intimidate, threaten, or coerce,” any individual who is “voting or attempting to vote” or “urging or aiding any person to vote or attempt to vote.”
“The presence of such private law enforcement could scare individuals attempting to vote and deter them from asking election officials questions. This would particularly be the case if those guards were armed,” von Spakovsky said.
Value the Vote’s issuance of grants and services to election offices may also conflict with existing statutes in 25 states prohibiting or restricting election officials’ use of private money to conduct elections. These laws, which election integrity advocates often refer to as “Zuckbucks” bans, were passed in response to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s actions in the 2020 election.
During that contest, Zuckerberg gave hundreds of millions of dollars to nonprofits such as the Center for Tech and Civic Life, which in turn poured these “Zuckbucks” into local election offices in battleground states around the country to change how elections were administered. The funds were ultimately used to expand unsupervised election protocols like mail-in voting and using ballot drop boxes. To make matters worse, these grants were heavily skewed toward Democrat-majority counties, essentially making it a massive, privately funded Democrat get-out-the-vote operation.
As detailed by Federalist Editor-in-Chief Mollie Hemingway in her national bestseller, “Rigged: How the Media, Big Tech, and the Democrats Seized Our Elections,” Zuckerberg “didn’t just help Democrats by censoring their political opponents,” his financing of “liberal groups running partisan get-out-the-vote operations” was “the means by which [Democrat] activists achieved their ‘revolution’ and changed the course of the 2020 election.”
“It was a genius plan,” Hemingway wrote. “And because no one ever imagined that a coordinated operation could pull off the privatization of the election system, laws were not built to combat it.”
In addition to financing private security for election offices, Value the Vote is also purportedly planning to confront so-called “election misinformation” through the use of “paid digital advertising,” as well as engage in voter registration efforts that favor Democrats. While federal law prohibits nonprofits from engaging in partisan voter registration, The Times reported that Value the Vote’s registration plans “align with typical Democratic efforts, focusing heavily on Black and Latino communities.”
As The Federalist previously reported, left-wing nonprofits have regularly abused their nonprofit status by aiming their registration efforts at demographics favorable to Democrats.
Shawn Fleetwood is a staff writer for The Federalist and a graduate of the University of Mary Washington. He previously served 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
An Air Force colonel nominated by President Joe Biden once claimed that “white colonels” are the “biggest barriers” to addressing so-called “racial injustice” in the U.S. military, according to a new report.
On Thursday, The Daily Signal’s Rob Bluey reported that Col. Benjamin Jonsson, who is “currently awaiting promotion to brigadier general,” penned an article in the Air Force Times weeks after George Floyd’s death lamenting his fellow white airmen don’t go along with leftist talking points about so-called “racial injustice” in the U.S. armed forces.
“As white colonels, you and I are the biggest barriers to change if we do not personally address racial injustice in our Air Force. Defensiveness is a predictable response by white people to any discussion of racial injustice. White colonels are no exception,” Jonsson wrote. “We are largely blind to institutional racism, and we take offense to any suggestion that our system advantaged us at the expense of others.”
Jonsson went on claim he “drew attention” to the notion that “racial tension remains an important issue to address” while speaking with two white colonels. According to Jonsson, his “introduction of race into the conversation created social discomfort,” allegedly causing both service members to “ameliorate” the situation “with humor.” He furthermore admonished a fellow white colonel who purportedly expressed the meritocratic sentiment that “when anyone joins the Air Force, they need to adopt the culture of the Air Force [and] that [the branch] should not make cultural accommodations.”
“By obscuring any cultural differences in the Air Force, he excused himself from the need to dig into the underlying issue of racial disparity,” Jonsson regurgitated the leftist talking points.
But Jonsson wasn’t quite finished demanding his fellow service members view the world through a racial lens. At the end of his article, the Air Force colonel recommended airmen develop a “game plan” to break so-called “invisible barriers” in the military by reading Robin DiAngelo’s White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism, a book that promotes divisive ideologies such as critical race theory (CRT).
“Dear white colonel, it is time to give a damn. Aim High,” he added.
The Air Force Times article is hardly the only incident in which Jonsson has pushed the military to adopt ideas saturated in so-called “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI), a poisonous left-wing framework that dismisses merit and instead discriminates based on characteristics such as skin color and sex.
In a December 2020 video commemorating the service of a Tuskegee Airman, Jonsson said the celebration gives the Air Force a chance to “acknowledge that there’s still progress that we need to make as a service.”
“There’s still barriers, more invisible barriers, that some of our airmen from underrepresented groups … still feel in their service,” Jonsson claimed. “We’re aggressively knocking down those barriers.”
According to a September 2022 Fox News report, the Air Force Academy — where Jonsson had apparently begun serving as vice superintendent in August 2022 — has regularly forced cadets to undergo DEI instruction. In one slideshow titled, “Diversity & Inclusion: What it is, why we care, & what we can do,” cadets are told to utilize words that “include all genders” and avoid using terms such as “mom,” “dad,” and “colorblind.”
An Air Force cadet writing under a pseudonym detailed in the Washington Examiner earlier this summer his experiences with the academy’s embrace of “leftist ideologies.” The cadet specifically noted how “critical race theory and diversity, equity, and inclusion trainings [are] being forced upon us by academy leadership” and that in doing so, the school has “divided the cadet wing from within, in a profession where unity is essential.”
Jonsson’s apparent infatuation with CRT and DEI ideologies further highlights the importance of Alabama Sen. Tommy Tuberville’s ongoing bid to force individual votes on Biden’s military appointees. Using his role on the Senate Armed Services Committee, Tuberville has been slowing down military personnel moves that require Senate confirmation to protest the Pentagon’s use of taxpayer money to cover service members’ travel expenses to get abortions.
To be clear, Tuberville is not blocking votes, but is forcing the Armed Services Committee to vote on each nomination individually rather than voting “en masse on large numbers of nominations.” The Alabama senator has since faced numerous attacks from Democrats and establishment Republicans, many of whom have baselessly claimed his protest is harming “military readiness.”
Shawn Fleetwood is a staff writer for The Federalist and a graduate of the University of Mary Washington. He previously served 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
Of all the terrible things about Nikki Haley — her enthusiasm for more foreign war funding, her deference to corporate cultural assault — the cringe-worthy attempts to hype her status as a woman (A mom! A wife!) and Indian (“I’m a minority first!,” “I’m as diverse as it gets!”) are the least offensive. But it’s still really, really bad.
Her whole campaign is Hillary 2.0.
Haley currently polls nationally at less than 5 percent, and it’s the same in early Republican primary states Iowa and New Hampshire, so there aren’t a ton of reasons to spend time thinking about her. But it’s truly awe-inspiring that there exist Republicans who still believe there’s anything to gain from the party’s voters by rubbing their faces in identity politics rot.
When have Republicans ever showed any appetite for it? They haven’t. They don’t care. It’s only interesting to the extent that ethnic minorities and women who run for office as Republicans are contrary to the racist media’s preferred narrative. Outside of that, it’s meaningless and has no bearing on a voter’s decision to trust any given candidate with power.
Haley has already disqualified herself for the nomination by cheering on more war between Ukraine and Russia, stupidly undermining the only Republican senator trying to uphold the law that abortions not be funded with taxpayer money, and ceding authority to corporations that promote gross left-wing social causes.
It’s only a bonus that she thinks there’s something novel or compelling about being a nonwhite woman. In an interview with Politico published Thursday, Haley was asked about the first GOP presidential debate next week. “The fellas are going to do what the fellas are gonna do,” she said.
See? Because she’s not one of the fellas. She’s a woman! She’s unique! It’s cool!
At the Iowa State Fair last weekend, Haley walked around in a shirt that said, “UNDERESTIMATE ME — THAT’LL BE FUN.”
Get it? She’s a woman! And she’s in the primary up against nothing but men! And she’s a minority! Whoa! Brave!
Also at the fair, she responded to one question by declaring herself “a minority first,” which proved she’s “as diverse as it gets.” (For good measure, she threw in that “minorities are smart.”)
Haley continues to desperately milk the teat of Don Lemon having said on CNN a whole six months ago that she “isn’t in her prime.” At this moment, her campaign’s merchandise store — yes, Nikki Haley swag actually exists — features six items with reference to the “in her prime” remark. A personal favorite is the set of drink can koozies that say, “Past my prime? Hold my beer.”
You go, lady candidate!
Some other fun products include a “women for Nikki” shirt; a T-shirt that says, “If you want something said, ask a man. If you want something done, ask a woman” (with the word “woman” in italics); and multiple other items that say, “Sometimes it takes a woman” (a paraphrase of Hillary Clinton’s 2019 bleat, “It often takes a woman…”).
It’s as if Haley is running an experiment to see how hard she can make Republicans wince. During her campaign launch, she said in her speech, “I don’t put up with bullies. And when you kick back, it hurts them more if you’re wearing heels.”
Is Nikki Haley a woman, yes or no? Yes or no. Look at me. SAY IT.
An unofficial slogan of the Haley campaign is some variation of, “Send a bad-ss woman to the White House.”
July 3: “It’s time to send a bad-ss Republican woman to the White House.”
June 30: “We need to send a bad-ss Republican woman to this White House.”
June 4: “It’s time to put a bad-ss woman in the White House.”
Hey, now, SHE’s a firecracker! You don’t wanna mess with HER!
Motherhood, marriage, and heritage don’t overwhelm Republican voters because none of it is impressive. Those qualities are either basic human goals or matters of pure luck of the draw. But if Nikki Haley wants to run as Hillary Clinton 2.0, she’s doing just fine. The outcome will be the same.
Burned cars and homes are seen in a neighborhood that was destroyed by a wildfire on Aug. 17, 2023, in Lahaina, Hawaii. (Photo: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
While climate hawks were quick to blame the tragic Hawaiian fires on climate change, some of the state’s green policies and questionable decision-making before and during the tragedy helped set the stage for a disaster that has so far claimed over 100 lives.
Along with other Democrats and some members of the media, Democratic Gov. Josh Green repeatedly suggested in the wake of the disaster that climate change and its effects were the primary cause, with Green himself stating explicitly that climate change is “the ultimate reason that so many people perished.”
However, a growing list of actions and green policy decisions made by elected and unelected officials of key Hawaiian institutions, public and private, in the years leading up to the fires appear to have played a major role. For years before the fires, government agencies understood that Western Maui, the hardest-hit area, was particularly susceptible to wildfires because of high concentrations of non-native grasses in the area, according to The New York Times. An assessment report from 2020 stated that the region had a 90% chance of wildfires each year on average, a percentage calculated with the pervasive non-native dry grasses in mind.
Despite its understanding that the abundance of dry grass in the region posed a threat, the state allowed it to grow without doing much to trim it or otherwise keep it under control, according to NBC News. As a result, huge swaths of the region became open-air tinderboxes, particularly in West Maui.
For example, the state appears to have dragged its feet in negotiations with Hawaiian Electric, the state’s utility company whose downed power lines reportedly started the blaze.
Hawaiian Electric had identified an urgent need as early as 2019 to make infrastructure upgrades and manage vegetation to reduce the possibility that its equipment could spark a fire, and it proposed to spend $190 million to do so last June, according to The Wall Street Journal. In response to the proposal, state bureaucrats and regulators bogged the proposal down in red tape and reviews, according to the Journal. The utility said that it would not begin the work until it had negotiated a deal with the state to recover the costs from ratepayers, an arrangement that is typical for utility companies seeking to make major investments of this variety, according to the Journal.
Hawaiian Electric is not completely absolved of responsibility, Dan Kish, senior fellow at the Institute for Energy Research, told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
“It’s sad to see all the government and utility officials passing the buck rather than stepping up and admitting that mistakes were made,” Kish told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
“Hawaii’s obsession with climate took the utility’s eyes off the ball,” Kish continued. “Rather than concentrating on what they can fix, they focused on the climate industrial complex and its unworkable solutions.”
Hawaiian Electric interpreted the signals sent by the state’s commitment to reach 100% green electricity generation by 2045, deciding to expend significant resources to achieve this aim, according to the Journal. The firm invested vast resources in green technologies, but ultimately spent less than $245,000 on wildfire-specific projects on the island between 2019 and 2022, after it had determined that it had to do more to mitigate the risks posed by errant sparks, according to the Journal.
“While there was concern for wildfire risk, politically the focus was on electricity generation,” Mina Morita, chair of the state utilities commission from 2011 to 2015, told the Journal.
A 2020 audit of the company’s management systems found that its risk considerations were mostly focused on financial risks, with minimal analysis of operational risks, while the division within the firm that oversaw power line operations had significant management problems, according to the Journal.
Hawaiian Electric did not respond immediately to a request for comment.
REPORTER: “Mr. President, any comment on the rising death toll in Maui?”
BIDEN: “No. no comment.”
REPORTER 2: “Will you come talk about the Hawaii response, Mr. President?”
The fires began in earnest the morning of Aug. 8, as a downed power line reportedly sparked some dry grass and started the fire that would grow into one of the deadliest wildfires in American history.
West Maui Land Co. made a request at 1 p.m. to the state’s Department of Land and Natural Resources, asking the agency for permission to divert stream water to its reservoirs so that firefighters on the front lines could have access to more water to battle the resurgent flames, according to a letter it wrote to the department on Aug. 10. In response to that request, the department’s Commission on Water Resource Management, which is led by an advocate of “indigenous knowledge” who has said that water management requires “true conversations about equity,” told the company to contact a downstream farmer to ensure that a temporary diversion would not impact his taro farming operation in undesirable ways, according to the letter. The company tried to make contact with the farmer, but communications were spotty and time was of the essence, the letter asserts.
The agency eventually granted approval to the company for the diversion at 6 p.m., some five hours after the request had been made, according to the letter. By that point, the fires were raging out of control, shutting down a key roadway and making it impossible for the company to access the siphon that would have allowed it to divert the water into the right places for the firefighters to access, the letter states.
Lahaina’s fire hydrants went dry, and the firefighters on the front lines had no choice but flee as their town went up in smoke, according to Hawaii News Now.
The alleged hesitation to approve a water diversion was not the only critical mistake made as the catastrophe unfolded. Lahaina’s emergency alert sirens never sounded, a decision that Maui Emergency Management Agency chief Herman Andaya has publicly defended with vigor, even as many residents reportedly did not know of the fires until seeing them or smelling smoke.
Andaya had zero prior career experience in crisis management before getting the job for Maui County. He did, however, serve as the chief of staff for the former mayor of Maui between 2011 and 2017, and also worked for the Maui housing administration from 2003 to 2007.
Andaya resigned late Thursday following backlash over his role
At some point, the local 911 system went down, according to Hawaii News Now.
The tragedy has so far claimed 111 lives, and that figure may continue to climb as emergency workers comb through the wreckage and attempt to locate the hundreds of civilians still unaccounted for. It is feared that many of the yet-to-be-discovered dead may be children, according to the Journal.
Green’s office, the Department of Land and Natural Resources, and the Maui Emergency Management Agency all did not respond immediately to requests for comment.
There is a huge asymmetry in the bizarre Chinese-American relationship. China would never tolerate America treating it as it treats America. Why do our leaders let this situation continue? Pictured: President Joe Biden (right) and Chinese leader Xi Jinping (left) shake hands as they meet on the sidelines of the G20 Summit in Bali, Indonesia, on Nov. 14, 2022. (Photo: Saul Loeb, AFP/Getty Images)
Imagine if the United States treated China in the same way it does us. What if American companies simply ignored Chinese copyrights and patents and stole Chinese ideas, inventions, and intellectual property as they pleased and with impunity? What if the American government targeted Chinese industries by dumping competing American export products at below the cost of production—to bankrupt Chinese competitors and corner their markets? What would the communist Chinese government do if a huge American spy balloon lazily traversed continental China—sending back to the United States photographic surveillance of Chinese military bases and installations? How would China react to America stonewalling any explanation, much less refusing to apologize for such an American attack on Chinese sovereignty?
Envision a U.S. high-security virology lab in the Midwest, run by the Pentagon, allowing the escape of an engineered, gain-of-function deadly virus. Instead of enlisting world cooperation to stop the spread of the virus, the American government would lie that it sprung up from a local bat or wild possum.
Washington would then make all its relevant military scientists disappear who were assigned to the lab while ordering a complete media blackout. America would forbid Chinese scientists from contacting their American counterparts involved in the lab, despite the deaths of more than 1 million Chinese from the American-manufactured disease. And what if during the first days of the pandemic, Washington had quietly prevented all foreign travel to the United States, while keeping open one-way direct flights from America to major Chinese cities?
How would Beijing respond if American biotech company warehouses were discovered in rural China with unsecured vials of deadly viruses and pathogens? Would China be angered that it was never notified by an American company that it had left abandoned COVID-19 and HIV viruses and malaria parasites in its facilities—along with rotting genetically engineered dead rats littering the floors with hundreds more lab animals abandoned in laboratory cages?
What would Chairman Xi Jinping have done if American-made fentanyl was shipped in massive quantities to nearby Tibet on the Chinese border? And what if it would be deliberately repackaged there as deceptive recreational drugs and smuggled into China, where it annually killed 100,000 Chinese youth, year after year?
What if 10,000 Americans this year illegally crossed the Indian border into China and disappeared into its interior?
What if an allied Asian nation—such as South Korea, Japan, or Taiwan—went nuclear? And what if, in North-Korean style, it serially blustered to send one of its nuclear missiles into the major cities of China?
What if almost monthly China discovered an American military operative teaching incognito at a major Chinese university or among the ranks of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army? Would China object if an American femme fatale agent was sleeping with a high-ranking Chinese official of the Chinese Communist Politburo? Or what if one of the chauffeurs of its top-ranking Chinese officials was a nearly two-decade-long American agent?
What would be the Chinese reaction if there were 350,000 American students attending schools all over the Chinese nation, with perhaps 3,000-4,000 of them actively engaged in national security espionage on behalf of the United States?
These “what-ifs” could be expanded endlessly. But they reflect well enough the great asymmetry in the bizarre Chinese-American relationship. Obviously, China would not tolerate America treating it as it does the Americans.
Why then does the imbalance continue? Do naive Americans believe that the more China is indulged, the more it will respond in kind to American magnanimity? Does the U.S. believe that the more China is exposed to our supposedly radically democratic and free culture, the sooner it will become a good democratic citizen of the global community?
Are we afraid of China because it has four times our population and believes its economy and military will overtake ours in a decade?
Are we terrified that its Chinese government is completely amoral, utterly ruthless, and capable of anything?
Or are our political, cultural, and corporate elites so compromised by their lucrative Chinese investments and joint ventures that they prioritize profits over their own country’s national security and self-interest? And did the Biden family—including President Joe Biden himself—in the past receive millions of dollars from Chinese energy and investment interests? Did Hunter Biden’s quid pro quo decade of grifting result in millions in Chinese money filling the Biden family coffers—all in exchange for the current Biden and past Obama administrations going soft on Chinese aggression?
No one seems able to explain the otherwise inexplicable. But one way to get along with China and to regain its respect is to deal with it exactly the way it deals with the United States. Anything less, and America will continually be treated with even more Chinese contempt—and eventually extreme violence.
Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, and author of the book “The Second World Wars: How the First Global Conflict Was Fought and Won.” You can reach him by e-mailing authorvdh@gmail.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 Trump
Legislators in North Carolina overrode several vetoes by Democrat Gov. Roy Cooper on Wednesday to pass three new laws that protect children from the harmful consequences of radical gender ideology.
Thanks to the bipartisanefforts of the state’s General Assembly, men in ladyface are barred from infiltrating women’s sports, a policy decision a majority of Americans support because they know that males have an indisputable biological and physiological advantage and women have a right to privacy and safety in places like locker rooms. Teachers, under another new law, must also alert parents of their children’s gender confusion issues instead of transitioning kids secretly.
A third law, which the House and Senate also overrode a veto to pass, prohibits medical professionals from pumping kids full of neutering drugs that carry permanent consequences including sexual dysfunction, infertility, a higher risk of cancer and cardiac events, impaired vocal cords, bone density issues, and “transition” regret.
While someone can still be remotely approved to mutilate functional body parts in just 22 minutes in some American states, red states and European countries like England, Sweden, Finland, and France have significantly scaled back or completely prohibited physical transgender interventions.
Legislators and parental rights activist groups in the Tar Heel State celebrated the overturned vetoes as a victory for “women, parents, and families.”
“While Governor Cooper has tried to stand between parents and their kids, today the NC House will continue to affirm parent’s rights, protect female athletes, and advocate for the health and safety of our children,” North Carolina House Speaker Tim Moore said in a statement.
Cooper, on the other hand, appeared to have no regrets that he ignored the will of his constituents by vetoing the protective legislation. Instead, he complained that legislators were focused on keeping children away from mutilative gender experiments that will wreak irreversible damage on their bodies and minds instead of passing a budget bill.
“These are the wrong priorities, especially when they should be working nights and weekends if necessary to get a budget passed by the end of the month,” Cooper said in a statement.
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 vitriolic exchanges between partisans regarding charges against the past president and family of the current president are obscuring scrutiny of another ethical question important to our national security. According to reports, the U.S. and Germany have given a combined $127 billion to Ukraine during the war, while the Chinese coordinate with Russia. And yet, the Chinese gave $100 million to the University of Pennsylvania under the watch of the current U.S. ambassador to Germany. Confusing?
Yes, and it demands the current U.S. ambassador to Germany, Amy Gutmann, the former president of the University of Pennsylvania and founder of the Penn Biden Centerwhere classified documents were found in January 2023, answer some questions from Congress.
Penn President Amy Gutmann and Vice President Joe Biden at the University of Pennsylvania’s Abramson Cancer Center on Jan. 15, 2016. (Ed Hille/Philadelphia Inquirer/Tribune News Service via Getty Images)
It has been revealed that Penn used the Penn Biden Center for schmoozing with donors during the Biden 2020 presidential run throughout 2019 and 2020. Meetings also were confirmed to have taken place there with future members of Biden’s “kitchen cabinet,” including Antony Blinken.
A colossal problem surrounding the Penn Biden Center that has been largely brushed off is the audio of Ambassador Gutmann’s Senate confirmation hearing where she said she had no knowledge of Chinese money flowing into the university. However, according to congressional testimony from Paul Moore, former head investigative counsel for the Department of Education during the Trump administration, there is a tape recording of the Penn Biden Center being discussed in an event in China coinciding with a massive influx of money being donated to the university while Gutmann was university president.
This claim goes against what the university said in the past, that “The Penn Biden Center has never solicited or received any gifts from any Chinese or other foreign entity.” The Chinese money – apparently close to $100 million – was given to the university itself, but the Penn Biden Center’s name apparently was dropped all over the place in order to raise it.
How many of those donors actually visited the Penn Biden Center, and perhaps got a chance to see the president’s rarely used office, we won’t know without visitor logs that Penn may or may not provide to Congress. We also don’t know who might have looked in the locked closet where Biden’s classified unauthorized documents were stashed for almost six years.
The Chinese government of course knows about this money donated to Penn and where it came from. They also know whether Ambassador Gutmann was forthcoming with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee about it during her 2021 confirmation hearing.
The $100 million question is, if Amy Gutmann is compromised by China with her denials and not being forthcoming about soliciting Chinese donations to Penn while she was visiting China during her tenure as Penn’s president. Is there a security risk that needs to be immediately addressed?
A major aspect of this problem is Gutmann’s current role in Germany as U.S. ambassador as Germany itself is central to military intelligence about Ukraine’s defensive war against Russia and U.S. aide to Ukraine. China, however, is coordinating with Russia.
Ambassador Gutmann should be brought back to Washington to testify before the House Oversight and Foreign Affairs committees, as well as the Senate, about her past dealings with China. Members of Congress should do their job on this instead of simply pressuring current Penn President Liz Magill to answer questions about what happened at the school while Gutmann was at the helm. Gutmann is the U.S. ambassador, and the potential security risk.
Former Vice President Joe Biden joins University of Pennsylvania President Amy Gutmann to discuss global affairs at the school’s Irvine Auditorium on Feb. 19, 2019 in Philadelphia. (Win McNamee/Getty Images)
Elite universities constantly argue that they are private and it’s none of the government’s business what they do, all while they take millions of dollars in federal subsidies and millions more from undisclosed foreign donors. These universities have been living off tax dollars for decades while amassing billion-dollar endowments. The least they can do is not pose a risk to our national security by being a gateway for foreign donors, and potentially also foreign intelligence officers, to get access to high level U.S. government officials.
The broader issue at work, however, is how Chinese money significantly influences universities throughout the U.S. The Justice Department had an investigation program into it, but Attorney General Merrick Garland closed the FBI’s so-called China initiative in February last year immediately after over 160 members of the University of Pennsylvania faculty and other universities signed an open letter calling for Garland to shut down the program.
These opponents of DOJ‘s China initiative used arguments against racial profiling as the excuse to nix the investigation. The faculty letter was part of a larger university battle against the program that included Penn, Harvard and the University of Minnesota.
Attorney General Merrick Garland (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
The DOJ’s website lists a string of real criminal cases that the China initiative had brought against academics over a four-year span who were caught dealing with China on espionage charges or not disclosing foreign donations and other financial ties they were required to disclose. The DOJ should be capable of avoiding racial profiling and enforcing laws vital to our national security at the same time.
Even though Gutmann at her 2021 confirmation hearing acknowledged that Penn took some Chinese donations, she insisted it did not affect the university’s values. Guttmann also denied that Penn set up a Confucius Institute on campus linked to the Chinese government through funders.
The problem is that Confucius Institutes are only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Chinese government influence in foreign universities. We still need to know what Ambassador Gutmann knew about the $100 million raised from China during the last few years of her Penn presidency and why she was unable to recall it in her Senate testimony.
Ambassador Amy Gutmann, front left, joins NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, second from left, during NATO air exercises at the Jagel Air Base in Berlin on June 20, 2023. (Cuneyt Karadag/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
It remains clear that our entire system of ethics in this country remains highly politicized. Democrats and Republicans focus on the other party while ignoring their own issues. The lesser of two evils strategy does not justify selective enforcement of our nation’s laws, and if we continue down this path of polarization, our nation could end up in dangerous waters.
Both the House Oversight Committee and Judiciary should be pursuing the truth, not partisan politics. For the good of our national security, Amy Gutmann must be called to testify about any possible ties to China, especially as she is serving as U.S. ambassador to Germany as the war in Ukraine continues.
John Pudner is president of Take Back our Republic Action.
The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recently reaffirmed its 2018 position on youth who suffer from gender dysphoria while simultaneously calling on a systematic review of the evidence of how to treat such children. Looking back on the AAP’s 2018 statement, as pediatricians, we both agree with the 2018 report that we “must protect youth who identify as Transgender and Gender Diverse from discrimination and violence.” It’s our job to protect children.
However, we do not think the 2018 report is following the millennia-old tenet of “do no harm.” The conclusions included in that 2018 position recommend that youth who identify as transgender have access to “comprehensive, gender-affirming, and developmentally appropriate health care” that is covered by insurance.
The increasing call in the U.S. for the daily release of hormones into young bodies, or extensive surgical procedures, with scant evidence of benefit while our European counterparts are restricting gender transitions for youth is doing more than raising eyebrows. This push, plus demands that it be covered by insurance at a time when so many other claims are being denied is not only potentially causing long-term harm to young people, but further eroding trust in our U.S. medical system.
Those AAP conclusions were published a year after Dr. Rachel Levine, who identifies as transgender and is now a high-level HHS secretary, sent an email to the co-founder of the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia gender clinic, writing: “I know that we had discussed at US PATH [Professional Association for Transgender Health] the possibility of gender confirmation surgery for young people under 18 years of age. This could include top surgery for trans young men and top and bottom surgery for trans young women. Is there any literature to support this protocol?”
The reply: “I’m not aware of existing literature but it is certainly happening. I think we’ve had more than 10 patients who have had chest surgery under 18 (as young as 15) and 1 bottom surgery (17).”
Despite the lack of evidence, nearly $17 million tax dollars has been spent on pediatric gender transition treatments in recent years in Pennsylvania alone.
“There is not a full range of evidence to support the treatments that we’re using,” said the director of the gender clinic at Chicago’s largest children’s hospital. His reward for not following evidence-based medicine is a $5.7 million grant from the NIH.
The FDA recently issued a warning against using some of the puberty blockers due to short-term neurological side effects. No one knows the long-term effects of introducing the hormones to a young brain or what the forever term use will bring to the future of these patients.
Despite the warnings, 14,726 minors with gender dysphoria started hormone treatment from 2017 through 2021. And 832 irreversible surgeries were performed on minors for gender dysphoria between 2019-2021. These numbers are expected to rise as gender dysphoria diagnoses have tripled between those years, at an accelerating pace.
When the AAP is going about reviewing the evidence, they—and all pediatric professionals—might want to fully dissect a survey that is often cited by proponents of gender transitions for minors: The Report of the 2015 U.S. Transgender Survey. The survey of 27,000 individuals recruited responses using advocacy organizations, and of note, detransitioners were excluded. There were other jarring red flags in this survey: There were no baseline mental health questions of survey respondents, respondents were asked to recall how they felt years earlier, and 25% of respondents came from 3 states (California, New York and Washington). Remarkably, the survey asked respondents if they sought any of a list of “gender-affirming care” and excluded them if they did not seek hormones. Colloquially, we call that cherry-picking.
The survey, put together by a group of self-professed social justice advocates, had very low numbers of adolescents, and yet has been used in recent years to justify the increase in medical treatment of gender-questioning youth.
Stickers in the shape of a heart with a trans flag are pictured during a conversation about trans care, equity and access, during National Trans Visibility Month with the Rainbow Room, a program of Planned Parenthood Keystone, in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, U.S., March 29, 2023. REUTERS/Hannah Beier/File Photo (REUTERS/Hannah Beier/File Photo)
The Journal “Pediatrics” relied on this survey for a paper in 2020.The same physician author from the 2020 Pediatrics paper used the survey for another “second look” paper. This 2022 second look was funded by the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, itself supported financially by pharma corporations Arbor and Pfizer. Both produce hormones used in gender transitions.
The 2022 second look of the survey spawned a series of sensational headlines. “Trans teens who get gender-affirming hormones are healthier and happier as adults,” trumpeted Today. “Transgender children who get hormone therapy enjoy better mental health,” claimed USA Today.
It’s good that the AAP is performing a systematic review. They would do well to be transparent, thorough and honest. They might want to comment on the perverse incentives that could have led to over-treatment in years past. And above all, they must remember: Primum non nocere.
Nikki Johnson, M.D. is a Cleveland-area pediatrician.
Marion Mass, M.D. is a Philadelphia-area pediatrician and a fellow at Independent Women’s Forum.
This isn’t a scene from wartorn Ukraine after an attack by Russian forces. It’s the result of the wildfire in Lahaina on the Hawaiian island of Maui, seen here on Monday. (Photo: Yang Pingjun/Xinhua/Getty Images)
Hawaii, once a symbol of nature’s grace, now lies devastated, a chilling semblance of a war zone. At least 100 lives have been lost to the flames of a devastating wildfire, with hundreds of homes obliterated and families shattered.
But in the face of this profound tragedy, President Joe Biden has responded with a suggestion that borders on the absurd. If you thought his disregard for the American people had reached its lowest point, think again. While the embers of destruction still glow in Hawaii, Biden has made a jarring proposal to Congress: Provide an additional $24 billion in aid to Ukraine.
Underneath America’s leadership, a perpetually angry and misguided segment of left-wing Americans has eroded our nation’s priorities. They argue that America should always be second to the needs of others. But this is not the America that the majority yearn for. It’s the America that those who resent our nation’s principles desire.
Our nation stands at a crossroads, grappling with a complex web of challenges that stretch far beyond typical crime and poverty. Among those challenges are the haunting problems of human trafficking and the trafficking of drugs and firearms. Yet, the threats we face are not limited to these insidious enterprises. Thousands of Americans fall victim to criminals every year through crimes such as carjackings and robberies.
When will the American people receive the attention and care that Ukraine gets? When will the homeless veterans, who once fought bravely for their nation only to be left in the cold, the needy families struggling to make ends meet, single mothers laboring to provide for their children, and the helpless, poor families waiting for a glimmer of hope receive the same level of commitment and assistance that Biden offers to a foreign nation?
The concern doesn’t end at Ukraine. We can cast our eyes to our own cities, like New York City, now facing a migrant crisis unparalleled in its history. It’s reminiscent of the European migration crisis of 2015, when open borders led to more than 1 million migrants entering the European Union. New York’s far-left City Council and state politicians are now grappling with the aftermath of such policies. Tens of thousands of migrants are now dispersed across New York’s cities, burdening communities large and small with both actual and unrealized fears.
Will those who feign righteousness, those who boldly fly the Ukrainian flag outside their homes, who offer to take migrants into their homes, who march in protests in support of Ukraine and who decry the Right for simply asking that we take care of our own first also fly the flag of Hawaii?
Of course they won’t, and we all know why. It’s because there’s a prevailing yet misguided doctrine that America is so powerful and mighty that when its own people are harmed, we can conveniently ignore them, treating them as though they are privileged and unworthy of attention.
Pay no mind to the stark contrast between images of overindulgence and peaceful streets in many Ukrainian cities under threat of conflict and the devastation on the ground in Hawaii. This selective empathy is obvious. It’s hypocrisy at its finest, and it clearly shows that those who stand for righteousness falter when their own countrymen are in need.
While my heart aches for the Ukrainians affected by this war, and I vehemently believe in halting Russian President Vladimir Putin’s aggression, America cannot turn a blind eye to its internal struggles. America’s families are faced with choosing which meals to skip, struggling to pay rent, or managing unexpected expenses.
I ask you, Joe Biden, when will these families receive the same assistance you provide to everyone else?
So, what shall we do for the displaced people from Hawaii? Will we abandon them? No. We must treat them better than we treat everyone else, for any expense spared is a blot on our national honor.
I urge our government to welcome displaced Hawaiians with more than just open arms. They deserve five-star hotel accommodations, luxurious meals, free health care and child care. Why? Because that’s how we should treat Americans. And yet, it’s how we’re currently treating the migrants.
“America First” has been wrongly maligned due to the Left’s deliberate misunderstanding and misinterpretation of the principle. It’s about preserving a nation’s dignity, offering help and utilizing resources wisely, without exhausting them.
The American people’s welfare must not be sacrificed for Ukraine or for the migrants crossing our borders. Perhaps time will tell whether we will be able to provide them assistance. But, until that day comes, America must first care for its own.
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 Trump.
Late Monday, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis charged former President Donald Trump and 18 other defendants in a 98-page indictment that included a total of 41 different counts.
The defendants are already fighting back, with Trump’s former chief of staff, Mark Meadows, seeking to remove the case to federal court based on a statute that protects federal officials from state court prosecution for official conduct. More counteroffensives will likely follow, with other former federal officials, including Trump, presumably also seeking removal to federal court, while the remaining defendants will probably expeditiously move to dismiss the indictment on a variety of grounds.
To get a handle on the indictment and to stay current with the various developments, it is helpful to put the charges into one of six buckets, starting with the biggest one: the alleged RICO conspiracy.
Bucket 1: RICO
The Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) count runs some 70 pages and says all 19 defendants, “while associated with an enterprise, unlawfully conspired and endeavored to conduct and participate in, directly and indirectly, such enterprise through a pattern of racketeering activity.” The indictment next defines the “enterprise” as “a group of individuals associated in fact,” who “had connections and relationships with one another” and “functioned as a continuing unit for a common purpose of achieving the objectives of the enterprise,” which Willis maintains was “to unlawfully change the outcome of the election in favor of Trump.”
There are several problems with the RICO count, most fundamentally, as Andrew McCarthy explained in an enlightening article, RICO requires an “enterprise,” which, while not necessarily a formal entity, needs to be an identifiable group. The RICO crime, then, is “being a member of the enterprise that commits crimes, not the commission of any particular crime.”
But there must be some sort of “enterprise,” and here Willis conflates the objective — keeping Trump in power — with “the enterprise.” “It was that objective, and not the sustaining of any group, that brought them together; and once that objective was attained or conclusively defeated, the group — to the dubious extent it really was an identifiable group — would (and did) melt away,” McCarthy wrote. It’s a “good sign that you’re not dealing with a RICO enterprise,” the former federal prosecutor explained.
Without an “enterprise,” there can be no RICO crime, and the facts alleged in the indictment are such that the defendants will likely soon seek dismissal of that count. Now, Georgia law differs from federal law on RICO, and there is no saying how the state court will interpret its own RICO statute, but from a legal perspective, the claim is exceedingly weak.
The second fundamental problem with the RICO count is factual: Willis portrays the defendants as trying to unlawfully change the election in Trump’s favor, but the many actions Trump and others took involved legal proceedings and efforts to convince the legislative bodies to use their authority to address what the defendants saw as a fatally flawed election. A court is unlikely to toss the complaint on this ground, however, with factual disputes ones only a jury can resolve.
However, if the court holds, as it appears it should, that the RICO count fails as a matter of law because there was no “enterprise,” then that factual dispute is irrelevant. Likewise, the 160-some “acts” Willis included in the indictment — everything from Trump declaring victory on Nov. 4 to tweeting that followers should watch a television newscast — allegedly in furtherance of the “RICO” conspiracy become irrelevant.
Bucket 2: Alternate Electors
The second-biggest bucket concerns the counts related to the naming of alternative Trump electors. The crimes alleged here range from soliciting individuals to violate their oaths of office, to conspiring to file false statements or documents, to forgery. Counts 2, 6, 8-19, 23, and 37 alleged these and other crimes against various defendants all arising out of Republicans appointing an alternative slate of Trump electors who would vote for Trump in the event he prevailed in his then-pending Georgia lawsuit.
While the legacy media continue to frame these individuals as “fake electors,” as I’ve previously detailed, that is fake news. Rather, legal precedent indicates that alternative electors should be named to protect a candidate challenging the outcome of an election, as Trump was in Georgia and elsewhere. That is precisely what Democrats did in Hawaii in 1960 when Richard Nixon had been declared the victor in the state, but John F. Kennedy’s court contest remained viable.
As a matter of law, these counts should all be dismissed because Republicans naming alternate electors was not a crime — no matter how much the press wants you to believe otherwise.
Bucket 3: Petitioning the Government for Redress
The crimes charged in Counts 5, 28, 38, and 39 fit into a third bucket that consists of efforts by Trump and others to petition the government for redress. Here, the crimes charged include solicitation of violations of oath by public officers and the making of false statements during those efforts, but the common theme is that the defendants sought to have Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger or the Georgia legislature address Trump’s allegations of voting irregularities or fraud.
There is nothing criminal, however, in asking the secretary of state to use his authority to investigate and respond to voting irregularities or to ask the legislature to call a special session to name Trump electors. On the contrary, those activities would seemingly be protected by the constitutional guarantee of the right to petition the government for redress.
Bucket 4: False Statements
The fourth bucket holds numerous counts against a variety of defendants with the common theme being false statements charges. Count 27 alleged false statements were included in one of Trump’s election lawsuits, but lawyers are entitled to rely on information provided for others, making this count weak. Counts 7, 24, 25, and 26 all charged individual defendants with making false statements to Georgia House or Senate committees. The main issue here will be whether the defendants made the statements knowing they were false.
Count 22 charges an attempt to make a false statement and concerns a letter DOJ lawyer Jeff Clark drafted and recommended be sent to the Georgia legislature. As I previously detailed, however, there was no impropriety in Clark’s drafting of that letter. Clark will also likely succeed in having the case against him removed to federal court and then dismissed.
Counts 40 and 41 both involve charges of lying as well, with Count 40 alleging one defendant lied to Fulton County investigators and Count 41 alleging perjury before a grand jury. Given the target on these defendants’ backs, it’s difficult to believe they knowingly lied, but that question may end up being left to a jury to decide.
Bucket 5: Communications Related to Ruby Freeman
Counts 20, 21, 30, and 31 all involve charges concerning efforts to supposedly influence the testimony of Ruby Freeman, who was an election worker at the State Farm Arena. Here, the theory seems to be that some of the defendants attempted to pressure Freeman to lie about what happened during the vote counting. Again, it may be left to a jury to decide this issue.
Bucket 6: Accessing Voting Machines and Election Data
The final category of charges involves efforts by Sidney Powell and others to allegedly illegally access voting machines and election results. Counts 32-36 allege various crimes related to those efforts, including conspiracy to commit election fraud by tampering with machines. Once the defendants charged in those counts respond, it will be easier to assess the criminal theories proffered and any weakness in the claims.
For now, though, watch for the federal court’s holding on whether Meadows, Clark, Trump, and potentially others have the right to remove the case to federal court. Simultaneously, expect the other defendants to seek dismissal of all or part of the indictment, likely narrowing this criminal case down substantially.
Margot Cleveland is The Federalist’s senior legal correspondent. She is also a contributor to National Review Online, the Washington Examiner, Aleteia, and Townhall.com, and has been published in the Wall Street Journal and USA Today. Cleveland is a lawyer and a graduate of the Notre Dame Law School, where she earned the Hoynes Prize—the law school’s highest honor. She later served for nearly 25 years as a permanent law clerk for a federal appellate judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Cleveland is a former full-time university faculty member and now teaches as an adjunct from time to time. As a stay-at-home homeschooling mom of a young son with cystic fibrosis, Cleveland frequently writes on cultural issues related to parenting and special-needs children. Cleveland is on Twitter at @ProfMJCleveland. The views expressed here are those of Cleveland in her private capacity.
The latest indictment of former President Donald Trump is even more outlandish than Jack Smith’s blatant attempt to criminalize free speech. The indictment Monday out of Fulton County, Georgia, criminalizes mundane activities like asking for a phone number, texting, encouraging people to watch a televised hearing, and reserving a room at the Georgia capitol.
These activities, according to Georgia prosecutor Fani Willis, run afoul of the state’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) statute. As far as Willis is concerned, Trump’s legal efforts to challenge the election results in Georgia amounted to a criminal conspiracy, with Trump as the criminal mastermind. What that means, outlandishly, is that every phone call or tweet related to those legal efforts, every step Trump and his team took to press their legal case, counts as “an overt act in furtherance of the conspiracy.”
This is of course crazy. As more than a few people have noted since the charges dropped, according to Willis’ standard every major Democrat should be in prison on racketeering charges — including Hillary Clinton but especially Stacey Abrams, who has made a career out of denying that she lost the 2018 Georgia gubernatorial election.
Here’s five minutes of Stacey Abrams denying she lost the 2018 election. When will she be arrested? pic.twitter.com/x9WaAdiKhd
So yes, the hypocrisy is stupendous and blatant. But let me suggest that decrying the hypocrisy here is a loser’s game. What you see in these anti-Trump indictments is not hypocrisy, it’s hierarchy. We all became familiar with this concept during the Covid pandemic. Gathering for church, even outside, was against the law, but mass rioting in the streets was OK — so long as you were rioting for racial justice. Ordinary people had to let their elderly loved ones die alone and were not even allowed to bury them, yet thousands attended the funeral and memorial services for secular saint George Floyd.
Perhaps nothing better captured the hierarchy-not-hypocrisy concept than a photo of Democrat Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez at the annual Met Gala in September 2021 wearing a white gown with “tax the rich” scrawled on its backside. Set aside the idiocy of the stunt itself. In the photo, AOC isn’t wearing a face mask, but the woman helping her with her gown is. What AOC was displaying for the public was hierarchy.
As my colleague Eddie Scarry wrote at the time, “This is simply another example of those in power, those running our most influential cultural and political institutions, sending a message: There’s a new social hierarchy in America. And this one isn’t about what you can afford to do, it’s about what you’re allowed to do.”
The same analysis applies to the raft of indictments against Trump, whose post-2020 denunciations of the election are no different than those of Clinton in 2016 or most Democrats in 2000 and 2004. Democrats are allowed to question the results of an election, Republicans are not. That’s not hypocrisy, it’s hierarchy.
Once you understand this, you begin to recognize it everywhere. Antifa thugs and BLM rioters were allowed to trash entire city blocks, torch police stations, take over neighborhoods, besiege federal courthouses — and do so with the blessing and encouragement, at times even with the complicity, of elected Democrat Party leaders. But every granny that set foot within a mile of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 had better brace for a federal indictment if they haven’t already been charged.
The same goes for teachers who push transgender ideology and critical race theory on students versus the parents who object to these things being taught behind their backs. The former are courageous leaders, the latter are potential domestic terrorists, at least according to the Biden Justice Department. Ditto for the media’s treatment of the Trump family business versus the Biden family business. None of this is hypocrisy, it’s hierarchy. The left is trying to tell you something, which is that they have all the power and you have none.
The essayist N.S. Lyons (a pseudonym) put it well in a piece last August, describing the futile efforts of Team B to call out the hypocrisy of Team A:
You see, it’s possible you are under the misapprehension that you are not supposed to notice what you described as the “double-standard” in acceptable behavior between Team A and Team B. And that you think if you point out this double-standard, you are foiling the other team’s plot and holding them accountable. This might be because, in your mind, you are still in high school debate club, where if you finger your opponent for having violated the evenly-applied rules a neutral arbiter of acceptable behavior will recognize this unfairness and penalize them with demerits.
Except in reality you are not holding Team A accountable, and in fact are notably never able to hold them accountable for anything at all. Even though Team A gets to hold you accountable for everything and anything whenever they want. This is because unfortunately there is no neutral arbiter listening to your whining. In fact, currently the only arbiter is Team A, because Team A has consolidated all the power to decide the rules, and to enforce or not enforce those rules as they see fit.
With each new Trump indictment, the left’s strategy becomes increasingly clear. It isn’t to bring real criminal charges based on actual violations of the law, or to see justice applied equally and fairly even to a powerful person like Trump. The strategy is to demonstrate power and thereby humiliate and discourage Trump supporters by showing them how powerless they are.
Another aspect of this strategy, as James Lindsay explained in a Twitter thread Tuesday, is to provoke the right into reacting. This is what Lindsay calls “leftist dialectical political warfare,” or, in Trump’s case, “Operation Poke the Bear.” The purpose of such warfare, says Lindsay, is to provoke a reaction that would justify the further consolidation of power on the left.
So expect to see more “hypocrisy” — even lazy and objectively embarrassing hypocrisy of the kind we saw this week in the Georgia indictment. It doesn’t matter how laughable or outlandish the charges against Trump are, because prosecuting actual crimes and upholding the law have nothing to do with any of this.
This is about power — who has it, and who doesn’t. The people at the top are trying to tell you, the masses under them, that they can do whatever they want to you, at any time, and there’s nothing you can do to fight back. Just look what they’re doing to Trump, a former president. If they can do that to him, imagine what they can do to you.
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.
Not everyone Wednesday was in lockstep with President Joe Biden and Democrats’ celebration of the one-year anniversary of the Inflation Reduction Act becoming law. Tea Party Patriots Action, a nonprofit grassroots conservative group, slammed the $750 billion legislation as being full of liberal boondoggles. Beth Martin, the group’s honorary chairman, said after one year, inflation still is wrecking havoc on American households.
“Only in Washington would spending $750 billion that we don’t have be considered an ‘Inflation Reduction Act;'” Martin said in a news release. “It’s Orwellian and the American people are not fooled by it. One year after signing his signature bill, inflation continues to be an albatross around the necks of the American people.
“We’re continuing to experience the worst inflation since the Jimmy Carter era. Inflation rose in July, and it will likely continue to rise in August as gas prices eat a bigger hole in our wallets.”
Martin said the fact Biden and Democrats are celebrating the passage of this bill is embarrassing.
“Biden and his Democrat allies in Congress who passed this bill on a party-line vote should be embarrassed to publicly celebrate this economic disaster,” she said.
Former President Donald Trump has been indicted in Georgia for violation of the state’s version of the Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act. Pictured: Trump delivers remarks during the Georgia GOP convention on June 10, 2023, in Columbus, Georgia. (Photo: Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
This week, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis launched a 98-page missile directly into the heart of American politics. That missile was a 41-count indictment charging former President Donald Trump and 18 alleged co-conspirators with violation of the Georgia version of the Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act—acts in furtherance of a conspiracy to commit a criminal act. In this case, the criminal act, according to the indictment, was “knowingly and willfully [joining] a conspiracy to unlawfully change the outcome of the election in favor of Trump.”
Whether this amounts to a crime comes down to the question of whether Trump himself knew that he had lost the election; if he believed that he had won, then all the other accusations about him fall away. After all, it is not a crime to pursue a spurious legal strategy in furtherance of a delusion.
But by charging RICO, Willis extends the case to people who may have admitted that Trump lost the election. This accomplishes two purposes.
First, it puts these alleged co-conspirators in serious legal jeopardy, giving them reason to flip on Trump himself.
Second, it may allow Willis to charge Trump as part of a criminal conspiracy even if he personally believed he won the election—after all, case law suggests that co-conspirators can be charged under RICO even if they didn’t agree on every aspect of the conspiracy, so long as they knew the “general nature of the enterprise.”
The Georgia case also presents unique danger to Trump because it is a state case.
The Manhattan case against Trump rooted in campaign finance allegations is incredibly weak and is an obvious stretch; the Florida and D.C. cases against Trump are federal, which means that if elected president, he could theoretically pardon himself.
The Georgia case is both wide-ranging and state-based: If convicted, Trump would go to state prison, and would have no ability to pardon himself. Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp does not have unilateral pardon power, either: In Georgia, pardons work through an appointed board. So, the very real prospect exists that even were Trump elected, he’d start his term from a state prison.
But even that discussion is premature: The Georgia case, along with all the other indictments against Trump, are going to lock him into courthouses for the rest of the election cycle. What’s more, every waking moment for the media will be coverage of those court cases. That will make it impossible for Trump—even if he were so inclined, which he has shown no evidence of being—to talk about President Joe Biden rather than his legal peril. And there has yet to be a single piece of data suggesting that Americans are driven to vote for Trump because of his legal troubles.
To pardon yourself, you have to be elected president. But spending your entire presidential race in the dock makes that a radically uphill battle.
All of this is quite terrible for the country. No matter what you think of Trump’s various legal imbroglios—from mishandling classified documents to paying off porn stars to calling up the Georgia secretary of state in an attempt to “find” votes—the glass has now been broken over and over and over again: Political opponents can be targeted by legal enemies. It will not be unbroken.
If you think that only Democratic district attorneys will play this game, you have another think coming. Prepare for a future in which running for office carries the legal risk of going to jail—on all sides. Which means that only the worst and the most shameless will run for office.
Ben Shapiro is host of “The Ben Shapiro Show” and editor emeritus of The Daily Wire. A graduate of UCLA and Harvard Law School, he is a New York Times bestselling author whose latest book is “The Authoritarian Moment: How the Left Weaponized America’s Institutions Against Dissent.”
Guatemala is one of America’s last partners in the region that still holds conservative values: free-market, anti-communism, and pro-family. Sunday’s election could threaten that should the Left find a new base in Central America. Pictured: Candidate for president of Guatemala and former first lady Sandra Torres presents her plan for government in Guatemala City on Aug. 7, 2023, in the run-up to the Aug. 20 ballot. (Photo: Fernando Aguilar, AFP/Getty Images)
Elections have consequences. They can either benefit a nation or lead to disastrous outcomes. On June 25, Guatemala held its first round of the presidential election, and the results ended disastrously for this historically conservative Central American country of 17 million people.
The results also do not bode well for America, as the current government has been pro-U.S. and a staunch American foreign policy ally, and the election of a leftist government could dramatically change all that. In an unexpected twist of events, the two candidates heading into this Sunday’s run-off elections are former first lady Sandra Torres and Bernardo Arévalo, son of former Guatemalan President Juan José Arévalo Bermejo—both leftists. The two won the first election round with only 15% and 11%, respectively, in a deeply fractured vote.
Prior to the elections, the then-frontrunner, a conservative businessman, was controversially disqualified by the attorney general while the Right has come under heavy criticism for splintering the nation’s majority conservative vote, leaving an opportunity for the Left to gain control. The results break this year’s string of conservative wins in Latin America. First, Chile’s Marxist president tried to radically change the country’s pro-free market form of government through a constitutional convention to rewrite the nation’s constitution. He was upended after conservatives won two-thirds of the convention seats.
Paraguay’s conservatives easily kept control of their government. And this past weekend saw conservatives in Argentina win nearly two-thirds of the vote in the first round of presidential elections amid a country financially ruined by the ruling socialist government.
It is Torres’ third time as a presidential candidate while it is Arévalo’s first. Torres campaigned on an agenda centered on “transforming Guatemala to be a place of equality, where women and men have the same opportunities, the youth find jobs, and everyone develops peace of mind.”
A social democrat, observers tell us, “She is too corrupt.” Since June, Torres has pivoted her campaign message to cast herself as a defender of the country’s deeply held conservative values—pro-life, pro-family, and pro-religion. She promises to name conservative ministers to her government if she wins. Nevertheless, public distrust of her runs high.
Arévalo hails from a new political party, Semilla. Local conservatives fear “he will make common cause with global progressives on abortion, gender identity, and a pro-LGBTQ+ platform.” Last year, Semilla unsuccessfully introduced a bill in parliament “for persons who menstruate,” a reference to “transgender” men’s rights (transgender men are biological women).
In neighboring Mexico, the ruling left-wing Morena (Movement for Social Regeneration) Party has convicted conservative members of parliament and church leaders for “gender-based political violence” for speaking out against transgender ideology. An Arévalo victory could bring similar pressures on the Guatemalan people.
During the campaign, Arévalo evaded questions about social issues and has laser focused on an appealing anti-corruption agenda. While Guatemala has made substantial improvements in democratizing its national economy, it remains riven with corruption between government and businesses and scandals that have eaten into Guatemalans’ trust in their own institutions. Indeed, voter turnout exposed the country’s loss of faith in government, as only 60% of eligible voters showed up at the polls with 24% of them leaving their ballots blank. In sum, half of the country opted out of participating in the elections.
The impact of Guatemala’s election on American national security could be severe. The current conservative government has been a staunch U.S. foreign policy ally, recognizing Taiwan over Communist China, openly backing Ukraine over Russia, and being solidly pro-Israel and pro-U.S.
Other Latin American states have joined China’s Belt and Road Initiative of receiving massive loans and infrastructure investments in return for loyalty to Beijing. Recently, current Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei pledged “absolute support” for Taiwan after neighboring Honduras switched sides and recognized Beijing over Taipei.
Torres promised to maintain relations with and expand economic relations with Taiwan. Her critics warn, however, that given the executive powers of the president, once in office, “she could easily switch to China.”
Alejandro Palmieri, the editor of La Republica Guatemala, warns that “Torres previously praised the PRC [People’s Republic of China] as an economic powerhouse, though she still wants to maintain relationships with the United States and Taiwan since they are important trade partners for us.”
As for Arévalo, he has made it clear that he wants to establish closer relations with China since he believes that it is essential for Guatemala’s economic growth.
Palmieri said that Guatemala’s conservative values are aligned with conservative American principles: “Guatemala is one of the U.S.’s last partners in the region that still holds conservative values such as support for a free-market economy, recognizing the hemispheric threat Communist China represents, and fidelity to the idea that the family structure is central to our lives.”
Sunday’s election results could threaten those shared values should international progressives find a new base in Central America. No doubt, as the White House has done with Marxist victors in Brazil and Colombia and progressives elsewhere in the hemisphere, it is likely only too keen to roll out the red carpet for Guatemala’s next left-wing president.
Max Primorac is director of The Heritage Foundation’s Douglas and Sarah Allison Center for Foreign Policy. He previously served as acting chief operating officer at the U.S. Agency for International Development. From 2009 to 2011, he was a senior adviser to the Afghan government.
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 Trump
Democrats’ crusade to weaponize the criminal justice system to put their chief political opponent in jail escalated again Monday night, with the release of an indictment pursued by Georgia’s Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis against former President Donald Trump. The indictment, targeting not just Trump but 18 of his lawyers and advisers, is a clear message that if you’re a Republican, challenging election results — something Democrats have done after every GOP presidential victory this century — is now a criminal offense.
Here are five straight minutes of Georgia Democrat Stacey Abrams denying the results of her 2018 election loss pic.twitter.com/oRYMeZR6vQ
Meanwhile, President Joe Biden’s Department of Justice is tripping over itself to insulate Biden and his son from scrutiny or criminal consequences for their apparent scheme to get rich off of peddling American political influence abroad.
The hacks at DOJ, by the way, also indicted Trump over a classified documents dispute, after raiding his house and rifling through his wife’s closet. Soon after, Biden was found to have classified documents lying around in his garage, but in his case, the feds are content to play nice. Oh, and Hillary Clinton also had a classified records scandal — in which her team destroyed emails and devices with BleachBit and literal hammers — but enjoyed the protection of then-FBI Director James Comey.
Speaking of Hillary, her campaign shopped a fake dossier full of lies about Trump to the FBI, which media and intelligence agencies used to smear Trump as a Russian stooge during and after the 2016 election. FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith, the one person handed criminal punishment for the operation, got 12 months probation. Oh, and Hillary was one of many, many Democrats who screeched for Donald Trump’s entire presidency that the 2016 election was stolen and Trump’s win was illegitimate.
Lest you should think Trump is the only example of the double standard, remember that the DOJ raided the home of a pro-life pastor for pushing a threatening pro-abortion agitator away from his young son, while militant abortion activists firebombed Christian pregnancy clinics. Recall how they charged a man with homicide for defending subway riders from a threatening vagrant, but do nothing to stop criminals who terrorize law-abiding citizens. Think about the ongoing campaign to imprison anyone adjacent to a Republican protest that turned into a mob at the U.S. Capitol in 2021, after letting left-wing protests descend into fiery riots across the country for an entire summer. Excuse me, fiery but mostly peaceful riots.
The message couldn’t be clearer: Republicans can do nothing right in the eyes of the justice system, and Democrats can do nothing wrong. We have a two-tiered justice system, and 4 in 5 Americans know it.
Problems of hypocrisy are another day’s work in politics. The use of the criminal justice system — the leveler on which the basic functions of a society depend — to turn that hypocrisy into arrest warrants is something else entirely.
A functioning justice system is a citizen’s best peaceful defense of his liberty, assuring him that his lawful exercise of freedoms will be protected. There’s a reason four of the 10 original amendments the founders affixed to their newly minted Constitution regard the rights attendant to a fair trial. When the justice system forfeits citizens’ trust, trust in the integrity of the republic itself goes with it.
We don’t have real elections if candidates are jailed — or chilled by the threat of jail — to keep them from running. We don’t have real legal recourse if DAs indict lawyers until other lawyers become afraid to defend an ostracized client. For all Democrats’ pontificating about the rule of law, it doesn’t exist if it’s only applied and misapplied to half the country. If we no longer uphold equal justice under the law, we still have a country, but not the one we thought we had.
As my colleague Joy Pullmann wrote a year ago, “A country that harshly prosecutes people or lets them off Scot-free based on their political affiliation is a banana republic. A two-tier justice system is not a justice system. … Its purpose is not justice but population control.”
A fair justice system isn’t the first thing to crumble in a dying republic — there are plenty of warning signs — but it might be the hardest loss to come back from. After all, the law is supposed to be the authority to which Americans appeal when their rights are abused and trampled. What are they supposed to do when the law and its enforcers are doling out the abuse?
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.
Attorney General Merrick Garland announced on Friday that U.S. attorney for the District of Delaware David Weiss, who orchestrated Hunter Biden’s sweetheart plea deal, will now serve as special counsel in the government’s probe of the Biden family business. The blatantly partisan decision to appoint a co-conspirator in the plot to cover up the Biden family business should not go unpunished. Republicans should start by impeaching Garland, whose track record even before the recent special counsel appointment was worth immense scrutiny. Garland’s decision to bestow special privileges and status on yet another one of Biden’s corrupt deep-state attorneys only adds to the growing list of reasons why he should be prosecuted and removed.
Garland isn’t the only one who should pay. The whole DOJ, its pawns in the FBI, and whoever in the White House is giving them orders should be held to account for their travesties against the American people. The Biden administration shouldn’t get away with its attempts to obstruct the Democrat president’s role in an international influence-peddling scheme. Unfortunately, the corrupt bureaucracy’s Biden business cover-up is only part of the downfall of the nation.
Any American can see that the biggest election-rigging plot to date is happening right under their noses. Every time there is a bombshell breakthrough in the Biden family corruption case, former President Donald Trump is punished with more concocted charges and indictments. Now more than ever, the right must fight back. If Republicans don’t use their majority in the House and the thin margin in the Senate to curb the deep state, they may never have a chance again.
That sounds dramatic, but it’s true. One look at the actions of the Biden administration and its leftist cronies shows they want nothing more than to undercut the foundational principles of our constitutional republic and replace them with leftist fantasies. Already, leftists have worked overtime to ensure the nation’s cities burned, hardworking taxpayers were forced out of their jobs over a jab, national security was comprised thanks to a wide-open southern border, and American voters didn’t get all of the information they needed to make an informed decision during the 2016, 2020, and now 2024 election cycle.
The few institutions the left doesn’t quite dominate, such as the Supreme Court, are constantly threatened with smears and court-packing campaigns. Red states that have rejected the left’s advances face lawsuits from the feds and out-of-state-funded ballot measures designed to make them look like blue states. As I write, the unconstitutional left is trying to overturn election integrity laws so it is easier to permanently put themselves in power. Once that is accomplished, there’s little to nothing that can be done to fight it. The authoritarian takeover is happening in plain sight, and Republicans are doing very little, if anything, to stop it.
Democrats love to use “X thing or person is a threat to democracy” as the justification for their unconstitutional actions. In reality, leftists and their radical agenda are the biggest threats our self-government faces today.
Impeachment can’t wait until Congress is back from its summer vacation. Defunding the FBI can’t wait until the spineless Senate Republicans get on board. Protecting our elections can’t wait until the corporate media are busy spinning on other issues.
The best time for the right to ward off the destruction of the country is now. Those Republicans who are silent now are throwing American voters to the wolves. Without a defense against a corrupt regime that has no problems imprisoning its political enemies and those it deems guilty of wrongthink, Americans and the founding principles that inspire and invigorate them will be long gone.
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 indictments against former President Donald Trump are “clearly politicized” and come as the Biden family “continues to dodge accountability” on the accusations that have been made about them, Rep. Ashley Hinson said on Newsmax Tuesday.
“It seems every single time there’s an indictment that comes down, it’s right after we’ve heard yet another damaging report about the Biden family,” the Iowa Republican said on Newsmax’s “Wake Up America.” “I can tell you what I’m hearing from Iowans, and it’s that they are sick and tired of this two-tier justice system. It’s rules for thee and not for me, whether it’s the Manhattan DA or the Fulton County, Ga., DA.”
Meanwhile, the Biden administration continues “using the weaponized Department of Justice to be able to go after their political opponents,” said Hinson.
This is why Republicans “need to do everything we can to fire Joe Biden, restore faith in our justice system, and make sure that these people who are designed to enforce the law are doing so with equal application of justice,” she said.
Trump, along with several co-defendants including ex-New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, was indicted in GeorgiaMonday night for allegedly meddling in the results of the 2020 election in the state, where he lost to Joe Biden. The grand jury brought 13 felony charges against the former president, including violations of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, or RICO, and violating his oath of office.
Hinson said the indictments also mean Republicans have their work cut out for them, and she’s glad for Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., and his work in leading the House Oversight Committee’s investigation of the Biden family.
“We’re doing as much as we can through the appropriations process as well to put pressure on all of these departments to make sure they’re actually following the law and giving us as members of Congress the documents we need to make sure we’re holding the right people accountable,” said Hinson.
Meanwhile, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis has called for the Georgia trial to be held in six months, or just after the Iowa caucuses in January and as other states move into their primary seasons.
“It’s important that we vet these presidential candidates because who we have in the White House in 2024 is going to be really, really important to making sure we can again restore justice here,” said Hinson. “When we keep hearing about these stretches that are being used for political purposes, that is not what everyday Americans are concerned that they’re going to be next. That’s what I think everybody’s worried about, and we need to make sure that we are refocusing it on that. Jan. 15 is Iowa’s caucus day and can’t come soon enough.”
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Former President Donald Trump pushed back against a 13-count indictment a Georgia grand jury handed down on Monday, saying that an exonerating report will be unveiled next week at his golf club in New Jersey.
“A Large, Complex, Detailed but Irrefutable REPORT on the Presidential Election Fraud which took place in Georgia is almost complete & will be presented by me at a major News Conference at 11:00 A.M. on Monday of next week in Bedminster, New Jersey,” Trump wrote on Truth Social, Tuesday.
“Based on the results of this CONCLUSIVE Report, all charges should be dropped against me & others — There will be a complete EXONERATION! They never went after those that Rigged the Election. They only went after those that fought to find the RIGGERS!”
Trump was indicted by a grand jury in Fulton County, Georgia, for allegedly trying to alter the outcome of the 2020 election in that state, which he lost. A grand jury voted Monday night to charge Trump with 13 felony counts, including violations of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) law, as well as violating his oath of office. Several others also were indicted, including former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who served as one of Trump’s attorneys, and former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows.
Trump called Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger on Jan. 2, 2021, and asked for help to “find” the votes Trump needed to defeat Joe Biden. Trump has admitted to making the call, often referred to the phone call as “perfect” and has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing.
The criminal case comes as Trump dominates in the polls and leads a crowded Republican field of contenders seeking the party’s 2024 presidential nomination. The Georgia indictment is Trump’s fourth this year, following charges in two federal cases and a New York hush-money case.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit dismissed a coalition of parents’ lawsuit against Montgomery County Public Schools alleging that the district’s gender support plan infringes on parental rights. Pictured: A group of parents gather outside MCPS Board of Education to protest a policy that doesn’t allow students to opt out of lessons on gender and LGBTQ+ issues in Maryland on July 20, 2023. (Photo: Celal Gunes/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit dismissed a coalition of parents’ lawsuit against Montgomery County Public Schools alleging that the district’s gender support plan, which allows students to change their gender without their parents’ permission, infringes on parental rights.
The court ruled that because none of the parents had children who were transgender or were utilizing a gender support plan, there was no harm that allows the court to act, documents show.
“We agree with the analysis of the dissenting judge that parents have a right to complain about this school policy because it allows the school to keep secret from parents how it is treating their child at school and that such policies violate parental rights,” Frederick Claybrook Jr., the attorney for the plaintiffs, told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
“Parents do not have to wait until they find out that damage has been done in secret before they may complain. Moreover, the policy just by being in place affects family dynamics, as the dissenting judge pointed out. We are actively considering next steps in the legal process.”
Montgomery County Public Schools’ gender support plan was adopted during the 2020-2021 school year to help students “feel comfortable expressing their gender identity,” according to the Monday opinion. The gender support plan allows students to record their change in name and pronouns while also detailing which bathrooms and locker rooms the student will correspond with their gender identity.
“MCPS [Montgomery County Public Schools] was successful in the challenge against our Gender Identity Guidelines,” a district spokesperson told the DCNF. “The appellate court returned the case to the district court and directed that it be dismissed. The case is resolved for now. MCPS supports the determination by the court.”
At least 350 students within the district have filled out a gender support plan over the past three years to change their gender at school, The Washington Post reported. The school district said they were not trying to keep student gender transitions from parents but if the student wanted privacy, “then we honor and respect that.”
“That does not mean their objections are invalid,” Judge A. Marvin Quattlebaum Jr. said in his opinion. “In fact, they may be quite persuasive. But, by failing to show any injury to themselves, the parents’ opposition … reflects a policy disagreement. And policy disagreements should be addressed to elected policymakers at the ballot box, not to unelected judges in the courthouse.”
Muslim, Roman Catholic, and Greek Orthodox Christian parents sued Montgomery County Public Schools in May after the school board alerted parents that it would no longer be notifying families of gender identity lessons and that parents would be unable to opt their children out of such lessons.
The parents allege that the school district’s policy that prohibits them from opting their child out of LGBTQ lessons violates their religious beliefs and their ability to raise their kids.
Parental rights advanced last week in deep blue California, as another school district required teachers to notify parents if their children begin to identify as transgender.
The school board of the Murrieta Valley Unified School District adopted a Parental Notification Policy by a 3-2 vote Thursday. Under it, teachers must contact a parent or guardian within three days if their child attempts to use a name, pronoun, restroom, or changing facility of the opposite sex, or compete on a sports team of the opposite sex.
Murrieta Valley school board members Paul Diffley, Nicolas Pardue, and Julie Vandergrift voted yes; members Linda Lunn and Nancy Young voted no.
“This policy is especially helpful for the younger kids who start dabbling with this,” Pardue told “Washington Watch” guest host and former Rep. Jody Hice, R-Ga., the day after the vote.
Gender transition at increasingly younger ages “has become a fad,” Pardue said, “because there are some activist teachers who push this agenda.” Families must be able to shield their children from the predatory transgender industry, said an eyewitness who regrets the brief time she identified as transgender.
“Parents deserve to know if their child is adopting a trans identity at school, because [gender] transition is not harmless. There are kids like me being seriously injured by this,” Chloe Cole, who had a double mastectomy at age 15 before embracing her biological sex within two years, testified at the Murrieta Valley school board meeting.
“The reality is, sex cannot be changed,” Cole told the school board. “As an educational institution, you have a duty to stand for truth. Your policies need to reflect reality and not opinion. You have a duty to stand against ideologies that are held up by low-quality research.”
“The entire trajectory of my life has been altered by delusional ideas that were pushed on me from a young age” and “weaponized by doctors to push a political agenda for monetary gain,” she added. “Socially transitioning is not benign. … It takes away years of necessary social development as your real, biological sex.”
Cole’s testimony “really stuck in my heart, because we all know that teenagers make bad choices, and it is up to us as adults to help them make better choices,” Perdue told Hice.
“I was allowed to grow up as an innocent kid,” the school board member said. “When they talk about ‘a safe space,’ the classroom should be a safe space from politics.”
Murrieta Valley is the second school district to adopt a parental notification policy in less than 30 days; neighboring Chino Valley Unified School District adopted a similar policy July 20.
“It’s exciting to see parts of California waking up,” Cole said after the vote. “Chino Hills and Murrieta schools are leading the way.”
School boards enacting such parental notification policies follow their “democratic mandate in ways consistent with medical ethics and court doctrine on parental rights,” Substack writer Wesley Yang said.
Pardue, the school board member, said every level of government should ensure that parents, not government, guide children’s formative views of controversial issues.
“Our constitutional rights are what we are supposed to defend as adults and as teachers,” Pardue said at the board meeting. “The world is surprised and shocked to know there are people who believe in the Constitution who live in California.”
If the momentum continues, Cole said, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, “will soon be forced to respect local communities and the U.S. Constitution.”
Yet school districts’ decisions to stand with parents come at a cost. Radical LGBTQ activists immediately barraged Chino Valley school board President Sonja Shaw with threats to kill and dismember her, murder her children, and slaughter her pets.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta, a Democrat, also began investigating the Chino Valley school board—a move leftists urged him to take against the Murrieta school board six daysbeforeit voted on the parental rights policy.
“[H]ere we go again,” Voices United for CVUSD, an activist group that opposes parental rights, told Bonta. “Please continue to investigate” such “extreme school boards.”
Bonta promptly announced that he has Murrieta in the crosshairs. The attorney general said he felt “deeply disturbed to learn another school district” had adopted a parental rights policy. He described it as a “forced outing policy” that “put at risk the safety and privacy of transgender and gender-nonconforming students.”Parental notification indicates a school district will “target or seek to discriminate against California’s most vulnerable communities,” the state’s attorney general said. “California will not stand for violations of our students’ civil rights.”
“The anti-Christian rhetoric is really intense,” Pardue told Hice on “Washington Watch.”
Adherents to extreme gender ideology “assume that Christian parents aren’t going to love their children if they’re struggling with gender identity issues,” the Murrieta school board member said. “But having a good, strong relationship with your parents is really the [best] step towards making sure that the children are safe. Knowing that they’re getting a loving response from their parents is really a game changer.”
The board’s vote has brought positive feedback, as well, Pardue said
“Ever since the vote, I’ve had quite a few emails thanking me” and the entire school board for “being a strong voice [and] reestablishing a relationship between the teachers and the parents in our community,” Pardue said.
But pro-family advocates say thankfulness should extend nationally.
“Parents all across the country owe a debt of gratitude to people like Mr. Pardue, who are willing to stand in the gap for our kids,” Meg Kilgannon, senior fellow for education studies at the Family Research Council, said later on “Washington Watch.”
“We’re really grateful,” Kilgannon said.
Leaders of the Murrieta Valley school district have received national recognition for its students’ loyalty and enthusiasm. Vista Murrieta High School won a $25,000 prize and the title of America’s Most Spirited High School for the third time this year.
Pardue predicts enthusiasm for parental rights also will sweep far beyond the Murrieta district.
“We are not going to be the only district to stand on parental rights,” Pardue told fellow board members before the vote. “There are a lot of people with traditional values who are figuring out that the state of California has pulled something over on them.”
Bonta’s harsh administrative crackdown on parental rights proves that “the Left wants believers to stay on the sidelines,” Hice said.
“They want you to think that you really don’t matter. But history shows that it only takes one person to spark an enormous change, a movement.” Pardue is living proof that “it does only take one person to make a difference,” the former congressman said.
The most important person who can make a difference in a child’s life is Mom or Dad, because “no one … loves children like a parent does,” said Hice. “And government simply cannot fill the gap.”
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 Trump.
On Thursday afternoon, three Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals judges heard Biden administration arguments to let government keep pressuring social media monopolies to ban ideas they don’t like from the internet. On July 4, a lower court had ordered the Biden administration to cease what it called “arguably … the most massive attack against free speech in United States’ history.” The Fifth Circuit paused that injunction on July 14 and heard oral arguments against it on Aug. 10 in Missouri v. Biden.
In this major case likely to hit the U.S. Supreme Court, the Biden administration is fighting to stop American citizens from sharing messages government officials don’t like. This case uncovered reams of White House and other high-level officials threatening internet monopolies with the end of their entire business model if they didn’t ban speech by Democrats’ political opponents.
“It’s far beyond the scope of what people realize,” says a lawyer for the plaintiffs, Zhonette Brown, of the public interest firm New Civil Liberties Alliance (NCLA).
Internal documents Twitter divulged under new owner Elon Musk provided more proof that social media monopolies are silencing Americans from Tucker Carlson and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to millions of non-famous citizens at the behest of government pressure. Here are some key takeaways from Thursday’s oral arguments and earlier revelations from this massive First Amendment case.
1. By the Government’s Own Definition, It’s Censoring
Key to Thursday’s arguments was the question of coercion: Did government demands of internet monopolies equal coercion, or were those merely officials advocating for their views?
“If the government was doing something like that in a coercive manner, then that could be the subject of a proper injunction,” Department of Justice lawyer Daniel Bentele Hahs Tenny told the court in his opening remarks. “The problem is that what you would have to do is say, ‘Here is what the government is doing that’s coercive, and I’m enjoining that.’”
Judge Don Willett responded: “How do you define coercive?”
Tenny: “I don’t think there’s too much disagreement on this point. Coercive is where a reasonable person would construe it to be backed by a threat of government action against a party if it didn’t comply.”
That’s exactly what the government did, the voluminous documents already discovered in this case show. In just one of the examples, Meta executive Nick Clegg, a former high-ranking U.K. official, told his bosses Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg: “We are facing continued pressure from external stakeholders, including the White House and the press, to remove more COVID-19 vaccine discouraging content” (emphasis original).
Clegg also characterized to colleagues an interaction with Andy Slavitt, a White House Covid adviser, this way: “[H]e was outraged – not too strong a word to describe his reaction – that we did not remove this post” of a meme about trial lawyers getting 10 years of vaccine-injured clients from government mandates.
2. Government Officials Treated Internet Monopolies Like Their Subordinates
The Fifth Circuit panel demonstrated familiarity with the numerous examples of this kind of government behavior, such as this email exchange between White House digital director Rob Flaherty and Facebook, in which Flaherty swears at Facebook engineers, “Are you guys f-cking serious? I want an answer on what happened here and I want it today.”
“What appears to be in the record are these irate messages from time to time from high-ranking government officials that say, “You didn’t do this yet,’” Judge Jennifer Walker Elrod told Tenny. “And that’s my toning down the language. … So it’s like, ‘Jump!’ and, ‘How high?’”
The judges also noted the White House publicly threatened the business model of all online communications monopolies through potentially revoking Section 230 and launching antitrust lawsuits. The lawsuit documentation shows leading Democrats making the same public threats, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and multiple U.S. senators.
Joe Biden even threatenedto hold Zuckerberg criminally liable for not running Facebook the way Biden wanted. In office, Biden also famously accused Facebook of “killing people” by not doing enough to spread the administration’s message and suppress opposing messages. FBI agent Elvis Chan‘s deposition in this case noted federal officials showed adverse legislation to social media monopolies’ leaders as examples of what the government would do to them if they didn’t ban Americans’ speech.
“It’s not like, ‘We think this would be a good public policy and we want to explain to you why that would be a good policy,” Elrod said. “There seems to be some very close relationship that they’re having these — ‘This isn’t being done fast enough’ you know, like it’s a supervisor complaining about a worker.”
3. Judges Likened Government Behavior to Mobsters
Tenny claimed there was no “or else” explaining what the government “would do” if the internet monopolies didn’t obey, so there was no government coercion present.
“This is an analogy, probably an inapt analogy, so if you’ll excuse me — like if somebody is in these movies we see with the mob or something. They don’t spell out things but they have these ongoing relationships and they never actually say, ‘Go do this or else you’re going to have this consequence,’ but everybody just knows,” Elrod replied. “And I’m certainly not equating the federal government with anybody in illegal organized crime, but there are certain relationships that people know things without always saying the ‘Or else.’”
Willett followed that up by commenting the case documentation makes it look like the government is “relying on a fairly unsubtle kind of strong-arming and veiled or not so veiled threats. ‘That’s a really nice social media platform you got there, it’d be a shame if something happened to it.’”
4. Censorship Is Election Interference
The lead attorney for the plaintiffs, John Sauer, initiated this case as Louisiana’s solicitor general. In representing state government interests to the judges, he noted that elected officials have to pay attention to what their constituents are saying online, or they won’t have a good read on what voters what them to do in office.
“We’ve gotta be able to craft messages and know what policies we’re adopting to be responsive to our citizens,” he summarized from statements submitted to the court from multiple state officials. “…Going back to 1863, as everyone knows, going back to the Federalist number 56 where [Bill of Rights author James] Madison said it, everyone knows state legislators have a sovereign interest in knowing what their constituents think and feel, and that’s directly impacted.”
When the federal government silences some Americans’ views online, Sauer said, it makes it harder for elected representatives to actually represent them. Two of the state injuries the plaintiffs assert against the federal government’s censorship are “Interference with our ability to hear our constituents’ voices on social media” and “interference with our ability to have a fair and unbiased process for our people to organize and petition the government for grievances.”
Court documents also revealed the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, a federal agency, set up a private entity to ban and throttle election-related online speech Democrats dislike. Much of the information choked by this algorithmic censorship operation is true, such as the legitimacy of Hunter Biden’s laptop, investigations and members of Congress have noted.
“They invented a whole new word, ‘mal-information,’ to justify going after the censorship of true speech and ideas,” Sauer said last month in a public discussion of the case that YouTube banned.
5. Democrats Want Free Speech for Themselves While Banning It for Their Enemies
The oral arguments also got into the FBI’s 2020 election interference in telling online monopolies that The New York Post’s reporting on Hunter Biden’s laptop was foreign disinformation. Tenny claimed the FBI refused to comment on the laptop because it was a pending investigation.
Yet the FBI and other federal intelligence agencies actually did comment on the laptop by calling it “foreign disinformation,” both privately to the internet monopolies and publicly. This was false, and the FBI knew it. The lower court ruled this deception constituted coercion because it caused people to act on false information.
As Ben Weingarten notes, these lies and FBI-demanded online content bans to protect them benefitted Joe Biden in the 2020 election:
According to Elvis Chan (pdf), an FBI official leading engagement with the social media platforms, while the bureau didn’t explicitly ask the companies to change their hacked material policies, it did frequently follow up to ask whether they had changed said policies, as the FBI wanted to know how they would treat such materials.
The judges almost broached an important question: If the First Amendment protects the FBI’s lies that Hunter Biden’s laptop was disinformation, for which not one federal employee has been disciplined, how can it allow for criminalizing the same behavior by average Americans by labeling their views “disinformation” and “mal-information”?
6. Today’s Internet Is Still Massively Rigged
Taibbi also noted that court documents show the Biden administration got mad enough to fire the F-bomb at social media companies when the algorithmic censorship they demand affected Biden’s Instagram account. Instagram instantly fixed the issue for the White House, but not for non-powerful Americans.
It’s clear from the case documents and other disclosures such as the “Twitter Files” and “Facebook Files” that the algorithms controlling what Americans see online are now deeply, massively rigged. That rigging is multilayered. It includes all this government coercion of entities including Apple, Google, LinkedIn, Meta, Snapchat, Tiktok, and Twitter going back to at least 2017, as well as pressure operations from corporate media and internal employee groups.
Beyond algorithm changes, social media monopolies have also changed their terms of service in response to government demands, the NCLA attorneys noted last month. So government control of public discourse will continue even if the Fifth Circuit reinstates the injunction.
Tenny told the Fifth Circuit the Covid-era censorship that ignited this case is over because the government currently deems Covid not an emergency. In court, Sauer cited YouTube banning two weeks ago a video of attorneys discussing this case as more proof this massive censorship persists. He also cited court documents showing Americans still can’t post social media messages about censored topics.
“Attorneys present gave estimates ranging from a few weeks to two months for the panel to rule” on whether to reinstate an injunction against more of this government behavior, reported Taibbi, who attended the oral arguments in New Orleans, Louisiana. The previous injunction includes exceptions for crimes such as sex trafficking.
“The government wants to be doing something that it shouldn’t be doing, and they really, really want to be doing it,” said NCLA attorney John Vecchione in the discussion YouTube banned.
Joy Pullmann is executive editor of The Federalist, a happy wife, and the mother of six children. Her latest ebook is “101 Strategies For Living Well Amid Inflation.” Her bestselling ebook is “Classic Books for Young Children.” An 18-year education and politics reporter, Joy has testified before nearly two dozen legislatures on education policy and appeared on major media from Fox News to Ben Shapiro to Dennis Prager. Joy is a grateful graduate of the Hillsdale College honors and journalism programs who identifies as native American and gender natural. Her several books include “The Education Invasion: How Common Core Fights Parents for Control of American Kids,” from Encounter Books.
John Wahl, chairman of the Alabama GOP, said the party’s candidates in the state for education-related offices should not accept campaign contributions from teachers unions because parents, not special-interest groups, should have control over their children’s education. (Photo: Glasshouse Images/Getty Images)
Alabama Republicans have told teachers unions to stay out of their school-related elections.
The Alabama Republican Party recently voted to ban GOP candidates for the Alabama Board of Education, local school boards, and county school superintendent from accepting donations from teachers unions. John Wahl, chairman of the Alabama GOP, says the change was needed to ensure that parents, and not special-interest groups, have control over their children’s education.
“There’s only one purpose that these education unions exist, and that’s to lobby for their facet of the education system,” Wahl says. “There’s only one reason school boards and superintendents exist, and that is to put forth the policies that regulate the school systems, so it’s a direct conflict of interest.”
Wahl joins “The Daily Signal Podcast” to explain what this change means for protecting parental rights in Alabama. Wahl also weighs in on the priorities of Alabama voters and what we can expect at the first GOP presidential debate on Aug. 23.
Virginia Allen: It is my pleasure to be joined today by Alabama GOP Chairman John Wahl. Chairman Wahl, thanks so much for being with us today.
John Wahl: No, it’s a pleasure to be on the show.
Allen: Well, the Alabama Republican Party just voted to ban GOP candidates for the Alabama Board of Education, local school boards, and country school superintendents from receiving donations from teachers unions. Why did you-all vote to block these candidates from receiving donations from the National Education Association or their affiliates?
Wahl: For me, it’s a really easy answer to that question. I want parents to be in charge of the children’s education. I want our elected officials to put the children first, to put parents first, above any special-interest group and especially a liberal teachers union.
We see some of these policies are coming out of the NEA and the national level. They’re so woke, they’re so progressive, and I believe they care more about indoctrinating our children than they do about educating our children. So we’re going to try to put an end to that here in Alabama.
Allen: Well, this is a big step and it’s one that I can imagine might receive a little bit of criticism because people might say, “Well, doesn’t this give Democrat candidates a strategic advantage over Republican candidates in the state since Democrat candidates will still be allowed to receive campaign donations from teachers unions?” What’s your response to that?
Wahl: Once again, I have a good response for that. This is Alabama. I’ve worked very hard building the state party here. We just did our summer dinner. We had President Donald Trump as a guest speaker. We raised $1.2 million at that dinner. My winter dinner, we raised 700,000.
So I told all the school board candidates this simple fact: I will have your back. Who would you rather take money from? A Liberal teachers union or the state Republican Party?
So our candidates are not going to have to worry about any missed funding in the general elections. We’re going to have their back. We’re going to make sure no missed money and we’re going to win every one of these seats we can possibly win.
Allen: So, give us a little bit of a sense of the landscape in Alabama, specifically around the issue of education.
Obviously, in my state of Virginia, I live in Northern Virginia, the fight around education has made national news in Loudoun County. Everyone’s very familiar with policies being pushed in California schools that are incredibly far left. What has the fight looked like in Alabama to make sure that leftist policies aren’t making their way into the classrooms?
Wahl: Well, I think that’s the battle we’re under. Because, especially in a super-red state like Alabama, the assumption, as you know, we should have a better education system as far as these woke policies.
But what people forget is most of our curriculum is coming down from a federal Department of Education that, in all honesty, has completely lost touch with the American people and the values of America—this idea that America is special, that our Founding Fathers had this great concept of we the people and freedom, and that America is an exceptional nation.
It’s a test, if you will, of, can a nation actually be founded on freedom and put people first and individual liberty first and limited government, and really stand up for these principles and create a new nation that really had never been tried before in human history?
The federal Department of Education has just lost sight of those concepts. We’ve seen them grow so woke and so out of touch with the American public, and that’s coming down through that department into our education system. Whether it’s California, whether it’s New York City or whether it’s Alabama, we’re kind of getting this cookie-cutter education system and I think that’s what’s really wrong across the country.
Allen:With this move to say those who are running for these education positions within the state of Alabama, whether it’s the State Board of Education, local school boards, or county school superintendent, what are the responses that you’re receiving from teachers and parents in Alabama over this change?
Wahl: The general public is incredibly excited about it. A lot of parents feel like they are out of touch. Some of them don’t have access to the curriculum that their children are being taught or their children are bringing home material that they just really are not happy about.
I’m excited to also report, a lot of our local teachers have the same sentiment. You know, in Alabama, most of our teachers are Republican and they believe in these core values and so when they see some of this curriculum, they’re not wanting to teach it, either.
I’ve actually had a very good response, even from some of the school board members, they’ve been tremendous. They’re actually excited because this frees them from having to worry about being tied down by these education unions that for so long have controlled the education system.
Allen: Have you spoken with any GOP candidates, folks who are looking to run and who maybe are now having to rethink where some of their donations are going to come from? What do you anticipate to hear from them?
Wahl: I have spoken to a couple of the incumbents who are up for reelection this time and some of those that I spoke to were actually some of those that were excited about this change. They really felt like this is something that frees them to really put the people first and they don’t have to worry about undue influence from a special-interest group.
Guys, let’s be honest. There’s only one purpose that these education unions exist, and that’s to lobby for their facet of the education system. There’s only one reason school boards and superintendents exist, and that is to put forth the policies that regulate the school systems so it’s a direct conflict of interest.
That’s what this is really about, good policy and taking that direct conflict of interest out. I’ve been very impressed with how many people are excited to see that, that they understand the problem and they’re very grateful to have this done.
Allen: How big of an impact do you think that this will have on really keeping a lot of the woke agenda out of our schools? Because I think, at the end of the day, so many parents are opting to pull their kids out of the public schools because they can’t know for sure, they can’t be certain that their child is not going to be receiving really an indoctrination education. So with this shift in Alabama, can you confidently tell parents, “You can send your child to a public school and have peace of mind”?
Wahl: This is really just one piece of the puzzle, and I think there’s so many things that are needed. This is a great step.
I also am very supportive of school choice, the idea, the tag, once again, go back to the parents. Who should have control of a child’s education? It’s the parents, not the government. Who cares more about what their children are facing than the parents do?
So this is really just one piece of a puzzle and it’s going to be a long, hard process to really get our education system back where it needs to be and I think, hopefully, this moves us in that direction.
Allen: Let’s talk a little bit about school choice because you have been such an advocate for school choice in the state of Alabama. The Heritage Foundation’s Education Freedom Report Card ranks Alabama 27th on school choice. What school choice programs are you advocating for in Alabama?
Wahl: I want to see, I almost hate to use the word universal because that’s more of a Democratic term, but a universal school choice system.
It should not be based on where anyone lives. It should not be based on economics or anything else. Every student should have access to school choice. They should have access to equal funding that the state would spend on their education if they want to opt out and spend that money otherwise.
You know, this goes back to giving control back, not just to parents. This is a Republican concept of giving control back to the people. “We the people” is the beginning of the Constitution. I very much view a system that is 100% of the funding the state would spend and that every single student in the state has access to it.
Allen: Of course, we have an election coming next year and a lot of folks are asking, what are those issues that are on the hearts and minds of Americans? In the state of Alabama, how highly does the education issue rank among voters, would you say?
Wahl: Oh, I think it’s No. 1. So, it’s actually interesting. Here at the state party—I love information, I love statistics and looking at polling data, and one of the things I wanted to see was, literally, ask the question you just asked: What issue is most important to you?
As I did this, I did tend to something a little bit different because I’ve noticed this trend that education issues seem mid-table when that question is asked, what most consultants asked. They would throw a question in, like, “What issue is most important?” You name off a few things—the economy, creating jobs. In our state, lottery would be on that list and then on there would be improving schools.
So I asked similar questions that would be normally asked in that range of questions, but I took out just “improved schools” and, instead, I put in the term “protecting children from woke policies.”
When I did that, we got a fascinating return in the polling. It went from a mid-table issue, just schools in general, but when you ask the question, “protect children from woke policies,” it was No. 1. It was No. 1 amongst Republicans, it was No. 1 amongst independents. And even amongst Democrats, protecting children from woke policies was the third-most important issue.
That really highlights to me just how far we’ve gotten and how far out of touch the national Democrat Party and the Biden administration have gotten on this issue.
What was most encouraging to me was the response from African Americans for the survey because it was within the margin of error being the most important issue to African Americans in the state of Alabama.
Allen: Well, Chairman Wahl, I want to get your thoughts on some of the coming debates and what we might be seeing, specifically from Republican candidates.
The Alabama Republican Party is likely to co-host a GOP debate sometime this fall. The first GOP debate, though, is on Aug. 23. What do you think that the American people are going to be watching for and looking for in that debate?
Wahl: You know, it’s a great question because I think a lot of the candidates are going to say the same basic thing. This is a Republican primary. They’re going to be talking about fiscal responsibility. They’re going to be talking about even the pro-life issue. They’re going to be talking about protecting children from woke policies.
I think what the Republican primary voters are looking for is not so much a candidate who has the best rhetoric, because they’re all going to be very similar. They’re looking for which candidate do they trust to actually deliver and I think that’s something that is getting ignored.
It almost doesn’t matter, I think, what the exact issues are, what the No. 1 issue to voters right now is, do they have faith in that candidate to be able to—does that candidate truly believe these things and do they have the will to stand up and the backbone to fight when they’re put into a foxhole on these important issues?
Allen:Any predictions of what we’re going to see on Aug. 23 during this first GOP presidential candidate debate?
Wahl: I think it’s going to be an extremely interesting thing and, of course, right now all questions are, does Donald Trump come? I think that’s going to be very much a game-changer in that. And if he doesn’t, what do the other candidates do? Do they still target him and kind of go after him even though he’s not there? I don’t know. It’s going to be very, very interesting to see.
This first debate is going to be where people really get to see, the first time, a lot of these candidates. Will we see shifts? Who kind of comes out of this as a dark horse, if you will?
Allen: It’s going to be really fascinating to watch. Mr. Wahl, thank you so much for being with us today. We really appreciate your time.
Wahl: No, it is a pleasure to be here. I appreciate the work that so many conservatives do across the country, and glad to be a small part of the fight, as our Founding Fathers would’ve said, the animated contest for liberty.
A preschool teacher repeatedly attacked the idea of “childhood innocence” and claimed that topics considered “inappropriate” can be shared with children, according to his scrubbed social media accounts. The California teacher, William “Willy” Villalpando, has said the idea of “childhood innocence” is a “myth,” and claimed topics deemed “inappropriate” – such as “queerness” – can be suitable for the pre-K age group. The district has repeatedly ignored Fox News’ requests for comment.
The Rialto Unified School District was asked months ago whether Villalpando was currently employed there and working with its schoolchildren. They did not respond. However, after receiving a tip from a concerned source – it can now be confirmed the teacher works at Trapp Preschool.
“There is a common mythology that children live in this world of pure innocence, and that by introducing or exposing them to the real-world adults are somehow shattering this illusion for them. Therefore, there is a banning of topics and issues that children should not be exposed to, as if they are not experiencing them already,” he said.
William Villalpando is a teacher at Trapp school in Rialto Unified School District. (Fox News Digital | TikTok/screenshot | iStock)
Villalpando describes himself as an expert at developing a child’s gender identity, according to his scrubbed website reviewed by Fox News. He stated on his website, “While I absolutely love working with young children, my passions really lie in teaching others why we do the things we do, and advocating on behalf of young children and their families. My research and interest areas is in gender development in young children, and the impact that early educators have on that development.”
Villalpando also answered a question about whether speaking to preschool kids about gender and sexuality is inappropriate.
Willy Villalpando’s website. (Fox News Digital)
“Absolutely not,” Villalpando said, defending the topics. “Infants begin making gendered association by the time they are 10 MONTHS OLD! By the time they are 3 most children can label what gender they believe they identify with and by 4 they can tell you what that gender means for what they can or cannot do.”
He went on to claim that 3-year-olds can be discriminating agents in society.
“With race, when a child is 3 months old they begin to visually discriminate based on race, favoring those that are the same race as their caregivers. Children as young as 2 begin to use race to reason about people’s behaviors,” he claimed.
Critical race theory teaches that society is rigged against minority groups and the only cure is present-day discrimination to combat historical wrongs. (Fox News Digital)
He concluded, “Children experience gender and race everyday. They need (and deserve) [to see] themselves to feel seen, and them to see others not like them.”
On another occasion, he said on his Instagram, “I’m tired of the ‘Childhood Innocence’ argument… Stop blaming a phenomenon that doesn’t exist.”
He went on to attack the idea that children shouldn’t be exposed to “sexuality,” claiming that “such a view is a very white, Christian, upper-class, cis-gendered, and hetero-centric.”
“Not talking about Queerness in the Classroom, is NOT Letting Children be Children. It’s Telling Those people They Do Not Deserve to Exist,” he said in September 2021. “Kids are never too young.”
Willy teacher pre-k (iStock | TikTok/screenshot)
“Let’s work to deconstruct some of our own biases. (Adults incorrectly link discussions on sexuality and gender as equating to discussions about sex.),” the early childhood educator said.
He said in a November 2022 podcast of “Rainbow Parenting” that “we have so many people who tell us that this is inappropriate stuff we can’t talk about. And so I’m like, hey, no, we can talk about this.”
Gender identity unicorn illustrates gender and sex is on a spectrum. (YouTube/screenshot)
The teacher went on to say that if parents didn’t have the conversations with kids, it was up to teachers to foster classroom environments that “may make others uncomfortable.”
“Children who are exposed to environments with more fluid understandings of gender, are more likely to understand that gender is fluid.”
“Parents haven’t already had conversations about these things with their kids, that kids don’t know, that they might be intersex, that they might be agender… non-binary. And really, children have a right to see themselves in our classrooms. It’s not okay to just forget about them or push them out just because it might make us uncomfortable or may make others uncomfortable.”
“This goes alongside teaching children to ask others for their pronouns. Trust me when I say children get this so much faster than adults give them credit for. Let kids practice with you,” he said.
Willy Villalpendo discusses ‘Queerness in the classroom.’ (Fox News Digital)
“[C]hildren are exploring and understanding gendered association before they say their first words,” he said. “Around 3 to 4 months old, infants [sic] show a sex and gender preference in who they look at.”
“At 3 years old, a child can label their perceived gender identity,” he added . “By 4 years old, children have a stable sense of their gender identity and have assumptions and beliefs of what they can and cannot do based on their gender (i.e. dolls are for girls, cars are for boys).”
For more Culture, Media, Education, Opinion, and channel coverage, visit foxnews.com/media
Hannah Grossman is a Reporter at Fox News Digital.
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including NewsMax, Fox News, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Rep. Devin Nunes, Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Chris Salcedo, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Trump.
Ex-Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund is determined to set the record straight on what happened at the Jan. 6 Capitol riot more than two years ago.
After writing a book that challenged the groupthink of corporate media and the partisan Jan. 6 Committee, Sund sat down for an interview with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson. According to Carlson, the interview with Sund was scheduled to air on the network April 24, the same day Fox News announced the anchor’s termination. (Another already-taped interview, with a Federalist senior contributor, was also stifled). Fox News refused to release the footage of Sund’s conversation with Carlson, so the pair recorded another sit-down published on Twitter Thursday.
“[Sund] knew more about what happened than virtually anyone else in the United States,” Carlson said. “Yet congressional investigators weren’t interested in talking to him. The media, not interested in talking to him. But we were.”
Ep. 15 Former Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund reveals what really happened on January 6th. Our Fox News interview with him never aired, so we invited him back. pic.twitter.com/opDlu4QGlp
Sund went on to make explosive allegations of federal misconduct related to the Capitol chaos that raised more questions than answers about how and why the complex was left vulnerable. The Capitol Police, Sund said, were left in the dark about a cascade of intelligence gathered by the FBI and Department of Homeland Security that warned about the rally turning violent.
The intelligence that Capitol Police gathered, Sund said, indicated a level of political activity similar to previous rallies that featured “limited skirmishes” with counter-protesters.
“Coming into it,” Sund said, Capitol Police received “absolutely zero” of the “intelligence that we know now existed talking about attacking the Capitol, killing my police officers, attacking members of Congress, and killing members of Congress.”
“None of that was included in the intelligence coming up,” Sund said. “We now know FBI, DHS was swimming in that intelligence. We also know now that the military seemed to have some very concerning intelligence as well. “
“None of the intelligence,” Sund said, was shared with the Capitol Police chief.
“I’ve done many national security events and this was handled differently,” Sund added. “No intelligence, no [Joint Intelligence Bulletin], no coordination, no discussion in advance.”
2. Milley Wanted to Shut Down D.C. Ahead Of Jan. 6
Military officials were so concerned about the intelligence that warned of an explosive riot that the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, Mark Milley, considered preemptively shutting down the city.
“Acting Secretary of Defense [Christopher] Miller and General Milley had both discussed locking down the city of Washington D.C. because they were so worried about violence at the Capitol on Jan. 6,” Sund said.
According to Sund, the two Pentagon leaders discussed even revoking permits on Capitol Hill out of concern for violence.
“You know who issues the permits on Capitol Hill for demonstrations?” Sund said. “I do. You know who wasn’t told? Me.”
On Jan. 4, however, Miller signed a memo “restricting the National Guard from carrying the various weapons, any weapons, any civil disobedience equipment that would be utilized for the very demonstrations or violence he sees coming.”
3. Congressional Leadership Denied National Guard Requests Before and During Riot
Despite federal intelligence warning of mass upheaval amid the joint session of Congress, Sund explained how he was denied preemptive deployment of the National Guard twice in the days leading up to the riot. On Jan. 3, 2021, Sund sought approval from congressional leadership for guard deployment as was still required by law.
“I was denied twice because of optics and because the intelligence didn’t support us,” Sund said. “I was denied by Paul Irving, House sergeant-at-arms, and also Mike Stenger, Senate sergeant-at-arms.”
Irving served under the direction of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Stenger reported to GOP Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.
The former Capitol Police chief said he was forced to beg for National Guard assistance as the turmoil escalated. While the riot grew, Sund said he called House Sergeant-at-Arms Irving to demand reinforcements from the nearby Guard troops.
“I’m told by Paul Irving, ‘I’m gonna run it up the chain, I’ll get back to you,’” Sund said. “His chain would be up to Nancy Pelosi. He didn’t have to do that but he wouldn’t give me authorization.”
Irving was allowed to authorize the deployment without Pelosi’s approval in the event of an emergency, Sund said. The former speaker’s office confirmed to The New York Times that Pelosi herself was asked to dispatch the National Guard.
Sund said Stenger was called next, who in turn said, “Let’s wait to hear what we hear from Paul [Irving].”
“For the next 71 minutes I make 32 calls,” Sund said, with no help from congressional leadership.
4. Secret Service Turned Over One Text to J6 Committee
While Sund made dozens of calls from the Capitol command center, the first agency to come to the police chief’s assistance was the Secret Service.
“One of the first people to offer assistance was United States Secret Service,” Sund said. “By law, I shouldn’t have requested their assistance … until I had approval. But I’m looking at my men and women having their asses handed to them and my first thought was ‘f-ck it, I will take whatever discipline there is. Send me whatever you got.’”
“That was the one text Secret Service turned over,” Sund added.
The agency had apparently deleted text messages from Jan. 5-6, 2021, that were subpoenaed by the House select committee probing the riot last summer. The only message turned over was Sund’s out-of-order request for support.
5. New Jersey State Police Arrived to Help Before National Guard
While Sund was begging congressional leaders to greenlight assistance from the National Guard, New Jersey State Police were on their way to reinforce Capitol Police.
The 150 to 180 National Guard troops who were “within eyesight” of the Capitol, Sund told Carlson, were put in vehicles and driven around the complex back to the D.C. Armory. Instead, Sund received the evening troops, who didn’t arrive on the scene until 6 p.m. By that point, according to Sund, the Capitol was under control.
“While I’m begging for assistance,” Sund said, “the Pentagon sent in resources to generals’ houses to protect their homes but not me.”
By the time the National Guard finally showed up, Sund noted, “New Jersey State Police [had] beat them to the Capitol.”
National Guardsmen were then positioned in front of the Capitol to take “pictures for military magazines” as “heroes” of Jan. 6.
6. Sund Wasn’t Told About Federal Informants Present at the Capitol
In the fall of 2021, The New York Times confirmed the presence of at least one federal informant at the Jan. 6 Capitol riot after the paper dismissed such claims as a conspiracy theory. The former Capitol police chief, however, was kept in the dark on undercover operations with “no idea” how many were in the crowd. The Justice Department had even deployed special commandos with “shoot to kill authority” at the Capitol, according to Newsweek.
“Not to share that in the intelligence,” Sund said, “that’s concerning.”
7. Lawmakers Didn’t Want Sund to Testify
In the aftermath of the Capitol riot, lawmakers began to schedule hearings on the security failures while the fever grew to launch a snap impeachment of the outgoing president.
“I fought to testify,” Sund said, but “they didn’t want me to testify in the Senate hearing.”
The hearing in the upper chamber was initially limited to current Capitol employees. Sund was excluded from the lineup because he was immediately dismissed from his job as chief of police after the riot. Irving and Stenger would have also initially been excluded. The trio of security officers eventually testified in the upper chamber after Trump’s acquittal in February 2021, with Sund the only one to appear in person.
Meanwhile Pelosi, who was in charge of the Capitol as speaker of the House, was “off limits” to investigation — leaving open questions such as whether the speaker was briefed on the potential for violence from other agencies. The House speaker even blocked Republican access to relevant documents ignored by the Democrats’ Jan. 6 Committee.
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.
In 2019, Päivi Räsänen did what any one of us might do — she tweeted at her church. Her tweet was simple and peaceful. She questioned the choice to sponsor a local pride parade. She questioned, was this befitting of their Christian faith? And she attached a scripture passage to the tweet.
Räsänen will be headed to court for the second time on criminal charges of “hate speech.” This longstanding member of the Finnish Parliament, medical doctor, and grandmother has faced onerous prosecution for four years at the hands of Finland’s government for a tweet.
Subjected to 13 hours of police interrogation, authorities dug into her past, charging her with three counts of “agitation against a minority group” for the tweet, in addition to a 2004 church pamphlet and 2019 radio appearance. Bishop Juhana Pohjola of Finland’s Evangelical Lutheran Church also was criminally charged for publishing the pamphlet, which discusses a Biblical-based understanding of marriage and human sexuality. Their charges carried with them tens of thousands of euros in fines and even the possibility of a two-year prison sentence.
In March of last year, the Helsinki District Court delivered a unanimous acquittal, stating clearly that, “it is not for the district court to interpret biblical concepts.” However, the law in Finland allows for legal double jeopardy — prosecutors can appeal all the way to the Supreme Court on the mere basis of dissatisfaction with the verdict. On Aug. 31, Räsänen and the bishop will be back in court once again. Their legal defense is supported by ADF International.
Without free speech, there can be no freedom, and the enormous implications of this case for fundamental freedoms have triggered international outrage. Finland, regularly ranked as the “happiest” country on Earth, is known as a stable bastion of European democracy. If this can happen there, then we must all beware.
On Aug. 8, 16 U.S. members of Congress, sent a letter to Rashad Hussain, U.S. ambassador–at–large for international religious freedom, and Douglas Hickey, U.S. ambassador to Finland, in response to Räsänen’s “egregious and harassing” prosecution. The letter highlights the severity of what’s at stake: “This prosecutor is dead set on weaponizing the power of Finland’s legal system to silence not just a member of parliament and Lutheran bishop but millions of Finnish Christians who dare to exercise their natural rights to freedom of expression and freedom of religion in the public square.”
Free speech is a preeminent American value, but also one well-protected in international law. The U.S. should always stand against the criminalization of peaceful expression and especially should raise concerns when violations of free speech occur in countries we view as allies, especially on human rights. As the legislators’ letter states, “No American, no Fin, and no human should face legal harassment for simply living out their religious beliefs.”
Now is the time for the Biden administration to speak out loud and clear. While the administration has acknowledged that it has privately raised concerns over Räsänen’s case with the Finnish government, it is vitally important that the U.S. government take a public stance in defense of free speech so under threat in this case.
With regard to Räsänen’s case, the legislators’ letter makes clear, “The selective targeting of these high-profile individuals is designed to systematically chill others’ speech under the threat of legal harassment and social astigmatism.” Historically, the U.S. has been the strongest bulwark against international violations of freedom of speech. In standing up for Räsänen, the U.S. government would in turn send a signal that it is standing up for the right of every person who feels the rapidly encroaching winds of censorship.
Elyssa Koren is director of legal communications for ADF International. ADF UK is supporting the legal defense of Isabel, Adam, and Father Sean. Follow her on Twitter: @Elyssa_Koren
Children, whose schools, parks and recreation areas are being used to house migrants, are blameless and powerless in this crisis but are being hit the hardest
As New York City’s migrant crisis grows increasingly out of control, it is children who are paying the highest price and facing the most potential harm from the incompetence of federal and city leadership. Some 56,000 migrants have flooded Gotham in recent months, and floundering officials are running out of places to house them.
Mayor Eric Adams has now set up a hundred cots at McCarren Park in Brooklyn, mainly for adult males, who have given great reviews to the set up including use of the pool, which kids flock to in the summer.
All programming in the South Wing of the Recreation center at the park, including a media center used by the city’s youth, has been canceled until further notice, owing to the influx of migrants. Meanwhile, across the East River on Randall’s Island, playing fields, mainly meant for kids, are being repurposed as makeshift Bidenvilles for the waves of humanity bursting the seams of the city. This all follows on the heels of the mayor using public school gyms to house asylum seekers while students are in attendance, which has led to major protests from parents.
As if lack of recreation facilities were not enough, as of May, some 14,000 children of migrants had signed up for the New York City public schools, with that number only growing, and threatening to overwhelm the institutions with kids, who through no fault of their own, are unlikely to be able to keep up with their native counterparts.
All the while precious resources are being diverted from programs to protect the homeless youth in New York who have been here and been suffering since long before the crisis. Between President Joe Biden’s border bungling that has let loose the floodgates and Mayor Adams’ shambolic sanctuary city shenanigans it is the kids who suffer the most even though they are not only blameless but powerless.
Sorry kid, you can’t use the media center to explore college scholarships; bad news, Bucko, no basketball in the gym this year, just run around your desk a few times; oh, and the pool might be a bit overcrowded.
What honestly makes this so horrible is that as our nation and its cities delay truly tackling this crisis, time is ticking on childhoods.
It doesn’t do a 12-year-old much good to get it figured out in 5 or 6 years, because they aren’t getting that time back, and will be thrust into adulthood with a lack of needed preparation owing to adults’ sordid choices. Also, let us not fail to mention that since March 2020 and the disastrous COVID lockdowns, these kids have been getting the short end of the social and educational stick for 3 years already, this just furthers the punishment.
What a woeful precedent we put in place shuttering the schools, closing the playgrounds, removing the rims from basketball courts, and now, almost in slow motion we see it again, not for fear of a virus, but for unwillingness to protect our southern border and implement reasonable policies in our cities.
It is difficult to discern a more vital purpose of local government than to protect children who are helpless to protect themselves, and yet this sacred duty is being thrown to the wayside by the unsustainable failures of Democrats at every level of government. Mayor Adams continues to howl into the leftist wind, begging Biden to come to his aid, but the scandal-plagued president has more or less told Hizzoner to drop dead.
New York Mayor Eric Adams, left, and city officials listen to a reporter’s question during a City Hall press conference, Wednesday Aug. 9, 2023, in New York. (AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews)
The children of New York and America deserve better than the short shrift their plight has been given by liberals supposedly acting out of kindness to migrants. Where is the kindness to our kids?
The playing fields and parks of this city where generations of New Yorkers made childhood memories now sit in the shadows of Bidenvilles, that is the memory we offer today’s youth. And make no mistake, our children aren’t making sacrifices, that would suggest they have some say in all this, no, they are being sacrificed to progressive policies so blatantly failing that Democrats are now even squabbling with each other.
It is time for President Biden to secure the border, it is time for Mayor Adams to stop taking resources from our kids, it is time for order to be restored before an entire generation is lost. The time to act is now, because faster than we might think, it will be far too late.
A potential plea deal between Hunter Biden and the Justice Department collapsed Friday after attorneys for both sides failed to finalize an agreement.
“Hunter Biden’s plea deal has collapsed. Talks with gov’t at an impasse,” Vox.com’s Andrew Prokop tweeted Friday with a screen grab of a court filing.
“DOJ filing: ‘Following additional negotiations after the hearing held on July 26, 2023, the parties are at an impasse and are not in agreement on either a plea agreement or a diversion agreement.'”
The court document adds: “Therefore, the Government believes the Court’s briefing order should be vacated.”
Prokop later tweeted: “DOJ says they are moving to dismiss the Delaware case against Hunter so they can file tax charges against him in CA or DC.”
Delaware U.S. District Court Judge Maryellen Noreika rejected a proposed plea deal on July 26 when she questioned aspects of the agreement for Biden to plead guilty to tax charges and avoid a gun charge. The judge told Hunter Biden’s lawyers and prosecutors that they could persuade her to approve the deal as it was previously negotiated, or to alter it to a form she can accept. She said she did not want to “rubber stamp” a plea deal.
President Joe Biden’s son then pleaded not guilty to charges of failing to pay taxes on more than $1.5 million in income in 2017 and 2018 despite owing more than $100,000, prosecutors allege.
The document shared by Prokop said DOJ officials requested Biden’s plea position on Wednesday and Friday. After his attorneys requested more time, until Monday, prosecutors declined.
Noreika released the proposed plea deal last week to satisfy a request from an NBC News reporter. Large portions of the plea deal were read in court on July 26.
On July 28, Noreika ordered attorneys Friday to raise issues with her chambers, not the court clerk. The order came two days after an employee at a law firm representing Biden allegedly misrepresented her identity to the clerk’s office during a phone call.
Attorney General Merrick Garland conducts a news conference at the Department of Justice announcing that U.S. Attorney David Weiss will be appointed special counsel to investigate Hunter Biden, the son of President Joe Biden, on Aug. 11. (Photo: Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc /Getty Images)
Attorney General Merrick Garland on Friday named David Weiss — the same prosecutor who made a court-rejected plea agreement with first son Hunter Biden — as the special counsel in the tax probe.
Garland said on Tuesday that Weiss, the U.S. attorney for the district of Delaware, asked him to be special counsel in the case.
“Upon considering his request, as well as the extraordinary circumstances relating to this matter, I have concluded that it is in the public interest to appoint him as special counsel,” Garland told reporters on Friday. “This appointment confirms my commitment to provide Mr. Weiss all the resources he requests. It also reaffirms Mr. Weiss has the authority he needs to conduct a thorough investigation and to continue to take the steps he deems appropriate independently.”
The appointment comes the same week that the House Oversight and Accountability Committee released bank records showing family members of President Joe Biden have raked in at least $20 million from foreign individuals and entities.
“This move by Attorney General Garland is part of the Justice Department’s efforts to attempt a Biden family cover-up in light of the House Oversight Committee’s mounting evidence of President Joe Biden’s role in his family’s schemes selling ‘the brand’ for millions of dollars to foreign nationals,” House Oversight and Accountability Chairman Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., said in a statement.
Comer has previously said he opposed the appointment of any special counsel or special prosecutor, fearing it would slow down the investigation.
“The Justice Department’s misconduct and politicization in the Biden criminal investigation already allowed the statute of limitations to run with respect to egregious felonies committed by Hunter Biden,” Comer continued. “Justice Department officials refused to follow evidence that could have led to Joe Biden, tipped off the Biden transition team and Hunter Biden’s lawyers about planned interviews and searches, and attempted to sneakily place Hunter Biden on the path to a sweetheart plea deal.”
IRS whistleblowers previously testified to the oversight panel, as well as to the House Ways and Means Committee, that Weiss sought special counsel status to investigate Hunter Biden in other jurisdictions, including Washington, D.C., and California. The same IRS whistleblowers also alleged the Weiss team tipped off Hunter Biden to search warrants, allowed statutes of limitations to run out, and negotiated felonies down to misdemeanors.
“If they wanted somebody to look into, the Justice Department should have looked to someone not tainted by whistleblower allegations,” John Malcolm, director of the Meese Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at The Heritage Foundation, told The Daily Signal. “This appointment is not going to address any allegations of political interference from Main Justice [the leadership of the Department of Justice], and it is not going to take care of the allegations of a shoddy investigation.” (The Daily Signal is the news outlet of The Heritage Foundation.)
Democrats have been quick to note that then-President Donald Trump nominated Weiss as U.S. attorney, but Delaware’s two Democratic senators also supported him at the time.
According to Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., Weiss was aware of an FBI form that alleged then-Vice President Joe Biden and Hunter Biden each took a $5 million bribe from an executive with Burisma, the Ukrainian energy company that employed the the younger Biden as a board member.
This is the second special counsel named to investigate a matter related to Joe Biden. In January, Garland named former U.S. Attorney for Maryland Robert Hur to investigate the president’s possession of classified documents during the time he was out of office.
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 Trump
In November, the leader of the incoming House Republican majority, Kevin McCarthy, sent a letter to the Select Committee on Jan. 6 reminding lawmakers they were required to “preserve all records” related to the panel’s work. Nine months later, however, Republicans in charge of investigating the committee’s work say the probe failed to comply with House rules.
GOP Georgia Rep. Barry Loudermilk, who became the target of the since-disbanded committee’s salacious attacks last summer, is leading the Republican probe into the Jan. 6 Committee as chairman of the Subcommittee on Oversight for the Committee on House Administration. Loudermilk told Fox News on Tuesday his team has struggled to locate the leftover material required to review the Select Committee’s work under Chairman Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss. The partisan probe spent 18 months prosecuting political opponents and was complete with Soviet-style show trials presented with fabricated evidence while lawmakers sought to portray the Capitol riot as a “deadly insurrection.”
“Nothing was indexed. There was no table of contents index. Usually when you conduct this level of investigation, you use a database system and everything is digitized, indexed. We got nothing like that,” Loudermilk said. “So it took us a long time going through it and one thing I started realizing is we don’t have anything much at all from the Blue Team.”
The “Blue Team” refers to the investigative staff on the committee in charge of probing the Capitol security failures, all of which point to former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. After then-Fox News prime-time host Tucker Carlson aired footage undermining central narratives of the Jan. 6 Committee in March, Chairman Thompson admitted the Select Committee didn’t actually review Capitol surveillance video.
“We’ve got lots of depositions, we’ve got lots of subpoenas, we’ve got video and other documents provided through subpoenas by individuals,” Loudermilk told Fox. “But we’re not seeing anything from the Blue Team as far as reports on the investigation they did looking into the actual breach itself.”
“What we also realized we didn’t have was the videos of all the depositions,” said the congressman.
Fox News reported on a series of exchanges between Thompson and Loudermilk, the latter of whom was defamed by the committee as giving “reconnaissance” tours of the Capitol on the eve of the riot. The Jan. 6 tapes aired by Carlson, however, show the Georgia Republican was giving a routine tour of the complex to constituents.
Loudermilk told Fox News his committee was only given 2.5 terabytes of data, contrary to Thompson’s initial claim the Select Committee handed over 4. A letter from the former chairman of the Democrats’ probe this summer conceded the Select Committee failed to maintain records that the probe was required to preserve.
“Consistent with guidance from the Office of the Clerk and other authorities, the Select Committee did not archive temporary committee records that were not elevated by the Committee’s actions, such as use in hearings or official publications, or those that did not further its investigative activities,” Thompson wrote.
“He’s saying they decided they didn’t have to,” Loudermilk told Fox News. “The more we go in the more we’re realizing that there’s things that we don’t have. We don’t have anything about security failures at the Capitol, we don’t have the videos of the depositions.”
McCarthy sent the letter demanding records preservation after reporting from The Washington Post raised concerns that the Select Committee was prepared to omit key details of the investigation.
“It is imperative that all information collected be preserved not just for institutional prerogatives but for transparency to the American people,” McCarthy wrote last fall. “The American people have a right to know that the allegations you have made are supported by the facts and to be able to view the transcripts with an eye towards encouraged enforcement of 18 USC 1001.”
California Republican Congressman Darrell Issa threatened members who served on the Jan. 6 Committee with censure over the destruction of records.
“The ones that are still in Congress might very well face a censure for what they participated in,” Issa said.
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.
Corporate media are returning to their favorite question to ask of any and all Republicans who care about the integrity of elections: Did Joe Biden win the 2020 election? A New York Times employee asked Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis the question in Iowa last week. NBC News correspondent Dasha Burns asked a variant of the question, to which DeSantis gave an extended reply about the proper and improper way to run elections. Completely uninterested in his substantive reply, she followed it up with: “Yes or no, did Trump lose the 2020 election?”
The question is never asked in good faith, and you can know that with certainty because none of these reporters even came close to asking it from 2016-2020 when the entirety of the Democrat Party refused to accept the legitimacy of Donald Trump’s election. In fact, they eagerly and actively participated in the Russia-collusion information operation designed to overturn the results of that election. Hillary Clinton was claiming the 2016 election was stolen throughout 2019, and the media generally cheered her on.
But if you need help understanding why the question is never asked in good faith, let’s step out of the realm of politics for a minute and consider the men’s gold medal basketball game of the 1972 Olympics.
The game is one of the most controversial events in Olympic history, with the American men’s team refusing to concede they lost to the Soviet Union. In fact, it’s been more than 50 years and the men on that team have never accepted their silver medals because they still do not believe the game was conducted in a fair fashion. Just last year, the men wanted to have the silver medals donated to the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, but the International Olympic Committee demanded the men officially accept them first before they could be donated. On principle, the men will not take the medals or recognize the legitimacy of the outcome, so the medals remain in limbo.
The team, which is the only team in Olympic history to contest an outcome, has an excellent case that the game was rigged. The Americans had dominated the Olympic sport since it first appeared in the 1936 Olympics. They had won seven gold medals and were the presumptive favorites in 1972. Their record before the final game was an astounding 63-0.
However, the Soviets were very good that year and their older and experienced team was winning the game until the final seconds, when the U.S. player Doug Collins was fouled and sank two free throws, putting the team ahead by one point with one second left on the clock.
An official demanded that an additional two seconds be put back on the clock. When that time expired, the U.S. team began to celebrate and their fans swarmed onto the court. But officials said the clock reset had not been done properly so they put three seconds back on the clock and gave the Soviets another chance. The Soviet team also managed to make an illegal substitution of a player who, with the help of a Soviet Bloc referee interfering in the play, passed to another player who scored the winning point.
The Americans were outraged at how the game was conducted and appealed to a basketball court made up of five judges. However, they lost that appeal 3-2. It is perhaps worth noting that all three judges who voted against the Americans happened to be from communist countries.
The Soviet Union men, for their part, are absolutely defiant that they won a free and fair game. Just a few years ago, Russians put out a very popular movie called “Going Vertical” — also known as “Three Seconds” — about their surprise victory over the Americans. It became “the most-successful Russian film of all time,” according to the Hollywood Reporter.
Can you imagine if reporters cornered the players or their fans and said, “Yes or no, did you lose the 1972 game?” Can you imagine if they badgered each player to utter an affirmation that the Soviets won fair and square or be called “basketball deniers”? Can you imagine how juvenile and idiotic that would sound? Real journalists wouldn’t do any of these things, particularly if they genuinely wanted to understand or accurately convey why the game was so controversial.
Similarly, there is something downright pathological in the media and other Democrat activists’ attempts to silence any and all genuine discussion about the weirdest election of our lifetimes. I researched and reported a full-length book about all of the verifiable problems with the election. These problems include the effort by the same top Democrat lawyer who ran the Russia-collusion hoax to push for the coordinated change of hundreds of election laws and processes, supposedly due to Covid. The vast majority of the significant changes were done in violation of the Constitution’s requirement that state legislatures handle such rules. The changes led to tens of millions of unsupervised ballots flooding into the system at the same time that scrutiny of said ballots was diminished. Mark Zuckerberg, one of the world’s wealthiest and most powerful men, spent more than $400 million to orchestrate the takeover of government election offices by left-wing activists. This get-out-the-vote effort was overwhelmingly focused on the Democrat areas of swing states.
There is also the issue that corporate media moved from pervasive bias into overt propaganda on behalf of Democrats and against Republicans. They invented fake news that was inserted into national debates, such as the false Aisne-Marne story claiming Trump secretly didn’t like American soldiers and the false claim that Russia was paying bounties for dead American soldiers and that Trump didn’t care. They also suppressed completely true stories about the Biden family business of paying for access to Joe Biden. In fact, a cabal of powerful figures conspired to falsely blame as Russian disinformation a laptop belonging to a key member of the Biden family pay-for-play business.
And that doesn’t even mention the fact that the U.S. government conspired with Big Tech companies to run a massive censorship-industrial complex to suppress news and information advantageous to conservative politicians and issues. This censorship-industrial complex also worked and continues to work to elevate left-wing media with a track record of running false information operations, such as the debunked Russia-collusion hoax and the Kavanaugh rape smear.
But let’s get back to the basketball game.
Did the men’s basketball team of the Soviet Union score more points than the United States in 1972? They did. Did they receive the gold medal? They did. Did Joe Biden receive more Electoral College votes than Donald Trump? He did. Was he inaugurated as the 46th president of the United States? He was.
All of those things are true. It is also true that reasonable people on the losing side of both contests believe — for very good reasons — they were not fair. It is sheer gaslighting to use the immense power of the Democrat media and corrupted Department of Justice to say that people are not allowed to oppose the way election contests were conducted or discuss how the manner in which the contests have been conducted affected the outcome.
Fans of the 1972 Soviet men’s basketball team and the 2020 Joe Biden campaign have every right to say they won a free and fair contest. They should not be jailed or persecuted for that view. Some fans and operatives of the current regime want to make it illegal or unacceptable to question or oppose the censorship-industrial complex, the plot to radically change election laws in an unconstitutional fashion, the private takeover of government election laws by left-wing billionaires, or our propaganda press. It’s something one might have expected to find in 1972 Soviet Russia more than in 2023 United States.
Sen. Joe Manchin D-W.Va., said Thursday that he is “seriously” considering becoming an independent and lamented that Washington Democrats’ brand had become “so bad.”
“I have to have peace of mind, basically. The brand has become so bad, the ‘D’ brand and ‘R’ brand,” Manchin told West Virginia Metro News’ “Talkline” host Hoppy Kercheval.
“In West Virginia, the ‘D’ brand because it’s [the] national brand. It’s not the Democrats in West Virginia, it’s the Democrats in Washington.”
Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., said Thursday that he is seriously considering switching party affiliations. (Samuel Corum/Getty Images)
Manchin has been asked several times in the past about a possible party switch, particularly after helping kill off key pieces of President Biden’s progressive agenda like Build Back Better. He never ruled it out. On Thursday morning, however, he said: “I would very seriously think about” becoming independent.
Long a fixture of the West Virginia Democratic Party in a heavily GOP-leaning state, Manchin faces a fierce GOP Senate challenge from West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice should he decide to run for reelection. And while he has been a thorn in Biden’s side, Manchin was widely panned by Republicans for ultimately supporting the Inflation Reduction Act, which included many provisions supported by progressives to address climate change.
“I’ve been thinking about that for quite some time,” Manchin said. “I haven’t made any decisions whatsoever on any of my political direction, I want to make sure that my voice is truly an independent voice.”
West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice switched parties from Democrat to Republican in 2017. (AP Photo/Chris Jackson, File)
But he vowed to continue calling out “extremes” on both sides of the aisle.
“When I do speak, I want to be able to speak honestly about basically the extremes of the Democrat and Republican Party that’s harming our nation,” he said.
Manchin’s latest comments come after he fueled speculation of a potential third-party presidential bid when he refused to rule the idea out during a No Labels event in New Hampshire.
In his Thursday radio interview, Manchin denied that such a campaign would hurt President Biden — something the Democrat commander-in-chief’s allies have warned about.
If Manchin becomes an independent, he would be the second Senate Democrat to do so in the last 10 months after Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, I-Ariz. (Getty Images)
“I don’t see that favoring either side because you just can’t tell how this is going to break,” Manchin said.
If he switches from Democrat to independent, Manchin would be the second Senate Democrat to do so within the last 10 months after Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, I-Ariz., did so late last year.
Elizabeth Elkind is a reporter for Fox News Digital focused on Congress as well as the intersection of Artificial Intelligence and politics. Previous digital bylines seen at Daily Mail and CBS News.
Follow on Twitter at @liz_elkind and send tips to elizabeth.elkind@fox.com
FIRST ON FOX: House Republican Conference Chair Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., is blasting a “damning photo” showing then-Vice President Joe Biden with his Hunter Biden-linked current adviser aboard an Air Force Two flight during his infamous 2015 trip to Ukraine.
Amos Hochstein, President Biden’s current special presidential coordinator, was apparently in communication with Hunter and Hunter’s associates at Ukrainian energy company Burisma Holdings when the first son was serving on the firm’s board, according to emails previously reported by Fox News Digital.
A photo taken by White House photographer David Lienemann shows Biden being briefed by Hochstein aboard Air Force Two on his way to meet Ukrainian leaders in Kiev on Dec. 6, 2015, when he threatened to withhold $1 billion in U.S. aid if they did not fire their top prosecutor, Viktor Shokin.
“This damning picture of then Vice President Joe Biden on Air Force Two en route to Ukraine talking with Amos Hochstein is just further evidence that Biden and senior officials in the Biden Administration not only knew of Hunter Biden’s corrupt foreign business dealings, but also that Joe Biden was intimately involved while Vice President,” Stefanik told Fox News Digital in a statement.
This photo taken by White House photographer David Lienemann shows Vice President Joe Biden being briefed by Amos Hochstein, right, aboard Air Force Two on his way to Ukraine on Dec. 6, 2015. (White House photographer David Lienemann)
“At the time of this photo, Hochstein was in communication with Hunter Biden and Burisma where Hunter served on the board,” she continued. “We also know that this photo was taken on Air Force Two ahead of Joe Biden’s now infamous meeting with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, where Biden threatened to have aid withheld if a Ukrainian prosecutor investigating Burisma was not fired.”
“All evidence points directly to Joe Biden being deeply compromised. House Republicans will leave no stone unturned in our investigations into Biden’s involvement in his family’s influence peddling scheme,” Stefanik added.
President Biden, Amos Hochstein and Hunter Biden (Getty Images)
Hochstein, who served as special envoy and coordinator for international energy affairs under the Obama-Biden administration, was tapped as Biden’s special coordinator for global infrastructure and energy security in August 2021, and he was made special presidential coordinator to Biden in February 2022.
Fox News Digital reported in June that in the summer of 2014, shortly after joining the board of Ukrainian energy firm Burisma Holdings, Hunter and his associates at Burisma and his now-defunct Rosemont Seneca Partners discussed speaking with Hochstein for contacts who could help navigate a new tax in Ukraine on private energy companies.
On July 31, 2014, top Burisma executive Vadym Pozharskyi expressed frustration in an email to the group that the Ukrainian parliament had “voted in favor of the package of laws, among which is a draft law on raising the tax for private gas producers.”
Amos Hochstein, senior energy security adviser for the U.S. Department of State, listens as President Biden speaks in the Roosevelt Room of the White House on Oct. 19, 2022. (Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Minutes later, Heather King, who did crisis communications for Burisma at the time and was in frequent communication with Hunter, said she was concerned by the news.
“This news is very concerning,” she wrote. “I assume you will be sending an email to the State Dept today about this? We will also get you connected with the US Embassy contact so you can hopefully meet with the guy Hochstein recommended as soon as possible.”
Nearly two months later, on Sept. 24, 2014, Pozharskyi emailed another communications consultant, Georgette Spanjich, and copied King, Burisma lobbyist David Leiter and Burisma board member Devon Archer, writing that “Ukrainian authorities are still pushing for further legislative initiatives which are going to cause even more damage to the gas industry.”
Amos Hochstein, special envoy and coordinator for international energy affairs, is interviewed in Houston on Aug. 15, 2016. (James Nielsen/Houston Chronicle via Getty Images)
“I am genuinely looking forward to your ideas on how we could influence this process,” Pozharskyi wrote. “Please, note that I am going to share this information with the US embassy here in Kyiv, as well as the office of Mr Amos Hochstein in the States.”
On Nov. 13, 2014, seven weeks after Pozharskyi said he would forward Burisma’s response to the Ukrainian tax hike to Hochstein’s office, Hochstein attended a meeting at Biden’s Naval Observatory residence, according to White House visitor logs. The next day, Eric Schwerin, the then-president of Rosemont Seneca Partners, sent Hunter a link, without comment, to Hochstein’s biography on the State Department’s website.
Eric Schwerin sent Hunter Biden a link to Amos Hochstein’s biography on the State Department’s website. (Fox News)
Three days later, on Nov. 17, 2014, Hochstein met with Kathy Chung, according to the White House visitor logs. Chung was Biden’s executive assistant at the time and now serves as the Pentagon’s deputy director of protocol. A few days later, Hunter asked Schwerin to send Hochstein’s contact information to Archer, Hunter’s fellow Burisma board member and a co-founder of Rosemont Seneca Partners.
A couple of weeks later, on Dec. 11, 2014, Hochstein met with Biden and Chung in two separate meetings and later attended a holiday party at Biden’s residence that same day. Four days later, Hochstein attended a “meeting” at the vice president’s residence, according to White House visitor logs.
Four months later, on April 16, 2015, Hochstein met with Biden in the West Wing of the White House, the visitor logs show. That meeting took place the same day that Hunter introduced his father to Burisma executive Pozharskyi and other business associates from Kazakhstan and Russia during a dinner at Café Milano in Washington, D.C., Fox News Digital previously reported. It is unclear whether Burisma or Pozharskyi’s visit to Washington, D.C., was mentioned during that meeting.
Then-Vice President Joe Biden and Amos J. Hochstein, special envoy and coordinator for international energy affairs, talk during the Caribbean Energy Security Summit at the State Department in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 26, 2015. (Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images)
The day after the dinner, Hunter received an email from Pozharskyi that read, “Dear Hunter, thank you for inviting me to DC and giving an opportunity to meet your father and spent [sic] some time together.”
Two months later, on June 17, 2015, Hochstein met with Biden twice, according to the visitor logs. He met with Biden again the next month in the West Wing on July 13, 2015, and with Chung again months later on Nov. 2, 2015.
According to a Senate Republican report on Hunter’s business dealings released in December 2020, testimony and public records show that Hochstein in October 2015 raised concerns with both Biden and Hunter that Hunter’s position on Burisma’s board enabled Russian disinformation efforts and risked undermining U.S. policy in Ukraine.
Senior adviser for energy security Amos Hochstein and Saudi Arabia’s Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman al-Saud speak after signing bilateral agreements during an investment agreement signing ceremony in the Red Sea coastal city of Jeddah on July 15, 2022. (Amer Hilabi/AFP via Getty Images)
Victoria Nuland, who was serving as assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian Affairs in 2015, testified to Congress in 2020 that Hochstein had another conversation about Hunter’s position on Burisma’s board with Biden on the way to Ukraine in 2015, according to the Senate report, during the same plane ride shown in the photograph criticized by Stefanik.
During Hochstein’s testimony in the 2020 report, he recounted that he spoke with Biden about Burisma in the West Wing of the White House in October 2015. According to visitor logs, he visited the White House three times in October 2015, with two of the visits occurring in the West Wing and the other on the second floor of the West Wing.
“We were starting to think about a trip to Ukraine, and I wanted to make sure that he [Vice President Biden] was aware that there was an increase in chatter on media outlets close to Russians and corrupt oligarchs-owned media outlets about undermining his message — to try to undermine his [Vice President Biden’s] message and including Hunter Biden being part of the board of Burisma,” Hochstein told Congress, according to the report.
According to Hochstein, Biden told Hunter about the meeting, prompting Hunter to request a meeting with Hochstein, according to the 2020 Senate Republican report.
“You are all set to meet with Amos on Friday at 4pm for coffee,” Joan Mayer emailed Hunter on Nov. 3, 2015, referring to their Nov. 6 meeting. She later emailed Hunter to let him know the Nov. 6 meeting with Hochstein at a Starbucks in Georgetown had been moved to 3 p.m. Hochstein met with Biden in the White House Situation Room the day before on Nov. 5, 2015, the visitor logs say.
Joan Mayer emailed Hunter Biden to let him know the Nov. 6 meeting with Amos Hochstein at a Starbucks in Georgetown had been moved to 3 p.m. (Fox News)
“Well, he [Hunter] asked me for a meeting,” Hochstein said in his testimony. “I think he wanted to know my views on Burisma and [Mykola] Zlochevsky. And so I shared with him that the Russians were using his name in order to sow disinformation — attempt to sow disinformation among Ukrainians.”
The report said Hochstein “did not go so far as to recommend that Hunter leave the board,” citing an earlier article by the New Yorker.
About a week later, on Nov. 12, 2016, Mayer let Hunter know that he missed a call from Hochstein, adding, “Please call back today if possible.” Hochstein met with Vice President Biden again in the White House Situation Room less than two weeks later, on Nov. 23, 2015.
On Nov. 12, 2016, Joan Mayer let Hunter Biden know that he missed a call from Amos Hochstein, adding, “Please call back today if possible.” (Fox News)
On Dec. 11, 2015, two days after they returned from Ukraine, Hochstein met with Biden in the West Wing.
Biden visited Ukraine from Dec. 7-9, 2015. Three months after the visit, Shokin was fired, and Biden would later use it to boast about his foreign policy skills.
Shokin was investigating Mykola Zlochevsky, the founder and then-president of Burisma Holdings, where Hunter served as a board member from April 2014 to April 2019. Biden’s defenders have said that Shokin was fired not because he was pursuing corruption too aggressively, but rather because he was too lax.
On Dec. 17, 2015, less than a week after his meeting with Biden, Hochstein attended a holiday party at the vice president’s Naval Observatory residence, where Hunter was also in attendance.
Hochstein visited Biden at least another six times in 2016, including the day after Shokin was fired on March 29, 2016.
The Obama administration had pushed for Shokin’s firing, and Biden boasted on camera in 2018 that when he was vice president, he successfully pressured Ukraine to fire Shokin.
“I looked at them and said: I’m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money,” Biden said in 2018, according to a transcript of his remarks at the Council on Foreign Relations. “Well, son of a b—-. (Laughter.) He got fired. And they put in place someone who was solid at the time.”
The White House and the State Department did not respond to Fox News Digital requests for comment.
Jessica Chasmar is a digital writer on the politics team for Fox News and Fox Business. Story tips can be sent to Jessica.Chasmar@fox.com.
The House Oversight and Accountability Committee plans to subpoena President Joe Biden and first son Hunter over allegations they peddled influence during foreign business dealings to secure millions of dollars in payoffs. Panel Chair James Comer, R-Ky., on Wednesday delivered a third round of bank records, bringing the official paper trail of payments to more than $20 million from Russia, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan during Joe Biden’s vice presidency in the Obama administration.
“It’s clear Joe Biden knew about his son’s business dealings, lied to the American people, & allowed himself to be ‘the brand’ sold to enrich the Bidens while he was VP of the United States,” Comer tweeted Thursday morning.
“This is public corruption at the highest levels of our federal government.”
Comer on Thursday told Fox Business, “This is always going to end with the Bidens coming in front of the committee. We are going to subpoena the family.”
The chair added that with all the opposition and obstruction from the Bidens’ attorneys, “we know this is going to end up in court when we subpoena the Bidens.”
The president’s legal counsel claims the latest allegations do not tie Joe Biden to Hunter Biden’s foreign influence peddling.
Appearing Wednesday on Newsmax, Comer said the president’s team should be more transparent with requests for information.
“If the president has done nothing wrong, then they should allow us to see their personal bank records,” Comer told “Rob Schmitt Tonight.” “If there’s nothing to hide, then they should be transparent with us, with their financial records, and stop obstructing and intimidating our witnesses and blocking us from more bank records.”
Joe Biden snapped at a reporter Wednesday after being asked about congressional testimony by Devon Archer, a former business associate of Hunter Biden.
“I never talked business with anybody, and I knew you’d have a lousy question,” Biden told the reporter, who then asked why it was a lousy question.
“Because it’s not true,” the president said before walking away.
Archer last week told congressional investigators that then-Vice President Joe Biden joined Hunter Biden’s calls during business meetings and dinners, where foreign businessmen were present and heard his voice, which was the “prize” in luring foreign businesses to pay to send “signals” to the highest levels of the Obama White House.
Critics warn of an attempt to “chill parents from speaking out” as the California State Assembly considers a bill that would criminalize causing a “substantial disruption” at a school board meeting. Pictured: A man hoists his message at a July 20 meeting of the Chino Valley school board in Chino, California. (Photo: David McNew/Getty Images)
California already has undermined the rights of parents from out of state when it comes to experimental transgender “health care,” but the Legislature also is considering a bill that would criminalize causing “substantial disorder” at school board meetings—an attempt to “chill parents from speaking out,” critics warn.
SB 596, which the California State Senate passed in May, 30-8, would expand state law that bars adults from subjecting “a school employee to harassment.”
The bill, now making its way to the floor of the lower chamber, the California State Assembly, would expand the definition of “school employee” to cover any employee or official of a school district, charter school, and county or state education board or office.
The bill also would outlaw, as a misdemeanor, actions that cause “substantial disorder” at a school board meeting.
The law proposed in the Golden State doesn’t define “substantial disorder,” and its definition of “harassment” leaves broad room for interpretation. Under the proposal, Californians who violate the provision face a fine of $500 to $1,000, a year in county jail, or both. A second offense would mean mandatory jail time and could involve another fine; a third offense would mean more jail time and perhaps a third fine.
“It’s clear they’re trying to chill parents from speaking out,” Sarah Parshall Perry, a senior legal fellow in The Heritage Foundation’s Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies, told The Daily Signal on Wednesday. (The Daily Signal is The Heritage Foundation’s news outlet.)
“I find it curious that there’s no definition of ‘substantial’ or ‘disruption’ within the proposed text,” Perry said. “Considering that these are essential terms for the bill, it’s likely that if passed, the law would fall under a vagueness challenge.”
Parents “have a right to express themselves under the protections of the First Amendment,” she noted. “Ordinary limitations on certain speech—making a true threat of violence, for example—already apply within the context of the First Amendment, making the criminal penalty here unnecessary, legally suspect, and ideologically driven.”
“California Democrats want to increase the presence of minors’ activism while working to chill the free speech of rightfully concerned parents and taxpayers,” Kelly Schenkoske, a California mother who homeschools her two children in conjunction with a public charter school program, told The Daily Signal.
“Instead of focusing on solutions for a state riddled with low academic achievement, a drug crisis, homelessness, rising taxes, human trafficking, water storage issues, and fire prevention, this Democrat-controlled Legislature continues to propose their aggressive, anti-family, legislative pet projects,” Schenkoske added. “Their work over the years to erode parental involvement and rights has been noticed by parents who will stand courageously to speak for the protection of their children and for a better education.”
Jim Manley, state legal policy deputy director at the Pacific Legal Institute, told The Daily Signal that the state government has the prerogative to make laws regarding school board meetings, but the vagueness of the text might encourage school employees and prosecutors to chill parents’ rights to speak freely.
“The idea that the government is trying to regulate conduct at school board meetings is pretty normal,” Manley said. “What sends up potential red flags is some of the language in this bill.”
SB 596defines “harassment” as “a knowing and willful course of conduct directed at a specific person that seriously alarms, torments, or terrorizes the person, and that serves no legitimate person.” The bill defines “course of conduct” as “a pattern of conduct composed of two or more acts occurring over a period of time, however short, evidencing a continuity of purpose.”
A parent or other critic “saying two things that the school official finds harassing could be enough to qualify there,” Manley said. “An email that simply torments would count as harassment under this standard.”
The lawyer noted that “to torment” merely means “to cause mental suffering.”
“If you send two emails that cause a school board official to mentally suffer, technically you fall under this definition,” Manley said.
The bill “could be interpreted in a way that chills people’s ability to communicate with elected officials,” he said.
Manley also noted that the bill includes an exemption for “any otherwise lawful employee concerted activity, including, but not limited to, picketing and the distribution of handbills.”
“Parents showing up to hand out literature would not be exempt” under the proposed law, the lawyer said. “Given how broadly this expands the coverage of the crime, I’d like to see the exemption be similarly broad. As written now, it only applies to employees who are picketing.”
Matt McReynolds, deputy chief counsel at the Pacific Justice Institute, echoed these concerns.
“I would certainly agreethat SB 596 targets conservative parents who have been energized and re-engaging at the school board level,” McReynolds told The Daily Signal.
“It’s not just speaking at school board meetings; this would criminalize sending emails that seriously annoy or alarm school employees,” he said. “Note, too, the double standards, beginning with the exception in the legislation for labor union activity such as picketing.”
McReynolds also said the “larger context” of the bill is “revealing.”
“In nearly all other areas, our state leaders are stressing decriminalization and have released thousands of dangerous offenders back into our communities,” he said. “The rhetoric about mass incarceration and overcriminalization goes out the window when they’re going after their political enemies. And in the school setting itself, our legislators are moving to reduce the ability of teachers and administrators to punish kids for defiance, disruption, and disorder. The hypocrisy is unmistakable.”
McReynolds also mentioned AB 1078, which passed the California State Assembly in May. That bill, which aims to boost instructional materials regarding diversity by circumventing parents, threatens “to reduce parents’ influence at the school board level,” McReynolds argued,
State Sen. Anthony J. Portantino, the Democrat who sponsored SB 596, didn’t respond to The Daily Signal’s request for comment on the bill.
The bill comes amid new California laws prioritizing children’s stated gender identity over parental rights. Last year, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, signed into law SB 107, a bill to turn California into a “sanctuary state” for “gender-affirming care.” The measure, which took effect in January, gives California courts the ability to award custody of a child if someone removes that child from his or her parents in another state to obtain such “care” over the parents’ disagreement.
In June, a California state senator told parents to flee the state as the Senate debated a bill that would subject parents who refuse to “affirm” their children’s “gender transitions” to child abuse charges.
“In the past when we’ve had these discussions and I’ve seen parental rights atrophied, I’ve encouraged people to keep fighting,” state Sen. Scott Wilk, a Republican, said. “I’ve changed my mind on that.”
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 Trump.
Barack Obama is often hailed as one of the greatest orators in modern politics. While he had undeniable gifts in that department, as someone who attended a number of his speeches in person, I never quite understood all the praise. Setting aside his career-making “red states, blue states” speech at the 2004 Democratic convention — a plea for political moderation he spent his time in office repudiating — the only memorable things Obama said were either campaign pablum such as “hope and change,” or remarks that were unintentionally revealing.
In the latter category, my personal favorite remark was this comment about congressional Republicans from 2013: “We’re going to try to do everything we can to create a permission structure for them to be able to do what’s going to be best for the country,” he said.
“Permission structure” is a phrase that’s been used by marketing executives for many years, and was apparently in common usage at the Obama White House. The idea is“based on an understanding that radically changing a deeply held belief and/or entrenched behavior will often challenge a person’s self-identity and perhaps even leave them feeling humiliated about being wrong. … Permission Structures serve as scaffolding for someone to embrace change that they might otherwise reject.”
While there’s more overlap between politics and marketing than anyone would like to admit, the naked use of jargon that comes from the world of consumer manipulation betrays a remarkably egotistical approach to politics. There was no need to address honorable disagreement to Obama’s policies, which were politically extreme and consistently opposed by voters. The White House just needed to create, with the help of a slavish media, narratives that could help people admit they were wrong and come around to his way of thinking.
Ironically enough, I thought of the “Permission structure” remark reading David Samuels’ interview in Tablet with Obama biographer David Garrow, which is shaping up to be perhaps the most discussed piece of journalism of the year. That’s because the entire article is a really effective “Permission structure” for a lot of Obama voters and moderates to finally admit he’s an entirely overrated, largely failed president who was far more radical than he ever let on. He’s also obsessed with celebrity and not very loyal to the people who helped him along the way.
In other words, he’s pretty much the guy his critics on the right said he was all along.
MLK vs. Obama
To be clear, that’s my gloss on it, and while I don’t think it’s an unfair summation, I wouldn’t want to claim to speak on behalf of Samuels or Garrow. But I think it’s undeniable the article does real damage to Obama’s reputation because the many criticisms in the piece are rooted in factual revelations about Obama’s past and the considered opinion of Garrow, who won a Pulitzer Prize in 1987 for his biography of Martin Luther King Jr. (In addition to decades of work as a civil rights historian, Garrow is a major historian of abortion.) Garrow was considered an important enough scholar that Obama sat for eight hours of interviews with him while he was still president. And it’s clear his opinion of Obama is somewhere between dismissive and contemptuous.
Worse, Garrow’s opinion is all the more devastating to Obama because, throughout the sprawling 16,000-word interview, Garrow keeps reverting back to his extensive knowledge of MLK and making explicit comparisons between the two men to reinforce his unflattering judgments about Obama. At first blush, being compared to MLK would be an impossible standard for almost anyone to be held up to. However, as a historian Garrow is notable for deftly exposing MLK’s considerable character flaws — the degree of MLK’s womanizing and alcoholism are decidedly worse than the public wants to know — while still burnishing his historic accomplishments. It’s clear throughout the interview that Garrow is not so reverential toward MLK he can’t think objectively about him, yet he still considers him a great man.
And in fairness, Obama invited this comparison upon himself. He rode into the White House encouraging supporters to frame his election as the fulfillment of MLK’s legacy, and further invited comparisons by appropriating MLK’s rhetoric.
Speaking of memorable Obama rhetoric, I’d be willing to bet that millions of Americans are under the impression “the arc of history is long and bends toward justice” is an Obama quote rather than an MLK quote (and it appears MLK borrowed it from a 19th-century Unitarian minister). Nonetheless, Obama has used the phrase “arc of history” more than a dozen times since his first presidential campaign.
The “arc of history” soon transmogrified into another oft-used Obama phrase, which was invoked by Obama and his staff many times throughout their triumphal bullying of political opponents for being on “the wrong side of history.” Obama’s abuse of the “right” and “wrong” side of history was so absurd that even The Atlantic took a break from acting as a court stenographer to run an article fretting this language “suggest[s] a tortured, idealistic, and ultimately untenable vision of what history is and how it works.”
It’s just as well people attribute that quote to Obama, because while this progressive and Hegelian understanding of history is perfectly in sync with American liberalism, it’s not exactly compatible with common sense — history is full of injustice that comes out of nowhere and sets righteous causes back quite a ways. King himself eventually recognized this and rejected the sentiment in his “Letter from Birmingham Jail.”
“Such an attitude stems from a tragic misconception of time, from the strangely irrational notion that there is something in the very flow of time that will inevitably cure all ills,” King wrote. “Actually, time itself is neutral; it can be used either destructively or constructively.”
At the same time Obama expressed arrogant certitude about his own role in history, he rejected the aspects of King’s idealism that were actually productive. In 2020, Obama gave an interview to Atlantic editor and Obama superfan Jeffrey Goldberg where he said, “America as an experiment is genuinely important to the world not because of the accidents of history that made us the most powerful nation on Earth, but because America is the first real experiment in building a large, multiethnic, multicultural democracy. And we don’t know yet if that can hold.”
So, America is the most powerful nation because of accidents of history — not because of our historically unprecedented founding commitment to human rights and limited government. It’s telling how the arguments about being on the right side of history are casually discarded here, even though they might make sense to use retroactively. As Garrow observes, “What I could never understand was Obama’s contempt for the idea of American exceptionalism. … Why would the president of the United States feel the need to disabuse his countrymen of the idea that they are special?”
Regardless, that’s hardly the most revealing part of that quote. MLK offered Americans “a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” Well, I don’t exactly know what Obama’s offering in response to King’s vision of the future is, but it sounds pretty pessimistic to say you’re not sure America can survive as a “multicultural democracy” — especially coming from a guy so famous for having his likeness emblazoned next to the word “HOPE” that the poster has its own Wikipedia entry.
Perhaps it’s unrealistic to expect America ever to stamp out racism (or any other sin for that matter), but King’s call to a virtue-based vision of equality was nonetheless deeply taken to heart by most Americans. Otherwise, the fact it took just 40 years for America to go from assassinating civil rights leaders and turning firehoses on peaceful black protesters to electing a black president is just another “historical accident.”
Maybe we still have a long way to go, but the progress made on civil rights in this country is still worth celebrating — and there’s no good evidence we should abandon the belief that progress was made because, in King’s words, “this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.” That it’s hard to tell whether America’s first black president believes that racial progress in America is because of, not in spite of, American ideals, well, that isn’t exactly reassuring for ordinary Americans looking to validate the trust they placed in him.
Of course, lots of other black leaders harbored doubts about King’s hopes for the future. Which brings us to the other startling aspect of the interview between Samuels and Garrow, where we move from the abstract realm of character judgments to disturbing historical facts. In Obama’s ballyhooed first memoir, Dreams of My Father, Samuels summarizes his description of the breakup between Obama and Sheila Miyoshi Jager, one of his serious girlfriends before he married Michelle Obama: “In Dreams, Obama describes a passionate disagreement following a play by African American playwright August Wilson, in which the young protagonist defends his incipient embrace of Black racial consciousness against his girlfriend’s white-identified liberal universalism.”
But Garrow, who started writing his Obama biography well into Obama’s second term as president, tracked down Jager — now a professor at Oberlin with a formidable academic reputation — and asked her about her relationship with Obama. (That the credulous journalistic establishment was totally incurious about digging into Obama’s inconsistent and self-serving life story is a thread running throughout the interview.) According to her, what really happened was this:
In Jager’s telling, the quarrel that ended the couple’s relationship was not about Obama’s self-identification as a Black man. And the impetus was not a play about the American Black experience, but an exhibit at Chicago’s Spertus Institute about the 1961 trial of Adolf Eichmann.
At the time that Obama and Sheila visited the Spertus Institute, Chicago politics was being roiled by a Black mayoral aide named Steve Cokely who, in a series of lectures organized by Louis Farrakhan’s Nation of Islam, accused Jewish doctors in Chicago of infecting Black babies with AIDS as part of a genocidal plot against African Americans. The episode highlighted a deep rift within the city’s power echelons, with some prominent Black officials supporting Cokely and others calling for his firing.
In Jager’s recollection, what set off the quarrel that precipitated the end of the couple’s relationship was Obama’s stubborn refusal, after seeing the exhibit, and in the swirl of this Cokely affair, to condemn Black racism. While acknowledging that Obama’s embrace of a Black identity had created some degree of distance between the couple, she insisted that what upset her that day was Obama’s inability to condemn Cokely’s comments. It was not Obama’s Blackness that bothered her, but that he would not condemn antisemitism.
While it’s hard to land firmly on one side of a he said/she said account of a romantic break-up, Jager has an outstanding reputation; she’s a professor at Oberlin college. She hasn’t been outspoken about Obama on much of anything, much less publicly critical of him. She doesn’t seem bitter about a relationship that ended decades ago, where Obama asked her to marry him twice and she rejected him.
If Jager is to be believed — and I think she is, as the rest of the Samuels-Garrow interview is full of criticism of episodes where Obama has obviously fictionalized aspects of his memoirs and life story — then this just really puts an exclamation point on the narrative established by this landmark interview. Americans thought they were electing a guy who had tacitly, if not explicitly, said he would fulfill Martin Luther King Jr.’s legacy, a man who, in Garrow’s considered words, “did not buy into identity politics.” Instead, they got a guy invested in defending Louis Farrakhan’s vision of race in America.
Being a president in the mold of King would entail evaluating leadership failures as a matter of the content of your character and judgment. Following Farrakhan would entail blaming… well, it seems hard to believe Obama would embrace antisemitic conspiracies, but certainly there’s ample evidence that Obama and his defenders do dodge accountability by blaming a more socially acceptable villain of shadowy cabals of racists and Republicans. (On the other hand, if Obama is hoping for favorable assessments of his famously antagonistic relationship with Israel, he’s not helped by Jager’s anecdote or the fact that he had his kids baptized at a church run by a guy who even Ta-Nehisi Coates admits spews “crude conspiratorial antisemitism.”)
‘He Loses Interest’
For those of you who may think this is a little too harsh and/or a Manichean take on Obama’s nuanced worldview, I have good news. The interview is also a springboard to debate Obama’s sexuality. And large portions of the interview are also consumed with discussions of whether Obama is a “celebrity-obsessed would-be billionaire, or … a would-be American Castro, reshaping American society.”
Garrow and Samuels’ conclusion on that last dilemma seems to be that the shallow narcissism of the former neuters a lot of the impulses related to the latter. Garrow concedes Obama, who frequently touted his credentials as a law professor, would be a terrible Supreme Court justice because Obama himself admits he’s “fundamentally lazy.” Elsewhere Garrow sums up much of his political career by saying, “Some things are meaningful to him, but then he loses interest.”
Samuels, however, doesn’t have Garrow’s scholarly restraint in describing Obama’s post-presidency. “I remember thinking, imagine telling Harry Truman, ‘Hey, why don’t you sell that old house and buy three or four huge mansions in Martha’s Vineyard and Hawaii and Washington, D.C., and rake in hundreds of millions of dollars in sweetheart deals with big corporations while you’re vacationing on rich people’s yachts?’” Samuels tells Garrow. “He’d probably sock you in the jaw.” (For what it’s worth, the yacht vacations with Bruce Springsteen, Oprah, and Tom Hanks appear pretty nauseating.)
In order to keep the Secret Service at bay, let me say for the record that neither the ghost of Harry Truman nor anyone else should sock Obama in the jaw. But it’s been seven years since the guy was in the White House, and the judgment of history is starting to come in. I think we at least have permission to say he was a bad president.
Mark Hemingway is the Book Editor at The Federalist, and was formerly a senior writer at The Weekly Standard. Follow him on Twitter at @heminator
An Army installation in Texas has been struggling to put food on the table for its soldiers for months as the base faces a shortage of cooks to staff its dining facilities.
Fort Cavazos, previously known as Fort Hood, has struggled to provide its junior enlisted troops with meals for months, with the base only opening two of its 10 major dining facilities for much of the summer and with limited times, according to a report Tuesday from Military.com.
According to the report, the base has faced a shortage of cooks to man the dining facilities around base, with many Army cooks either on deployment or away on field training. Soldiers who depend on the dining facilities to eat have also faced confusing and conflicting opening schedules for the facilities as base officials attempt to move personnel around to staff the food service buildings.
Bernie Beck Gate at Fort Hood, Texas, now known as Fort Cavazos. (Drew Anthony Smith/Getty Images)
Some of the dining facilities have only been opened during limited times, forcing some soldiers to drive a long distance across one of the military’s largest installations in attempts to get food.
“For months, one [dining facility] was open and was a more than 30-minute drive for my soldiers,” a noncommissioned officer who anonymously spoke to Military.com said. “All the soldiers were going to that one. It’s unmanageable during the workday.”
Many Army cooks have been pulled off the base for a rotation at the National Training Center and for support of a cadet exercise at Fort Knox, Kentucky, further straining the Fort Cavazos facilities, according to the report.
Soldiers eat at the Patriot Inn Dining Facility at Fort Hood, Texas, on Jan. 9. 2015. (U.S. Army)
Making matters more difficult, many junior enlisted soldiers do not have vehicles, and there has been limited shuttle service options available to get those members to the facilities. Two of the installation’s dining facilities have been reopened in the past week, according to the report, potentially providing some relief to soldiers facing packed facilities and logistical hurdles.
The report comes as the military has continued to battle its worst recruiting crisis in over 50 years, with the Army being the branch hardest hit by the shortfall, falling 15,000 recruits short of hitting its goal in fiscal year 2022. While Army leaders, including Army Secretary Christine Wormuth, have expressed optimism that the branch has turned the tide this fiscal year, it is still expected to come well short of meeting its goals again ahead of Sept. 30, the last day of fiscal year 2023.
While it is unclear if the cook shortage at Fort Cavazos is related to recruiting issues, Army leaders have made improving dining facilities a key focus raising the quality of life for troops, an issue that could help to alleviate some of the recruiting shortfall.
Staff Sgt. Sean Prater, Headquarters and Headquarters Company, 115th Brigade Support Battalion, 1st Armored Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division, works on creating a stuffed beef loin on Nov. 18, 2015, for the Thanksgiving Day celebration. (U.S. Army)
For the time being, Army officials are considering a plan to allow soldiers to use meal cards typically used at official dining facilities at on-post military restaurants such as Panera and Qdoba. That idea is currently being piloted at Fort Drum, New York, according to the report.
Reached for comment by Fox News Digital, an Army spokesperson said the issues experienced at Fort Cavazos stemmed from “Combat Training Center rotations, operational deployments around the world, facility renovations, and support to Cadet Summer Training at Fort Knox, Kentucky, Fort Cavazos was limited to running two Warrior Restaurants during the month of July.”
However, the spokesperson stressed that “dining facilities available through July did not reach capacity and were well stocked throughout the month. Since August 1st Fort Cavazos has reopened multiple Warrior Restaurants on base. There are currently five opened facilities.”
“We take the health and welfare of our Soldiers seriously and making sure our Soldiers have the sustenance necessary to them is a top priority,” the spokesperson said. “Flyers and posters were placed throughout unit areas, barracks, and at all dining facilities to inform Soldiers of the changes for the summer.
“As our operational demands shift, the availability of dining facilities will also be adjusted to meet the needs of our Soldiers. Earlier this summer, the Commanding General established an Installation-level food service board to ensure the best use of food service resources in support of our Soldiers. As of 1 August, two of the largest dining facilities have re-opened.”
Michael Lee is a writer at Fox News. Follow him on Twitter @UAMichaelLee
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American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
American Family Association
American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
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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 (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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