A female Massachusetts high school field hockey player was sent to the hospital Thursday for “significant facial and dental injuries” during a state tournament game after a male on the opposing team hit her in the face with a field hockey ball. In the video circulating social media, viewers can see the male player (No. 2) hit the ball, which launches up and hits his unnamed female opponent in the mouth. After the hit, the girl is heard screaming while her teammates look on with their hands laced over their mouths in shock.
The game was between the number No. 12 Swampscott Big Blue and the No. 21 Dighton-Rehoboth Falcons.
It's reported that male player (#2 for Swampscott) knocked the teeth out of female player. Males are allowed to play on female teams in MA because of the "equal play act"
According to the Media Research Center, the male player in question is Sawyer Groothuis, who plays for Swampscott and is a “Northeastern Conference All-Star in the women’s league.” The Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association handbook effectively allows for men to compete in women’s sports and vice versa.
While speaking with the media, Dighton-Rehoboth Superintendent Bill Runey called for the MIAA to take a “renewed approach” to protecting student athletes, but stopped short of saying men should be prohibited from competing in women’s sports.
Rather than highlight the unnamed female players’ injury, at least one local news outlet completely ignored the egregious nature of a man dominating Thursday’s game. In its brief “roundup” of local sporting events, for example, ItemLive ran with the headline, “Big Blue, big-time performance from Groothuis,” and didn’t even mention Groothuis sending the opposing female player to the hospital.
“Swampscott led at the break thanks to a goal from Northeastern Conference All-Star Sawyer Groothuis,” the article reads. “The Big Blue had a corner and the ball was loose in front of the goal. Groothuis was quickest to react, and poked it home for the early cushion. In the second half, it was Groothuis again finding the back of the net and sealing the game.”
You’d like to believe that a girl screaming out in agony and being sent to the hospital after getting a ball to the face would warrant at least brief mention, if not a paragraph. Especially when considering that the ItemLive write-up of the game is about Groothuis and his performance.
But at the end of the day, many local media outlets are just as bad at their jobs as their national counterparts. It doesn’t matter that the aforementioned female athlete got knocked out of a state tournament game because a male decided he wanted to impose his will on women’s athletics. All that matters is advancing the leftist agenda — no matter what.
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
Rolling Stone published an article over the weekend vilifying Speaker Mike Johnson for being a Christian who actively protects his teenage son from the damaging effects of porn. In the clip scrutinized by Rolling Stone, Johnson readily explains to a crowd at Cypress Baptist Church in Benton, Louisiana, that he uses a subscription-based accountability software called Covenant Eyes to notify him if his son views vile imagery and sexual content online.
Johnson testified to the efficacy of Covenant Eyes by noting that Jack has “a clean slate” and does not appear to regularly view internet porn, something that can’t be said for 73 percent of his son’s teenage peers.
The speaker’s attempt to protect himself and his son from content that negatively affects sexual and mental development is admirable parenting and often hailed as best practice in evangelical circles around the country.
Rolling Stone, however, led its article by dishonestly accusing Johnson and his son of “monitor[ing] each other’s porn intake,” of which Johnson already indicated there was none. The publication then framed Johnson’s vigilance as “creepy Big Brother-ness” that matched his track record as a “faith-obsessed, election-denying, far-right Christian nationalist” with a staunch belief in traditional marriage and in the sanctity of life in the womb.
The publication tried to suggest that the scorn it directed at the Louisiana native is rooted in concerns that the third-party technology company “might ‘compromise’ Johnson’s devices.”
But Rolling Stone’s use of the word “admits” in its headline reveals the paper’s belief that Johnson’s preventative actions should be viewed as villainous and something worth hiding.
According to corporate media like Rolling Stone, faithful Christians like Johnson (or even former Vice President Mike Pence) who participating in normal Christian practices are “faith-obsessed” and “far-right Christian nationalist[s].”
Just weeks after dogpiling on the new speaker for living out his faith, leftist mouthpieces, Democrat strategists, and Biden ad writers quickly amplified the publication’s unfair framing and even used it to insinuate that Johnson is a pervert.
Rolling Stone routinely publishes articles lamenting the “Christian right” and evangelical conservatives like Johnson.
The publication’s latest attack on the speaker of the House, however, proves Rolling Stone understands nothing about the voting bloc that it blames for helping former President Donald Trump get elected.
Rolling Stone did not immediately respond to The Federalist’s request for comment.
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.
Conservative media personality Steven Crowder allegedly obtained three pages of Nashville school shooter Audrey Hale’s manifesto, revealing that the transgender-identifying killer targeted Christian school children because they are white.
“[G]oing to fancy private schools with those fancy khakis + sports backpacks w/ their daddies mustangs + convertibles,” Hale wrote in her “DEATH DAY” plan shared by Crowder. “I wish to shoot you weak-ss d-cks w/ your mop yellow hair wanna kill all you little crackers!!! Bunch of little f-ggots w/ your white privileges,” she added.
The Federalist reached out to the Nashville Police Department and the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation (TBI), but neither would confirm or deny the validity of the manifesto. The Federalist also reached out to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) but did not hear back.
If verified, the three pages published by Crowder are the first glimpse the public has had of Hale’s manifesto since she gunned down three children and three staff members at the Christian Covenant School in Nashville, Tennessee, last March. For 7 months, the FBI, TBI, and Nashville Police Department have hid the manifesto from public view.
Hale’s alleged manifesto reveals that Hale’s attack was premeditated. The leaked documents include minute-by-minute details of her planned attack, such as the time Hale intended to arrive at the Covenant school and how long it would take her to park her car. Hale even predicted that she would die the day of the shooting, writing at the bottom of her “DEATH DAY” schedule, “Time 2 die.”
The manifesto includes many disturbing quotes like her enthusiastic desire to “Kill those kids!!!” and to obtain a “high death count.” She also wrote, “Can’t believe I’m doing this, but I’m ready…I hope my victims aren’t.”
Journalist Ian Miles Cheong pointed out that Hale’s stated hatred of white people and white privilege is an outgrowth of “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion” ideology. “[Hale] is a product of DEI,” Cheong wrote on X. “This is why the media industrial complex, the government, and the institutions refused to publish it. They are all complicit. Hale’s actions and her motive go against the narrative that ‘white supremacy’ is the greatest threat to democracy. The greatest threat to freedom and democracy is DEI. It is the woke mind virus.”
Google and Facebook have reportedly censored news of the manifesto’s leak. This censorship is reminiscent of X’s actions back in March, when the social media company mass-suppressed reports on the “Trans Day Of Vengeance,” which was originally scheduled to take place the same week as Hale’s attack. Federalist CEO Sean Davis was among the censored, and his X account was locked for simply sharing a poster about the scheduled event.
If the leaked manifesto is real, it confirms that despite the Biden Justice Department (DOJ) knowing Hale’s attack was racially motivated, the DOJ did not investigate the shooting as a hate crime.
This adds to the dismissiveness and disrespect the Biden administration has shown to the Nashville shooting victims and their families. Thus far, the Biden administration has done nothing to seriously investigate the perverse, bigoted incentives behind the murders of the six slain Christians, nor has it, at the very least, done anything to memorialize the victims.
Recall, also, that in the wake of the shooting, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre came out with statements in support of the “trans community,” and Vice President Kamala Harris met with rogue, insurrection-instigating Tennessee state representatives instead of the victims’ families.
Evita Duffy-Alfonso is a staff writer to The Federalist and the co-founder of the Chicago Thinker. She loves the Midwest, lumberjack sports, writing, and her family. Follow her on Twitter at @evitaduffy_1 or contact her at evita@thefederalist.com.
A New Hampshire court dismissed Democrat-backed lawsuits contesting the legality of the state’s voter ID law on Wednesday, marking a major win for Republicans and election integrity advocates.
Writing for the Hillsborough Superior Court, Justice Charles Temple ruled that a series of challenges filed against New Hampshire’s voter ID law lacks legal standing because plaintiffs failed to provide evidence showing their ability to vote was impeded by the law in question. In their original lawsuit against New Hampshire’s Republican secretary of state and attorney general, several state voters, along with 603 Forward and Open Democracy Action (two leftist organizations), claimed SB 418 violated provisions of the New Hampshire Constitution.
The Republican National Committee, New Hampshire Republican State Committee, and Restoring Integrity and Trust in Elections (RITE) PAC were intervenor-defendants in the case.
Signed into law by GOP Gov. Chris Sununu last year, SB 418 altered the process by which voters verify their identity when casting their ballot. Under the law, voters who fail to present an approved form of ID would be instructed to fill out an “affidavit ballot,” at which point he or she must then fill out and submit a series of documents proving he or she is eligible to vote. If a voter does not return a copy of the required information within seven days of the election, that voter’s ballot will not be certified.
In his Wednesday ruling, Temple noted how plaintiffs were unable to document any evidence proving their rights were, “or will be,” violated by the law.
“In sum, it seems abundantly clear to the Court that the ‘rights’ at issue in this litigation are the constitutional rights of New Hampshire’s voters, which the organizational plaintiffs maintain have been (or will be) violated by SB 418,” Temple wrote. “However, under long-standing case law, the organizational plaintiffs may only challenge the constitutionality of SB 418 based on an invasion of their own rights. … For the reasons stated above, the plaintiffs have failed to identify the necessary ‘present legal or equitable right’ belonging to them ‘to which the [defendants] [are] asserting an adverse claim.’”
Temple furthermore granted the defendants’ motion to dismiss the plaintiffs’ requests that SB 418 be declared unlawful and an injunction prohibiting its enactment and enforcement.
“Voter ID laws do not harm eligible voters, instead, they identify those people ineligible to vote, including non-citizens,” RITE President Derek Lyons said in a statement celebrating Wednesday’s ruling. “Every case rejecting activists’ attempts to upend state election law helps restore voters’ confidence in the ballot box.”
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
On a sunny, brisk weekday in Sterling, Va., state senate candidate Juan Pablo Segura is on a world tour of sorts. Andres Ruiz, a pastor who works with Segura’s campaign on Latino outreach, gestured to a block of strip-mall of restaurants with a grin. “See? You can go from Peru to Bolivia, Mexico, and around the corner is Venezuela!”
Segura, a Republican entrepreneur vying to be Virginia’s first Latin-American state senator, is courting the immigrant community in the competitive 31st Senate District, a bid to earn both new and disaffected voters in a population he says Democrats have taken for granted. Last week, it was working.
Control of the Virginia House and Senate hang in the balance in this midterm test of Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s appeal and record in this purple state. The operation is a test-run of the GOP’s message and its ability to avoid the pitfalls that plagued the party in 2020 and 2022.
It could also be a chance to capitalize on President Biden’s losses among Hispanic voters, where the president’s lead has fallen from 12 points in NYT battleground polling to single digits since September. It’s part of a larger shift among all nonwhite voters since 2020, where Biden has seen almost a 20 percent drop in support. If Republicans can attempt to woo them, it would happen in swing districts like the one where Segura is pounding the pavement.
Twenty-year-old Katie Rivas, working the register at her father’s small Loudoun County market, said she was excited to cast her very first vote for Segura next week at her former high school. Edgar Martinez, an administrator at a local church, said he’s been in Virginia more than 30 years, but this will be his first vote for state senate.
“Republican principles are in a lot of ways immigrant principles,” Segura said, referencing the newly redrawn district’s 14% Latino population, along with double-digit Asian and multiracial segments. “This race is really a microcosm for what the coalition can look like.”
Control of the Virginia House and Senate hang in the balance in this midterm test of Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s appeal and record in this purple state. The operation is also a test-run of the GOP’s message and its ability to avoid the pitfalls that plagued the party in 2020 and 2022.
Every state seat is up for grabs, but the competitive universe is about seven Senate seats (either party must win 4 for control) and 10 Delegate seats. Republicans currently hold the House and Democrats, the Senate.
Control of the Virginia House and Senate hang in the balance in this midterm test of Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s appeal and record in this purple state. The operation is also a test-run of the GOP’s message and its ability to avoid the pitfalls that plagued the party in 2020 and 2022.
As Segura walked the district, he chatted in his fluent Spanish with a pair of women enjoying Peruvian chicken as a telenovela played on the restaurant TV, and a group of 20-somethings at a Mexican restaurant’s bar. These voters shared with him a mix of economic concerns, wariness of Democrats on social issues and public safety, particularly among church-going Latinos, and pride in potentially electing a member of the Latin community. Segura is a native Virginian whose family hails from Argentina.
Virginia Governor Glen Youngkin addresses the Economic Club of Washington’s luncheon event at the Marriott Marquis on September 26, 2023, in Washington, D.C. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
In 2022, national issue polling showed Republicans with commanding leads in what voters cared about, but the party couldn’t overcome candidate quality issues and a top-down aversion to early voting. The expected red wave never washed ashore.
This year in Virginia, “top issues for Republicans and Independents…are the economy and inflation, at 41% and 30% respectively, while Democrats said abortion is their highest concern, at 25%.”
On a recent weekend, door-knockers with Americans for Prosperity walked pumpkin-dotted porches in Northern Virginia, politely crossing paths with activists for Segura’s Democratic opponent, Russett Perry. Reaching people on the economy, education, and public safety with “policy leaders who believe in freedom and opportunity,” is what voters want, said C.J. Sailor, state director of AFP, who says the organization tallied more than 700,000 voter contacts in the cycle. “It’s so important to connect with voters about what’s at stake.”
Youngkin’s state operation has done three things to prevent a repeat of 2022 and preserve the term-limited executive’s chance at expanding his legislative agenda. They worked on candidate quality, going 10-for-10 in contested primaries where Youngkin backed a candidate.
“We really focused on finding good candidates that could run good campaigns, that could effectively communicate what they want to do in Richmond and who would be good public servants,” said Dave Rexrode, a senior adviser to Youngkin.
The state party rolled out an early-voting effort in July they say got buy-in from candidates, the state party, and local activists. The push has ruffled feathers in Segura’s district, where the area’s liberal prosecutor cease-and-desist letter over having a mariachi band and a taco truck at one of his “early-vote fiestas.” Segura said such events have been attracting hundreds of new and infrequent voters, which is what Republicans must do to win these uphill-climb districts.
“We’re certainly seeing a lot of good progress, and I think it’s gonna pay dividends for us in these targeted races where the margins are going to be incredibly close,” Rexrode said.
Finally, the party’s operation spent money early defining candidates positively while Youngkin himself staked out a “compassionate consensus” position on abortion— a 15-week limit with exceptions— that gave Republican candidates a position to embrace, making it harder for Democratic opponents to claim they want the kind of early bans that risked swing and suburban voters in 2022.
“One of the big lessons learned from 2022 is we can’t just let Democrats get way with their fear-mongering on the issue,” Rexrode said. “We have to clearly articulate where we stand on the issue but also explain where they stand on the issue,” which he said represents only a very small minority of Virginia voters.
Segura and the rest of the battleground candidates also hope to be buoyed by Youngkin’s popularity. Youngkin’s approval rating has been above 50 percent all year and goes as high as 60% with Independent voters. Notably absent from the constant attack ads on Virginia TV and radio are attacks on the governor himself. Instead, many Democrats are running on promises to work across the aisle with the governor.
Youngkin was propelled to the governor’s mansion in 2021 on his own political savvy and a normie-dad vibe, bolstered by a series of missteps by Virginia Democrats. Most notably, former Gov. Terry McAulliffe threw in with teachers’ unions to keep schools closed for more than a year during the pandemic, and pooh-poohed parents’ concerns, making parental rights an issue that still resonates in a place like Loudoun County, which became ground zero for education fights. Joshua Raimundo, strategic director with the LIBRE initiative in Virginia, said education is a top issue for Hispanic voters in the state, who favor school choice in large numbers.
“They (Democrats) have forgotten the Latino,” Martinez said as he showed Segura out of the church lobby and back into the autumn sun. “We are traditional values. I don’t see the Democrats support that anymore at all. We want to see you at the state to help Glenn Youngkin!”
Next week, we’ll find out whether new messengers, a popular governor, and a conversion on early voting can improve on the GOP’s 2022 performance and lay the groundwork for this battleground state in 2024.
Mary Katharine Ham is an OutKick columnist. She is a writer, speaker, and Georgia Bulldog who built patience and resilience waiting 41 years for a national championship and now uses those skills to parent four children. She hosts a podcast called “Getting Hammered.”
Some GOP pollsters have considered former President Donald Trump having all but won the Republican presidential primary, and now his support in the latest Rasmussen Reports poll has reached a majority 50% among likely voters.
Trump now leads the field by 38 points after having pulled 45% support in September’s edition of the Rasmussen poll.
The full GOP primary results:
Trump 50%
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis 12%
Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley 9%
Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie 5%
Entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy 3%
Former Vice President Mike Pence 3%
Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C. 2%
Former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson 1%
North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum 0%
Undecided 14%
Notably, Pence has since officially ended his campaign, saying, “it is not my time.”
When the nationwide poll expands to include Democrat and third-party voters for those with open primaries, the also-rans pick up a little bit of support against Trump.
“In states with open primaries — allowing voters to choose which primary they vote in without regard for their party registration — Trump’s advantage could be diluted by the potential ‘crossover’ vote,” according to the Rasmussen Reports analysis.
“While Trump gets 63% of the vote among self-identified Republican voters, the former president is supported by only 33% of Democrats and 46% of unaffiliated voters who say they’re likely to vote in their state’s 2024 GOP primaries.
“Several of Trump’s primary rivals — including DeSantis, Haley, and Christie — draw a significant share of their support from Democrats and unaffiliated voters.”
Rasmussen Reports surveyed 1,344 likely Republican primary voters and 2,015 likely U.S. primary voters Oct. 26-31 and Nov. 1-2, 2023. The margin of error for GOP primary voters is plus or minus 3 percentage points.
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
The Internal Revenue Service opened an audit into the American Accountability Foundation, a conservative nonprofit that has exposed the Biden administration. Pictured: Internal Revenue Service Commissioner Danny Werfel testifies before the Senate Finance Committee at the U.S. Capitol on April 19. (Photo: Kent Nishimura, Los Angeles Times/Getty Images)
The Internal Revenue Service has moved to audit a conservative group that has exposed the radicalism of some of President Joe Biden’s nominees to senior administrative posts, and in so doing, led him to withdraw their candidacies.
The American Accountability Foundation has exposed numerous Biden nominees, and it published emails showing that Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., had encouraged the IRS to target conservative organizations, including AAF, for extra scrutiny and investigation.
“Senator Whitehouse has repeatedly called for the IRS to investigate AAF—by name,” AAF President Tom Jones told The Daily Signal in an emailed statement Monday. “Attacking groups like ours has been a priority for Senator Whitehouse and it appears the Biden admin has heeded his calls.”
“We’re auditing your organization’s Form 990 for the tax year ended December 31, 2021,” an IRS revenue agent wrote in a Sept. 14 letter to AAF. The organization provided a copy of the letter to The Daily Signal.
The IRS insisted it does not launch audits for partisan reasons. A spokesman said he could not confirm the audit.
“Under the federal tax law, federal employees can neither confirm nor deny that a particular organization is or is not being audited,” IRS spokesman Anthony Burke told The Daily Signal in a phone interview Monday. “We’re precluded from disclosing tax return information.”
Burke directed The Daily Signal to IRS Publication 556, which explains the examination of returns.
“AAF is being attacked because it is successful,” Jones said. He mentioned a few of the Biden nominees AAF criticized whose nominations Biden later revoked.
When Biden nominated David Chipman to lead the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, Jones unearthed allegations that Chipman, who had served as a special agent at ATF until 2012, had remarked that “African American agents … must have been cheating” because they passed an exam. Biden withdrew Chipman’s nomination after AAF revealed the alleged comments.
When Biden nominated Gigi Sohn to join the Federal Communications Commission, AAF purchased billboards and ran newspaper and digital ads opposing her nomination. AAF highlighted the Fraternal Order of Police’s opposition to Sohn, which noted her statements indicating “serious animus towards law enforcement officers.” Sohn withdrew her nomination following the scrutiny.
AAF also warned that Saule Omarova, then a nominee for comptroller of the currency, had apparently joined a self-declared Marxist group on Facebook in 2019. Biden also withdrew her nomination.
“Whether it is Gigi Sohn at the FCC, David Chipman at the ATF, Saule Omarova as Biden’s bank czar, there are numerous people who have been exposed because of AAF’s work,” Jones told The Daily Signal. “Apparently, the administration has decided they want to stop that by weaponizing the IRS against us.”
In 2010, conservative groups reported waiting longer than usual to receive verification for tax-exempt status from the IRS. Groups claimed the IRS had targeted them for their political and ideological stances, but the Obama administration denied any ideological discrimination. In October 2017, the Department of Justice settled two cases in the IRS targeting scandal. In a class-action lawsuit involving 428 conservative plaintiffs, the IRS agreed to pay $3.5 million.
Chief Justice John Roberts—seen here receiving the Henry J. Friendly Medal at the American Law Institute’s 2023 annual dinner in Washington on May 23—needs to rein in the Administrative Office of U.S. Courts. (Photo: Sarah L. Voisin/ The Washington Post/Getty Images)
Federal courts have their own administrative state, and that’s a problem. Like many of its executive branch counterparts, the Administrative Office of U.S. Courts came into existence during President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal push to establish supposedly expert administrators. Established in 1939 after FDR’s failed court-packing plan, the “AO” (as it has come to be known) nominally has a narrow mandate—“to provide administrative support to federal courts.”
In fact, two federal appellate courts that have examined the relationship of the AO vis-a-vis the federal judiciary have said that the AO “was created to perform, and historically has performed, a limited ministerial function.” It was not, they said, “intended to govern or make policy for the Judiciary.”
It would raise serious constitutional concerns for it to do so, since the AO itself is a not an entity under Article III of the Constitution. That job instead has been assigned to the Judicial Conference of the United States, which serves as the “Judiciary’s principal policy-making body.”
The chief justice presides over the Judicial Conference, which is “comprised of the chief judge of each judicial circuit, the Chief Judge of the Court of International Trade, and a district judge from each regional judicial circuit, who is elected for a term of not less than three nor more than five successive years as established by majority vote of all circuit and district judges of the circuit represented.” Still, the chief justice appoints the AO’s director, who is under “the supervision and direction of” the Judicial Conference.
Today, the AO maintains a sprawling portfolio and has engaged in actions that have directly injected the courts into hot-button political controversies. Worse still, the AO’s actions seem to contradict the Supreme Court’s own recent precedent in the area of racial preferences. For instance, an article published earlier this year highlighted just a few of the AO’s problematic diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, where the AO has been touting its work to promote “diversity” in the profession, particularly along “racial, ethnic, socioeconomic, and sexual-orientation dimensions.”
While the Judicial Conference should rein in these problematic policy decisions, it has unfortunately allowed some of these same pernicious themes to creep into its views, too.
As part of its 2020 Strategic Plan for the Federal Judiciary, it emphasizes that “Judges must be encouraged to give special attention to diversity in their law clerk hiring process.” Of course, that diversity lies largely along racial, ethnic, and sexual orientation dimensions.
And the reports of the Judicial Conference’s various committees are rife with references to programs under consideration to increase the diversity of staff and employees and among members of the bankruptcy and magistrate benches.
At its next meeting, the Judicial Conference should engage in a serious discussion about whether these various initiatives and programs undermine confidence in the judiciary. They give the impression that the courts themselves are not being colorblind in their actions and are instead relying on something other than merit when making hiring and firing decisions.
And the Judicial Conference (again, headed by the chief justice) must grapple with whether these programs can still pass muster in light of the Supreme Court’s decision this past June (written by the chief justice) striking down Harvard’s and the University of North Carolina’s affirmative action programs.
There’s some precedent at the state level for reviewing such programs being implemented in our court systems around the country.
The Florida Supreme Court, for example, exercised its administrative oversight to prohibit programming that required certain diversity quotas from qualifying for continuing legal education credit. Other state high courts should similarly exercise their oversight authority, and the Judicial Conference must do the same here.
Our Constitution is colorblind, and our courts must be colorblind, too, in all of their actions. To do otherwise undermines the very foundations of our court system—and our country.
Mark Levin skewered the media for publishing articles against him regarding his comments about the Jewish heritage of a CNN anchor.
On Thursday, far-left outlet, Media Matters, ran an hit piece castigating Levin for comments he made on his radio show earlier this week. CNN published an article on Friday echoing the sentiments of the Media Matters story. The writer of the piece, Oliver Darcy, requested a comment from the White House – which also condemned Levin and Fox News.
“Not only is Fox News aligning with those who fan the flames of hate – Fox is paying their salaries,” said Andrew Bates – deputy White House press secretary. “Lying to insult the pain that families suffered in the Holocaust has absolutely no place in America. None. Sadly, this is not the first time in recent months that a Fox News host made sickening remarks about the Holocaust.”
The media outlets ran stories from the following quote from Levin:
Wolf Blitzer, as I understand it, his parents weren’t victims in one way or another, of the Holocaust. But certainly his family comes out of that background — but you wouldn’t know it. Because the ideology of the left is very attractive. It’s very compelling, particularly if you’re in media.
Blitzer’s parents came to the United States as refugees from Poland after surviving the Nazi era and all four of his grandparents were murdered during the Holocaust.
A CNN spokesperson framed Levin’s quote as “wildly uninformed, inappropriate and shameful,” “dangerous,” and “anti-Semitic rhetoric.”
However, Levin clarified his wording on Thursday’s episode of his show and pointed out how the word “weren’t” doesn’t make sense in the context of his commentary:
Let’s stop for a second. When I take a breath, when I’m saying something and I’m passionate. I take a breath. Now you can hear that they say worth it if you’re really listening and you want it to say where it is so that you can hear it to say weren’t. I barely even remember saying it. So we’ve played it. We’ve got the audio you can twist it to say weren’t. But obviously, why would I say his parents weren’t in one way or another. Victims in the Holocaust. How can that even be logical? Why would I say somebody’s parents were or were not victims of the Holocaust? If they weren’t victims of the Holocaust, why would they say his parents weren’t victims of the Holocaust? Or why would I intentionally say that I didn’t? I didn’t. In the second sentence, but certainly as family comes out of that background. Clarifies exactly what I’m talking about. So, they take that and say Levin denies. They’re Wolf Blitzer’s parents. We’re in the Holocaust, which I’ve since looked up, and they were at Auschwitz, and it’s the grandparents were killed there. Which is a horrible, horrible thing. In fact, some of the people who’ve been taken back into Gaza. We’re Holocaust survivors in Israel. Some of the people murdered were Holocaust survivors. And of course, my point is you have a background like that. And you might and you ask Hakeem question. Hakeem Jeffries a question like this. It’s shocking to me, especially as a Jew. It is shocking to me. And so that now, ladies and gentlemen, causes CNN, which was contacted by, I think, The Daily Beast, another leftist Marxist operation. And here’s what CNN said. Quote. And by the way, it’s anonymous. We don’t even know who at CNN said it.
Levin – who is Jewish – blasted the media for citing Media Matters – the progressive outlet that targets conservatives and has received funding from George Soros.
“NEVER AGAIN, MEDIA, WHETHER YOU LIKE IT OR NOT,” Levin wrote on the X social media platform. “The media CANNOT stop lying, using Soros’s Media Matters as their source and using their spin, the sickening statement from an anonymous CNN spokesman, then, of course, the Washington Post (which was silent during most of the Holocaust), and now, to top it off, a Biden regime propagandist.”
Levin continued, “It won’t work as they hang on the words ‘were’ and ‘weren’t.’ The media have been horrendous in their coverage of the Oct. 7 slaughter of Israeli Jews and their subsequent use of Hamas lies, including the notorious reporting about the Gaza hospital, which they blamed on Israel, the use of Hamas statistics, the regurgitation of Biden administration talking points, and relentless insinuations and worse about Israel and its military killing civilians.”
The host of “The Mark Levin Show” said, “The New York Times and Washington Post essentially covered up the Holocaust as it was occurring. The Times issued a quasi-apology in 2001 (the Post still has said nothing to the best of my knowledge, some 80 years later).”
The Blaze Media personality declared, “I will not allow the corporate media, and their numerous propagandists, to get away with their hate and lies. Never again will the media be free to push a hateful narrative without pushback from me and conservatives like me. They can try and use the words were’ or weren’t’ to distract from what is really happening, and ask a Biden lapdog staffer for his input, but it will not work.”
He said all the media does is “twist, spin, deceive, false narratives, and lies.”
Levin proclaimed, “I will not be intimidated, and neither should any of you!”
Washington Post reporter, Jeremy Barr, cited Media Matters when regurgitating a smear on yours truly even though he knew that the president of Media Matters is an anti-Semite and his own newspaper had reported on it in the past. And Barr works for the Washington Post Corporation even though he knows it helped cover up the Holocaust. What does that make Jeremy Barr?
Shame on the Washington Examiner for pushing this crap 3-days later. Perhaps the Examiner will link to these real stories about CNN’s grotesque anti-Semitism, including by several of its hosts, and its anti-Israel propaganda over the years. Apparently, their reporter was too lazy to provide full context, so I have included just a few of the stories about CNN’s horrendous antisemitism, including several of its hosts. Their pattern and pro-Hamas propaganda are not secrets.
You can listen to Levin’s original comments from the Nov. 1 episode below.
A Cartoon that hits Minnesota Teachers who are supporting Hamas terrorism in schools and other evil social topics when they should be teaching things like math, English, and real history in class. This is what happens when students of higher learning graduate and enter our society. They create more woke monsters turning our world upside down.
So many left-wing groups are supporting Hamas terrorists, like Gay and Lesbian groups, LGBTQ+, Transgenders, Liberal Democrat Jews, etc., but don’t seem to understand that if any of them ventured to Gaza, they would be thrown off the top of a building to their death for the lifestyle or politics they have. DEI groupthink and American universities have warped and brainwashed our kids minds to the point they can’t see who is actually on their side—the side of freedom and democracy.
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.
Top Stories • Joe Biden Wants to Fund Abortions for Illegal Immigrants at Taxpayer Expense • Bishop Says Catholics Must Vote Pro-Life Because Abortion is a “Choice Between Good and Evil” • Issue 1 Would Allow Sex Changes on Minor Children Without Parents Even Knowing, Vote NO • Republican Senators Face Backlash After Opposing Tommy Tuberville’s Pro-Life Holds
More Pro-Life News • Catholic Bishops Slam Joe Biden’s Proposal to Force Employers to Fund Abortions • Pro-Life Daniel Cameron Tied With Pro-Abortion Andy Beshear in Kentucky Governor Race • Every State With an Abortion Ban Allows Treatment for Miscarriage and Ectopic Pregnancies • OGBYN Confirms Miscarriage is Not Abortion, Treatment for Miscarriage is Not Abortion • Scroll Down for Several More Pro-Life News Stories
Looking for an inspiring and motivating speaker for your pro-life event? Don’t have much to spend on a high-priced speaker costing several thousand dollars? Contact news@lifenews.com about having LifeNews Editor Steven Ertelt speak at your event.
Looking for an inspiring and motivating speaker for your pro-life event? Don’t have much to spend on a high-priced speaker costing several thousand dollars? Contact news@lifenews.com about having LifeNews Editor Steven Ertelt speak at your event.
Comments or questions? Email us at news@lifenews.com. Copyright 2003-2023 LifeNews.com. All rights reserved. For information on advertising or reprinting news from LifeNews.com, email us.
The 2024 Republican presidential front-runner is faced with 91 state and federal charges one year from Election Day. After a series of failed attempts to capture the criminal conviction of Donald Trump, Democrats have charged their primary political opponent with nearly 100 crimes to thwart the former president’s triumphant return to the Oval Office. Here’s a “who’s who” of the key players in the Democrats’ latest crusade to achieve the top item on their policy agenda.
Alvin Bragg
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg was the first prosecutor to land the coveted indictment of Democrats’ Public Enemy No. 1. In April, the New York prosecutor unveiled a 34-count indictment against Trump, carrying a maximum 136-year prison sentence. The charges stem from 2016 hush-money payments to porn actress Stormy Daniels in a case prosecutors previously declined to pursue.
The Manhattan charges, however, marked the fulfillment of a campaign promise Bragg made two years ago to prosecute the former president. Prosecuting Trump was apparently the top issue of his platform in 2021.
“Bragg often reminded voters on the campaign trail that he helped sue the Trump administration ‘more than a hundred times’ as a deputy in the New York state attorney general’s office,” Reuters reported that year.
The 50-year-old prosecutor’s own supporters pointed to his ability to pursue Trump in court as a reason to back him. The New York Times reported on Bragg’s endorsement from a former U.S. attorney in July 2021.
“Preet Bharara, a former United States attorney in Manhattan who supervised Mr. Bragg and endorsed his candidacy, said Mr. Bragg had varied experience as a prosecutor, and that his work on white-collar crime and public corruption cases could come into play in the investigation into Mr. Trump,” the Times read.
Bragg was also promoted to his current office with financial support from left-wing billionaire financier George Soros. The super PAC backed by Soros, Color of Change, pledged to bankroll Bragg’s campaign with a seven-figure sum in the spring of 2021. Soon after the cash infusion, the committee pulled back $500,000 of the donation when Bragg faced allegations of sexual misconduct of his own.
Bragg’s record in New York, meanwhile, has been one of unleashed crime while prosecutors pursue politicized investigations against the most popular Republican in the country. In a Wall Street Journal op-ed last year, Soros admitted to backing candidates who promised to be soft on crime, branded as “reform prosecutors.” Bragg has held up to the pledge by prioritizing Trump instead of dangerous criminals. According to The New York Times, major crime spiked 22 percent during Bragg’s first year in office.
Letitia James
While Bragg pursues criminal charges against the former president, New York Attorney General Letitia James has Trump in civil court on allegations of fraud. In September last year, the attorney general filed a $250 million fraud suit with the state Supreme Court in Manhattan, accusing the former president of inflating corporate assets to obtain financial benefits.
“We found that Mr. Trump, his children, and the corporation used more than 200 false asset valuations over a 10-year period,” said James at a press conference.
James, 65, won in a partial summary judgment a year later, and in October, the trial began after the judge found the Trump family, including Trump himself, liable for fraud. The judge in the case ordered the termination of Trump’s New York business license and will now examine charges by James to determine additional penalties. In October, an appeals court put a hold on the judge’s mandate to dissolve Trump’s business in the state.
The aggressive effort against the Trump family’s New York business empire marks another campaign promise fulfilled by the state attorney general. Similar to Bragg, James ran for office in 2018 on a platform to prosecute the president. When first campaigning for the statewide job five years ago, James railed against the Republican president as “illegitimate” and an “embarrassment.”
“NY Attorney General Letitia James has a long history of fighting Trump and other powerful targets,” headlined an Associated Press profile of James in September.
“Letitia James fixated on Donald Trump as she campaigned for New York attorney general, branding the then-president a ‘con man’ and ‘carnival barker’ and pledging to shine a ‘bright light into every dark corner of his real estate dealings,’” the AP reported. “Five years later, James is on the verge of disrupting Trump’s real estate empire.”
James was reelected last fall just more than a month after she unveiled the $250 million lawsuit against the Trump family. Now James is on the cusp of capturing Trump’s corporate exile from the Empire State.
Arthur Engoron
The state-friendly judge presiding over James’ civil lawsuit against Trump is a Democrat who held the former president in contempt last year over subpoena violations. Arthur Engoron is a judge in the New York Supreme Court’s 1st Judicial District who ran unopposed for the seat in the 2015 general election.
In September, Judge Engoron devalued the former president’s Mar-a-Lago Florida estate from between $426 million and $612 million, as estimated by the Trumps, to a mere $18 and $28 million.
The stunning devaluation stands in contrast to smaller properties at Palm Beach, which sold for far more. Rush Limbaugh’s former residence, for example, sold for $155 million despite a $51 million appraisal. Mar-a-Lago, meanwhile, is the only property at Palm Beach to face the waterfront on both the ocean and the waterway.
Last month, Engoron also implemented a gag order to prevent Trump from even speaking out against the accusations against him. Trump was fined twice over violations of the gag order for a combined $15,000.
Jack Smith
Jack Smith, 54, a veteran prosecutor with years spent at the Justice Department, was appointed last November to lead two of the federal efforts seeking Trump’s conviction. Now special counsel in a pair of cases prosecuting Democrats’ top political opponent, Smith was previously head of the DOJ public integrity unit from 2010 to 2015. Among his most notable cases was the prosecution of former Virginia Republican Gov. Robert McDonnell, whom the Supreme Court exonerated of a bribery conviction in 2016. Smith was also involved in the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) tax scandal targeting conservative nonprofits.
Now Smith is spearheading the federal government’s criminal efforts against Trump regarding classified documents and the events related to the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021. In June, Trump was indicted with 37 counts of mishandling classified information, with three more charges handed down in the case about two months later. Smith indicted Trump with an additional four charges in a separate case this summer over objections to electoral certification, such as Democrats have made for decades.
Tanya Chutkan
Smith’s team at the Justice Department could not have landed a more friendly judge in the government’s Jan. 6 case against Trump than U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan. An activist judge with an obvious animus against the former president and his supporters, the Obama appointee was assigned to preside over the politically fraught Jan. 6 case after building a reputation as “a tough punisher of Capitol rioters.”
“Other judges typically have handed down sentences that are more lenient than those requested by prosecutors,” the AP reported. “Chutkan, however, has matched or exceeded prosecutors’ recommendations in 19 of her 38 sentences. In four of those cases, prosecutors weren’t seeking any jail time at all.”
When Trump complained the federal charges against him amounted to election interference by the DOJ, Chutkan shrugged off the accusations, saying, “That’s how it has to be.” Chutkan previously condemned comparisons between the Capitol turmoil and the far-left riots that characterized the summer of 2020 in other rulings of pro-Trump demonstrators. The fiery riots, she claimed, were actually “the actions of people protesting, mostly peacefully, for civil rights.” Chutkan said comparisons between the two “ignore[] a very real danger that the Jan. 6 riot posed to the foundation of our democracy.”
In September, Chutkan predictably denied Trump’s request to recuse herself from the Jan. 6 trial. In October, Chutkan handed down another gag order to prevent the president from speaking publicly and openly about the case. On Nov. 1, Chutkan handed down an order allowing Smith’s team to conceal evidence from Trump’s attorneys that the DOJ has identified as “classified.”
Fani Willis
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis in Georgia upset a six-term incumbent when she defeated her former boss, Paul Howard, three years ago. Willis, who beat Howard in the primary runoff, carried the general election unopposed after no Republicans qualified for the November contest.
Willis’ investigation of Trump and the former president’s campaign team was one of her first acts in office and will define her legacy. In August, the DA for Fulton County, which covers most of Atlanta, charged Trump with 13 counts related to the former president’s efforts to protest aspects of the 2020 election. The Georgia prosecutor also indicted 18 Trump allies, several of whom have taken plea deals. Trump adviser Jeffrey Clark, however, filed a motion on Oct. 31 to dismiss the “massive and grotesque abuse of prosecutorial power.”
A September report from The Federalist revealed Willis possesses evidence exonerating Georgia’s alternate electors but continues to pursue criminal convictions anyway.
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.
Black voters and activists in Milwaukee are feeling uninspired to vote for President Biden with one year to go before the election, according to a CNN report. Black voters in Milwaukee are feeling uninspired and potentially not motivated to vote for President Biden in advance of 2024, according to a CNN report Friday.
Joanna Brooks, who owns a yoga studio in Glendale, said that the Democratic Party has taken Black voters for granted.
“Black people in general, I think, tend to be pretty loyal to the Democratic Party,” Brooks said. “Sometimes I wonder, just based on how that party has performed thus far for people so far, if they should continue to be.”
Black voters in Milwaukee are feeling uninspired and potentially not motivated to vote for President Biden in advance of 2024, according to a CNN report. (CNN screenshot | Getty Images)
“I hear people saying [that] they’re not gonna vote,” Milwaukee voter Eric Jones said of the 2024 presidential election. “That’s my fear. They see [Biden and former President Donald Trump], and they’re gonna say, ‘Screw it. We’re damned anyways.'”
“When the factories and the manufacturing left, jobs left,” he told CNN. “When jobs leave and opportunities leave, then you have certain things that are domino effects.”
Jones said that the recipe for popularity as a political candidate was simple: “You bring opportunities, you bring jobs, you get votes. Plain and simple.”
When asked who he would choose between Trump and Biden, Devonta Johnson, a canvasser with Black Leaders Organizing for Communities (BLOC), admitted that would be a difficult choice to make.
When asked who he would choose between former President Donald Trump and President Biden, Devonta Johnson, a canvasser with Black Leaders Organizing for Communities, admitted that would be a difficult choice to make. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
Other community and statewide organizers said that the stakes were high for winning the Black vote in Wisconsin.
“There’s no way to win a statewide election that doesn’t run through the Black community,” BLOC executive director Angela Lang said. “What happens in Milwaukee can impact the rest of the state, which ultimately can impact the rest of the country.”
“I don’t want the world the Democrats are offering.”
Based black man gives you the most real straight talk you’ll ever hear about the way Dems are wrecking big cities and how people are getting FED UPpic.twitter.com/tyiRhOg43n
Some Democrats are worried about Black male voter turnout as they campaign for 2024 and argue the party is “failing” to reach Black males and younger Black voters, The Washington Post reported.
Internal party analysis reportedly showed that Black male turnout and younger Black voter turnout were much lower in certain states in the 2022 midterms.
“The Democratic Party has been failing epically at reaching this demographic of Black men — and that’s sad to say,” W. Mondale Robinson, founder of the Black Male Voter Project, told the Post. “Black men are your second-most stable base overwhelmingly, and yet you can’t reach them in a way that makes your work easier.”
IM SICK OF THIS BULL Sh****
A lot of people won’t like this video but I’m tired of holding back. Yes I said what I said. Judge me all you want
WE DONT GIVE A FLYING F*** about President @realDonaldTrump being indicted.
For more Culture, Media, Education, Opinion and channel coverage, visit foxnews.com/media
Fox News’ Hanna Panreck contributed to this report.
Jeffrey Clark is an associate editor for Fox News Digital. He has previously served as a speechwriter for a cabinet secretary and as a Fulbright teacher in South Korea. Jeffrey graduated from the University of Iowa in 2019 with a degree in English and History.
For the past five months, former President Barack Obama has discreetly advised President Joe Biden’s administration on its artificial intelligence strategy (AI), aides for both men told NBC News. At Biden’s request, his former boss has been working in the background, talking with tech companies and meeting with senior West Wing aides via Zoom, with the joint effort culminating in an executive order Biden signed on Monday that sets up some government oversight of AI.
“You have to move fast here, not at normal government pace or normal private-sector pace, because the technology is moving so fast,” White House chief of staff Jeff Zients said, recalling Biden’s words. “We have to move as fast, or ideally faster. And we need to pull every lever we can.”
Aides told NBC it’s the first time the president has asked for Obama’s input on a key policy initiative and he requested it because he and Obama think alike on the matter. The former president’s involvement could also help speed the process, they said.
According to Zients, the current and former presidents see AI as an urgent priority, given the great promise, and potentially catastrophic consequences, attached to it. During a phone call in June, Biden and Obama agreed that the goal should be to maximize the technology while limiting the risk, aides to both men said.
Biden then asked Obama to collaborate with his team to develop a policy that addresses the dangers of AI, while encouraging innovation. Over lunch at the White House, aides said, they agreed they have a “shared vision” and that the federal government should act quickly.
As summer turned into fall, Obama kept in touch regularly with Zients, deputy chief of staff Brue Reed and national security adviser Jake Sullivan to help shape the executive order, Biden and Obama aides told NBC. According to the aides, the two teams communicated about a dozen times, including as the order was finalized prior to Monday’s announcement.
Biden called AI “the most consequential technology of our time” at the executive order signing ceremony on Monday and voiced fears about AI-enabled cyberattacks and AI-formulated bioweapons. If used properly, however, the technology could help develop new pharmaceuticals and lead to breakthroughs in cancer research.
In a statementreleased earlier this week, Obama said he hopes to see more AI-related action from the Biden administration.
“If we want AI to be a force for good, we have to be able to stand for something bigger — not just because it’s the right thing to do, but because it’s the smart thing to do,” he said. “I applaud the Biden administration for taking this important step and hope it’s just the beginning.”
According to NBC, the White House is particularly concerned about the role AI could play in spreading misinformation about elections.
Nicole Wells, a Newsmax general assignment reporter covers news, politics, and culture. She is a National Newspaper Association award-winning journalist.
The United States urged Israel on Friday to ensure more humanitarian aid gets into Gaza and to do more to protect Palestinian civilians, as Israel’s prime minister said there would be no cease-fire in the nearly month-old war until Hamas releases hostages.
The leader of the Iran-backed Hezbollah militant group stoked fears that the conflict could widen by promising more attacks along the Lebanon border.
Israeli troops tightened their encirclement of Gaza City, the focus of their campaign to crush the enclave’s ruling Hamas militants, who launched a brutal attack on Israeli communities that started the war.
But ever since that Oct. 7 assault, there have been concerns the conflict could ignite fighting on other fronts, and Israel and the Iranian-backed militant group Hezbollah have repeatedly traded fire along the Lebanon border.
In his first public speech since the war began, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said his group had “entered the battle” with the past weeks’ unprecedented cross-border fighting. “We will not be limited to this,” he said, suggesting escalation was possible. Still, Nasrallah stopped short of announcing that Hezbollah is fully engaging in the war.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken, on his third trip to Israel since the war began, reiterated U.S. support for Israel in the war, saying it has the right to defend itself. But he said a “humanitarian pause” was needed to boost aid deliveries to Palestinian civilians amid growing alarm over the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
After meeting Blinken, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel “refuses a temporary cease-fire that doesn’t include a return of our hostages,” referring to some 240 people Hamas abducted during its attack. He said Israel was pressing ahead with its military offensive with “all of its power.”
Blinken said there had to be a substantial and immediate increase in humanitarian aid to Gaza, where “we need to do more to protect Palestinian civilians.” Without that, “there are no partners for peace,” he said, adding that it was critical to restore the path toward a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict.
Hezbollah, an ally of Hamas, attacked Israeli military positions in northern Israel with drones, mortar fire and suicide drones on Thursday. The Israeli military said it retaliated with warplanes and helicopter gunships, and spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said civilians were wounded in the Hezbollah attacks.
“We are in a high state of readiness in the north, in a very high state of alert, to respond to any event today and in coming days,” he said.
Blinken said the U.S., which has deployed aircraft carriers and other forces in the eastern Mediterranean, was committed to ensuring that no “second or third front” opens in the conflict, referring to Hezbollah.
In his speech, Nasrallah said his militia is not deterred by U.S. warnings, saying: “Your fleets in the Mediterranean … will not scare us.”
A war with Hezbollah would be devastating for both Israel and Lebanon. Hezbollah is much stronger than Hamas, with an arsenal of some 150,000 rockets and missiles, some believed to be precision-guided weapons capable of striking deep inside Israel.
Israel has promised to unleash vast destruction in Lebanon if all-out war erupts, accusing Hezbollah of hiding its military installation in the midst of residential areas. The two enemies fought an inconclusive monthlong war in 2006. Renewed fighting could also risk drawing Iran, which backs both Hamas and Hezbollah, into the conflict.
More than 9,200 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza so far, mostly women and minors, and more and than 23,000 people have been wounded, the Gaza Health Ministry said, without providing a breakdown between civilians and fighters.
More than 1,400 people have died on the Israeli side, mainly civilians killed during Hamas’ initial attack, when some 240 people were also taken hostage. Some 5,400 have also been injured.
Twenty-four Israeli soldiers have been killed in Gaza since the start of the ground operation. Since the start of the war, seven Israeli soldiers and a civilian have been killed in different incidents along Israel’s border with Lebanon.
As American officials have before, Blinken pledged unwavering support for Israel and its right to defend itself.
“We stand strongly for the proposition that Israel has not only the right but the obligation to defend itself, and to make sure that October 7 should never happen again,” said Blinken, who also plans to visit Amman, Jordan. It follows President Joe Biden’s suggestion for a humanitarian “pause” in the fighting. The aim would be to let in aid for Palestinians and let out more Palestinians who hold foreign passports and wounded.
Around 800 people left Gaza over the past two days — the first time people departed the besieged territory other than four hostages released by Hamas and another rescued by Israeli forces.
Blinken first held talks with Netanyahu behind closed doors before starting wider discussions with the leader and his War Cabinet and meeting with President Isaac Herzog.
More than 3,700 Palestinian children have been killed in 25 days of fighting, according to the Health Ministry in Hamas-run Gaza. Bombardment has driven more than half the territory’s 2.3 million people from their homes. Food, water and fuel are running low under Israel’s siege, and overwhelmed hospitals warn they are on the verge of collapse.
Israel has allowed more than 260 trucks carrying food and medicine into Gaza, but aid workers say it’s not nearly enough. Israeli authorities have refused to allow fuel in, saying Hamas is hoarding fuel for military use and would steal new supplies.
White House national security spokesman John Kirby said the U.S. was not advocating for a general cease-fire but a “temporary, localized” pause.
Israel has not openly responded to Biden’s suggestion. But Netanyahu, who has previously ruled out a cease-fire, said Thursday: “We are advancing. … Nothing will stop us.” He vowed to destroy Hamas rule in the Gaza Strip.
Israel and the U.S. seem to have no clear plan for what would come next if Hamas rule in Gaza is brought down — a key question on Blinken’s agenda during the visit, according to the State Department.
Meanwhile, military officials said Israeli forces have now completely encircled Gaza City, a densely packed cluster of neighborhoods that Israel says is the center of Hamas military infrastructure and includes a vast network of underground tunnels, bunkers and command centers.
Israeli forces are “fighting in a built-up, dense, complex area,” said the military’s chief of staff, Herzi Halevy.
Hagari, the military spokesperson, said Israeli forces were in “face to face” battles with militants, calling in airstrikes and shelling when needed. He said they were inflicting heavy losses on Hamas fighters and destroying their infrastructure with engineering equipment.
Hamas’ military wing said early Friday that its fighters battled Israeli troops in several areas in Gaza and claimed they killed four soldiers on the northern edge of the city of Beit Lahiya. It also claimed to have destroyed several tanks with locally made anti-tank rockets.
Neither the reports from Israel nor Hamas could be independently verified.
Casualties on both sides were expected to rise as Israeli troops advance toward the dense residential neighborhoods of Gaza City. Israel has warned residents to immediately evacuate the Shati refugee camp, which borders Gaza City’s center.
But hundreds of thousands of Palestinians remain in the path of fighting in northern Gaza, despite Israel’s repeated calls for them to flee. Many have crowded into U.N. facilities, hoping for safety.
Still, four U.N. schools-turned-shelter in northern Gaza and Bureij were hit in recent days, killing 24 people, according to Philippe Lazzarini, general-secretary of the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, known as UNRWA.
In the occupied West Bank overnight, Israeli forces killed seven Palestinians in different places and arrested many more, according to the Israeli military and Palestinian health officials.
Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
Our failing public schools don’t need more hard-earned cash from taxpayers. They need a shake-up called education choice. (Photo illustration: damircudic/Getty Images)
A few days ago, I posed two questions to my two young children.
The first question: “What would you think about the government telling us which pediatrician to go to, based on where we live?”
The second: “What if a hailstorm damaged our roof, but we had to choose from a list of government-approved roofers based on where our house is located?”
Both of my children appeared to feel strongly that such scenarios would be wrong. Those are pretty big decisions, and we should get to choose things like that for our own family, my 8-year-old said.
Then I got to the crux of the issue: “What if the government tells you where to go to school simply because of your ZIP code or neighborhood? And what if that school is a place where the students aren’t actually learning how to read, write, or do math well? Or if that school isn’t safe? What if those kids aren’t being prepared for college or employment?”
The point is, even young children innately know that is wrong.
With education reforms being implemented all over the nation, chances are strong that you’re at least somewhat aware of the debate in Texas regarding education choice. A variety of terms are used in this debate—ESAs, vouchers, school choice, and so on. But Facebook memes can’t capture the essence of this issue, and neither can the one-sided, politically motivated emails recently sent out by the Fort Worth Independent School District, one of the largest school districts in Texas.
On Oct. 17, the Fort Worth school district sent out a supposedly impartial email, “to share some insights.” Sadly, the insights were simply political activists’ talking points designed to advocate preserving this failing public school system.
Let me preface my position by sharing that I’m a mother to children who attend schools in the Fort Worth district. My husband and I mostly have been happy with our school and have no intention of removing our children regardless of the outcome of the Texas Legislature’s current special session. Although we are fortunate to be zoned for a good public elementary school, that is sadly not the reality for most Fort Worth families (see school-based student outcomes). That being said, I’m a staunch advocate of education choice and am represented among the 73% of Texas school parents who supporteducation savings accounts, or ESAs.
Although the Fort Worth district’s email proudly asserts that its public schools are held to “high standards of accountability,” the evidence for these standards is lacking. In fact, the most recent data reveals that, districtwide, only 24% of students meet grade-level standards in math, 31% in reading, and a mere 19% in science. Anyone who sees this data knows that these outcomes are unacceptable and that fundamental change is needed.
The story that we’ve been told for years is that Texas public schools simply need more funding. But a look at the data proves that increased funding hasn’t improved student outcomes. Statewide, a 166% increase in funding per student, adjusted for inflation, occurred between 1970 and 2020. However, student outcomes continue declining, and the state of our public schools worsens.
According to the Nation’s Report Card, the proficiency of students in the Fort Worth district has steadily dropped in both math and reading between 2017 and 2022, and that was with higher annual budgets. The solution can’t be to continue increasing funding for another decade or two in the hopes that things eventually will improve. What our public schools need is not an injection of even more hard-earned cash from taxpayers. They need a shake-up of this failing system to make it better. That shake-up is called education choice.
Some of the more common arguments made by opponents of education savings accounts is that ESAs will “take money away from the public schools,” “only benefit the rich,” or “hurt public school education.”
The problem with these either/or fallacies is the availability of research and data from 31 states with some form of school choice, many for 20 years or more. So, what does years’ worth of data from numerous states show happens when parents are given a choice in how to educate their child? Public schools improve and students across all socioeconomic levels achieve substantial gains in academic success, both in the short and long term.
Here are a few examples.
When Florida implemented school choice in 2002, the state ranked 33rd in the nation for outcomes among low-income students. By 2019, Florida had risen to first in the nation.
Similarly, when Indiana implemented school choice in 2002, it was No. 22 in the nation for educating low-income students. By 2019, Indiana had risen to No. 3.
In Washington, D.C., a school choice program resulted in high school graduation rates improving from 70% to 82% of students, according to a 2010 study by the Department of Education.
Other examples abound, and the research is clear: Giving parents the opportunity to choose the educational path that is the best fit for their own child has positive, meaningful, and measurable effects.
The Fort Worth school district’s email assailing education choice encouraged parents by saying that our “voice is crucial in shaping the future of our community’s education system.”
So let my voice be clear as well: Our kids deserve better. We have the opportunity to support legislation that will give children in Texas better opportunities to learn and succeed. Your voice matters, too. Now is the time to stand up and speak out on behalf of our children and for the sake of the future of the great city of Fort Worth and the great state of Texas.
Lindsay Horton, a resident of Fort Worth, Texas, is the mother of three children. Her husband, J.B. Horton, is executive vice president of the Texas Public Policy Foundation.
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Looking for an inspiring and motivating speaker for your pro-life event? Don’t have much to spend on a high-priced speaker costing several thousand dollars? Contact news@lifenews.com about having LifeNews Editor Steven Ertelt speak at your event.
Looking for an inspiring and motivating speaker for your pro-life event? Don’t have much to spend on a high-priced speaker costing several thousand dollars? Contact news@lifenews.com about having LifeNews Editor Steven Ertelt speak at your event.
Comments or questions? Email us at news@lifenews.com. Copyright 2003-2023 LifeNews.com. All rights reserved. For information on advertising or reprinting news from LifeNews.com, email us.
The Woke culture infecting our society today is the direct offspring of the Liberal Democrat party and the radical left. Woke has permeated our government institutions, Universities, and corporate America, Mainly because of the radical left that have become professors in higher learning, brainwashing students to believe it’s okay to mass-murder, rape, and torture innocent people in Israel and attack the Jews in America.
Although many Democrats try to separate themselves from the Wokesters, they are directly responsible for this Diversity-Equity-Inclusion that plants the seed for division and the balkanization of our country.
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.
Talk about bad timing. On Wednesday, the White House announced a “National Strategy to Counter Islamophobia,” the necessity of which, according to awkwardly scripted remarks by Vice President Kamala Harris, is that Muslims endure a disproportionate number of “hate-fueled attacks and other discriminatory incidents.”
Leave it to the Biden White House to pick a moment when a wave of antisemitism is surging across America to announce this. Set aside the dearth of evidence that Muslims face persecution or discrimination in mainstream American society. Last year set a record for anti-Jewish hate crimes, breaking the previous record that was set the year before. Since the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attack on Israel, antisemitism has erupted in our cities and on campuses, this time with the imprimatur and cooperation of the identitarian left. The idea that now is the time to address Islamophobia is so out of touch with the reality of the moment, only the Biden-Harris administration could possibly have come up with it.
But the announcement inadvertently serves to highlight a rather disturbing development in our civic life. At this point, some three weeks removed from the Hamas slaughter of 1,400 Israelis, it’s hard to deny that we have a domestic constituency for Hamas in this country. Generally speaking, it’s comprised of a broad swath of the woke left together with a broad swath of Muslim-Americans, united in what amounts to an unstable Red-Green alliance.
It’s also easy to see that this Hamas constituency is warming up for a season of real violence.
We’ve all seen the recent videos of self-righteous Hamas sympathizers tearing down posters of missing or kidnapped Israeli children. In almost every case, their actions are accompanied by either a defiant callousness or a dead-eyed nonchalance. Pleading with them or interrogating them is pointless, as every person who has tried to do so on camera has quickly discovered. These people are antisemites, and it’s not possible to shame them out of their antisemitism. They own it gladly.
But this week, a different sort of video appeared on social media. A group of Jews in Manhattan’s Upper East Side physically protected a bunch of posters of Israeli child hostages from an antisemite who was trying to tear them down. The man, who of course covered his face with a keffiyeh, tried to force his way through and a scuffle ensued. Eventually, a cop pulled up and appeared to arrest the man as a crowd gathered.
Just happened. 68th and Lex. Jews protecting the posters of Jewish children hostages from being torn down. pic.twitter.com/xIrcdSf9Ne
The incident illustrates the violence lurking just beneath the surface of the antisemitic, pro-Hamas sentiment now manifesting all across the country. The kind of people who are willing to casually rip down posters of children taken hostage by terrorists are not those who have any kind of principled commitment to nonviolence. They might or might not individually be cowards, but they clearly have no problem with violence as such — see, for example, the BLM posters celebrating Hamas paragliders who slaughtered more than 250 Israeli concertgoers on Oct. 7.
This is especially true on our nation’s college campuses. This week at Harvard, whose students have staged some of the most blatant and vile pro-Hamas demonstrations, including straightforward calls for the ethnic cleansing of Jews, a group of keffiyeh-waving students surrounded and then assaulted a Jewish student who was simply trying to get away from them.
Some of these assailants have been identified, like Ibrahim Bharmal, a student at Harvard Law School and an editor at the Harvard Law Review, as well as Elom Tettey-Tamaklo, a student of Harvard Divinity School. That a Harvard law student feels free to harass and assault Jews on campus — the opposite of what we should expect from a student of the law — suggests not only that antisemitism on campus is a real threat to Jewish students but that the pro-Hamas woke left is growing in boldness and is reasonably confident it can target individual Jews on campus with impunity.
Jon Levine called the Harvard assault a LARP pogrom, which is exactly what it was. And as we know from 2020, left-wing riot and assault LARPers eventually get around to the real thing. Indeed, all the elements are falling into place for a season of civic violence of the kind we saw during the summer of 2020. The White House’s ham-fisted campaign against Islamophobia is all the confirmation you need that Jewish Americans, not Muslims, are the ones in real danger right now.
This is something of a pattern on the left. When a dangerous or unstable element in its coalition is revealed as such, the official narrative is to pretend that element is under unique threat from the American mainstream. Look at the media and Democrat reaction to the mass shooting at a Christian school in Nashville back in March. The shooter was Audrey Hale, a 28-year-old woman who identified as a man. She killed three children and three adults before police took her out. Hale was mentally unwell and left behind a kind of trans shooter manifesto, which was suspiciously never released to the public.
In the wake of the shooting, all we heard from the corporate press and Democratic leaders was that transgender Americans were under threat. Not a word about how transgender ideology attracts mentally unstable, unwell people who need help, not affirmation. That was not the conversation they wanted to have, even after the slaughter of six innocent people.
Likewise, we’re going to hear a lot more about how Muslims and left-wing Hamas apologists are the real victims, even as Jewish students suffer escalating attacks, harassment, and threats. Make no mistake, the violent rhetoric you hear at these pro-Hamas rallies, the revolting practice of tearing down posters of Israeli children taken hostage, the targeting of individual Jewish students on campus — it’s all leading somewhere very bad.
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. He is the author of the forthcoming book, Pagan America: the Decline of Christianity and the Dark Age to Come, to be published in March 2024. Follow him on Twitter, @johnddavidson.
A judge has overturned the results of the Democrat primary for the mayoral race in Bridgeport, Connecticut, after viewing compelling evidence of voter fraud. His ruling creates chaos for the general election that is scheduled to take place in just a few days.
On September 12, incumbent Bridgeport Mayor Joe Ganim narrowly edged out challenger John Gomes by a mere 251-vote margin in the Democrat primary. Primary election day ballots favored Gomes, but after absentee ballots were tallied later that evening, Ganim prevailed over Gomes, 4,212 to 3,961.
Within days, the Gomes camp cried foul, posting a video to Facebook that appeared to show Wanda Geter-Pataky, a city employee and a long-standing supporter of Mayor Ganim, stuffing a ballot box outside City Hall with absentee ballots. The Gomes campaign later issued similar allegations against Eneida Martinez, a former city council member who also supports Ganim.
Gomes then filed a lawsuit in Fairfield Judicial District Superior Court to contest the results of the primary election, naming Ganim as well as city clerk Charles Clemons, Bridgeport Democratic registrar of voters Patricia Howard, and Connecticut Secretary of State Stephanie Thomas as defendants.
On Wednesday, Judge William Clark sided with plaintiff Gomes, citing “significant mishandling of ballots by partisans” such as Geter-Pataky and Martinez. In fact, the sheer volume of evidence was “perhaps unprecedented in the State of Connecticut in an election case,” the judge said.
“The evidence here has involved hundreds of applications and ballots, thousands of hours of video of drop boxes, testimony of partisan actors, assertion of privilege against self-incrimination by Ms. Geter-Pataky and Ms. Martinez, and analysis of ballot numbers, particularly in the voting Districts linked to Ms. Geter-Pataky and Ms. Martinez,” Judge Clark wrote in the 37-page ruling.
Mayor Ganim was also called to testify in the case and said he was “shocked” by the evidence, including an 18-minute video of possible absentee ballot fraud committed by his supporters. “Mr. Ganim was … correct to be ‘shocked’ at what he saw on the video clips. … The videos are shocking to the court and should be shocking to all the parties,” Judge Clark concluded.
The judge, however, was not convinced that improperly stamped absentee ballots from the primary election should have been tossed, as Gomes’ attorney, Bill Bloss, had recommended. An assistant town clerk testified that the official stamp with city clerk Charles Clemons’ signature on it had broken, and while Judge Clark indicated that the city should have taken steps to rectify the issue of the broken stamp more quickly, he added that “the court recognizes the practical realities on the ground.”
Though Clark refused to nullify the absentee ballots without Clemons’ stamped signature, he did rule that a new Democratic mayoral primary election was warranted. He then gave attorneys 10 days to confer with state and local officials regarding a new primary election.
While Gomes is celebrating Clark’s ruling as “a victory for the people of Bridgeport,” that victory complicates the general election for Bridgeport mayor scheduled for November 7. Ganim will still be listed as the Democratic nominee on the ballot, while Gomes will be listed as an independent candidate. David Herz will be listed as the Republican.
Lamond Daniels is also running for mayor of Bridgeport, and his campaign website refers to him as a Democrat. It’s unclear what party affiliation he will have on the ballot, if he appears on the ballot at all.
Bloss, Gomes’ attorney, speculated to the CT Examiner that the city will likely host another primary election in December if and only if Mayor Ganim wins re-election. If one of the other candidates prevails in the general election, the city will likely scrap the primary election do-over.
Bloss also suggested that Geter-Pataky and Martinez may even face criminal prosecution at some point. That would hardly be a first for Geter-Pataky. She already will likely face criminal charges for alleged voter fraud in connection with the 2019 Bridgeport mayoral primary race, a race that Ganim barely won after a significant absentee ballot dump late in the evening pushed him over the top.
“I got your back, Mayor,” Geter-Pataky once assured Ganim in a video of a mayoral campaign event.
And Ganim himself, who was first elected Bridgeport mayor in 1991, served seven years in prison for accepting bribes and kickbacks while in office. After he was released, he won his old mayoral seat back in 2015, followed by re-election four years later.
Ganim is still considering whether to appeal Clark’s ruling. In the meantime, he is encouraging local residents to get out the vote in the general election next week.
The following is a video from primary day back in September, before Ganim was declared the winner. Gomes was leading in the vote count at the time this news report aired.
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“Canceling” people who disagree with you over ordinary political issues is bad for civil society. Ruining someone’s life because he wore a MAGA cap or tweeted something stupid or supported the wrong initiative creates an oppressive environment for open discourse.
“Canceling” people who sign petitions and hold up signs that openly celebrate or justify the targeted, brutal murders of women and babies, on the other hand, is good for civil society. Stopping malevolent ideas from being normalized is good. Exercising your First Amendment right to free speech and free association to shun and call out people who spread odious ideas in public life is a moral imperative.
Because people who walk around ripping down posters of kidnapped children and women aren’t pondering the future of a “two-state solution” or the Gazan refugee situation, they are moral degenerates. In the same way you wouldn’t hire the guy who stands in front of Disney World waving around a swastika flag, you shouldn’t hire someone who marches with a sign that reads “from the river to the sea.” Both convey the same sentiment. The ethical line is bright and obvious. If you don’t see it, something is broken in you.
Yet, a bunch of Hamasapologists are calling out conservatives for their alleged hypocrisy on “cancel culture” when it comes to “pro-Palestinian” advocates.
Though I’m not a fan of mobs, I’ve never been a big critic of cancel culture, either. Looking back, I could find only one piece I’ve written on the topic — and it concerned itself with double standards. It’s a slippery term. And there is facet to the debate that’s often overlooked. Americans have no obligation to associate with those who attack their deep-seated values. To hire someone who signs a pro-Hamas petition can be an endorsement of that outlook. Your company is not an open social media platform which exists as a forum for debate, it has a reputation and customers. (Not that I believe the state should be able to compel social media companies to host opinions, either.)
And it’s not as if you asked these people to give you their opinion on genocide. They did so by their own volition. The Harvard petitions blaming Jews for their own murders were signed and released for public consumption. They were released before Israel had even counted the dead, much less invaded Gaza. If law students were celebrating 9/11 on 9/12, would New York firms have a responsibility to provide them with gainful employment? No, they would be rejected in the real world and compelled to get jobs in academia, where such views are welcome.
Of course, the contention that “pro-Palestinian” advocates, or even those who talk about Israel as if it was some authoritarian proto-Nazi state, are being mass canceled is a myth, anyway. They fill the op-ed pages of major newspapers and cable news. They dominate campuses. They aren’t canceled. They are rewarded. When someone like “porn star” Mia Khalifa was “canceled,” it is because she was quite literally rejoicing in the murder of innocent people in real time.
Ibrahim Bharmal, who one suspects is dumber than the average internet prostitute, is the editor of the Harvard Law Review, not some rando trying to wind people up on the internet. He is out there physically and verbally abusing a Jewish student during a pro-Hamas rally on campus like some kind of Brownshirt. Does Harvard have a responsibility to have him on campus? Why should a firm with Jewish partners — or any decent people — hire him?
Harvard, by the way, has assembled a special task force to help students who signed pro-Hamas statements deal with the blowback. Apparently, some people are under the impression they’re the only ones allowed to speak.
The notion that anti-Israel pundits are concerned about double standards, by the way, is risible. You might recall that Harvard rescinded its offer to pro-Second Amendment Parkland kid Kyle Kashuv, ostensibly over things he tweeted as a 16-year-old. No one cared. Today, Georgetown thinks it’s fine to cancel Ilya Shapiro for a single inarticulate tweet, but it will not cancel a professor who complains online about “Zio bitches.” The New York Times cancels an editor for running a column from a sitting senator but hires a writer who praises Hitler (true story).
When I say I’m a free-speech absolutist, I mean it. The state should do absolutely nothing to inhibit or censor pro-Hamas Americans from expressing their opinions. Free speech isn’t contingent on your position. Hate speech is free speech. The government has no business prodding or even suggesting limitations on our rhetorical interactions. Even outside state intervention, we should be upholding the values that promote free expression. We can peacefully coexist with colleagues, neighbors and friends who hold contradictory opinions within the normal parameters of political debate.
Likewise, Americans have a right to use their freedom to call out and disassociate themselves from people who take the side with nihilistic murder cults.
When a tragedy happens, there are inevitably a rush of “how to talk to your children…” articles about how to break down what happened into manageable, kid-appropriate language.
Jews right now are facing a different issue: how not to talk to your kids about what happened on October 7th when it’s all you want to talk about.
How do we move on with life, yell at the kids to put on their shoes or do their homework, while also hugging them too often in our despair for the people whose lives cannot move on.
We are consumed by it. Jews around the world, who don’t know each other, are all posting the same thing. We haven’t slept since that Saturday. We see each other and our eyes are wide saucers, dark circles, full of pain. We refresh the news and absorb new, horrifying, details.
How do we protect our children from our despair and rage but also our fear?
We consider where we can no longer send our Jewish children to college, which countries we can no longer visit. We pass around the familiar stories of Jewish-owned businesses targeted, Jews shouted at, Jews chased, Jews beaten. We parse which friends are suddenly not. We think about which of our neighbors would happily load us on the train.
Pro-Hamas protesters at Harvard surround Jewish student and shout “Shame” “Shame” “Shame” pic.twitter.com/wy4n64KcQ8
My own children are blessedly too young for most of it. They know something bad happened and they know Israel is at war. The eldest, at 13, knows there was an attack in southern Israel where many died, knows hostages were taken but not much else.
I don’t want her to know about the rapes, the details I can’t unknow about the way children who look just like her were killed. In a few years she will be going to music festivals. I don’t want her to live a life of fear, worried that someone is coming to kill her. I don’t want her to know what monsters live on the earth with us and what they are capable of doing.
Our sons are 10 and 7. The eldest boy is a history buff. He knows about historical atrocities. He’s read about torture. But he’s still a baby who calls for me when he’s sick, reaches for me when he’s hurt. I don’t want him knowing that kids were stolen while screaming for their mama, that their parents could not save them. I don’t want him to hear that parents were killed in front of their children and children in front of their parents. And that’s before the truly gruesome particulars. I don’t want him to also not be able to sleep at night thinking of beheaded, burned, baked babies. I want him to believe it when I say I will always protect them, that no one is getting by me. I want to believe it too.
The youngest is too young for any of it. Israel is a faraway land he doesn’t know. He knows he has family there but still can’t quite put together who is related to who. His grandmother’s twin, her husband, her children and grandchildren, we go over the connections to him. He doesn’t know Israel is a safe haven for Jews around the world who are just like him. I’ll tell him, someday, about the hatred and the violence, but when I look at his sweet, innocent face, I think “not yet.”
Not telling them anything is no cure either. Recently a Jewish acquaintance wrote a long piece about how Israel just doesn’t matter to him. I knew before he noted it that his family had been in America since the turn of the last century. Those are always the Jews shrugging their shoulders. They did not experience the Holocaust and they also did not know pogroms in Russia, mass graves in Ukraine, murder and expulsion from Arab states. They have lived ensconced in a safety and security that has simply never been the norm for Jews. So sure, who needs Israel, pass the lox.
🚨 Breaking: Hamas leader Ghazi Hamad says they will repeat October 7-like massacres until Israel is annihilated.
I will have failed as a parent if that is my child. It’s my life goal to not raise my children to feel so blindly privileged. It was the luckiest twist of fate that they were born Jews in America and I will not let them forget that.
I want to tell them the truth, that we’re mostly alone in this world, that most people will not stand up for you. That will include their fellow Jews who had spoken up for others, posted all the right things, but when they see their own comrades are against them, they will quiet and shrink from view until they nearly disappear. Do not count on these Jews. Remember that there are always Jews who imagine they will be killed last. They won’t be. It’s a lesson they never seem to learn.
But if you do life right, there will be people who do reach out to you in bad times like these and offer support. They will pray for you, offer you safety should you need it, say the words to defend you and feel your fear.
I don’t say all this. I tell them for the 5th time to get their cleats on and to put their plate in the sink. I try not to show the darkness I’m feeling. They’ll know it all someday. It can wait.
Karol Markowicz is a columnist for the New York Post and writes frequently for Fox News Opinion. She has also written for Time, USA Today, The Observer, Heat Street, Federalist, Daily Beast and other publications. She is the co-author of the new book, “Stolen Youth: How Radicals Are Erasing Innocence and Indoctrinating a Generation.” Follow her on Twitter @Karol.
Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, took aim at President Joe Biden’s sudden push for a pause to Israel’s military action in Gaza, calling it “obscene.” Cruz was reacting to Biden’s response to a heckler on Wednesday in Minneapolis. A self-proclaimed rabbi interrupted Biden’s speech at a fundraiser and demanded that Biden push Israel for a cease-fire, in response to which Biden said, “I think we need a pause. A pause means give time to get the prisoners out.”
The White House later clarified that Biden meant hostages, not prisoners.
“Obscene,” Cruz posted to X. “Biden poured hundreds of millions of dollars toward Hamas, which then massacred 1,400 Israelis and dozens of Americans. Now he’s pressuring Israel to stand down so Hamas can regroup. He’s even pressuring Israel to send more fuel to the Gaza Strip, which Hamas will seize and use to attack Israel.”
Cruz’s assertion about fuel came amid Israel Defense Forces releasing audio Wednesday of a conversation it says is proof that Hamas is taking gas from hospitals in Gaza.
On Thursday, The Associated Press reported that Secretary of State Antony Blinken will “urge” Israel on Friday to pause military operations in order for aid to get into Gaza and hostages to get out. The Biden administration is going to great lengths to define a “pause” as vastly different than “cease-fire,” but both involve Israel putting a halt to its military operation — something Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed not to do until Hamas is eliminated.
U.S. National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby tried to peddle those semantics last week, but then said multiple pauses over more than one day might be required for aid.
“If that’s what it requires, then we absolutely will try to get such pause or pauses in place.”
Lior Haiat, Israel’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson, said last Friday, “Israel is opposed to a humanitarian pause or cease-fire at this time.”
Five Democratic mayors wrote to President Joe Biden calling for a meeting to discuss the illegal alien crisis their cities are facing. Pictured: Illegal aliens line up outside the Roosevelt Hotel in New York City on Aug. 2. (Photo: Fatih Aktas/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)
Five Democratic mayors have asked President Joe Biden for a meeting to discuss the illegal alien crisis their cities are facing. The mayors of Chicago, Denver, Houston, Los Angeles, and New York City sent a letter to Biden on Saturday “requesting an urgent meeting with you to directly discuss ways we can work with your administration to avoid large numbers of additional asylum seekers being brought to our cities with little to no coordination, support, or resources.”
The mayors, all of whom lead sanctuary cities with the exception of Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner, told the president they need four things. First, they are asking for additional federal funding.
Mayors Brandon Johnson of Chicago, Karen Bass of Los Angeles, Mike Johnston of Denver, and Eric Adams of New York City, and Turner begin the letter by thanking Biden for the $1.4 billion in federal funding for food, shelter, and additional services for illegal aliens. But that’s not enough, according to the Democratic mayors.
“Cities have historically absorbed and integrated new migrants with success, but the challenges brought by the new border arrivals are due not only to the high numbers, but also the diversity of nationalities, the large share arriving as families, and the overwhelming number who seek asylum,” the mayors write. “Given the impact this crisis has had—and continues to have—on state and local budgets, we respectfully advocate for additional funding.”
According to the five Democrats, Denver is spending about $2 million a week on shelter for illegal aliens, New York City has spent more than $1.7 billion, and Chicago has spent more than $320 million.
In order to help the illegal aliens arriving in their cities while still providing services to citizens, the mayors have asked Biden for “$5 billion to cover the expenditures our cities have already incurred and to continue serving the growing number of people arriving in our communities.”
$5 Billion. Hey, I think I have a better plan. SHIP THEM ALL BACK WHERE THEY CAME FROM. That ought a cost a few thousand dollars.
Isn’t it interesting that all these Leftist loves to get in front of a camera, with a microphone, virtue signaling how much they love illegal aliens. However, when it comes actually take care of them, they scream unfair, and “send more money.” SHIP ‘EM BACK AND SEAL THE BORDER!
Additionally, the mayors have asked Biden to “[a]ccelerate approval of work authorization and adjudication for eligible applicants.” Specifically, the leaders are asking Biden to remove barriers to work authorization so applicants can receive approval to work within a 30-day window. Furthermore, the Democrats have asked the president to “increase access to work authorization.”
“Our strong request is that anyone who has arrived in this country and is approved with an Alien Registration Number, or A-Number, has the ability to work,” they write.
Finally, the five mayors have asked Biden to “[a]dopt a collaborative federal approach around coordinated entry.”
The mayors say they are “confident that we could lead a coalition of cities that could identify shared available capacity, welcome newcomers in a way that would set them up for success and relieve the burden on border cities and destination cities receiving far greater numbers than can be supported.”
The mayors of Denver and Chicago met with senior Biden administration officials at the White House on Thursday to discuss the current crisis their cities are facing. Adams, the New York City mayor, was originally slated to attend the meeting, but canceled his trip to Washington unexpectedly Thursday morning.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said the two mayors met with White House Chief of Staff Jeff Zients and senior adviser to the President Tom Perez, along with other officials from the White Houseand the Department of Homeland Security. Jean-Pierre described the meeting as a “constructive conversation.”
This man is proving the point again that a lot of people jump on “band wagons” without knowing what that “band wagon” actually stands for. The mob is usually wrong.
Just when you think that America’s children have been lost in the pits of woke, this happens. Students demanding the school, and district, go back to gender correct bathrooms.
High school students in Loudoun County gathered today to ask the Loudoun County School Board to restore girls only and boys only locker rooms and bathrooms in schools. @7NewsDCpic.twitter.com/EKUj18Hnsf
He should have started the video with a baby puppy with a duck in his mouth to grab the attention of those who don't pay attention. He is wrong on one issue,only a select view voted for this. Stealing an election has… pic.twitter.com/JKgZ2cB0PM
Top Stories • Texas Abortions Drop to Almost 0, Saving Over 5,000 Babies Per Month • House Speaker Mike Johnson Slams FBI for Targeting Pro-Life Americans • Doctor Confirms Abortion Kills Unborn Children and Hurts Women • Speaker Mike Johnson Doesn’t Apologize for Being a Christian: “It’s Who I Am, It’s How I Think”
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Many in the Democrat party think that Biden hasn’t the mental capacity or physical ability to make it through another election but are afraid to let their feelings known publicly. So some are running covert presidential campaigns to be ready for what they feel is the inevitable—people like Gavin Newsom, the governor of California. There are even rumors that Hillary Clinton may be eyeing that spot again, and there are also rumors that Michelle Obama could be entertaining the idea of running in 2024.
There are no limits to what the desperate Democrats will do to keep Trump from becoming president again, going as far as using lawfare and creating multiple frivolous indictments and legal maneuvering to keep him off the ballot. Knowing that Biden isn’t capable of winning the next election, many Democrats are looking at other possible candidates other than Kamala Harris, who most feel is a total train wreck.
So, you have Gavin Newsom, Hillary, and Michelle Obama, waiting around like buzzards for Biden to drop out.
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.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R) responded on Tuesday to liberal critics who have personally attacked him for being an unapologetic Christian. After winning the speakership last week, Johnson told Fox News host Sean Hannity that his Christian faith is central to his personal identity.
“I am a Bible-believing Christian. Someone asked me today in the media, they said, “It’s curious, people are curious. What does Mike Johnson think about any issue under the sun?” I said, “Well, go pick up a Bible off your shelf and read it — that’s my worldview.” That’s what I believe, and so I make no apologies for it.”
The comments set off a flurry of disgusting attacks against Johnson and his faith.
Bill Maher, for example, compared him to the mass killer who murdered 18 people in Lewiston, Maine, last month. MSNBC host Jen Psaki labeled Johnson a “religious fundamentalist” and mocked his faith, while the Daily Beast compared Johnson to the “Taliban and the mullahs in Iran,” claiming Johnson wants to “institutionalize” his Christian faith.
Speaking with Fox News host Kayleigh McEnany, Johnson condemned the personal attacks on his faith as “disgusting” and absurd.”
“Our religion is based on love and acceptance,” Johnson pointed out. “So to compare that worldview with the Taliban, who seek to destroy their enemies, or with, you know, some deranged shooter who murders people is absolutely outrageous.
“And I think everyone who follows and believes in a Judeo-Christian worldview should be just terribly offended by that,” he said.
Johnson acknowledged that character attacks come with his job and said he’s willing to “take the arrows.”
“But what really hurts me,” he continued, “is that it really is a statement about everyone who believes in this that the country was built upon. Our Judeo-Christian foundation is the heritage of our country.”
Importantly, Johnson also dispelled the accusation that he wants to institutionalize Christianity or establish it as the national religion.
“I just wish they would get to know me. I’m not trying to establish Christianity as the national religion or something,” he said.
“If you truly believe in the Bible’s commands and you seek to follow those, it is impossible to be a hateful person, because the greatest command in the Bible is that you love God with everything you have and you love your neighbor as yourself.”
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Joe Biden received $40,000 from Chinese communists, funneled through his son and brother and their businesses, House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer revealed Wednesday morning.
“Where’s the money?,” President Joe Biden quipped over the summer when asked by a reporter to comment on the House’s investigation into the bribery scandal swirling around his family. Comer continues to answer that question for the country, with a press release and video detailing the House Oversight Committee’s latest discovery from subpoenaed bank records that establish Joe Biden directly profited from his family’s influence-peddling.
A 12-page memorandum from the Oversight Committee’s staff to the majority members of the committee, which The Federalist has reviewed, details the latest development Comer summarized in his video and press release. The bottom line is a $40,000 check from Sara and James Biden’s personal checking account written to Joe Biden on Sept. 3, 2017, claiming to represent a “loan repayment.” But following that money upstream reveals it originated from the Chinese “business” partners Hunter Biden had threatened a little over a month earlier in a WhatsApp message.
Hunter Biden had sent that WhatsApp message on July 30, 2017, to Raymond Zhao, an associate of CEFC, the Chinese energy giant Hunter and James Biden began courting in 2016, while Joe Biden was vice president. After Joe Biden left office at the end of the Obama administration, according to one of Hunter Biden’s business partners, the Chinese communist-connected CEFC sent them a $3 million wire in March of 2017 as a “thank you” for the Bidens’ assistance in furthering their business interests.
But CEFC had committed to investing another $10 million, which an email recovered from Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop indicated would be used to form a joint venture. CEFC’s founder and chairman, Ye Jianming, was to hold 50 percent interest in the company, and Hunter Biden, Jim Biden, and some of their business associates would hold the other 50 percent. That email noted Hunter Biden would own a 10 percent interest in the holding company for “the big guy,” a moniker used for Joe Biden.
However, as of the end of July 2017, the $10 million cash infusion had yet to materialize, prompting Hunter Biden to text Zhao on WhatsApp, telling him to “Please have the director call me- not James or Tony or Jim- have him call me tonight,” with the “director” being an apparent reference to the executive director of CEFC, and James and Tony being business partners, along with Jim Biden. The text continued:
I am sitting here with my father and we would like to understand why the commitment made has not been fulfilled. I am very concerned that the Chairman has either changed his mind and broken our deal without telling me or that he is unaware of the promises and assurances that have been made have not been kept. Tell the director that I would like to resolve this now before it gets out of hand. And now means tonight. And Z if I get a call or text from anyone involved in this other than you, Zhang (sic) or the Chairman I will make certain that between the man sitting next to me and every person he knows and my ability to forever hold a grudge that you will regret not following my direction. All too often people mistake kindness for weakness — and all too often I am standing over top of them saying I warned you. From this moment until whenever he reaches me. It I [sic] 9:45 AM here and i assume 9:45 PM there so his night is running out.
The Oversight Committee memorandum then detailed how in a WhatsApp message on July 31, 2017, Zhao responded, “CEFC is willing to cooperate with the family.” Hunter later followed up with a text to another CEFC associate, Gongwen Dong, stating, “The Biden’s [sic] are the best I know at doing exactly what the Chairman wants from this partnershipn [sic]. Please let’s not quibble over peanuts.”
The money soon began flowing, with Hunter Biden first opening a bank account on Aug. 3, 2017, for a new company, Hudson West III, which would serve as the joint venture between Hunter Biden and CEFC’s Gongwen Dong. Hunter Biden’s business, Owasco P.C., owned 50 percent of Hudson West III, and Dong’s company, Hudson West V, owned the other 50 percent.
On Aug. 8, 2017, financial records show Hunter Biden’s new business venture with CEFC received a $5 million wire from the CEFC-connected business Northern International Capital. That same day, Hunter Biden transferred $400,000 out of Hudson West III and into his corporation, Owasco P.C. From those funds, Hunter purchased a Porsche and transferred funds to other of his personal or business accounts.
Then on Aug. 14, 2017, Hunter Biden wired $150,000 from his Owasco account to the Lion Hall Group — the company owned by James and Sara Biden. Two weeks later, Sara Biden “signed a withdrawal ticket for $50,000 from the Lion Hall Group bank account,” and on the same day deposited that $50,000 into her and James’ joint personal checking account. Soon after, on Sept. 3, 2017, Sara Biden signed the $40,000 check payable to Joe Biden.
The House Oversight staff memorandum provides a clear narrative of these transactions and copies of the relevant bank records. The memorandum also added this graphic to further crystalize the money trail:
Significantly, the House memorandum also established that the $40,000 used to supposedly repay a loan to Joe Biden came solely from funds the communist China-connected CEFC paid to Hunter Biden to “cooperate with the family.” The House Oversight staff’s memorandum made that point clear by detailing, in addition to the flow of funds from CEFC to Joe Biden, the balances in the various accounts prior to the receipt of those funds.
For instance, before Sara Biden transferred $50,000 into their personal checking account from which they paid Joe Biden $40,000, their balance was $46.88. And before Hunter Biden transferred the $150,000 into the Lion Hall Group bank account, that account showed a balance of $1,964.62.
So, whether James and Sara Biden actually owed Joe Biden $40,000 is irrelevant because the money they used to repay the supposed loan came from the Chinese company that Hunter and James groomed to serve as the family cash cow during Joe Biden’s vice presidency. And CEFC only provided that capital after Hunter Biden — saying he and his father were sitting there trying to understand why the promised $10 million hadn’t yet materialized — threatened their Chinese counterparts.
It’s also interesting to note that the $40,000 Joe “the Big Guy” Biden received was exactly 10 percent of the $400,000 Hunter Biden received from CEFC.
With Wednesday’s release of a copy of the $40,000 check paid to Joe Biden, Comer has provided two examples of the now-president directly benefitting from his son and brother’s selling of his political influence. Earlier this month, Comer released evidence establishing James Biden paid Joe $200,000 in funds the president’s brother obtained from the since-bankrupted Americore.
Wednesday’s news, however, proves even more scandalous because the funds originated from individuals connected to the Chinese Communist Party who first partnered with Hunter and James Biden while Joe Biden was vice president — and the payment followed Hunter Biden’s threatening text message, which invoked his father’s name (and presence) and warned of his wrath.
But to Joe Biden apologists, this will likely remain “no evidence” of corruption.
This article has been updated since publication.
Margot Cleveland is an investigative journalist and legal analyst and serves as The Federalist’s senior legal correspondent. Margot’s work has been published at The Wall Street Journal, The American Spectator, the New Criterion (forthcoming), National Review Online, Townhall.com, the Daily Signal, USA Today, and the Detroit Free Press. She is also a regular guest on nationally syndicated radio programs and on Fox News, Fox Business, and Newsmax. Cleveland is a lawyer and a graduate of the Notre Dame Law School, where she earned the Hoynes Prive—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. Cleveland is also of counsel for the New Civil Liberties Alliance. Cleveland is on Twitter at @ProfMJCleveland where you can read more about her greatest accomplishments—her dear husband and dear son. The views expressed here are those of Cleveland in her private capacity.
Three weeks after Hamas brutally murdered more than 1,400 Israelis and two dozen Americans during a sneak attack, Southern Poverty Law Center President and CEO Margaret Huang published a 779-word statement lamenting “all acts of hate violence” in the Israel-Hamas war. A few days later, the activist group that made a brand out of tarnishing organizations with Christian missions or conservative ties covertly edited the statement to modify language that insinuated Israel intentionally attacked children in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip. In her statement posted on Oct. 28, Huang acknowledged that “Hamas led an unconscionable attack against Israeli civilians, killing more than 1,000 people and kidnapping hundreds,” but couched the SPLC’s response by condemning Israel’s retaliation against the terrorists.
“The tragedy has only continued as Palestinian civilians in Gaza — many of whom are children — have been killed by airstrikes and cut off from food, clean water, medical care and life-saving supplies,” Huang wrote. “It is a humanitarian crisis of unspeakable proportions that has already left thousands dead. Our hearts are with all those who are suffering.”
An earlier version of Huang’s words, Daily Signal Managing Editor Tyler O’Neil reported, suggested that children in Gaza were “targeted” by Israel.
Instead, Huang reiterated that “we reject any attempt to prejudice or persecute communities pushed to the margins.”
The leftist organization claims to “monitor hate groups and other extremists throughout the United States,” including many of which it says are “far right” antisemitic organizations.
Huang, however, hardly mentioned the rising antisemitism Jews all around the world faced after Hamas’ attack. Instead, she joined her concern about “a dramatic increase in the targeting of Jewish” communities with her worries that “Muslim communities” are also suffering.
The SPLC statement also claimed to “denounce all acts of terrorism.” Still, it invoked language such as “ongoing systemic injustice,” which pro-Hamas demonstrators and Palestine activists have used for years to scrutinize Israel, to describe the ongoing Middle East conflict. SPLC previously refused to tell The Federalist whether it had plans to designate the left-wing organizations like Black Lives Matter and Democratic Socialists of America that responded positively to Hamas’ massacre in Israel as “hate groups.”
It was also minimized by the fact that the SPLC Union flatly accused Israel of genocide last week, in a statement which went publicly unpunished or condemned by the SPLC, and a lead attorney for the organization allegedly participated in the pro-Palestine takeover on Capitol Hill.
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.
Architects of Barack Obama’s 2015 Iran giveaway deserve plenty of blame for empowering terrorist proxies throughout the Middle East, including the one that murdered 1,400 Jews — over 30 Americans. At this point in history, they should have nothing to do with our Israel policy.
And yet, welcome our new ambassador to the Jewish State, Jack Lew.
Sen. Ben Cardin, the Chair of the Senate Foreign Relations, ludicrously claimed during Lew’s confirmation hearing that the former Treasury Secretary was “eminently qualified to serve in this post. He has extensive experience.”
Lew’s only experience in foreign policy is championing pro-Iran policies. During the Iran deal debate, Lew predicted the giveaway “will make our country safer, it will make our allies safer, and it will make the world safer.” Not once, in his Washington Institute speech praising Obama’s foreign policy, incidentally, did Lew mention the word “Israel.” What the deal — and subsequent support for Iran — did was reward the Revolutionary Guard for murdering around 600 Americans in Iraq and incentivize that regime to take more American hostages.
Our allies certainly aren’t any safer. Israel not only has to deal with Iran-funded Hamas but also the Iran-funded Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Iran-funded Houthis in Yemen and Iran-funded Islamic terror groups still operating within Judea and Samaria.
The Obama administration, which refused to show any solidarity with the Green Revolutionaries, rarely had a bad word to say about Iran. Not so Israel. Because of his Jewish background, Lew was recruited by the administration to publicly rebuke duly elected Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for being critical of the deal. It was “beyond the pale,” said Lew in 2015, the man now being sent to pressure that same man into letting Hamas off the hook.
Then again, it should not be forgotten that Lew went above and beyond for Iran. As Treasury Secretary, he oversaw the $400 million “pallets of cash” transfer to the mullahs (we later learned it was much worse.) For over 37 years, through five administrations, both Democrat and Republican, the United States’ position was that those funds were not “Iran’s money.” Yet, rather than handing the funds to the families of American terror victims who were still owed $53 billion in court decisions against the terror state, Lew sent it to Ali Khamenei.
It got worse. After telling Congress that the mullahs wouldn’t be granted access to the American financial system, Lew secretly helped Iranians convert nearly $6 billion into dollars and then euros. (Apparently, Iran likes their blood money in $6 billion cuts.)
There was no stipulation in the Iran deal compelling the United States to license the exchange of mullah blood money in American banks. But, as usual, Lew lied. “Since Iran has kept its end of the deal, it is our responsibility to uphold ours, in both letter and spirit,” he said in 2016, without explaining how the transaction was legal. Iran, of course, hadn’t upheld its end of the deal. Nor was it in the “spirit” of the deal to covertly circumvent sanctions that were intentionally left standing. Though to be fair, Lew does know a thing or two about shady banking.
In 2006, Lew had parlayed his Clinton-era administration experience into a job heading up a Citigroup hedge fund that bet against the housing market. And still, somehow, under Lew, the fund lost nearly all its value. More than 50,000 employees at Citigroup were fired. For all his good work, however, Lew was cut a $940,000 bonus check right after Washington gave his company a $301 billion federal guarantee taxpayer-funded bailout and right before he became Budget Director for Obama.
Now, “Lew will have to take up Washington’s call to protect civilians in Gaza amid the widening human suffering,” according to CNN. Indeed, the myth that Israel isn’t engaged in a proportional response and hasn’t gone out of its way to warn Arab civilians to get out of the way is a kind of blood libel Democrats like to engage in to placate its pro-Hamas wing. Lew will likely incentivize Hamas to use more civilians as shields, as he did Iran, since it is obviously an effective tactic.
Virtually every instinct of the contemporary Democrat about this conflict has been disastrously wrong. And few of them have been more wrong than Lew.
The Israeli military reported additional casualties inside the Gaza Strip as the Israel-Hamas war enters its 26th day. Israeli forces entered the second stage of their war with Hamas in what is expected to be a lengthy military operation. Until this week, Israel had largely relied on airstrikes and artillery to retaliate against Hamas’ massacre in Israel on Oct. 7. More than 9,900 people have been killed in the war on both sides since the Oct. 7 Hamas terror attack.
Israel has entered its fourth week of war against Hamas after the terrorist group infiltrated the country on October 7, firing thousands of rockets at residential areas and butchering civilians
As many as 9,900 people have been killed in the war on both sides, including at least 1,400 Israeli civilians and soldiers and 35 Americans. The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry claims 8,525 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza and 111 in the West Bank. At least 10 Americans are feared to be among the 240 people held captive by Hamas
Israel has greatly expanded its ground operations in Gaza over the weekend, marking a new stage in the conflict
The first foreign passport holders were permitted to leave Gaza and enter Egypt through the Rafah crossing, although American citizens are still struggling to leave the warzone
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Hamas terrorist gives graphic details about shooting children to Israeli authorities
A Hamas terrorist told an Israel Securities Authority (ISA) official he and another man shot and killed crying children who were inside a safe room, until the sounds could no longer be heard, while acknowledging he entered the house simply to kill.
In a video posted by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) to the social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, the Hamas terrorist is seen wearing prison garb while sitting in a chair with an Israeli flag behind him.
The unnamed man tells the ISA official, who cannot be seen in the video, that he and other members of Hamas entered a house through the window. While checking the house, he told the official, they heard sounds of young children in the safe room and shot at the safe room.
Israel Defense Forces (IDF) spokesman Doron Spielman appeared on “America Reports” to discuss recent Israeli strikes against Hamas, as the war between the two militaries continues.
Host Sandra Smith asked Spielman about a recent attack that killed a Hamas commander in the Jabalia refugee camp, but also several civilians in the process.
“This was a pinpointed strike against the Hamas commander that has been controlling and commanding the anti-tank warfare unit in the Gaza Strip, which they’ve been employing both in the Gaza Strip, towards our tanks, towards people, towards our soldiers,” Spielman explained. “In fact, one of those did result in some of the deaths that we experienced. He was a senior commander and he is confirmed dead, along with a number of other terrorists that were with him.”
The official also explained that Hamas terrorists have been fleeing into civilian areas amid the fighting.
“They are fleeing, I can tell you, into underground bunkers,” Spielman said. “We see them inside of medical clinics, inside of schools. They go in, you open the doors, you can’t find anybody. You walk a few feet in, you pull up a hatch and they’re underneath the ground.”
“They are so embedded within the civilian structures,” he added.
Israel-Hamas war: 5 American aid workers leave Gaza for Egypt
Foreign passport holders board a bus after arriving in the Egyptian part of the Rafah border crossing with the Gaza Strip on November 1, 2023. (Photo by AFP via Getty Images)
Fox News has learned that 5 Americans are part of the civilian group that left Gaza for Egypt on Tuesday.
The evacuation was conducted with the help of the Special Operations Association of America, which worked with the U.S. State Department.
The Americans were all aid workers, part of a group of around 30. The other 25 workers had different nationalities.
The civilians departed through the Rafah crossing after a deal was struck between Egyptian and Palestinian authorities, amid Israel’s blockade of the Gaza Strip.
Israeli Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant says Hamas has two options: ‘Die or surrender’
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant speak during a press conference in Tel Aviv, Israel on October 25, 2023. (Photo by Elad Malka (IMoD)/Handout/Anadolu via Getty Images)
Israeli Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant released a statement on civilian losses in Gaza amid the Israeli military’s war against Hamas terrorists.
The statement was released as the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) continues airstriking the Jabalia refugee camp for the second day in a row, killing an unknown number of Palestinians.
“The IDF is advancing on the way to defeating Hamas,” the official said. “War has a heavy price, I share in the sorrow of the families who lost their loved ones in the hard battles in Gaza City.”
In the press release, Gallant also referenced Israel’s determination to secure victory over Hamas.
“We are determined to win. The enemy has only two options: die or surrender unconditionally – there is no third option,” the statement read. “The arena of the war is wider, we are on the attack in the Gaza Strip area, but we are defending in the north and are prepared in additional fronts.”
“We are at the forefront of the free world against a world of darkness and all evil,” Gallant concluded. “We must win.”
Fox News Digital’s Yael Rotem-Kuriel contributed to this report.
Hamas official vows to attack Israelis ‘again and again’ until Israel is destroyed
Hamas Spokesman Ghazi Hamad speaks on May 23, 2021 in Gaza City, Gaza. (Photo by Laurent Van der Stockt/Getty Images)
Hamas official Ghazi Hamad said in an interview that Hamas will repeat terrorist attacks against Israel “again and again” until the Jewish nation is destroyed.
“Israel is a country that has no place on our land,” Hamad argued. “We must remove that country, because it constitutes a security, military, and political catastrophe to the Arab and Islamic nation, and must be finished. We are not ashamed to say this, with full force.”
The official argued that Hamas was willing to repeat the attacks until they achieved victory, calling Palestine “a nation of martyrs.”
“We must teach Israel a lesson, and we will do this again and again,” he explained. “The Al-Aqsa Flood is just the first time, and there will be a second, a third, a fourth, because we have the determination, the resolve, and the capabilities to fight. Will we have to pay a price? Yes, and we are ready to pay it. We are called a nation of martyrs, and we are proud to sacrifice martyrs.”
“We are the victims of the occupation. Period,” Hamad added. “Therefore, nobody should blame us for the things we do. On October 7, October 10, October 1,000,000 – everything we do is justified.”
Hamas took power in the Gaza Strip after winning elections in 2006, a year after Israeli occupation of Gaza ended.
Palestinian official says Gaza’s only cancer hospital is inoperable, faces fuel shortage
This picture taken on April 22, 2021 shows a general view of nurses and patients at the COVID-19 coronavirus intensive care unit , at the Turkish-Palestinian Friendship Hospital in Gaza City. (Photo by Emmanuel DUNAND / AFP)
The only hospital in the Gaza Strip that treats cancer patients has reportedly gone out of service Wednesday after running out of fuel.
The development surrounding the Turkish-Palestinian Friendship Hospital now means 16 out of the 35 hospitals in Gaza are not operating, Reuters is reporting, citing Palestinian Health Minister Mai al-Kaila.
“The lives of 70 cancer patients inside the hospital are seriously threatened,” she was quoted by the news agency as saying. “The number of cancer patients in the Gaza Strip is about 2,000 living in catastrophic health conditions as a result of the ongoing Israeli aggression on the Strip and the displacement of a large number.”
The Israeli government has maintained a blockade over Gaza in response to terrorist attacks from Hamas fighters, who have launched around 8,000 rockets since the war began.
Jordan recalls ambassador from Israel in protest of war in Gaza
Seen on a large screen the King of Jordan Abdullah II attends the International Peace Summit hosted by the Egyptian president in the New Administrative Capital (NAC), about 45 kilometres east of Cairo, on October 21, 2023, amid the ongoing battles between Israel and the Palestinian group Hamas. (Photo by KHALED DESOUKI/AFP via Getty Images)
Jordan recalled its ambassador from Israel in protest of the “humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza.
Jordan’s deputy prime minister, Ayman al-Safadi, who is also the foreign minister, said the return of the ambassadors is linked to Israel “stopping its war on Gaza … and the humanitarian catastrophe it is causing.”
Jordan signed a peace deal with Israel in 1994, the second Arab country after Egypt to do so.
King Abdullah II of Jordan has called for peace between Gaza and Israel but said Israeli-Palestinian relations could never be stable without a “two-state solution.”
Such a proposal includes Palestinian people getting their own land and country, which Israel opposes.
“There will be no security, no peace, no stability without just and total peace that comes through a two-state solution,” King Abdullah II told the Jordanian parliament earlier this month, calling for a Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital.
The King of Jordan has also mobilized medical and humanitarian aid teams to the blockaded Gaza Strip through Egypt.
Fox News Digital’s Lawrence Richard and the Associated Press contributed to this update.
Democrats could be split for a ‘generation’ as left tears ‘itself apart over Israel’
The Democratic Party is divided over pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian factions in a major split that may tear the party apart for a “generation,” according to a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed. (Getty Images // Fox News Digital)
The Democratic Party is divided over pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian factions in a major split that may tear the party apart for a “generation,” according to a recent Wall Street Journal report.
Some of the biggest names in progressive and leftist politics are expressing concerns that the Democratic Party is no longer unified as politicians and commentators continue to battle it out in the public square over Israel. The article, headlined “The Left Is Tearing Itself Apart Over Israel,” was published on Tuesday.
“It has been an incredibly clarifying and terrifying moment at the same time for many progressive Jews,” Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt told the WSJ’s Molly Ball. “They’re calling me, tweeting, messaging, expressing shock and sadness that the people they marched with, the causes they marched for, have abandoned them in their hour of need.”
Others were disappointed that the Democratic Party was not doing enough for pro-Palestinian factions.
“If you are Arab-American, Muslim-American or Palestinian, you feel like you don’t matter, you feel invisible,” said Waleed Shahid, former spokesman for the Justice Democrats. “If you are advocating at all that Palestinian and Israeli lives should be treated equally, there’s a feeling that the party doesn’t care about you at all.”
Shahid also pointed to flagging poll numbers for President Biden among “young and minority voters,” according to the story. A recent Gallup poll found that Biden’s “job approval rating among Democrats has tumbled 11 percentage points in the past month to 75%, the worst reading of his presidency from his own party. This drop has pushed his overall approval rating down four points to 37%, matching his personal low.”
“It shouldn’t be that hard to condemn the murder of innocent women and children and seniors, yet many have either said nothing or equivocated,” said Maryland state delegate and congressional candidate Joe Vogel. “We have a serious problem in our party right now.”
Fox News Digital’s Jeffrey Clark contributed to this update.
Biden says American citizens will leave Gaza through Rafah border crossing
RAFAH, GAZA – NOVEMBER 01: Ambulances carrying Palestinians, injured in ongoing Israeli attacks, arrive Rafah border crossing on November 01, 2023 in Gaza. Injured Palestinians are to receive medical treatment in Egyptian hospitals. (Photo by Ashraf Amra/Anadolu via Getty Images)
President Biden on Wednesday said the United States secured safe passage for wounded Palestinians and for foreign nationals to exit Gaza.
“We expect American citizens to exit today, and we expect to see more depart over the coming days,” Biden wrote in a post on X.
He added, “We won’t let up working to get Americans out of Gaza.”
Egypt, Israel and Hamas earlier came to an agreement allowing limited evacuations out of Gaza and into Egypt through the Rafah crossing after Qatar mediated talks.
The deal allows for foreign passport holders and some critically injured Gaza residents to evacuate, though no timeline has been set for how long the crossing will remain open, a source briefed on the deal told Reuters.
Dozens of foreign passport holders reportedly could be seen entering the crossing Wednesday morning in evidence of the deal.
The negotiations came as the Israeli military has been carrying out the second stage of its war against Hamas. The Israel Defense Forces have greatly expanded ground operations in Gaza, clearing Hamas terrorists out of their fortified positions and tunnels.
Military officials have warned that the campaign will be a long and difficult affair. So far, at least 16 Israeli soldiers have been killed in the fighting.
Fox News Digital’s Anders Hagstrom contributed to this update.
Cornell University junior Patrick Dai was arrested on a federal complaint Tuesday for allegedly calling for the deaths of Jewish people online and threatening to shoot up an on-campus dining hall.
The 21-year-old engineering student hails from Pittsford, New York, about 80 miles northwest of the Ithaca campus.
His mother told the New York Post that Dai suffers from “severe depression” and was on the brink of suicide before his arrest.
In a string of disturbing posts on a Greek life message board that was not affiliated with the school, Dai allegedly threatened to “shoot up 104 West,” a campus dining hall that serves kosher food, according to a press release from the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of New York.
The cafeteria is next door to the Cornell Jewish Center, which provides housing for Jewish students.
“In another post, Dai allegedly threatened to ‘stab’ and ‘slit the throat’ of any Jewish males he sees on campus, to rape and throw off a cliff any Jewish females, and to behead any Jewish babies,” the press release says. “In that same post, Dai threatened to ‘bring an assault rifle to campus and shoot all you pig jews.’”
The deranged threats come in the midst of heightened hostilities and a spike in antisemitism on college campuses across the U.S. spurred by the Israel-Hamas War.
Fox News Digital’s Rebecca Rosenberg contributed to this update.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., accused a pro-Israel political action committee (PAC) of being an “extremist organization” that “destabilizes” American democracy.
The leader of the progressive “Squad” attacked the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) on Tuesday night amid Israel’s war with the Palestinian terrorist organization Hamas.
Ocasio-Cortez — who accused Israel of committing “war crimes” last month — accused the pro-Israel PAC of being “racist” and “bigoted” toward lawmakers of color.
Ocasio-Cortez also accused AIPAC of being an “extremist organization that destabilizes US democracy.”
“AIPAC endorsed scores of Jan 6th insurrectionists,” the Democratic Socialist of America (DSA) congresswoman said. “They are no friend to American democracy.”
“They are one of the more racist and bigoted PACs in Congress as well, who disproportionately target members of color,” she continued.
“They are an extremist organization that destabilizes US democracy,” she wrote.
AIPAC responded to Ocasio-Cortez’s post, blasting the democratic socialist congresswoman over her peddling “of the same tired lies [and] spin.”
“[Ocasio-Cortez] and the Squad summed up: People who disagree with us are racist,” AIPAC posted on Wednesday. “AIPAC stands with pro-Israel Democrats and Republicans of all races, genders, and backgrounds who support the US-Israel alliance.”
“And we oppose those who don’t, like you,” the group added.
Fox News Digital’s Houston Keene contributed to this report.
A Florida doctor is offering a helping hand in Israel after his family’s vacation to the Holy Land took a turn for the worst during Hamas’ surprise attacks on Oct. 7.
“It’s been a very chaotic period of time,” Dr. Cory Harow, medical director of the emergency department of West Boca Medical Center, told “FOX & Friends First” on Wednesday.
“This is not something that you plan for. We had a phenomenal family vacation. We were touring, visiting with friends, extended family, and it was all fantastic being together until air raid sirens woke us up October 7th. We padded out into the hallway of our hotel, and the images that we saw on the televisions were just chilling.”
Harow, a dual American and Israeli citizen, joined the IDF while attending Tel Aviv University.
He currently serves in a unit that specializes in battlefield triage, assessing, treating and stabilizing battlefield injuries.
“We’ve been training every year. We meet for one week a year to maintain a high state of readiness. And then we were mobilized on October 7th when the hostilities began in an attempt to save as many battlefield lives as possible,” he explained.
After Hamas terrorists launched their surprise attacks last month, his phone rang, and he confirmed he was in the country and ready for emergency mobilization.
While his family flew back home to the U.S. the next day, he stayed behind to work with first responders to help treat wounded IDF soldiers.
Fox News Digital’s Taylor Penley contributed to this update.
Yale Daily News (YDN) , the independent student newspaper and oldest college daily in the country, retracted editor’s notes that targeted a pair of recent pro-Israel columns after a huge backlash. The editor’s notes took issue with statements in both pieces that “Hamas raped women,” calling them “unsubstantiated claims.”
An Oct. 12 column by Yale student Sahar Tarak titled, “Is Yalies4Palestine a hate group?” was hit with an editor’s note without Tarak’s initial knowledge, reading, “This column has been edited to remove unsubstantiated claims that Hamas raped women and beheaded men.”
Another column published on Oct. 13, titled “Stop justifying terrorism,” similarly accused the terror group of raping women during the Oct. 7 attack on Israel and also had an editor’s note added.
“The News was wrong to publish the corrections,” the newspaper later wrote on Tuesday. “By the time of the first correction on Oct. 25, there had been widely reported coverage from outlets such as Reuters publicly verifying that Hamas raped and beheaded Israelis.”
There have been multiple reports that Hamas terrorists committed rape during their rampage. Israel released footage of one captured attacker who said they were given permission to rape the corpse of a girl, according to The Times of Israel. NBC News reported on “signs of rape” in videos of the attack presented to journalists last week. Military forensic teams in Israel also said they found signs of torture and rape among the victims, according to Reuters.
Additionally, Shani Louk, a German-Israeli citizen who was kidnapped by Hamas and paraded unconscious on the back of a truck, as seen in footage of the Oct. 7 massacre, was discovered dead and beheaded, according to Israeli government officials.
The Yale newspaper wrote that it “failed to ensure that the columnists’ statements were properly cited and attributed” during its editing process because “[a]t the time of the columns’ initial publication, those specific forms of violence during Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack were not independently confirmed by the cited source.”
Fox News Digital’s Jeffrey Clark contributed to this update.
The Israel Defense Forces confirmed three more casualties in the Gaza Strip on Wednesday, bringing the total number of soldiers killed in the second phase of the war to 15.
Israel earlier reported that 10 soldiers were killed when hit by an anti-tank guided missile while operating in the northern part of the Gaza Strip.
Israeli forces entered the second stage of their war with Hamas in what is expected to be a lengthy military operation. Until this week, Israel had largely relied on airstrikes and artillery to retaliate against Hamas’ massacre in Israel on Oct. 7.
Military officials have warned that the war will be long and difficult, potentially spanning months or longer.
The IDF began expanded ground operations this week and ground troops are now tasked with clearing out a complex network of Hamas tunnels and other fortified strongholds. IDF says it has attacked 11,000 targets in Gaza Strip since Oct. 7.
More than 320 soldiers have been killed since the start of the war, many in the initial Oct. 7 attack.
Fox News’ Thomas Ferraro contributed to this update.
A sophomore Yale student whose pro-Israel column published in the Yale Daily News was edited without her knowledge spoke out on Tuesday.
An Oct. 12 column by Sahar Tarak titled, “Is Yalies4Palestine a hate group?” was hit with an editor’s note on Oct. 25, reading, “This column has been edited to remove unsubstantiated claims that Hamas raped women and beheaded men.”
Tartak wrote in an op-ed in the Washington Free Beacon this week about how the Yale Daily News, the university’s independent student newspaper, edited a section referring to Hamas’ atrocities in their terrorist attack against Israel.
Tartak said she found out about the edits over the weekend. “The Yale Daily News editor in chief told me that at the time my piece was published—five days after Hamas carried out a pogrom reminiscent of the bloodiest 19th-century atrocities—’there was swirling unsubstantiation [sic] of the rape and beheading claims,'” she wrote, while pointing to several sources substantiating the allegations.
She also reported that another column by a friend, titled “Stop justifying terrorism,” was updated by the Yale Daily News without the author’s knowledge to include a similar editor’s note that read, “This column has been edited to remove unsubstantiated claims of rape.”
But Tartak said, “Yale Daily News editors are not such sticklers when it comes to lobbing accusations at the Jewish state,” in reference to other anti-Israel op-eds they published.
She warned about “history repeating itself” and how the attitudes of Yale students on campus reverberate into the greater media ecosystem when they graduate.
“I wish I could write off my classmates’ foibles as youthful stupidity, but I see professional journalists making the same mistakes. It’s not an accident: The Yale Daily News is their breeding ground, and in a few years, the editors who wrote and approved that correction will go on to careers in the mainstream press, which is chock-full of Yale Daily News editors and reporters. Take the New York Times, where the author of the flagship daily newsletter, the paper’s diplomatic and Supreme Court correspondents, and the host of the paper’s hit podcast The Daily are all Yale Daily News alumni,” she wrote.
“This pipeline is full of sewage, and it shows. The Yale Daily News is now a home for modern-day Holocaust denial, where brutalizing Jews does not need to be justified. It’s just denied outright,” Tartak concluded.
Fox News Digital’s Hanna Panreck and Alexa Moutevelis contributed to this update.
Heads of Israeli universities sent a letter to colleagues around the world expressing concern about rampant antisemitism on some college campuses after the bloody Oct. 7 Hamas terror attacks.
The Association of University Heads in Israel also criticized the failure of academic leaders to clamp down on antisemitism on their campuses amid the Israel-Hamas war.
“It’s unsettling to note that many college campuses have become breeding grounds for anti-Israel and antisemitic sentiments, largely fueled by a naïve and biased understanding of the conflict,” the letter said, according to the Associated Press.
“Freedom of speech is a cornerstone of academic freedom, but it should not be manipulated to legitimize hate speech or to justify violence.”
At campuses across the U.S., anti-Israel protesters have organized massive demonstrations since the Hamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7. The surge in incidents has been paired with antisemitic rhetoric and violence against Jews, leaving many students feeling unsafe and fearful of attending class.
Fox News Digital’s Madeline Coggins and the Associated Press contributed to this update.
Cornell Jewish students described still feeling “terrified” after threats from a self-identified “Hamas fighter” led to the arrest of a suspect from the student body in interviews with Fox News Digital.
On Tuesday, the Department of Justice announced it had a suspect – 21-year-old Patrick Dai –, who is a junior at Cornell, in custody for allegedly posting about threatening to “stab” and “slit the throat” of Jewish males, to “rape” Jewish women and throw them off a cliff and to behead any Jewish babies, according to its press release. Court documents show numerous posts allegedly made by Dai, where he allegedly used usernames like “Hamas fighter,” “jew evil” and “glorious Hamas”
“It’s both scary and sad that a member of our own campus community could be so hateful… To see that a student believes and was willing to make comments such as these shows that Jew-hatred can be anywhere and everywhere, even among our fellow students,” said Cornell student Netanel Shapira. He added it was “scary to think that people around you, especially… at an Ivy League school people take pride in… being well-educated and knowing the facts of what’s going on, and [are] believing in that… Just no words.”
Another student, Amanda Silberstein, criticized the university’s professors for peddling what she believed was propaganda against Israel in response to the arrest. She said it was “terrifying to be on campus right now.”
“Upon discovering that the suspect was, in fact, a fellow student at Cornell, rather than an anonymous individual unaffiliated with the university, the situation took on a heightened sense of reality,” said Amanda Silberstein.
“It’s a stark acknowledgment that harmful ideologies and antisemitic rhetoric persist and spread. This includes the propagation of untruths, the denial of atrocities, the tolerance of hate speech under the guise of free speech, the repetition of propaganda by some professors, and the falsehood that anti-Zionism is anything other than a form of hatred against the Jewish community,” she continued.
Cornell did not immediately respond to a request for comment regarding Silberstein’s opinion of the “propaganda.”
Fox News Digital’s Hannah Grossman contributed to this update.
On October 7, Hamas launched a multi-pronged terror attack on multiple Israeli army bases, civilian communities and a music festival. The Hamas paragliders who murdered teens and young adults at the music festival have been touted by some as a symbol of the attack, such as the Chicago Black Lives Matter chapter, which posted a graphic of a paraglider with the Palestinian flag that read “I Stand With Palestine.”
After asking about the prospect of revoking visas from foreign students calling for the destruction of Israel and Jewish people, Hawley read one such social media post and asked for Mayorkas’ opinion on the rhetoric.
“What about people who say things like, on October the seventh, ‘F Israel’ — I’m cleaning up the language here — ‘F Israel, the government and its military, are you ready for your downfall?’ People who say things like, ‘F Israel and any Jew who supports Israel. May your conscience haunt your dreams until your last breath. Palestine will be free one day. F apartheid Israel,’ This is pretty extreme rhetoric, don’t you think?”
After Mayorkas argued there is a distinction between “espousing or endorsing terrorist ideology and speech that is odious,” Hawley followed with some key details.
“This person works for you,” he said, noting the DHS worker in question is “an employee of the Department of Homeland Security who posted these comments on October the seventh.”
He went on, “That’s not all she posted,” noting the department employee also posted a “fake graphic” depicting a “Hamas paraglider” armed with a machine gun and flying into Israel.
Hawley noted that this employee posted it with the celebratory caption, “Free PALESTINE.”
Hawley addressed Mayorkas and asked if this “asylum and immigration officer who is posting these, frankly, pro-genocidal slogans and images on the day that Israelis are being slaughtered in their beds” is “typical of people who work for the DHS.”
Mayorkas initially denounced the premise of the question, “Your question to suggest that that is emblematic of the men and women of the Department of Homeland Security is despicable.”
“I’m sorry, this person works for the Department of Homeland Security, have you fired her?” Hawley replied.
Fox News Digital’s Alexander Hall contributed to this update.
Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley said most U.S. companies likely do not want to hire someone who proverbially links arms with a terrorist organization, telling FOX News that those who demonstrate with signs and chants in favor of Hamas should be publicly identified.
Haley said that as a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, she knows that most member nations believe Hamas is a terrorist organization, and that she believes the intergovernmental organization is a farce – and that the ideologically corrupt viewpoints expressed are similar to the reason why she wanted America to split from the World Health Organization during COVID.
“I expected this from the UN, you expect all kinds of ridiculous things at the UN. I fought this battle every day for two years. What I don’t expect is to see what’s happening in our cities and what’s happening on our college campuses, because these protests that we’re seeing,” she told “Hannity.”
“Are you telling me that these professors, these college students, they are supporting a terrorist organization?”
She noted Hamas has murdered at least 33 Americans and taken at least 20 hostage while members of the Palestinian-governing party have chanted “Death to America, and the like.
Haley asked whether the Americans who are demonstrating in favor of Hamas or in agreement with Hamas’ massacre of Israeli civilians therefore also want America to be destroyed.
“If they do, every one of them is dangerous to our country… because that’s what Hamas preaches, is ‘death to America’. So when they get up there, and they hold those signs, or they get upset on why people won’t hire them: it’s because companies don’t want to hire someone who wants to destroy our country,” Haley said.
“That’s why I think every name needs to be … published. Every face needs to be published. And we need to call this out for the hate that it is.”
Fox News Digital’s Charles Creitz contributed to this update.
Israeli mom recounts last call from terrified daughter as group vows to find Hamas hostages
“Mommy, I think I’m going to die,” Romi Gonen, 23, said while shot and bleeding in the back seat of a car during the October 7, 2023 Hamas terror attacks on Israel. Her fate is unknown. Gonen is possibly among the 243 people believed held hostage by Hamas in Gaza. (Courtesy of Bring Them Home Now)
Meirav Gonen listened in real-time terror as her daughter, bleeding in the back seat of a car and fearing death, described by phone the surprise attack by Hamas on a music festival in southern Israel on Oct. 7.
“Mommy, I’m shot. Mommy, I think I’m going to die,” said daughter Romi to her mother during the militant incursion into Israel, as the elder Gonen relayed to Fox News Digital on Tuesday from Tel Aviv.
“I heard her crying very quietly. I heard the shooting all around them,” said the anguished mother.
Gonen does not know the fate of the middle of her five children. But Romi’s best friend, Gaya Halifa, was killed — apparently in the same vehicle.
If Romi Gonen survived, she’s likely one of about 243 people — citizens from up to 20 different countries, including the United States — believed to be kidnapped and held hostage by terrorists in the Palestinian territory of Gaza.
Bring Them Home Now, a grassroots humanitarian movement with international volunteers, is determined to find every one of them.
“We demand the safe return of all citizens who have been taken hostage by the terrorist group Hamas,” the group says on its website, story.bringthemhomenow.net.
“We will not rest until every hostage is released and returns home safely,” the group says.
Fox News Digital’s Kerry J. Byrne contributed to this update.
Iran’s leader says countries should ‘block the flow of oil and food’ to Israel
TEHRAN, IRAN – OCTOBER 25: Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei speaks during a meeting in Tehran, Iran on October 25, 2023. (Photo by Iranian Leader Press Office / Handout/Anadolu via Getty Images)
Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is calling on countries Wednesday to block the flow of food and oil to Israel over its military action against Hamas inside the Gaza Strip.
Khamenei’s remarks to students in Tehran come after he praised the Palestinian terrorist group for launching its Oct. 7 attack in southern Israel.
“What the Islamic governments should insist is an immediate halt to the crimes [the Israelis] are committing in Gaza. The bombardments should immediately stop,” Khamenei was quoted by state media as saying, according to The Associated Press. “They should block the flow of oil and food to the Zionist regime. Islamic governments shouldn’t have economic cooperation with the Zionist regime.”
Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian called on Iran’s Arab-majority neighbors in mid-October to impose an oil embargo on Israel and for nations within the Organization of Islamic Cooperation to expel all Israeli ambassadors.
However, OPEC, the organization of largely Arab nations that overseas oil production in the Middle East, has no plans to impose such an embargo, Reuters reported at the time.
“We are not a political organization,” one OPEC source told Reuters.
Fox News Digital’s Greg Norman and the Associated Press contributed to this update.
Massachusetts family stranded in Gaza speaks out about situation on the ground
The Massachusetts family stranded in Gaza amid the ongoing war between Israeli forces and Hamas terrorists said they continue to struggle to access drinking water, fuel and other resources and are hoping for safety as they await updates from the U.S. government about a possible exit plan.
Abood Okal, Wafa Abuzayda and their 1-year-old son, Yousef, were visiting family in Gaza when Hamas launched its largest attack against Israel on Oct. 7. The family has been in the region since late September, and had intended to return home to Medway, Massachusetts, on Oct. 13 before the violence delayed their plans.
In an audio recording obtained by Fox News Digital, Okal explained that the family ran out of drinking water on Sunday and that a nearby desalination station had run out of fuel needed to power generators. He said they have been roaming the main roads and streets in Rafah City, where they are staying in a single-family home with 40 other people including his sister Haneen and her three kids, in search of trucks or carriages carrying tanks of 1,000 or 2,000 liters of drinking water. Haneen and her children are also Americans.
“We stood in line, I think it was for maybe about two hours, to fill one gallon. They tried to limit the portions, so ours was a gallon. And we’re hoping that would last us for the rest of the day today and for most of tomorrow until we could find another place to get drinking water from,” Okal said in the recording created on Monday.
Israel’s military announced Wednesday that more than 11,000 terrorist targets have now been hit inside the Gaza Strip, while the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) shot down a surface-to-air missile fired from Lebanon at one of its drones.
The Israeli air force said in a series of posts that “During the fighting yesterday, IDF fighters identified many terrorists of the terrorist organization Hamas who had barricaded themselves in a multi-story building in the Jabalia area in the northern Gaza Strip.”
“The building is located near a school, a medical center and government offices. The fighters directed air forces that attacked the terrorists,” it added.
The Israeli air force said as military activity in the Gaza Strip continues “since the beginning of the fighting, the IDF has attacked more than 11,000 targets of the terrorist organizations.”
“In addition, IDF forces identified a vehicle carrying anti-tank missiles as it drove towards the forces operating in the Gaza Strip. Following this, the ground forces directed an aircraft that fired at the vehicle. A hit has been detected,” it also said.
Farther north, the IDF shot down a “surface-to-air missile” fired from Lebanon at an IDF remotely-piloted aircraft, according to the Israeli air force.
“In response, Air Force aircraft attacked the source of the fire from which the missile was launched as well as the squad that carried out the launch,” it said.
Fox News Digital’s Greg Norman contributed to this update.
Bolivia cuts diplomatic ties with Israel while Chile and Colombia recall their ambassadors
Israeli security forces inspect the damage at a residential building after it was hit by a rocket fired from the Gaza Strip, in Ashdod, southern Israel, Tuesday, Oct. 31, 2023. (AP Photo/Ilan Assayag)
Left-wing governments in several South American countries have taken actions against Israel this week, criticizing the reported number of Palestinian deaths in the ongoing war with Hamas.
Bolivia cut diplomatic relations with Israel on Tuesday, accusing the Jewish state of “crimes against humanity.” Meanwhile, Chile and Columbia recalled their ambassadors to Israel and criticized the country’s military offensive against Hamas terrorists.
Bolivian officials cited the number of Palestinian casualties in Gaza that have resulted from the latest Israel-Hamas war, but made no mention of the Hamas attack on Israel at the start of the conflict.
“Bolivia decided to break diplomatic relations with the state of Israel in repudiation and condemnation of the aggressive and disproportionate Israeli military offensive taking place in the Gaza Strip,” Freddy Mamani, Bolivia’s deputy foreign minister, said at a news conference.
Chile recalled its ambassador “in the face of the unacceptable violations of international humanitarian law committed by Israel in the Gaza Strip,” the South American country’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
Neither country mentioned the Oct. 7 attack perpetrated against Israel by Hamas, in which 1,400 Israelis, mostly civilians, were butchered by terrorists.
Columbian President Gustavo Petro also said he was recalling his country’s ambassador to Israel.
The Hamas-led Gaza health ministry claims more than 8,500 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli airstrikes and ground operations since the start of the war. Gaza authorities do not distinguish between civilians and terrorists in their reports, which cannot be independently verified.
Massie clashes with pro-Israel group over opposition to $14B aid package
WASHINGTON, DC – OCTOBER 20: U.S. Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) leaves a closed-door House Republican meeting at the U.S. Capitol on October 20, 2023 in Washington, DC. The House Republican caucus is searching for a new Speaker of the House candidate after Rep. Jim Jordan failed on three separate attempts to achieve a majority of votes in the House of Representatives. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie, a Republican, responded to criticism from a pro-Israel group after he announced he would vote against a $14.3 billion aid package for Israel.
The aid package for Israel, which is backed by most House Republicans, includes allocating $1.2 billion for the development of the Iron Beam defense system and $4 billion for the country’s Iron Dome and David’s Sling defense systems.
“If Congress sends $14.5 billion to Israel, on average we’ll be taking about $100 from every working person in the United States,” Massie wrote Monday on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. “This will be extracted through inflation and taxes. I’m against it.”
The American Israel Public Affairs Committee pointed out that the congressman voted last week with nine progressive Democrats, including Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Jamaal Bowman of New York, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, against a resolution defending Israel’s right to defend itself and condemning Hamas.
Massie responded to the post on Tuesday by saying the AIPAC was “intentionally misrepresenting” his intent in voting against the resolution. The congressman has condemned Hamas’ terror attack against Israel, but said last week he opposed the resolution because it calls for sanctions and “asserts the necessity of foreign aid commitments which I have voted against.”
“AIPAC always gets mad when I put America first. I won’t be voting for their $14+ billion shakedown of American taxpayers either,” he wrote on Tuesday. “Let them know what you think by replying to their post. They are intentionally misrepresenting my intent and the resolution I voted against.”
The group replied, “The U.S. is stronger when Israel is secure. No misrepresentation, your vote says it all: NO to standing with Israel, NO to condemning Hamas, NO to helping Israel win this war.”
A drone attack on a U.S. base in Syria was thwarted on Wednesday, according to a report.
Two drones targeting Syria’s al-Tanf region were disabled or destroyed by the base defense system, an Iraqi government source told Reuters.
The thwarted attack comes as U.S. and Coalition Forces at Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve (CJTF-OIR) installations in Iraq and Syria have been attacked at least 27 times between Oct. 17-31.
Of these attacks, 16 happened in Iraq and 11 took place in Syria. They included a mix of one-way attack drones and rockets.
Most of these attacks were successfully disrupted by military forces and most failed to reach their targets, thanks to robust defenses. One U.S. contractor died as a result of cardiac arrest, when warned of an attack. Several other injuries were reported.
Defense officials have said Iranian-forces are believed to have backed the attacks.
Senior U.S. officials, including President Biden, Vice President Harris and Secretary of State Antony Blinken have discouraged Iran from getting involved. They have also vowed retaliation if U.S. forces are intentionally targeted but have not specified which actions they would take.
The U.S. has deployed carrier group and other forces in the Mediterranean Sea and sent an additional 300 more troops on Wednesday.
Fox News Digital’s Lawrence Richard and Liz Friden contributed to this update.
Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis took issue with President Biden’s tact of sending detachments of U.S. troops to the Middle East amid the Hamas invasion of Israel, saying the numbers of troops are too small to be effective but large enough to be a target of America’s enemies.
While Vice President Kamala Harris recently said the administration has “absolutely no intention” to deploy troops to fight in Israel or Gaza, several hundred have been deployed elsewhere and about 2,000 were reportedly told to prepare for potential deployment earlier this month.
The Pentagon has said there have been 27 attacks against American troops in the Mideast in October.
DeSantis, who is running for president, told FOX News on Tuesday that the U.S. taken ineffective actions against Iran – the suspected sponsor of Hamas terror – in that the response to attacks on U.S. servicemembers has been “abysmal.”
“I look at all these attacks that are going against US positions in the Middle East, and it seems like Biden has people there that are effectively sitting ducks,” he said on “Your World.”
“They’re there in probably too small a number to really do a whole lot. But they’re in sufficient numbers where they’re an inviting target.”
Fox News Digital’s Charles Creitz contributed to this update.
An Israeli woman who was taken hostage by Hamas recently told Israeli outlet Ynet that her fellow captives are still alive.
Kibbutz Nir Oz resident Nurit Cooper, 79, was released last week after being kidnapped on October 7. According to an English translation of the Ynet piece, she is “slowly recovering” from the traumatic experience. Cooper’s husband is still in custody of Hamas.
“The abductees are alive,” Cooper is quoted as saying. “Everything must be done to bring them back. I want all the families to be as happy as my family is.”
Cooper’s son told the outlet that her recovery is “not easy at all.”
“She remembers details, but doesn’t always share,” he explained. “She prefers to focus on the future. Father is still kidnapped and she worries about him very much. They were kidnapped together and held together in the same underground room, along with five other kibbutz members.”
“Father must have realized that mother and Yochaved were released,” he added. “The event is very traumatic for her, because the kidnapping was very violent.”
Foreign passport holders were seen entering the Rafah Crossing from Gaza to Egypt Wednesday morning.
These individuals are the first travelers to enter the crossing since the war between Israeli forces and Hamas terrorists began on Oct. 7.
This, after Qatar mediated an agreement between Egypt, Hamas and Israel in coordination with the U.S. to open the Rafah Crossing on Wednesday. The agreement allows foreign passport holders and some critically injured civilians out of Gaza.
It is unclear how long the crossing will remain open.
More than 9,700 people have been killed in Gaza and Israel since Hamas launched its largest attack against Israel in decades on Oct. 7, leading to retaliatory action from Israeli forces. Thousands more have been wounded, and many others have been taken hostage by Hamas and raped, tortured and murdered.
The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.
The Ivy League student who allegedly made threats of a mass shooting and antisemitic violence at Cornell University has been criminally charged.
Court documents show that 21-year-old Patrick Dai, a junior at Cornell has been federally charged in connection with the threats following an investigation by the Joint Terrorism Task Force.
“It is concerning, of course, that the threats came from within the campus. It must be particularly frightening for students to think that someone they sat in class with or socialized with could make such threats,” said William A. Jacobson, a Clinical Professor of Law and Director of the Securities Law Clinic at Cornell Law School. “I hope that there will be a full and transparent investigation of his connections, if any, to any groups or others who may have known of the threats.”
Fox News Digital’s Stepheny Price contributed to this update.
Nearly three dozen U.S. citizens were killed when Hamas terrorists executed a sneak attack on Israel on Oct. 7, according to the U.S. State Department.
“At this time, we can confirm the deaths of 35 U.S. citizens who were killed in the October 7 attacks,” the spokesperson said, adding that an additional U.S. citizen died as a result of continued violence after the attacks.
As far as the number of Americans who have died in Gaza, the State Department spokesperson said they are not aware of any, but information about U.S. fatalities in Gaza is “extremely limited” because of the situation.
“We extend our deepest condolences to the victims and to the families of all those affected,” the spokesperson said on behalf of the department.
Of the 35 U.S. citizens the State Department said have died, 26 have been confirmed.
Fox News’ Lawrence Richard and Greg Wehner contributed to this report.
The Israeli military reported additional casualties inside the Gaza Strip, the day after it said its first two soldiers were killed during its ground invasion against Hamas Tuesday morning, the first such casualties in Gaza since Israel began its ground operations there.
According to Fox News’ Trey Yingst, who is in Israel, Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) were hit by an anti-tank guided missile while operating in the northern part of the strip, leaving at least 10 dead.
Israeli forces entered the second stage of their war with Hamas in what is expected to be a lengthy military operation. Until this week, Israel had largely relied on airstrikes and artillery to retaliate against Hamas’ massacre in Israel on Oct. 7.
Military officials have warned that the war will be long and difficult, potentially spanning months or longer.
The IDF began expanded ground operations this week and ground troops are now tasked with clearing out a complex network of Hamas tunnels and other fortified strongholds. IDF says it has attacked 11,000 targets in Gaza Strip since Oct. 7.
“Combined forces of the IDF attacked many terrorist targets throughout the Gaza Strip during the night, including operational headquarters and squads of Hamas terrorists,” a translated statement from the IDF Wednesday read.
Fox News’ Lawrence Richard and Trey Yingst contributed to this report.
U.S. intelligence agencies virtually disregarded Hamas and other Palestinian terror groups in the years following the 9-11 attacks, The Wall Street Journal reported. Instead, the focus was on leaders of al-Qaida and the Islamic State, according to U.S. officials.
Mainstream media reports in the past several weeks have asked how Israeli and U.S. intelligence failed to discover what Hamas had planned for Oct. 7, when the group’s terrorists attacked Israel. More than 1,400 Israelis have been killed, and more than 200 others were taken to Gaza as hostages. AP reported that the death toll among Palestinians has exceeded 8,000, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.
Current and former U.S. officials said intelligence agencies had a handful of analysts tracking events in the Gaza Strip before the attacks, but the U.S. ceded the responsibility for monitoring Hamas to Israel, the Journal reported Wednesday.
“In terms of intelligence failures, which really do lie mostly on Israel, I think we should also share some blame for missing this event,” Marc Polymeropoulos, a retired CIA operations officer with extensive counterterrorism experience, told the Journal. “Ceding the target to the Israelis now looks to have had consequences.”
Israel’s intelligence services have relied on human intelligence, eavesdropping, and other technical means throughout the West Bank and Gaza.
“It is almost inconceivable how they missed this,” Polymeropoulos told NBC News.
“True intelligence failures result not simply from a lack of information but also an inability to understand it,” Ignatius wrote. “Israelis knew the malevolent hatred that animated Hamas and its backers in Iran. What they didn’t appreciate was the creativity and competence of their adversaries. This was a level of organized malice that was, literally, unthinkable.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in a comment Sunday on X, formerly Twitter, blamed the security failures on the country’s defense and intelligence services. However, he soon deleted the post and apologized. Members of Netanyahu’s Likud party have said Israel needs to focus on defeating Hamas before analyzing what went wrong.
Neither Hamas nor Gaza were mentioned in the U.S. director of national intelligence’s Annual Threat Assessment, which was issued in February.
Jonathan Schanzer, who tracked Hamas as a U.S. Treasury terrorism finance analyst, now is at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. He said the Oct. 7 attacks should prompt a review of U.S. policy toward Iran-backed proxy groups.
“There should be one. If there isn’t, it’s foreign policy malpractice,” Schanzer told the Journal.
The Dao Award seeks to put journalism incentives back where they belong: on courage and accuracy. The Pulitzer Prize seems to have abandoned those values. (Photo: Isabel Pavia/Getty Images)
We’re finally getting an alternative to the Pulitzer Prize, and it couldn’t have come at a better time. The Dao Prize, an annual award that aims to showcase and support investigative journalism, is the result of a partnership between two conservative organizations: the National Journalism Center, created by the Young America’s Foundation, and the Dao Feng & Angela Foundation, a philanthropic grantmaker dedicated to “preserving conservative roots” and “universal values.”
The Dao Prize couldn’t have arrived at a better time, given the state of Pulitzer Prize nominees, finalists, and winners over the past decade.Emily Jashinsky, director of YAF’s National Journalism Center, described the current incentive structure in media as “broken” in a post on X, formerly Twitter:
“Reporters who do amazing work are attacked. Reporters who do garbage work are given Pulitzers. The carrots and sticks are all mixed up. But we can fix that.”
She’s not wrong. It’s now more profitable for a journalist to write libelous drivel going after conservatives than to report factually.
The Pulitzer has fallen from celebrating accurate journalism to refusing to rescind awards given to egregious reporting by The New York Times and The Washington Post. The newspapers’ reporting falsely accused the Trump administration of colluding with Russia in the 2016 election, despite overwhelming evidence and Federal Election Commision fines for both Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee over the allegations.
What an incentive structure for the next generation of journalists! Why investigate serious issues and expose corruption, cover-ups, and abuses of power when it’s just as easy to write an unfounded hit piece accusing New York City’s Jewish schools of maleducation and malfeasance?
Forensic bombshells such as the New York Post’s reports on the Hunter Biden corruption and bribery scandal are ignored by the Pulitzer committee while pieces such as Times reporter Brian Rosenthal’s slander of Orthodox Jewish yeshivas gets an immediate nomination.
“Journalists who put narratives over facts get prestigious trophies,” Jashinsky told The Daily Signal, so “it’s all too easy for reporters to get sucked into this cycle, lured by prestige, recognition, and money.”
The National Journalism Center, founded in 1977, seeks to correct this dramatic misalignment in incentives by prioritizing a return to foundational investigative principles.
A press release from YAF lists “accuracy and courage” as the two primary values judged in considering journalists’ work for the prize. The Dao Award committee certainly has its work cut out for it—2023 has seen an incredible bevy of investigative work.
Like the Pulitzer, the Dao Award may be given to an individual journalist or a publication. Jashinsky listed Emma-Jo Morris of Breitbart News, Miranda Devine of the New York Post, Aaron Sibarium of The Washington Free Beacon, and the “Twitter Files” team, which includes Matt Taibbi, Bari Weiss, and Michael Shellenberger, as some of the candidates up for consideration.
The prize is set to be awarded Wednesday night at a gala in Washington, D.C., and also will be livestreamed on the Young America’s Foundation YouTube channel. The winning journalist or publication will receive $100,000 along with the prize, and two finalists will get $10,000.
At a time when institutions we’ve relied on for decades have failed us in monumental fashion, conservatives, centrists, and independents have a responsibility to set up new organizations and awards that praise proper standards.
I look forward to the Dao Award’s impact on investigative journalism as the nation continues to abandon the rotting remains of a legacy media system too wretchedly narcissistic to reform.
Rep. Mike Johnson, R-La., seen here being sworn in on Oct. 25 after winning the House speakership, said of gender transitioning: “When you’re an adolescent or a young child, obviously, you’re in no position to be making life-altering decisions. And that’s why parental consent on everything is so critically important. (Photo: Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call/Getty Images)
FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL: New House Speaker Mike Johnson sharply criticized experimental surgeries on children as he discussed the “destructive” effects that such experimentation, dubbed “gender-affirming care” by gender ideologists, has upon young people.
“We had some hearings on the subject when I was in [the Judiciary Committee],” the Louisiana Republican said in a Tuesday interview with The Daily Signal, referring to a high-profile hearing that he led in July. “Some of the evidence that the expert witnesses brought forward was just alarming, in terms of some of these experimental surgeries that they’re performing on young children.”
His great concern is whether some of this has been done without parental consent, Johnson said.
“All of it just seems terribly destructive,” he said.
Johnson went on to discuss detransitioners, such as activist Chloe Cole, who attempted to change their gender and then realized that that was impossible. Cole testified emotionally at the July hearing about how attempting to transition has irrevocably changed her life.
“We had also witnesses who had gone through a gender transition and were transitioning back, and they gave very compelling testimony about how damaging this was to their physiology, their physical body, as well as their mental and spiritual health,” he recalled.
Rep. Mike Johnson, R-La., speaks to reporters on Capitol Hill on Oct. 24, the day before he was elected as House speaker by his colleagues. (Photo: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
“I think it’s a very, very serious issue that demands the attention of lawmakers at the state and federal level,” Johnson continued. “I don’t know that there is a consensus yet on exactly what Congress should do about that, but we wanted to put the advocates of that on notice that we’re deeply concerned about it.”
Why children can’t consent to puberty blockers in under 30 seconds!
Kids that choose 2 Oreos over $10,000 and still believe in the tooth fairy are being told they are able to make the lifelong decision to take chemical castration drugs.
Though lawmakers are still discussing what role Congress might play in protecting children, Johnson emphasized that they are “watching [the matter] closely.”
“Mostly, it is being handled at the state level, and we’ll have to continue to have dialogue here about what role Congress should play,” he said.
He called the plight of detransitioners “tragic, vastly tragic,” condemning gender ideology advocates for overlooking vital components—such as parental consent—“because they’re pursuing an agenda.”
“It just breaks your heart what these young people have been through,” he said. “When you’re an adolescent or a young child, obviously, you’re in no position to be making life-altering decisions. And that’s why parental consent on everything is so critically important.”
Top Stories • They Told Kathy Ireland Being Pro-Life Would “Kill Her Career,” But She’s Still Fighting Abortion • Speaker Mike Johnson Holding the Line Against Shipping Dangerous Abortion Pills Nationwide • Tuberville Slams Biden: He’d Rather “Burn the Senate Down” Than Stop Funding Abortions • Republican Senator Blasts Biden Admin: “No Justification” for Making Americans Fund Abortion Travel
More Pro-Life News • Speaker Mike Johnson Makes Liberals Angry Because He’s a Married Pro-Life Christian • Pro-Life Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves Signed the Bill That Overturned Roe, Vote for Him • Virginia Needs to Vote Pro-Life So Our State Can Save Babies From Abortions • Pro-Life Advocates Arrested for Demanding Investigation of Full-Term Babies Killed in Abortions • Scroll Down for Several More Pro-Life News Stories
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Will the choice in the 2024 election be Tick(Biden) or Treat(Trump)? This is just a thought that came to me this Halloween season after all the damage that Obama 2.0 has done to our country under Biden.
This disaster isn’t just Obama/Biden policies. This is Democrat policy, and unless we get Trump in Office along with taking over the Senate and the House, we will have no hope to save this country. Illegal immigrants Hordes of thousands are coming across our border every day. This is going to destroy our Republic as it was founded based on freedom and justice under the Constitution and Bill of Rights.
Governor Gavin Newsom, in an effort to look presidential, takes a trip to Communist China to lick their boots and kiss their ring while ignoring their human rights atrocities and the genocidal slave labor treatment of the Uyghurs.
Governor Newscom is running a covert not-so-stealthy campaign for president, smelling blood in the water with Joe Biden’s failing poll numbers and cognitive decline. Still, he’s not fooling anyone but possibly the mainstream media and a few sycophant followers.
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.
American Family Association
American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
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American Family Association
American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
American Family Association
American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
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American Family Association
American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
NEWSMAX
News, Opinion, Interviews, Research and discussion
Spiritual
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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