Dozens marched at the fourth annual March for Martyrs in Washington, D.C. on April 27, 2024. | The Christian Post/Nicole Alcindor
WASHINGTON — Pouring rain didn’t stop demonstrators from marching in the nation’s capital on Saturday to stand in solidarity with persecuted Christians globally, with some asking why the American Church isn’t doing more to spread awareness. Dozens gathered for the fourth annual March for the Martyrs on the National Mall, with many carrying flags representing the countries they are supporting in the mission to overcome global brutality against believers.
After worship and speeches encouraging Christians from all denominations to advocate for their persecuted brothers and sisters, the crowd marched from 17th Street and Constitution Avenue to the Museum of the Bible.
“I think that with all that’s going on in the world and with Christianity, I just had to be here to hear the speakers,” D.C. resident Carrol Monaco told The Christian Post, adding this was her first time at the March for Martyrs.
“I was expecting more people to be here. Maybe it’s because of the weather. I just think it’s very important that we bring awareness to this. Christians are being persecuted, even today.”
“It’s just something that we need to be more aware of and more sensitive to,” she added. “I think events like this are vital because it raises sensitivity. I think it’s possible that people just don’t realize what’s going on.”
According to the global persecution watchdog organization Open Doors, which monitors persecution in over 60 countries, over 360 million Christians live in areas of the world where they face high levels of persecution or discrimination for their faith in Christ. In some countries, owning a Bible or converting to Christianity can send someone to prison or put them on death row.
March for Martyrs founder Gia Chacón told CP she was inspired by the March for Life, the annual pro-life rally in Washington, D.C., launched after the Supreme Court’s 1972 Roe v. Wade ruling to call for an end to abortion. Today, the March for Life is attended by tens of thousands each year. March for Martyrs started in 2020 in Long Beach, California, during the height of COVID-19 pandemic.
“I thought we should be doing the same thing for our persecuted brothers and sisters around the world and show them our solidarity and advocate on their behalf,” she said. “We need to pray for persecuted Christians and ask God for their protection and for their comfort.”
As a devout Catholic, Monaco said events like March for Martyrs help make people more aware of persecution impacting Christians globally and helps spread the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
“We have to try to counter the persecutions that are occurring. My faith is a journey, and I’m still on this journey. It really is about living the way, the truth, and the life of Jesus Christ each and every day. I know it’s a struggle for a lot of people,” Monaco said.
“I struggle with it sometimes. I ask the question: ‘Why? Why is this happening?’ I don’t understand it. But you have to have faith. The Christian faith is about helping each other along on that journey.”
Monaco believes one way that Christians can begin to alleviate persecution is to help spread the Word of God as love.
“That’s what He is. God is love. And it’s about spreading the love of God each and every day. And I think that is a message that gets missed a lot, and I think that needs to be emphasized everywhere, Church outside of church. God is love, and He gives us His love. It’s up to us to spread His love in any way we can,” she said.
‘Opened my eyes’
Another D.C. resident, Patrick Jordan, attended the event to support persecuted Christians in Lebanon. He told CP that no weather — rain or shine — would have stopped him from attending.
“I saw this as a very important event and it called to me, and here I am. When I sailed back from Europe to America, my dad’s friend was Lebanese, and he actually opened my eyes to what happened to that corner of the world during the civil war, and how just beng Christian you’d get rounded up and killed,” Jordan said.
Jordan said his father’s friend told him about one occasion when a group of Lebanese Christian friends organized a garbage cleanup as a way to maintain God’s green earth, and many were murdered due to their faith.
“It was pretty shocking as a 12-year-old to hear that. This was a very nice guy, and I couldn’t imagine anyone doing that just for your faith. This guy had no ill will towards others,” he said. “That just opened my eyes to certain dark areas. It’s great to see that people at this event want to shine a light on that.”
Jordan said that events like the March for Martyrs are crucial to raise awareness.
“I was very fortunate to have met my dad’s Lebanese friend. How many people are going to have that opportunity to have their eyes opened wide to the atrocities taking place across the globe when it comes to persecuted Christians?” Jordan said.
“These events are so important to let other people know that there are people hurting out there, and they need your help to survive. That’s why everyone is here today. I would love to keep being a part of this every year.”
Jordan said he allows his faith to inform how he treats others. He cited Matthew 5:44, where Jesus advises followers to “love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.”
“It’s a pretty confusing world. I like to reflect on what God wants me to do, and that helps me temper whatever part of my humanity that may not be good to others. But, once I give myself over to the Lord, it brings more light to the world,” Jordan said.
Although he hasn’t been severely harmed for his faith in Christ like some people have faced overseas, he said societal opposition to the Christian faith made him think twice about becoming a teacher.
“I was training to become a high school teacher in public schools. The persecution I faced made me feel guilty about being a Christian as someone training to be a teaching professional. We were advised not to bring our faith into the classroom,” Jordan said.
“This dissuaded me from becoming a teacher at all. I knew that I couldn’t really represent that part of me. It felt like I couldn’t really be myself, and it dissuaded me from my whole career. I would have loved to be a teacher.”
Jordan now works as a nurse, where he is better able to express his faith when helping treat his patients back to good health.
“I think the persecution against Christians can be alleviated by just sort of notifying someone that there’s a bear outside your cave. The correct thing to do is to say: ‘Hey, this exists.’ And should you be afraid of the bear? Yeah, maybe. But how do you prepare for that?” Jordan said.
“I hope that these organizations can tell these people. ‘Hey, there are hostile militants that are against you due to your faith.’ How do you overcome this issue?”
Christians are not doing nearly enough as they should be doing to combat anti-Christian hate crimes nationally, Jordan contends.
“I mean, if you look at every church, [this issue] is not on their site. They have the rainbow flag. They don’t have Christ on the front. Churches are totally gone now. I think churches need to start to realize we are Christians,” Jordan said.
“They keep focusing on these little political issues. You have to be above that and say: ‘No, we’re trying to build something that’s for a church for eternity,’ not something to get us through the next election year.”
‘Why is the Church not paying more attention?’
Chacón hopes the march brings “attention to the global crisis of Christian persecution.”
“During that [first year in 2020], we saw an increase in Christian persecution. And after my extensive travels overseas working with the persecuted, I just couldn’t help but wonder why is the Church in the United States not paying more attention to what’s happening to our brothers and sisters? Why is the world turning a blind eye to the human rights abuses against Christians because of their faith.”
March for Martyrs founder Gia Chacón speaks at the fourth annual March for Martyrs in Washington, D.C., on April 27, 2024. | The Christian Post/Nicole Alcindor
As a Christian, Chacón said her faith inspires her to stand with those suffering globally for following Christ.
“My faith is everything to me. And I really have the persecuted to thank for their inspiration and their boldness and their willingness to lay down their lives for Christ inspired my own faith so deeply. Through my personal relationship with Jesus and the witness of the persecuted, nothing is more important to me than my faith,” Chacón said.
“I have never faced persecution myself. I pray that the Church in the United States of America never faces persecution. Although we do face intimidation. I have sat with people who have firsthand suffered persecution and to hear their stories and what they have suffered for their faith in Christ, and they remain faithful and hopeful in such a huge way, can motivate us in the United States to stand strong no matter the costs.”
Nicole VanDyke is a reporter for The Christian Post.
However, a poll conducted by Rasmussen Reports — a survey I wrote with a team of experts at the Heartland Institute and discussed last week on Tucker Carlson’s show — not only calls into question that often-repeated claim, it shows the opposite could have been true. According to its findings, voter fraud, especially fraud related to mail-in ballots, may have been common in the 2020 election. This conclusion isn’t based on questionable allegations but on voters’ own responses to the poll questions.
The Heartland Institute/Rasmussen survey, which was conducted from Nov. 30 to Dec. 6, asked likely voters who cast ballots in 2020 questions about fraudulent activities, without telling them such actions were a form of voter fraud. The results were stunning. One in five people who voted by mail admitted to engaging in at least one kind of potential voter fraud, seriously calling into question the security of widespread mail-in balloting.
For example, one question asked, “During the 2020 election, did you cast a mail-in ballot in a state where you were no longer a permanent resident?” Such an action nearly always constitutes fraud. Incredibly, 17 percent of voters said “yes.”
Another question asked if “a friend or family member” filled out a respondent’s ballot, “in part or in full,” on behalf of the respondent, which is illegal in some states. Nineteen percent of mail-in voters who responded to the survey answered “yes.”
Even more remarkably, 21 percent of respondents admitted to filling out a ballot for someone they know, such as a spouse or child, and 17 percent confessed to signing a ballot or ballot envelope “on behalf of a friend or family member, with or without his or her permission” — both potential forms of illegal voting.
Taken together, these results strongly indicate fraud and illegal voting heavily affected mail-in balloting in the 2020 election. Even if a fraction of the people admitting wrongdoing here are actually guilty, that would still equal the electoral margin for 2020.
It’s an incredibly important finding since that contest involved more mail-in ballots than any other election in U.S. history. Election officials report that of 159 million ballots cast in 2020, more than 68 million were submitted by mail, about 43 percent of the total. In addition, as the MIT Election Data and Science Lab noted, “the dramatic increase in the raw number of absentee ballots cast was accompanied by a significant decrease in the overall absentee rejection rate for the country: from 0.96 percent in 2016 to 0.79 percent in 2020.”
If the recent Heartland Institute/Rasmussen survey is accurate and one in five ballots were, in fact, fraudulent, that would suggest greater than 13 million ballots should not have been counted nationwide in 2020. That’s far more than the margin of victory for President Biden in the popular vote, about 7 million.
As troubling as these findings are, however, additional questions in the Heartland Institute/Rasmussen survey suggest voter fraud and illegal voting may have been even worse than the one-in-five figure suggests. For instance, 8 percent of all respondents — not just those who voted by mail — said they were offered “pay” or “reward” in return for voting.
Equally disturbing, 10 percent of voters said, “a friend, family member, co-worker, or other acquaintance” admitted to them that he or she “cast a mail-in ballot in 2020 in a state other than his or her state of permanent residence.” Eleven percent said that “a friend, family member, co-worker, or other acquaintance” admitted to filling out someone else’s ballot.
These questions could indicate far more fraud occurred than anyone previously thought.
It’s also worth remembering that presidents are not elected by a national popular vote but through the Electoral College. The three states in which Trump and Biden were closest — Arizona, Georgia, and Wisconsin — were all decided by fewer than 21,000 votes.
Biden narrowly won each of those contests, but if he had lost those three states, he wouldn’t have reached the 270 electoral vote thresholds needed to win the presidency. Instead, the Electoral College vote would have been a tie, pushing the decision to the Republican-controlled House of Representatives. With such razor-thin margins and the results of the recent Heartland/Rasmussen voter fraud survey in mind, it’s hard not to wonder how big of an effect fraud truly had on the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.
But regardless of how much fraud occurred, one thing is absolutely certain: States must take appropriate legislative action to protect the integrity of the next presidential election so that all Americans can be confident that the winner of the 2024 campaign will capture the White House fair and square.
There is already substantial evidence that voter fraud could play a significant role in 2024. Another survey conducted in March and April by the Heartland Institute and Rasmussen shows that 28 percent of likely voters now say they would commit at least one form of illegal voting during the 2024 election, “if given the opportunity.” Interestingly, respondents’ willingness to commit fraud was similar among Republicans, Democrats, and independents.
There is some good news, however. The threat of voter fraud can be limited dramatically by changing mail-in ballot rules. Voters who are physically able to cast their ballots in person should be required to do so, or they should be mandated to have their ballot signature notarized, significantly reducing opportunities for fraud. Lawmakers could fund public programs to increase access to free notaries for those who need them.
According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, just three states require notaries for mail-in ballots — Mississippi, Missouri, and Oklahoma. Only nine additional states mandate that a voter obtain one or more non-notary witness signatures when casting a ballot by mail. Most states require neither a witness nor a notary to verify signatures.
Lawmakers must ensure widespread voter fraud does not happen in future elections. That can only occur if mail-in voting systems are radically improved. Time is running out for legislators to fix these major threats to American self-government.
Justin Haskins (Jhaskins@heartland.org) is the director of the Socialism Research Center at The Heartland Institute and a New York Times bestselling author.
It’s not just atrocious polls that suggest President Joe Biden will lose in November; it’s also the behavior of the White House. In just the past few weeks, the Biden administration has rolled out over a dozen new initiatives and rules, many of them – like banning development of Alaska’s National Petroleum Reserve – likely to impact our country far into the future. It’s a startling avalanche of executive activity.
Call me crazy, but that looks like a White House panicked that its days are numbered.
Who can blame them? A new national CNN poll shows Trump leading the president by six points, one of the biggest gaps yet; more important, Fox News surveys have Trump inching ahead in several critical swing states.
Bad polls, an unpopular president, disruptive protests at home and rising threats around the world, sinking consumer confidence and resurgent inflation; all signs point to defeat in November. Hence, the whirlwind of regulations, which includes the following:
3. EEOC charges of racism against a company because they avoided hiring criminals;
4. More federal help on student loans;
5. FTC preventing the merger of two luxury goods makers;
6. New overtime rules;
7. New regulations detailing airline refunds;
8. New decision restricting drilling in Alaska’s National Petroleum Reserve;
9. FTC blocking hospital group mergers;
10. New power plant emissions rules;
11. Putting on hold a ban on menthol cigarettes;
12. A revamp of school lunch mandates, reducing sugar and salt.
The Biden administration appears to be preparing for the worst, pushing through policies that could be overturned if passed later in the year. Congress has 60 days to nix rules promulgated by federal agencies with a simple majority; if there’s a red wave, Biden diktats adopted in the traditional “lame duck” session would likely disappear. The Trump administration employed that tool successfully, ditching several policies rolled out late in President Obama’s second term; Biden returned the favor when he came to office.
Some decisions, like forgiving student loans or not banning menthol cigarettes which are favored by Blacks, are obviously meant to attract targeted voters. Others seem to scratch a progressive itch, like the upending of long-standing employment laws.
Voters should wonder: Is all of this activism well-thought-out? The answer is almost surely no. After all, these are the folks that forced Detroit automakers to go all-in on EVs, sure that Americans were ready to abandon their gas-guzzling SUVs.
Consider the FTC, led by the reckless ideologue Lina Khan. Under Khan’s guidance, the FTC has clamped down on corporate merger activity. Most recently, the agency sued to block luxury fashion firm Tapestry’s acquisition of Capri. Tapestry owns Coach, Stuart Weitzman and Kate Spade, while Capri owns the Versace, Jimmy Choo and Michael Kors labels.
Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan testifies before the House Judiciary Committee on Capitol Hill on July 13, 2023. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
Henry Liu, Director of the FTC’s Bureau of Competition claims, “This deal threatens to deprive consumers of the competition for affordable handbags…” Forgive me, but only a man could utter such nonsense. Any woman will tell you that there are a gazillion handbag makers, and that they compete mainly on style and image, not price. And, frankly, that few of them are “affordable.”
This is one of many examples of the FTC interfering with the normal pursuit of business. Fashion is fickle; companies continually add names and brands to survive. Liu has no idea what he is talking about.
But we cannot dismiss this FTC intervention as insignificant. The Biden White House, just like that of President Obama, is tragically lacking in business leaders, and in common sense.
Lina Khan is a typical progressive Biden appointee, who is now compiling an impressive record of overreach and defeat. She failed to prevent Meta from acquiring the virtual reality company Within, failed to keep Microsoft from buying Activision and will probably fail in her effort to keep grocers Albertson and Kroger from combining. She denies that mergers can create efficiencies and lower costs for consumers. As an undergraduate, she wrote a paper criticizing Amazon for being big; if Khan had been in charge, Americans would not be enjoying the obvious convenience of the world’s largest online retailer.
It isn’t just the FTC which, by the way, is also behind the outrageous and sure to be overturned ban on non-compete agreements. Consider the new Department of Transportation demands that airlines must “immediately” refund money for delayed or canceled flights and reimburse passengers for equipment issues like non-working TVs. Talks about adding headaches to an industry constantly toggling between profits and losses! What the government should be doing is investing in critical air traffic control equipment and infrastructure; let consumers punish airlines that don’t treat them fairly.
Some of the White House’s most enduring and damaging new rules have to do with energy. Biden is desperate to shore up his bona fides with the environmental lobby, and so has added new restrictions on domestic oil and gas development. Consequently, he just banned exploration of a vast swath of Alaska’s huge National Petroleum Reserve, even though the region contains some of our country’s most promising prospects and despite support for drilling from the state’s native population.
In addition, the president’s EPA has recently issued new power plant emissions rules that could force the closure of many coal-fired power plants, even as demand for electricity expands. It also requires by 2032 wide-spread use of carbon-capture technology that does not yet exist on a large scale. Similar rules adopted by the Obama administration were overturned by the Supreme Court in 2016; critics claimed executive overreach. The Biden team’s approach, which could undermine the nation’s energy security, is likely to meet the same fate.
These are not sensible policies; they are the wish-list and fantasies of a progressive White House not likely to pay the price for their damaging meddling. Here’s hoping.
Liz Peek is a Fox News contributor and former partner of major bracket Wall Street firm Wertheim & Company. A former columnist for the Fiscal Times, she writes for The Hill and contributes frequently to Fox News, the New York Sun and other publications. For more visit LizPeek.com. Follow her on Twitter @LizPeek.
The U.S. under a second Trump administration would “be there” to help Israel defend itself against Iran, former President Donald Trump told Time magazine in an exclusive interview.
Despite promoting what Time termed an overall foreign policy based on “transactional isolationism,” Trump made it clear he would back Israel against Iran.
“If they attack Israel, yes, we would be there,” Trump told Time.
The former president added he now believes a two-state solution, with a Palestinian state neighboring Israel in peace, is increasingly unlikely after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack and massacre and Israel’s retaliatory war.
“There was a time when I thought two-state could work,” he said. “Now I think two-state is going to be very, very tough.”
Trump, running to unseat President Joe Biden in November’s general election, criticized Israel’s handling of its war against the Hamas terrorists, who also took nearly 250 hostages Oct. 7.
He called for Israel to “get it over with.”
The former president appeared to levy criticism on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for failing to prevent Hamas’ attack.
“It happened on his watch,” Trump said.
The presumptive Republican presidential nominee, once a close ally with Netanyahu, also told Time that he “had a bad experience with Bibi.”
According to Trump, a January 2020 U.S. operation to kill a top Iranian general was supposed to be a joint attack until Netanyahu backed out at the last minute.
“That was something I never forgot,” Trump told the magazine.
Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas—seen here at a news conference outside the Capitol in September—took issue Tuesday with some fellow Republican lawmakers on their unwillingness to fight to control federal spending. (Photo: Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
For Rep. Chip Roy, it’s a frustrating conversation that happens all too often with fellow lawmakers on his side of the aisle.
“‘Chip, we have a razor-thin majority. We just have to win the White House; we just have to win the Senate,’” the Texas Republican recalled in a speech Tuesday.
When he hears colleagues concerned about the narrow 217-212 House Republican majority, he notes the Democrats’ narrow Senate majority—51 senators in the Democratic caucus compared with 49 Republicans.
“Well, when do they ever look across there and say Chuck Schumer has a razor-thin majority?” Roy said of the Senate Democratic leader from New York. “When do they ever look and say, ‘You’re actually in charge of the House of Representatives, which James Madison told you in [Federalist Paper 58] actually has the power of the purse. Do something with it. Stop making excuses.”
That prompted applause from the audience at The Heritage Foundation at an event, “Defunding the Left.” (The Daily Signal is the news outlet of The Heritage Foundation.)
Roy had earlier quoted Madison—father of the Constitution and later the fourth president of the United States—who wrote in Federalist 58:
The House of Representatives can not only refuse, but they alone can propose the supplies requisite for the support of government. … This power over the purse may, in fact, be regarded as the most complete and effectual weapon with which any Constitution can arm the immediate representatives of the people, for obtaining a redress of every grievance, and for carrying into effect every just and salutary measure.
Though the GOP mostly prevented nondefense spending hikes, and kept the political focus on border security, he said irresponsible spending is a bipartisan problem that “infests the entire swamp” in both parties.
“The fundamental problem is not just the weakening of the dollar and the strength of our financial system. It’s actually the radical Left funding the tyranny, funding the government that’s at war with your way of life.”
He noted the Republican-controlled House approved $62 billion in funding for the Department of Homeland Security amid rising crime and fentanyl deaths in the U.S. resulting from the border crisis.
The House majority also went along with $200 million to fund a new FBI headquarters and overall about $40 billion for the Justice Department, despite concerns about politicized lawfare. He noted $824 billion went to the Defense Department with no demands to scrap its focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion policies that are hurting armed forces recruitment.
The House majority allowed $80 billion for the Department of Education; $9 billion for the Environmental Protection Agency; and $117 billion for the Department of Health and Human Services, while requiring no accountability for mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic by departmental subordinate agencies, such as National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
While his GOP colleagues often talk about the need to win the next election, Roy said, conservative control of both houses of Congress and the White House are not guaranteed to reverse the trend.
“Literally, on Day One, they are going to say, ‘Chip, we can’t do all you want to do because we don’t have 60 in the Senate. You’ve got to be reasonable.’” Roy predicted. “I promise you that’s coming. So, we have to win majorities. But we have to plan now for driving a steamroller over the weak-kneed individuals in Congress that will use 60 [as a premise] not to fight for you.”
In the Senate, 60 votes are required to end filibusters.
Roy noted there were some positive accomplishments, however. Since winning the majority, House Republicans have for the most part “kept the ball on our side of the field,” he said.
Nondefense spending was largely held flat, while increased defense spending in 2023 was initially paid for by taking money out of the Internal Revenue Service and unspent COVID-19 funding.
That occurred after then-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., put caps in place, even though the caps were discarded in January. Further, Roy noted that House Republicans didn’t let Democrats redirect the border debate to one of amnesty for illegal immigrants.
“Amnesty was off the table. All we talked about this last year was border security. We didn’t achieve it, but we didn’t allow the Democrats to start moving the ball down the field and have a debate about amnesty,” Roy said. “It matters where you set the goal post and how you set your mission.”
The Texas lawmaker criticized the recent $95 billion foreign aid package that passed without the support of most Republicans. He said that too often, members of Congress “default to fear” on defense spending.
“I want the strongest military that we can possibly produce. I want it to be sparingly used,” Roy said, adding:
I don’t want to use it often, but if we do, I want it to destroy everything in its path. But we just default to fear, and we use the national security-defense complex to run over everything else.
“People literally come into [House Republicans’] meetings and say, ‘We just can’t risk defense.’ Well, if that’s what you do, you’re never going to change the town,” he continued, “because they are always going to use defense as the leverage to say, ‘We’re not going to cut [the Justice Department]; we’re not going to cut education; we’re not going to make reforms.”
There has been a notable shift toward more and more extreme rhetoric in the media from predicting that democracy will end with this election to “disappearing” journalists and gays to ending all rights for everyone. On Monday, MSNBC host Nicolle Wallace added to this litany with a claim that “as with racists, all of the conspiracy theorists are Republicans.”
After discussing how GOP candidates have stated that they believe that the last election was “stolen,” Wallace added “It is not accurate to say everyone in the Republican Party is a conspiracy theorist but as with racists, all of the conspiracy theorists are Republicans.”
It was a crushingly ironic moment. Wallace has been repeatedly criticized for spreading false news. For example, the “Deadline: White House” host told viewers that they should not take the Hunter Biden laptop seriously: “We shouldn’t look at it as anything other than a Russian disinformation operation.”
Wallace heralded the Mueller investigation while pushing the now debunked Russian collusion claims. However, on the Durham investigation, she told viewers that they could ignore it despite the fact that the report stands uncontradicted:
“Durham’s whole thing is predicated on it’s like a rabbit hole conspiracy that suggests that the Trump-Barr paranoia infected his ability to stand back and evaluate whether the probe yielded guilty convictions of people who would have had nothing to do with any of these questions he looked at.”
Wallace and MSNBC also pushed false claims about Bill Barr clearing Lafayette Park for a Trump “photo op.”
On August 5th, 2019, MSNBC’s Nicole Wallace falsely claimed that Trump had talked about “exterminating Latinos.”
Wallace claimed that the lab theory of the Covid 19 was a “conspiracy theory.” It has been embraced by various federal agencies despite being called racist by many experts.
Many on the left now routinely call opposing views as spreaders of disinformation or conspiracy theories. The Biden Administration has funded various groups to blacklist or bar those with opposing views as disinformation, malinformation, or misinformation. Indeed, new groups are being formed before the election to echo these claims, including one headed by the former “Disinformation Czar.”
Bidenomics, with its high inflation and high cost of living, is wreaking havoc on the U.S. economy. Though the left continues to gaslight and cook the books in their favor, Americans can feel this economic disaster.
POLL: Biden Trails Trump in Six Swing States – 70% Say Economy is on the “Wrong Track”
BY JORDAN CONRADSON – APRIL 26, 2024
According to a recent poll, President Trump currently holds a lead in six of the seven key swing states that are expected to determine the 2024 Presidential Election.
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 • Pro-Life Advocate Placed in Solitary Confinement for 22 Days for Sharing Food • Florida Heartbeat Law Takes Effect Wednesday, Will Save Thousands of Babies From Abortion • 17 States Challenge Biden Rule Forcing Employers to Facilitate Abortions • Birth Rates Plummet to Historic Lows, Lowest in Blue States With Abortions Up to Birth
More Pro-Life News • Mother Confirms Abortion Ban Saved Her Baby’s Life • Planned Parenthood Made $178 Million in Profits From Killing Almost 400,000 Babies in Abortions • Kansas House Overrides Gov Laura Kelly’s Vetoes of Two Pro-Life Bills • Radical Abortion Activist Won’t Go to Prison for Attacking Pregnancy Center • 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.
Comments or questions? Email us at news@lifenews.com. Copyright 2003-2024 LifeNews.com. All rights reserved. For information on advertising or reprinting news from LifeNews.com, email us.
Forty years ago, a KGB defector, Yuri Bezmenov, revealed the systematic plan Soviet communists used to take down countries and establish a communist-type society and regime. More recently, a Chinese defector immigrant, Xi Van Fleet, has been on a crusade to warn Americans about the parallels between what is happening in America today and what Mao did in the Chinese Cultural Revolution.
The systematic plan Bezmenov revealed involves four fluid stages of communist subversion: 1) demoralization, 2) disorientation, 3) crisis, and 4) normalization. In Mao’s America, Xi Van Fleet explains how Mao’s destruction of the “Four Olds” (old ideas, old culture, old customs, and old habits) is being replicated by today’s leftist cancel culture, which will end what is left of freedom in America if not stopped.
Demoralization
The first stage in the Bezmenov analysis, demoralization, lasts a generation or more. One of its main thrusts is to undermine the Judeo-Christian beliefs, customs, habits, and traditions that have been foundational to America — these parallel the Four Olds that Mao destroyed in China.
Another target for demoralization is the family, which communists want to replace with the state. Xi Van Fleet points out that just as the Chinese Cultural Revolution turned children against their parents, American families are under increasing attack. Government schools, the medical establishment, and popular culture — which now support the transgender movement — are increasingly turning children against their parents.
A third demoralization strategy is breaking the people’s loyalty and love for their country by rewriting history, denigrating the founders and national heroes, and destroying historic monuments — again, the Four Olds. In summary, the goal of demoralization is to disconnect people from the virtue of the past and render them unable to assess what is true.
Disorientation
The second stage of the communist strategy, according to Bezmenov, builds on demoralization to advance society’s disorientation, a condition wherein the masses feel bewildered and helpless. While it’s impossible to prove intentionality at this time, the China-originated Covid-19 pandemic caused massive disorientation in the U.S. when the government mandated masks, social distancing, quarantines, lockdowns, and the abandonment of tried-and-true medical practices of preventive and therapeutic treatments.
Another important part of disorientation happened early in the Covid crisis after the death of George Floyd. Assertions of systemic racism in law enforcement triggered rioting, looting, and the destruction of several billion dollars’ worth of property, along with the tearing down of historic statues and memorials in many cities across the United States.
Americans became further disoriented when they realized government authorities were unable or unwilling to do anything about the destruction in big cities across America. There were few arrests while more than 2,000 police officers were injured. Disorientation may have reached its peak when cities with the most lawlessness, such as Minneapolis, Seattle, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Baltimore, initiated efforts to defund local law enforcement.
Crisis
Following disorientation is the crisis stage. An unprecedented crisis stage for America came in November 2020 with election rigging. Democrat operatives exploited the fear factor of Covid-19 in the summer months of 2020. They visited almost every swing state to change voting rules to accommodate expanded mail-in ballots, drop boxes, and extended vote-tally deadlines — all of which facilitate vote fraud.
The crisis that ensued from election irregularity was deepened by the massive media and social media censorship and cancellation campaigns that began well before the Nov. 3, 2020, election. The Department of Homeland Security division called the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, better known as CISA, collaborated with the Stanford University-based NGO Election Integrity Partnership (EIP) to suppress information that would help Trump.
EIP launched a campaign to prevent the public from challenging the anticipated voting irregularities by getting agreements from all the social media companies — Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, Reddit, and Pinterest — to modify their customer terms-of-service policies to incorporate language about “delegitimization.” Once that was accomplished, according to Mike Benz, a former U.S. State Department communications policymaker and an expert on propaganda, the door was opened to algorithmic mass censorship and cancellation.
EIP exerted pressure on all the social media companies to adhere to their customer service policies and censor, cancel, or deplatform any content that contained “delegitimized” narratives about new election protocols and “processes,” election “issues and outcomes,” “mail-in ballots,” “early voting,” “drop boxes,” “Dominion Voting Systems,” and “Antifa.”
The media treatment of the Hunter Biden laptop story that broke in mid-October 2020 in the New York Post illustrates just how quickly the channels of propaganda and media manipulation fall into place. The laptop story (which contained massive incriminating evidence revealing a compromised Joe Biden family), was immediately delegitimized and taken down from every social media site. At the same time, 51 former top intelligence officials signed a letter, published in The New York Times and The Washington Post, stating that the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop had “all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.”
After the 2020 election, social media effectively thwarted discussion about election fraud. Again EIP insisted that social media companies uphold the terms-of-service contracts that required censoring social media content containing newly delegitimized terms, such as “Stop the Steal,” “dead voter rolls,” “Sharpiegate,” “stolen election,” “ballot harvesting,” and “Postal Service,” to name a few. Additionally, people questioning the integrity of the 2020 election were marginalized by the media and discredited as “election deniers.”
Bemenov’s four stages are fluid, so demoralization and disorientation continue in the crisis stage. We see this with lawfare against Donald Trump, his aides, and some 1,200 Jan. 6 participants arrested by the FBI.
The target is not just Trump and his supporters, but the American people, who are now seeing that large parts of the justice system in America resemble that of a banana republic. With equal justice under the law and respect for the Constitution being mocked, the subliminal message is, “This is not the America you know; it’s a new world that you have entered, so get used to it.”
Normalization
While America is still in the crisis stage, some subversion experts argue that the lawfare, censorship, and cancellation regimes that now exist are really part of the last stage of communist takeover known as normalization — Bezmenov’s fourth and final stage. If America’s borders remain open and the American people are denied access to information, become accustomed to rigged elections, accept limitations on free speech, and acquiesce to the rewriting of history, the constitutional republic that was the United States will be gone, and the new world of communist global elite control will be normalized.
John Adams, the second president, unequivocally warned, “Liberty once lost is lost forever.” It is no longer enough just to man the ramparts. It’s time for the people to turn the tables on the elite destroyers of our constitutional republic.
Scott Powell is senior fellow at Discovery Institute and a member of the Committee on the Present Danger-China. His recent book, “Rediscovering America,” was the No. 1 Amazon New Release in the history genre for eight weeks. Reach him at scottp@discovery.org.
Parents across the United States are being restricted from accessing their adolescent children’s online electronic health records. Not only are military parents barred from accessing all but basic information on their 13- to 17-year-olds in the military’s online health care portal, but the adolescent minor also is not allowed to have a user logon until 18. Though elected officials are tackling this issue on the state level, military parents will need to be their own advocates as they appeal to Congress to restore their parental rights.
Military insurance provider Tricare finally issued a press release in March explaining Department of Defense (DOD) policies that restrict parents from adolescent records in the portal, Military Health System (MHS) Genesis, as well as from “sensitive” physical records.
Last year, I wrote about my experience of spending months trying to obtain the official policy that barred parents from these records. Now that the policy is out in the open, it must not be allowed to stand, as it is ultimately harmful to children.
Many military parents object to providers’ having a confidential relationship with their children because they do not trust activist MHS doctors who believe a child can be born in the wrong body to counsel their children on anything in secret — as some are doing.
One sobering example of what can happen when parents are excluded occurred in Louisiana, where two civilian parents were treated as the enemy. After less than an hour behind closed doors with their 13-year-old, the provider tried to manipulate them into affirming their daughter’s new identity as a boy by asking them if they would “rather have a dead daughter or a live son.” One of the doctors involved, Dr. Ryan Pasternak, is a leader in adolescent medicine and has co-written recommendations for the Society of Adolescent Health and Medicine (SAHM) on the management of electronic health records. SAHM’s ideal method includes permitting full access only to the adolescent, while actively blocking parents so they receive only nonconfidential information.
Even as state legislatures are moving to restore parental access to unemancipated minor medical records, the MHS seems to be plowing ahead with its efforts to keep parents in the dark. With all I’ve uncovered about adolescent confidentiality and gender activists within the MHS, parents are right to be concerned.
Congress Fails to Act
In 2017, the Defense Health Board, a federal committee that advises the secretary of defense, acknowledged in a report that the emerging field of adolescent medicine had “recently made a profound shift from its traditional role. Instead of providing preemptive guidance to parents, providers now work to reduce risk-taking behaviors with their focus aimed directly at the adolescent.” The board also recommended expanding the use of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones to address gender dysphoria and suggested possibly including surgeries for gender-confused children in the future. The board pointed out that the Tricare Mental Health and Substance Use Disorder Treatment final rule on Sept. 2, 2016, “permits ‘coverage of all non-surgical medically necessary and appropriate care in the treatment of gender dysphoria.’” This was a final rule that came from unelected bureaucrats — not Congress.
Nevertheless, recent efforts in Congress to prohibit coverage for transgender procedures for minor military children were removed by the Senate from the House-passed fiscal 2024 National Defense Authorization Act. Language to prevent the Exceptional Family Member Program from being used to facilitate child transgender transitions was also removed.
Bases, Schools Push Transgenderism
Today, adolescents can receive confidential care on military bases and in school-based clinics. For example, Joint Base Lewis-McChord’s Madigan Army Medical Center’s adolescent clinic offers subspecialty care for transgender confusion, sexuality issues, and substance use, among other services. Madigan also runs a system of school-based health clinics in 10 area schools; dependents on Tricare Prime insurance can visit the clinic once each week.
If military parents aren’t “affirming” of a transgender identity, activist group PFLAG recommends that children talk with “a school counselor, the on-base youth Military Family Life Counselor (MFLC), a chaplain (if from an affirming denomination), or an online friend or peer.” PFLAG also reveals that MHS Genesis “now allows patients to mark their gender identity in addition to their sex assigned at birth.” This will “allow transgender youth to receive appropriate care without as many obstacles.” And “military LGBTQ+ organizations are currently working with DoDEA [schools for children of military families] to incorporate the same procedures in school documents.”
In the school-to-scalpel age, confidential care being provided to adolescents should cause alarm bells to go off. Ian Prior, founder of Fight for Schools, in his article, “Queer Whistleblower Exposes Evils of the School to Scalpel Pipeline,” shows how indoctrination into transgenderism can begin at school as young as kindergarten. In many cases, children are encouraged to socially transition at school. By the time parents find out, children can be convinced they were born in the wrong body, and doctors who favor the “gender affirmation” approach steer parents and their dysphoric children down that path of care.
Thanks to an official Department of Defense Education Activity (DODEA) teacher training in May 2021, we know that secret transgender transitions are happening in overseas schools for military children. Former Rep. Vicky Hartzler wrote a letter to DOD in 2021 asking why teachers were being trained at a DODEA teachers summit to transition children at school without parents’ knowledge. She never received a response — and DODEA has avoided accountability even to this day.
I spoke with a military mom whose daughter, Cami (not her real name), was enrolled in a public school in Fairfax County, Virginia, that concealed from her parents that she had transitioned to a boy at school. Though the mother only wanted Cami to see a therapist to address her depression, military medicine additionally referred her to a so-called gender clinic in the Washington, D.C., area. When the mother didn’t take her daughter to the clinic, she received a call from a military doctor who suggested Cami might need puberty blockers to give her time to decide about her sex. At the time of our conversation, the family was still reeling from the harm that “trusted” adults at school had caused.
MHS Treats Thousands of Confused Dependents
Armed with this information about a gender clinic on base, I found research conducted by active-duty medical doctors and a medical school professor that mentioned a regional referral-based adolescent medicine clinic that opened in 2014 and serves dependents between the ages of 9 and 24. It provides “services including diagnosis, puberty suppression, affirming-hormone treatment, reproductive health services … and affirming counseling, and refers for surgical, ancillary (e.g., voice therapy) and complex mental health services.”
Ft. Belvoir in Virginia fit the clinic’s description, and transgender-confused children do, indeed, seek care there. Dr. David Klein was chief of adolescent medicine at Ft. Belvoir in 2016. He and his associates have diligently documented their research on transgender-identifying military dependents. They reveal that from 2009 until 2017, more than 2,500 military dependents, ages 4 to 25, sought treatment for gender confusion from the MHS. When Tricare began to pay for puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones for dependents in 2016, they observed a marked increase in the number of patients seeking such care. One can only imagine how high the figures are today when taking into account estimates that the number of transgender-identifying youth in the United States nearly doubled between 2016 and 2022.
Another Klein study looked at 53 gender-confused adolescents and measured parental support for their care. Researchers looked at MHS data from 2014 to 2017 and rated strong support of parents for initiation or continuation of “gender transition” at 55.8 percent, non to moderately supportive at 25 percent, and conflicted support at 19.2 percent.
Though numerous studies show that military kids suffer from a higher rate of anxiety and depression than their civilian peers, key recommendations from Klein and his co-authors provide advice to doctors as if wrongly named “gender affirmation” is the only approach for treating gender dysphoria. They claim a transgender diagnosis is not necessarily related to other mental health concerns and that attempts “to convert a person’s gender identity to align with their sex assigned at birth are unethical and incompatible with current guidelines and evidence.”
Klein and colleagues made the news last year and caught congressional attention when they stated in their latest research, in a discussion about understanding the risks and benefits of “gender-affirming” care, that 7-year-olds can begin participating in medical decision-making. Fortunately, as former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard pointed out to Tucker Carlson, 53 percent of MHS physicians in that study said they would refuse to prescribe hormones even if trained to do so. Sadly, others would be willing to, and Klein is now the Family Adolescent Medicine Program director at Travis Air Force Base in California — training the next generation of military physicians.
Falling out of Favor Around the World
Even as MHS leaders continue to promote this harmful medicating of children, it is rapidly falling out of favor among doctors around the world, who are opting for psychotherapy as a first line treatment for gender dysphoria, after studies have shown “no demonstrable, long-term benefit” on “psychosocial well-being of adolescents with gender dysphoria.”
Additionally, the leading organization for transgender care, WPATH, was recently exposed for its lack of evidence and safeguards that led to members performing pseudoscientific surgical and hormonal experiments on minors. And, similarly, the Cass Review, released this month, detailed how England’s leading specialist youth transgender “clinic,” now permanently closed, was untethered from evidence-based medicine.
As the rationale for transgender drugs and surgeries unravels, a legal reckoning is being led in the United States by detransitioners such as Chloe Cole, who began transitioning at 12 and had a double mastectomy by 15. DOD and affirming doctors in the MHS must be included in this reckoning and held accountable for any harm suffered by military dependents under their care.
Laws and policies that allow medical records and medical treatment of adolescents to be hidden from parents are potentially harmful to children and destructive to families, and this is why military parents must urge Congress to strike DOD’s policies that drive a wedge between them and their children and to pass legislation that clarifies their right to guide the medical care of their children.
Amy Haywood is a former senior legislative assistant for a U.S. House representative. She writes The Primary Educator newsletter, which can be found at theprimaryeducator.com.
President Joe Biden has a message for the 133 hostages held by the monsters of Hamas: He will not rest until they are “back in the arms of their loved ones.”
“They have my word. Their families have my word,” Biden pledged Saturday on the POTUS X account before heading to a posh, black-tie White House Correspondents’ Dinner to rub elbows with the corporate media sycophants who have been carrying water for him.
I will not rest until every hostage, like Abigail, ripped from their families and held by Hamas is back in the arms of their loved ones.
Such a vow from the vaguely alert octogenarian known for being full of crap must have been comforting to the families of the people who have spent the better part of the past seven months in an unimaginable hell while the Biden administration has been sweet-talking the same people who want to wipe out Israel and annihilate Jews.
Biden tirelessly avoided any talk of the political headaches of hostages and Israel’s right to exist during the annual fete of self-important politicians, journalists, and celebrities at the Washington Hilton. Reportedly on the menu, Terrine of Jumbo Lump Crabmeat as an appetizer, an entree of Smoked Paprika Rubbed Filet with Foraged Wild Mushroom Ragout and Pancetta & Gala Apple Demi, washed down with some very fine Chateau Ste. Michelle, Chardonnay, and Cabernet Sauvignon. Safe to say the menu for Hamas’ captives was not nearly as epicurean.
But pretending to think about hostages works up a man-sized, elitist appetite.
“And let there be laughter. I hope for lots of side-splitting, light the internet on fire laughter,” Kelly O’Donnell, NBC senior White House correspondent and president of the White House Correspondents’ Association, insipidly said in her opening remarks.
But not a word about the goings on in Gaza and Israel from Biden or the assemblage of narcissists, to the chagrin of the hundreds of Hamas sympathizers protesting outside the high-priced Hilton.
“Shame on you!” shouted the protesters adorned in the traditional Palestinian keffiyeh, the Associated Press reported. Their renunciations, like those of the professional protesters at Columbia and other college campuses, were reserved for Israel, the United States, and anybody who dares do business with them.
It was tough all over. Some of the correspondents’ dinner guests had to “hurry through hundreds of protesters outraged over the mounting humanitarian disaster for Palestinian civilians in Gaza,” in the AP’s telling. The self-loathing reporters forced to cover the glitzy affair couldn’t help but make the story about the protesters and the poor Palestinians, most of whom have been cheerleaders for the genocidal “From the River to the Sea, Palestine Will Be Free” campaign.
‘Take This Serious’
Biden could muster all of 10 minutes in his stand-up routine, and much of that was to knock the political opponent he’s trying to imprison. The dinner is designed to be a good-natured roast, but Biden’s speech took a grim turn as he warned of the kind of horror only Democrats and the reporters assembled at the Washington Hilton could invent: a J6 apocalyptic future under another Donald Trump presidency. The room of accomplice media members surely shuddered thinking about the hellscape that life under Trump would unleash — like a booming economy, low inflation, a safer world, and a closed U.S. border.
“We have to take this serious — eight years ago we could have written it off as ‘Trump talk’ but not after Jan. 6,” Biden told the attendees with a straight face. Know this, White House correspondents and esteemed corporate media reporters: Biden will never rest until every one of those Jan. 6 grandmother rebels, Capitol sightseers, and the Republican presidential candidate leading the current White House occupant rot in prison.
Colin Jost, after comparing his late grandfather to Biden, closes by saying his grandfather voted for Joe in 2020 "because you're a decent man" and "my grandpa voted for decency and decency is why we're all here tonight."
Trump did not attend the dinner. That might have something to do with the fact that he’s been forced to defend himself in a Democrat-led banana republic while trying to find time to campaign for president. But as AP pointed out, Trump never attended the smorgasbord of smugness during his presidency.
“In 2011, he sat in the audience, and glowered through a roasting by then-President Barack Obama of Trump’s reality-television celebrity status. Obama’s sarcasm then was so scalding that many political watchers linked it to Trump’s subsequent decision to run for president in 2016,” the story asserts as if communicating facts. We all know the No. 1 reason presidential campaigns launch is out of spite. Franklin Pierce jumped in the 1852 race after Whig Millard Fillmore dogged the Democrat about his raging alcoholism. Hell hath no fury like a Jacksonian Democrat scorned by “scalding sarcasm.”
Biden did spend time on Sunday telling Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu how to run Israel’s war on terror. You’ll recall how much the United States appreciated similar meddling by other nations after 9/11. According to The Times of Israel, Biden spoke to Netanyahu about his joint statement with the leaders of 17 other nations calling on Hamas to immediately release the remaining hostages it is holding in Gaza amid the human shield Palestinians. Israel would grant a ceasefire if the hostages are released. And that’s what an unpopular American president drowning in bad polls really wants: a ceasefire. The release of the hostages is a means to his political ends, which is to get two critical contingencies — Muslims and Jews — off his back.
And the hostages and their families can rest assured, tough-talking Joe Biden won’t rest until he secures freedom for his political aims. *Not including his daily rests and swanky dinners.
Matt Kittle is a senior elections correspondent for The Federalist. An award-winning investigative reporter and 30-year veteran of print, broadcast, and online journalism, Kittle previously served as the executive director of Empower Wisconsin.
Colleges around the U.S. implored pro-Palestinian student protesters to clear out tent encampments with rising levels of urgency Monday, including an ultimatum from Columbia University for students to sign a form and leave the encampment by the afternoon or face suspension.
Columbia activists defied the 2 p.m. deadline with chants, clapping and drumming from the encampment of more than 300 people. No officials appeared to enter the encampment, with at least 120 tents staying up as the deadline passed.
The notice sent Monday by the Ivy League university in Manhattan to protesters in the encampment said that if they left by the deadline and signed a form committing to abide by university policies through June 2025 or an earlier graduation, they could finish the semester in good standing. If not, the letter said, they will be suspended, pending further investigation.
Early protests at Columbia, where demonstrators set up tents in the center of the campus, sparked pro-Palestinian demonstrations across the country. Students and others have been sparring over the Israel-Hamas war and its mounting death toll. Many students are demanding their universities cut financial ties with Israel. The number of arrests at campuses nationwide is approaching 1,000.
College classes are wrapping up for the semester, and campuses are preparing for graduation ceremonies, giving schools an extra incentive to clear encampments. The University of Southern California canceled its main graduation ceremony this spring. Others are asking the protests to resolve peacefully so they can hold their ceremonies.
Fewer new tent encampments have sprouted around the country as the school year winds down. But students have dug in their heels at tent encampments at some high-profile universities, with standoffs continuing between protesters and administrators at Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania, Yale and others.
Protesters at Yale set up a new camp with dozens of tents Sunday afternoon, nearly a week after police arrested nearly 50 and cleared a similar one nearby. Later Sunday, they were notified by a Yale official that they could face discipline, including suspension, and possible arrest if they continued the encampment on a grassy area known as Cross Campus, protesters and school officials said. No deadline to leave was set.
Yale said in a statement Monday that while it supports peaceful protests and freedom of speech, it does not tolerate policy violations such as the encampment. School officials said that the protest is near residential colleges where many students are studying for final exams, and that permission must be granted for groups to hold events and put-up structures on campus.
Protests were also still active at a number of other campuses. Near George Washington University, protesters at an encampment breached and dismantled the barriers Monday morning used to secure University Yard, the university said in a statement. The yard had been closed since last week.
About 275 people were arrested Saturday at various campuses including Indiana University at Bloomington, Arizona State University and Washington University in St. Louis.
In its letter to student protesters, Columbia officials noted that exams are beginning, and graduation is upcoming.
“We urge you to remove the encampment so that we do not deprive your fellow students, their families and friends of this momentous occasion,” the letter said.
Mahmoud Khalil, the lead negotiator on behalf of protesters, said university representatives began passing out the notices at the encampment shortly after 10 a.m. Monday. A spokesperson for Columbia confirmed the letter had gone out to students but declined to comment further.
Under the terms spelled out in the letter, students who leave the encampment would be put on disciplinary probation through June 2025. Students who are already receiving discipline, or who face harassment or discrimination charges for actions in the encampment, are not eligible for the offer.
Red and orange tents stayed up on the lawn as protesters considered the latest amnesty offer from the administration. A hundred feet away, a student cafe was open, and people enjoyed coffee in the warm spring sun.
On one side of the shuttered campus, students and staff lined up for security checks across the street from a cluster of TV trucks. At the other side, a police officer stood next to an unmarked black sedan with blue and red lights quietly flashing.
The demonstrations have led Columbia to hold remote classes and set a series of deadlines for protesters to leave the encampment, which they have missed. The school said in an email to students that bringing back police “at this time” would be counterproductive.
The students and administrators have negotiated to end the disruptions, but the sides have not come to an agreement, university President Minouche Shafik said in a statement Monday. The university said it will offer an alternative venue for the protests after exams and graduation.
Columbia’s handling of the protests has prompted federal complaints.
A class-action lawsuit on behalf of Jewish students alleges a breach of contract by Columbia, claiming the university failed to maintain a safe learning environment, despite policies and promises. It also challenges the move away from in-person classes and seeks quick court action requiring Columbia to provide security for the students.
Meanwhile, a legal group representing pro-Palestinian students is urging the U.S. Department of Education’s civil rights office to investigate Columbia’s compliance with the Civil Rights Act of 1964 for how they have been treated.
The plight of students who have been arrested has become a central part of protests, with the students and a growing number of faculty demanding amnesty for protesters. At issue is whether the suspensions and legal records will follow students through their adult lives.
Copyright 2024 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
An illegal alien from China arrives Oct. 10 at a San Diego train station with a group of other illegal immigrants. (Photo: Frederic J. Brown/AFP/Getty Images)
Chinese nationals are crossing America’s southern border at a rapid rate. On Wednesday alone, the U.S. Border Patrol encountered 206 Chinese nationals crossing into the San Diego sector, Fox News correspondent Bill Melugin reported. But the illegal entry of Chinese nationals into America through the Border Patrol’s San Diego sector isn’t new. Chinese individuals long have worked with criminal cartels to get into the U.S., former Border Patrol Chief Rodney Scott says, but the numbers have shot up.
In January, U.S. Customs and Border Protection reported over 3,700 encounters with Chinese nationals on the southern border, nearly all in the San Diego sector. But back up to January 2021, when Joe Biden became president, and CBP encountered only 17 Chinese nationals at the southern border. So what changed?
To find out why so many Chinese nationals are crossing the U.S.-Mexico border in the San Diego sector, The Daily Signal spoke to Scott as well as to Derek Maltz, a 28-year veteran of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, and to Michael Cunningham, a research fellow in The Heritage Foundation’s Asian Studies Center. (Heritage founded The Daily Signal in 2014.)
They point to six main reasons.
1. San Diego Infrastructure
“It’s easy,” Scott said of why San Diego is a favorite crossing point for illegal immigrants from China.
Before serving as the 24th chief of the Border Patrol from January 2020 to August 2021, Scott was chief patrol agent for the San Diego sector from 2017 to 2019. San Diego, population 1.4 million, long has been a popular illegal crossing point for illegal aliens because it’s easy to disappear on busy city streets, Scott explains.
“If you’re coming across [the border] in between the ports of entry through traditional smuggling, we used to talk about a vanishing point,” Scott said. “How fast can you get across the border and then blend into society? That’s one of the reasons you look for [urban] infrastructure.”
San Diego is even more popular now for illegal aliens, given the situation at the border, because “it’s a lower risk,” he said.
To cross into Texas from Mexico, “you’ve got to come across the river,” the former Border Patrol chief explained, adding that globally, smugglers and others seeking to enter the U.S. illegally have seen Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s response to illegal immigration. In an initiative called Operation Lone Star, the Republican governor placed Texas National Guard troops along sections of the border with Mexico and installed concertina and razor wire, creating a greater challenge for migrants seeking to cross the border illegally.
And in Arizona, the harsh realities of the desert are a turnoff for illegal aliens trying to cross into the U.S., Scott said. Although such conditions don’t prevent illegal crossings, he said, Arizona is “hot” and “desolate.”
Mexico’s border with California in the San Diego sector offers a safer, more comfortable crossing option, he said.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s nine southern border sectors. (Graphic: CBP/Border Report)
A migrant can go to Tijuana, Mexico, “be in a hotel drinking coffee, watching TV, get the ‘go,’ and in 15 minutes [he] can be in the United States,” Scott said. In 20 more minutes, he said, that same migrant can be getting processed inside a Border Patrol station with “air conditioning, food, and water.”
When illegal aliens are released in San Diego, the city offers “this massive nongovernmental organizational network system that’s going to provide free bus tickets [and] shelter,” he said. California also is a sanctuary state, meaning it doesn’t cooperate with federal authorities to enforce immigration law.
“From a marketing standpoint, it’s the easiest place to convince people to cross illegally,” Scott said of San Diego. “And then from a cartel perspective … that smuggling infrastructure has been well-established for years.”
2. Money Motivates Cartels
Chinese migrants are “lucrative” to the drug and smuggling cartels in Mexico, Scott told The Daily Signal.
“It’s pretty hard to get out of China,” the former Border Patrol chief said. “Nobody just goes to an airport and flies to the United States without specific permission from the government, so you have to be smuggled out of China and then into the United States.”
Chinese nationals buy “travel packages” from the cartels that are similar to commercial vacation travel packages, Scott said, and they pay based on what is included. For example, he said, one package for Chinese nationals requires them to travel to Ecuador and then on to Mexico.
“And when they came into Mexico, they got legit legal travel documents so that they could fly on domestic airlines in Mexico. But for a lower fee, you didn’t get that.”
3. Because They Can
Established smuggling routes, urban or suburban infrastructure, and the cartels’ financial motivation long have driven illegal Chinese migration to the U.S. So again, why the spike now?
“The difference now,” Scott said, “is there’s no real response from the federal government of the United States to slow it down. There hasn’t been since 2021.”
Biden, a Democrat, was inaugurated Jan. 20, 2021, and quickly dismantled the border security policies of his defeated Republican predecessor, Donald Trump.
Now, with a Biden-Trump rematch looming in November, Scott speculated, migrants and smugglers are concerned that U.S. border security will return if Trump or another Republican wins. That may help explain the rapid rise in crossings in recent months.
Illegal crossings in the San Diego sector by Chinese nationals were relatively few at the beginning of the Biden administration. CBP records only 75 encounters with Chinese migrants in the San Diego sector during fiscal year 2021, which ended that Sept. 30. The number climbed to 942 in fiscal 2022, then exploded to 10,520 in fiscal 2023.
So far in fiscal 2024, which ends in five months, CBP has encountered 23,890 Chinese nationals in the San Diego sector.
Cunningham, the research fellow in Heritage’s Asian Studies Center, told The Daily Signal that Chinese nationals “see all over the news that the border is wide open, that Biden is not protecting the border.”
So the question, he says, is “why wouldn’t they” attempt to cross into the U.S.?
4. ‘A Better Life’
“A lot of people are desperate to get out of China now,” Cunningham said. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Chinese citizens endured about three years of lockdowns and restrictions that dwarfed those in the U.S. These “draconian lockdowns” led many Chinese to lose faith in their communist government, he said.
China’s older population lived through the Cultural Revolution from 1966 to 1976, if not previous repressive political campaigns, Cunningham said, before the regime implemented a strict “zero-COVID” policy.
“They saw zero-COVID as what it was—a political campaign. And they’re worried about China’s future,” he said of ordinary Chinese citizens.
Chinese leader Xi Jinping gained an opportunity to rule the nation indefinitely when the communist regime ended formal presidential terms in 2018.
China’s economy is struggling as young people try to find jobs, the nation’s real estate market is in trouble after the failure of two major property development companies this year, and its stock market saw a $7 trillion decline in just a few years.
“People for years have wanted to get their money out of China, and it’s very difficult because of capital controls,” Cunningham said. “Now more of them are just wanting to get out of China altogether for a better life.”
5. Chinese Influence on America
Through its Belt and Road Initiative, China plans to develop trade routes with other nations, expand infrastructure, and invest in foreign economic development initiatives.
With Chinese leaders’ end goal of expanding “their power and control dramatically,” Scott said, it is “not a hidden secret that they have long allowed and or even facilitated and helped getting people out of China into the U.S. through whatever means possible.” The former Border Patrol chief pointed to reports that Chinese nationals are “systematically coming into the United States and buying property, buying foreign property, buying property near military bases,” as evidence that they are crossing the border intentionally.
China owns 384,000 acres in the U.S., about 1% of foreign-held acres, according to a Department of Agriculture report in 2021, the latest data available.
Although illegal immigrants could achieve some cultural and economic influence on America, Cunningham said, it’s unlikely that significant numbers of Chinese nationals cross the southern border with the intent of spying on the U.S.
Legal ways to enter the U.S., he said, provide greater opportunity for Chinese spies to access sensitive U.S. data than an illegal alien could get at.
“The idea that China is desperate to get their spies in the U.S. and so they’re sending them across the border illegally where they’re going to have no identity, they’re not going to be capable of getting the high-access jobs that they want their spies to get—it’s just not reasonable,” Cunningham said.
But, he added, it’s reasonable to believe that Chinese spies are infiltrated within criminal cartels and are “keeping tabs on some of the Chinese who are coming to America.”
6. Marijuana Farms
The Chinese are heavily involved in the domestic growth of marijuana in America, both legal and illegal, federal officials say. In February, 50 members of the House and Senate sent a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland expressing concern about and asking for answers to “reports from across the country regarding Chinese nationals and organized crime cultivating marijuana on United States farmland.”
“There’s a new term that’s been used a lot lately in local law enforcement—especially [in] Northern California [and] the inland parts of California—called narco slavery,” Scott told The Daily Signal. “And they’re seeing more and more Chinese that are being brought across and they’re being forced to work these domestic marijuana operations; they’re being forced to shovel money around the United States to pay back the smuggling fee that they couldn’t afford up front.”
Chinese-run marijuana grow operations “are all over the country,” Maltz, the former DEA official, told The Daily Signal. This isn’t a coincidence, he said.
“The marijuana today has high content of THC, much higher than we’ve ever seen,” Maltz said. THC, formally known as tetrahydrocannabinol, is a psychoactive compound found in cannabinoids. Large amounts increase the effects of marijuana on the user.
“Marijuana use directly affects brain function—specifically the parts of the brain responsible for memory, learning, attention, decision-making, coordination, emotions, and reaction time,” according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Cannabis products have been legalized for medical use in 38 states and legalized for nonmedical use in 24 states. The increased levels of THC in marijuana are “causing issues with the brain more than we’ve ever seen,” said Maltz, who also was in charge of the Justice Department’s Special Operations Division for nearly 10 years.
“Very smart Chinese Communist Party leaders understand this is another way we could take advantage of America’s addiction to marijuana, and dumb Americans will never figure it out,” he said.
Last night, I had the pleasure of attending the White House Correspondents’ Dinner at the Washington Hilton. This dinner was memorable from past years in the huge number of anti-Israeli protesters around the hotel. I was dropped off a couple blocks from the hotel and immediately confronted with protesters with cameras demanding that I denounce Israel. Once guests made it to the security line, they walked next to protesters shouting insults and some tossing fake blood. In other words, it was not that different from my campus so there was a sense of familiarity.
I have attended the dinner in prior years, including when I worked for CBS, NBC, and BBC. I was attending this year with my colleagues at Fox News.
The President did a very good job and delivered some very funny lines: “The New York Times issued a statement blasting me for ‘actively and effectively avoiding independent journalists. Hey, if that’s what it takes to get The New York Times to say I’m active and effective, I’m for it.”
He primarily attacked his opponent, which is not surprising. (“Age is the only thing we have in common. My vice president actually endorses me.”). Some lines surprisingly received applause despite their implied slap at the treatment of the WHC by his administration: “In a lot of ways, this dinner sums up my first two years in office: I’ll talk for 10 minutes, take zero questions and cheerfully walk away.”
He spoke to “all my friends in the press . . . and Fox News.” It was a funny but poignant line for a press corps repeatedly criticized for being in the bag for the Bidens.
I must confess a certain dismay at having President Joe Biden speaking under a huge banner reading “Celebrating the First Amendment.” As I have written in columns and my forthcoming book, President Biden has proven arguably the most anti-free speech president in our history after John Adams. While that record primarily reflects his support for censorship rather than curtailing the free press, the banner held a degree of bitter irony for some of us in the free speech community.
This year’s host was Colin Jost who also had some very funny moments. I have been to some WHC dinners where the hosts were distinctly unfunny and even painful. Jost had some very good jokes, even as he was poked fun at Fox, New York Post, and conservatives. My favorite WHC dinner remains when Ray Charles appeared. He proceeded to sing a couple of his signature songs. His voice had become even more gravelly with age and it only made the songs more powerful. The whole room was rocking as was then President Barack Obama.
Yet, Jost brought some good material:
“My Weekend Update co-anchor Michael Che was going to join me here tonight, but in solidarity with President Biden, I decided to lose all my Black support. Che told me to say that, and I’m just realizing I was set up.”
“Doug [Emhoff], as you can tell from all the comments about my wife, I’m also used to being the second gentleman.”
“The Washington Post is here. … They were the ones taking your coats at the door. Please be sure to tip.
He also ended with a moving tribute to his grandfather, a firefighter in Staten Island, New York, who passed away in the last year. It was genuine and moving.
Throughout the remarks, Jost remarked how he could not believe the race was tied despite all of the bad coverage of Trump. However, the open support shown for the President last night is why the one-sided coverage is not having much penetration with many Americans. Many in the public now simply tune out the mainstream media after seeing the bias and reframing of the news, including the continued protection of the President by the media. Indeed, Peter Doocy is viewed by many as one of the few members of the White House Press Corp willing to consistently push the President in damaging stories.
I joined figures like Shannon Breem (who I will see this morning as her guest on Fox Sunday), Jennifer Griffin, Trey Yingst, and others at our table. It was great to see Trey out of his usual flak jacket in a war zone, though the Beltway can be an equally lethal environment. The evening would not be complete without my own embarrassing moments. When Trey and I decided to do a selfie, I showed my usual complete inability to handle the basic functions of life. Here is my selfie that I took of the two of us:
Having spent time under fire and recognizing incompetence under pressure, Trey delicately noted that I did not have a clue how to take a selfie, grabbed my phone, and took this picture:
This is why the closest place that Fox allows me to real combat is the United States Supreme Court.
To make matters even worse, my friend Steve Doocy was there (with, of course, that “other Doocy,”Peter). Steve also had to grab my phone to perform this simplest of tasks:
The fact is that, like Blanche DuBois, I have always depended on the kindness of others to get me through the basic requirements of life. As my children can attest, the idea of my work with modern technology as simple as a cellphone is fraught with danger. This is why I try to stay in the 18th Century for much of my academic work.
It was a fun night, though the walk out of the hotel was another running of the gauntlet with protesters throwing the fake blood and screaming profanities at the journalists and others leaving the event. It was around midnight, but many protesters remained (though the numbers were much smaller than the crowd at 6pm).
I happily skipped the after-dinner parties since this was long past when all good law professors should be in bed. Nevertheless, it was a fun evening and I have the non-selfies to prove it.
Below is my column in The Hill on the first week of testimony in the Trump trial. It is making Rube Goldberg’s 13 step self-operating napkin look like a model of efficiency and clarity. It is so convoluted and illogical it is mesmerizing.
Here is the column:
Rube Goldberg, the inventor of bizarre machines that performed simple tasks through dozens of mechanical steps, was once asked about the essence of creating such fantastic, illogical machines. He replied, “An inventor is simply a fellow who doesn’t take his education too seriously.” After the first week of testimony, the trial of Donald Trump is increasingly looking like a mad prosecution machine by lawyers who don’t take law too seriously.
I have long been a critic of the Bragg indictment as legally incomprehensible. However, I must confess that after a week of testimony, some of us have developed a weird fascination with the utter madness of the scene unfolding in Manhattan. It was not until the second week of proceedings that Bragg even revealed part of his theory of criminality. For months, even liberal legal analysts have expressed dismay that Bragg’s indictment had not clearly stated what specific crime that Trump sought to conceal by allegedly misrepresenting payments to former adult film actress Stormy Daniels.
The premise of the prosecution always had that Rube Goldberg feel. It was so implausible as to be impossible. After all, the base charge is a simple misdemeanor under a New York law against falsifying business records. Trump paid Cohen hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees and costs, including $130,000 for a nondisclosure agreement with Daniels.
Bragg is vague as to what should have been noted on the ledgers for the payments. It is not even clear if Trump knew of this expense’s designation as a legal cost. However, it really did not matter, because the misdemeanor has been as dead as Dillinger for years.
The dead misdemeanor was shocked back into life by claiming that it was committed to conceal another crime. Under New York’s penal law, section 175.10, it can be a felony if the “intent to defraud includes an intent to commit another crime or to aid or conceal the commission thereof.”
For months, Bragg has suggested that the “other crime” was the violation of federal election laws, suggesting that the payment was really a campaign contribution Trump made to himself that was not properly recorded. The problem is that the Justice Department investigated that crime already and decided that it was not a viable criminal claim. It did not even seek a civil fine.
Bragg’s predecessor and Bragg himself rejected the theory behind this prosecution. But then a pressure campaign led Bragg to green-light a prosecution roughly eight years after the 2016 campaign.
In the trial, Bragg added a type of frying pan flip to his Rube Goldberg contraption by arguing that Trump may have been trying to hide his violation of another dead misdemeanor under yet another New York election law prohibiting “conspir[ing] to promote or prevent the election of any person to a public office by unlawful means.”
In other words, Trump was conspiring to try to win his own election. This even though the notations were made after he had won the election, and even though Trump was running for a federal, not a state office.
So again, what is the unlawful means?
The machine then flips you back to the beginning — seeking “to influence the election.” There are still the federal election violations, but that theory was rejected after an investigation. And if it were a real crime, it would be brought by federal, not state prosecutors.
There are also the misdemeanor falsifications of business records under section 175.05. So, Bragg would use one dead misdemeanor to trigger a second dead misdemeanor to create a felony on the simple notations used to describe payments for a completely legal nondisclosure agreement.
This circular reasoning is already incredibly creative, but the actual evidence used to propel this ball through the machine is even wackier. Bragg decided to start with a witness to discuss an affair that is not part of the indictment. David Pecker, former publisher of the National Enquirer tabloid, had supposedly been paid to kill a story of a Trump affair with a different woman, Karen McDougal, a former Playboy model.
Pecker proceeded to make the prosecution case even more convoluted. On cross examination, Pecker admitted that Trump told him that he knew nothing about any reimbursement to Cohen for any hush money, that he had killed or raised such stories with Trump for decades before he ever announced for president and that he had also killed stories for other celebrities and politicians, including Arnold Schwarzenegger, Tiger Woods, Rahm Emanuel and Mark Wahlberg.
He also testified that Trump told him that paying hush money never really worked because stories still get out. And he understood that Michael Cohen was working as Trump’s personal counsel, not his campaign counsel. Finally, he testified that Trump had no direct involvement in arranging any payments to McDougal.
Pecker added that Bragg’s star witness, Michael Cohen, commonly exaggerated and often became loud and argumentative. Cohen will effectively ask the jury to send his former client to jail for following his own legal advice.
Bragg will now call to the stand Cohen, whom a judge just recently denounced as a serial perjurer who is continuing to game the system.
Even as legal experts debate what crime can be found in any of these flips and dips, Judge Juan Merchan seems content to listen as this weird machine bleeps and whirls in his courtroom.
That is why Bragg has created the perfect Rube Goldberg attraction. The artist himself explained his unlikely success by saying, “It just happened that the public happened to appreciate the satirical quality of these crazy things.”
In New York, that appreciation has moved from the satirical to the legal.
Jonathan Turley is the J.B. and Maurice C. Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at the George Washington University Law School.
A.F. Branco Cartoon – Sen. Nicole Mitchell, DFL-Woodbury, has yet to appear on the Senate floor since she was arrested and charged with first-degree burglary in northwestern Minnesota earlier this week. But she’s been the center of attention in the little the Senate has accomplished since it returned from a Passover holiday break on Wednesday.
DFL senator accused of burglary: ‘I do not intend to resign’
By Hank Long – April 26, 2024
Sen. Nicole Mitchell, DFL-Woodbury, has yet to appear on the Senate floor since she was arrested and charged with first-degree burglary in northwestern Minnesota earlier this week. But she’s been the center of attention in the little the Senate has accomplished since it returned from a Passover holiday break on Wednesday.
On Thursday afternoon, the first-term legislator — who represents District 47 (which includes most of Woodbury and a portion of southeastern Maplewood) — distributed a statement to media announcing she does not intend to resign from her seat. READ MORE…
A.F. Branco Cartoon – The New York Kangaroo justice system has become a national joke, demonstrating beyond any doubt they are a Stalinist-style Banana Republic exercising “Show me the man, and I’ll show you the crime” tactics against Donald Trump.
SAVAGE ANGEL Alina Habba ERUPTS After Corrupt New York Kangaroo Court Denies Trump the Right to Speak and Slaps Him with $83 Million Judgement! WTH? (VIDEO)
By Jim Hoft – Jan 26, 2024
Trump attorney Alina Habba WENT OFF after the crooked New York City court slapped President Trump with an $83 million judgment for speaking out against the disgusting lies of a crazed woman who said he lured her into a Bergdorf Goodman store some 25 or 30 years ago and raped her in a dressing room where they were trying on lingerie. The entire story lacks credulity and is like something from a Law and Order sketch. READ MORE…
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.
For a man who’s supposedly hated in Democrat-controlled cities, Donald Trump made one helluva splash in The Big Apple.
Look at this reception by onlookers as Trump headed to the kangaroo court set up by Alvin Bragg:
Ok, if you’re going to make me go to court in NYC, I’m going to CAMPAIGN IN NYC😲! He’s going to get 200 million votes this time so suck it liberals👊. Remember, you too could trigger a liberal with every retweet😉 pic.twitter.com/aOxF9TJ4oB
This is an impromptu appearance by Trump, and he draws this fawning crowd. Compare this to the pre-fab nonsense of Biden.
Trump gets exponentially more people waving and praising him than Biden can get at his own family reunion.
As one commenter wrote: “Meanwhile Joe Biden is getting his diaper changed.”
Check out this video that blows up the Leftist narrative:
Watch that video multiple times and gauge the crowd. All 360 degrees of video show people in support of Trump. And there may be thousands of Trump worshippers; all people who recognize the political witch hunt Trump faces in Democrats’ election interference efforts. No need for obscure camera angles to hide the crowd, as the press do with Biden.
Speaking of Captain Demento, while speaking in Pennsylvania he recently lamented people with “FJB” signs and children flipping him off:
I congratulate the parents of the 7 or 8-year-old Biden mentioned who flipped him off. Fitting that children recognize scum when they see it, less they turn into Democrats.
Biden is an indecent man at best. However, what’s worse is he pretends to be decent. But Joe Biden fools nobody.
What bothers Democrats and other Leftists is this is happening all over America. To validate what the “81-million-vote-man” lamented, check out this video of Biden heading into the battleground state of Michigan:
We slowed this video down so you could see the more of the signs. Even at regular speed it’s easy to see the throngs of Trump supporters lined up for what appears to be blocks. These people took the time to dress in patriotic anti-Biden gear, carry American flags, and showcase signs to show how much they detest Biden.
Slow-motion shows thousands of people supporting Trump, hating Biden. And this video captures only a fraction of the distance and people. This video lasted a minute, and you saw a fraction of the thousands of Trump supporters.
By contrast, where are the Biden supporters?
Watch ANY video of Biden and the one thing that will be missing is supporters. This slowed down video show no Biden supporters, because Biden is almost universally despised. I’m actually surprised he admitted it in that earlier video.
If Biden were popular, there would be just as many people holding his signs on the other side of the road. But you never hear of clashes between Trump supporters and Biden supporters for one simple reason: there are no true Biden supporters.
Biden supporters are either Trump haters or virtue-signalers. They only support Biden when they gain something. Privately, only the biggest fool in the country supports this old fool.
Leftists get mad at me for stating this truth. Because the truth hurts, and people hate being caught in their own lies.
Democrats are panicked.
Democrats may pretend to be Tommy Toughass publicly, but in truth he’s scared of his shadow. That’s why he lies about his life, his son’s life, his uncle’s life, and everything else.
Play all the games the Left will, but they are panicked at the visceral reaction against Biden. Everywhere. And the real polls validate what Democrats know: Biden can’t beat Trump.
The strategy of Democrats has been clear since Biden was cheated into office. Tie Trump up in court, and try to bankrupt him. But that’s not working, nor will it.
As I heard the President of the Claremont Institute say, [pp] “Trump is the perfect man for this time.” He went on to say that Trump may not be the best president for all time, but he is undoubted the man for this time.
How anybody could watch Democrats persecute this man and not see what’s happening shows the real nature of Democrats or anti-Trumpers.
Nothing Democrats do will stop Trump’s second term and the resurgence of America. MAGA.
Top Stories • 24 States Fight Biden’s Decision to Yank Oklahoma’s Health Care Funds Because It’s Pro-Life • Pregnancy Centers Fight Back Against Biden Trying to Force Them to Promote Abortions • New York Attorney General Letitia James Trying to Shut Down Every Pro-Life Pregnancy Center • Robert F. Kennedy Jr Supports Abortions Up to Birth at Taxpayer Expense
More Pro-Life News • Justice Alito Shuts Down Biden Attorney: How Do You Not Know This Law Protects Unborn Children? • Joe Biden is Trying to Force My State to Kill Babies in Abortions, Supreme Court Must Stop Him • Protecting Babies From Abortion is One of the Top Issues for Christian Voters • FBI Director Christopher Wray Targeted Pro-Life Protests, But Not Monitoring Pro-Hamas Protests • 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.
Comments or questions? Email us at news@lifenews.com. Copyright 2003-2024 LifeNews.com. All rights reserved. For information on advertising or reprinting news from LifeNews.com, email us.
Students at the University of Washington postponed an anti-Israel demonstration planned for Thursday because too many of the students who signed up are white.
According to MyNorthwest, a Washington-based radio station, the University of Washington’s Progressive Student Union (UWPSU) opted to delay an encampment in solidarity with Palestinian terrorists “to make sure this encampment is a better reflection of the UW community, and having even greater unity with Muslim, Palestinian and Arab students.”
“We want to be part of a much larger coalition of groups and make no mistake, WE WILL HAVE A UW ENCAMPMENT! We want to make sure everyone’s voice is included and this action is as safe, secure, and strong as possible,” read a statement from the far-left student union published by MyNorthwest.
BREAKING: Activists with the UW Progressive Student Union said they're postponing the “UW Palestine encampment” because there were too many white students involved. The group received criticism for not including Muslim and Arab students in the organizing.https://t.co/Do5KBLbFM2
— Jason Rantz on KTTH Radio (@jasonrantz) April 25, 2024
The protest at the University of Washington would have placed the school on the map of more than 40 college campuses where pro-Palestine demonstrations have brought havoc to institutions from coast to coast. These anti-Israel encampments have been reported from Harvard and Yale to Stanford and the University of Southern California (USC), driving a nationwide rise in anti-Jewish hate. According to the Associated Press, students taking over college campuses are broadly demanding schools halt business with Israel or any other groups supporting the Israeli effort to eliminate Iranian-backed terrorists in the Middle East.
Demonstrations spread from Columbia University, where students began to protest last week as school leaders testified about antisemitism on Capitol Hill. The Ivy League school canceled in-person classes Monday and notified students that classes would be hybrid for the rest of the semester due to ongoing demonstrations. Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson visited the university this week to shift attention away from his embarrassing failure to secure any new border fortification amid negotiations that ended with sending more money to Ukraine.
At USC, officials announced the university will cancel the school’s primary graduation ceremony after dozens were arrested in protests Thursday. Other universities may follow suit while some, such as the University of Michigan, are tightening restrictions on prohibited items, including flags and banners.
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) sent a letter to college and university presidents earlier this month to “urge you to take clear, decisive action now to ensure that graduation ceremonies, events, and functions run smoothly, and that all students and their families feel safe, welcomed and celebrated.”
“As leaders in the Jewish community, we ask that you take your role seriously in making sure that Jewish students — and all students — are not robbed of a positive, memorable lifecycle event,” said the ADL.
Meanwhile, schools where demonstrations are taking place are facing financial consequences for their failure to crack down on the encampment protests. Billionaire Columbia University alum Robert Kraft, the owner of the New England Patriots, said he would stop contributing to his alma mater, and Leon Cooperman, another alum, also pledged to continue a halt in donations shortly after the Oct. 7 terrorist attack on Israel. According to The New York Post, other billionaire donors are considering a similar pause on university contributions. With high-dollar contributors pulling back from schools, having too few white students involved in pro-terrorist protests should be the least of their worries.
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.
Maybe you saw a recent clip-on X from conservative talk radio personality Erick Erickson criticizing what he calls a “weird movement within conservatism” that questions things like “limited government” and “free markets,” principles long associated with the conservative movement.
If you haven’t seen the clip, take a look. It’s like watching someone talk about the state of conservatism halfway through Obama’s first term, when Republican leaders were vowing to repeal Obamacare and inveighing against Democrats for violating the Constitution with a “socialist” health care scheme. (Obamacare was of course never repealed and is now, all these years later, a permanent feature of America’s health care system.)
A growing number of individuals and groups on the right are turning their back on conservatism without giving up the label. They have abandoned the three-legged stool of fiscal conservatism, traditional values, and a foreign policy approach of peace through strength. Instead,… pic.twitter.com/Ddv6i7vKxG
Erickson’s point, which he also made in a post for National Review, is that the Republican coalition for decades was built on the “three-legged stool” of fiscal conservatism, traditional values, and a peace-through-strength foreign policy. This is what won the Cold War and unleashed prosperity at home. I’m sure you’ve heard the story.
The problem now, he says, is that some people on the right (whom he doesn’t name) are calling into question these orthodoxies, especially free markets and limited government. They aren’t fighting to cut the size of the government but are instead working to gain control of it and wield power to achieve their preferred outcomes.
Erickson thinks this is bad, a betrayal of the old three-legged stool of Reaganite conservatism. After all, he says, if you use government power when your side is in control, the opposing side will use it against you when they’re in control. And we don’t want that, do we?
It’s hard to overstate how out-of-touch this way of thinking is, as if the past 15 years simply never happened, to say nothing of the past 50.
Consider the three legs of the stool. On fiscal conservatism, we’re swimming in an ocean of debt that grows no matter which party controls Congress, while inflation is killing middle- and working-class families. On traditional values, we legalized gay marriage and then quickly moved on to normalizing transgenderism and acquiescing to so-called “gender-affirming care,” even for minors. On peace-through-strength foreign policy, we lost the War on Terror and are now funding multiple wars all over the world as part of a crumbling global imperium. The stool has no legs left.
As for limited government, we saw how much the GOP cared about the former during Covid, and even recently when it refused to do anything about our intelligence agencies routinely spying on us and censoring disfavored speech online. And free markets, although fine in theory, have in practice served as a permission slip for massive corporations to hollow out America’s industrial base and ship jobs overseas, enriching the upper and managerial classes while everyone else struggles.
In other words, the conservative movement as its currently constituted has stood athwart history yelling stop, and history has ignored it. Conservatism as Erickson understands and articulates it has not only failed to conserve anything, it has also turned out to be a shell game. Republicans would raise money on promises to repeal Obamacare or restrict abortion or secure the border, but never follow through once in power. They would rail against fiscal profligacy but always end up passing massive budgets with no real reforms or cuts. A strong foreign policy now looks more like a corporate welfare program for Pentagon contractors in a world that’s anything but peaceful.
Now, you could look at all this and dismiss it by saying a failure of Republican politicians to stand up for conservative principles doesn’t mean the principles are bad, it just means we have bad politicians. And that’s true up to a point. But such a critique fails to acknowledge two crucial things.
First is the incompatibility of an American global empire with the notion of “limited government.” After the Allied victory in World War II, and especially after the Cold War, America was never going to have a limited government. Or rather, our ability to limit the government was going to be rather limited. We have seen this play out with our intelligence agencies and the vast surveillance apparatus they wield. That apparatus, once used to topple foreign governments by staging coups and manipulating public opinion overseas, is now being used against American citizens (and of course was infamously used against President Trump).
Second is the plain reality that we are in a life-or-death struggle against the left, and the left is playing by a different set of rules. If the right agrees as a matter of principle that it will not wield government power to achieve its preferred outcomes, but the left vows to use the government whenever and however it can, then the left is going to win every time. And that is exactly what has happened.
So what to do about this? Erickson’s admonition amounts to a posture of permanent defeat. If conservatives can’t wield power to bring about their vision of the good, of a rightly ordered public square and a prosperous society, then the leftist radicals will continue to seize power and press forward with their permanent revolution, as they have been for decades.
Instead, we need to recognize that the conservative movement has failed. It is dead; we have seen it die. The fusionism of the Cold War era, when libertarians and social conservatives made common cause against communism, is finished. So too is the GOP establishment whose first priority was always corporate welfare at the expense of everything else.
As I wrote in these pages nearly two years ago, we have to stop thinking of ourselves as conservatives and start thinking of ourselves, and our movement, as restorationist and counterrevolutionary. In a very real sense, we have to re-found our country, and to do that we will have to seize power from the left — and use it.
It’s understandable if that makes some conservatives uneasy. After decades of repeating the phrases “limited government” and “free markets,” it’s a sobering thing to realize they were just empty slogans, at best just means to some other, higher end.
But the situation is what it is. Following Erickson’s advice, eschewing power because of allegiance to a political fantasy, means certain defeat. It means permanent dhimmitude for conservatives in a country run by people who hate them and are determined to destroy them and their way of life. The other option is to fight back, establish a beachhead, and use whatever power we can marshal to push back the left in hopes that future generations of Americans can live in true peace and prosperity.
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 Pagan America: the Decline of Christianity and the Dark Age to Come. Follow him on Twitter, @johnddavidson.
Former President Donald Trump returned to court in Manhattan on Friday for day eight of the NY v. Trump trial. Former American Media CEO David Pecker took the stand for cross-examination by defense attorneys who seek to poke holes in prosecutors’ allegations that Trump falsified business records.
Former President Donald Trump is on trial in Manhattan for allegedly falsifying business records to cover up hush money payments to Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal during his 2016 campaign for president.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg charged Trump with 34 counts of falsifying business records in the first degree. Trump pleaded not guilty to all 34 counts.
For prosecutors to secure a criminal conviction, they must convince a jury that Trump committed the crime of falsifying business records in “furtherance of another crime.” New York prosecutor Joshua Steinglass on Tuesday said the other crime was a violation of a New York law called “conspiracy to promote or prevent election.”
Get the Best of Fox News
Fast, 24/7 alerts delivered to your inbox daily. Subscribe to be in the know of the most important moments around the world.
By subscribing, you agree to our Privacy Policy.
26PostsSort BySort by NewestSort by Oldest
Coverage for this event has ended.
2 hour(s) ago
PINNED
Trump calls for Judge Merchan to ‘immediately’ lift gag order imposed upon him in criminal trial
Former President Trump and his team are requesting New York Judge Juan Merchan “immediately LIFT THE GAG ORDER” so that the presumptive 2024 Republican presidential nominee can “freely state his views, feelings, and policies.”
“45th President Donald J. Trump is again the Republican Nominee for President of the United States, and is currently dominating in the Polls. However, he is being inundated by the Media with questions because of this Rigged Biden Trial, which President Trump is not allowed to comment on, or answer, because of Judge Juan Merchan’s UNPRECEDENTED AND UNCONSTITUTIONAL Gag Order,” Trump posted to his Truth Social Friday.
“His Opponents have unlimited rights to question, but he has no right to respond,” the post continued.
“There has never been a situation like this in our Country’s History, a Candidate that is not allowed to answer questions,” he continued. “Even Crooked Joe Biden is talking about the Sham Case, and others inspired by his Administration.”
“We request that Judge Merchan immediately LIFT THE GAG ORDER, so that President Trump is able to freely state his views, feelings, and policies. He is asking for his Constitutional Right to Free Speech,” he posted. “If it is not granted, this again becomes a Rigged Election!”
Merchan, who is presiding over the trial, imposed a gag order on the former president before the trial began, which prohibits him from making statements about court staff and potential witnesses. The former president is allowed to discuss the trial in other ways, and without mentioning those individuals.
Bragg has alleged Trump violated the order at least 14 times and is asking the judge to fine the former president $1,000 per violation. They also want Trump to be held in contempt of court.
Trump attorneys argue the gag order is a violation of the former president’s First Amendment rights.
The judge is expected to hold a hearing on the gag order alleged violations on Thursday. Merchan has not yet ruled.
Former President Trump suggested the White House as the venue for a debate against President Biden, saying he “would be very comfortable.”
The presumptive 2024 Republican presidential nominee, after hours in a Manhattan courtroom for the eighth day of his criminal trial, has repeatedly said he will debate Biden “anywhere, anytime, anyplace.”
Biden broke his silence on debating his 2024 opponent on Friday during an interview with radio host Howard Stern. Biden said he would be “happy” to debate Trump.
“…we’re willing to do it Monday night, Tuesday night, Wednesday night, Thursday night, Friday night on national television,” Trump said after court concluded for the week. “We’re ready. Just tell me where.”
“We’ll do it at the White House,” Trump added. “That would be very comfortable, actually. You tell me where. We’re ready.”
Day 8 of Trump’s hush money trial adjourned until Tuesday
(REUTERS)
Court was dismissed late Friday afternoon following the eighth day of the hush money trial against former President Donald Trump.
The last witness called to testify was Gary Farro, a former senior bank manager at First Republic Bank who worked closely with Trump’s ex-lawyer Michael Cohen, and who is expected to be a key witness later in the trial.
Cohen has said that he arranged the $130,000 hush money payment to adult film actress Stormy Daniels through First Republic.
Farro testified Friday that every time Cohen spoke to him “he showed a sense of urgency.” Farro was selected to manage Cohen. He testified that he was selected “because of his knowledge and ability to work with clients who may be a little challenging.”
Farro said that he believes he can identify Cohen’s signature. Cohen had more than one account at the First Republic, and they were all his personal accounts. Farro testified that he did not open any accounts for the Trump Organization.
Earlier in the day, ex-tabloid publisher David Pecker took the witness stand, followed by a long-time Trump Org. employee Rhona Graff, who said she had a “vague recollection” of seeing Daniels at Trump Tower.
The trial will resume on Tuesday, April 30.
Fox News’ Grace Taggart contributed to this update.
Long-time Trump ‘gatekeeper’ testifies working for Trump, Stormy Daniels considered for ‘Apprentice’
Rhona Graff testifies during former U.S. President Donald Trump’s criminal trial (REUTERS/Jane Rosenberg)
Rhona Graff, a long-time Trump Organization employee and considered a “gatekeeper” to former President Donald Trump, testified Friday in the hush money case against him.
New York prosecutor Susan Hoffinger has Graff if she ever saw adult film actress Stormy Daniels in the office at Trump Tower.
Graff said she had a “vague recollection” of seeing her in the reception area before the 2016 election.
Defense lawyer Susan Necheles cross-examined Graff. When asked about her 34-year tenure Graff said, “I never had the same day twice in all that time. It was very stimulating, exciting….”
Necheles asked if Graff if she recalled Trump considering Daniels for his reality show, The Apprentice.
Graff testified that she vaguely recalled it. that Stormy would be an interesting addition. Necheles asks if Daniels was at Trump Tower to discuss being cast for the Apprentice, and Graff said that she assumed so based on office chatter.
Necheles asked if Graff was responsible for sending checks to the WH; Graff says she was not.
Graff confirmed that she would see Trump sign checks, sometimes on the phone, “It would happen…”
When asked what kind of boss Trump was, Graff said, “I think he was fair…and respectful boss to me in all that time.”
Necheles asks if he respected her intelligence, to which Graff says she wouldn’t have been there 34 yrs if he didn’t.
Graff testified that her conversations with Trump were about business 99% of the time. He would occasionally ask about her family, sometimes telling her to leave early.
Graff said she attended his presidential inauguration and sat on the platform at the U.S. Capitol.
“It was a pretty unique, memorable experience,” she recalled.
Pecker testimony concludes with personal detail about Trump
(Getty Images)
At the conclusion of his testimony, ex-tabloid publisher David Pecker testified that former President Donald Trump was one of the first people to reach out following an anthrax incident at his company, American Media, Inc., (AMI)
Pecker was CEO of AMI until summer 2020, during which time he was publisher of news outlets like the National Enquirer, Men’s Fitness, and Star.
Defense attorney Emil Bove pressed Pecker if Trump cares about his family, which Pecker confirmed.
Pecker’s testimony was key in the hush money trial against Trump. Pecker said he had told Trump and his personal lawyer at the time, Michael Cohen, that he would be their “eyes and ears” for any negative stories that could crop up during the campaign in 2016.
One of those stories is now part of the driving force behind Trump’s hush money trial. Pecker previously admitted to working with Trump’s team to purchase and suppress a story from former Playboy model Karen McDougal about claims of a 2006 affair with Trump. She was reportedly paid $150,000 to keep quiet.
Fox News Digital’s Greg Wehner contributed to this update.
Pecker says ‘catch and kill’ term not used with Trump, prosecutors dispute his memory
(Getty Images)
David Pecker, former CEO of American Media, Inc., and publisher of the tabloid magazine National Inquirer, changed his testimony Friday about when he first heard the term “catch and kill.”
“Catch and kill” is a tabloid industry term that refers to the practice of buying the rights to a story without ever publishing it.
Pecker told New York prosecutor Joshua Steinglass Friday afternoon that “catch and kill” was not a term used with former President Donald Trump.
Pecker said he first heard the term from federal prosecutors. But the prosecution referred to the 2016 article in the Wall Street Journal that reported the National Inquirer paid for former Playboy model Karen McDougal’s story that she had an affair with Trump, which reads, “Squashing stories that day is known in the tabloid world as ‘catch in kill.’
Pecker then changed his testimony that the first he heard of “catch and kill” in the press.
Fox News’ Grace Taggart contributed to this update.
Court is back in session Friday after breaking for lunch, David Pecker resumes the witness stand
(Getty Images)
The hush money trial against former President Donald Trump has resumed shortly after 2:00 p.m. on Friday after a lunch break.
Former American Media, Inc., CEO David Pecker will continue to be questioned by New York prosecutor Joshua Steinglass.
Defense attorney Emil Bove is expected to also cross-examine the ex-tabloid publisher.
Earlier in the day the defense set out to highlight inconsistencies in Pecker’s recollection of key events in an effort to show hey may not be a credible witness. Trump’s lawyers also asked questions that emphasized the financial motives behind AMI’s decision to purchase the rights to Karen McDougal’s story about her alleged affair with Trump.
The decisions Pecker made, the defense attempted to show the jury, were based on what was best for AMI and not what was best for the Trump presidential campaign.
As for articles in the National Enquirer that attacked Trump’s political opponents, Pecker testified that the information reported was not original to the Enquirer and had been publicly reported previously.
Fox News Digital’s Chris Pandolfo contributed to this update.
American Media Inc., – or AMI – is a parent company and publisher of celebrity, health, and fitness outlets like Star, Shape, and the tabloid magazine National Inquirer.
David Pecker was the CEO of AMI until summer 2020. Pecker is a a longtime friend of former President Trump. He recently testified about the “catch-and-kill” scheme to hide allegations of a past affair that surfaced when then-candidate Trump was running for the White House in 2016.
According to Pecker, he told Trump and his personal lawyer at the time, Michael Cohen, that he would be their “eyes and ears” for any negative stories that could crop up during the campaign.
One of those stories is now part of the driving force behind Trump’s hush money trial. Pecker previously admitted to working with Trump’s team to purchase and suppress a story from former Playboy model Karen McDougal about claims of a 2006 affair with Trump. She was reportedly paid $150,000 to keep quiet. Pecker was granted immunity in 2018 after working with prosecutors on their hush money case against Cohen.
On Friday, The defense set out to highlight inconsistencies in Pecker’s recollection of key events in an effort to show hey may not be a credible witness. Trump’s lawyers also asked questions that emphasized the financial motives behind AMI’s decision to purchase the rights to Karen McDougal’s story about her alleged affair with Trump.
The decisions Pecker made, the defense attempted to show the jury, were based on what was best for AMI and not what was best for the Trump presidential campaign. As for articles in the National Enquirer that attacked Trump’s political opponents, Pecker testified that the information reported was not original to the Enquirer and had been publicly reported previously.
Prosecutors will continue to ask Pecker questions when court resumes at 2:15 p.m. after a lunch break.
Fox News Digital’s Greg Wehner contributed to this report.
President Biden said he would be “happy” to debate former President Trump on Friday during an interview with radio host Howard Stern.
“I am, somewhere, I don’t know when. I’m happy to debate him,” Biden said, after Stern said he didn’t know whether Biden would participate in a debate.
In a response after his criminal trial recessed for lunch, Trump eagerly challenged Biden to debate as soon as possible, even tonight in front of the Manhattan courthouse.
“Crooked Joe Biden just announced that he’s willing to debate! Everyone knows he doesn’t really mean it, but in case he does, I say, ANYWHERE, ANYTIME, ANYPLACE, an old expression used by Fighters,” Trump posted on Truth Social.
“I suggest Monday Evening, Tuesday Evening, or Wednesday Evening at my Rally in Michigan, a State that he is in the process of destroying with his E.V. Mandate,” the presumptive Republican nominee continued. “In the alternative, he’s in New York City today, although probably doesn’t know it, and so am I, stuck in one of the many Court cases that he instigated as ELECTION INTERFERENCE AGAINST A POLITICAL OPPONENT – A CONTINUING WITCH HUNT! It’s the only way he thinks he can win. In fact, let’s do the Debate at the Courthouse tonight – on National Television, I’ll wait around!”
Former President Trump’s criminal trial is in recess after defense attorneys finished their cross-examination of former American Media Inc. (AMI) CEO David Pecker.
The defense set out to highlight inconsistencies in Pecker’s recollection of key events in an effort to show hey may not be a credible witness. Trump’s lawyers also asked questions that emphasized the financial motives behind AMI’s decision to purchase the rights to Karen McDougal’s story about her alleged affair with Trump.
The decisions Pecker made, the defense attempted to show the jury, were based on what was best for AMI and not what was best for the Trump presidential campaign.
As for articles in the National Enquirer that attacked Trump’s political opponents, Pecker testified that the information reported was not original to the Enquirer and had been publicly reported previously.
Prosecutors will continue to ask Pecker questions when court resumes at 2:15 p.m. after a lunch break.
David Pecker is questioned during former U.S. President Donald Trump’s criminal trial on charges that he falsified business records to conceal money paid to silence porn star Stormy Daniels in 2016, in Manhattan state court in New York City, U.S. April 23, 2024 in this courtroom sketch.(REUTERS/Jane Rosenberg)
Defense attorney Emil Bove questioned ex-tabloid publisher David Pecker about the latter’s meetings with the FBI amid a since-closed federal probe into the payments made to Karen McDougal and Stormy Daniels.
Pecker testified that the FBI approached him in April 2018. He said agents arrived at his home and searched his phone. Pecker said he could not recall the number of times he met with the FBI after that but confirmed it was at least one meeting.
Asked if those meetings were stressful, Pecker said his attorney was present and that he “felt good.”
Bove also asked about an apparent inconsistency in Pecker’s testimony. Pecker testified yesterday that Trump thanked him for his help in suppressing an unsubstantiated story about former President Trump fathering a child with a Trump Tower maid.
But according to notes cited by Bove in court, Pecker had previously told federal authorities that Trump did not express any gratitude to him or American Media during the meeting.
Pecker insisted that what he said in court was the truth.
“I know what the truth is,” he said.
Fox News’ Maria Paronich and the Associated Press contributed to this update.
The defense introduced a Wall Street Journal article published shortly before the 2016 election that revealed the National Enquirer had endorsed Trump and was supporting his presidential campaign.
“Since last year, the Enquirer has supported Mr. Trump’s presidential bid, endorsing him and publishing negative articles about some of his opponents,” the Wall Street Journal reported in 2016, noting that then-candidate Donald Trump and former American Media Inc. CEO David Pecker were “longtime friends.”
Newspapers routinely endorse presidential candidates and cover their opponents with a negative slant. The defense’s point was to show the Enquirer acted like any other publication.
For example, here’s how the New York Times endorsed Hillary Clinton in 2016:
“In any normal election year, we’d compare the two presidential candidates side by side on the issues. But this is not a normal election year. A comparison like that would be an empty exercise in a race where one candidate — our choice, Hillary Clinton — has a record of service and a raft of pragmatic ideas, and the other, Donald Trump, discloses nothing concrete about himself or his plans while promising the moon and offering the stars on layaway. (We will explain in a subsequent editorial why we believe Mr. Trump to be the worst nominee put forward by a major party in modern American history.)
“But this endorsement would also be an empty exercise if it merely affirmed the choice of Clinton supporters. We’re aiming instead to persuade those of you who are hesitating to vote for Mrs. Clinton — because you are reluctant to vote for a Democrat, or for another Clinton, or for a candidate who might appear, on the surface, not to offer change from an establishment that seems indifferent and a political system that seems broken.”
Fox News Legal Editor Kerri Kupec contributed to this update.
Defense questions Pecker on National Enquirer’s motives
National Enquirer tabloid newspapers are arranged for a photograph at a newsstand in Louisville, Kentucky, U.S., on Thursday, Feb. 14, 2019. (Luke Sharrett/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Defense attorneys questioned former American Media Inc. CEO David Pecker about the editorial process of his tabloid, the National Enquirer, and whether the company buried Karen McDougal’s story to help Trump’s campaign.
The point of the questions was to show that the Enquirer was motivated by profits, not politics, when it purchased the rights to McDougal’s story about her alleged affair with Trump.
Trump attorney Emil Bove asked Pecker about the August 2015 meeting with Michael Cohen at Trump Tower and Pecker testified that prior to that meeting the Enquirer was already running negative stories about Bill and Hillary Clinton because it sold papers.
“Running those stories was good for [American Media Inc.],” Pecker said.
Bove introduced several examples of the Enquirer running negative stories about Trump’s opponents in the 2016 Republican primary, including Ben Carson and Ted Cruz. The attorney noted that some of the information in those articles was publicly available and published in other outlets, including The Guardian.
Pecker agreed with Bove that recycling material with a new angle is quick, easy and good for business. Pecker testified the Enquirer would’ve ran those stories even if he hadn’t discussed it with Trump.
This line of questioning builds the defense team’s narrative that negative stories about Trump’s opponents were in the public domain, and other outlets covered them well before American Media Inc. If those other publications aren’t being charged with campaign violations, the reasoning goes, why should Trump be for working with AMI?
Criminal defense attorney Mark Eiglarsh explained Friday that prosecutors face a difficult task of making the jury understand what the crime is former President Trump is accused of.
Joining “America’s Newsroom,” Eiglarsh said most juries can wrap their heads around crimes like murder or rape. But in this case, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office alleges Trump falsified business records in “furtherance of another crime” that until the trial was not made clear.
“In this particular case, you’re looking at them to see whether they understand this at all. They come into this thinking, well, wait, what’s the crime exactly? And why should we care? And I think that there’s a problem right now with the prosecution being able to show that what was done was unlawful,” Eiglarsh said.
New York prosecutor Joshua Steinglass on Tuesday said the other crime was a violation of a New York law called “conspiracy to promote or prevent election.” Prosecutors questioned former tabloid publisher David Pecker about a “catch and kill” scheme to have his publication purchase the rights to Karen McDougal’s story about her alleged affair with Trump and then bury the story.
But Pecker testified Thursday that his publication did the same thing for other celebrities including Arnold Schwarzenegger and Rahm Emanuel.
“You’re getting Pecker as an expert defense witness to say, for over 17 years this was commonplace. Buying stories wasn’t just because of an election, we did it all the time on behalf of Trump, but so did many celebrities. And it doesn’t mean the stories were true,” Eiglarsh said. “It’s the cost of doing business when you’re a celebrity, because people are constantly looking for cash grabs, or because you might have done something a little questionable and you got to buy that out because it’ll hurt your brand or it’ll affect your home life, or it might even affect an election.”
Fox News contributor Jonathan Turley cautioned that it may not be an advantage for former President Trump’s legal team that there are two attorneys present in the jury pool.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s prosecutors allege that Trump committed a felony by falsifying business records in “furtherance of another crime.” New York prosecutor Joshua Steinglass on Tuesday said the other crime was a violation of a New York law called “conspiracy to promote or prevent election.”
“This case has no crime that is discernable,” Turley said on “America’s Newsroom,” criticizing prosecutors.
He cautioned however that if members of the jury feel compelled to express doubts about the district attorney’s case against Trump, the attorneys present in the jury pool might “weigh in at that moment” and “silence those dissenting voices.”
“That’s why I think it’s a bad idea and I don’t think it’s a good thing to have two attorneys on this jury,” Turley said.
Former President Donald Trump appears at Manhattan criminal court before his trial in New York, Friday, April 26, 2024. (Jeenah Moon/Pool Photo via AP)
Former President Trump filed another complaint about the “freezing courthouse” on Friday and speculated that the temperature was being kept low on purpose.
“They don’t seem to be able to get the temperature up,” Trump said. “It shouldn’t be that complicated. But we have a freezing courthouse and that’s fine, that’s just fine.”
Trump’s attorneys have asked Judge Juan Merchan if something can be done about the temperature, but the judge declined. Last week he apologetically explained that the old courthouse has two modes: chilly or sweltering, and that it’d be better to be cold than hot.
Trump attorney Todd Blanche asked the judge if it were possible to increase the temperature by “just one degree.”
“It is cold, there’s no question it is cold, but I’d rather be a little cold than sweaty, and really those are the choices,” the judge said, according to a pool report. “I agree with you it’s chilly, no question.”
Former President Trump wished his wife Melania a “very happy birthday” on Friday morning and complained that he could not spend the day with her because of his “rigged” trial.
Trump spoke to reporters moments before he entered the courtroom for the continuation of his criminal trial on charges of falsifying business records.
“I want to start by wishing my wife Melania a very happy birthday. It’d be nice to be with her but I’m in a courthouse for a rigged trial,” Trump said.
The former president and presumptive Republican nominee for 2024 said yesterday’s proceedings went “very well” and that his trial “should be over.”
“I think we have a judge who will never allow the case to be over in a positive way, he’s highly conflicted,” Trump said, taking a shot at presiding Judge Juan Merchan.
He also commented on Thursday’s Supreme Court hearing on his claim of presidential immunity, calling his attorney’s arguments “brilliant.”
“I listened to it last night, I thought it was really great. I thought the judge’s questions were really great,” Trump said. “All presidents have to have immunity, it has nothing to do with me,” he asserted.
Trump told reporters he will return to Florida after the trial warps up today to be with his wife.
Former President Trump has departed Trump Tower for the Manhattan courthouse where his criminal trial for allegedly falsifying business records will continue for its eighth day.
Court proceedings will begin at 9:30 a.m. ET. Trump did not make any statements as he left Trump Tower, but he has held several impromptu press conferences outside the courtroom this week and may speak to reporters again.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg charged Trump with 34 counts of falsifying business records in the first degree. Bragg alleges that Trump ex-attorney Michael Cohen orchestrated hush money payments to Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal to prevent them from sharing their stories about alleged affairs with Trump. Bragg is trying to prove that Trump was aware of those payments, and allegedly falsified records of payments to Cohen as “legal expenses” rather than repayments for the hush money.
Trump has pleaded not guilty to all counts and told Fox News Digital in an exclusive interview on Thursday that he was simply paying Cohen legal fees because Cohen was his lawyer.
Bragg also alleged American Media Inc., which witness David Pecker was the CEO of, allegedly employed the “catch and kill” strategy to bury stories — specifically Karen McDougal’s. Bragg and prosecutors sought to convince the jury that Pecker’s work to do this was made with the blessing of Trump’s 2016 campaign.
Pecker, though, testified that he worked with Cohen in his capacity as Trump’s personal attorney.
Pecker’s cross-examination is expected to continue Friday morning.
Fox News Digital’s Brooke Singman contributed to this update.
Prosecutor Christopher Conroy argued Thursday that former President Donald Trump allegedly violated a gag order four additional times, for a total of 14 violations.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office has asked Judge Juan Merchan to hold Trump in contempt of court for allegedly violating an order which prohibits Trump from commenting on likely witnesses in his criminal trial. The judge has yet to rule on the request.
In documents filed Thursday, Conroy outlined four additional alleged violations that happened this week when Trump made statements to the press between his court appearances. The prosecutor pointed to comments Trump made to a local Pennsylvania news station about his former attorney Michael Cohen, who is expected to testify at trial later on.
“Well, Michael Cohen is a convicted liar and he’s got no credibility whatsoever. He was a lawyer and you rely on your lawyers. But Michael Cohen was a convicted liar. He was a lawyer for many people, not just me. And he got in trouble because of things outside of what he did for me, largely, it was essentially all because what he did in terms of campaign I don’t think there was anything wrong with that with the charges that they made. But what he did is he did some pretty bad things, I guess, with banking or whatever if that was a personal thing to him,” Trump said on Monday.
Conroy called this a “knowing and willful statement” that violated Merchan’s gag order. The prosecutor also noted statements Trump made about David Pecker, a former tabloid publisher who will resume cross examination today.
“He’s been very nice. I mean, he’s been — David’s been very nice. A nice guy,” Trump said on Thursday.
At trial, Conroy told the judge that Trump was sending a message to Pecker, instructing him to “be nice” else Trump would use his platform to “say things like I said about Cohen.”
Trump prosecutor quit top DOJ post for NY job in likely bid to ‘get’ former president, expert says
Prosecutor Matthew Colangelo speaks in DOJ video. (Department of Justice/YouTube)
The prosecutor whose opening statement kicked off the historic trial of Former President Donald Trump left a lofty perch in the Biden administration Justice Department for his current comparatively modest New York City job – a career move that legal analysts describe as puzzling and one that’s prompted questions regarding motivation.
Even though Matthew Colangelo is only now sitting in a courtroom formally opposing the former president, his work has for years involved investigating Trump and his businesses, despite working for different prosecutorial offices at varying levels of government. Colangelo’s sudden switch from top DOJ official to a role with the DA’s office in the Big Apple has particularly raised eyebrows.
“It’s very odd. It’s usually the other way around. . . . And frankly, that sounds to me like somebody who thought, ‘Ah, here’s an opportunity to go and get Donald Trump,'” attorney and former member of the Federal Election Commission, Hans von Spakovsky, told Fox News Digital in a phone interview this month.
It’s rare to see successful, ambitious attorneys willingly climb several steps down the career ladder, experts note.
“It is a little unusual,” Heritage Foundation senior legal fellow Zack Smith said of Colangelo’s career moves. “Particularly, the position he had at the Justice Department was a fairly high ranking one . . . he spent some time in the New York Attorney General’s office, he also spent some time as a career staffer in the DOJ Civil Rights Division. He was in leadership in the Justice Department, and then immediately from that leadership position — an acting leadership position — went to the DA’s office.”
Fox News Digital’s Emma Colton contributed to this update.
Pecker claims Trump said anytime Stormy mentions his name, ‘it’s a $1M penalty’
Former National Enquirer publisher David Pecker speaks from the witness stand during former U.S. President Donald Trump’s criminal trial on charges that he falsified business records to conceal money paid to silence porn star Stormy Daniels in 2016, in Manhattan state court in New York City, U.S. April 22, 2024 in this courtroom sketch. (REUTERS/Jane Rosenberg)
Former American Media Inc. (AMI) CEO David Pecker told the court that former President Trump had an agreement with Stormy Daniels and every time she said his name she would have to pay a $1 million penalty.
One of the exhibits presented in court was a Wall Street Journal article from Jan. 12, 2018, which revealed Michael Cohen paid Daniels to stay quiet. The evidence was presented, “not for the truth, but to show that it was printed on that date.”
Fast-forwarding to March 2018, Steinglass brought up an interview between Karen McDougal and Anderson Cooper, which Pecker remembered taking place around March 18, 20218.
The day after the interview, Pecker claimed, Trump called him.
“Did you see the interview last night with Anderson Cooper and Karen McDougal? I thought you had, and we had, an agreement that she can’t give any interviews or be on any television shows,” Pecker recalled Trump saying.
“Yes, we have an agreement, but I amended it to allow her to speak to the press,” Pecker said he told Trump.
Pecker testified that Trump got upset.
Pecker also talked about another call between Trump, Hope Hicks and Sarah Huckabee Sanders, where he mentioned he was going to extend Karen’s contract because they had not fulfilled some of the obligations.
Trump allegedly told him it was a bad idea but later told him, “It’s your business, do whatever you plan on doing.”
McDougal filed a lawsuit against AMI in March 2018 and wanted out of the NDA. The lawsuit was ultimately settled. Pecker said when he communicated the lawsuit with Cohen, he thought it was a bad idea. Still, Pecker told Cohen he did not want to continue with the lawsuit and was giving McDougal back her rights.
Pecker also told Cohen he was planning to sell back the rights because McDougal was upset.
Also, while on the stand, Pecker said he watched the Anderson Cooper and Stormy Daniels interview. Afterward, Trump called and asked if he saw the interview.
“We have an agreement with Stormy that she cannot mention my name or do anything like this,” Pecker claimed Trump said. “Anytime she breaches the agreement it’s a $1 million penalty. Based on that interview, she owes $24 million.”
Trump compliments prosecution’s first witness in criminal trial: ‘very nice’
Former US president and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump leaves Trump Tower to attend his trial for allegedly covering up hush money payments linked to extramarital affairs in New York, on April 22, 2024. Donald Trump’s unprecedented criminal trial is set for opening statements after final jury selection ended Friday, leaving the Republican presidential candidate facing weeks of hostile testimony that will overshadow his White House campaign. (CHARLY TRIBALLEAU/AFP via Getty Images)
Former President Donald Trump lauded the first witness in his trial in Manhattan, former tabloid publisher David Pecker, as a “nice guy” earlier Thursday ahead of court.
“He’s been very nice. David’s been very nice. He’s a nice guy,” Trump told the media while meeting with construction crews in the city early Thursday morning.
Pecker is the prosecution team’s first witness in the NY v. Trump case, where the 45th president is facing 34 charges of falsifying business records.
Pecker is the former CEO of American Media Inc., the parent company of publications such as the National Enquirer, who has known Trump stretching back to the 1980s. The former media publisher took the stand earlier this week, where he testified regarding “catch and kill schemes” to allegedly bury negative information about Trump ahead of the 2016 election.
“Catch-and-kill” schemes are understood as tactics used by media and publishing companies to buy the rights of a person’s story with no intention of publishing it. The NY v. Trump case specifically revolves around a payment of $130,000 given to former pornographic actress Stormy Daniels by former Trump personal attorney in 2016 to allegedly silence her claims she had an extramarital affair with Trump in 2006.
Pecker testified Thursday that he first heard of Daniels’ claims of a sexual affair with Trump after the notorious “Access Hollywood” tape was unearthed ahead of the election in 2016. He said that Daniels was selling rights to her story for $120,000, which Pecker said the media company could not afford.
“I am not a bank,” Pecker said he told National Enquirer editor Dylan Howard of the tip and sale of Daniels’ story. Howard then told Pecker he would contact Cohen about the matter, Pecker said.
Prosecutors allege that after Cohen paid Daniels in exchange for silence on the alleged affair, Trump fraudulently logged reimbursements to the personal lawyer as legal expenses. Prosecutors in the case are trying to prove that Trump falsified business records in “furtherance of another crime.” The DA’s office said the other crime is the violation of a New York law against “conspiracy to promote or prevent election.”
Fox News Digital’s Emma Colton contributed to this update.
NY v. Trump: Tabloid publisher testifies he bought stories on Tiger Woods, ex-Obama chief of staff
David Pecker is questioned during former U.S. President Donald Trump’s criminal trial on charges that he falsified business records to conceal money paid to silence porn star Stormy Daniels in 2016, in Manhattan state court in New York City, U.S. April 23, 2024 in this courtroom sketch. (REUTERS/Jane Rosenberg)
David Pecker testified Thursday that he purchased stories about professional golfer Tiger Woods, former Obama chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, among others during questioning by defense attorneys for former President Trump.
Pecker is the former CEO of American Media Inc., the parent company of publications such as the National Enquirer, who has known Trump stretching back to the 1980s. Prosecutors allege that Pecker worked closely with the Trump campaign to bury negative information about Trump ahead of the 2016 election. Trump is accused of falsifying records related to the alleged “catch and kill” scheme.
Pecker testified that he purchased negative stories about Trump before the 2016 election and did not publish them — known as a “catch and kill” scheme. The stories included allegations from adult film actress Stormy Daniels and Playboy model Karen McDougal about affairs with Trump.
With regard to negative stories coming out about Trump before the election, Pecker testified that Trump was concerned about what his family would say about it, specifically about how it would impact his wife Melania Trump and daughter Ivanka Trump.
Pecker also testified that Trump was concerned about what the impact would be on his campaign in 2016.
But under cross-examination by Trump defense attorney Emil Bove, Pecker testified he purchased stories about other high-profile individuals besides Trump.
Pecker testified he purchased a story about professional golfer Tiger Woods, and a story about Rahm Emanuel in 2009 after he left the Obama White House. Pecker said he purchased the story about an alleged affair Emanuel had so that it would not be published. Emanuel also later served as ambassador to Japan.
Pecker also testified that he worked with Trump attorney Michael Cohen in his capacity as the former president’s personal attorney — not as part of the 2016 campaign.
Fox News Digital’s Brooke Singman contributed to this update.
While Donald Trump was on trial in Manhattan, the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments on the former president’s claims of presidential immunity.
In nearly three hours of debate on Thursday, the high court wrestled with this question: “Whether and if so to what extent does a former president enjoy presidential immunity from criminal prosecution for conduct alleged to involve official acts during his tenure in office?”
Special Counsel attorney Michael Dreeben argued that U.S. presidents cannot enjoy blanket immunity from criminal prosecution Thursday. Trump attorney John Sauer contended that prosecuting a president for official acts while in office is “incompatible” with the U.S. Constitution.
Over the course of questioning, the justices seemed generally split along ideological lines.
“If the potential for criminal liability is taken off the table, wouldn’t there be a significant risk that future presidents would be emboldened to commit crimes with abandon while they’re in office?” Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson asked in an exchange with Trump’s lawyer, John Sauer.
“Once we say, ‘No criminal liability, Mr. President, you can do whatever you want,’ I’m worried that we would have a worse problem than the problem of the president feeling constrained to follow the law while he’s in office,” Jackson said.
Conversely, Justice Samuel Alito questioned whether limiting immunity for a former president would send the country into a destabilizing cycle.
“If an incumbent who loses a very close, hotly contested election knows that a real possible after leaving office is not that the president is going to be able to go off into a peaceful retirement, but that the president may be criminally prosecuted by a bitter political opponent, will that not lead us into a cycle that destabilizes the functioning of our country as a democracy? And we can look around the world and find countries where we have seen this process, where the loser gets thrown in jail,” Alito remarked.
“We’re writing a rule for the ages,” Justice Neil Gorsuch later stated.
A decision in the case is expected early this summer.
Fox News Digital’s Brianna Herlihy and Anders Hagstrom contributed to this update.
David Pecker, chair and CEO of American Media, speaks at the Shape and Men’s Fitness Super Bowl Party in New York City, U.S., January 31, 2014. REUTERS/Marion Curtis/File Photo
Tabloid publisher David Pecker is known as a longtime friend of former President Trump. He recently testified about the “catch-and-kill” scheme to hide allegations of a past affair that surfaced when then-candidate Trump was running for the White House in 2016.
Pecker was the CEO of American Media until summer 2020, during which time he was publisher of news outlets like the National Enquirer, Men’s Fitness, and Star.
According to Pecker, he told Trump and his personal lawyer at the time, Michael Cohen, that he would be their “eyes and ears” for any negative stories that could crop up during the campaign.
One of those stories is now part of the driving force behind Trump’s hush money trial. Pecker previously admitted to working with Trump’s team to purchase and suppress a story from former Playboy model Karen McDougal about claims of a 2006 affair with Trump. She was reportedly paid $150,000 to keep quiet.
Pecker was granted immunity in 2018 after working with prosecutors on their hush money case against Cohen.
Former President Donald Trump will return to New York Supreme Court on Friday morning for day eight of his criminal trial for allegedly falsifying business records.
Court will resume at 9:30 a.m. ET with former American Media CEO David Pecker taking the stand for cross-examination by defense attorneys. Trump is expected to attend today and every day of the trial.
On Thursday, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office wrapped up their direct examination of Pecker. The former tabloid publisher explained in great detail the “catch and kill” scheme regarding former Playboy model Karen McDougal’s story about an alleged affair with Trump.
Pecker coordinated with former Trump attorney Michael Cohen and purchased the exclusive rights to McDougal’s story, paying her $150,000 with the intention of never publishing it. He testified that he believed McDougal’s story to be true and it would have been very embarrassing for Trump and his 2016 presidential campaign if it became public.
Pecker also described learning about former pornographic film actress Stormy Daniels’ allegations of an affair with Trump, and testified that Cohen urged Pecker to buy Daniels’ story as well. However, Pecker said he refused to buy the story, instead telling Cohen that Trump should buy it himself.
Additionally, Pecker testified about various calls and meetings with Trump, including a visit to the White House in July 2017. He recalls Trump always asking about Karen.
At the end of his direct examination, Pecker discussed entering into a non-prosecution agreement with federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York about campaign finance violations and an agreement with the Manhattan district attorney’s office. He admitted he was given immunity if he cooperated. He also said he has no negative feelings towards Trump and considers him a mentor and friend.
Defense attorneys began to cross-examine Pecker in the last hour of court on Thursday. During questions, Pecker said he had been giving Trump a heads up about negative stories since 1998. He also said he had purchased negative stories about celebrities and politicians in the past, including Arnold Schwarzenegger and ex-Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel.
Fox News’ Maria Paronich contributed to this update.
FBI Director Christopher Wray testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee Dec. 5, 2023 in Washington, D.C. (Photo: Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
The director of the FBI is being accused of hypocrisy for allowing the targeting of concerned parents, Trump supporters, and American Catholics but not “monitoring” pro-Hamas rallies and protests on college campuses.
Director Christopher Wray was asked in an interview on Tuesday about “actively monitoring” the rallies erupting across college and university campuses, which have become the subject of controversy and condemnation from even senior government officials. Wray replied, “We don’t monitor protests.” He added, “But we do share intelligence about specific threats of violence.”
Social media users reacted, accusing Wray of hypocrisy. Conservative podcast host Graham Allen quoted Wray saying, “We don’t monitor protests,” and wrote:
FBI Director Chris Wray: "We don't monitor protests"
They just monitor: Republicans Church Christians Donald Trump supporters Parents who attend a PTA meeting
Author and conservative media commentator Jesse Kelly pointed out the FBI’s failure to investigate the vandalizing and firebombing of pregnancy resource centers, commenting:
“We can’t find who’s bombing pregnancy centers cause they’re doing it at night.” -Merrick Garland
“We don’t monitor protests.”-Chris Wray
The truth is the street animals are protected by the elite. The good people in the middle are attacked from top and bottom. https://t.co/2cvGOJFqxQ
Numerous social media users posted photos of known or suspected FBI agents undercover at pro-Trump rallies, alleged that the FBI embedded undercover agents at the Jan. 6, 2021 rally at the U.S. Capitol building, or noted the FBI’s designation of parents protesting school board meetings or “radical traditionalist Catholics” as potential domestic terror threats. Referring to the infamous memo from the FBI’s Richmond field office, detailing plans to infiltrate and spy on Catholic parishes, one user commented, “I guess they are too busy monitoring Catholic churches.”
The U.S. House Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government previously castigated the FBI’s memo for its reliance on biased sources, including the Southern Poverty Law Center, which lists “radical traditionalist Catholics” as a hate group, alongside neo-Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan. The controversial memo, leaked early in 2023, labeled American Catholics who attend the Tridentine Mass (the form of the Mass common prior to 1969) as “racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists” (RMVEs). The memo’s creation included communication with other FBI field offices, interviews with at least one priest and a choir director, and the approval of senior FBI lawyers. The House Committee warned, “The FBI must be held accountable for its actions. It is not enough for the FBI to investigate itself and remedy its own wrongdoings, especially when it involves law-enforcement overreach involving fundamental religious freedoms.”
But that’s what the FBI appears to have done. Last week, the U.S. Department of Justice’s Inspector General Michael Horowitz submitted a report to Congress absolving the FBI of any wrongdoing in the drafting and circulating of the memo. Horowitz wrote, “Our review did not find evidence that anyone ordered or directed Analyst 1 or 2 to find a link between RMVEs and any specific religion or political affiliation, including Church 1, or that there was any underlying policy direction concerning such a link.” The report added, “Additionally, our review of emails, instant messages, and text messages for Analysts 1 and 2 during the relevant time period did not identify any evidence of discriminatory or inappropriate comments by them about Church 1, or individuals who practiced a particular religious faith or held specific political beliefs.”
Previously, both Wray and U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland have stonewalled Congress in response to requests to interview FBI agents and analysts responsible for drafting and circulating the memo.
Arielle Del Turco, director of the Center for Religious Liberty at Family Research Council, told The Washington Stand, “The FBI shouldn’t be monitoring most protests, but when massive demonstrations are shutting down higher education institutions that threaten fellow students and incorporate genocidal slogans like ‘From the river to the sea,’ that all should pique the interest of federal law enforcement.”
She continued, “Wray’s comments are yet another hit to the FBI’s credibility after the Department of Justice’s inspector general held last week that the FBI did not commit any wrongdoing when it was looking into ‘racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists’ that they alleged were connected to ‘radical-traditionalist Catholic ideology.’”
Del Turco added, “The FBI’s heightened concern over traditional Catholics appears especially absurd when considering the agency’s total disinterest in protestors who are threatening Jewish students on college campuses.”
Currently, pro-Hamas rallies are taking place at schools such as Ohio State University and the Ivy League Columbia and Yale universities.
Below is my column in the New York Post on yesterday’s oral arguments on presidential immunity. As expected, with the exception of the three liberal justices, the Court appears to be struggling to find a more nuanced approach that would avoid the extreme positions of both parties. Rather than take a header off either cliff, the justices seem interested in a controlled descent into the depths of Article II.
Here is the column:
Writer Ray Bradbury once said, “Living at risk is jumping off the cliff and building your wings on the way down.”
In Thursday’s case before the Supreme Court on the immunity of former President Donald Trump, nine justices appear to be feverishly working with feathers and glue on a plunge into a constitutional abyss. It has been almost 50 years since the high court ruled presidents have absolute immunity from civil lawsuits in Nixon v. Fitzgerald. The court held ex-President Richard Nixon had such immunity for acts taken “within the ‘outer perimeter’ of his official responsibility.”
Yet in 1974’s United States v. Nixon, the court ruled a president is not immune from a criminal subpoena. Nixon was forced to comply with a subpoena for his White House tapes in the Watergate scandal from special counsel Leon Jaworski. Since then, the court has avoided any significant ruling on the extension of immunity to a criminal case — until now.
There are cliffs on both sides of this case. If the court were to embrace special counsel Jack Smith’s arguments, a president would have no immunity from criminal charges, even for official acts taken in his presidency. It would leave a president without protection from endless charges from politically motivated prosecutors.
If the court were to embrace Trump counsel’s arguments, a president would have complete immunity. It would leave a president largely unaccountable under the criminal code for any criminal acts.
The first cliff is made obvious by the lower-court opinion. While the media have largely focused on extreme examples of president-ordered assassinations and coups, the justices are clearly as concerned with the sweeping implications of the DC Circuit opinion.
Chief Justice John Roberts noted the DC Circuit failed to make any “focused” analysis of the underlying acts, instead offering little more than a judicial shrug.
Roberts read its statement that “a former president can be prosecuted for his official acts because the fact of the prosecution means that the former president has acted in defiance of the laws” and noted it sounds like “a former president can be prosecuted because he is being prosecuted.”
If the justices want insight into the implications of denying any immunity, they just need to look north to New York City.
The ongoing prosecution of Trump is legally absurd but has resulted in the leading presidential candidate not only being gagged but prevented from campaigning.
Alvin Bragg is the very personification of the danger immunity is meant to avoid.
With cliffs to the left and the right, the justices are looking at a free-fall dive into the scope of constitutional and criminal law as they apply to presidential conduct. They may be looking not for a foothold as much as a shorter drop.
Some of the justices are likely to be seeking a third option where a president has some immunity under a more limited and less tautological standard than the one the DC Circuit offered. The problem for the court is presidential privilege and immunity decisions are meant to give presidents breathing room by laying out bright lines within which they can operate. Ambiguity defeats the purpose of such immunity. So does a test that turns on the motivation of an official act.
The special counsel insists, for example, Trump was acting for his personal interest in challenging certification and raising electoral fraud since he was the other candidate. But what if he wasn’t on the ballot — would it have been an official function to raise such concerns for other candidates?
When pressed on the line between official and nonofficial conduct, the special counsel just dismissed such concerns and said Trump was clearly acting as an office-seeker not an officeholder.
Likewise, the special counsel argued the protection for presidents must rest with the good motivations and judgment of prosecutors.
It was effectively a “Trust us, we’re the government” assurance. Justice Samuel Alito and others questioned whether such reliance is well placed after decades of prosecutors’ proven abuses.
Finally, if there is no immunity, could President Barack Obama be prosecuted for ordering the killing of a citizen by drone attack and then killing his son in a second drone attack? The government insisted there is an exception for such acts from the murder statute.
In the end, neither party offers a particularly inviting path. No immunity or complete immunity each holds obvious dangers.
I have long opposed sweeping arguments of immunity from criminal charges for presidents. The devil is in the details, and many justices are struggling with how to define official versus nonofficial conduct.
The line-drawing proved maddening for the justices in the oral argument. The most they could say is similar to the story of the man who jumped off a building. As he passes an office window halfway down, another man calls out to ask how he’s doing. The jumper responds, “So far so good.”
As the justices work on a new set of legal wings, anything is possible as the nation waits for the court to hit ground zero in the middle of the 2024 presidential election.
DEI, Diversity Equity, is designed to suppress one group while promoting another, not based on merit but on the color of skin and sexual orientation, while showing prejudice against straight white males. There is a word for this; it’s called racism, and it is systemic.
Dr. Phil Destroys Guest’s Argument for DEI Policies in Seconds: ‘That Was Called Marxism’ (VIDEO)
By Mike LaChance – April 12, 2024
A recent guest on the Dr. Phil show was there to argue in favor of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies and things did not go well for her. Dr. Phil pointed out that what she is arguing for is equality of outcomes, which just doesn’t work. He correctly pointed out to her that what she is talking about is essentially Marxism.
Dr. Phil nailed this. Equality of outcomes is communism and it has failed everywhere it has been tried throughout history. READ MORE…
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 • America’s Fertility Rate Hits Record Low as Planned Parenthood Abortions Hit Record High • Missouri Legislature Defunds Planned Parenthood Abortion Biz • Biden Doing Sign of the Cross at Abortion Event Confirms He’s No “Devout Catholic” • Why are Taxpayers Forced to Give $700 Million to Planned Parenthood to Kill Babies?
More Pro-Life News • Joe Biden Trashed Pro-Life Christians at Abortion Rally • Studies Confirm Women are Three Times More Likely to Die Following Abortion Than Childbirth • Mom Who Rejected Abortion Will Graduate From College, Get Diploma With 18-Month-Old By Her Side • Kansas Gov Laura Kelly Vetoes Bill to Help Pregnant Women Choose Adoption • 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.
Comments or questions? Email us at news@lifenews.com. Copyright 2003-2024 LifeNews.com. All rights reserved. For information on advertising or reprinting news from LifeNews.com, email us.
Tennessee lawmakers passed a bill permitting teachers and staff to carry a concealed weapon under certain conditions, despite angry theatrics from activists.
On Tuesday, hundreds of anti-gun radicals ramped up their efforts to stop the gun-rights legislation. They stormed the capitol building in Nashville, carrying signs and chanting unoriginal slogans such as “Blood on your hands!” and “Hey! Hey! Ho! Ho! The GOP has got to go!”
Noted Democrat agitator state Rep. Justin Pearson, who has already been expelled from the Tennessee House once for his disruptive activism, spoke in the midst of the group, railing in the cadence of a Southern preacher, “This is what democracy looks like!”
The activists, most of whom appeared to be women, then performed a protest known as a “die in,” whereby participants collectively collapse to the floor, pretending to be dead. They apparently believe the demonstration reflects the carnage of mass school shootings, though members of the public and law enforcement in the building that day instead likely enjoyed the brief moment of quiet.
The cries of the activists then reached a shrill pitch when the measure, SB1325, passed easily through the House, 68-28. Four Republicans joined all 24 Democrats in voting against the bill. Three more Republicans abstained.
“Vote them out!” one woman shrieked as a security officer escorted her and another individual out of the gallery. “Vote them out!”
The bill will now go to the desk of Republican Gov. Bill Lee. If he signs it or does nothing, it will become law. His only means of stopping the measure from taking effect would be to veto it, but he has never vetoed any piece of legislation since taking office in 2019. Thus, the bill will almost assuredly soon become the law of the state. But, cosponsor Republican state Sen. Paul Bailey clarified that it will not force any “faculty or staff member” to carry a weapon. It “simply gives” them “the option,” he said.
The bill also places several conditions on teachers and staff interested in arming themselves on campus. The following is a summary of those conditions, per CNN:
• Get an enhanced carry permit
• Get written authorization from the superintendent, principal, and the chief of the appropriate law enforcement agency
• Complete 40 hours of basic training in school policing and 40 hours of Peace Officer’s Standards and Training commission-approved training that is specific to school policing each year at the educator’s expense
• Complete a background check
• Undergo a psychological exam conducted by a Tennessee-licensed health care provider
As CNN noted, the bill passed just over a year after the horrific shooting at the Covenant School in Nashville, which left six Christians — three adults and three children — dead. However, CNN neglected to report that the individual responsible for the murders identified as transgender, describing the shooter only as “a 28-year-old former student.”
CNN also incorrectly asserted that “gun violence is the leading killer of children in the United States,” which has already claimed the lives of 436 children this year. The leading killer of children in America, by far, is abortion. According to NPR, more than 1 million children died from abortion in the U.S. in 2023 alone.
Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!
Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito suggested Thursday during oral arguments regarding presidential immunity that criminalizing individuals just because they question government-run elections would destabilize true democracy.
Special counsel Jack Smith indicted former President Donald Trump for questioning the administration of the 2020 election. The high court is now hearing challenges as to whether presidents have immunity from criminal prosecutions for actions taken while in office that fall within the scope of their presidential duties.
“Let me end with just a question about, what is required for the functioning of a stable democratic society, which is something that we all want?” Alito began. “I’m sure you would agree with me that a stable, democratic society requires that a candidate who loses an election, even a close one, even a hotly contested one, leave office peacefully if that candidate is the incumbent?”
Justice Alito hypothesizes what could happen if presidents don’t have criminal immunity:
“If an incumbent…knows…that the president may be criminally prosecuted by a bitter political opponent, will that not lead us into a cycle that destabilizes the functioning of our country?” pic.twitter.com/zXSJEGMNOo
“Now, if an incumbent who loses a very close, hotly contested election knows that a real possibility after leaving office is not that the president is going to be able to go off in a peaceful retirement but that the president may be criminally prosecuted by a bitter political opponent, will that not lead us into a cycle that destabilizes the functioning of our country as a democracy?” Alito asked. “And we can look around the world and find countries where we have seen this process where the loser gets thrown in jail.”
“So, I think it’s exactly the opposite, Justice Alito,” Dreeben said. “There are lawful mechanisms to contest the results in an election and outside the record, but I think of public knowledge, petitioner and his allies filed dozens of electoral challenges and my understanding is lost all but one that was not outcome determinative in any respect. There were judges that said in order to sustain substantial claims of fraud that would overturn an election results that’s certified by a state, you need evidence, you need proof and none of those things were manifested. So there’s an appropriate way to challenge things through the courts with evidence, if you lose, you accept the results, that has been the nation’s experience.”
“Thank you,” Alito interjected.
Alito appears to warn Democrats that should the high court rule that certain presidential acts are not covered by presidential immunity and Smith’s lawfare case against the former president may continue — true democratic norms would be decimated as partisan politicians could weaponize the justice system to target their opponents.
Smith indicted Trump on charges of conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, obstruction of and an attempt to obstruct an official proceeding, and conspiracy against rights. In simpler terms, Smith alleges that Trump’s claims that the 2020 election was stolen were false and that Trump knew they were false.
To support his claims, Smith alleges that since federal agencies like the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency — which meddled in the 2020 election — told Trump the election wasn’t stolen, and he should have taken that at face value, as pointed out by Federalist Senior Editor John Daniel Davidson.
But objecting to elections is a tale as old as time. Failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton still claims the 2016 election was stolen while Democratic Reps. Jim McGovern, Pramila Jayapal, Raul Grijalva, Sheila Jackson Lee, Barbara Lee, Maxine Waters — who also called the 2000 election “fraudulent” — and Jamie Raskin all objected to Congress’ certification of electoral votes in 2017 that formally declared Trump the winner, my colleague Tristan Justice details.
The 2004 election was also considered “stolen” by New York Rep. Jerry Nadler who went so far as to declare voting machines need to be investigated.
And even after the Supreme Court ended Al Gore’s attempt to overturn the outcome of the election, there were no steps taken to throw Gore in jail for challenging the contest.
Brianna Lyman is an elections correspondent at The Federalist.
After a marathon debate over whether former President Trump should be granted presidential immunity for crimes alleged by Special Counsel Jack Smith, legal experts tell Fox News Digital that most of the Supreme Court justices appear concerned with how the ruling will impact the future functioning of the executive branch.
In nearly three hours of debate on Thursday, the high court wrestled with this question: “Whether and if so to what extent does a former president enjoy presidential immunity from criminal prosecution for conduct alleged to involve official acts during his tenure in office?”
Legal experts told Fox News Digital that while it appeared the majority wasn’t sold on the idea of absolute immunity, they could determine that Trump, and any future former presidents, should be granted a qualified version of it.
“I think the court recognizes that it would be a dangerous precedent if future presidents can prosecute their political rivals,” Mark Brnovich, former attorney general of Arizona, told Fox News Digital.
The Supreme Court in Washington, March 7, 2024. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)
“They will set a limiting principle because, under the prosecutor’s theory, future prosecutors would have a lot of power to persecute their political rivals,” Brnovich said.
Over the course of questioning, the justices seemed generally split along ideological lines.
“If the potential for criminal liability is taken off the table, wouldn’t there be a significant risk that future presidents would be emboldened to commit crimes with abandon while they’re in office?” Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson asked in an exchange with Trump’s lawyer, John Sauer.
“Once we say, ‘No criminal liability, Mr. President, you can do whatever you want,’ I’m worried that we would have a worse problem than the problem of the president feeling constrained to follow the law while he’s in office,” Jackson said.
Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)
Conversely, Justice Samuel Alito questioned whether limiting immunity for a former president would send the country into a destabilizing cycle.
“If an incumbent who loses a very close, hotly contested election knows that a real possible after leaving office is not that the president is going to be able to go off into a peaceful retirement, but that the president may be criminally prosecuted by a bitter political opponent, will that not lead us into a cycle that destabilizes the functioning of our country as a democracy? And we can look around the world and find countries where we have seen this process, where the loser gets thrown in jail,” Alito remarked.
“We’re writing a rule for the ages,” Justice Neil Gorsuch later stated.
Former President Trump points to supporters during a campaign rally at the Atkinson Country Club on Jan. 16, 2024, in Atkinson, New Hampshire. (Brandon Bell/Getty Images)
John Shu, a constitutional scholar and former official in both Bush administrations, told Fox News Digital that the justices indicated “they believe this case isn’t really about Trump per se. It’s about the Office of the President, what future presidents can do, and whether they’ll be prosecuted for their choices.”
“It’s a very important issue and the Biden administration set a very bad precedent to go after not only a former president, but one who also is challenging Biden’s re-election,” he said.
“What the Biden administration has done here gives the terrible appearance of vindictiveness, and on an international or foreign policy level, it makes us look like just another banana republic that we generally criticize for prosecuting or trying to jail their political opponents,” he stated.
Shu added that “many of the justices perhaps find what Trump did after the 2020 election distasteful.”
“But they also seem uncomfortable with either granting blanket immunity on the one hand, or no immunity at all on the other. As often happens, the middle ground is where the discussions will be,” he said.
John Yoo, a law professor at University of California at Berkeley, said Trump’s argument “had much more success than many court watchers expected.”
“Only the three liberal justices seemed to reject the idea of immunity outright. The six conservative justices recognized the need to prevent future presidents from criminalizing policy and constitutional differences with their predecessors,” Yoo said.
He added that a possible outcome could be that the justices punt the question back to the lower courts and ask them to first determine whether Trump’s actions amounted to “official” or “private” acts, before they decide whether immunity might extend to official acts.
A decision in the case is expected early this summer.
The special counsel’s office declined to comment when reached by Fox News Digital.
Fox News’ Bill Mears and Shannon Bream contributed to this report.
Brianna Herlihy is a politics writer for Fox News Digital.
As the Biden White House continues to brag about the alleged success of its economic policies, government data shows the country is hemorrhaging full-time jobs. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the number of Americans reporting full-time employment dropped by more than 1.7 million jobs from November 2023 to the end of March 2024, the most recent month for which data is available. That’s a decline of 1.33% over a five-month period. Excluding job losses related to the COVID-19 lockdowns in 2020, the recent drop in full-time employment is the largest five-month decline since the Great Recession in 2009, 15 years ago.
President Biden visits Nowhere Coffee shop in Emmaus, Pennsylvania, on Jan. 12, 2024, as he touts his Bidenomics agenda. (Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images)
Before that, the last time the number of full-time jobs declined this much over a similar period was in 1994.
Despite these remarkable figures, the Biden administration has continued to boast about its economic policies. For example, on April 11, the White House’s official X account claimed, “Under Bidenomics, our economy has created 15 million jobs and unemployment has remained under 4% for the longest stretch in 50 years.”
The Biden administration has made similar claims for much of the president’s time in office. At best, they are wildly misleading.
Although it’s true that total employment has increased dramatically since Biden entered the White House, the vast majority of those jobs were recovered from the coronavirus-related government lockdowns. They are not “created” jobs.
Compared to employment figures recorded in January 2020, immediately prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, the number of jobs added under Biden’s tenure is just 2.98 million, an unimpressive figure compared to many of his predecessors.
During Donald Trump’s first three years in office, the U.S. economy added 6.33 million jobs, more than double the figure recorded in the Biden era. These numbers are made even more remarkable by the fact that, excluding the 2020 coronavirus lockdown, Biden’s government has spent more money in a three-year period than any other president in history.
Two of the four highest federal deficits ever recorded have occurred under Biden, and a third, the $1.4 trillion deficit in 2009, happened while Biden was serving as Barack Obama’s vice president.
Biden’s economic agenda of dramatically increasing the size and power of government programs, raising taxes, and imposing increasingly more regulations on businesses has been a complete and utter failure. Not only has it been killing full-time jobs in recent months, it also is the driving factor behind America’s lingering inflation problem.
As difficult as it is for the Biden White House to understand, when a government consistently spends far more money than it receives in tax revenue and turns to money-printing policies to pay the bills, inflation increases. And when inflation gets out of control, as it has been for years now, most people get poorer. Based on the Consumer Price Index’s inflation estimates, an American family buying $200 worth of groceries in January 2021, when Biden took office, would have to spend $238 today to purchase the same products.
Most Americans can barely afford to pay basic living expenses. The average cost of rent has increased dramatically. The average sales price of a home and the cost of mortgages have skyrocketed.
The cost of purchasing a new car has increased by thousands of dollars in just a few years.
The American people are suffering under the Biden administration’s economic agenda. And based on the recent full-time jobs data outlined earlier in this article, the situation is not likely to improve while Biden’s failing policies remain in place.
Demonstrators participate in a protest outside the U.S. Supreme Court on April 25, 2024, in Washington, D.C. The Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the Trump v. United States, a case about presidential immunity from prosecution on obstruction and conspiracy charges. (Photo: Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
Supreme Court justices on Thursday appeared to signal they may hand former President Donald Trump a partial victory in his presidential immunity case by possibly sending it back to a lower court.
Trump’s attorney Dean John Sauer argued that presidents should have constitutional immunity from prosecution for official acts conducted during their presidency. Chief Justice John Roberts, as well as justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, brought up the potential for the Supreme Court to send the case back to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, which could delay a trial on Trump’s election interference case until at least after the election, according to Politico.
A three-judge appeals court panel unanimously rejected Trump’s immunity claim in a Feb. 6 ruling in the case originating from an indictment Jack Smithsecured against the former president over his efforts to contest the results of the 2020 election.
Roberts pressed Department of Justice (DOJ) counselor to Smith, Michael Dreeben, asking if the appeals court and the DOJ were arguing that Trump lacked immunity by default because he had been indicted.
“They said that there is no reason to worry because the prosecutor will act in good faith and there is no reason to worry because a grand jury will have returned the indictment,” Roberts said. “Now, you know how easy it is in many cases for a prosecutor to get a grand jury to bring an indictment and reliance on the good faith of the prosecutor may not be enough in some cases, I‘m not suggesting here, so if it’s tautological, if those are the only protections the court gave that is no longer your position, you are not defending that position, why shouldn’t we send it back to the court of appeals or issue an opinion making clear that that’s not the law?”
“Well, I am defending the court of appeals’ judgment and I do think there are layered safeguards the court can take into account that will ameliorate concerns about unduly chilling presidential conduct,” Dreeben responded. “That concerns us. We are not endorsing a regime that we think would expose former presidents to criminal prosecutions in bad faith, for political animus, without adequate evidence. A politically driven prosecution would violate the Constitution … It’s not something within the arsenal of prosecutors to do.”
Moreover, Justice Amy Coney Barrett indicated the possibility of establishing a test for presidential protection from prosecution, that would not quite be absolute immunity, which could also lead to delays if lower courts rule on it, according to Politico.
Justice Clarence Thomas questioned Dreeben about why no other president has faced prosecutions before Trump.
“Over the not-so-distant past … certain presidents have engaged in various activity, coups or operations like Operation Mongoose, when I was a teenager, and yet there were no prosecutions,” Thomas said. “Why? If what you’re saying is right, it would seem that would have been ripe for criminal prosecution of someone.”
“So, Justice Thomas, I think this is a central question,” Dreeben responded. “The reason why there have not been prior criminal prosecutions is that there were not crimes.”
Justice Elena Kagan characterized Sauer’s argument that a president may have criminal immunity for staging a coup after she presented him with a hypothetical as “sound[ing] bad,” which Trump’s attorney agreed with.
“It certainly sounds very bad, and that’s why the framers have a whole series of structural checks that have successfully, for the last two hundred and thirty-four years, prevented that very kind of extreme hypothetical. And that is the wisdom of the framers,” Trump’s attorney argued.
The U.K.’s ‘Rwanda Plan’ could serve as a model for the U.S. as both countries struggle to stem illegal immigration. Immigrants should be deported or sent to a safe third country to await the processing of their asylum claims. Pictured: Illegal immigrants sit on an inflatable raft before attempting to illegally cross the English Channel to reach Britain, off the coast of Sangatte, France, on July 18, 2023. (Photo: BERNARD BARRON, AFP/Getty Images)
After nearly two years of legal and political challenges, Britain’s parliament has finally passed a law confirming that Rwanda is a safe place to send people who arrive in the U.K. illegally by sea. This is a major policy win for the Conservative government of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and a victory for common sense. Britain, like the U.S. and Europe, is experiencing mass illegal migration in the guise of asylum claims. The British devised the Rwanda plan in response, but the U.S. already has successful equivalents that can be resurrected when there is a will to once again control America’s borders.
Like those coming to the U.S. by land, most people illegally arriving in Britain by boat are economic migrants. Britain’s asylum system has been swamped by growing demand, and backlogs for processing cases stretch into years.
In 2018, only 300 people arrived illegally in the U.K. by small boat from France across the English Channel. In 2022, it was more than 45,000. And in August 2023, the U.K. received its 100,000th illegal boat-borne immigrant, one of 700 who arrived each day. Nearly all of the 100,000 are still in Britain, joined by ever-increasing numbers.
From Jan. 1 to April 21 this year, 6,265 small boats arrived in the U.K. carrying illegal immigrants, with the largest numbers being from Afghanistan and Vietnam.
Having left the European Union, the British are unable to return asylum-seekers to the first safe country in the EU under what are called the Dublin Regulations. By mid-2023, 96% of asylum-seekers who arrived in 2021 had not received final decisions in their cases, and around 50,000 were being housed in hotels, costing the United Kingdom the equivalent of more than $8.8 million U.S. a day. The limitless liability of illegal immigration to the U.K. is an important electoral issue for Conservative Party voters.
Sound familiar?
In August 2023, Sunak’s government passed an Illegal Migration Act that barred people who entered illegally by sea from applying for asylum. The act requires British officials to return inadmissible aliens—without appeal—back to their birth country, if possible, or if not, to a safe third country.
To implement the act, Britain needed a safe third country to house putative asylum-seekers pending case processing. Britain does not have any developing-country neighbors, so they struck a deal with Rwanda in 2022 in which that Central African country would be compensated to take up to 1,000 putative asylum applicants over five years.
Anyone sent to Rwanda could opt at any time to return to their home country or to be resettled in Rwanda as refugees, but they could not return to Britain. The British government fought a series of legal challenges to its policy, but passage of the new law should clear the way for removal flights to Rwanda within weeks from now.
Sunak says he means business. “The only way to stop the boats is to eliminate the incentive to come, by making it clear that if you are here illegally, you will not be able to stay,” he said at a press conference. “We are ready. The plans are in place.”
The government has also set aside judges and courts on standby to handle the inevitable legal challenges.
The Rwanda plan is Britain’s attempt to regain control over its borders and national sovereignty. The goal is to cut off the possibility of asylum from boat arrivals, thus both destroying the business model of maritime smugglers and saving lives. This past week, five people died when over 100 illegal migrants attempted to cross the English Channel in an overcrowded boat.
The Rwanda plan has many opponents. The United Nations High Commission for Refugees argues that if the U.K. is successful, it will set a “worrying precedent for dismantling asylum-related obligations that other countries, including in Europe, may be tempted to follow …” Perhaps so, but the alternative is to cede control over immigration to foreign actors in perpetuity.
The British hope to emulate the success of Australia, which in 2001, started turning back boats carrying illegal migrants. The idea was to give “no advantage” to asylum applicants arriving illegally by boat over those arriving by air.
Australia set up detention and asylum processing centers on the island nation of Nauru, and on Manus Island in Papua New Guinea. Eventually, Australia adopted a strict rule that no asylum-seeker arriving by boat and processed offshore would ever be resettled in Australia. The policy faced considerable political opposition but was highly effective in reducing demand.
The message was quickly understood by would-be boat migrants and migrant traffickers across Southeast Asia. “Arrival numbers went off a cliff once the Australians started to deport … because ‘news spreads like wildfire among refugees,’” wrote Matthew Paris in the Spectator.
When a later Australian government closed the Manus and Nauru centers, illegal migration soared again. In 2012, more than 600 people drowned when boats carrying illegal migrants capsized. In response, Australia reopened the offshore centers and resumed sending back all illegal aliens who arrived or attempted to arrive in Australia by sea.
As before, the putative asylum applicants remained in the offshore centers for the entire time, pending the adjudication of their cases. The offshoring policy and an unbending Australian government destroyed the market for maritime migrant smugglers. For example, in 2014, only a single boat carrying migrants made it to Australia.
At its peak in 2014, Nauru’s camp had 1,233 asylum applicants living there. By June 2023, only three remained. Though the boat-borne illegal migration virtually stopped, a credible ability to restart offshore processing is vital to Australia maintaining its current control over seaborne illegal immigration. Therefore, Australia is paying the equivalent of $288,000 U.S. a year to Nauru to keep the detention/processing option open in reserve.
The U.S. does not have the advantage of being an island. But as recently as the Trump administration, we had Safe Third Country agreements in place with Central American countries and the Migrant Protection Protocols with Mexico. Under these agreements, any asylum applicant coming to the U.S. and first passing through a third safe country to get here would be sent back to that country if he or she had not applied for asylum in that country. For example, all those who crossed illegally into the U.S. from Mexico were returned there pending their case adjudication.
The U.S. needs to use all the economic and diplomatic leverage at our disposal to revive those agreements. Meanwhile, similar to the U.K. and Australia, we should prohibit asylum applications from those illegally crossing between ports of entry to discourage frivolous and fraudulent asylum claims.
The BorderLine is a weekly Daily Signal feature examining everything from the unprecedented illegal immigration crisis at the border to immigration’s impact on cities and states throughout the land. We will also shed light on other critical border-related issues like human trafficking, drug smuggling, terrorism, and more.
Judge Merchan and the Democrats are trying to hold Trump hostage to hinder his campaign, but the more lawfare they throw at him, the higher his poll numbers keep rising.
TX Rep. Lance Gooden Demands AG Merrick Garland and DA Alvin Bragg Turn Over Evidence Related to Hiring Radical Biden Attorney Colangelo to Run Latest Lawfare Suit Against Trump
By Jim Hoft – April 24, 2024
On Tuesday, Rep. Lance Gooden (R-TX) sent out a letter to crooked Attorney General Merrick Garland and Soros-funded New York City District Attorney Alvin Bragg demanding the two turn over evidence related to the hiring of former top Biden attorney Matthew Colangelo to run the latest lawfare case against President Trump in a New York City courtroom.
Gooden calls the hiring of Colangelo “a declaration of war against the American judicial system.” READ MORE…
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 • Idaho Fights at Supreme Court to Protect Babies From Abortions • Arizona House Votes to Repeal Abortion Ban, Three Republicans Join Democrats to Allow Killing Babies • Joe Biden Makes Sign of the Cross at Pro-Abortion Rally • DeSantis Slams Biden on Abortion: “Florida is Not Buying” Your Abortions Up to Birth Message
More Pro-Life News • Joe Biden: Not Being Able to Kill Babies in Abortions is a “Nightmare” • Gavin Newsom Lies, Abortion Bans Don’t Allow Police to Pull Over Pregnant Women • Justice Sonia Sotomayor Falsely Claims Abortion Bans Don’t Have Life of the Mother Exceptions • 22 Pro-Life States Defend Their Pro-Life Laws From Joe Biden’s Attack • 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.
Comments or questions? Email us at news@lifenews.com. Copyright 2003-2024 LifeNews.com. All rights reserved. For information on advertising or reprinting news from LifeNews.com, email us.
A Pennsylvania middle school student says she warned a school official in advance of last week’s bloody attack by a trans-identified student against one of her classmates, the response to which has sparked criticism from parents and community members. Emily, a student at Pennbrook Middle School, was one of several people to speak about the attack during a Thursday North Penn School Board meeting. She said she was seated at a nearby table last Wednesday when a 13-year-old trans student known as “Melanie” began beating a 12-year-old girl with a metal Stanley cup.
Melanie reportedly had a “hit list” of people he planned to attack, and Emily was allegedly one of his targets.
Emily claims she warned the school’s staff about the hit list and learned the student planned to attack her and the other girl who was assaulted during lunch and that she should “watch [her] back.”
Emily said she was “terrified” and told a teacher about her concerns. But she claims the teacher responded, “Don’t worry about it; it’s not going to happen.”
“You could’ve stopped it,” Emily said during the school board meeting. “It was five hours from when I told you it was going to happen. I don’t get how you couldn’t have stopped that.”
The middle schooler said that the girl who was attacked didn’t see it coming, as her back was to the trans student. Emily remembered hearing “terrible loud bangs” as the assailant hit the girl in the head with the Stanley cup.
The student known as “Melanie” grabbed the girl by the hair and continued to beat her with the cup as blood went “everywhere,” Emily said. As he hit the girl with the cup, the boy repeatedly yelled, “I’m going to murder you!”
The middle school student added that the school was placed on lockdown for at least 28 minutes, not eight minutes, as the school board had claimed in an email.
“We had to sit there and watch them clean up her blood off the table and ground,” Emily said as she became emotional during her testimony. “And we had to watch them take her out with blood dripping down her face, and I will never forget that!”
“Laying in bed last night, I just kept repeating it in my head,” Emily continued. “And we shouldn’t have had to sit there and just watch that.”
Full video of PA father & daughter at yesterday's @NPSD School Board Meeting on the gruesome attack at Pennbrook Middle School.
Dad: Why were kids told they weren't allowed to call/text their parents [for 28 minutes]? Why were students left in that room as they're cleaning up… https://t.co/y81olsiI55pic.twitter.com/3UV1MSv45e
WATCH: Courageous Teen Shares Horrifying Account Following Friend's Violent Assault by Trans Student at Montgomery County Middle School
A 13-year-old boy who identifies as a girl named "Melanie" was recently transferred to Montgomery County Middle School and made a hit list to… pic.twitter.com/Mzjqyn1z8g
The North Penn School District did not immediately respond to The Christian Post’s request for comment.
Parent Alyssa Santiago said during the school board meeting that her daughter was also on the alleged “hit list” and called the school twice to warn of threats against the student’s safety, according to The Reporter Online.
Superintendent Todd Bauer said during the meeting that the victim of the attack has been released from the hospital and is recovering at home. He requested privacy for the victim, the assailant and their families as the police and school officials investigate.
“This should not have happened, period. Such behavior has no place in our schools,” Bauer was quoted as saying, according to Fox 29. “You expect better. We expect better, and I certainly do, as well. Every parent has the right to send their child to school and their child to feel safe.”
“As a result of yesterday’s incident, I do recognize and understand why some of you did not feel that way this morning,” Bauer added. “Please do not perceive my lack of response to your comments as a lack of genuine and sincere care.”
Parents who spoke during the meeting last Thursday expressed frustration with how the school handled the incident. One parent, Chris Pekula, questioned why the other students were kept in the same room while the staff cleaned blood from the attack off of the floor, The Reporter Online notes. Other parents recalled receiving messages from their scared children at the time of the attack.
“Your worst fear comes to light when you get that call from your kid crying in school,” another parent, Stephanie Pallica, was quoted as saying. She objected to how the school district informed parents of the matter, saying it was “really disrespectful.”
“‘Mom, help me, I’m scared, there’s blood everywhere.’ You can’t get to them fast enough. And they hang up on you because teachers and staff are yelling at them to hang up their phones.”
“So, we’re left to speculate the worst: God forbid, school shooting, stabbing. I hear my kid fearing for her life and tons of kids in the background, screaming and crying. I just don’t know what went wrong. I would like to know and be assured that this child will not be returning to any other North Penn schools, at all.”
The assailant will be charged as a juvenile and is facing aggravated assault and other charges, according to CBS Philadelphia.
The ongoing border invasion is perhaps the largest source of human trafficking inside the United States. Yet the woman President Joe Biden tasked with monitoring and combating this problem has largely neglected that nexus in her reports, speeches, and other work since assuming her role in January 2023.
On paper, U.S. Ambassador-at-Large to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons (TIP) Cindy Dyer appears qualified to lead that State Department office. Her official bio boasts “three decades of experience working at the local, national, and international levels to prevent and respond to human trafficking, sexual assault, and domestic violence” as well as her lengthy track record as former vice president for human rights at a nongovernmental organization.
It’s safe to say Dyer is no stranger to the conditions that breed exploitation at home and abroad. That might be why the Senate unanimously confirmed her as human trafficking czar in 2022. Notably missing from her work at the TIP office, however, is a focus on what has quickly become the nation’s biggest hub for human trafficking: the southern border.
The Elephant in the Room
Human trafficking was a huge, bipartisan issue until a few years ago when corporate media started associating it with the “far-right.” That narrative shift directly coincided with Democrats’ zeal for unfettered illegal immigration. That means it’s like pulling teeth to get anyone in the regime (including the nation’s lead woman on the job) to talk about the mass human trafficking at our compromised southern border.
Still, it’s happening and, with the help of a vast nongovernmental organization system, is funded with American tax dollars and enabled by American policies.
In 2007, the majority of trafficking victims in the States were clocked as female border crossers. Even our federal government admits on the U.S. Customs and Border Protection website that “border smuggling frequently involves human trafficking.” Since that report was released in 2007, the number of men, women, and unaccompanied minors indebting themselves to smugglers so they can illegally enter the United States has skyrocketed.
At least 10 million illegal border crossers have entered the United States since President Joe Biden’s presidency began. Since illegal immigrants rarely get across the U.S.-Mexico border without paying a price to cartels, those millions likely shelled out thousands of dollars to ensure their illegal passage from Mexico into California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas.
The people demanding these payments are “coyotes,” the billion-dollar human smuggling arm of criminal organizations that control the Northern Mexico territory. The profitability and frequency of these cartels’ kidnapping and ransom schemes have increased since Biden effectively legalized illegal border crossings after taking office in 2021.
Tara Lee Rodas, who worked with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Refugee Resettlement to place unaccompanied migrant children with sponsors, told the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration Integrity, Security, and Enforcement in April 2023 that children “are being trafficked through a sophisticated network that begins with being recruited in home country, smuggled to the US border, and ends when ORR delivers a child to . . . Sponsors” who may be “criminals and traffickers and members of Transnational Criminal Organizations.”
“Whether intentional or not, it can be argued that the US Government has become the middleman in a large scale, multi-billion-dollar, child trafficking operation run by bad actors seeking to profit off the lives of children,” Rodas said.
See Something, Say Nothing
The 2023 Trafficking in Persons Report, released by Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Dyer last June, acknowledges that human trafficking “often occurs transnationally” but stops short of acknowledging that the influx of illegal border crossers welcomed under President Joe Biden contributes to the nation’s modern slavery problems. Instead of addressing the root cause of U.S. trafficking problems — unfettered and incentivized access to the United States via a compromised border — Dyer said the State Department is focused on promoting “equity” that prioritizes “diverse groups and marginalized communities” in foreign countries.
“Promoting equity with respect to race, ethnicity, gender identity, sexual orientation, and for marginalized communities is not only the right thing to do, it is the smart thing to do. When we partner to support vulnerable migrants, advocate for women’s rights, or enact legislation to protect LGBTQI+ individuals, we are creating a more just and equitable world that is also more impervious to human traffickers,” Dyer wrote in the report’s introduction.
Later in the 116-page document, Dyer also demanded foreign governments “re-double their efforts to proactively identify all victims, protect them, support survivors, prevent trafficking even in the face of new and complex challenges, and ensure that law enforcement holds traffickers accountable.” The report confirmed this by calling for U.S. security and government “assistance” for other countries deemed in need of trafficking prevention resources.
Yet Dyer failed in the report to specifically address securing the U.S. border or cracking down on the criminal trafficking that stems from it.
The United States Advisory Council on Human Trafficking Annual Report 2023, released under the Dyer office’s supervision, does touch on the relationship between the border invasion and trafficking but fails to link it to the Biden administration’s open border polices or recommend any serious policies aimed at combating the problem. Instead, the report merely suggests the Department of Homeland Security increase its “oversight,” “support,” and “awareness” of the issue.
Why hasn’t Dyer directed her or her subordinates’ attention to the ongoing border chaos despite its clear connection to human trafficking?
She admitted the quiet part out loud during May 2023 testimony to the House Subcommittee on Global Health, Global Human Rights and International Organizations when she told Chairman Chris Smith, R-N.J., that her office supports the Biden administration’s goals to facilitate amnesty for illegal border crossers instead of deportation.
“Addressing the challenges of irregular migration, specifically providing protection to refugees and asylum seekers and offering lawful migration pathways are key priorities for the administration,” Dyer said.
The Federalist asked Dyer if she believes cracking down on illegal immigration and securing the border would reduce the risk of human trafficking, but she did not respond.
Emboldening crime organizations with promises of citizenship for all doesn’t simply put illegal border crossers at risk of exploitation and harm, it endangers Americans too. Simply put, failure to curb the border crisis is a direct failure to cut down on human trafficking and American suffering in the United States.
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.
Donald Trump was very proud of his $2 trillion tax cut that overwhelmingly benefited the wealthy and biggest corporations and exploded the federal debt.
Well, obviously Trump should be “proud” of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which is set to expire at the end of 2025. If the GOP presidential candidate had any sense, he would be running Biden’s promise to enact a $2 trillion tax hike, one of the biggest in American history, in a perpetual ad loop. Of course the rich benefited. As did everyone else. Even the New York Times and Washington Post were compelled to admit as much.
In raw terms, as with any across-the-board tax cut, Trump’s reform helped higher earners most, because high earners pay most of our federal taxes. In 2023, the top 1 percent paid eight times the rate paid by the bottom half of taxpayers. The idea that the rich aren’t paying their share is a preposterous zero-sum economic myth spread by resentment-racket class warriors on left and right. If everyone actually paid his “fair share” in this country, we’d be years deep into a violent revolution.
If anything, the problem with Trump’s tax cuts was that the code became more progressive, although other downsides include the lack of any corresponding cuts or reforms of debt-driving entitlements. Quite the opposite.
As a percentage of income, though, the Trump tax cuts benefited the middle class most, as Justin Haskins explained:
A careful analysis of the IRS tax data, one that includes the effects of tax credits and other reforms to the tax code, shows that filers with an adjusted gross income (AGI) of $15,000 to $50,000 enjoyed an average tax cut of 16 percent to 26 percent in 2018, the first year Republicans’ Tax Cuts and Jobs Act went into effect and the most recent year for which data is available.
Filers who earned $50,000 to $100,000 received a tax break of about 15 percent to 17 percent, and those earning $100,000 to $500,000 in adjusted gross income saw their personal income taxes cut by around 11 percent to 13 percent.
By comparison, no income group with an AGI of at least $500,000 received an average tax cut exceeding 9 percent, and the average tax cut for brackets starting at $1 million was less than 6 percent. (For more detailed data, see my table published here.)
That means most middle-income and working-class earners enjoyed a tax cut that was at least double the size of tax cuts received by households earning $1 million or more.
Let’s not forget, as well, when “that tax cut is going to expire”—and there are no assurances anything would pass to take its place—that would slash child tax credits from $2,000 per child to $1,000 and cut additional credits for older children and dependents in half. It should also be remembered that corporate taxes—which Trump cut from 35 percent to 21 percent and Democrats raised again—are also just a tax on consumers.
You may also recall the fearmongering and performative meltdowns among Democrats over the tax reform. Larry Summers, a relatively moderate voice on the left, warned Trump’s bill was “a threat to democracy” and would lead to more than 10,000 dead Americans every year.
“Armageddon,” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi warned, declaring Trump’s tax cut “one of the worst bills in the history of the United States Congress”— potentially, then, in a category with the Fugitive Slave Act and the Espionage Act. Unhinged progressive economist Bruce Bartlett said on MSNBC the tax cuts were “really akin to rape” of the poor, while the Washington Post ran an article from a “depression historian” who contended, “The GOP tax bill is straight out of 1929.”
What happened? The bill passed at the end of 2017. In 2018,
the real GDP increased 3.1 percent, compared with an increase of 2.5 percent the previous year.
The price index for GDP purchases increased 2.1 percent in 2018, compared to 1.9 percent in 2017.
Many “new right” populists don’t like defending tax cuts (Ronald Reagan talked about them a lot, so yuck). But the average American family — which is middle class, lives in the suburbs, and votes in high numbers — will surely be more concerned about a rising tax bill than about any issue animating the populist Internet influencer crowd.
Hamas on Wednesday released a propaganda video showing Israeli-American hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin, who has not been seen since he was kidnapped during the terrorist group’s attacks on Israel on Oct. 7. Goldberg-Polin, 23, identified himself as an Israeli in the video and commented he had been held hostage for “nearly 200 days,” an indication the video was recorded recently, according to The Times of Israel. The video, which runs almost three minutes long, shows Goldberg-Polin asking the Israeli government to bring the hostages home.
The young man is missing his left arm from the elbow down. He lost his limb when Hamas terrorists attacked the Supernova rave in the Negev desert in the early hours of Oct. 7. Video from the onslaught showed Goldberg-Polin’s arm was blown off when Hamas terrorists threw hand grenades into a shelter where he and others tried to hide.
Media outlets in Israel do not show hostage videos, saying they are an act of psychological warfare, according to the New York Post.
Goldberg-Polin was at the music festival with a friend and was shown on video being loaded onto a truck, with his left arm mangled from the explosion.
A media representative for Goldberg-Polin’s parents, Rachel Goldberg and Jon Polin, declined to speak with the press after the video of their son was released.
The video comes a few days after his family had made an impassioned plea begging he be released in time for the start of Passover.
“All of the symbolic things we do at the Seder will take on a much more profound and deep meaning this year,” Goldberg told reporters.
She said the family was planning to hold their Seder, but said “if 15 minutes in, we just can’t do it, and we need to cry, then we will cry.”
Goldberg and Polin spoke with the Post earlier this month when six months had passed since their son and 250 other hostages were taken.
“At a certain point, we did realize that hope is mandatory, optimism is mandatory,” Goldberg said. “We’re trying to save our son’s life, we’re trying to help save the lives of all of the hostages who are still alive.”
Hiking the minimum wage to $20 for California’s fast-food workers will result in job losses, higher prices, and more automation. Pictured: An employee helps a customer April 1 at a Chipotle restaurant in San Rafael, California. (Photo: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
California’s list of public policy failures was already long but hiking its minimum wage to $20 an hour for fast-food workers may belong at the top.
The predictable fallout in lost jobs and higher prices are already being felt, and the flood of residents fleeing the state is poised to accelerate.
California is already home to some of the highest taxes and costs of living in the country, the consequences of failed government policies. A higher minimum wage is more of the same.
Consider California’s “green” energy policies, which have created the highest utility rates in the nation. Instead of rolling back those mandates, the state created a new one: surcharges on utility bills, making the middle class pay more even if they don’t use more.
The overtaxing, overspending, and overregulating by the state government in Sacramento has turned California into such a basket case that 1.2 million more people left the state than moved in over the past three years—by far the biggest loss of any state and beating New York by 35%.
Californians clearly don’t like the effects of these policies, but they just got more of them with the higher minimum wage law for fast-food workers. This particular policy provides a superb example of how disastrous economic ideas become law: wonderful rhetoric, terrible results.
The law was advertised as forcing “greedy” corporations to pay workers a “living wage.” But businesses aren’t charities and can’t pay employees more than they produce or they’ll go bankrupt. Employers pay taxes and other costs on top of an employee’s earnings; at $20 an hour, many fast-food workers don’t provide enough value to justify the highest minimum wage in the country.
Not surprisingly, California’s fast-food companies have frozen hiring. Some are already announcing mass layoffs. This is not a small cohort of workers: California is, at least for now, home to half a million fast-food workers.
That number is already dropping and is set to plunge soon. McDonald’s has been investing millions of dollars in fully automated restaurants and opened the first such restaurant last year. Jack in the Box and El Pollo Loco, the Mexican chicken chain, both announced that they’ll use robotics to fully automate cooking and cashier functions.
The machines are cheaper than employing people at artificially inflated wage rates, plus the additional costs such as training, payroll taxes, and vulnerability to lawsuits, thanks to lawyer lobbies.
Where fast-food workers can’t be replaced, their jobs effectively will be outsourced. About 1,100 Pizza Hut delivery drivers are set to lose their jobs, with more layoffs announced at another restaurant chain, Round Table Pizza.
Consumers will have to use food delivery apps (also being targeted by California’s notorious legislation, AB 40), or they’ll have to pick up their orders themselves.
Apologists claim that corporations are just posturing and won’t really lay off thousands of workers. That thinking is largely made possible by the fact that many politicians never have run a business, had to make payroll, or hired minimum-wage workers.
In short, advocates of the $20 minimum wage don’t understand the impact of the policy they’re pushing. All the politicians know is that it’s a reliable vote winner—even if it throws low-wage workers under the bus not once, but twice. Hiking the minimum wage causes job losses, but it also increases prices. Because lower-income folks disproportionately eat at fast-food restaurants, they bear the brunt of these higher costs, in addition to losing their jobs.
A minimum wage of $20 an hour is really a state ban on any job that pays less than $20. Californians in that category either must go somewhere else where such work is still legal, work illegally “under the table,” or rely on welfare.
But the insanity doesn’t end there. The law also creates a Fast-Food Council that can raise the minimum wage for fast-food workers by another 3.5% per year, every year, until no fast-food workers are left standing.
California will continue to hemorrhage residents, and that rate of outmigration likely will accelerate as politicians target low-income workers with wage mandates and inflation. Eventually, all those willing to work will leave. The only ones left will be those on the state’s bloated welfare rolls.
The Golden State is killing the goose that laid its golden eggs.
Below is an expanded version of my column in the New York Post on the start of the Trump trial and much awaited explanation of District Attorney Alvin Bragg on the underlying alleged criminal conduct. The curious aspect of the case is that the prosecutors are stressing that they will prove largely uncontested facts. Indeed, if all of these facts of payments, non-disclosure agreements, and affairs are proven many of us (including liberal legal experts) are doubtful that there is any cognizable crime.
Here is the column:
For many of us in the legal community, the case of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg against former president Donald Trump borders on the legally obscene: an openly political prosecution based on a theory that even some liberal pundits have dismissed. Yet, this week the prosecution seemed like they were actually making a case for obscenity.
No, it was not the gratuitous introduction of an uncharged alleged tryst with a former Playboy bunny or planned details on the relationship with a former porn star. It was the criminal theory itself that seemed crafted around the standard for obscenity famously described by Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart in the case of Jacobellis v. Ohio, 378 U.S. 184 (1964): “I shall not today attempt further to define [it] … But I know it when I see it.”
After months of confusion of what crime they were alleging in the indictment, the prosecution offered a new theory that is so ambiguous and undefined that it would have made Justice Stewart blush.
New York prosecutor Joshua Steinglass told the jury that one of the crimes that Trump allegedly committed in listing the payments to Stormy Daniels as a “legal expense” was New York Law 17-152. This law states “Any two or more persons who conspire to promote or prevent the election of any person to a public office by unlawful means and which conspiracy is acted upon by one or more of the parties thereto, shall be guilty of a misdemeanor.”
So they are arguing that Trump committed a crime by conspiring to unlawfully promote his own candidacy. He did this by paying to quash a potentially embarrassing story and then reimbursing his lawyer with other legal expenses.
Confused? You are not alone.
It is not a crime to pay money for the nondisclosure of an alleged affair. Moreover, it is also not a federal election offense (which is the other crime alleged by Bragg) to pay such money as a personal or legal expense. It is not treated under federal law as a political contribution to yourself.
Yet, somehow the characterization of this payment as a legal expense is being treated as an illegal conspiracy to promote one’s own candidacy in New York.
The Trump cases have highlighted a couple of New York’s absurdly ambiguous laws. Under another law, New York Attorney General Letitia James secured an almost half of billion dollar judgment against Trump for loans where the alleged victims not only did not lose a dime but were eager for more business from his company. The law does not actually require any loss to a victim to impose a roughly $500 million penalty against a defendant that James pledged to bag in her campaign for office. While the over and under valuing of assets is common in the real estate area, James singled out Trump.
James declined to explain how this law could be used against other businesses since actual losses or injuries are not viewed as necessary. Businesses would just have to trust her and her judgment. In other words, the law could have sweeping applications, but we will know a violation under the civil law when we see it.
As with James, Bragg saw it in Trump. His predecessor did not see it. He declined charging on this basis. Bragg did to. He stopped the investigation. However, after a pressure campaign, Bragg might not be able to see the crime, but he certainly saw the political consequences of not charging Trump.
In New York, prosecutors are expected to have extreme legal myopia: they can see no farther than Trump to the exclusion of any implication for the legal system or legal ethics. Of course, neither he nor his office has never seen this type of criminal case in any other defendant. Ever.
We have never seen a case like this one where a dead misdemeanor from 2016 could be revived as a felony just before any election in 2024. The misdemeanors in this case, including falsifying these payments, expired with the passage of the statute of limitations. But Bragg (with the help of Matthew Colangelo, a former top official in the Biden Justice Department) zapped it back into life by alleging a federal election crime that the Justice Department itself rejected as a basis for any criminal charge.
So now there is a second crime that is hard for most of us to see, at least outside of New York. Trump is accused of conspiring to promote his own candidacy by mislabeling this payment, even though it was part of a larger legal payment to his former counsel, Michael Cohen.
They do not see a crime in analogous mislabeling of payments by Democratic candidates. Take Hillary Clinton who served as senator from New York and ran for president against Trump. For months before the 2016 election, Hillary Clinton’s campaign denied that it had funded the infamous Steele dossier behind the debunked Russian collusion claims. That was untrue. When reporters tried to report on the funding story, one journalist said Elias that “pushed back vigorously, saying ‘You (or your sources) are wrong.’”
While the funds were part of the campaign budget, they were listed as legal expenses and the Clinton people continued to insist that such payments to a former intelligence figure to put together the dossier was a legal expenditure.
It is not clear if Trump even knew how this money was characterized on ledgers or records. He paid the money to his lawyer, who had put together this settlement over the nondisclosure agreement. Cohen will soon go on the stand and tell the jury that they should send his former client to jail for following his legal advice.
In addition to running for president, Trump was a married host of a hit television show. There were ample reasons to secure an NDA to bury the story. Even if money was paid to bury these stories with the election in mind, it is not unusual or illegal. There was generally no need to list such payments as a campaign contribution because they were not a campaign contribution in the view of the federal government.
It is not even clear how this matter was supposed to be noted in records. What if the Trump employee put “legal settlement in personal matter” or “nuisance payment”? Would those words be the difference?
Again, it is not clear. But that does not appear to matter in New York. The crime may not be clear or even comprehensible. However, the identity of the defendant could not be clearer, and the prosecutors are hoping that the jury, like themselves, will look no further.
Our universities melting down seems to be part of the Democrats’ Cloward and Piven strategy of destroying the capitalist system in order to rebuild it into a utopia resembling that of the former Soviet Union or Communist China, throwing away our constitution with all power and control resting with a few wealthy elitists in the Democrat party.
Chaos at Columbia: Anti-Zionist NYC College Protest Gets Physical Last Night, “Arrest that Zionist piece of s***” (VIDEO)
By Benjamin Wetmore – April 19, 2024
Protests at Columbia University in New York City got heated Thursday night as protesters demanded charges be dropped against pro-Palestinian activists who were shutting down the college’s buildings to protest Israel’s war in Gaza. The protesters were upset that the police arrested those making a ‘tent city’ inside the college’s buildings and on campus grounds. 108 were arrested after three days of protests. The protesters wanted those arrested released without charges. READ MORE…
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 Campaigns in Florida for More Abortions • Biden Issues New Rule to Shield Abortionists Who Kill Babies in Illegal Abortions • Robert Kennedy Jr Releases New Abortion Policy Supporting Abortions Up to Birth • Americans Want Less Abortions Not More
More Pro-Life News • Supreme Court Should Shut Down Joe Biden’s Attempt to Force ERs to Do Abortions • Catholic Bishops Slam Biden for Trying to Force Christian Employers to Fund Abortions • Pro-Life Congressmen Ask Supreme Court to Stop Biden Form Turning ERs Into Abortion Centers • Pro-Life Groups Ask British Parliament to Defeat Measure Legalizing Abortions Up to Birth • 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.
Comments or questions? Email us at news@lifenews.com. Copyright 2003-2024 LifeNews.com. All rights reserved. For information on advertising or reprinting news from LifeNews.com, email us.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) would not say Tuesday whether it is investigating people identifying themselves as part of a foreign terrorist organization heard chanting “We are Hamas” outside U.S. universities including Columbia.
Video footage shows masked Islamists taunting Jewish students outside of President Barack Obama’s alma mater. One woman shouted at a pro-Israel activist, “We are Hamas” while standing outside Columbia University. “We’re all Hamas.”
Another man who covered his face was seen on video promising more mass slaughter, rape, and kidnapping: “Remember the 7th of October! That will happen not one more time, not five more times, to 10 more times, not 100 more times, not 1,000 more times, but 10,000 times!”
"Never forget the 7th of October. That will happen not one more time, not five more times, not 10…100…1000…10,000…The 7th of October is going to be every day for you."
“Never forget the 7th of October,” another unidentifiable man donning the Palestinian flag outside the university screams in a video recording. “Are you ready? Seventh of October is about to be every day. Every day. Seventh of October is going to be every day for you.”
The Federalist asked the FBI whether they would investigate the self-proclaimed terrorists.
“Thank you for your inquiry. However, we decline comment on this matter,” the bureau replied.
The FBI designates Hamas as a terrorist organization.
Perhaps the FBI’s unwillingness to let the American people know it’s monitoring self-proclaimed terrorists is because the agency allegedly trained some of its personnel using material that “ranked people who oppose abortion, pro-life activists, as a greater threat than Islamists,” as former special agent Steve Friend told the Tennessee Informer.
Friend said he received the training material in 2014 but was unsure whether the agency still used it. The materials, he said, were produced by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), a hate group whose materials inspired a gunman to shoot up the offices of a conservative DC organization in 2012, and another gunman to attempt to murder a member of Congress in 2017.
As of 2023, the FBI still uses some SPLC materials. SPLC responded to the October 7 terrorist attack in Israel by claiming that, while “all acts of hate violence” are wrong, Israel targets Palestinian civilians. That is a Hamas propaganda refrain.
The FBI also cited SPLC in a 2023 document targeting traditional Christians for opposing abortion and holding orthodox views about the sexes. It labeled them “racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists” and even suggested cultivating FBI informants within local churches.
The FBI has also smeared Americans who support former President Donald Trump as potential terrorists by including them in their “domestic extremism” definition, a 2023 report from Newsweek found. Newsweek found “nearly two-thirds of the FBI’s current investigations” focus on Trump supporters who allegedly disregarded “anti-riot” laws.
After Jan. 6, 2021, the agency also expanded its “anti-government or anti-authority violent extremists-other” classification so it could monitor anyone who disagrees with any government action. A 2021 inspector general report found that several FBI officials lied to cover up agency errors and dinged the agency for its systemic lack of rapid investigation of later convicted child sex abuser Larry Nassar.
Brianna Lyman is an elections correspondent at The Federalist.
A lot of congressional Republicans see a political slam dunk in thrusting their focus into the thick of anti-Israel protests raging at Ivy League campuses across the country, but to the protesters, there’s only one thing to say: This is what disappointment feels like. Get used to it.
Participants in the protests are demanding a range of things, from a simple “cease fire” in Gaza to something resembling more of what you might call a “final solution” in Israel. Republicans and Fox News are taking a special interest in the affair because of course all of the protesters are Democrat voters, and some of them are proudly allowing their anti-Jew flag to fly.
That makes things a little uncomfortable for the White House and Democrats in Congress, but so far, Joe Biden and Co. are managing to tolerate it. That’s because, with a giddy assist from Republicans, Democrats are within a baby’s breath of passing a nearly $100 billion foreign welfare package, about a quarter of which will go to Israel to continue its war campaign. Included in that portion is some “humanitarian aid” for Palestinians. (Enjoy!)
What’s not included in that handsome giveaway is anything of note that would directly improve the life of a single American on U.S. soil. There was nothing related to the collapse of the Southern border, nothing to address crime, and nothing to bring down the cost of groceries or the price of gas.
So, the anti-Israel faction of the Democrat Party feels put out by Washington? Don’t we all.
What they all need to understand is that the leaders they elected don’t care. Elected Democrats don’t share their interests. Likewise, elected Republicans just showed their priorities aren’t in sync with the desires of their voters, either.
I know it stings. Nobody likes rejection. But here we all are, as far corners of the world are taken care of by our tax dollars amid massive federal deficits and debt. Everyone here is fine, right?
Ultimately, what the protesters want is stupid anyway. After what happened on Oct. 7, Israel isn’t going to relent until it’s ready, just as any proud nation would do. That’s not to say Israelis should wage their battle at our expense, but that wasn’t my call. It was Washington’s. And Washington cares just as much about the preferences of anti-Israel activists as they do every other average American’s.
Get comfortable. Things aren’t going to change for a while.
In opening statements on Monday, Manhattan prosecutors sought to convince a jury that former President Donald Trump “orchestrated a criminal scheme to corrupt the 2016 presidential election.” Meanwhile, the perpetrators of the Russia-collusion hoax — the real criminal scheme that was orchestrated to meddle in that election — walk free.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg claims Trump broke the law after he classified payments made by his then-lawyer, Michael Cohen, to pornographer Stormy Daniels, as “legal fees” rather than campaign expenditures. (It is not illegal to purchase negative press about oneself, and Trump likely would have run afoul of campaign finance laws if he had classified such an expense, which benefitted him personally rather than just his campaign, as a campaign payment.)
Prosecutor Matthew Colangelo, who formerly held a top post in President Joe Biden’s Department of Justice, alleged Monday during opening statements that “this was a planned, long-running conspiracy to influence the 2016 election, to help Donald Trump get elected through illegal expenditures to silence people who had something bad to say about his behavior.”
“It was election fraud, pure and simple,” Colangelo continued, according to PBS News. “The defendant, Donald Trump, orchestrated a criminal scheme to corrupt the 2016 presidential election. Then he covered up that criminal conspiracy by lying in his New York business records over and over and over again.”
Manhattan prosecutors seek to put Trump in jail for up to four years. Meanwhile, the operatives who invented a hoax accusing Trump of being a Russian asset in 2016, commissioned a dossier of fake oppo research, and shopped it to the FBI — which then used the shoddy “research” as a basis to illegally spy on the Trump campaign — have received a light tap on the wrist, if any punishment at all.
Marc Elias, the Clinton campaign lawyer who commissioned the discredited dossier, received no punishment. The DNC and the Clinton campaign — which together provided funds for oppo research firm Fusion GPS to hire former British spy Christopher Steele, who put his name on the so-called “Steele dossier” — were fined $105,000 and $8,000, respectively, for labeling the payments as “legal and compliance consulting” and “legal services.” Clinton herself, who personally approved the decision to leak the false accusations to the press, was still suggesting the 2016 election was “stolen” from her as recently as 2022 and has never received any repercussions for the Russia hoax.
Russian national Igor Danchenko, the “primary sub-source” whose testimony Steele relied on in creating the dossier, “fed Steele false information about the Trump campaign, which a Clinton booster had invented.” Danchenko was indicted by Special Counsel John Durham for lying to the FBI about a 2016 phone call he claimed he received from an anonymous person who he thought was Sergei Millian. Danchenko claimed the anonymous caller revealed a “conspiracy of cooperation” between Trump and the Russians. These claims were added to the Steele dossier.
Evidence presented to the jury, as The Federalist’s Margot Cleveland noted at the time, indicated that “Danchenko did not know Millian and had not received any telephone calls during the relevant time frame that might fit the description of the call Danchenko claimed he received.”
Nevertheless, a jury in a deep-blue Virginia suburb of Washington, D.C. acquitted Danchenko in 2022.
Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann was also acquitted, despite evidence suggesting he lied to then FBI-General Counsel James Baker in 2016. Sussman “presented Baker with data and whitepapers that supposedly showed the existence of a secret communications network between the Russian-based Alfa Bank and the Trump organization,” Cleveland explained. “According to the indictment [from Special Counsel John Durham], Sussmann was acting on behalf of the Clinton campaign and tech executive Rodney Joffe when he met with Baker, but falsely told his friend that he was coming on his own behalf to help the FBI.”
The only person who received any sentence was former FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith, who pleaded guilty to forging an email to get a warrant to spy on the Trump campaign. Clinesmith, according to Federalist CEO Sean Davis’ reporting on Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s findings, “altered an email from a separate U.S. federal agency, believed to be the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), to falsely state that [Trump campaign affiliate Carter] Page had never worked with the CIA to investigate suspected Russia agents operating within the U.S.”
“In fact,” Davis wrote, “as Clinesmith was told by the operative, Page had worked with the CIA previously, as well as with the FBI.”
Clinesmith was sentenced to 400 hours of community service and one year of probation.
Brianna Lyman is an elections correspondent at The Federalist.
President Joe Biden has an antisemitism problem. It is large and growing larger. It is his problem, and he can’t shed responsibility for it. In a nutshell: The people who work for him are not doing their jobs to stop discrimination against Jews in America. Anyone with eyes and ears can see and hear what has been happening in America for six months, and a climax of sorts was reached this weekend at Columbia and Yale Universities. Police have taken some action against the violent protesters at the New Haven and Upper West Side campuses of the two schools, but how did it reach this point? Why have the Biden Departments of Education and Justice been MIA?
The problem manifests immediately on the landing page of the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights where any visitor finds this notice right off the bat: “The majority of OCR staff are working remotely because of the pandemic.”
Huh? The pandemic is long gone everywhere except the DOE. Everyone in the federal government should be at their desk and answering their phones or at least making it through a few emails a day. That would not be enough though. There should be task forces of DOE and DOJ personnel dispatched to every campus where these outages are occurring. Take the pictures. Make the first-hand reports. Become witnesses, not desk jockeys.
Even folks “working remotely” from the vast Department building at 400 Maryland Avenue SW in D.C. ought to be able to do the easy stuff of answering emails. The portion of the website titled “Race, Color, or National Origin Discrimination” includes what should be known to every DOE-OCR employee: “Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits discrimination based on race, color, or national origin in programs or activities that receive federal financial assistance.”
There is an online form for filing a complaint about unlawful discrimination —but it hardly seems necessary when every news organization and social media platform has produced coverage of the antisemitic harassment at Columbia and Yale and before that at Harvard, the University of Michigan etc.
Nevertheless, the organization “Campus Reform” has stepped up to wake up DOE-OCR by filing complaint after complaint about the rolling waves of anti-Semitism on American campuses.
Campus Reform bills itself as “America’s leading site for college news.” It also brands itself as a “conservative watchdog to the nation’s higher education system,” one which “exposes liberal bias and abuse on the nation’s college campuses.” Maybe that’s why the Biden administration seems to be ignoring its emails: Complaints from conservatives don’t count.
“Our team of professional journalists works alongside student activists and student journalists to report on the conduct and misconduct of campus administrators, faculty, and students,” the organization adds. “Campus Reform holds itself to rigorous journalism standards and strives to present each story with accuracy, objectivity, and public accountability.”
Good for them and they have indeed been relentless in cataloging many of the antisemitic incidents and filing the complaints required by the Department of Education. To what end?
Dr. Zachary Marschall is the editor-in-chief of Campus Reform and in January he opined that the “beginning of the end is here for unaccountable, radical campus indoctrination.” Nearly three months later, however, the hatred is metastasizing, not abating, and not for lack of notice.
Marshall and his team have filed scores of complaints against the highest profile offenders like Princeton. But nothing has happened. No funds have been cut off; no civil rights actions filed in federal court by DOE-OCR in conjunction with the Division of Civil Rights at the Department of Justice. Why not? It’s certainly not for “lack of notice.” The answer has to be in either the incompetence or the ideology of the Office of Civil Rights at the Department of Education, or both.
The StandWithUs Center for Legal Justice has brought a private suit against MIT for the antisemitism there, but DOJ has not joined it. Finding any DOJ suit against any college or university for antisemitic acts since Oct. 7 is impossible. They aren’t in that business. Like the DOE-OCR, the feds at Justice have taken a vacation from enforcing civil rights laws when Jews are the victims.
In sharp contrast, the State Department appears set to sanction units in the Israeli Defense Forces that somebody at State believes are committing war crimes of some sort. Astonishing but true: Team Biden can find defendants to accuse of bad acts inside of Israel but can’t muster any response to our civil rights meltdown in the U.S.
At what point do American supporters of Israel and especially American Jews realize that the Democrat Party has reverted to the policies of the State Department throughout 1940 to 1944 —the era of Breckinridge Long? Don’t recognize the name? Read this.
Too harsh to compare the bureaucrats of today with Long? Maybe it would have been in October or even early November. But there has been six months of growing antisemitism in the U.S. generally and creeping anti-Israel policies inside the Biden administration specifically. It will be up to voters to punish this disgusting abdication of enforcement of the country’s civil rights laws coupled with a turn against our ally Israel.
Let’s hope no student has to be killed before DOE and DOJ acts.
Hugh Hewitt is host of “The Hugh Hewitt show,” heard weekday mornings 6am to 9am ET on the Salem Radio Network, and simulcast on Salem News Channel. Hugh wakes up America on over 400 affiliates nationwide, and on all the streaming platforms where SNC can be seen. He is a frequent guest on the Fox News Channel’s news roundtable hosted by Brett Baier weekdays at 6pm ET. A son of Ohio and a graduate of Harvard College and the University of Michigan Law School, Hewitt has been a Professor of Law at Chapman University’s Fowler School of Law since 1996 where he teaches Constitutional Law. Hewitt launched his eponymous radio show from Los Angeles in 1990. Hewitt has frequently appeared on every major national news television network, hosted television shows for PBS and MSNBC, written for every major American paper, has authored a dozen books and moderated a score of Republican candidate debates, most recently the November 2023 Republican presidential debate in Miami and four Republican presidential debates in the 2015-16 cycle. Hewitt focuses his radio show and his column on the Constitution, national security, American politics and the Cleveland Browns and Guardians. Hewitt has interviewed tens of thousands of guests from Democrats Hillary Clinton and John Kerry to Republican Presidents George W. Bush and Donald Trump over his 40 years in broadcasting, and this column previews the lead story that will drive his radio/TV show today.
Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona on Tuesday released a statement condemning “antisemitic hate on college campuses” and expressing his concerns about the “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” at Columbia University.
Three students were suspended from the school and multiple others were arrested last week for staging a pro-Palestinian protest in the center of the school’s campus. The demonstrators are calling for an immediate cease-fire in the war between Israel and Hamas and for the United States to stop sending military aid to Israel.
“Antisemitic hate on college campuses is unacceptable. I am deeply concerned by what is happening at Columbia University,” Cardona wrote in a statement on social media. “In November 2023, our Office for Civil Rights opened an investigation of Columbia involving Title VI.”
Cardona added: “While we can’t comment on pending investigations, every student deserves to feel a sense of safety and belonging at school. Hate has no place in our schools. All education leaders must stand definitively against hate, antisemitism, anti-Arab, and anti-Muslim sentiment.”
Columbia previously announced that the main campus will implement hybrid learning for almost all classes, excluding programs based on the arts or that require in-person practice.
“Safety is our highest priority as we strive to support our students’ learning and all the required academic operations,” the school’s Provost Angela V. Olinto and Chief Operating Officer Cas Holloway said in a statement Monday.
Electric vehicle chargers stand ready to power EVs on Sept. 23, 2020, in Corte Madera, California. The state will need tens of thousands more of them along with a massive increase in the required power-generating capacity to accommodate the forthcoming California ban on gas-powered cars. (Photo: Justin Sullivan/ Getty Images)
California’s electric vehicle agenda will require costly upgrades to the state’s electric grid infrastructure if it is to be realized, according to a new study published in the scientific journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The state, often heralded as a national leader when it comes to EVs, is set to ban the sale of purely gas-powered passenger vehicles in the state after 2035 and heavy-duty trucks that burn fossil fuels starting in 2036. The infrastructure upgrades reportedly needed to support the projected rise of EVs in the state could cost anywhere between $6 billion and $20 billion, according to the study.
The study identifies “feeders,” or transmission lines that carry electricity from the site of generation to its end user, as a key type of infrastructure that needs extensive upgrades by 2045 in order to meet targets set by California’s aggressive EV policies. There is a “substantial need” for 50% of all feeders in the state to receive upgrades by 2035, and for 67% of feeders by 2045, according to the study.
The state will also need to increase the amount of energy that it is able to distribute by about 25 gigawatts (GW) by 2045 to meet demand for public and private EV charging stations—upgrades that will cost anywhere between $6 billion and $20 billion, the study states. But it takes nearly 2.5 million solar panels or 310 utility-scale wind turbines to produce just 1 GW of power, according to the Department of Energy.
“The imminent challenges confronting California serve as a microcosm of the forthcoming obstacles anticipated worldwide due to the prevailing global trend of EV adoption,” the study states.
California is also expecting to continue its advance toward its goal of having 100% zero-emissions power generation by 2045. The state figures to rely heavily on wind and solar power to meet that target, given that the state’s sole major nuclear power plant may have to close for good after its five-year life span extension granted by state regulators expires.
While the state is changing how it sources electricity over time and adding demand with policies like those pushing EVs, the study’s authors project that electricity demand growth will actually drive down electricity costs in the state over time. California had the second-highest cost of electricity per unit of any state in the continental U.S. in January, trailing only Rhode Island, according to data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
The office of Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom and the California Energy Commission did not respond immediately to requests for comment.
Professor Shai Davidai, an assistant professor at Columbia Business School, was reportedly denied access to the main campus on Friday as his school ID was “deactivated” during the recent protests over the Israeli-Gaza conflict. What was equally concerning is that the university did so for his own protection out of concern that, as an outspoken Jewish faculty member, he could not walk around the campus safely. It was reminiscent of the recent controversy of a man in London threatened with arrest because being “quite openly Jewish” would trigger pro-Palestinian protesters.
The most basic obligation of a university is to ensure the safety of its faculty and students from physical assaults. If there is a problem on campus, it is found in those students or faculty who would threaten a Jewish professor if he were to walk on campus.
This is not part of the debate over what language is considered a threat or hateful rhetoric. This is barring a professor because his status alone makes his presence inflammatory or dangerous. I cannot imagine how the solution was barring the potential victim of religious-based bigotry and violence.
We have not heard from Columbia University on the “deactivation.” Unless Professor Davidai is lying, someone cut off his access in the university. The university owes him and the Columbia community an immediate explanation. Indeed, University President Nemat “Minouche” Shafik should have issued a statement yesterday.
There are calls for Shafik to resign. That position is not helped by the silence on the barring of a faculty member. If the accounts are untrue, Shafik needs to say so. If they are true, she needs to explain the basis for this extraordinary action. I cannot imagine the basis for such a deactivation since Shafik has not been accused of any threatening conduct himself.
As major donors like Robert Kraft pull their financial support from Columbia, the school will need to respond more quickly and transparently to such controversies. That can start by reactivating the card of Professor Davidai and supplying whatever security is needed to allow him and others to walk around campus without fear of assault.
Below is my column in The Hill on the man who lit himself on fire outside of the New York courthouse last week. What does matter may be the reaction to such “demonstrations.”
Here is the column:
The scene outside of the New York courthouse holding the Trump trial has become a microcosm of our deep political divisions and rage this month. Images of citizens screaming at each other from across security barriers have played out nightly on news programs.
But few were prepared for what occurred Friday night, when a man threw flyers in the air, poured a flammable liquid on himself and lit himself on fire.
Some immediately rushed to use the incident to fuel their own rage. On the far left, postings and comments declared MAGA supporters were lighting themselves and “MAGA Terrorist just set himself on fire.”
For many, it seemed a fact too good to check. Even after the police and fire officials explained that the material distributed by the man did not seem to relate to the trial, journalists pushed for a connection to the pro-Trump protesters. Officials reported that the flyers concerned wacky conspiracy theories related to schools and other matters.
What should be clear is that he was a deeply disturbed individual. Yet even self-immolation may no longer be treated as per se evidence of mental illness. In today’s politics, even setting yourself on fire can be rationalized.
An event was held recently at UCLA in which two psychiatrists appeared to rationalize self-immolation in the cause of people in Gaza.
Ragda Izar and Afaf Moustafa were reportedly discussing the self-immolation in front of Israel’s embassy of airman Aaron Bushnell in February to protest Israeli policies. It was referred to as a “revolutionary suicide” on the panel on “Depathologizing Resistance.”
UCLA’s Izar stated that Bushnell “carried a lot of distress…but does that mean that the actions he engaged in are any less valid?” She suggested that it is “normal to be distressed when you’re seeing this level of carnage [in Gaza].”
Moustafa is quoted as saying that “Psychiatry pathologizes non-pathological…reactions to a pathological environment or pathological society. It’s considered illness to choose to die in protest of the violence of war but perfectly sane to choose to die in service of the violence of war.”
There have been a few prominent historical self-immolations in protest, including the famous case of Thich Quang Duc, who burned himself alive to protest the Vietnam War in 1963. However, as lay persons, most of us would hazard to say that it is not “normal” or “valid” to set oneself on fire in a protest.
The dividing line between rage and reason has always been contextual. In my forthcoming book, “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage,” I discuss how we have faced regular periods of rage in our history. How one views rage depends largely on the underlying viewpoint. This country was born in rage with the Boston Tea Party, where a riot with massive property damage is celebrated as a moment of liberation.
Yet even self-immolation may now be viewed as somehow valid when used to oppose Israeli policies or other “distressful” realities. If Azzarello was motivated by his view of a conspiracy among educators or Trump’s trial, would his self-immolation also be viewed as valid?
Relativism has become deeply embedded in our politics, as we see in the continuing efforts to shut down opposing views. A year ago, Stanford University was the scene of a disgraceful shout-down of a federal judge who wanted to share his jurisprudential views. The university apologized to federal appellate Judge Kyle Duncan, particularly after a dean appeared to blame him at the event for “triggering” students by sharing his opposing views. The situation did not improve after the response of the university. At the time, I criticized Stanford President Marc Tessier-Lavigne and Law School Dean Jenny Martinez after they declined to punish any students. Instead, all students were required to watch a widely mocked video on free speech.
One year later, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression released “The Judge Duncan Shoutdown: What Stanford Students Think.” It turns out that 54 percent of Stanford students believe Judge Duncan’s visit should have been canceled by the administration. Seventy-five percent said that “shouting down speakers to prevent them from speaking on campus” is acceptable at least sometimes.Most chilling, almost 40 percent of the students stated that using physical violence to shut down a campus speaker can at times be acceptable.
Of course, the same students supporting violence to silence opposing views would be triggered and traumatized by others preventing them from hearing their own preferred viewpoints or speakers. For these deluded young people, violence is righteousness when used to silence others, but reprehensible if ever used to silence themselves.
Violent acts against others (or even against oneself in the case of self-immolation) can become “normal” once you accept that others have triggered a response through their conduct or speech. In recent years, we have seen journalists and lawyers throwing Molotov cocktails at police, and some justify it as a form of protest.
What we are losing is a sense of clarity or objectivity. Self-immolation is not normal whether committed by a monk or a madman. Likewise, violence against political opponents is not contextual, but wrong.
The alternative is to come up with excuses about how we must not “pathologize non-pathological…reactions to a pathological environment or pathological society.” That gobbledygook merely rationalizes the irrational and justifies the unjustifiable.
I have no familiarity with either Bushnell or Azzarello, but I know that setting yourself on fire or violently attacking others is indeed “less valid” than alternatives, such as participating in the political system. Before we stretch the spectrum of what is the new normal, we might want to consider the implications of this radical relativism that is taking hold in our political discourse. If you are heading to a rally with matches and a can of accelerant, then you have issues, and they are not political.
Jonathan Turley is the J.B. & Maurice C. Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at the George Washington University Law School.
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
Opinion
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
You Version
Bible Translations, Devotional Tools and Plans, BLOG, free mobile application; notes and more
Political
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
Bible Gateway
The Bible Gateway is a tool for reading and researching scripture online — all in the language or translation of your choice! It provides advanced searching capabilities, which allow readers to find and compare particular passages in scripture based on
By 
By 
By 
What Did You Say? 
You must be logged in to post a comment.