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Victor Davis Hanson Op-ed: 11 ways Biden and his handlers are hell-bent on destroying America

By Victor Davis Hanson Fox News | Published April 5, 2024 5:00am EDT

Why are those controlling President Biden using him to advance so much of a destructive agenda that it will likely end America as we know it?
If someone wished to destroy America, could he do anything more catastrophic than what we currently see and hear each day?
What would an existential enemy do that we have not already done to ourselves?

Here are 11 now familiar steps to civilizational destruction:

1. Wipe out a 2,000-mile border.

Allow 10 million foreign nationals to enter unlawfully. Have no audit of any; nullify all federal immigration laws. Let in toxic drugs that kill 100,000 Americans a year. Give free support to those millions who broke the law. Smear any objectors as racists and xenophobes.

2. Run up $35 trillion in national debt.

Keep adding $1 trillion to it each 100 days. Defame anyone wishing to cut wild spending as cruel and inhumane.

3. Appease or subsidize enemies like Iran and China.

Demonize allies like Israel. Allow terrorists to attack Americans without adequate response. See Islam as either similar or superior to Christianity. Make amends to leftist governments for supposedly past toxic American international behavior. Follow the lead of international agencies like the U.N., ICC and WHO to atone for past American neocolonial and imperialist behavior. Recede to second-tier international status, befitting American decline.

4. In a multiracial democracy, redefine identity only as one’s tribal affiliation.

Ensure each identity group rivals the other for victimhood and the state spoils it confers. Reboot all political issues by race and sex oppressors and oppressed. Destroy all meritocratic standards of admission, retention, promotion and commendation.

5. Recalibrate violent crime as understandable, cry-of-the-heart expressions of social justice.

Ensure no bail and same-day release for arrested, repeat violent felons. Empathize with the violent killer and rapist; ignore their victims, especially if they are slain police officers.

6. Emasculate the military by using non-meritocratic standards of race, gender, and sexual orientation to determine promotion and commendation.

Deliberately impugn as racists and insurrectionists the largest demographic in the military who in recent wars died at twice their numbers in the population — so that they leave or never join the military. Encourage retired high officers to slander their commander-in-chief. Cut the defense budget. Stop producing sufficient weapons, but leave billions of dollars’ worth of arms to terrorists.

7. Reinvent the justice system to indict, bankrupt, convict, jail and eliminate political opponents.

Use ballot removal, impeachment, civil suits, and state and federal indictments rather than elections to defeat an opponent. Mob the homes of non-compliant Supreme Court justices, and attack them personally by name.

Supreme Court members — Members of the Supreme Court, from left: Associate Justices Amy Coney Barrett, Neil M. Gorsuch, Sonia Sotomayor and Clarence Thomas; Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr.; and Associate Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson, Samuel A. Alito, Jr., Elena Kagan and Brett M. Kavanaugh pose in the Justices Conference Room prior to the formal investiture ceremony of Associate Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 30, 2022. (Collection of the Supreme Court of the United States via Getty Images)

8. Encourage the fusion of the bureaucratic state with the electronic media to form a powerful force for political audit, surveillance, censorship and coercion.

Marry the FBI to Silicon Valley and hire its contractors to warp the news and hound supposed enemies of the people.

9. Make war on affordable gasoline and natural gas.

Substitute inefficient, unreliable and expensive wind and solar power, even as energy prices nearly bankrupt the middle class.

10. Marry late, but preferably not at all.

Consider males toxic, especially boys. Have no children, or as few as possible. Otherwise, assure children they are entitled, and must be sheltered. Raise them to have grievances against past generations and current norms.

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11. Turn world-class universities into indoctrination centers.

Suspend the Bill of Rights on campuses. Train youth to graduate despising their own culture and civilization. Recruit foreign students from hostile nations to subsidize campus commissar bloat. Replace the curriculum with therapeutic propaganda. Ban the SAT/ACT and do not evaluate comparative high school GPAs. Ensure merit does not select the student body. Charge tuition higher than the rate of inflation. Bill the government when students default on their loans.

Why could those controlling the president be doing all of the above?

1. They are delusional and think their socialist and globalist agendas are working and will save us.
2. They are raging nihilists who do not like the U.S. and deliberately want it destroyed as a service to the world. A ruined U.S. is preferable to a strong America.
3. They are Jacobin revolutionaries who are intentionally erasing the old United States as a prerequisite for creating an entirely new America that will arise from the ashes with no trace or even memory of its past.
4. They have no agenda. They are aimless fools and utter incompetents. These bunglers just wing it day-to-day, in response to what their radical media, academic and political masters dictate is necessary for them to retain power. They have no idea of the damage they are doing.
5. A bit of 1-3, but probably not 4.

There is cause for hope among this nihilist remaking of America: the people are fed up and will demand an accounting in the fall.

Editor’s note: This op-ed is adapted from a tweet by the author.

Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and the author most recently of “The Dying Citizen.”

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Hugh Hewitt Op-ed: Morning Glory: Israel’s war of survival

By Hugh Hewitt Fox News | Published April 2, 2024 5:00am EDT

Do you know what you are talking about when you opine on Israel’s war of survival?

“Give me five minutes with a person’s checkbook,” the late Billy Graham remarked, “and I will tell you where their heart is.”

That famous dictum is no longer true because… who uses checkbooks? But a modern corollary is now applicable: “Show me the podcasts you follow in your feed and actually listen to, and I’ll tell you whether you are genuinely informed about ____.”

CAPTURED HAMAS TERRORISTS SAY GROUP IS ‘COLLAPSING FROM WITHIN,’ SAYS ISRAEL’S DEFENSE MINISTER

Podcasts have become an alternative to news programs—network, cable or on the radio—and to newspapers. Sports pods came first as fans of specific franchises are “super consumers” of news and analysis of the clubs they follow. My feed is full of Cleveland sports for example: “Terry’s Talkin’” with Terry Pluto and David Campbell of Cleveland.com, along with “Orange and Brown Talk” and “Buckeye Talk” from the same platform with different hosts who cover the Cleveland Browns and The Ohio State University Buckeyes football have been in my podcast feed the longest.

Israeli tank — An Israeli soldier on top of a tank on the border with the Gaza Strip, in southern Israel, Sunday, March 17, 2024. (AP)

Also on the feed is the relatively new “Kings of the North” pod, hosted by Doug Lesmaires and Bill Landis, which has forged a concept that “northern” college football deserved its own pod—as opposed to, say, dreaded SEC pods that don’t understand that the best college football is played north of Tennessee. It’s quite entertaining, as well as my other regular sports pods. That’s what the best sports pods are: entertaining and informative.

Of political and general news pods, there are now thousands competing with sports pods. I enjoy “Getting Hammered” with Mary Katharine Ham and Vic Matus because it is funny and topical, and I feel like I am listening in to conversations my adult children might be having. It does cover some news, but mostly it provides a dive into the informed perspectives on the news of a different age cohort.

But if the subject you are interested in is Israel’s war in Gaza, and quite likely the imminent, much expanded battle between the IDF and Hezbollah on the northern border of the Jewish state, you have to be much more selective.

Thus, I have become a daily listener to the Times of Israel’s The Daily Briefing (especially when the platform’s senior analyst Haviv Rettig Gur is a guest) and it’s “What Matters Now” pod which also often features Rettig Gur, who has become something of a must-listen to interpreter of the war for non-Israelis.

I discovered Rettig Gur on the “Call Me Back” podcast hosted by Dan Senor, a pod on which Senor interviews key observers of the war in Gaza and the likelihood of another front that exploded in intensity in the north. Senor is an American who seems to know pretty much every journalist and many officials in Israel.

Senor’s March 21 interview of Israeli War Cabinet member Ron Dermer was perhaps the first “strategic” pod I have listened to. Dermer quite obviously had many messages to deliver from the War Cabinet to the American public that supports Israel’s war. He picked Senor’s pod because he wanted to speak to that audience specifically. It was a wise choice. Senor is a seasoned interviewer but, in this episode, like almost every other episode, Senor is eliciting information, not dealing out his opinions.

Finally, I’m not Jewish, but I am also not blind to the surge in antisemitism in the United States to truly staggering levels, so I make a habit of listening to every “Commentary” pod that appears as well as relevant ones from The Free Press, the platform pioneered by Bari Weiss which has exploded in popularity as an alternative to legacy media.

The latter is usually a new take with a new voice on most episodes, but the Commentary pod has a recurring format: Editor-in-chief of Commentary Magazine John Podhoretz leads a daily conversation with his Executive Editor Abe Greenwald and two or three of his key contributors—Matt Continetti, Seth Mandel and Christine Rosen—through every aspect of Israel’s war and its impact on Jewish Americans of the antisemitic Krakatoa that went off in the states after 10/7, as well as a good mix of domestic American politics as campaign 2024 heads into its third turn.

Bari Weiss launched The Free Press, an important alternative to the legacy media. (Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)

What “JPod,” as Podhoretz is known online and off, does is simply run through the current developments with his gang of very, very smart voices—say, a focus on the abstention of the U.S. on last week’s Security Council Resolution decoupling a ceasefire from release of the hostages or on the views of American Jewry on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The Commentary pod also welcomes guests like Dr. Jonathan Schanzer, Eli Lake or Eliana Johnson. They also welcome—wait for it—the remarkable Rettig Gur now and again.

Finally, I make a point to listen to Donniel Hartman, 66, and Yossi Klein Halevi, 71, on their “For Heaven’s Sake” pod, whenever it appears, because these are two very smart old Israeli friends who are public intellectuals of great reputation in Israel who seem to me to be left and center-left (and both anti-Netanyahu) and thus certain to introduce me to some Israeli thinking that isn’t necessarily going to make it into news reports I ordinarily read. They also represent voices from my age cohort with references throughout to their 50-plus years of Israeli history and politics.

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Bottom line, I’d have half as many facts and views of the war if I only listened to two of these four podcasts focused mostly on Israel’s war of survival. If I relied only on American legacy media, I would have a terribly distorted view of the war and would be blind and dumb to vast amounts of crucial data about the war.

Thus, on Friday’s night “Special Report”—Gillian Turner sitting in for Bret Baier—the “Winners and Losers of the Week” segment came up, and I rattled off these pods as the “winners of the week” because of their collective coverage of this terrible but necessary war. I recommend all four of them to you because so much of the coverage of the war in Gaza and what seems likely to be a war in Lebanon requires a lot of information and assessment that most reporters and pundits simply don’t have the time to acquire.

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Give me five minutes with your podcast feed, and I’ll know not just your passions, but probably your point of view on politics generally and whether or not you are in a position to even articulate an informed opinion on the war that Israel is waging. Give them all a try. Start, perhaps with Senor’s conversation with Dermer from last week and his latest interview or Rettig Gur which posted early Monday morning in the U.S.

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I would be happy to listen to a pod that was news from the Palestinian point of view, but I am afraid there just isn’t anything that can be relied on given Hamas’ stranglehold on Gaza’s Arab population. If you have a suggestion, leave it in the comments. I’ll give any serious pod a chance. But if you are an American journalist or elected official who is commenting on the war without reference to the Israeli point of view—not just the government’s positions and statements but the Israeli public’s almost completely United attitude towards the war—perhaps say nothing until you are least informed of the facts in Gaza and on the northern border. To get those facts, you are going to have to go in harms way and out of your American news comfort zones.

Try it. You may not change your mind, but at least you will be less in danger of holding a risible opinion untethered to the reality of the situation in Israel.

Hugh Hewitt is one of the country’s leading journalists of the center-right. 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, and it is today syndicated to hundreds of stations and outlets across the country every Monday through Friday morning. Hewitt has frequently appeared on every major national news television network, hosted television shows for PBS and MSNBC, written for every major American paper, 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 this 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 broadcast, and this column previews the lead story that will drive his radio show today.

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Hugh Hewitt Op-ed: Morning Glory: An offer they can’t refuse

By Hugh Hewitt Fox News | Published February 29, 2024 5:00am EST

Earlier this month the Senate rejected a “compromise” on the border and sent a bill to the House that funds Israel’s many needs following the 10/7 massacre, Taiwan’s defenses, weapons for Ukraine and a significant spend on America’s defense industrial base. Now Speaker Mike Johnson has to decide what to do with it because he needs more support from his Caucus than the bill as currently written garners from the House GOP caucus. The best strategy for the Speaker? Make everyone an offer they can’t refuse: Build the wall.

The key to getting the Supplemental passed lies in a Washington Post article from February 27, the headline of which tells the story: “The Border Wall Has Never Been More Popular.”

The critical two paragraphs:

“Multiple recent polls have shown support for building a wall along the southern border creating a majority.

“Late last year, it was Quinnipiac University and Fox News polling that showed between 52 and 57 percent supported its construction. On Monday it was a Monmouth University poll that pegged support at 53 percent.”

Those are eye-popping numbers because the wall is former President Trump’s signature issue, but the collapse of security at the border and President Biden’s shrugging of shoulders at the flood of migrants who have crossed the border since he became president has changed public opinion dramatically in Trump’s and the wall’s favor.

BIDEN, TRUMP TO MAKE US-MEXICO BORDER STOPS THURSDAY AS MIGRANT CRISIS ROILS ELECTION

Trump had the border under control by the end of his first term and has promised to do so again in a second term.

Biden, in the sharpest contrast of the campaign ahead, abandoned the policies that led to control of the border and eight million people entered the country without permission in Biden’s first three years. That number has likely now passed 9 million total “encounters” at the border —and that number does not include “got-aways”: The illegal immigrants who do not enter through a port of entry and are never “encountered” by law enforcement anywhere. The “get-aways” include the cartels’ worst customers carrying the most fentanyl and the Chinese nationals who don’t want to be fingerprinted and then released.

It’s a mess. It’s a huge burden on all the states and cities flooded with migrants. It’s a threat to every kid who tries one pill because they think they have bought a Xanax online but it’s a knock-off laced with enough fentanyl to kill. And it’s a national security nightmare.

Only 450 Chinese nationals were “encountered” at the border in Fiscal Year 2021. In FY 2022 “encounters” with Chinese nationals soared to 2,176. “In 2023, it ballooned to 24,314,” according to NBC News and in the first quarter of FY 2024, estimates are that another 19,000 have already entered and the surge in this demographic is increasing. That’s a national security issue of the first order. When the Soviet Union existed, do you think Ronald Reagan would have allowed 40,000 Soviets to enter the country and vanish into its interior? Of course not, but Joe Biden has done the equivalent of that by doing nothing.

Migrants in San Diego sector — Migrants are encountered by Border Patrol in the San Diego sector on Feb. 17. (Fox News)

When discussing this Chinese subset of the migrant flood with three former national security officials from the Trump era this past weekend, they guaranteed me that tens of thousands of Chinese nationals don’t slip easily out of the Chinese Communist Party’s control. They are very alarmed that the vast majority of these migrants are military-aged men.

Whatever one thinks about sanctuary cities, or California extending Medicaid to illegal immigrants (at a cost of more than $2 billion annually to a state with a $68 billion dollar deficit) the reality is that Americans of all political perspectives save the hard Left have awakened to the fact that this can’t go on.

The border with Mexico is 1,954 miles long. 900 miles are considered “passable.” When he left office, Trump was adding miles of Wall daily to try and get as much of the 900 miles of Wall needed built. But as soon as Biden was sworn in, construction stopped, and the film of migrants walking around the unfinished Wall or through openings created by the coyotes began playing. Americans noticed. They want The Wall and they want it now.

With funding for most of the Supplemental already enjoying majority support in the House, how to pass the necessary bill? Tack on funding for the wall as well as language that makes it clear that construction is to restart and conclude in a matter of months. That will also require language in the new law that approves that construction “notwithstanding any other law or treaty with any nation or sovereign Tribe.” That language blows past the obstacles to the Wall’s construction posed by the federal Endangered Species Act, Clean Water Act, and National Environmental Policy Act while also mandating construction on tribal lands. This is America. We built the Interstate Highway system. We can build the Wall in a matter of months if the will, the money and the clear direction exist in the Congress.

Want the Supplemental? Build the Wall. It is that simple.

Hugh Hewitt is one of the country’s leading journalists of the center-right. 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, and it is today syndicated to hundreds of stations and outlets across the country every Monday through Friday morning. 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 this 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 forty years in broadcast, and this column previews the lead story that will drive his radio show today.

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BIDEN, TRUMP TO MAKE US-MEXICO BORDER STOPS THURSDAY AS MIGRANT CRISIS ROILS ELECTION

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Karol Markowicz Op-ed: What I saw at the border and what I hope Biden understands when he visits this week

By Karol Markowicz Fox News | Published February 28, 2024 5:00am EST

There are three walls in the area around McAllen, Texas. Colloquially, they are referred to as “the George W. Bush wall,” “the Donald Trump wall” and the “Greg Abbott wall.” Like so much of what happens at our southern border, the walls make little sense. For one thing, both sides of the wall, in all three cases, are United States land. In other words, if you’re a migrant, and you’ve reached the wall, you’re already on American soil. For another, the walls are all incomplete, with gaps that make them easy to breach. You can simply follow the wall, see where it ends and walk around it.

Joe Biden, Border wall — President Biden and migrants attempting to cross into the U.S. (Getty Images)

I didn’t know any of this when I landed in McAllen, Texas, a few days ago. A safe, bustling city, McAllen sits in the Rio Grande Valley on the American border with Mexico. Hundreds of thousands of migrants come through the city each year.

I was invited on this trip to the border by Americans for Prosperity, “a libertarian conservative political advocacy group.” I have no affiliation with this group other than joining them on this trip. “Is this… a pro-open borders trip?” conservative friends half-joked.

Despite being founded during the “Tea Party” era, AFP has a reputation for having a softer stance on immigration than most groups in the conservative world. As my own opinions on immigration policies are fairly stringent, I was actually interested to hear the argument for open borders, one that even the left has stopped making.

CHINESE MIGRANTS ECLIPSE MEXICAN NATIONALS IN KEY SOUTHERN BORDER SECTOR

But that didn’t happen. If AFP had been somewhat lenient on illegal immigration in the past, it didn’t come through during this trip at all. The speakers all stressed the severe problems that are caused by allowing masses of unvetted people to enter the country unchecked.

We learned that during the Obama administration his Homeland Security secretary, Jeh Johnson, had proclaimed it a real problem when 1,000 people crossed every day and that 3,000 would be a crisis. Yuma Sector’s Retired Chief Border Patrol Agent Chris T. Clem told the group, “Now those numbers would be a vacation for us.”

They brought in Chalmers Carr, a farmer and owner of Titan Farms in South Carolina. “Oh, here we go,” I thought to myself. I imagined Mr. Carr would be making an argument that he needed these illegal immigrants to work his farm. I was wrong. In fact, Carr does not employ any seasonal workers who don’t have a specific work visa.

Migrants in Texas — Migrants who crossed the Rio Grande and entered the U.S. from Mexico are lined up for processing by U.S. Customs and Border Protection, Sept. 23, 2023, in Eagle Pass, Texas. (AP Photo/Eric Gay, File)

Carr said the migrants entering illegally largely don’t want to work in agriculture anymore. He told us about the Biden administration assault on the H-2 visa process that allows Carr to legally hire seasonal workers from other countries. In a nod to labor groups, the Biden administration has made the process of hiring workers extremely difficult and expensive. They’ve raised the fees on these visas to offset the funding of asylum cases.

FORMER ICE DIRECTOR VOWS TO MAKE 2024 ELECTIONS ABOUT BORDER SECURITY: ‘COUNTRY-ENDING CRISIS’

I spoke with Chief Clem after the trip and asked him what Americans need to most understand about the border. He stressed, “We’re letting in everybody who crosses into the country and many of them don’t meet basic tenets for asylum.”

He told me that the old system would weed out people who very obviously didn’t have a reasonable case but DHS policy now is to give every single person an asylum hearing before a judge. That can sometimes take years and since we don’t have the capacity to hold people, we’re letting people out into the country and hoping they come back for their court date. It’s unsustainable.

Clem told me if the people crossing the border “saw a judge within 7-14 days after detainment, that would go a long way toward fixing the problems and would be consistent with the way the system is designed.” Most would be found ineligible for asylum and it would act as a “deterrent to people making the dangerous journey with cartels.”

A few days before I arrived at the border, Axios reported, “Biden has considered an executive order that would dramatically stanch the record flow of migrants into the Southwest. This could even happen in the two weeks before the address, allowing Biden to say he took action while Republicans just talk.”

BORDER PATROL ARRESTS MULTIPLE ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS WITH DRUG CARTEL CONNECTIONS, CHILD SEX ASSAULT CONVICTIONS

The fact that an executive order was possible the whole time to fix this issue, but Biden has been waiting for the most politically opportune moment while the country buckles under this problem, is unacceptable. It is not pro-immigrant to allow people into our country unchecked. We have strained every resource and Biden could end it all with a pen stroke.

My border trip ended with a visit to Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley Humanitarian Respite Center. An old bar had been repurposed as a mini pharmacy for toiletries and other goods. Signs in English, Spanish and Russian instructed that no medicine could be prescribed here.

On mats on the floor, adults lounged, scrolling on their phones while a dance troop entertained the kids in another room. The migrants stay here 24-48 hours before their families arrange passage for them. If they don’t have family in the United States, they are assisted by other non-governmental agencies.

Perhaps this was the part of the trip meant to pull at the heartstrings but it served as a reminder that if you break the law to come into the United States, there will be a network there to assist you in your journey. For a refugee like me, whose family came to this country legally and with great difficulty, it’s galling to see people so blatantly disregard our laws and be rewarded with easy passage.

On my flight home, there were a few obvious migrant families and several Haitian single men. The men were very well-dressed, in designer clothing and sneakers. Where were they going and what will they be doing? How have we allowed a system that does not specifically answer this question?

In December and January, U.S. Customs and Border Protections had 478,188 encounters at our southern border. Much of the media sells us an image of food delivery men and agriculture workers coming here to do the jobs Americans won’t. Nearly half a million people in two months couldn’t all have become Uber Eats delivery drivers. It turns out they are not working in agriculture. How is this mass of people being absorbed into American life?

A story last week about the northern border, and how it’s growing as a crossing point for migrants who have discovered it’s even easier to get in from Canada than Mexico, contained this tidbit from a resident of a small Vermont town being impacted:

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“The Border Patrol actually told us, ‘You guys might want to put a pistol in your backpack’ because nine out of 10 of them are just here for a better life, but there’s that one guy that’s got a rap sheet.”

The CPB puts the total of nationwide encounters for 2023 at 3,201,144. Someone ask the Biden administration to do the math.

Karol Markowicz is a columnist for the New York Post and writes frequently for Fox News Opinion. She is the co-author of the bestselling book, “Stolen Youth: How Radicals Are Erasing Innocence and Indoctrinating a Generation” and host of “The Karol Markowicz Show.” Follow her on Twitter @Karol.

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SENATE PASSES CONTROVERSIAL FOREIGN AID BILL SENDING BILLIONS TO UKRAINE, ISRAEL AND TAIWAN

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Newt Gingrich Op-ed: The Senate’s contempt for America is on full display once again

By Newt Gingrich Fox News | Published February 14, 2024 2:47pm EST

22 Republican senators appear clueless about Americans’ fears when it comes to our ballooning national debt. The U.S. Senate once again proved its contempt for the American people.

After the collapse of the phony border security bill that would institutionalize the failing policies of the Biden administration, the Senate has passed a $95.3 billion foreign aid package — with zero offsets to pay for it.

The gap between the senators and the American people can be seen by looking at a poll we did at America’s New Majority Project from Nov. 3 to Nov. 6.

The American people are increasingly frightened because the Biden administration and Democrats in Congress keep spending more money as the national debt grows bigger. Interest payments on the national debt will soon be larger than the total cost of our national security system.

When asked if voters would prefer a Republican who insisted on spending offsets to a Democrat who wanted to spend more money on foreign aid without offsetting it, they chose the Republican by 50% to 34% over a Democrat. This was a 13-point swing from the generic ballot.

Apparently, 22 of the Republican senators did not get the message that their constituents believed it should be possible to find offsets in a $6 trillion budget. After all, if the aid to Israel and Ukraine (and the secondary amounts for Taiwan) are so important, aren’t there lower priority items in the budget that could be postponed or just dropped to make way for the foreign aid?

Not only did 56% of the American people favor the spending offsets in the America’s New Majority Project poll, but 50% preferred to have no bill if it could not be offset.

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Meanwhile, Speaker Mike Johnson and the House Republicans are clearly listening to the American people. They should continue to fight for offsets — and for fundamental changes on the southern border.

Eventually, our senators are going to realize they should listen to the people who elected them — or find themselves looking for work.

Newt Gingrich was Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives from 1995-1999 and a candidate for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination. He is chairman of Gingrich 360.

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TRUMP HAD ONE OF HIS BEST WEEKS AS CASES AGAINST HIM APPEARED TO IMPLODE

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Liz Peek Op-ed: Trump could ride Special Counsel’s report all the way to the White House but only if he avoids these potholes

By Liz Peek Fox News | Published February 13, 2024 5:00am EST

Former President Donald Trump can ride Special Counsel Robert Hur’s report on Joe Biden’s “diminished faculties” all the way to the White House if he does these three things:

1. Leans into voters’ concerns about the disastrous border crisis – and tells them how he’ll fix it.

2. Talks up his plan to keep the economy humming through deregulation, keeping taxes low and also by pushing his “Drill Baby Drill” plan to expand America’s energy stockpile and independence, and…

3. Shuts up about everything else. Don’t feed Democrat narratives with threats to abandon NATO or impose 60% tariffs on China. Stop whining about the 2020 election, stop denigrating rival and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley’s husband and wardrobe, and lay off President Joe Biden. The president is destroying his reelection hopes all by himself; he doesn’t need any help.

Also, talk less about what a great job you did before and more about how you’ll do it again, even better. Voters want to know and they want optimism.

There’s been a lot of chatter about what Joe Biden should do to confront the terrible blow delivered by Special Counsel Hur. There has been less commentary about how the presumed GOP nominee should navigate this gift from the blue. My view – don’t interrupt Biden’s decline and fall.

‘THE VIEW’ HOST POSTS PANICKED HANDMAID’S TALE MEME OVER BIDEN POSSIBLY LOSING TO TRUMP

Odds makers have Donald Trump in the lead, with one site giving him a 52% chance of winning in November, against 27% for Biden. Shockingly, Michelle Obama is next most likely to become president, with a 15% chance. That says everything.

Democrats are in disarray, with many turning on their standard-bearer for letting them down. But really, it is the Democratic universe – the leadership, Dem donors in Hollywood and Silicon Valley, White House aides, the liberal media, Jill Biden and the whole dishonest crew – that has nurtured this cancer in their midst. They knew the president was in decline but have lied repeatedly about his vigor and his sharpness – even to themselves — and conspired to hide it from the public.

If you receive your news from MSNBC, you might have no idea Joe Biden can barely finish a sentence without stumbling. You don’t know that the White House has been shielding his decline by limiting his interactions with the press, using more easily-managed stairs to deplane and stage-managing his appearances to prevent him looking befuddled and lost.

BIDEN LASHES OUT AT REPORTERS ASKING ABOUT AGE CONCERNS AFTER SPECIAL COUNSEL REPORT: ‘THAT IS YOUR JUDGMENT!’

On social media, clips of Biden’s deterioration are everywhere. His miscues are no longer “gaffes”; believing you just sat down with France’s former President Francois Mitterand, who died in 1996, is senility mixing up the channels.

There’s been a lot of chatter about what Joe Biden should do to confront the terrible blow delivered by Special Counsel Hur. There has been less commentary about how the presumed GOP nominee should navigate this gift from the blue.

Reliable lefties like Ross Douthat at the New York Times are openly calling for Biden to step aside at the convention, allowing delegates to choose another candidate. Maureen Dowd, also at the awakened (panicked) Times, says Biden’s denial of his infirmities isn’t going to beat Trump, though she fails to provide a better plan.

Trump can capitalize on Biden’s slide. But he must stop stepping in the middle of the story, such as he recently did when he recalled telling NATO members that if they didn’t pay their share of the alliance’s defense budget he would not protect them from Russia aggression. That, of course, made headlines of just the sort Democrats savor – Trump is reckless! Trump cannot be trusted!

Trump must keep the spotlight on the president’s age and on the horrors perpetrated by Biden – the millions of illegals swarming across the border, the soft-on-crime approach of this White House, the resulting mayhem in places like Chicago and New York and the hugely inflated prices of everything. These issues are shipping voters into the “R” column. They remember these problems didn’t exist under Trump.

Meanwhile, wars in Ukraine and the Middle East demolish Biden’s absurd claims of diplomatic know-how. Rather, those conflicts showcase the extreme cost to the world of a weak man sitting in the Oval Office. Biden touts his “experience”; what good is experience if you can’t remember?

Donald Trump is not a weak man. He is powerful – as a speaker and as a leader – ready to use the might of the U.S. presidency to close our borders. He has done it before and can do it again. Joe Biden has the same tools at his disposal, but refuses to take them out of the tool box. Trump should lay out how he will convince Mexico to host asylum-seekers on their side of the border, how he would deport criminals in the country illegally, and how he would team with Greg Abbott to prevent crossings instead of taking the Texas governor to court as Biden is doing.

Similarly, Trump should push for a reasoned America-first approach to energy. Rather than chasing oil supplies from enemies in Iran and Venezuela, the United States should exploit our abundant natural resources here at home. Open up new federal lands to drilling, accelerate permits and back off Biden’s costly new fees and regulations which are making it more costly to drill.

Greenlight LNG exports which help the U.S. reduce our trade deficits with China and Japan, are critical for our European allies, and which actually help the climate as natural gas backs out coal. Ease Joe’s fuel efficiency mandates which are costing taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars and which may well kill U.S. automakers. When Ford is losing $60,000 on every EV it is forced to make, something is very wrong.

Finally, tell voters about Joe Biden’s plan to hike taxes, which will slow growth and cost jobs. The next president needs to extend the Trump tax cuts; the former president should make that happen.

Trump right now has the wind at his back. Jamie Dimon, one of the world’s financial leaders, told the shocked elites at Davos that Trump had been right on a lot of issues; he was correct.

If former President Trump can focus on those issues that worked for our country – the border, the economy and energy specifically – he can win in November.

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.

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EJ Antoni Op-ed: Caught in Crosshairs of a Cost-of-Living Crisis

EJ Antoni / @RealEJAntoni / February 06, 2024

President Joe Biden stands behind a podium wearing a bright blue jacket. — Americans’ main concern today isn’t internet speed, as Preisdent Joe Biden seems to think, but their inability to afford necessities such as food and housing. Pictured: Biden speaks Jan. 24 about his economic agenda and recent infrastructure funding in Superior, Wisconsin. (Photo: Stephen Maturen/Getty Images)

President Joe Biden recently took to a stage in North Carolina to tout his economic agenda, which includes bringing high-speed internet to rural America. But that’s hardly what Americans struggling with a cost-of-living crisis need to hear.

Millions of Americans have been terribly frustrated with the economy over the last three years, as witnessed by countless economic polls. While several aggregate numbers like gross domestic product and its largest component, consumer spending, may paint a rosy picture, millions of Americans are economically worse off than they were three years ago.

After annual inflation outpaced earnings growth for a record 26 consecutive months, real (inflation-adjusted) incomes are down about 4.5% compared to January 2021. Yet Biden claims “we’re doin’ pretty damn well economically.”

While Biden claims that real earnings have risen for the bottom half of workers, data released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics mere hours before Biden spoke show real earnings have fallen 1% for the bottom half of workers during his tenure.

People are struggling to make ends meet, with credit card debt at a record $1.1 trillion while 60% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck. This is despite a record number of Americans having multiple jobs as they try to boost their lagging real incomes.

Having maxed out their credit cards, Americans turned to alternative financing options, like buy-now-pay-later plans, to cover their holiday spending. Meanwhile, a quarter of Americans still haven’t even paid off their holiday debt from 2022.

It’s no wonder that defaults and delinquencies on consumer debt like credit cards are rising at the fastest pace since the Global Financial Crisis.

However, official inflation metrics like the consumer price index are understating the cost-of-living crisis by underestimating inflation, mostly because of methodological changes over the years. This is especially true for housing, which has seen affordability plummet over the past three years.

According to the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, the median-priced home is affordable with the median income in only one metropolitan area (population of at least 500,000) in the whole country. Families are maxing out credit cards just to pay their rent.

This debt-fueled consumer spending binge of the past three years mirrors federal government spending. The national debt has breached $34 trillion, with another $1 trillion being added every 100 days or so. Interest on the debt is now $1 trillion annually, the third-largest budget item behind only the Social Security Administration and the Department of Health and Human Services.

The explosions in government and consumer debt are related. Runaway federal spending prompted the Federal Reserve to create trillions of dollars for the Treasury Department to pay its bills. That drove inflation to 40-year highs, which robbed workers of their purchasing power, prompting them to take on debt to maintain their standard of living.

Ironically, Biden cited his American Rescue Plan and the infrastructure bill he signed as two critical components of Bidenomics that have aided in his quest to expand high-speed internet access. Of course, these multitrillion-dollar spending packages also supercharged inflation.

From his podium, Biden predicted that everyone in North Carolina would have high-speed internet access by the end of the decade. Unfortunately, because of the explosion in government spending, the federal debt will exceed $52 trillion by that time.

The never-ending flood of government debt will bring more rounds of inflation and only worsen American families’ financial situations as prices and interest rates fluctuate violently.

Americans’ main concern today is not their internet speed but their inability to afford necessities such as food and housing. The only way to reverse this cost-of-living crisis is to reverse what got us here: runaway government spending.

This commentary, distributed by Tribune News Service, originally was published by msn.com

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EX-FBI OFFICIALS WARN CONGRESS OF ‘NEW AND IMMINENT’ BORDER DANGER: ‘THE COUNTRY HAS BEEN INVADED’

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Betsy McCaughey Op-ed: Democrats are so pro-migrant that it’s now Russian roulette with Americans’ safety

By Betsy McCaughey Creators Syndicate | Published January 30, 2024 3:30pm EST

If you’re rushing to the airport and forget your photo ID, good luck being allowed on the plane. But many migrants without “an acceptable form of identification,” according to airport signs, don’t need a photo. They get special treatment.

Migrants who have entered the country using President Joe Biden’s new CBP (Customs and Border Protection) One app — about 422,000 of them — can fly domestically without photo ID.

A sign posted at the Miami International Airport tells migrants: “1. Notify the TSA officer that you are a migrant. 2. The TSA officer will take a photo (optional). 3. If requested, provide your alien identification number or biographic information.”

Taking a photo would allow the TSA officer to confirm that the person boarding matches the person pictured in the CBP One app. But the airport sign repeats, “Photo capture is voluntary.” The migrant trying to board could be anybody.

DID BIDEN INTENTIONALLY CAUSE THE BORDER CRISIS?

An American without photo ID will likely be grilled for more than an hour and patted down, and their luggage will be gone over inch by inch while their plane takes off without them.

Allowing migrants — or anyone — to board airplanes without photo ID, and promoting ID cards that blur that lines between legal and illegal, sabotage us.

Businessman Connor Esraelian, who was flying from San Francisco to his home in Chicago, forgot his wallet with his photo ID. He filmed the 75-minute ordeal to get on the plane, posting it on TikTok. He called it “a nightmare.” He didn’t get an E-Z Pass, but migrants do.

This is our government kowtowing to the immigration lobby and putting Americans second, safety be damned.

Even worse is the 16-year delay in implementing the Real ID Act, passed in the aftermath of the 9/11 terror attacks to prevent people from using lax forms of ID to illegally get on planes.

Most of the hijackers used state driver licenses issued by states with lax requirements to get on the planes. They weren’t in the country illegally.

Following the 9/11 Commission’s recommendation, Congress enacted Real ID, barring TSA from accepting state driver licenses or other IDs that don’t require proof of being in the U.S. legally. Real ID was supposed to go into effect in 2008, but it’s been repeatedly delayed. Now the official start date is May 2025. Don’t hold your breath.

All 50 states now provide Real ID licenses to legal residents who request them. But blue states such as New York and Illinois are normalizing being illegal.

Illinois used to issue a license for illegals with a purple stripe across the top and the words “Not Valid for Identification.” But last June, Illinois discontinued it, in Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s words, “decreasing stigma and creating more equitable systems for all.”

Illinois Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias said the purple stripe had become “the ‘Scarlet Letter’ of someone’s immigration status.” Now legal and illegal residents of Illinois will qualify for the same “standard license” that says “Federal Limits Apply,” a fuzzy reference to the May 2025 deadline. In the meantime, illegals are boarding planes.

The same is true in New York state, which issues a “standard” license available to everyone, including illegals. It carries a vague notation, “Not for Federal Purposes,” which applies only after May 2025. The state Department of Motor Vehicles is barred from even asking a customer about their citizenship status.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM BETSY McCAUGHEY

New York City’s ID program also blurs the distinction between legals and illegals. It’s advertised as one ID for all New Yorkers regardless of immigration status. The card looks like a state driver license, and nothing — not one word — alerts the viewer otherwise. It’s unlikely to work on a plane, but likely to allow anybody to get past security and into the elevator in an office tower.

An open southern border flooded with millions of migrants from over 100 countries, some hostile to America, puts our nation at risk. Most migrants are just desperately seeking economic opportunity. But it only took a handful of sinister actors with misleading ID to bring down the World Trade Center and cost nearly 3,000 Americans their lives.

Twin Towers burning on 9/11/2001 — FILE – Smoke rises from the burning twin towers of the World Trade Center after hijacked planes crashed into the towers on September 11, 2001 in New York City. Associated Press photographer Richard Drew talks about AP’s coverage of 9/11 and the events that followed. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

Allowing migrants — or anyone — to board airplanes without photo ID, and promoting ID cards that blur that lines between legal and illegal, sabotage us. Don’t let Biden and the hard left play Russian roulette with our lives. Remember 9/11.

Betsy McCaughey is a former lieutenant governor of New York and chairman of the Committee to Reduce Infection Deaths. Follow her on Twitter @Betsy_McCaughey.

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Victor Davis Hanson Op-ed: The Hysterical Style in American Politics

Victor Davis Hanson / @VDHanson / January 19, 2024

A far left protester equates then-President Donald Trump with Nazi Germany’s Adolf Hitler at a march for Trump’s Impeachment six years ago Saturday on Jan. 20, 2018, in Portland, Oregon. The Left is notorious for that sort of hysterical attack on their opponents. (Photo: Diego Diaz/Icon Sportswire/Getty Images)

The post-Joe McCarthy era and the candidacy of Barry Goldwater once prompted liberal political scientist Richard Hofstadter to chronicle a supposedly long-standing right-wing “paranoid style” of conspiracy-fed extremism. But far more common, especially in the 21st century, has been a left-wing, hysterical style of inventing scandals and manipulating perceived tensions for political advantage.

Or, in the immortal words of former President Barack Obama‘s chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, “Never let a serious crisis go to waste.”

The 2008 economic emergency crested on Sept. 7, with the near collapse of the home mortgage industry.

Obama took office on Jan. 20, 2009, more than four months after the meltdown. In that interim, the officials had finally restored financial confidence and plotted a course of economic recovery. No matter. The Obama administration never stopped hyping the financial meltdown as if it had just occurred. That way, it rammed through Obamacare, massive deficit spending, and the vast expansion of the federal government. All that stymied economic growth and recovery for years.

In 2016, then-President Donald Trump was declared Hitler-like and an existential threat to democracy. Amid this derangement syndrome, any means necessary to stop him were justified: the Russian collusion hoax, impeachment over a phone call, or the Hunter Biden laptop “disinformation” farce.

Eventually, the Left sought to normalize the once-unthinkable: Removing the leading presidential candidate from state ballots and indicting him in state and local courts. Nothing was off-limits—not forging a federal court document, calling for a military coup, rioting on Inauguration Day, or radically changing the way Americans voted in presidential elections.

In October 2017, allegations surfaced about serial sexual predation by liberal cinema icon Harvey Weinstein. The #MeToo furor immediately followed. At first, accusers properly outed dozens of mostly liberal celebrities, actors, authors, and CEOs for their prior and mostly covered-up sexual harassment and often assault. But soon, the once-legitimate movement had morphed into general hysteria. Thousands of men (and women) were persecuted for alleged offenses, often sexual banter or rude repartee, committed decades prior.

#MeToo jumped the shark with the left-wing effort to take down conservative Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. Would-be accusers surfaced from his high school days, 35 years earlier, but without any supporting evidence or witnesses for their wild, lurid charges. #MeToo hysteria ended when too many liberal grandees were endangered. Most dramatically, former Joe Biden senatorial aide Tara Reade came forward during the 2020 campaign cycle with charges that front-runner Biden had once sexually assaulted her—and was trashed by the liberal media.

The outbreak of COVID-19 in the United States during the winter of 2020 prompted an even greater hysteria. Without scientific evidence, federal health czars Anthony Fauci and Francis Collins were able to persuade the Trump administration to shut down the economy in the country’s first national quarantine.

Suddenly, it became a thought crime to question the wisdom of six-foot social distancing, of mandatory mask-wearing, of the Wuhan virology lab’s origin of the COVID-19 virus or of off-label use of prescription drugs. Left-wing politicians and celebrities, from Hillary Rodham Clinton and Gavin Newsom to Jane Fonda, all blurted out the political advantages that the lockdowns offered—from recalibrating capitalism and health care to ensuring the 2020 defeat of Trump.

The COVID-19 hysteria magically ended when Biden won the 2020 election. Suddenly, the explanations about the bat or pangolin origins of the virus faded. The damage from the quarantines could no longer be repressed. And herd immunity gradually mitigated the epidemic. The lockdown caused untold economic chaos, suicides, and health crises.

One result was the 120 days of looting, arson, death, destruction and violence spawned by Antifa and Black Lives Matter in the aftermath of the tragic death of George Floyd while in police custody in May 2020. Suddenly, a hysterical lie took hold: American police were waging war against black males.

The details around Floyd’s sudden death—he was in the act of committing a felony, resisting arrest, suffering from coronary artery disease and the after-effects of COVID-19, and being high on dangerous drugs—were off limits. The riot toll reached $2 billion in property damage, more than 35 deaths and 1,500 injured law enforcement officers. A federal courthouse, a police precinct, and a historic church were torched. Police forces were defunded. Emboldened left-wing prosecutors nullified existing laws. Diversity, equity and inclusion commissars spread throughout American higher education as meritocracy came under assault. Racial essentialism triumphed. Racially segregated dorms, campus spaces, and graduations were normalized. Everything from destroying the southern border to dropping SAT requirements for college admission followed.

Sometimes real, sometimes hyped crises led to these contrived left-wing hysterias—like the Jan. 6 violent “armed insurrection” or the “fascist,” “ultra-MAGA” threat.

Otherwise, the progressive movement cannot enact its unpopular agendas. So, it must scare the people silly and gin up chaos to destroy its perceived enemies—any crisis it can.

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Hugh Hewitt Op-ed: Morning Glory: No Border Wall, no deal on Israel and Ukraine

By Hugh Hewitt Fox News | Published January 18, 2024 5:00am EST

“Ninety-one percent of Republicans support the building of the wall…”

That’s the policy and political reality behind the about-to-emerge “immigration compromise” negotiated between President Biden, Senate Democrats and a handful of Republican Senators. But it is the reality the Senate Republicans are about to ignore and not merely ignore, but actually demonstrate contempt for, and for the party that elected them.

The “supplemental” bill about to emerge promises to be a complete disaster for the GOP. One for the books. There is still time for Leader McConnell to lead a retrograde movement away from the fiasco.

McConnell has pulled off many miracles before. He’s the best legislative leader the GOP has had in my lifetime. He saved the Constitution with his refusal to allow hearings on the Supreme Court vacancy following the death of Justice Scalia. McConnell preserved the First Amendment through litigation over decades. He’s put together crucial Senate majorities only to see lesser political talents destroy them with party nominees he told everyone could not win.

McConnell got former President Trump elected because of the Leader’s “no hearings on any nominee” stance which made Trump’s list of potential Supreme Court nominees the key to the upset win in 2016 by the former president. McConnell will work with Trump again for the good of the Republic. McConnell’s two best pieces of advice —”First, you have to win” and “You can start too late but never start too early”— are worth the cost of his brilliant memoir “The Long Game.

Will McConnell save the GOP once more?

REPUBLICANS ACCELERATE PROBE INTO BIDEN ADMINISTRATION’S ACTIONS TO HOUSE MIGRANTS ON FEDERAL LANDS

We need to get Israel aid. We need to get Ukraine aid. We need to secure the southern border. These are all pressing national security needs. They are of equal importance to America.

If we send the wrong sort of aid to Israel or Ukraine it will not help them win. If we don’t build the 900 miles of fence where it is needed on the 2000 miles of southern border, Americans will continue to die from fentynal, more millions will walk across “UN encountered,” along with the 8 million who have been “encountered” in the three years of the Biden Border Era. The Wall isn’t one of five things that need doing. It is the first thing that must be done if the other things that need to be done are going to work.

The Wall is a necessary but not sufficient national security measure. To repeat: It is the first thing that must be done. Other things are useful —more Border Patrol, more return flights, more detention facilities, more Administrative Law Judges and changes to the actual asylum and refugee law. All of it.

But none of it matters without the Wall. The Wall is the “signal” amid the noise. It actually gets the message to the endless column of millions trudging north. That message is “Closed save by appointment.”

Officials at the southern border with Mexico — National Guard agents place a barbed wire wall on the banks of the Rio Grande in El Paso, Texas, on the border with Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua State, Mexico, on March 8, 2023. (HERIKA MARTINEZ/AFP via Getty Images)

This is not a hardliner position. It is the moderate position. Most “moderates” on immigration reform including me are people who want to care for the stranger when they get here. Most of us are aware that only a small percentage of the millions crossing illegally are undoubtedly dangerous, but they are dangerous indeed, and those who engage in human smuggling are depraved while possible terrorists should be understood as 10/7 types. We moderates are also concerned with innocents caught up in this river of misery that has to be damed before those on this side of the order can’t be helped.

If Democrats say “No” to the Wall, then it is no, and the GOP walks away from the talks, explains why, and campaigns on the Wall.

All three of the remaining possible GOP presidential nominees want the Wall. The Senate candidates the GOP needs to win the 2024 elections and thus the 2025 majority all want the Wall. Only a handful of Senators and their staffs have persuaded themselves that the Wall isn’t necessary. Wake up. It is necessary, and the 91 percent aren’t wrong. They are your bosses.

The supplemental without the Wall is far, far worse than a dead end. It’s a cliff. We won’t climb back up to a moment of clarity like this for decades, if ever. And the House GOP should never approve it anyway, and I doubt incumbent GOP senators who support it will in turn find themselves supported by 90 percent of the Party. Who is selling this? On what grounds?

Please, Senate GOP, the momentum of a terrible ride is no reason to stay on the runaway train. Get off. Now. Walk away.

Hugh Hewitt is one of the country’s leading journalists of the center-right. 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, and it is today syndicated to hundreds of stations and outlets across the country every Monday through Friday morning. 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 this 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 forty years in broadcast, and this column previews the lead story that will drive his radio show today.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM HUGH HEWITT

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Dennis Prager Op-ed: If You Insist Men Can Give Birth, We Likely Know What You Think About Hamas

Dennis Prager / @DennisPrager / January 17, 2024

The real “science deniers” aren’t those skeptical of risks posed by climate change, but rather those who insist that men can get pregnant and give birth. (Photo: Andriano_cz/iStock/Getty Images)

If you say, “men give birth,” we all know your position on Hamas.

Now, why is that? Why, if a person says “men give birth” or says that men who say they are women should be allowed to compete in women’s sports, can we be virtually certain that the person sides with Hamas in its war to eradicate Israel?

Theoretically, the two claims—that men as well as women give birth and Israel is the villain in its war against Hamas—have absolutely no connection.

But they do—for two reasons.

Reason No. 1: When people have a distorted moral value system, that distortion applies to just about every issue. Just as a broken compass will almost always point in the wrong direction, a broken moral compass will do the same.

However, to be more precise, people who say, “men give birth” and who side with Hamas, i.e., progressives and leftists—liberals don’t believe men give birth or side with Hamas—do not merely have a broken moral compass. They have a moral compass that works in the way progressives and leftists have configured it: North always points south and east always points west.

Some examples of how the progressive compass works:

Women who object to men who say they are women competing in women’s sports—even in weightlifting—are haters and bigots (“transphobes”). The men who compete against them are heroes.
Adults who object to schools’ sponsoring drag queen performances for 6-year-olds are haters and bigots (“transphobes”). The teachers who take children to drag queen events are progressive, compassionate, and open-minded.
If a 9-year-old girl says she is a boy, the only therapists she is allowed to see are those who engage in “gender affirmation,” which is, of course, a left-wing Orwellian term. The one thing these therapists do not do is affirm the actual gender of the child.
All-black dorms on college campuses are anti-racist. Objecting to racially segregated dorms is racist.
Those who want to build walls or fences to prevent millions of people from illegally entering the country are xenophobic. Those who oppose building such barriers and declare their cities “sanctuary cities” are humanitarians.
Demanding that citizens show a voter ID before being allowed to vote—the norm in virtually every democracy in the world—constitutes “voter suppression.”
If we have fewer police officers, we will have safer cities.
Marriage is a product of patriarchal misogyny. It wasn’t created to protect and honor women, but to exploit them. Anyway, a woman needs a man as much as a fish needs a bicycle.
Scientists who express skepticism about catastrophic man-made global warming are “science deniers.”

These are some of the morally and factually perverse positions of the Left. Just about every individual who holds these positions also holds the morally perverse position that Israel is the villain and Hamas and its Palestinian supporters are the moral party.

The converse is also true: With the exception of Muslims, those who are anti-Israel also tend to believe that men give birth and the other examples of left-wing moral chaos. Few Muslims—certainly no religious ones—believe that men give birth or that children should be taken to drag queen shows. They just want Israel destroyed.

Reason No. 2: People who say that men give birth also say that Israel is the villain because these positions emanate from the same aim; namely, the destruction of Western civilization, beginning with the destruction of the West’s moral and social norms.

Because some people need a daily reminder… pic.twitter.com/DG6OrmIaX9
— Steve Inman (@SteveInmanUIC) November 19, 2023

When people say that men give birth and that men can compete in women’s sports, they are seeking to undo the bases of Western civilization—truth, science and the belief that we live in an ordered universe. That is why the Left is so adamant about denying that sex (“gender”) is binary. The fact that there are only two sexes represents order—natural and, worse, divine.

Those on the Left unwittingly acknowledge the connection between their anti-Western positions and their Israel-hatred. They routinely attack Israel for being an “outpost of Western civilization.” That is precisely what Israel is, which tells you a great deal about both of Israel’s enemies—the Left and much of the Muslim world.

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Mike Gonzalez Op-ed: The Left Feels Threatened by Those Who Tell the Truth

Mike Gonzalez / @Gundisalvus / January 17, 2024

A belief in man’s power to deconstruct reality produces an ideological morass that prevented Harvard’s Claudine Gay from rejecting genocide categorically at a catastrophic congressional hearing. Pictured: Gay, left, then president of Harvard, testifies Dec. 5 about on-campus antisemitism before the House Education and Workforce Committee in Washington. (Photo: Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

Mike Gonzalez, a senior fellow at The Heritage Foundation, is a widely experienced international correspondent, commentator, and editor who has reported from Asia, Europe, and Latin America. He served in the George W. Bush administration, first at the Securities and Exchange Commission and then at the State Department, and is the author of the book “BLM: The Making of a New Marxist Revolution.” Read his research.

Are conservatives plotting to subvert American institutions?

This bold assertion was tucked inside the op-ed that Claudine Gay published in The New York Times the day after she stepped down as Harvard University’s president. Gay made the accusation twice in her op-ed, so it was not a passing fancy. She devoted a full paragraph to the idea, which deserves quoting in full:

The campaign against me was about more than one university and one leader. This was merely a single skirmish in a broader war to unravel public faith in pillars of American society. Campaigns of this kind often start with attacks on education and expertise, because these are the tools that best equip communities to see through propaganda. But such campaigns don’t end there. Trusted institutions of all types—from public health agencies to news organizations—will continue to fall victim to coordinated attempts to undermine their legitimacy and ruin their leaders’ credibility. For the opportunists driving cynicism about our institutions, no single victory or toppled leader exhausts their zeal.

Further on in the op-ed, Gay added that courage was needed “to stand up to those who seek to undermine what makes universities unique in American life.”

This contention is at first blush paradoxical. Many people, especially those in the center and the center- Left, are belatedly coming around to agree that our cultural institutions have made a gigantic mistake in enforcing the view that all of life must be seen through the power dynamic of the “oppressed vs. the oppressor.”

But those of us who have been writing about this for years have made the case that to get power over these institutions, the Left first had to undermine American norms and institutions. This is the heart of what is known as “cultural Marxism.” It is not always possible to settle economic scores and overthrow regimes through violent and bloody revolutions as Karl Marx wanted (and the bloodier they were, the more Marx liked them), so a better approach is to infiltrate the institutions and indoctrinate the population, especially the young.

In the lingo of the cultural revolutionaries, this is called replacing the existing “cultural hegemony” with a “counterhegemony,” or engaging in “consciousness raising” with those who have “false consciousness” because they, wrongly in this view, identify with the oppressor class.

Your average woke professor may call false consciousness being “white adjacent” because our present-day cultural Marxists have racialized cultural Marxism. If you have ever taken a graduate seminar or debated one of these pinheads, you are sure to have heard these phrases. But what is known as the Left’s “March Through the Institutions” (their term) has been so successful that Gay and the rest of the cultural Marxist Left are now putting us on notice that they are the new hegemony and we unwashed are running a subversion that wants to impose a counterhegemony.

Some might call it a quiet insurrection, though let’s not give them any ideas.

We saw an element of this exactly a year ago when an NHL player born in Russia, Ivan Provorov, refused to wear an LGBT “pride” jersey during warmups, citing his Christian Orthodox religious beliefs. An ESPN commentator, E.J. Hradek, said that if Provorov couldn’t “assimilate” to American ways, he should go back to Russia.

“If this is that much of a problem for him, to maybe assimilate into his group of teammates, and in the community and here in this country, that’s OK,” Hradek said. “Listen, you can feel any way you want. But the beauty is if it bothers you that much, there’s always a chance to leave, go back to where you feel more comfortable.”

Except that the immense changes the cultural Left has wrought (and yes, they have been immense) have been accomplished in a very few years. There is still more than folk memory of how things used to be.

Although many people have come to accept gay marriage, for example, the Supreme Court only judged it constitutional less than a decade ago. Many other people continue to see marriage as society recognizing the species’ reproductive strategy and government’s sanction of it based solely on its interest in regeneration. And there’s even less consensus on the T in LGBTQ, especially concerning grotesque medical procedures on minors.

What is truly un-American is demanding that anybody affirm anything against their belief system or leave the country.

It is ludicrous therefore for Hradek to claim that Provorov is not assimilating “in the community and here in this country,” just as it is for Gay to claim that conservatives are undermining “pillars of society” and “expertise” because these tools enable society to see through propaganda. This is true only if you accept the cultural Marxist charge that reality is not real, that man’s perception of the natural world cannot be relied upon because it is comprehended only through a conceptual superstructure that can be built, torn down, or replaced.

This canonical belief in man’s power to deconstruct reality only produces the ideological morass that prevented Gay from rejecting genocide categorically at a catastrophic congressional testimony Dec. 5. Her “expertise” consists only in the ability to speak this lingo—to share, as she so self-incriminatingly put it at one point, “her truth.”

This new hegemony is thus unmoored from reality, from natural law, from eternal truth, and the shaky institutions built on them engender their own cynicism. All critics have to do is tell the plain truth to undermine it.

This commentary originally was published by the Washington Examiner

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HOW TWO IOWA VOTERS FEEL ABOUT THE CANDIDATES AHEAD OF THE CAUCUSES

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Alfredo Ortiz Op-ed: Iowa caucus marks voters’ first chance to begin kicking Bidenomics to the curb

By Alfredo Ortiz , Erik Lee Fox News | Published January 15, 2024 5:00am EST

The Iowa Caucus marks Americans’ first opportunity to begin replacing President Joe Biden’s failed economy. Sadly, voter pushback won’t come soon enough for many small business casualties such as the Jerald Sulky Company, a Waterloo, Iowa-based manufacturer of performance horse-drawn vehicles owned by Erik Lee that is closing after 125 years in business.

Over the past three years, small businesses have faced numerous hurdles, including COVID-19 shutdowns, historic inflation, high borrowing costs, tax increases and over-regulation. Arguably, the biggest challenge facing small businesses is the beleaguered American consumer.

The pressure on household budgets, including at higher income levels not historically impacted by inflation, has caused underlying changes in spending patterns that are not yet reflected in overall economic figures.

Since President Joe Biden took office, prices of goods and services have increased by nearly 20%, far outpacing wage growth over the same period. Talk to ordinary consumers and many will tell you prices have increased even faster than the topline figures suggest.

Erik Lee is the owner of the Waterloo, Iowa-based Jerald Sulky Company. (Photo courtesy of Erik Lee)

According to a recent study by the U.S. Senate Joint Economic Committee, ordinary households are spending nearly $11,500 more per year to maintain the same standard of living as in January 2021.

These new costs cannibalize consumers’ discretionary income — their fun money that many businesses like Erik’s rely on to keep their doors open. When money is tight, consumers cut back spending on non-necessities like sports, hobbies, and tourism.

Equestrian isn’t spared. The problem is especially severe for small businesses like Erik’s that face competition from their own used products that become available in the secondary market as participation decreases.

Middle-class consumer spending drives the economy, and most discretionary businesses cannot make it by relying only on the wealthy. As consumers continue to trade their extra income for more expensive groceries, rent and debt interest payments, expect many more enterprises to follow the Jerald Sulky Company out of business.

Erik Lee and his wife Shelli stand next to a Fine Harness Buggy. (Photo courtesy of Erik Lee)

A recent viral video of one ordinary worker in Arizona complaining about how she can’t make ends meet even though she works three jobs illuminates the plight of many ordinary consumers in today’s economy. “I have three jobs. And I’m still f—ing struggling,” says Jourdan Bourdain. “I’m just getting myself farther and farther into credit card debt, because I don’t have enough after the first of the month to avoid using it. It just isn’t working.”

And she’s not alone. National credit card debt has risen to a record $1.2 trillion. A Financial Times poll finds only 14% of Americans say they are better off financially than when Biden took office.

While inflation increases have moderated in recent months due to the Federal Reserve’s aggressive interest rates, it’s important to remember that even moderate inflation figures still mean increasing sticker prices that stack on top of the historic inflation of recent years. Prices aren’t going down. They are just going up more slowly. Wages are still growing at about the same pace as core inflation.

Over the past three years, small businesses have faced numerous hurdles, including COVID-19 shutdowns, historic inflation, high borrowing costs, tax increases and over-regulation. Arguably, the biggest challenge facing small businesses is the beleaguered American consumer.

Trillions of dollars in deficit spending over the past three years have bid up prices and distorted the economy. Last year’s federal deficit was a near-record $1.7 trillion. Productive small businesses can’t compete for resources against nearly unlimited government funds.

The next administration must rein in reckless spending to finally slay inflation and restore America’s vibrant small-business economy. It can rebalance the economy and prices by balancing the budget and squeezing unproductive, government-supported activity and cronyism out of the economy.

According to Job Creators Network’s recent SBIQ poll of small businesses located in Iowa and other early-primary voting states, 8 in 10 respondents said they’re more likely to vote for a candidate who commits to reducing inflationary spending. It’s too late for businesses like Erik’s, but to the extent ordinary voters understand this small business dynamic, they can begin a much-needed national turnaround on Monday.

Erik Lee is the owner of the Waterloo, Iowa-based Jerald Sulky Company.

Alfredo Ortiz is president and CEO of Job Creators Network, author of “The Real Race Revolutionaries,” and co-host of “The Main Street Matters” podcast.

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John Stossel Op-ed: Are You a Maker or a Taker?

John Stossel / @JohnStossel / January 03, 2024

Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla Inc., speaks at the Atreju political convention on Dec. 15, 2023, in Rome. (Photo: Antonio Masiello/Getty Images)

Politicians are often takers.

They take our money (and freedom) in the name of achieving goals they rarely achieve.

Elon Musk and Sen. Elizabeth Warren may be the best examples of maker and taker. They’re the stars of my video this week.

Warren shouts, “Tax the rich!”

She especially wants to tax Musk, the richest man in the world.

In her eagerness to grab his money, she spun a scandal in the media, claiming Musk paid no taxes. She went on TV again and again to tell people that in 2018, “He paid zero!”

It was true. In 2018, Musk paid no federal income tax. But that was only because his pay was entirely in the form of “stock options,” and that year, they gave him no income.

But at the very moment Warren launched her “zero tax” screed, Musk was paying the U.S. government $12 billion—more tax than anyone has ever paid in history.

Warren didn’t mention that.

I wish Musk paid much less tax. It would be better for the world if he spent the $12 billion himself—rather than giving it to Warren and her cronies.

I say that because Musk, a maker, does so many useful things. That includes things that government is unable to do.

NASA has given up building spaceships. Even NASA bureaucrats now understand that they don’t do things very well.

In 2008, NASA Administrator Mike Griffin said, “We can’t keep doing the same old things as before,” and invited private companies to join the space race.

That got results.

By 2020, Musk had sent astronauts into orbit, something NASA hadn’t been able to do for nine years.

Musk lowered the cost of nearly every component of space flight. NASA spent $1,500 on door latches. Musk’s team built the part for $30 by modifying a latch from bathroom stalls.

Musk developed reusable rockets, which drastically cut costs.

“Reuse the rocket, say, 1,000 times,” said Musk. “That would make the capital costs of the rocket per launch only about $50,000.”

Why didn’t NASA do that? Because in government, people do what they’ve always done. Lowering costs isn’t important. They’re spending other people’s money.

Musk also created Starlink. Starlink satellites now provide low-cost internet service to people all over the world. He’s so successful launching satellites that most satellites now orbiting Earth are Musk’s. He’s given more poor people access to the internet than any government ever has.

Musk develops the world’s most popular electric car, gives poor people internet access, reinvigorates space exploration, and creates 110,000 jobs.

So, Warren wants to punish him?

She sent a letter to the Securities and Exchange Commission, demanding the government investigate Tesla for “not properly representing shareholders.”

Seems like a bizarre accusation, given that Tesla’s stock has increased in value by $790 billion.

Warren didn’t like that Musk became CEO of Twitter. She demanded that “conflict of interest” be investigated.

But it’s great that Musk bought Twitter. He told Joe Rogan that he’s lost money on the company, but that taking over Twitter was still worth “everything,” because he’s protecting open debate.

I agree. Twitter’s previous owners censored political views that didn’t conform to left-wing bias.

They even reduced the number of my Twitter followers. Only when Musk took over did the total climb back above a million again.

Now Musk’s company, Neuralink, is trying to help paralyzed people access the internet and operate artificial limbs—just by using their thoughts.

Neuralink, Tesla, SpaceX, Starlink. Musk is a maker and a hero!

Warren, the taker, attacks people who create wealth.

She pushes a skewed narrative about “greedy” corporations.

Of course,corporations are greedy! Greed works. It motivates people to try harder.

But (outside of government) greedy people can only satisfy their greed by pleasing customers. Unlike politicians, they can’t force anyone to pay.

Our world needs fewer Elizabeth Warrens and more Elon Musks.

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BIDEN HAS ANOTHER CALAMITOUS YEAR AT THE SOUTHERN BORDER IN 2023 AS RECORDS SHATTER

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Senator Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) Op-ed: Biden aiding illegal immigrants instead of veterans is un-American

By Tommy Tuberville Fox News | Published December 27, 2023 5:00am EST

The Biden border crisis is the worst in American history — and it’s not even close. Since President Biden took office, there have been at least 7 million illegal border crossings and nearly 2 million known gotaways.

It isn’t just the southern border — illegal encounters along one sector of the northern border are up 700%. Hundreds of people on the terror watch list have been caught trying to get into our country, and more than 300,000 Americans have died of overdoses from drugs brought over the border. We’ve never seen anything like this.

Unreal, they are destroying our country right in front of us https://t.co/WOyer1ypCr
— Hodgetwins (@hodgetwins) December 27, 2023

Make no mistake — Democrats created this problem. Biden and Democrats are only feigning interest in securing the border now because it is an election year. If Biden actually wanted to secure our border, then he could have simply left the Trump border policies in place or reversed his own extreme policies by now. He has done neither.

It should be obvious that Biden’s sudden interest in the border is a political stunt to look like action is being taken, get good press and write campaign ads about how tough he is on illegal immigration.

In an aerial view, thousands of illegal immigrants, most wearing thermal blankets, await processing at a U.S. Border Patrol transit center in Eagle Pass, Texas, on Dec. 19. Major surges of migrants illegally crossing the Rio Grande have overwhelmed U.S. border authorities in recent weeks. (John Moore/Getty Images)

Now Biden is adding insult to injury. Media reports indicate that the border is in such chaos that the Biden administration is using resources from the VA to facilitate healthcare for illegal aliens. This is a slap in the face to our veterans and to the taxpayer.

That’s why, last week, I introduced the No VA Resources for Illegal Aliens Act in the Senate. My bill does just what it says. It prohibits VA resources, whether healthcare or claims processing for healthcare, from being used for illegal aliens. The bill already has the support of the Chairman of the House VA Committee Mike Bost, and I’m hopeful that Congress can pass it soon.

Biden flacks argue that since the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) reimburses the VA for these services, there is no issue. But this is wrong. In reality, DHS is leveraging healthcare providers in the VA’s Community Care Network, which was established to ensure veterans could access doctors in their own town, for the care of illegal aliens.

As a result, veterans are forced to travel to VA facilities instead of relying on doctors in their communities. That means the administration is prioritizing the needs of illegal immigrants over the needs of our nation’s veterans. It’s hard to think of something more un-American than that.

There was a similar scandal at the VA the last time Biden was in the White House. In President Barack Obama’s second term, dozens of veterans died while waiting for care. The VA then lied about it to cover it up. Some of those folks are being hired back by the Biden administration. VA leadership in the Obama years didn’t fire the offenders because of job protections for federal employees.

It’s no wonder we have such a massive crisis at the border. People around the world know that they can simply waltz into our country, go to a blue state, and get free healthcare, free education, drivers’ licenses and even cash benefits. Meanwhile, the people of this country work hard, pay taxes and face rising prices for just about everything. Securing our border will require shutting off the magnet that is drawing illegals into this country.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM SEN. TOMMY TUBERVILLE

Our veterans earned their healthcare serving in uniform for the United States. Illegals haven’t earned a dime from the taxpayer — they shouldn’t even be in the country. The contrast couldn’t be clearer.

There’s no reason this legislation should not become law. Following the law — whether at the VA or at the border — shouldn’t be a partisan issue, and neither should caring for our veterans. If Biden is serious about securing the border, he should urge Democrats to pass this common-sense legislation and sign it into law.

Republican Tommy Tuberville represents Alabama in the United States Senate.

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RONALD REAGAN’S CHRISTMAS LETTER TO NANCY REAGAN IN 1981

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Dr. Kent Ingle Op-ed: Why Reagan’s first Christmas address matters today

By Dr. Kent Ingle Fox News | Published December 24, 2023 8:00am EST

Over 40 years ago, President Ronald Reagan gave his first Christmas address. When Reagan stepped into office, the national spirit was low. The U.S. was experiencing some of the worst economic turmoil since the Great Depression – with high taxes, record levels of unemployment and spiraling interest rates. The world was also in the midst of the Cold War, with many countries fighting for the freedoms held by Americans.

With fears of an economic recession and tensions across the U.S. due to the wars in Israel and Ukraine, there are many truths from Reagan’s address that are relevant today.

Ronald Reagan with flag — Ronald Wilson Reagan, 40th president of the United States (1981-1989) and 33rd governor of California (1967-1975). (Photo12/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)

First, Reagan shared the importance of caring for one another.

He said, “Yes, we’ve questioned why he who could perform miracles chose to come among us as a helpless babe, but maybe that was his first miracle, his first great lesson that we should learn to care for one another.“

America needs more people who genuinely care for and look after one another. We have our differences, and news outlets will tell us that we are more divided now than ever.

Patti Davis, Paul Grilley, First Lady Nancy Reagan, President Ronald Reagan, daughter-in-law Doria, and son Ron. — Nancy and Ronald Reagan celebrate Christmas with their family. (Bettmann)

Let’s not forget that our nation was founded by individuals who came from different political backgrounds. They put aside disagreements to form a nation where everyone had the freedoms of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Our differences should never take away from our ability to love and respect one another. This is clearly demonstrated in Jesus’ life, as He cared for those around Him, and even those that society deemed insignificant.

MELANIA TRUMP SHARES CHRISTMAS ‘MAGIC,’ MESSAGE OF ‘HOPE AND COMPASSION’ AT FOSTER CARE HOLIDAY CELEBRATION

Reagan discussed the value of trusting in God.

He said, “At times our footsteps may have faltered, but trusting in God’s help, we’ve never lost our way.”

CHRISTMAS 2021: READ BIDEN, TRUMP AND OBAMA’S CHRISTMAS MESSAGES TO AMERICANS

Just as Reagan said, we must continue to trust in God. Many of America’s early colonies were founded by men and women who fled the oppression of the British government as they refused to compromise on their religious convictions and beliefs. The statement “In God We Trust” became a pillar for our nation. It was inscribed on our currency. And it became our country’s first official motto in 1956 when President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed it into law.

In America’s darkest moments – through the Civil War, two World Wars and the Cold War – she turned to God. It often seems as if the government desires to remove God by posing threats to religious freedoms.

WHITE HOUSE 2021 CHRISTMAS DECORATIONS TO HONOR COVID-19 FRONTLINE WORKERS

Yet, in times of weakness and despair, God can be America’s source of strength. As Psalm 27:1 tells us, God is our light and source of strength in times of trouble.

Reagan reminded us of the obligation to the heritage of liberty.

Reagan continued, “Let those candles remind us that these blessings bring with them a solid obligation, an obligation to the God who guides us, an obligation to the heritage of liberty and dignity handed down to us by our forefathers and an obligation to the children of the world…”

The obligation to liberty isn’t an easy endeavor.

Ronald Reagan praying. — Ronald Reagan prays at a Republican fund-raiser dinner in Framingham, Massachusetts, 1972. (Spencer Grant/Getty Images)

It means standing up against the government when it imposes regulations or proposes laws against the Constitution. It requires taking legal action, peacefully protesting, being involved in local government and letting our voices be heard. In the midst of oppression and adversity, we can’t let the light of liberty be extinguished – even if it requires going against the grain.

Finally, Reagan ended by expressing how Christmas means so much because of one special child and reminds us that all children are special.

He said, “But Christmas also reminds us that all children are special, that they are gifts from God, gifts beyond price that mean more than any presents money can buy. In their love and laughter, in our hopes for their future lies the true meaning of Christmas.”

In Jesus’ ministry, He showed the significance and the value of children. Jesus told us in Mark 10:14 that the kingdom of Heaven belongs to children. Children are the present and the future of our nation. Everything we have built, fought for and accomplished lies in their hands.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE DR. KENT INGLE

And, in everything we do, from financial decisions to legislation, we think not of the present, but of the future it will create for generations to come. We must ensure there is a better future for them that preserves financial stability and the freedoms we are privileged to have today.

This Christmas, let us remember the birth of our Savior – which brought us hope through salvation – and the example He set for us to follow. When we encounter economic hardships and threats to freedom, may we persevere by knowing America has been through similar times.

And, let us also be grateful for the freedoms we have today and work toward ensuring those for generations to come.

Dr. Kent Ingle presently serves as the President of Southeastern University (SEU) located in Lakeland, Florida. Southeastern University can be found online at seu.edu and their prayer community can be found on pray.com.

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Opinion, Political, Spiritual

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Suzanne Venker Op-ed: Gen Z and millennial women are waking up to the lies feminists fed them. Now they are upset and alone

By Suzanne Venker, Fox News | Published December 22, 2023 5:00am EST

I read with a mixture of sadness and relief an essay by one Melissa Persling, who by all accounts represents the average 30-something woman in America today. In the article, she laments the fact that she’s single at 38 and feels “unbelievably betrayed by feminism.” Persling feels that way because it is that way. For decades, our culture has failed women by spreading falsehood after falsehood about men, marriage, motherhood and career. It’s been a slow, daily drip of “You go, Girl!” messages, specifically designed to delete men and babies from life’s equation. And it has wreaked havoc on women’s lives.

In an interview with Fox News, Persling explained why she wrote her article. “I wrote a lot of that article, like, truly scared… I really did think, like, wow, you’ve missed your opportunity. You are going to be alone. You’re not going to have a family,” she said.

Persling added, “I was constantly fed this idea that women can do everything. We don’t really need men… I do feel in many ways betrayed by that line of thinking.”

frustrated young woman — Women are realizing that feminism took away traditional roles but didn’t replace them with a new model for life. (iStock)

Persling then concedes that she received this message from “so many of the women” in her life. “I want to go back to some of those teachers and coaches and say, ‘What the hell did you mean by that? Because we can’t do it all. We can’t. That’s a lie!’” she said.

Yes, it was all a lie — and good on Persling for calling it out in such a public way.

Still, it’s a super hard pill to swallow, made worse by the fact that Persling has been slammed with hateful comments, particularly from men, who insist she’s been selfish. She’s a product of her choices, they say, and, well, too bad.

It’s not that simple.

CLICK HERE FOR MORE FROM SUZANNE VENKER

As a life and relationship coach, I hear regularly from women like Persling who realize they’ve been duped by the narrative that being an independent, self-sustaining woman is enough to be happy. It makes perfect sense that these women would find themselves, down the road, overcome with grief at the prospect of living life alone. And they can’t turn to the culture for help because the culture hails singlehood as the be-all, end-all.

Persling was smart to recognize that being a product of divorce also put her at a disadvantage, since she saw women “taking care of everything” in life. Her mother may not have specifically groomed her to be a feminist, but she absorbed the feminist message of not needing a man all the same. No one told her otherwise.

America is now saturated with women like Persling, who acted upon the wisdom passed along to them by the people they most trusted. These women thought they did everything right, only to have it turn out all wrong. To accept that the advice they received was based on lies is a hard lesson for anyone to learn.

The truth is this purportedly “liberated” path women have been groomed to travel has a domino effect. Because if the goal isn’t marriage and family, what is the goal? To be satisfied with being single forever because at least you have a paycheck and no one to whom you must answer? As Persling said, “I don’t want to wake up at 60 and say, ‘Oh, well, I had a lot of fun!’”

Persling then concedes that she received this message from “so many of the women” in her life: “I want to go back to some of those teachers and coaches and say, ‘What the hell did you mean by that? Because we can’t do it all. We can’t. That’s a lie!’”

The problem with the narrative women has been fed is that it deleted the old way but didn’t replace it with anything new. It conveniently left out the details about how women are supposed to live their lives instead.

I believe Persling when she said she’s “not even a feminist.” That’s the thing about movements and trends: They seep into the culture to such a degree that they cease to need a name at all. You don’t even recognize it’s there, and yet it’s governing your every move.

As Danielle Crittenden wrote in “What Our Mothers Didn’t Tell Us”, feminism “had seeped into their minds like intravenous saline into the arm of an unconscious patient. They were feminists without knowing it.”

But now, thanks to Persling’s bravery, more women will wake up.

Suzanne Venker is a marriage and relationship coach and host of the “Suzanne Venker Show.” Her website is www.suzannevenker.com. Her most recent book is “The Alpha Female’s Guide to Men & Marriage: How Love Works.”

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Culture, Opinion, Political

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Brian Kilmeade Op-ed: Teddy Roosevelt and Booker T. Washington can teach today’s Americans how to overcome adversity

By Brian Kilmeade Fox News | Published December 19, 2023 5:00am EST

Too many Americans have forgotten how to be tough. Too many are just giving up. They’re “quiet quitting” their jobs, and even their marriages. The youngest generation in the workforce claims to be “completely overwhelmed” by daily life.

It’s true that we’re facing significant challenges at home and abroad today. But in America’s long history, that’s nothing new. Our greatest leaders were molded into towering figures because of – not in spite of – the challenges they faced.

At the dawn of the 20th century, two such men were Theodore Roosevelt and Booker T. Washington. One of these men had to overcome the evils of slavery, and fought for the rest of his life against evil institutional racism. The other was born into privilege, but forced himself to conquer the fragile health that plagued him in youth.

Booker T. Washington and Teddy Roosevelt (Sentinel)

They both went on to become prominent men of their day, and when the president and the civil rights leader came together, they worked hard to make the new century a fairer and more equitable one for all Americans.

HOW ICONS TEDDY ROOSEVELT AND BOOKER T. WASHINGTON BLAZED A PATH FOR RACIAL EQUALITY

Booker T. Washington’s first home was a one-room log cabin. Meals were “a piece of bread here and a scrap of meat there.” He wore no shoes until he was 8. Brutalizing punishment was a fact of life. And he could forget about education. “Learning from books in a schoolroom,” his mother explained, “[is] forbidden to a Negro child.” He was told reading was “dangerous,” but that only upped his curiosity.

TEDDY ROOSEVELT’S MODEL TO COMBAT COMMUNIST CHINA

“From that moment I resolved that I should never be satisfied until I learned what this dangerous practice was like.”

At the age of 16, he walked all the way to the Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute. His teachers there were impressed by his work ethic, with one, Nathalie Lord, remarking: “I think I may safely say he was never idle.”

It soon became clear that Booker wasn’t just interested in acquiring knowledge for his own sake. “To help his people,” Miss Lord learned, “was foremost in his mind.”

And help he did. After spending several years teaching, in 1881 he became the head of the brand-new Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, a training school for Black educators. First, though, he had to build the campus.

Washington and his students took on the hard work of clearing dozens of acres. One of his colleagues later wrote: “They couldn’t say they were too good for that kind of work when Mr. Washington himself was at it harder than any of them.”

The Tuskegee Institute grew into the base from which Washington launched a national movement to improve the lives of Black Americans. By 1901, Washington was such a major voice in the national conversation that he became the first Black person to dine at the White House – at the invitation of President Theodore Roosevelt.

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY, OCTOBER 14, 1912, TEDDY ROOSEVELT SHOT IN CHEST, MAKES CAMPAIGN STOP MINUTES LATER

Roosevelt’s privileged circumstances could hardly have been more different from Washington’s, but he too faced early challenges that made him into the man he was. Colds, stomach upsets and fevers affected him in early childhood. At age 3, he developed asthma, soon followed by acute bouts of diarrhea and vomiting.

Theodore was 14 and had suffered years of sickness when his father sat him down for a man-to-man conversation about his health. “You have the mind, but you have not the body,” his father said. “Without the help of the body the mind cannot go as far as it should.”

But the boy was ready to rise to the challenge. “I’ll make my body,” he promised.

He started training by lifting weights, wrestling and boxing lessons. Theodore persisted and, as one of his sisters observed, he “widen[ed] his chest by regular, monotonous motion – drudgery indeed.”

He worked his mind, too, reading voraciously, his tastes varying from boys’ fiction to travel books and works on zoology and natural history. Over years of hard work, he turned into the man who would enter New York state politics in 1886, kicking off the true start of a brilliant career that saw him in the White House by 1901.

On Oct. 16 of that year, he invited Booker T. Washington to dinner. Roosevelt had been in office for barely a month. His predecessor William McKinley had been assassinated, and it was now up to Roosevelt to lead a country that was split by racial divisions and tensions despite the end of the Civil War decades earlier.

William McKinley (1843-1901) was the 25th president of the United States, serving from March 4, 1897, until his assassination in September 1901, six months into his second term. (Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)

One fateful meal brought together two men whose lives, though very different, had been shaped by similar commitment to overcoming adversity. As Washington fought for equal rights, Roosevelt, bolstered by Washington’s encouragement, fought to appoint Black Americans (and fair-minded Whites) to government positions, becoming personally involved in many cases.

He closed a local post office in Mississippi after they unfairly dismissed their Black postmistress. He faced wailing denunciations from the press and political opposition, but Booker T. Washington had his back.

CLICK HERE FOR MORE FROM BRIAN KILMEADE

Both Booker T. and Teddy had vision. They had drive. And their skins were tough enough that they drove forward even in the face of often vicious criticism.

We are a better nation because they chose to fight. Both of those men would have no time for “quiet quitters.” They would not be “overwhelmed” by daily life. Nothing would stop them from fighting for what’s right. That’s a legacy we can all look up to.

Brian Kilmeade is the co-host of FOX News Channel’s (FNC) FOX & Friends (weekdays 6-9 AM/ET) alongside Steve Doocy and Ainsley Earhardt and the host of One Nation with Brian Kilmeade (Saturdays 8-9 PM/ET).

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Liz Peek Op-ed: Biden’s 2024 election insurance policy might surprise you

By Liz Peek Fox News | Published December 19, 2023 5:00am EST

Democrats are marching through various stages of grief as they contemplate President Joe Biden running for reelection in 2024. They have variously been hopeful, worried, frantic … and now they’re getting downright angry.

Far-left columnist Harold Meyerson, editor of the liberal magazine American Prospect, is furious that more Democrats have not jumped into the race. His latest piece asks, “Are the Democrats sleepwalking to disaster?” Disaster, of course, being the election of Donald Trump, who will bring the U.S. – according to Meyerson – to the “brink of authoritarian rule.”

The former Washington Post writer says Biden has been an “excellent president,” but is concerned that he is “the candidate least able to defeat Donald Trump.” Meyerson is certainly not alone; a rising chorus of Democrat voices are urging Biden to step aside, including now, apparently, Barack Obama. The New York Post reports that the former president “knows this is going to be a close race” and “feels that Democrats very well could lose.”

BIDEN APPROVAL RATING SINKS TO ALL-TIME LOW IN NEW NATIONAL POLL

The question is: who might replace Biden? Meyerson lofts Gavin Newsom as a possibility but notes that the California governor “lacks appeal to working-class voters (California has the lowest share of white working-class residents of any state save Hawaii).”

biden democrats white house midterm republicans maga laura ingraham — Polls look bad for President Joe Biden’s chances of keeping the White House in 2024. But the Democrat alternatives aren’t much better. FILE: A flag flies atop the White House November 15, 2000. (Photo by Alex Wong/Newsmakers) (Getty Images)

He also throws Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer into the mix but supposes she would “face misogynistic hurdles,” deploying one of Hillary Clinton’s many excuses for losing in 2016. He totally ignores Vice President Kamala Harris, as do most commentators, even though tossing her aside could be risky for Democrats.

Here is the truth: the Democrat bench is terrible.

For months, Newsom has been the favored candidate of elite liberals. He’s reliably progressive, telegenic and has been running a stealth campaign to introduce himself to American voters. Unfortunately for Newsom backers, the governor is slip-sliding towards oblivion. First, he surprisingly performed a major face-plant in his debate with Republican Ron DeSantis on Sean Hannity’s Fox News show. Most commentators, including myself, expected the glib Newsom to run rings around the supposedly wooden and inarticulate DeSantis.

Instead, Florida’s governor came armed with facts and figures showing his state beating out California on every major metric important to voters – cost of living, taxes, employment, homelessness and crime. Not only did DeSantis win on points, he also won on style. Newsom was smug, condescending and unlikeable. It was a wipeout.

Second, California’s nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office recently projected the state would run a 2024-25 budget deficit of $68 billion next year, twice as large as recorded in 2023-24. The projected gap is an all-time record, as is the state’s $310 billion spending plan. Commentators in California pounced on the news, with the Mercury News declaring “Newsom owns this mess.” The editorial board reminded Californians that at the beginning of last year, Newsom “was bragging about the state’s $98 billion budget surplus.” Oops.

Newsom was first elected governor in 2019; his proposed budget for the 2019-2020 fiscal year called for spending of $209 billion. So, in five years, the budget has skyrocketed nearly 50%; on a per-person basis, it has jumped 56%, because more than one million residents have fled the state’s high taxes and impossible business regulations.

Where has the money gone? More than 50 billion was allocated in the past two budgets for climate change, enormous funds handed to unions like the childcare workers group that is demanding a 25% pay hike and teachers who were given an 8.2% cost-of-living raise; taxpayer money has also funded a 10% increase in welfare payments, and numerous other progressive priorities.

Vice President Kamala Harris would be a logical choice to replace her boss, President Joe Biden. But she’s even less popular than he is. (Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images)

Newsom’s mismanagement of California’s finances is a blueprint, as DeSantis charged in their debate, for how Democrats will crush the U.S. economy.

If Newsom falls appropriately by the wayside, could Governor Gretchen Whitmer be next up? Unlike Newsom, she represents an important swing state, and her favorability ratings in Michigan are better than the president’s. In addition, she has a following with Black voters, which Newsom lacks. Politico reports that Democrats outside of Michigan have encouraged her to run, including members of the Congressional Black Caucus. Also, a female candidate could help Democrats next year keep the focus on abortion. Polling shows Whitmer competing against Donald Trump more successfully than Biden, Harris or Newsom. In a month-old Fox News poll, all four Democrats lose to Trump, but Whitmer is down by only 2 points.

Still, the Michigan governor is remembered as the author of ludicrous COVID-19 mandates, such as allowing state residents to shop at hardware stores, but outlawing purchases of seeds or other gardening supplies.

In addition, her state is losing population, like California, though less rapidly. Michigan has also acquired a large Muslim population, which could complicate Whitmer or Biden’s prospects in the state if Democrats continue to support Israel. Further, rivals could go after Michigan’s governor for enacting tougher gun laws but failing to drive down crime in what some have called “America’s most dangerous state.” The state harbors eight of the most crime-ridden cities in the U.S.

Unfortunately for Newsom backers, the governor is slip-sliding towards oblivion. First, he surprisingly performed a major face-plant in his debate with Republican Ron DeSantis on Sean Hannity’s Fox News show. Most commentators, including myself, expected the glib Newsom to run rings around the supposedly wooden and inarticulate DeSantis.

Whitmer’s main handicap, however, is that she is not well known nationally. In a recent Economist/YouGov poll, 31% of respondents said they would like to see the governor run for president, but a whopping 45% were “unsure.” If the selection of a candidate falls to the Democrat convention next summer, Whitmer would have little time to introduce herself.

Harris is the obvious replacement should Biden bow out. But her approval ratings are even worse than the president’s, despite numerous efforts by her team and the White House to gin up support. The Real Clear Politics average approval shows her underwater by 20 points; her boss scores a negative 15 points. She also has worse favorable/unfavorable ratings than Donald Trump.

Newsom, Whitmer and Harris are all likely contenders should Biden withdraw from the race. Given their likely electability, Joe may be forgiven for staying put.

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.

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Victor Davis Hanson Op-ed: Americans Must Choose Between Civilization—or Its Destroyers

Victor Davis Hanson / @VDHanson / December 14, 2023

Police tape surrounds a crime scene where a suspect rammed into the San Francisco Chinese Consulate on Oct. 9, 2023. (Photo: Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

Nihilism is the religion of the Left. Anarchy is now at the core of the new Democratic Party.

If the Left wished radically to alter the demography of the U.S., it could have expanded legal immigration through legislation or the courts. Instead, it simply erased the border and dynamited federal immigration law.

By fiat, nihilists ended the wall, and stopped detaining and deporting illegal aliens altogether. Or was it worse than that when candidate Joe Biden in September 2019 urged would-be illegal aliens to “surge” the border?

As a result, through laxity and entitlement incentives, 8 million illegal entrants have swarmed the southern border under the Biden administration. They are swamping border towns, bankrupting big-city budgets, and infuriating even Democratic constituencies. The same nihilism applies to crime.

In the old days liberals gave light sentences to criminals or reduced bail. But today leftist prosecutors do not even seek bail. They hardly prosecute theft or random assaults. Criminals are arrested and released the same day. Is the nihilist plan to destroy the entire body of American jurisprudence, and to ensure “equity” in being victimized?

Is the woke idea that all Americans—inclusive of diverse Beverly Hills elites, Hollywood celebrities, or members of Congress alike—must share victim equity, and thus experience firsthand street robbery, car-jacking, smash-and-grab, and home invasion?

The United States can produce annually more natural gas and oil than any nation on earth. It once pioneered nuclear power. It has vast coal reserves and sophisticated hydroelectric plants. The old idea was to use these unmatched resources to transition gradually to other cleaner fuels such as hydrogen, fusion power, solar, and wind. That way consumers would still enjoy affordable energy. And the United States could remain independent of coercion by the oil-producing Middle East.

But that was not the nihilist way. Instead, the Left deliberately cut back on pipelines, new energy leases, and fracking. It bragged of an upcoming ban on fossil fuels. In drought-stricken, energy-short California, the state is blowing up, not building new dams.

Is the nihilist agenda to punish with bankruptcy the energy-using middle class? Is the hope that Americans will have to beg the Saudis, Iranians, Venezuelans, and Russians to pump more of the hated goo for our benefit so we would not have to dirty ourselves helping ourselves?

When Biden entered office in January 2021 the U.S. was naturally rebounding from more than a year of COVID-19-enforced lockdowns. Overtaxed supply chains were still fragile. Pent-up demand was soaring. Consumers were flush with government cash. Trillions of dollars had been printed and infused into the economy to ward off a feared recession. All economists advised not to increase the deficit, spike further consumer demand, and expand entitlements. Instead, the Left did just the opposite.

Four-trillion dollars were printed and distributed. In no time, Americans, recovering from COVID-19, next experienced the worst, but entirely preventable, inflation in 40 years. Three years later prices on staples remain 30%-40% higher than when Biden took office. Mortgage rates tripled.

Abroad the nihilism is even more inexplicable and terrifying. All nations suffer military setbacks. But none in memory have shamefully hightailed out of a theater as we did from Afghanistan. Few countries could even imagine discarding billions of dollars of weapons and hardware into the hands of the terrorist Taliban, or abandoning a $1 billion new embassy, and a huge, remodeled air base.

Why did the administration simply allow a huge Chinese spy balloon to float and photograph leisurely over the continental U.S.? Naive countries might endure two or three attacks on their overseas bases without serious retaliation. But how could the U.S. military permit 135 rocket barrages by Iranian-supplied terrorists on American soldiers without a major and sustained response?

Is the point to humiliate our own troops? To destroy what is left of U.S. deterrence?

Popular culture is especially captive to leftist nihilism. It is not enough to object to a statue or artwork. Instead, without deliberation or public input, they must be defaced or destroyed, all the better stealthily and by night.

After the massacres of Oct. 7—but well before Israel had even responded to the barbaric invasion—thousands of students swarmed their elite universities cheering on the violence. And what so exhilarated them? The nihilist, ghoulish beheading, torture, mutilation, mass rape, dismemberment, and necrophilia of unarmed, civilian Israeli elderly, women, children, and infants.

In sum, we are witnessing an epidemic of leftist nihilism similar to the 16th-century European mad wave of iconoclastic destruction of religious art.

Or is the better parallel the suicidal insanity that Mao Zedong unleashed during his cultural revolution of the 1960s?

The old politics of Right versus Left, and Republican opposed to Democrat have now given way to a new existential struggle: Americans must choose between civilization—or its destroyers.

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MORE HISPANIC VOTERS REALIZING THEY’RE CONSERVATIVE DUE TO FAMILY AND FAITH, SPANISH-LANGUAGE RADIO STAR SAYS

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Chuck DeVore Op-ed: As Biden’s border collapses, South Texas Hispanics move away from Democrats

By Chuck DeVore Fox News | Published December 13, 2023 8:00am EST

The Law of Unintended Consequences is a public policy constant. Few lawmakers, politicians or academics are wise enough to look beyond their own biases or the next election to grasp the potential follow-on effects of their actions. But in President Biden’s complete surrender of control on our southern border to Mexican drug and human trafficking cartels, we can see political consequences unfolding in real time.

On Dec. 7, Fox News’s Bill Melugin reported that the day before saw a record 12,000 migrant encounters on the southern border with more than 10,200 Border Patrol apprehensions of illegal immigrants.

The recent trends observed in Texas’s Rio Grande Valley, historically a Democratic stronghold, indicate a significant shift toward the Republican Party.

Fox’s Griff Jenkins added that Customs and Border Patrol reported that they had more than 535,000 since Oct. 1 with “more than 65,000 Known Gotaways – that’s nearly 1000/day – no idea who they are, where they’re from or why they’re here.”

Separately, John Rogers, a pollster with Cygnal, authored an opinion piece for the Dallas Morning News on Dec. 7 that contained findings from a poll of Hispanic voters. The key takeaway from the poll was a continued shift Hispanic voters to the Republican Party in Texas’ Rio Grande Valley.

What caused that shift? According to Rogers, it was “…the Democratic Party’s embrace of progressive stances on immigration, the economy, crime and foreign policy.”

TRUMP GAINING GROUND AMONG HISPANIC VOTERS, POLL SHOWS

The implications for Texas are striking. The Rio Grande Valley contributes a bit more than 3% of the vote in Texas, with about 90% of region’s 1.4 million people being Hispanic – specifically, Tejanos.

Contrary to Democrats’ desire to see Hispanics as a monolithic voting bloc, Tejanos have their own priorities, with 67% holding a favorable view of the U.S. Border Patrol and 61% wanting an “enforcement-based approach” to immigration laws – compared to only 28% who prefer an “amnesty-centered approach.”

But immigration takes second place to the economy, and views on Biden’s economy fare better, with 43% trusting the Democratic Party’s policy prescriptions over 40% for the Republican Party. So, if Bidenflation doesn’t rear its ugly head in the form of higher gas and food prices over the next 11 months, Biden may have a chance with this contingent.

As Rogers notes, “The Democratic Party is increasingly urban and progressive, with an activist base focused on electorally niche issues like gender identity and an economic message that income inequality has killed the American dream.”

But, Rogers concludes, “69% of Hispanic voters in the Valley believe the American dream remains achievable,” leaving South Texas Hispanics “…open to the GOP.”

The shifting political landscape in the Rio Grande Valley, particularly among Hispanic voters, presents a complex picture that reflects broader national trends in immigration policy and political affiliation.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM CHUCK DEVORE

The recent trends observed in Texas’s Rio Grande Valley, historically a Democratic stronghold, indicate a significant shift toward the Republican Party, particularly in the context of the 2024 presidential election.

The larger political question is what might happen in other Hispanic communities across America as the Democrats’ White and woke intellectual elite continues its long march to the left.

Chuck DeVore is a vice president with the Texas Public Policy Foundation, was elected to the California legislature, is a retired U.S. Army lieutenant colonel, and the author of the new book, “Crisis of the House Never United.”

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Victor Davis Hanson @VDHanson

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Summing Up Politically INCORRECT Cartoons for the Week of December 1st, 2023

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HUMOR, Opinion, Political

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Victor Davis Hanson Op-ed: The Unhinged Among Us

Victor Davis Hanson / @VDHanson / December 01, 2023

Pro-Palestinian demonstrators hold up signs saying — Why are millions of people around the world supporting Hamas, the reincarnation of the Nazi SS? Hamas targets civilians for murder and rape; uses its own civilians as human shields; and hides beneath hospitals, schools, and churches. Pictured: Members of the Palestinian Youth Movement gather outside of the President’s Park to stage a pro-Palestinian demonstration and demand a ceasefire in Gaza during the National Christmas tree lighting in Washington D.C., on Nov. 30. (Photo: Celal Gunes, Anadolu/Getty Images)

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Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, and author of the book “The Second World Wars: How the First Global Conflict Was Fought and Won.” You can reach him by e-mailing authorvdh@gmail.com.

Oct. 7 should have been an open-and-shut case of moral condemnation. During peace and holiday, invading Hamas gunmen murdered, tortured, mass-raped, decapitated, and mutilated some 1,200 Israelis. The vast majority were unarmed women, children, infants, and the elderly. The cowardly murderers proudly filmed their atrocities and then fled back to Gaza—to cheers from the Gaza street.

Before Israel even retaliated, the mass murdering of Jews earned praise from the Middle East, the international hard Left, and especially the faculty and students of elite Western campuses.

When the Israel Defense Forces struck back, the killers dispersed to the safety of their multibillion-dollar subterranean cities. The cowardly elite architects of the mass murder fled to Arab sanctuaries in Lebanon and Qatar. From its headquarters burrowed below hospitals, mosques, and schools, Hamas bartered hostages for a reprieve from the Israel Defense Forces and the release of its own convicted terrorists in Israeli jails. Hamas shot any of its own supporters who refused to shield Hamas gunmen. It continued launching rockets at Israeli civilian centers. It serially lied about its casualties, expropriating intended relief food and fuel for its underground tunnel city of killers.

Abroad, Hamas supporters also emulated the methods of the pro-Nazi demonstrators in Western cities of the 1930s. Unlike their pro-Israel critics, the pro-Hamas demonstrators in the U.S. and Europe turned violent. They took over and defaced private and public property. They chanted genocidal antisemitic slogans calling for erasure of the nation of Israel. They interrupted shoppers, blocked highways, attacked businesses, and swarmed bridges. They assaulted police. The majority wore masks to hide their identities in the fashion of antisemitic Klansmen.

Why did the doctrinaire Left, the youth of the Democratic Party, and the campuses outdo each other in their antisemitic venom toward Israel? For the first time in their lives, many of the ignorant protesters suddenly professed concern about refugees, colonialism, disproportionality, innocent civilians, and the rules of war. But none could explain why the Palestinians who fled Israel in 1947-48 still self-identify as victimized “refugees” when 900,000 Jews ethnically cleansed from Middle East Arab cities about the same time do not.

The 200,000 Greek Cypriots driven out from northern Cyprus by Turkey apparently do not warrant “refugee” status either.

Few protesters knew that Jews have lived in present-day Israel for over three millennia. The longest colonialist presence there was Muslim Turks who brutally ran the Holy Land for 300 years until they lost in World War I and were expelled.

How exactly did it happen that the eighth-century A.D. Al-Aqsa Mosque was built within King Herod’s earlier Second Temple enclosure?

The pro-Hamas crowd has little appreciation that colonizing Arab Muslims have one of history’s longest records of “settling” other countries far from their historic birthland.

They “settled” and “colonized” the Hellenistic, Roman, and Byzantine Middle East, Berber North Africa, and southern Spain. Millions of Middle Easterners migrated to—“settled?”—supposedly infidel European cities, where they often self-segregate and do not assimilate fully with their magnanimous hosts.

As far as “disproportionality”—it is the goal of every power at war, Hamas included.

What protesters are furious about is that Israel is more effective at being disproportionate in retaliation than Hamas and its Iranian supporters were in their preemptive mass murdering.

Targeting innocent civilians? Hamas is among the current greatest offenders in the world. It rockets Israeli cities without warning. It mass murders Jews in their beds during peace. It exposes Gazans to mortal danger by impressing them as human shields. Hamas shoots those who refuse.

The “rules of war” are violated by Hamas daily. Such protocols require combatants to wear uniforms so as not to blend in with civilians, not to use them as shields, not to murder noncombatants, not to rape them, not to mutilate them, and not to execute civilians without trial.

Why then would millions ally themselves with this odious reincarnation of the SS?

Are they ignorant of the history of the Middle East?

Are they arrogant since few challenge their hate and threats?

Are they opportunists who feel mouthing anti-Western shibboleths gains them career traction in leftist-run media, academia, and popular culture?

Are they bullies who count on the Western silent majority remaining quiet as they disrupt lives, trash Western tolerant culture, and commit violence?

Like Hamas that they support, do they despise Jews? Why else do they express an existential hatred toward Israelis that they never display to any other group?

Those now on the street utter not a peep about the Sudanese Arab mass killers in Darfur; Chinese oppressors of the Muslim Uyghurs; Russians targeting civilians in Ukraine; or ISIS, Syrian, and Yemeni murderers of fellow Muslims. Yet all of these terrorist killers are guilty of the very charges the protesters falsely attribute to Israel. But they are all not Jewish—and that explains the pass given them by our antisemitic, pro-Hamas street.

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MAJOR DEM DARK MONEY NONPROFIT POURED $150 MILLION INTO PROGRESSIVE CAUSES IN 2022, TAX FORMS SHOW

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Jason Rantz Op-ed: Seattle voters hike taxes to pay for leftist policies, then wonder why things get worse

By Jason Rantz Fox News | Published November 17, 2023 5:00am EST

Seattle residents have once again voted to raise the cost of housing to lower housing costs. If it sounds contradictory, you must be new to the Emerald City. Here, a liberal ethos prevails, with a penchant for endorsing any proposal cloaked in the mantle of progressivism.

Consider the Seattle Housing Levy as a case in point: a colossal program nearing $1 billion, earmarked for the construction of affordable housing. This levy did not simply extend a pre-existing tax from 2016; it more than tripled the tax rate from 14 cents to 45 cents per $1,000 of assessed property value.

Predictably, the levy passed with early voting results showing a commanding 66% support. The only firm number the levy commits to is a mere 3,200 new rental home constructions.

While it helps build some affordable housing, it also increases the cost of housing. Homeowners will see their property tax bills surge by roughly $400 annually. Tenants won’t be spared either, as these tax hikes are passed along via increased rents.

Seattle homeless — Andrea Suarez, executive director of We Heart Seattle, a non-profit that stages trash cleanups across the city, dismantles a tent as garbage lies piled at a homeless encampment in Seattle on March 13, 2022. The accumulation of garbage at such sites has become a major issue as the city tries to move the unhoused out of shared public spaces. (John Moore/Getty Images)

Adding insult to injury, the levy allocates $30 million for rental assistance to 4,500 tenants, yet the administrative costs to implement it are twice as much. This is in a city where the median house price has soared to $800,000, and where record-high fatal overdoses and a surge in homicides have marred the previous year’s statistics.

This trend mirrors the distressing trajectory of other Democrat-run cities, where residents pay a premium to live in areas that are deteriorating thanks to extreme leftist policies.

As I write about extensively in my new book, “What’s Killing America: Inside the Radical Left’s Tragic Destruction of Our Cities,” the progressive conviction is that housing is an inalienable human right. They use that belief to justify heavy-handed governmental interference in the housing market.

Despite the clear evidence that increased regulations and taxes have propelled the cost of living to exorbitant heights, the radical left remains steadfast in their dogma demanding higher taxes, conveniently sidestepping the fact that all of us are already contributing more than our “fair share.”

Landlords, often misperceived as affluent, are merely striving to earn a respectable living while providing affordable housing. Yet, they find themselves beleaguered by a system that disproportionately favors tenants, including those who are clearly gaming the system.

Seattle Grassroots Landlords is a local group of about 600 that connect on social media “to support each other and to prevent the ongoing degradation of rental housing options in Seattle.” Independent landlord Charlotte Thistle told me on my Seattle-based radio show that 17 new laws implemented citywide and statewide over the last three years have made the job nearly impossible. She highlighted the bureaucratic labyrinth that can result in a yearlong process and $20,000 in legal fees to remove a disruptive occupant.

Jason Roth, another landlord, learned this the hard way. After his tenant allegedly stopped paying rent, sublet the property on Airbnb and flaunted his exploits on social media, Roth found himself homeless, with his court case to evict postponed for months due to the tenant invoking the claim of being low-income. It triggered the system to offer him even more benefits.

Thistle and Roth’s experiences have prompted them, along with many others, to pull their properties from the market. This landlord exodus, in a state that penalizes property ownership, only serves to inflate rental costs further.

Democrats’ response is to pour tax dollars into affordable housing, but there’s a problem with relying on the wealthy to “pay their fair share” (whatever that is). They leave.

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos announced this month that he’s leaving the Seattle area for Miami, to be closer to his parents and partner. It’s hard to ignore a striking difference between Washington and Florida.

Washington Democrats passed a statewide capital gains tax, managing to convince an eager state Supreme Court to redefine income taxes, which are unconstitutional here, so that they could get more tax dollars from the wealthy.

They bizarrely claimed it’s an excise tax, before justifying their position by arguing their new definition is necessary because the state’s “upside-down tax system perpetuates systemic racism by placing a disproportionate tax burden on BIPOC residents.”

This trend mirrors the distressing trajectory of other Democrat-run cities, where residents pay a premium to live in areas that are deteriorating thanks to extreme leftist policies.

Before the tax took effect, Bezos sold more than 1.3 million Amazon shares, sparing him about $1.1 billion in taxes. He won’t have to worry about this in Florida. Moreover, Seattle wants to implement an additional capital gains tax and Democrats in the legislature are eyeing a wealth tax.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM JASON RANTZ

Democrats believe the homelessness crisis is due to the high costs of homes. But they also believe housing developers and landlords are wealthy, privileged and greedy. This perspective has led to punitive regulations and a reliance on government agencies to manage housing “the right way.” Yet, there is scant evidence to suggest that these measures are making the housing market more accessible. On the contrary, the situation continues to deteriorate.

Maybe if they stopped “helping” so much, let the market operate with fewer impediments, we’d have housing for everyone. But Seattle voters seem eager to keep getting in the way of progress with more taxes.

Jason Rantz, author of What’s Killing America: Inside the Radical Left’s Tragic Destruction of Our Cities, is a Seattle-based talk show host on KTTH Radio. Follow him on Twitter @JasonRantz.

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NEW STUDY FINDS AMERICAN HISTORY COLLEGE COURSES AMPLIFY DIVISIVE MOMENTS WHILE IGNORING POSITIVE ACTIONS

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Gregg Jarrett Op-ed Book Review: It’s time to revive the American spirit. Here’s how we start

By Gregg Jarrett Fox News | Published November 14, 2023 8:00am EST

In my new book, “The Constitution of the United States and Other Patriotic Documents,” readers can rediscover what made America a luminous beacon of hope for liberty, prosperity, and justice throughout the world.

Since before its founding, our country has been blessed with extraordinary leaders who steeled our resolve for independence. They invented a new form of government by the people and for the people. Each brought different skills and talents to the cause of freedom. Those who followed guided us ably through more than two centuries of often treacherous challenges and grave threats. It is a story best told through the lens of historic documents that have been honored and preserved for our national heritage.

In this unique collector’s edition, the writings, speeches, and letters of our founders and their successors are carefully selected and explained. The important promises and navigating principles that shaped our great nation can be read in full. Over time, others helped transform public sentiment to advance equality and opportunity, empowering generations that followed. Their eloquent beliefs and convictions are also included.

The American experiment had its genesis in the power of words and ideas. We owe our unparalleled success to the exemplary statesmen – and women – who expressed them. Bold and transcendent figures defined what it is to be an American and to control our own destinies. Their dynamic opinions, steadfast faith, and inspiring arguments are revisited in this volume as a salute to our nation’s enduring triumph.

The durability of our constitutional republic and the rights we enjoy today also serve as a shining testimonial to the moral courage and intellectual brilliance of our forebearers. We are their grateful beneficiaries. Absorbing their wisdom enriches our appreciation for the lives we enjoy and our love of country.

Gregg Jarrett The Constitution Revised book cover

Among the essential patriotic documents contained in the book, we revisit seminal moments in the American journey. For example…

*As Patrick Henry stirred the nation with his passionate vow, “Give me liberty or give me death,” it was the inexorable logic and “common sense” of Thomas Paine that galvanized Americans to declare their independence when he wrote, “Resolution is our inherent character, and courage hath never forsaken us.”

*John Adams cautioned that only the ballot box in a representative democracy would prevent men in power from becoming “ravenous beasts of prey.” He argued that “The happiness of society is the end (goal) of government.”

*While Ben Franklin expressed sober misgivings about the Constitution, Alexander Hamilton and James Madison penned a brilliant set of essays known as The Federalist Papers that led to its adoption. Madison acknowledged the flaws of our system when he wrote, “That which is the least imperfect is therefore the best government.”

Statue at UPENN — A statue of Benjamin Franklin, founder of the University of Pennsylvania, on the school’s campus in Philadelphia, March 15, 2007. (Mike Mergen/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

*As he left office, a prescient George Washington warned that divisive political parties would become “potent engines of unprincipled men” who would “undermine freedom and enfeeble good governance.” He vigorously counseled against them, to no avail.

*Frederick Douglass, an escaped slave, abolitionist icon, and confidant of Lincoln delivered a powerful lament on the hypocrisy of American slavery by arguing that “We, the people” does not mean “We, the white people.” In plain language he deplored the cruelty and depravation that rendered “four million of our fellow countrymen in chains…and sold on the auction-block with horses, sheep, and swine.”

*In one of the greatest acts of moral courage Abraham Lincoln proclaimed “that all persons held as slaves shall be forever free.” At Gettysburg, he reminded Americans that “all men are created equal.” In his Second Inaugural he sought to salve the wounds of war by uttering the words, “With malice toward none, with charity for all.”

Abraham Lincoln (Library of Congress Prints and Photographs)

*As the suffrage movement gained momentum, Elizabeth Cady Stanton condemned the tyranny of sexism, leaving “women to feel aggrieved, oppressed, and deprived of their most sacred rights.” Victoria C. Woodhull correctly argued that “the Constitution makes no distinction of sex” and “women are the equals of men.” In a much acclaimed speech, Susan B. Anthony, who was indicted for casting a ballot, posed the vexing question, “Is it a crime for a citizen of the United States to vote?”

*At the dawn of the 20th century, Theodore Roosevelt shattered the Gilded Age of ruthless monopolists and robber barons with his promise of a “square deal for every man, big or small, rich or poor.” Drawing from the principles of Lincoln, Roosevelt moved aggressively and successfully against corporate corruption and what he called “the sinister influence or control of special interests” in government.

Teddy Roosevelt president — Theodore Roosevelt, the 26th president of the United States (The Associated Press)

*His relative, Franklin Roosevelt, saw the nation through immense suffering in the Great Depression by reassuring Americans, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” His innovative fireside chats buoyed the spirits of a nation in despair. When the U.S. was attacked by Japan on Dec. 7, 1941, Roosevelt delivered his famous “a date which will live in infamy” address before Congress. He vowed that “The American people in their righteous might will win through to absolute victory.”

*As Germany initiated World War II in Europe, the renowned theoretical physicist, Albert Einstein, sent a secret letter to Roosevelt warning him that the Nazis were attempting to develop a new and frighteningly powerful weapon —an atomic bomb. Einstein’s alarming missive triggered the covert operation by the U.S. to build its own weapon in the highly classified Manhattan Project.

Einstein becomes citizen — Albert Einstein takes his oath of allegiance upon becoming a U.S. citizen in federal court in Trenton, New Jersey, in 1940, alongside his daughter Margot, right, and his secretary, Helene Dukas. (Getty Images)

*When Harry S. Truman ordered two atomic bombs dropped on Japan he revealed to the nation that “The force from which the sun draws its power has been loosed against those who brought war to the Far East.”

*In the face of Soviet aggression, Dwight D. Eisenhower sought peace through strength by urging a halt to nuclear proliferation as he warned, “Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.”

*Ronald Reagan became the unabashed voice of conservatism and opened his presidency with a masterful address declaring, “Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.” He precipitated the end of the Cold War when he challenged the Soviets to remove the physical barrier in Berlin. “Mr. Gorbechev, tear down this wall,” Reagan demanded. Two years later, the wall came tumbling down. And so did the communist empire.

The common denominator among all these exceptional men and women was their abiding faith in our country’s greatness fortified by a devotion to patriotism. In their memorable words, Americans found both solace and inspiration. We still can.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM GREGG JARRETT

The virtues, aspirations, and ideals they so elegantly expressed are rediscovered in my new book, “The Constitution of the United States and Other Patriotic Documents.” It is a living testimonial for American patriots who are immensely proud of our foundational desire for a unified nation dedicated to freedom, prosperity, and justice for all. We continue to seek ways to improve the human experience and strive for “a more perfect union.”

In an era when too many have forgotten our country’s remarkable past, the noble ideas and uplifting words of these exceptional leaders are needed now more than ever to rekindle the indomitable American spirit.

Gregg Jarrett is a Fox News legal analyst and commentator, and formerly worked as a defense attorney and adjunct law professor. His recent book, “The Trial of the Century,” about the famous “Scopes Monkey Trial” is available in bookstores nationwide or can be ordered online at the Simon & Schuster website. Jarrett’s latest book, “The Constitution of the United States and Other Patriotic Documents,” was published by Broadside Books, a division of HarperCollins on November 14, 2023. Gregg is the author of the No. 1 New York Times best-selling book “The Russia Hoax: The Illicit Scheme to Clear Hillary Clinton and Frame Donald Trump.” His follow-up book was also a New York Times bestseller, “Witch Hunt: The Story of the Greatest Mass Delusion in American Political History.”

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Opinion, Patriotic, Political

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John Stossel Op-ed: Canceling Cancel Culture

John Stossel / @JohnStossel / November 08, 2023

“I self-censored,” says 23-year-old Rikki Schlott about how she handled being a right-leaning libertarian at New York University. Pictured: People walk past NYU on Oct. 30, 2023, in New York City. (Photo: Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

“I was not genuine in my own beliefs,” says 23-year-old Rikki Schlott in my new video. “I self-censored.”

Why? What did this college student believe that was so unacceptable that she felt she had to hide it?

The fact that she’s a right-leaning libertarian.

“I was afraid to have Thomas Sowell and Jordan Peterson books on my bookshelf.”

If her classmates at NYU saw that, she says, she might have been “verbally attacked on social media, maligned as whatever ‘ist’ or ‘ism’ people might attack me with.”

So Schlott kept her mouth shut, eventually dropping out of NYU.

I ask her, “If you were doing it again, you’d speak out?”

“I did speak out! Here I am!” She responds.

By “here,” she means my TV studio, where I interviewed her about a new book she co-wrote titled, “The Canceling of the American Mind.” It details how cancel culture grew into a serious problem on campuses.

Examples:

A teacher in Virginia lost his job for calling a transgender student “she.”

At Hamline University, an art history lecturer lost her job simply for showing a painting of Muhammad.

A University of Virginia med student was banished from campus for merely questioning the importance of “microaggressions.”

Then such idiocy spread beyond campuses.

A Levi Strauss executive felt she had to resign because employees objected to her tweets criticizing COVID-19 school closures and mask mandates for children.

The Philadelphia Inquirer’s top editor was forced to resign after approving an article titled “Buildings Matter Too,” after Black Lives Matter rioters burned down buildings. Some at the paper called his headline “extremely inappropriate” and “tone-deaf.”

And so on.

Now some want to punish people who defend Hamas. Others want to silence Israel’s defenders.

Schlott argues that America needs more free speech, even if it’s hateful. “Being a true free speech champion does require that you defend speech that even you disagree with.”

Schlott’s co-author on “The Canceling of the American Mind” works for the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. FIRE argues that everything can be said, as long as it’s not direct incitement of violence, willful negligence, or defamation.

Schlott tells me, “You are well within your First Amendment rights to cancel people and to malign them on social media. But the question is, ‘Do we want to live in a culture where that is our first reaction?’”

She points out that her generation started tweeting when they were kids, and many posted stupid things.

“Young people need to be able to screw up.”

Maybe. But based on what I see on my news feeds, it’s people her age who are most eager to “cancel” people.

“It is true that younger Americans tend to be more pro-cancel culture,” she replies. “Millennials have the most positive view, and as you get older, it goes lower and lower. But Gen Z (ages 11 to 26) completely switches that around. Only 8% have a positive view of it. That’s because if you’re a young person who grows up in a graceless society, you’re always looking behind your back. You see friends torn down on social media. You’re not going to want to live in a world like that.”

I push back. “But they perpetuate a world like that!”

“It’s a tyranny of the minority,” she replies. “One squeaky wheel scares the life out of everyone else. Then we self-censor.”

She did that in college.

Students like her kept their mouths shut because they didn’t want to be reported as “biased.” NYU officials, like the secret police in East Germany, even encouraged students to report on others.

She tells me, “When I got to NYU, the first thing I had to do was go pick up my ID card. I found on the back the emergency number, in case you’re in danger, and a bias response hotline in case you’re offended. The university itself sanctioned the idea that you can snitch on your peers.”

She says it’s time for students to push back against school censorship.

“We need to say we want to live in a free speech culture. … Courage is contagious. As soon as I spoke out at NYU, people came out of the woodwork to say, ‘Thank you for saying that! I completely agree with you.’”

COMMENTARY BY

John Stossel @JohnStossel

John Stossel is the creator of Stossel TV videos, and author of “No They Can’t! Why Government Fails—But Individuals Succeed.”

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Culture, Opinion

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Sarah Huckabee Sanders Op-ed: Why people are leaving California for Arkansas

By Sarah Huckabee Sanders Fox News | Published November 7, 2023 5:00am EST

Ask people why they’re leaving blue states like California, and they’ll give you a lot of answers: more freedom, a lower cost of living, a more family-friendly quality of life. But a lot of them are just tired. Tired of the lockdowns, tired of the crime, tired of the preening politicians who won’t do anything to address the real issues they’re facing.

As governor of Arkansas, I’ve had my chance to ask that question a lot of times. That’s because our state has received a steady influx of new residents for years. Today, there are thousands of California refugees – and thousands more from other states – in our state.

Govs Newson and Sanders — California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders (Getty Images)

This year alone, about 32,000 new people moved to Arkansas, about 10% of them from California. Arkansas is now one of the top five states for inbound migration. And the flow isn’t slowing down anytime soon.

SARAH SANDERS WADES INTO ‘CRUCIAL’ KENTUCKY GOVERNOR RACE AS REPUBLICANS LOOK TO FLIP SECOND SEAT FROM DEMS

That’s because my administration is focused on the reforms that will make Arkansas the best state in the country to live, work and raise a family.

Just in my first few months in office, we passed the boldest education reforms in the country, including universal school choice, cut taxes not once, but twice, and are making historic investments in outdoor recreation. We’re cracking down on crime, getting woke nonsense out of our schools, and keeping kids safe online.

SARAH HUCKABEE SANDERS TO SIGN EXECUTIVE ORDER ELIMINATING ‘WOKE, ANTI-WOMEN WORDS’ FROM STATE GOVERNMENT USE

I think these changes will be the icing on the cake for those who are already looking at how good we have it in Arkansas. Take our cost of living, for example. It’s nearly 40% cheaper to live in Little Rock than in Los Angeles. Housing is about 60% less expensive; health care is 15% cheaper. Imagine a family struggling to eke it out in California. For $500,000 – no small sum – they could afford a tiny fixer-upper in East LA. With that money in Little Rock, you could get a modern, 4,000-square-foot, custom-built home in one of our best neighborhoods.

Taxes are another way we beat our coastal competition. Already this year, we cut the top individual income tax rate twice and built the groundwork to phase out the state income tax entirely. Our tax rate is about a third of that in California and going down.

ARKANSAS HIGH COURT SIDES WITH GOV. SANDERS, STATE LAWMAKERS IN EDUCATION OVERHAUL CASES

We’re able to slash taxes so heavily because our economy is booming, creating billion-dollar surpluses. As taxes continue to fall, our economy will continue to rise – the opposite of the Left Coast’s downward spiral.

But moving to Arkansas isn’t just a pocketbook decision – it’s about quality of life as well. As 48 million people discovered for themselves in 2022, Arkansas is, for good reason, the Natural State. From world-class duck hunting to fly-fishing, there are outdoor adventures for everyone – many of which are located just minutes from our urban centers.

Arkansas’ 52 state parks are free to residents and visitors alike and offer a host of outdoor opportunities right at your doorstep. Four of Arkansas’ state parks – Mount Nebo State Park, Hobbs State Park, Pinnacle Mountain State Park, and Devil’s Den State Park – host a collection of world-class mountain biking trails known as the Monument Trails that Outside Magazine just named the best in America.

Arkansas is God’s country. I firmly believe that you haven’t lived until you float the clear, free-flowing waters of the Buffalo River through the Ozark Mountains or watch a sunrise on a duck hunt in flooded timber.

Arkansas is also the land of opportunity, where Sam Walton grew a little five-and-dime store into the most successful business on the face of the earth.

Arkansas is the home of legends like Al Green and Johnny Cash who pioneered a new American sound. It’s where Daisy Bates and the Little Rock Nine struck a blow against racism and blazed a trail for civil rights.

Arkansas is my home, and we’d love to welcome you here too, as a tourist, as an investor, and even as our newest neighbor. Come and see what we have to offer. I promise you won’t regret it.

Sarah Huckabee Sanders is the 47th governor of Arkansas.

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5 REASONS VIRGINIA IS THE STATE TO WATCH ON ELECTION NIGHT 2023

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Mary Katharine Ham Op-ed: Could Virginia be a blueprint for a Republican red wave in 2024?

By Mary Katharine Ham | OutKick | Published November 6, 2023 2:59pm EST

Editor’s note: The following column was first published on OutKick.

On a sunny, brisk weekday in Sterling, Va., state senate candidate Juan Pablo Segura is on a world tour of sorts. Andres Ruiz, a pastor who works with Segura’s campaign on Latino outreach, gestured to a block of strip-mall of restaurants with a grin. “See? You can go from Peru to Bolivia, Mexico, and around the corner is Venezuela!”

Segura, a Republican entrepreneur vying to be Virginia’s first Latin-American state senator, is courting the immigrant community in the competitive 31st Senate District, a bid to earn both new and disaffected voters in a population he says Democrats have taken for granted. Last week, it was working.

Control of the Virginia House and Senate hang in the balance in this midterm test of Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s appeal and record in this purple state. The operation is a test-run of the GOP’s message and its ability to avoid the pitfalls that plagued the party in 2020 and 2022.

It could also be a chance to capitalize on President Biden’s losses among Hispanic voters, where the president’s lead has fallen from 12 points in NYT battleground polling to single digits since September. It’s part of a larger shift among all nonwhite voters since 2020, where Biden has seen almost a 20 percent drop in support. If Republicans can attempt to woo them, it would happen in swing districts like the one where Segura is pounding the pavement.

Twenty-year-old Katie Rivas, working the register at her father’s small Loudoun County market, said she was excited to cast her very first vote for Segura next week at her former high school. Edgar Martinez, an administrator at a local church, said he’s been in Virginia more than 30 years, but this will be his first vote for state senate.

HISPANIC VOTERS SAY THEY’RE ‘RUNNING AWAY’ FROM BIDEN: ‘BIG CUP OF JOE OVERFLOWING WITH INFLATION’

“Republican principles are in a lot of ways immigrant principles,” Segura said, referencing the newly redrawn district’s 14% Latino population, along with double-digit Asian and multiracial segments. “This race is really a microcosm for what the coalition can look like.”

VIRGINIA’S ELECTIONS A KEY 2024 BAROMETER AND A HUGE TEST FOR RISING GOP STAR GLENN YOUNGKIN

Control of the Virginia House and Senate hang in the balance in this midterm test of Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s appeal and record in this purple state. The operation is also a test-run of the GOP’s message and its ability to avoid the pitfalls that plagued the party in 2020 and 2022.

Every state seat is up for grabs, but the competitive universe is about seven Senate seats (either party must win 4 for control) and 10 Delegate seats. Republicans currently hold the House and Democrats, the Senate.

Control of the Virginia House and Senate hang in the balance in this midterm test of Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s appeal and record in this purple state. The operation is also a test-run of the GOP’s message and its ability to avoid the pitfalls that plagued the party in 2020 and 2022.

As Segura walked the district, he chatted in his fluent Spanish with a pair of women enjoying Peruvian chicken as a telenovela played on the restaurant TV, and a group of 20-somethings at a Mexican restaurant’s bar. These voters shared with him a mix of economic concerns, wariness of Democrats on social issues and public safety, particularly among church-going Latinos, and pride in potentially electing a member of the Latin community. Segura is a native Virginian whose family hails from Argentina.

Youngkin on stage — Virginia Governor Glen Youngkin addresses the Economic Club of Washington’s luncheon event at the Marriott Marquis on September 26, 2023, in Washington, D.C. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

In 2022, national issue polling showed Republicans with commanding leads in what voters cared about, but the party couldn’t overcome candidate quality issues and a top-down aversion to early voting. The expected red wave never washed ashore.

This year in Virginia, “top issues for Republicans and Independents…are the economy and inflation, at 41% and 30% respectively, while Democrats said abortion is their highest concern, at 25%.”

On a recent weekend, door-knockers with Americans for Prosperity walked pumpkin-dotted porches in Northern Virginia, politely crossing paths with activists for Segura’s Democratic opponent, Russett Perry. Reaching people on the economy, education, and public safety with “policy leaders who believe in freedom and opportunity,” is what voters want, said C.J. Sailor, state director of AFP, who says the organization tallied more than 700,000 voter contacts in the cycle. “It’s so important to connect with voters about what’s at stake.”

HISPANICS ARE RUNNING AWAY FROM DEMOCRATS. BIDENOMICS IS MAKING THINGS EVEN WORSE

Youngkin’s state operation has done three things to prevent a repeat of 2022 and preserve the term-limited executive’s chance at expanding his legislative agenda. They worked on candidate quality, going 10-for-10 in contested primaries where Youngkin backed a candidate.

“We really focused on finding good candidates that could run good campaigns, that could effectively communicate what they want to do in Richmond and who would be good public servants,” said Dave Rexrode, a senior adviser to Youngkin.

The state party rolled out an early-voting effort in July they say got buy-in from candidates, the state party, and local activists. The push has ruffled feathers in Segura’s district, where the area’s liberal prosecutor cease-and-desist letter over having a mariachi band and a taco truck at one of his “early-vote fiestas.” Segura said such events have been attracting hundreds of new and infrequent voters, which is what Republicans must do to win these uphill-climb districts.

“We’re certainly seeing a lot of good progress, and I think it’s gonna pay dividends for us in these targeted races where the margins are going to be incredibly close,” Rexrode said.

Finally, the party’s operation spent money early defining candidates positively while Youngkin himself staked out a “compassionate consensus” position on abortion— a 15-week limit with exceptions— that gave Republican candidates a position to embrace, making it harder for Democratic opponents to claim they want the kind of early bans that risked swing and suburban voters in 2022.

“One of the big lessons learned from 2022 is we can’t just let Democrats get way with their fear-mongering on the issue,” Rexrode said. “We have to clearly articulate where we stand on the issue but also explain where they stand on the issue,” which he said represents only a very small minority of Virginia voters.

Segura and the rest of the battleground candidates also hope to be buoyed by Youngkin’s popularity. Youngkin’s approval rating has been above 50 percent all year and goes as high as 60% with Independent voters. Notably absent from the constant attack ads on Virginia TV and radio are attacks on the governor himself. Instead, many Democrats are running on promises to work across the aisle with the governor.

Youngkin was propelled to the governor’s mansion in 2021 on his own political savvy and a normie-dad vibe, bolstered by a series of missteps by Virginia Democrats. Most notably, former Gov. Terry McAulliffe threw in with teachers’ unions to keep schools closed for more than a year during the pandemic, and pooh-poohed parents’ concerns, making parental rights an issue that still resonates in a place like Loudoun County, which became ground zero for education fights. Joshua Raimundo, strategic director with the LIBRE initiative in Virginia, said education is a top issue for Hispanic voters in the state, who favor school choice in large numbers.

“They (Democrats) have forgotten the Latino,” Martinez said as he showed Segura out of the church lobby and back into the autumn sun. “We are traditional values. I don’t see the Democrats support that anymore at all. We want to see you at the state to help Glenn Youngkin!”

Next week, we’ll find out whether new messengers, a popular governor, and a conversion on early voting can improve on the GOP’s 2022 performance and lay the groundwork for this battleground state in 2024.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM MARY KATHARINE HAM

Mary Katharine Ham is an OutKick columnist. She is a writer, speaker, and Georgia Bulldog who built patience and resilience waiting 41 years for a national championship and now uses those skills to parent four children. She hosts a podcast called “Getting Hammered.”

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Paul Sacca is a staff writer for Blaze News.@Paul_Sacca →

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‘The media CANNOT stop lying’: Mark Levin blasts several media outlets for running hit piece on his Holocaust remarks

By: PAUL SACCA | NOVEMBER 05, 2023

Mark Levin skewered the media for publishing articles against him regarding his comments about the Jewish heritage of a CNN anchor.

On Thursday, far-left outlet, Media Matters, ran an hit piece castigating Levin for comments he made on his radio show earlier this week. CNN published an article on Friday echoing the sentiments of the Media Matters story. The writer of the piece, Oliver Darcy, requested a comment from the White House – which also condemned Levin and Fox News.

“Not only is Fox News aligning with those who fan the flames of hate – Fox is paying their salaries,” said Andrew Bates – deputy White House press secretary. “Lying to insult the pain that families suffered in the Holocaust has absolutely no place in America. None. Sadly, this is not the first time in recent months that a Fox News host made sickening remarks about the Holocaust.”

Several other media outlets ran with the story – including the Washington Post, the Times of Israel, and the Daily Beast, Mediaite, the Washington Examiner. The media outlets took a quote from Levin from the Wednesday episode of “The Mark Levin Show.” During the episode, Levin slammed CNN anchors Wolf Blitzer and Jake Tapper, and said CNN is “filled with a lot of self-hating Jews.”

The media outlets ran stories from the following quote from Levin:

Wolf Blitzer, as I understand it, his parents weren’t victims in one way or another, of the Holocaust. But certainly his family comes out of that background — but you wouldn’t know it. Because the ideology of the left is very attractive. It’s very compelling, particularly if you’re in media.

Blitzer’s parents came to the United States as refugees from Poland after surviving the Nazi era and all four of his grandparents were murdered during the Holocaust.

A CNN spokesperson framed Levin’s quote as “wildly uninformed, inappropriate and shameful,” “dangerous,” and “anti-Semitic rhetoric.”

However, Levin clarified his wording on Thursday’s episode of his show and pointed out how the word “weren’t” doesn’t make sense in the context of his commentary:

Let’s stop for a second. When I take a breath, when I’m saying something and I’m passionate. I take a breath. Now you can hear that they say worth it if you’re really listening and you want it to say where it is so that you can hear it to say weren’t. I barely even remember saying it. So we’ve played it. We’ve got the audio you can twist it to say weren’t. But obviously, why would I say his parents weren’t in one way or another. Victims in the Holocaust. How can that even be logical? Why would I say somebody’s parents were or were not victims of the Holocaust? If they weren’t victims of the Holocaust, why would they say his parents weren’t victims of the Holocaust? Or why would I intentionally say that I didn’t? I didn’t. In the second sentence, but certainly as family comes out of that background. Clarifies exactly what I’m talking about. So, they take that and say Levin denies. They’re Wolf Blitzer’s parents. We’re in the Holocaust, which I’ve since looked up, and they were at Auschwitz, and it’s the grandparents were killed there. Which is a horrible, horrible thing. In fact, some of the people who’ve been taken back into Gaza. We’re Holocaust survivors in Israel. Some of the people murdered were Holocaust survivors. And of course, my point is you have a background like that. And you might and you ask Hakeem question. Hakeem Jeffries a question like this. It’s shocking to me, especially as a Jew. It is shocking to me. And so that now, ladies and gentlemen, causes CNN, which was contacted by, I think, The Daily Beast, another leftist Marxist operation. And here’s what CNN said. Quote. And by the way, it’s anonymous. We don’t even know who at CNN said it.

Levin – who is Jewish – blasted the media for citing Media Matters – the progressive outlet that targets conservatives and has received funding from George Soros.

“NEVER AGAIN, MEDIA, WHETHER YOU LIKE IT OR NOT,” Levin wrote on the X social media platform. “The media CANNOT stop lying, using Soros’s Media Matters as their source and using their spin, the sickening statement from an anonymous CNN spokesman, then, of course, the Washington Post (which was silent during most of the Holocaust), and now, to top it off, a Biden regime propagandist.”

Levin continued, “It won’t work as they hang on the words ‘were’ and ‘weren’t.’ The media have been horrendous in their coverage of the Oct. 7 slaughter of Israeli Jews and their subsequent use of Hamas lies, including the notorious reporting about the Gaza hospital, which they blamed on Israel, the use of Hamas statistics, the regurgitation of Biden administration talking points, and relentless insinuations and worse about Israel and its military killing civilians.”

The host of “The Mark Levin Show” said, “The New York Times and Washington Post essentially covered up the Holocaust as it was occurring. The Times issued a quasi-apology in 2001 (the Post still has said nothing to the best of my knowledge, some 80 years later).”

The Blaze Media personality declared, “I will not allow the corporate media, and their numerous propagandists, to get away with their hate and lies. Never again will the media be free to push a hateful narrative without pushback from me and conservatives like me. They can try and use the words were’ or weren’t’ to distract from what is really happening, and ask a Biden lapdog staffer for his input, but it will not work.”

He said all the media does is “twist, spin, deceive, false narratives, and lies.”

Levin proclaimed, “I will not be intimidated, and neither should any of you!”

Levin blasted the Washington Post by saying:

Washington Post reporter, Jeremy Barr, cited Media Matters when regurgitating a smear on yours truly even though he knew that the president of Media Matters is an anti-Semite and his own newspaper had reported on it in the past. And Barr works for the Washington Post Corporation even though he knows it helped cover up the Holocaust. What does that make Jeremy Barr?

The host of “LevinTV” on Blaze Media also slammed the Washington Examiner:

Shame on the Washington Examiner for pushing this crap 3-days later. Perhaps the Examiner will link to these real stories about CNN’s grotesque anti-Semitism, including by several of its hosts, and its anti-Israel propaganda over the years. Apparently, their reporter was too lazy to provide full context, so I have included just a few of the stories about CNN’s horrendous antisemitism, including several of its hosts. Their pattern and pro-Hamas propaganda are not secrets.

You can listen to Levin’s original comments from the Nov. 1 episode below.

PAUL SACCA

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Media, Opinion, Political

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Rep. Warren Davidson Op-ed: House speaker fight: Republicans, it’s time to unite around a plan, not a person

By Rep. Warren Davidson Fox News | Published October 23, 2023 2:46pm EDT

For House Republicans to unite and move forward, reason must prevail over faction. Some refer to factions within the political parties as “tribalism.” The goal is really to diminish the merits of alternative policy perspectives. The reality is that both Republicans and Democrats form diverse coalitions in an attempt to contain America’s diverse political views within two political parties. By definition, each party is effectively its own form of coalition government.

Now, Republicans confront the reality of having far more government than we can afford as we debate the role of Speaker of the House. Speaker Kevin McCarthy wrestled for years to build the coalitions necessary to govern the narrow majority. Nevertheless, there were fatal flaws in his coalition, and it collapsed once a small group became convinced that the commitment to break the status quo on appropriations was either insincere or no longer on a path to being achieved. While their motion to vacate was foolish in my opinion, saying their action was purely personal or without merit willfully avoids the principled objection to failure.

As I and many others cautioned, the motion to vacate without a plan for what would happen next has in fact been disastrous. Frankly, the idea that their risky action to vacate the chair could somehow result in a more conservative coalition that would address the broken appropriations process, prevented Jim Jordan from restoring unity with a similar coalition to Speaker McCarthy’s. This, of course, exposed other factions who had other objectives with this crisis.

HOUSE FREEDOM CAUCUS DEMANDS CONGRESS STAY IN SESSION UNTIL NEW SPEAKER IS SELECTED

Now, my friend and colleague, Rep. Mike Flood from Nebraska, has a new proposal to restore unity to the Republican Party’s narrow majority in Congress. He is a good man, whose intentions in my estimation are pure. However, as I began, reason must prevail over faction. Unfortunately, Flood’s proposal formalizes the alternative outcome.

HOUSE REPUBLICANS VOTE TO REMOVE JIM JORDAN AS SPEAKER NOMINEE

After violating this pledge to stop a threat to the status quo (Jim Jordan as Speaker with a plan), the system would insulate itself from the risk of further disruption. Regardless of intent, I anticipate this submission pledge will be coercive in the hands of the largest and most powerful faction in order to protect internal power for those who already have it.

Frankly, pledges typically fail or have significant drawbacks, but since there is one floating around, I’d like to offer an alternative proposal. We should agree that the next speaker be someone who commits to:

1. Never bringing an Omnibus bill to the floor. If an omnibus comes via discharge petition, I will remove the Appropriations chairman and resign as speaker.

2. No continuing resolution (CR) except the one envisioned by the Fiscal Responsibility Act that would extend well into the first quarter of 2024 and apply pressure to actually pass appropriations bills rather than another omnibus. If any alternative comes via discharge petition, I will remove the Appropriations Chair and resign as Speaker.

3. In a given fiscal year, if the primary appropriations bill for their jurisdiction ultimately never passes the House as standalone legislation, I will remove the respective cardinal as chair.

4. If a presidential or Senate supplemental funding request is even considered by the House, I will separate all supplemental funding requests by topic rather than accept the binary false premise of “this or nothing.”

Responsibility and authority must be aligned in order to provide accountability. Otherwise, there will simply be more excuses for the broken status quo.

As we debate the next speaker, everyone remains focused on the person, yet the focus must be on the plan to create change. Unfortunately, the current selection process is designed to focus on the person, rather than their plans.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM REP. WARREN DAVIDSON

My pledge seeks a commitment to a shared mission. It empowers a new speaker and provides accountability.

Republicans must resolve the agenda that unites the conference and provide accountability for results in order to ensure everyone is motivated to achieve it. This is the ongoing debate that seeks resolution.

Fortunately, reason can prevail. Getting everyone to trust a single person will be significantly harder than getting everyone to trust a shared mission. Whoever leads the mission should emerge as the next speaker and restore unity in our conference.

Republican Warren Davidson represents Ohio’s 8th Congressional District in the United States House of Representatives. He spent 15 years starting, acquiring and growing manufacturing companies before replacing former Speaker John Boehner in the United States House. Davidson is a former Army Ranger. He graduated from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and received an MBA from the University of Notre Dame.

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BIDEN ISSUES CRYPTIC WARNING TO IRAN AFTER ADMIN DENIES COUNTRY WAS INVOLVED IN HAMAS ATTACK: ‘BE CAREFUL’

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Liz Peek Op-ed: Biden’s missteps in Middle East could cost him the White House, just like Jimmy Carter

By Liz Peek Fox News | Published October 17, 2023 2:00am EDT

Joe Biden’s presidency is tracking Jimmy Carter’s four years in the Oval Office so faithfully it must give his campaign team hives. Recent events in Israel create even more parallels. It was a Middle East crisis that brought down Jimmy Carter’s presidency; the current conflict in the region could prove Biden’s undoing as well.

In 1979, more than 50 U.S. citizens were taken hostage in Iran, and Carter failed to secure their release. Worse, a U.S. military mission sent to rescue the prisoners failed, infuriating Americans. Carter’s foreign policy blunders sank his reelection bid, but they were far from his only problem. His administration was considered weak and inept, and the events in Tehran reinforced those perceptions.

Like Biden, Carter was already in trouble when the hostage crisis occurred. The Georgia peanut farmer presided over sky-high inflation: so has Biden. Carter pushed enormous and controversial increases in government spending: ditto Biden. Like Biden, Carter started with high approval numbers that went pretty much straight downhill.

As he approached reelection in 1980, Carter faced a primary battle from fellow Democrat Senator Ted Kennedy; nearing next year’s presidential election, another Kennedy — Robert F. Kennedy Jr. – was until recently attempting to mount a primary challenge against Biden. History may not repeat but it sure does rhyme.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/jake-sullivan-defends-saying-middle-east-region-was-quieter-days-hamas-rcna120490

Today, 30 Americans have been murdered by Hamas and more than a dozen are being held captive. Voters will hold President Biden responsible for punishing the terrorists responsible for those deaths, and for bringing both American hostages and those trapped by war home safely.

So far, the Biden White House has not impressed. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan boasted eight days before Hamas’ invasion of Israel that, “The Middle East region is quieter today than it has been in two decades,” displaying either incredible ignorance or unjustifiable smugness.

Elsewhere, it turns out that Robert Malley, Biden administration’s “special envoy” to Iran, who is known to have had close contacts with Hamas, was put on leave from his State Department post several months ago. Officially, he has been accused of mishandling classified documents, but there is speculation that he has long worked on behalf not of the U.S. but of Iranian interests.

Biden and his national security team have refused to accuse Iran for complicity in Hamas’ attack on Israel, claiming repeatedly there is no evidence of Tehran’s involvement. That is untrue. There is increasing proof that the planning for the attack went on for months, discussed by senior officials of both Hamas and Hezbollah meeting with leaders of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard in Beirut.

Biden is understandably loathe to implicate Iran in Hamas’ atrocities. Confronting Tehran could escalate the hostilities in the region, and would also boost oil prices, which would inevitably hurt Biden’s approval ratings. Also, Biden’s White House, foolishly pursuing a nuclear pact, has enriched and emboldened the mullahs, in part by loosening enforcement of sanctions; voters will not look kindly on that decision.

Wisconsin Representative Scott Fitzgerald wrote recently in an op-ed, “Relaxing sanctions has allowed Iran to generate oil revenues exceeding $80 billion annually while strengthening its relationship with China. As I warned in April 2021, using China to dodge U.S. sanctions allows Iran to funnel money to its proxy forces in the Middle East, including the Iran Revolutionary Guard Corps and Hamas, which is armed, funded, and led by the Iranian regime.”

At the same time, there has been a spike in the number of people on the terror watch list who have been apprehended at the uncontrolled southern border, through which millions of people have entered our country illegally since Biden took office. Fox News reports that four Iranians have been caught since October 1, heightening concerns.

Our State Department has been slow to help evacuate Americans from Israel, even as other countries have arranged to airlift their citizens to safety. In addition, recent news reports show U.S. citizens responding to our government’s advisory and arriving at the Egyptian border, only to find it blocked and being told to go home.

The Biden White House claims to be “surging additional military assistance” to our ally. Given that Biden goofed some months ago by admitting that the conflict in Ukraine has drained our stocks of munitions, it is not clear how much we can provide.

Hamas, on the other hand, appears to be well-equipped, thanks at least in part to mountains of weapons and ammunition abandoned by U.S. forces in their hasty exit from Afghanistan, which Joe Biden and his team continue to applaud as a “success.”

Meanwhile, while the world has been transfixed by the horrors taking place in Israel and Gaza, the president has carried on with his campaigning. Biden’s support for Israel may be unwavering, but his attention span is not. As Israel declared war, Biden and his wife hosted a barbeque for White House staffers; the next day the president spoke at a Rose Garden campaign event celebrating his efforts to cut down on “junk fees.”

The very next day, Biden traveled to Philadelphia to promote his green energy agenda. An agenda, we note, that includes curbing U.S. oil production and consequently driving prices higher, helping to fund Iran-backed groups like Hamas and Hezbollah. The president may have received word that his campaigning was not well received; he abruptly canceled a trip to Colorado on Monday to “instead hold meetings with his national security team as Israel’s war with Hamas appears set to escalate,” as one news outlet helpfully explained.

Jimmy Carter, faced with the hostage crisis, had the decency to suspend campaigning and focus his government on the plight of the captive Americans. One of his aides at the time, Stuart Eizenstat, wrote that the Carter’s so-called “Rose Garden strategy” “personalized the crisis in the American media by focusing the responsibility on the Oval Office and showing the terrorists they could put the American presidency itself into dysfunction.” Maybe that’s why Biden is choosing to keep up his campaigning, but his behavior is unseemly.

So far, voters back our support for Israel; if more American lives are lost, or the conflict spreads, they will not be so forgiving, and they will blame Joe Biden.

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.

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Commentary: My January 6 legal saga

OPINION | STEVE BAKER | October 02, 2023

Photo: Video screenshot, Steve Baker

Editor’s note: This is the first of a two-part series on the legal travails of Blaze Media contributor Steve Baker and his reporting surrounding the events of January 6, 2021.

I’ve been under federal investigation for the better part of two years. Last Wednesday morning, my attorney spoke with FBI Special Agent Craig Noyes, one of the lead investigators in my case. He confirmed that the Department of Justice is continuing its probe into my journalistic activities on January 6, 2021.

Like many other reporters and photojournalists — both independents and those working directly for established media companies — I followed the story that day where it went. And it happened to be inside the Capitol Building. Depending on who is doing the counting, between 100 and 200 journalists were either already inside the Capitol, covering the event from restricted grounds, or followed the crowd inside.

The left-wing Sedition Hunters compiled a rather impressive spreadsheet of all types of journalists, with designations of “Interior (Breach),” “Interior (Press Corps),” and “Restricted Grounds” assigned to 160 different “confirmed” journalists, and an additional spreadsheet tab listing 45 “unconfirmed” reporters and videographers.

When I first looked up the Sedition Hunters’ spreadsheet over a year ago, I wasn’t listed. So I contacted them and asked to be added. They didn’t respond to me directly. Instead, they blocked me from their Twitter page. A more recent search shows they added my name, along with my Locals blog link, my Twitter handle, and my Rumble page, with the “Interior (Breach)” designation under the “confirmed” tab.

(My journalistic activities on January 6 took place before I became a Blaze Media contributor.)

I made no effort to hide what I was doing on January 6. I did two different interviews that same day with WUSA, a CBS News affiliate in Washington, D.C. I also uploaded a short YouTube video commentary later that same evening.

Upon returning to my home in Raleigh, North Carolina, I socked myself away for five days, doing a frame-by-frame analysis of my own videos. I then wrote and published on January 13, 2021, a 9,500-word opus to my blog detailing what I experienced that day, titled, “What I Saw on January 6th in Washington, D.C.”

That piece, and a February 24, 2021, follow-up, “Who was ‘Up the Chain’ on January 6?” has been viewed and read by hundreds of thousands of readers on my blog and various social media pages.

I always expected that I would be contacted by the FBI at some point, at the very least to acquire my videos for the bureau’s investigations. I did no violence or property destruction on January 6, and I certainly did not interfere with the election certification, as I didn’t enter the Capitol Building until well after both the Senate and House of Representatives had been evacuated.

Several months passed. Finally, around 10 a.m. on Thursday, July 22, 2021, I received a call from someone who introduced himself as FBI Special Agent Gerrit Doss.

My immediate response: “What took you so long?”

Doss told me he knew I was scheduled to speak at a Libertarian Party meet-up in Leesburg, Virginia, the next evening and asked if I might have time earlier in the afternoon to meet with a couple of agents. (Thus tipping me to the fact that the FBI had been watching me and tracking my activities.)

I politely informed Doss that I would be in Leesburg earlier in the day. Unfortunately, my attorney would not be with me, so I would be unable to speak with him.

“Oh, oh … I understand,” Doss replied. “Is there a good time when you can meet with us, along with your attorney?”

I asked the agent for his contact number and told him I’d have my attorney reach out to him as soon as possible.

Through my attorney, we agreed to a voluntary meeting at the FBI’s Cary, North Carolina, office on August 5, 2021. Upon arrival at the FBI office that morning, Agents Doss and Craig Noyes greeted us and informed my attorney and me that they “may not” be able to conduct an interview that day after all. They invited us to have a seat in the lobby and said that they would return “in about 10 minutes.”

Doss and Noyes re-emerged from behind closed doors about 30 minutes later to let us know that they couldn’t conduct the interview without “special permission” because of my “press” status.

According to the Code of Federal Regulations, a federal investigative agency must first secure “authorization by a United States Attorney or Assistant Attorney General” before conducting an interview with a member of the media.

My lawyer and the U.S. attorney’s office then negotiated a proffer agreement for my voluntary interview, which said in effect that nothing I said in the interview could be used against me should I be charged with a crime unless I perjured myself. Keep that in mind.

The FBI was quite accommodating of my travel and work schedule, and my attorney and I ultimately reappeared at the Cary, N.C., FBI office for that interview with Doss and Noyes on October 18, 2021.

The interview lasted for exactly two hours and began with both agents thanking me for not doing violence against law enforcement on January 6. The only really contentious moment in an otherwise cordial meeting was my request to record the interview for my own benefit, which the agents rejected. With my agreement, we proceeded.

At the conclusion of the interview, we volunteered to turn over my videos from January 6. Again, I had nothing to hide. My attorney even asked that in exchange for the videos, I might receive immunity from prosecution. (No such luck.)

Under the circumstances, it’s never a good feeling when you see your attorney’s name pop up on caller ID. On November 17, I got the call I had been dreading.

“I’ve got bad news,” he told me. “I just received an email from Assistant U.S. Attorney Anita Eve, which says you can expect to be ‘charged within the week.’”

“With what?” I asked.

“Well, that’s the weird part,” my attorney continued. “According to the criminal statutes she sent — 18 USC 1952 (a)(1)-(2) and 40 USC 5104 (e)(2)(d) and (g) — you’re being charged with interstate racketeering and property damage.”

“What?!”

To the first charge, the only thing we could surmise is that during the FBI interview, I had been asked how much money I had made from the licensing of my January 6 videos. Several of my video clips had been used in January 6 documentaries produced by HBO and the New York Times, as well as by news services all over the world.

Was the federal government really trying to claim that I had traveled from Raleigh, N.C., to Washington, D.C., with the foreknowledge of a criminal event and conspired with others to profit from it?

All I could do was laugh.

As to the second charge, I’d informed the agents during the interview that at one point while inside the Capitol, I stood on a bench to get above the crowd to get a better camera angle on the crowd’s activities. Agent Noyes asked, “You stood on a bench?” He then feverishly wrote something on his notepad.

According to federal law, “A person may not step or climb on, remove, or in any way injure any statue, seat, wall, fountain, or other erection or architectural feature, or any tree, shrub, plant, or turf, in the [Capitol] Grounds.”

Good grief. I’d damaged nothing! But, yes, I stood on a bench.

Anita Eve’s notification arrived on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving week in 2021. I was on the road, traveling for the holiday. My attorney and I immediately went on offense. On Monday morning of Thanksgiving week, we sent out over 200 copies of a press release notifying media organizations large and small that an independent journalist was being prosecuted for his coverage of January 6.

Right away, I began receiving interview requests from radio hosts, podcasters, and print journalists. At 1:47 p.m. that day, my attorney received an email from Eve, with an attached copy of the press release.

“I’m not thrilled with this press release that was forwarded to me today,” she wrote.

My attorney responded: “Mr. Baker is obviously feeling threatened by the charges and is using his First Amendment right to garner support. … Are you suggesting that he refrain from making further statements? … He has nothing to hide. But he does have a right to speak truthfully about his experiences and share his opinions. … It’s not fair to ask him to be silent while he endures federal prosecution.”

In that same email, my attorney again offered that I would voluntarily provide the government with my videos from January 6.

“I have absolutely no objection to Mr. Baker exercising his First Amendment rights,” Eve answered. “He can continue that as often as he so desires. My concern is what impact this will have with the Judge who gets assigned to his case. Also, I may make use of his commentary at some future proceeding.”

An assistant U.S. attorney looking for notches in her career-advancement gun belt is concerned about what a judge may think about my actions? I wasn’t buying it.

On the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, I received a message from a dear friend telling me that Senator Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) wanted me to call him. He’d been forwarded my press release. So I did.

“Hello, this is Ron,” a man answered.

“Is this Senator Johnson?” I asked.

“This is Ron.”

And so it went. Without pretense of any kind, here was a U.S. senator from a state where I was not a constituent, and to whom I’d never made a campaign contribution, asking how he could help me. After about a 15-minute chat, Senator Johnson gave me the phone number of his chief January 6 investigator, with whom I had a rather lengthy call the next week.

The government’s prosecutor and FBI agents then went silent. Despite the assistant U.S. attorney warning that I would be “charged within the week,” we didn’t hear from her office again until 20 months later.

In part two of this series, Baker explains what happened next and the current status of the federal investigation into his January 6 reporting.

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corruption, Opinion, Political

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Commentary: Let’s face it: The GOP is the problem

OPINION | DANIEL HOROWITZ | October 02, 2023

zkolra/Getty Images

The right has a problem. It is not merely a Mitch McConnell or Kevin McCarthy problem. It’s a Republican Party problem. Conservatives will never have leverage to fight the issues that matter in any meaningful way until we find a new home. That is the stone-cold truth.

Before we can move forward, we must face this inconvenient reality.

No, a government shutdown has not been “averted,” because we now face the ultimate government shutdown — indefinitely — with no strategy or political vehicle to end it.

Republicans began this year with the most auspicious potential to block Joe Biden’s agenda. They had the twin leverage points of the debt ceiling and the budget deadline, whereby they could have refused to grant Biden any more funding for his harmful policies without serious concessions. In many respects, Republicans had more leverage than ever before because they could theoretically govern with a simple majority in the House while Democrats need 60 votes to use their majority in the Senate. Moreover, unlike during the tenures of Bill Clinton or Barack Obama, Democrats are saddled with an unpopular and inarticulate Democrat president who would not be able to command the bully pulpit during a shutdown fight.

So what happened?

Republicans in June gave Biden a blank check for the remainder of his term by suspending the debt ceiling until 2025 — more time than he had asked for. The debt has grown quicker than ever as a result.

The GOP’s final leverage point was the budget, and the intensification of the border invasion gave congressional Republicans the perfect mandate to fight through a government shutdown. Yet with both of these leverage points, Republican leaders showed that there is no degree of danger in which Biden can place this country that would prompt them to engage in brinksmanship. They wouldn’t even go up to the line and allow a lapse in funding at least for Sunday, when most government facilities are closed anyway. They fear one minute of a temporary funding lapse more than they fear crushing inflation, trillions in debt, millions of illegal aliens, and the FBI picking off political opponents.

I shudder to think exactly what it would take to shift Republican leaders’ attention away from the old paradigm. Everything we have been through these past few years was evidently not enough. It’s also shocking how Republicans had no problem shutting down the whole country for months, yet they zealously clamor to avoid one minute of a partial federal furlough over a weekend.

What’s clear is that nothing has changed about this party since the era of Trump began — not among leadership and not among the overwhelming majority of rank-and-file members. If they can’t fight even for a few days into a government shutdown over such popular issues and against such unpopular Democrat opponents, they will never ever fight for us.

We will now suffer through endless inflation, invasion, war on our energy and freedoms, and political persecution with zero backstop in sight. There is quite literally nothing Democrats can do that would elicit a unified, righteous response from the Republican Party. It’s not that they don’t have values — they certainly care deeply about funding Ukrainian oligarchs — it’s just that you and I are not part of their value system.

Not that we can even wait until 2025 to redress the aforementioned crises, but nothing will change then either — even if Republicans win all three branches. With such a maniacal degree of fear of a debt ceiling or budget funding lapse, Republicans will never have leverage to fulfil a single campaign promise, assuming any of those promises are even a little sincere. Democrats will always have enough votes in the Senate to filibuster any GOP budget bill. GOP leaders have made it clear that they will never allow the government to shut down for even one day. By definition, that means Democrats will always win a budget fight 100% of the time.

We need not speculate about the future when in fact this is what occurred when Republicans controlled the trifecta of government with Donald Trump as president, McConnell as Senate majority leader, and Paul Ryan as speaker of the House. As I noted earlier this year, Kevin McCarthy was House majority leader and shepherded nearly every budget bill through the floor with more support from Democrats than Republicans. Nothing has changed, and nothing will.

But it’s worse than the political math at the federal level. In more than 20 states, Republicans enjoy control of all three branches with filibuster-proof majorities. Why is it that we can barely find Republicans outside Florida willing to fight on issues such as “green” energy and illegal immigration? They wield dominant majorities — in some states to the point where there aren’t enough Democrats to populate all the committees! Yet Republicans still betray us. At some point we have to face the music that the obstacle to reform has nothing to do with the media or the Democrats. The Republican Party is the problem.

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TEACHERS UNION INSTRUCTS EDUCATORS TO DESTROY DOCUMENTS OF STUDENTS’ GENDER IDENTITIES

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Terry Schilling Op-ed: When it comes to wokeism, media come up with most fanciful theory of all

By Terry Schilling Fox News | Published October 3, 2023 7:18am EDT

The past, they say, is a foreign country. But for political pundits, so is the present. This is the only way to explain the ludicrous theories that lately litter the opinion pages of The New York Times or come falling out of the mouths of sober political analysts on the nightly news. When it comes to judging the Republican electorate, commentators are even further out of their depth and no topic confuses the chattering classes more than “wokeism.”

Pundits struggle to understand what wokeism even means. They insist it’s not happening, before turning around and insisting with equal vigor that whatever is happening is good. Then they dismiss anyone who opposes it as both a quixotic crusader and a dangerous menace.

But now they’ve come up with the most fanciful theory of all: the backlash against wokeism in schools is ending. They imagine Republicans don’t even care about wokeism, that the issue is dying away, and that we can steer clear of the vexing topic altogether. They assert that GOP leaders will go back to talking about the deficit or some other mundane topic and leave the “experts” to worry about what their children are learning.

This — seriously — is the conclusion of a number of columns over the past month, from The New York Times, Business Insider, and Vox, to name just a few. All argue that, as Vox puts it, “Republican voters don’t really care for the war on woke.” Voters are tired, they claim, of hearing about gender, race, schools, and everything in between.

They base this theory on a number of facts. First, they point out, the word “woke” has barely come up in the Republican presidential debates. Second, Ron DeSantis — in their minds the icon of the GOP anti-woke crusade — is not leading the race for the nomination, and, in addition, nobody since Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin has ridden anti-woke sentiment into office. Third, they say, polling shows Republicans would rather have a candidate who focuses on something else, like crime or the economy, than one who solely focuses on defeating wokeism in schools.

This is wish-casting. Let’s take the arguments in reverse order.

LAURA ZORC: THE RISE OF MILLENNIAL PARENTS

If there is any conclusion to be drawn from recent polling on culture-war issues, it’s that Americans broadly — and not just Republicans — are opposed to the left’s ideological agenda. They oppose allowing gender transitions for minors by a margin of between 17 points and 37 points. They think the rising rates of transgender identification among minors is a problem (63%), as is wokeness (60%), too much of a focus on race in schools (75%), boys playing girls’ sports in public schools (81%), schools indoctrinating kids with liberal ideas (58%), parents not having enough say over the curriculum (80%), and overly accommodating transgender policies in schools (74%). Similar opinions prevail on just about every related issue.

What happened? pic.twitter.com/BivZU7oNj8
— Declaration of Memes (@LibertyCappy) October 2, 2023

But, the pundits respond, those polls also show voters, including Republicans, rank the economy as a top concern above social issues. And, if forced to choose, Republican voters would prefer a candidate focused on law and order than one who prioritizes fighting wokeism.

However, to leap from this to the idea that voters don’t care about wokeism, or don’t care very much, is absurd. Republicans interviewed by The New York Times were quick to point out that the choice is a false one — they want candidates who are anti-anarchy and anti-woke. Moreover, if being ranked as less of a concern than the economy means that an issue doesn’t matter, that implicates other issues also, such as abortion. Perhaps someone should tell Democrats the backlash to the Dobbs decision is over!

Next, the pundits opine that DeSantis’ campaign hasn’t resonated because his anti-woke message is a turnoff. But this explanation fails to account for the candidate overwhelmingly leading the race: Donald Trump. Since launching his campaign, Trump has promised to ban gender transitions for minors, defund doctors and hospitals who perform them, investigate any school that promotes gender ideology, and establish that there are only two genders, determined at birth, in law. These issues have regularly featured in his rallies and speeches. Clearly, Republican voters aren’t being alienated by them.

The New York Times building in Manhattan. (Fox News Photo/Joshua Comins)

And as for the fact that the word “woke” hasn’t been mentioned very much in the GOP debates, that may be true enough, but the word itself is not at issue. The candidates spent significant time discussing the actual substance — enough time for it to qualify as a top-four issue in both debates. Candidates went out of their way to address school indoctrination, parents’ rights and gender issues, in some cases very passionately. That these topics did not feature as prominently as others had far more to do with the preferences of the moderators than those of the candidates, or voters.

Indeed, the weakness of the pundits’ anti-anti-woke argument says more about the punditry’s own preferences than anything else. Unfortunately for them however, even Republican politicians are not, it appears, stupid enough to suddenly stop campaigning on issues on which they have a significant advantage in popular opinion. Although the commentariat may not like the culture wars, they are undoubtedly here to stay.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM TERRY SCHILLING

Terry Schilling (@Schilling1776) is the executive director of American Principles Project, a conservative nonprofit group dedicated to putting human dignity at the heart of public policy.

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Jason Whitlock Op-ed: Colin Kaepernick and Philly looters share the same foolish, bigoted motivation

JASON WHITLOCK | September 27, 2023

Matt Winkelmeyer / Staff | Getty Images

There’s little difference between Dayjia “Meatball” Blackwell and Colin Kaepernick. Both are internet trolls, substanceless social media influencers adept at promoting chaos and outrage.

On Tuesday night, Meatball encouraged her Philly followers to meet her downtown. The group eventually looted a Lululemon, an Apple store, a Foot Locker, and a liquor store. Meatball livestreamed much of the action before getting arrested.

Kaepernick, of course, is the former NFL quarterback who elevated his brand seven years ago by kneeling during the national anthem. In the process, Kaepernick became the most polarizing athlete in America. He torched his football career while simultaneously becoming a cult figure to left-wing activists and Nike. On Tuesday, Kaepernick had his rap music buddy J. Cole release a letter Kaepernick wrote to the New York Jets asking for a roster spot on their practice squad.

“I would be honored and extremely grateful for the opportunity to come in and lead the practice squad,” Kaepernick wrote. “I would do this with the sole mission of getting your defense ready each week. If I were able to fill this role, I believe this allows for multiple things.’

“Worst case scenario, you see what I have to offer and you’re not that impressed. Best case scenario, you realize you have a real weapon at your disposal in the event you ever need to use it. In either of these scenarios, I would be committed to getting your defense ready week in and week out, all season long, and I would wear that responsibility like a badge of honor.”

Meatball and Kaepernick are victims of a culture that rewards, promotes, enables, excuses, and justifies self-destructive behavior from black people. They’re collateral damage from the circus “clown show” that I’ve been railing against all week. The social media matrix baits celebrities, journalists, athletes, broadcasters, and influencers into creating content that outrages what used to be the establishment. For black influencers, the establishment is white evangelical conservatives. Black influencers have been convinced that anything that aggravates, annoys, or frustrates white conservatives is a net positive for black people. It’s a ridiculous standard.

But it’s what compelled Kaepernick to foolishly kneel during the national anthem. His protest and support of Black Lives Matter did not save one black life. It accomplished the opposite. It demonized the profession of policing, sparked defund-the-police policies and sentiment, and subsequently made black neighborhoods more violent and crime-ridden. It also wrecked Kaepernick’s football career. It should be obvious to everyone that Kaepernick regrets sabotaging his playing career. How else do you explain someone who hasn’t played football in seven years begging the Jets to sign him to the practice squad? Kaepernick is 35. Two years ago, he released a documentary-style movie about his life and analogized the NFL to a slave plantation. Three years ago, he backed out of an organized workout in Atlanta and donned a Kunta Kinte T-shirt.

Kunta Kaepernick now wants a job back on Massa Goodell’s plantation? Make it make sense. It only makes sense if you recognize and acknowledge that Kaepernick’s original protest was devoid of substance and was driven by the social media stimulus that grants clout and relevance to black people who troll white evangelical conservatives.

This same stimulus motivates young people such as Dayjia Blackwell to loot and produce immoral content.

Leftists have defined Christianity as the “white man’s religion.” They’ve demonized whiteness, which, in their minds, justifies the tearing down of Christianity. It’s all a lie. The first Christians were ethnically Semitic and had light to dark brown skin. All humans, regardless of color, are made in the image of God.

Let me get back to Meatball and the looting last night in Philadelphia. Blackwell streamed much of the activity. She screamed into the camera: “Everybody’s gotta eat!”

You don’t rob Lululemon because you’re hungry. The looting we see nationwide has nothing to do with hunger pangs. It’s a reflection of people’s animus toward a country they’ve been convinced must be torn down and remade. It is a form of protest.

They’re just protesting the wrong thing. The establishment that is truly in control is quite comfortable with black people and others protesting the wrong thing. They’re fine with protesting white evangelicals and Christianity. What the ruling establishment won’t tolerate is American citizens protesting the ruling establishment.

The ruling establishment controls Congress, the Capitol, and the White House. Americans are strictly forbidden to protest there. The ruling establishment constantly points black people to direct their frustration at “whiteness” and away from the wickedness of a secular society.

Joe Biden routinely tells the public that “white supremacy” is the greatest threat to America. He’s providing cover for Satan, who is colorless. Satan is a set of values and beliefs that destroy the soul and the mind. Biden and the left are intentionally inspiring black people to destroy America and themselves.

Colin Kaepernick and Dayjia Blackwell are useful idiots following instructions.

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Tulsi Gabbard Op-ed: On 9/11, Biden and his team want us to forget about the jihadists who attacked us

By Tulsi Gabbard Fox News | Published September 11, 2023 2:54pm EDT

Monday marks the twenty-second anniversary of the Islamist terrorist attack on 9/11 and I’m here in New York City, visiting Ground Zero, the place where the World Trade Center towers once stood.

President Biden is not here and will not be coming here. The question is, why not? I believe it’s because he wants the American people to “move past” or forget about this attack, who carried it out, and why. He and his administration want us to move forward to new, bigger, and more lucrative wars.

They want us to focus on politically advantageous wars, like the war against parents who simply want to have a say in our children’s education or patriotic Americans who are standing up to protect our freedoms enshrined in our Constitution.

ON 9/11 I SAW PURE EVIL UP CLOSE AS PEOPLE JUMPED TO THEIR DEATHS. I ALSO SAW THE BEST OF HUMANITY

The Biden administration and their propagandists in the mainstream media downplay the fact that the 9/11 attack on our country was carried out by jihadists who continue to carry out a crusade to impose Islamic caliphates throughout the world, including the United States. They want to hide from the American people the fact that these jihadists are the biggest long-term threat to the United States and world.

nextImage 1 of 3 (Jennifer S. Altman/WireImage)

President Biden and his team want to hide from the American people the fact that these jihadists are the biggest long-term threat to the United States and world.

On this solemn anniversary, we hear a lot of platitudes from politicians, but we don’t hear them talking about who carried out the attacks, what their motivation was, and the fact they are continuing their jihad, doing their very best to get their hands on weapons of mass destruction to carry out an attack that would make their attack on 9/11 seem minuscule in comparison. 

It was not that long ago that I deployed to Africa with our Special Forces to take on these jihadists, who I guarantee you have not forgotten their mission to destroy the United States and freedom-loving people all over the world.

So, while neocon leaders, like those in the Biden administration, want us to forget that we are at war with jihadists, the jihadists have not forgotten.

But we will never forget. The American people are not sheep.

I, and countless other patriots who were motivated by the attack on 9/11 to put on the uniform, and every American patriot, will always remember the precious lives taken by these jihadists who attacked our country and continue to wage both ideological and kinetic war against us.

And on every anniversary of the attack on 9/11, we will recommit to defeating such jihadists.

Former Democrat turned independent Tulsi Gabbard represented Hawaii’s 2nd congressional district from 2013 to 2021 in the United States House of Representatives. She was a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020. Gabbard currently serves as a Lt. Col. in the U.S. Army Reserve where she commands a Civil Affairs Battalion.

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VIRGINIA GOV. YOUNGKIN DOESN’T RULE OUT 2024 PRESIDENTIAL RUN: ‘WE’RE FOCUSED ON 2023’

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Newt Gingrich Op-ed: Want to win, Republicans? Here’s a blueprint for success in 2024

By Newt Gingrich Fox News | Published September 5, 2023 6:00am EDT

Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin is leading a campaign in Virginia this fall that is a model for Republicans to study across the country. Virginia has off-year legislative elections, and he has taken on the challenge of fighting to keep the General Assembly and win the Senate.

Gov. Youngkin has three big things going for him.

First, he is doing a great job as governor, and he gets support from a vast majority of Virginians. A July Morning Consult poll showed 57 percent of Virginians approved of Youngkin’s performance. Only 32 percent disapproved. That is a solid base from which to wage a campaign for help in the legislature.

Second, Gov. Youngkin has great issue positions. He wants to cut taxes while his Democrat opponents want to spend more money and make government even bigger. Currently, there is a projected $5 billion surplus. Gov. Youngkin would give most of it back to Virginians and to Virginia companies. His argument is that making Virginia more attractive will bring in even more companies. This will create even more jobs and raise incomes for all Virginians.

VIRGINIA GOV. YOUNGKIN CALLS LAWMAKERS TO RECONVENE FOR SPECIAL SESSION ON LONG-DELAYED STATE BUDGET

The Democrats hate to give Virginians their own money. The Democratic model is to spend as much as possible on public bureaucracy and argue that bureaucrats can do more for the people of Virginia than the private sector. Being for higher taxes is a big burden for Democrats to carry. It may please their interest group allies, but it loses them support among average hard working Virginians.

Third, Gov. Youngkin has launched a “Secure Your Vote Virginia” campaign, which is designed to mobilize votes and get his supporters to the polls as early as possible. He analyzed the outcomes in 2020 and 2022 and realized that allowing the Democrats to build up a huge advantage before Election Day made it hard – sometimes impossible – for Republicans to play catchup on Election Day.

As Gov. Youngkin explained it in a USA Today article on Aug. 13, “Republicans need to stop fighting early voting. It’s how we can win on Election Day.”

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM NEWT GINGRICH

He went on to write Republicans cannot afford to go into Election Day down thousands of votes. That will all but guarantee loses.

“Secure Your Vote Virginia modernizes the way we turn out our voters through absentee and early voting. The portal − secureyourvotevirginia.com − provides step-by-step instructions for requesting an absentee ballot or voting early by mail or in person. This campaign educates voters on the options available to cast their ballot early and to ensure their voice will be heard in November.”

Gov. Youngkin has offered his own time and prestige – and raised a lot of resources – to bring together a professional team to maximize Republican turnout this fall.

If Gov. Youngkin’s all-out push pays off in significant Republican legislative gains this fall, his role as a Republican leader with a positive vision and real achievements will be greatly expanded almost overnight.

Newt Gingrich was Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives from 1995-1999 and a candidate for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination. He is chairman of Gingrich 360.

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EMAIL REVEALS HUNTER’S COZY RELATIONSHIP WITH HIGHEST LEVELS OF OBAMA’S STATE DEPT. AS FARA ACCUSATIONS SWIRL

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L. Brent Bozell III Op-ed:

Leftist media desperately bury Biden scandals and think they can get away with it

By L. Brent Bozell III Fox News | Published September 1, 2023 2:00am EDT

The leftist “news” media – NBC, ABC, CBS, MSNBC, CNN, The Washington Post, The New York Times – continue their conspiracy of silence on blockbuster evidence of President Joe Biden’s corruption, determined to see, hear, and report no evil about the Democratic administration.

An internal FBI document provides convincing evidence that Joe Biden – then the sitting vice president of the United States – along with his son Hunter – extorted $5 million for each of them from an executive of Ukrainian oil company Burisma.

According to terms of the $10 million bribe outlined in the document, the vice president would quash Burisma’s legal problems by threatening to withhold financial aid to Ukraine if they didn’t fire a senior prosecutor looking into their corruption.

Even when the document was released to the public on July 20, Biden’s media minders kept their audiences in the dark. No longer journalists, they’re now mere leftwing storytellers, selectively spreading a message intended to deceive when it suits them, and throwing a blanket over any truthful report when it harms the narrative. Their primary mission isn’t to inform the public or to hold the powerful accountable. It’s to ensure that Joe Biden gets reelected.

A document provides potentially damning evidence against President Biden and his son, Hunter. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

The Burisma scandal follows reports of similar bribery/pay-to-play schemes with Russia, Kazakhstan, Romania and even with America’s arch-enemy China, hiding the money in over 20 LLCs that served no purpose other than to confuse potential investigators.

Between the evening of August 1 and the morning of August 8, ABC, CBS and NBC devoted more than five hours to Donald Trump’s third indictment on morning and evening newscasts as well as their Sunday morning political talk shows, according to an analysis by NewsBusters.

In contrast, the same programs spent a mere four minutes and 50 seconds on matters related to the Biden family’s many scandals. Putting a number on that lopsided disparity, the old networks spent 68.7 times longer covering Trump’s indictment than anything related to the Biden family’s legal troubles. 

The Burisma cover-up continues. On August 9, House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer released a memo detailing bank transactions that show at least $20 million flowing from Russian and Kazakhstani oligarchs to Hunter and his associates.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM L. BRENT BOZELL III

“It appears no real services were provided other than access to the Biden network, including Joe Biden himself,” Comer said in a statement. Some of the same oligarchs dined at Washington, D.C.’s Café Milano with then-Vice President Biden, according to Comer. The evidence suggests a criminal scandal on a scale never seen before in American politics. And yet The Big Three refuse to share a word of it with American public.

Those who don’t watch or read these leftist propagandists – and there are plenty of reasons not to tune in – might wonder if it matters. The answer is clear. At the height of the Hunter Biden laptop scandal, ahead of the 2020 elections, the legacy media refused to cover it or dismissed it as Russian disinformation.

A post-election poll conducted for the Media Research Center found that 45.1% of swing state Biden voters were unaware of the evidence linking Biden to corrupt financial dealings with China through his son Hunter. And 9.4% of Biden voters said that had they known these facts, they would not have voted for Biden, flipping all six of the swing states he won and giving President Donald Trump 311 electoral votes.

The bottom line is that the legacy media intentionally kept Americans in the dark, and in doing so, swayed the election to Biden. 

US Representative and Committee Chairman James Comer (R-KY) speaks during a House Committee on Oversight and Accountability hearing regarding the criminal investigation into the Bidens, on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, on July 19, 2023. (Photo by Brendan SMIALOWSKI / AFP)

Meanwhile, the Big Three are myopically focused on Trump’s fourth indictment – the timing of which not so coincidentally follows the latest shocking revelation in the Biden influence-peddling scandal.

The Big Three’s abject refusal to report on the Biden bribery scandal while providing wall-to-wall coverage of the dubious charges against Trump is not just a betrayal of their viewers; it constitutes election tampering. As such, their behavior is a threat to democracy.

Last week, an even bigger bombshell. It turns out then-Vice President Joe Biden was using a web of pseudonyms, from Robert Peters to Robin Ware to JRB Ware, while working with his son to place tens of millions of dollars in that web of LLCs. The National Archives revealed that its holdings contain nearly 5,400 emails, electronic records and documents indicating that Biden used aliases while he was vice president.

Those who don’t watch or read these leftist propagandists – and there are plenty of reasons not to tune in – might wonder if it matters. The answer is clear. At the height of the Hunter Biden laptop scandal, ahead of the 2020 elections, the legacy media refused to cover it or dismissed it as Russian disinformation.

The pattern continues. Not one story in the pro-Biden press.

It is time for Biden to face an impeachment inquiry to find out whether he used the power of the vice presidency to rake in millions of dollars for his family, Additionally, President of ABC News Kimberly Godwin, CEO and President of CBS News Wendy McMahon, and NBC News President Rebecca Blumenstein should be invited to appear before a congressional committee and be prepared to answer for this behavior.

The American people deserve to hear the truth. Suppressing the news is not something we should expect outside of totalitarian regimes.

L. Brent Bozell is the founder and president of the Media Research Center.

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Jarrett Stepman Op-ed:

Busing migrants to deep blue cities is working. There’s a reason why Dems are to blame for Biden’s border mess

By Jarrett Stepman Fox News | Published August 31, 2023 8:00am EDT

Editor’s note: The following column first appeared in The Daily Signal.

Republican border-state strategy to send illegal immigrants to Democrat-run cities and states is paying off. Last Thursday, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul sent a letter to President Joe Biden begging for federal aid. Importantly, she finally acknowledged where the problem is coming from.

“This is a financial burden the city and state are shouldering on behalf of the federal government,” Hochul, a fellow Democrat, said of the illegal immigrants pouring into New York.

“I cannot ask New Yorkers to pay for what is fundamentally a federal responsibility,” the governor wrote. “And I urge the federal government to take prompt and significant action today to meet its obligation to New York State.”

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In a press conference following the release of the letter, Hochul further complained about illegal immigrants released into the country by the Biden administration.

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What happened to all are welcome, no exceptions?

This is an interesting pivot from the New York governor. Until now, Democratic politicians mostly have been unwilling to criticize the White House in any way on the border security issue, or even suggest that the Biden administration is where the problem originates.

If you want to know the reason for the sudden pivot, a new poll sheds light. The Siena College poll released earlier this month shows that New Yorkers are deeply discontented about the surge of illegal immigrants in their state and mostly blame Democrat leaders.

“New Yorkers—including huge majorities of Democrats, Republicans, independents, upstaters and downstaters—overwhelmingly say that the recent influx of migrants to New York is a serious problem for the state,” Siena College pollster Steven Greenberg said.

Now, this may seem meaningless in the sense that New York is unlikely to become a red state any time soon. But keep in mind that the crime issue didn’t just swing seats from Democrat to Republican in the 2022 midterm elections, it likely also gave the GOP overall control of the U.S. House of Representatives.

Discontent over lawless Democrat policies is much worse now, and New York voters are heaping the blame on Hochul, New York City Mayor Eric Adams, and, most of all, Biden. Open borders and the idea that all immigration—whether legal or illegal—is a positive good is a matter of faith for Democrat Party activists. That’s less likely to be true with rank-and-file voters and independents.

“There is no question in my mind that the politics of this is a disaster to Democrats,” said Howard Wolfson, a former deputy and political adviser to former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, in an interview with The New York Times.

NYC MIGRANT CRISIS COSTS COULD HIT $12 BILLION, MAYOR ADAMS URGES FEDERAL EMERGENCY DECLARATION

“This issue alone has the potential to cost Democrats the House, because it is such a huge issue in New York City and the coverage of it is clearly heard and seen by voters in all of these swing districts in the suburbs,” Wolfson said.

He described the issue as a “ticking time bomb” for Democrats.

I’d say the bomb already has gone off.

Since Biden entered the White House in January 2021, a historic stream of illegal immigrants has poured across the U.S. southern border. This has had catastrophic consequences for many swamped communities in Texas and Arizona especially. They’ve shouldered the burden of the border crisis for years, so it’s a little rich for New York to be throwing a pity party.

It obviously would be better if the federal government was doing its job and enforcing our laws, but until that time there’s little border states can do to “fix” the situation. All they can do is mitigate the damage. The Biden administration has done all it can to make sure that the border remains nice and open, er, “secure.”

The administration’s actions have made it clear that Biden and his top officials want to flood the country with illegal immigrants. And that’s where border-state busing comes in.

Instead of carrying the entire burden of the Biden-led border disaster, Republican governors such as Greg Abbott in Texas, Ron DeSantis in Florida, and Doug Ducey in Arizona decided to ship illegal immigrants to places such as Chicago, New York, the District of Columbia, and, most amusingly, Martha’s Vineyard. This is hardly ideal. But if the federal government is going to foist open borders on the country, why not at least force the people who voted for this nonsense to pay more of the price for it?

Of course, Democrats in those destinations pointed fingers at the Republican governors for their newfound troubles, and some left-wing political commentators tried to say that shipping illegal immigrants to Martha’s Vineyard—a posh, liberal vacation destination—was akin to Nazism.Biden’s trusty allies in the legacy media have done all they can to “contextualize” the immigration issue to protect the president from criticism. However, much like with the crime surge, it’s hard to pull the wool over the eyes of the American people forever when they literally see the consequences of bad policies in their neighborhoods.

Thanks to Biden, the bill for once low-cost, sanctuary-city virtue signaling has come due. I suggest that if Democrat politicians want federal aid to care for illegal immigrants, they should demand that the White House work to restore the policies of the previous administration and actually attempt to get control of the border. The excuses have run out, the border crisis has become a national crisis, and blame for this mess falls on the “big guy” in the Oval Office.

Democrats’ demands for more money should be met with a resounding “no” until the actual problem is fixed at its source.

Jarrett Stepman is a Daily Signal columnist and the author of “The War on History: The Conspiracy to Rewrite America’s Past” (Regnery Gateway, 2019).

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Liz Peek Op-ed:

A vote for Biden is a vote for President Kamala Harris. Nikki Haley is right, America

By Liz Peek Fox News | Published August 30, 2023 4:00am EDT

Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley warns: “A vote for Joe Biden is a vote for Kamala Harris”, suggesting that re-electing the aged and addled president would almost certainly vault the vice president into the Oval Office within the next four years. The alarm from the GOP candidate is resonating; just about nobody wants Harris to be our next commander in chief. As Haley says, the very thought should “send a chill up every American’s spine.”

Joe Biden’s campaign is taking heed, prompting the White House to roll our yet another effort to reboot Harris’ “image” – by some counts the third such initiative in the past two years.

Vice President Kamala Harris speaks at Coppin State University in Baltimore on July 14, 2023. (Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images)

Vice President Harris, for the Biden White House, is both a blessing and a curse. Without Harris in the wings, the president would have faced even louder encouragement to step aside, inspired by his dismal approval ratings, alleged corruption and declining acuity. Some 44% of Democrats do not want Joe to run again, according to a recent Monmouth University poll. But Democrats are wary; if Biden steps out of the race, Harris, who has even worse favorability than the president, steps in. In that same poll, only 13% of her party wishes her to be the candidate.

On the other hand, if more GOP contenders begin to echo Haley, Americans might think twice about voting for doddering Joe.

The White House needs to pump up Kamala Harris… fast. It’s not as though they haven’t tried. Earlier in the administration they even started calling the Second Gentleman Douglas instead of Doug, to make him appear a more serious and appropriate spouse for a woman best known for breaking into hysterical laughter at the oddest moments. True story.

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Mostly the makeovers have teetered on assigning Harris to new roles, hoping she might finally get traction. On her initial briefs – acting as U.S. border czar and the point person on overhauling voting rights, she fell flat. Her response to being asked if she would visit the border early on was to break into giggles, a telling moment that, given the gravity of the border crisis, should disqualify Harris from higher office.

Naturally, any redo starts with the help of the liberal media. Predictably, here comes a slew of puffy articles about the vice president. Politico recently ran this intriguing headline: “Why Kamala Harris is a Better VP than You Think.”

Vice President Kamala Harris speaks during the Investing in America tour at Coppin State University in Baltimore, Maryland, on July 14, 2023. (Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images)

It is worth a read. Houdini’s famous contortions pale next to author Julia Azari’s attempts to explain Harris’ face plant in office. In desperation, the political science professor points out that one possible VP role is to speak up for underrepresented groups, but then has to acknowledge that even black people don’t much like Harris.

Azari dismisses criticisms of Harris’ infamous “word salads” (because, you know, George W. Bush also spoke poorly) and her inability to retain staff (women of color have it tougher) but fails to make the case that Harris is a success. In desperation, she closes with, “In the final analysis, her political difficulties, and their causes, are nebulous and hard to pin down. Kind of like the vice presidency itself.”

BIDEN SHOUTS DURING SPEECH, CHALLENGES ANYONE TO NAME ‘ONE THING’ THE US SET OUT TO ACCOMPLISH AND FAILED

The New York Times chimes in, writing recently “Kamala Harris Takes on a Forceful New Role in the 2024 Campaign.” The reporter begins: “The vice president is trying to reclaim the momentum that propelled her to Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s side as a candidate and into the White House in 2020.”

What is he talking about? Harris flopped as a presidential hopeful early in the 2020 election cycle; a few months before she dropped out, a Quinnipiac poll showed her winning the votes of only 7% of Democrats and only 1% of the black vote. Her career was hanging by threads when Biden narrowed his V.P. choices by promising to tap a woman of color. The list of possible recruits was short; only Harris had any national name recognition.

In a November 2019 piece about the implosion of Harris’ run, the Times reported that Harris “proved to be an uneven campaigner who changes her message and tactics to little effect and has a staff torn into factions.” Also: “there is only one candidate who rocketed to the top tier and then plummeted in early state polls to the low single digits: Ms. Harris.”

Now the Times is extolling her expanding presence on the campaign trail, lauding her attacks on GOP hopeful Ron DeSantis and confronting “rising extremism in the Republican Party…” In particular, Harris slammed the Florida governor’s African American history curriculum, which she claims (along with other civil rights activists) portrays slavery as in some instances beneficial. As William Allen, one of several black authors of the disputed material has argued, the reference is historically accurate and is one line in 216 pages.

In other words, Harris is, characteristically, spewing dishonest talking points instead of engaging in thoughtful or serious debate.

What the Times fails to mention, is that Harris is more visible on the campaign trail mainly because she’s filling a void. Joe Biden has done little campaigning, for good reason. Almost any time he steps to a microphone, his aids steel themselves for the inevitable goof – not knowing where he is, getting facts and dates wrong, or wandering lost from the podium. These are not Republican talking points; these are signs that Biden should not run again.

Kamala Harris is not a failed VP because the tasks are too tough or because she hasn’t been allowed a long leash – excuses the liberal press toss out to explain her abysmal ratings. She has failed because she is not a serious person and did not deserve such an important role. Joe Biden described her as a “work in progress” early in their joint administration; sadly for both, there has not been much progress.

When Americans vote next fall they should heed Haley’s warning; voting for Joe Biden could make Kamala Harris president, an outcome too dire to contemplate.

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.

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Mark Levin Op-ed:

The Trump prosecutors have a grand jury problem. Where are the defense attorneys?

Mark Levin Fox News | Published August 28, 2023 8:00am EDT | Updated August 28, 2023 9:02am EDT

Let me address a very important and timely matter that, as best as I can tell, has not been addressed by the legal commentariat or, for that matter, defense counsel in the wide-ranging charges against President Donald Trump and his co-defendants.

The Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution states, in pertinent part, that “No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury …” Is that what happened when Special Counsel Jack Smith and the Biden Department of Justice used the Washington, D.C., grand jury to charge former President Trump for alleged crimes that occurred in Florida in the so-called documents case, clearly using the wrong venue in violation of specific DOJ policy, and then hastily moved the case to a grand jury in Florida?

The protection afforded by a fair grand jury proceeding dates back many centuries to the Magna Carta and was prominently implemented by British and American courts applying Blackstone’s legal doctrines. The notion that any grand jury would indict a ham sandwich refers to the usual adoption by grand juries of evidence presented by a prosecutor. It should not eradicate a right that was deemed important enough to be included in the Bill of Rights. The public and the courts must realize that these are accusations crafted and made by the individual prosecutors and not the result of deliberations and subsequent decisions by a group of ordinary citizens.

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Since the Florida grand jurors did not hear the testimony presented to the D.C. grand jury, exactly what did they hear or see to charge the former president and the other defendants? Was the D.C. testimony read to them? What were they instructed about the D.C. testimony? Were they asked whether they had any questions for the witnesses who testified? Were they instructed on the need to find probable cause as to each of the defendants? Were they instructed on the law?

The customary procedure in cases of obvious crimes is just to submit an indictment drafted by the prosecutor to the grand jurors and ask them to vote up or down. When the charges are not about an obvious crime and are instead much more complex, such as in the so-called documents case, the constitutional right to be indicted by a grand jury must require more than that. Indeed, the D.C. grand jury met for many months, heard from many scores of witnesses, and was presumably provided with an enormous amount of “evidence” presented to it by the government.

We already know from the subsequent public record in the court proceedings in Florida that what the government has turned over to the defendants consists of over 1 million documents and nine months of videotape, which will be used in whole or part during the trial.

From that, plus the complexity of the law in this matter, the fact that it is a case of first impression, and there are numerous legal and constitutional issues associated with using the Espionage Act against a former president, the Florida grand jury, not having the benefit of seeing and hearing first-hand any of the witnesses, etc., the government would have been required to ensure that, in fact, the Florida grand jury, and not the government, indicted the former president based on probable cause, a requisite for each of the nearly 40 counts.

Although the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure (Rule 6) impose a secrecy requirement on federal grand jurors, the judge should, now that the indictment has been returned, permit defense counsel to interview the grand jurors and release them from any secrecy obligation. That is the only way to discover, before the defendants are forced to a trial, whether the Fifth Amendment’s obligation has been satisfied. And, again, given how Smith used the D.C. venue and a D.C. grand jury to conduct his very extensive investigation on matters related almost exclusively to events in Florida, this is an especially important issue.

In all four cases involving the indictment of President Trump, the media have repeatedly reported that Trump has “been indicted by a grand jury.” The real question is whether the grand juries truly deliberated or simply went through the motions at the direction of the prosecution. Did a majority vote to accuse Trump and all his co-defendants of the complex crimes alleged in the indictments or was this window dressing for what happened in these secret proceedings?

Another obvious example is the case in Georgia. The indictment is 98 pages in length and involves over 40 charges. Moreover, in addition to the individual charges, an umbrella charge of a grand conspiracy, that is a so-called RICO charge, is alleged, involving up to 19 co-conspirators, including the former president.

This is an extraordinarily complicated factual and legal indictment, putting aside the obvious substantive weaknesses of the case. And in this case, like the federal documents case, the prosecution has much to answer for. Recall that on the day the grand jury was to meet to vote on whether to indict, the actual indictment was published by the court clerk on the official website – before the grand jury had even met or voted.

Later that day, D.A. Fani Willis held a press conference playing up the fact that the 19 defendants who were accused had been charged by named ordinary citizens of the grand jury, although under Georgia law she could have filed the charges without a grand jury endorsing them. Since she claimed the indictment was the work of the grand jury, the question is whether, in fact, it was.

TRUMP LAWYER CALLS FOR SPECIAL COUNSEL JACK SMITH TO BE INVESTIGATED, SAYS CHARGES ARE ALL ‘THEATRICS’

From the moment the indictment was posted on the clerk’s official website that morning, Willis moved at a frenzied pace to get an indictment that night.

Exactly what happened in the grand jury room? What kind of deliberations occurred? Again, the issue is probable cause and whether the defendants’ due process rights were abridged.

In Georgia, the grand jurors are free to publicly speak. We saw that earlier when, in a prior investigative grand jury, the foreman went on television after its proceedings concluded and would not stop talking about what had occurred among grand jurors, and she did so gleefully. It should not be difficult for defense counsel to get to the bottom of what occurred.

In the Manhattan case, when D.A. Alvin Bragg officially filed his indictment, he accompanied it with a prosecutor’s statement that the media accepted as part of “the grand jury indictment.” It was certainly presented that way. The question is whether the grand jurors actually voted on it.

New York imposes a secrecy requirement on grand jurors, but that requirement makes sense while the grand jury is considering criminal charges. Should it apply to prevent disclosure of how the prosecutor instructed the grand jury on the law and to discover whether the grand jurors did, in fact, consider whether there was probable cause to make the criminal allegations? And was Bragg’s accompanied statement part of the proceedings?

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg (Lev Radin/Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images)

Finally, in the second federal case supposedly involving Jan. 6, President Trump is not charged with insurrection or sedition, yet when the special counsel, Jack Smith, made his remarks announcing the indictment, nearly half of his statement had no relevance to the charges brought by the grand jury. He said, in part:

The indictment was issued by a grand jury of citizens here in the District of Columbia and sets forth the crimes charged in detail. I encourage everyone to read it in full. The attack on our nation’s capital on January 6, 2021, was an unprecedented assault on the seat of American democracy. As described in the indictment, it was fueled by lies. Lies by the defendant targeted at obstructing a bedrock function of the U.S. government, the nation’s process of collecting, counting, and certifying the results of the presidential election. The men and women of law enforcement who defended the U.S. Capitol on January 6 are heroes. They’re patriots, and they are the very best of us. They did not just defend a building or the people sheltering in it. They put their lives on the line to defend who we are as a country and as a people. They defended the very institutions and principles that define the United States.

Again, this is a wide-ranging public condemnation of the former president, in which Smith all but accuses the former president of insurrection and sedition, for which he was not charged. Indeed, the charges are based on the 1871 Ku Klux Klan law, the post-Enron statute, and a financial fraud law that is used mostly in cases where contractors and others swindle the federal government.

Exactly what information was presented to the grand jury and what did Smith tell the grand jurors when they were urged to charge the former president? Did Smith use arguments about insurrection and sedition to persuade the grand jurors to vote for these other charges? This is a critical point. It appears that Smith played fast and loose with the law and the facts, which does not meet the requirements for bringing charges that meet the probable cause standard.

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The grand jury process is intended to protect an individual’s due process rights. Indictments are to be brought by ordinary citizens sitting as jurors. The government is to provide the jurors with witnesses, information and an explanation of the relevant law, so that the citizen jurors are making their decisions based on a true, accurate and honest presentment. When this process is violated by politically motivated prosecutors, as with Bragg and Willis, or a prosecutor with a long record of abusing the criminal justice system, as with Smith, it is especially important that the Fifth Amendment not be abused and violated, and used not to protect an individual but as a cudgel by the government intended to imprison their targets.

It is relevant to note that all three prosecutors had the grand juries vote smack in the middle of a presidential election, and all have demanded trials within months of the indictments – that is, for maximum political damage to candidate Trump, and maximum political benefit to candidate Biden.

The use of these grand juries, where there is obvious evidence of chicanery by these prosecutors, must be scrutinized at the front end of these various cases. Thus, the question I have is: Where the heck are the attorneys representing President Trump and the other defendants? Why do they seem so passive in the face of potential grand jury abuses and, frankly, other government misconduct?

This juncture of the process is highly significant. In fact, the Supreme Court has held that the defendant loses any right to challenge the grand jury process, at least at the federal level, once a trial is held on the indictment.

Mark Levin is host of FOX News Channel’s (FNC) Life, Liberty & Levin (Sundays, 10-11 PM/ET). He joined the network in November 2017.

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Victor Davis Hanson Op-ed: Fentanyl, Viruses, Spying: Why Do We Let China Get Away With Attacks on America?

Victor Davis Hanson / @VDHanson / August 18, 2023

A smiling President Joe Biden and China's President Xi Jinping shake hands — There is a huge asymmetry in the bizarre Chinese-American relationship. China would never tolerate America treating it as it treats America. Why do our leaders let this situation continue? Pictured: President Joe Biden (right) and Chinese leader Xi Jinping (left) shake hands as they meet on the sidelines of the G20 Summit in Bali, Indonesia, on Nov. 14, 2022. (Photo: Saul Loeb, AFP/Getty Images)

Imagine if the United States treated China in the same way it does us. What if American companies simply ignored Chinese copyrights and patents and stole Chinese ideas, inventions, and intellectual property as they pleased and with impunity? What if the American government targeted Chinese industries by dumping competing American export products at below the cost of production—to bankrupt Chinese competitors and corner their markets? What would the communist Chinese government do if a huge American spy balloon lazily traversed continental China—sending back to the United States photographic surveillance of Chinese military bases and installations? How would China react to America stonewalling any explanation, much less refusing to apologize for such an American attack on Chinese sovereignty?

Envision a U.S. high-security virology lab in the Midwest, run by the Pentagon, allowing the escape of an engineered, gain-of-function deadly virus. Instead of enlisting world cooperation to stop the spread of the virus, the American government would lie that it sprung up from a local bat or wild possum.

Washington would then make all its relevant military scientists disappear who were assigned to the lab while ordering a complete media blackout. America would forbid Chinese scientists from contacting their American counterparts involved in the lab, despite the deaths of more than 1 million Chinese from the American-manufactured disease. And what if during the first days of the pandemic, Washington had quietly prevented all foreign travel to the United States, while keeping open one-way direct flights from America to major Chinese cities?

How would Beijing respond if American biotech company warehouses were discovered in rural China with unsecured vials of deadly viruses and pathogens? Would China be angered that it was never notified by an American company that it had left abandoned COVID-19 and HIV viruses and malaria parasites in its facilities—along with rotting genetically engineered dead rats littering the floors with hundreds more lab animals abandoned in laboratory cages?

What would Chairman Xi Jinping have done if American-made fentanyl was shipped in massive quantities to nearby Tibet on the Chinese border? And what if it would be deliberately repackaged there as deceptive recreational drugs and smuggled into China, where it annually killed 100,000 Chinese youth, year after year?

What if 10,000 Americans this year illegally crossed the Indian border into China and disappeared into its interior?

What if an allied Asian nation—such as South Korea, Japan, or Taiwan—went nuclear? And what if, in North-Korean style, it serially blustered to send one of its nuclear missiles into the major cities of China?

What if almost monthly China discovered an American military operative teaching incognito at a major Chinese university or among the ranks of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army? Would China object if an American femme fatale agent was sleeping with a high-ranking Chinese official of the Chinese Communist Politburo? Or what if one of the chauffeurs of its top-ranking Chinese officials was a nearly two-decade-long American agent?

What would be the Chinese reaction if there were 350,000 American students attending schools all over the Chinese nation, with perhaps 3,000-4,000 of them actively engaged in national security espionage on behalf of the United States?

These “what-ifs” could be expanded endlessly. But they reflect well enough the great asymmetry in the bizarre Chinese-American relationship. Obviously, China would not tolerate America treating it as it does the Americans.

Why then does the imbalance continue? Do naive Americans believe that the more China is indulged, the more it will respond in kind to American magnanimity? Does the U.S. believe that the more China is exposed to our supposedly radically democratic and free culture, the sooner it will become a good democratic citizen of the global community?

Are we afraid of China because it has four times our population and believes its economy and military will overtake ours in a decade?

Are we terrified that its Chinese government is completely amoral, utterly ruthless, and capable of anything?

Or are our political, cultural, and corporate elites so compromised by their lucrative Chinese investments and joint ventures that they prioritize profits over their own country’s national security and self-interest? And did the Biden family—including President Joe Biden himself—in the past receive millions of dollars from Chinese energy and investment interests? Did Hunter Biden’s quid pro quo decade of grifting result in millions in Chinese money filling the Biden family coffers—all in exchange for the current Biden and past Obama administrations going soft on Chinese aggression?

No one seems able to explain the otherwise inexplicable. But one way to get along with China and to regain its respect is to deal with it exactly the way it deals with the United States. Anything less, and America will continually be treated with even more Chinese contempt—and eventually extreme violence.

COMMENTARY BY

Victor Davis Hanson @VDHanson

Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, and author of the book “The Second World Wars: How the First Global Conflict Was Fought and Won.” You can reach him by e-mailing authorvdh@gmail.com.

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The left careens down the road toward totalitarianism

LEVINTV | BLAZETV STAFF | August 08, 2023

The Democrat Party is intent on destroying our nation from the inside out. And while the leftists might not come bearing physical weapons, they do have a more insidious kind of attack: ideas.

“It’s the battle of ideas. People are persuaded by socialism and Marxism. Why? Because they never produce what they say they’re going to produce. They produce horror, they produce death, they produce impoverishment. But the promises are endless,” Mark Levin explains.

Because Americans have historically enjoyed the greatest freedoms, they are also at the highest risk for giving them away.

“Liberty takes some explanation. Not to those who don’t have it, but to those who do,” Levin says.

If we’re incapable of even understanding the liberty we have, it becomes much harder to stop it from being taken away — and Levin believes that’s what’s happening right now.

“We are definitely on the road to totalitarianism,” he warns.

But he has a solution.

“We have no control over the culture, and so we need to push back. We have to claw our way back. We have to fight our way back.”

“It is important that we are successful, when it comes to the debate over ideas. It is important that we are successful in passing the word along from our family to our friends to our neighbors to our co-workers. It is important that we quietly in our churches and synagogues and mosques or anywhere else explain to the people who may not understand or even engage in debate,” Levin adds.

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Judge Andrew P. Napolitano Op-ed: Constitution Valueless if Gov’t Negates It

constitution shredded — (Mike2focus/Dreamstime.com)

By Judge Andrew P. Napolitano | Monday, 07 August 2023 03:52 PM EDT Current | Bio | Archive

“Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech.”

— First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution

Here is a pop quiz: If the states ratified an amendment to the Constitution repealing the First Amendment, would we still enjoy the freedom of speech?

That depends on which value prevails: Are our rights only what lawmakers have written down, or are they personal attributes immune from government reach?

When James Madison was crafting the First Amendment, he insisted that the word “the” precede “freedom of speech” in order to manifest the Framers’ belief that the freedom of speech pre-existed the government. The First Amendment is a negative right.

It doesn’t grant the freedom of speech.

Rather, it restrains Congress from abridging a right that preexisted Congress.

So, what is a right, and where does it come from?

A right is an indefeasible personal claim against the whole world.

It does not require a government permission slip or any precondition or community consensus — only the ability to reason.

It belongs to every human by virtue of our existence.

Privileges — like voting or driving an automobile — come from the government. Rights come from our humanity. Madison included the word “the” before “freedom of speech” in order to underscore its natural — not governmental — origins.

If you accept the existence of the natural law — a body of unchanging moral principles universally knowable by the exercise of reason — you accept that natural rights are ours to exercise whether the government is expressly prohibited from interfering with them or not.

So, under the natural law, murder would still be wrong and unlawful, even if the government were to permit itself and others to kill, as, of course, governments have done and continue to do.

Under the natural law, the answer to our pop quiz is that because the freedom of speech is a natural human right, it exists and is free from government interference whether the prohibition on interference is written down or not.

Is natural law in the Constitution?

Yes.

The Ninth Amendment — Madison’s crown jewel — recognizes the existence of personal human rights too numerous to articulate, and it prohibits the government from denying or disparaging them.

The opposite of natural law is positivism.

It teaches that law is only that which has been written down and ratified by the law giver.

Under positivism, there is no natural law restraint upon the government; right and wrong are only and always whatever the government says they are.

Under positivism, the answer to our pop quiz is that the freedom of speech would be fair game for the government to abridge.

The freedom of speech — to think as you wish, to say what you think, to offer what you say — is so normal, so human, so integral to the very existence of each of us, who cares what the government thinks of it?

Yet, today, the government thinks very little of the freedom of speech, even though all in government —from the president on down to a part-time government janitor — have sworn allegiance to the Constitution.

Today, even though the First Amendment only verbally addresses Congress, the freedom of speech is protected from all government infringement —whether local, state or federal; whether legislative, executive or judicial.

President Woodrow Wilson, who infamously had Princeton University students arrested for reading the Declaration of Independence aloud outside draft offices in Trenton, New Jersey, claiming they might deter men from registering for the draft, argued that the First Amendment only restrained Congress, not the president.

Today, such an argument is hogwash.

I offer this brief philosophical and historical discourse on the freedom of speech as background in order to address how this basic freedom is under attack by the government today.

Today, the attacks on free speech are often silent and unseen, as the government attempts to do indirectly what the First Amendment unambiguously prohibits it from doing directly.

In a case involving Facebook now making its way through the federal courts in Texas, we have learned that the Biden administration pressured Facebook executives to suppress free speech about COVID-19 vaccines.

The suppressed speech offered an alternative view to that which the government preferred. Rather than competing in the marketplace of ideas, the government chose to use its bully power to suppress the speech that it hated or feared or with which it disagreed.

This is government interference with speech because of its content.

The U.S. Supreme Court has made it clear that, except for a state interest of the highest order — protecting the secrecy of troop movements in wartime, for example — the government is absolutely prohibited from interfering with speech because of its content.

The government claims it was just pointing out errors in scientific materials to Facebook. But that is not government’s job.

The government does not enjoy the freedom of speech; only individuals do.

The whole purpose of the First Amendment is to keep the government out of the business of speech so that individuals can decide for themselves what to say and hear.

Facebook is not the government.

It’s free to censor all it wants. But when it does so to get the government off its back, it thereby acquires an attribute of the government, and a court can impose First Amendment restrictions upon it.

Stated differently, if Facebook and the feds are in a mutually beneficial relationship, they will both lose.

The feds will be restrained by a court — as the Biden administration was — for interfering with the content of speech, and Facebook will lose its ability to censor the content of its own bulletin boards.

Why do we elect persons to protect the Constitution who end up cutting holes in it?

What value is the Constitution if the government can negate it?

Whose speech will the government undermine next?

To learn more about Judge Andrew Napolitano, visit https://JudgeNap.com.

Judge Andrew P. Napolitano, a graduate of Princeton University and the University of Notre Dame Law School, was the youngest life-tenured Superior Court judge in the history of New Jersey. He is the author of five books on the U.S. Constitution. Read Judge Andrew P. Napolitano’s Reports — More Here.

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Jason Whitlock Op-ed: ‘The Great Gay Hope’ – Megan Rapinoe – dragged US soccer down the slippery slope

OP-ED | JASON WHITLOCK | August 07, 2023

Alex Grimm – FIFA / Contributor | Getty Images

The collapse of the U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team mirrors the descent of its most famous player, Megan Rapinoe.

Early Sunday morning, the USWNT exited the World Cup in the first round of the knockout stage, losing to an overmatched Sweden team on penalty kicks at the conclusion of a 0-0 tie. It marked the worst finish for the American women’s team in World Cup history.

Our national team has been ranked No. 1 in the world since June 2017 and for all but 10 months since March 2008. The squad has never been ranked lower than No. 2. In the Round of 16, Sweden conquered a dynasty.

Close observers were not surprised. The team has been in mental decay since Carli Lloyd retired (2020) and corporate media anointed the purple-haired Rapinoe as the unquestioned face of American women’s soccer.

For the last three years, the 38-year-old winger has used the team’s spotlight to grow the Rapinoe brand. The game, the competition, and representing national honor all took a back seat to self-promotion, virtue-signaling, so-called social activism centered around the BLM-LGBTQ-Alphabet Mafia, and expressing Trump derangement.

Rapinoe’s handlers and major corporations partnered with corporate media to cast her as “The Great Gay Hope,” the alternative-lifestyle Muhammad Ali.

Mia Hamm, Abby Wambach, Carli Lloyd, and Alex Morgan were all better players than Rapinoe. But none of them can match Rapinoe’s knack for drawing attention to herself for sleeping with women — her superpower, the behavior that makes her a legendary icon.

The same forces that have attempted to make Brittney Griner the Nelson Mandela of basketball insisted that “The Great Gay Hope” take a victory lap on the national team long past her expiration date.

To no surprise, the strategy backfired. Rapinoe acted as a locker-room cancer. She diminished the importance of competition. Throughout the World Cup, the U.S. women failed to play with passion and precision. In four games, they scored four goals and won just one match.

Fox Sports broadcaster Alexi Lalas repeatedly warned that the U.S. team would lose. Lloyd, working alongside Lalas, blasted the team after it laughed off and celebrated following a disappointing 0-0 tie with Portugal in its final group match.

The team had the wrong attitude. The team mirrored its star, Rapinoe, who was being crowned with commercials and feature stories promoting the legend of Megan Rapinoe. The World Cup was a coronation of Rapinoe … until it wasn’t.

On Sunday, with a chance to off Sweden with a penalty kick, Rapinoe missed the entire net wide right. She smirked and laughed in embarrassment. Two other U.S. women missed their kicks as well. But those women earned their spots on the roster. Rapinoe was on the team and on the field because of social pressure and a never-ending marketing campaign. She hadn’t earned the right to fail. The opportunity was bestowed on her.

When it was over, when the No. 1-ranked team in the world completed its epic collapse, supporters of “The Great Gay Hope” refused to pivot. ESPN aired a three-minute feature story on Rapinoe narrated by her “fiancee,” WNBA player Sue Bird.

The Worldwide Leader in Sports carried on as if Rapinoe had stuck a Kerri Strug-like landing, scored 61 points like Kobe, or ricocheted into the end zone like John Elway.

“The Great Gay Hope” crashed and burned. She took her teammates with her.

When asked for her greatest memory of her “legendary” career, she pointed to the lawsuit she and her teammates filed against the U.S. Soccer Federation over alleged pay inequality. Gender pay inequality is a myth and a lie, no different from other popular corporate media narratives like climate change and the alleged genocidal homicide of unarmed black men.

But the truth is irrelevant in the making of an Alphabet Mafia icon. Megan Rapinoe is the George Floyd of soccer. Racism and sexism are the only things that prevented them from being president and vice president of the United States.

Or maybe Rapinoe is just another narcissistic, greedy, entitled celebrity.

Could you imagine Joe Montana or Michael Jordan summarizing their careers by referencing a contract dispute?

Rapinoe is a fraud. She’s the Colin Kaepernick of soccer. Her attitude poisoned the women’s national soccer team. Let’s hope her side effects don’t linger.

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Alexandra York Op-ed: Why Masculine Men Matter

a cartoon heart with a handlebar mustache — (Dreamstime)

By Alexandra York | Tuesday, 01 August 2023 11:32 AM EDT

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In today’s increasingly muddled and manipulated world of sexuality, it may be worthwhile to stand back and ask anew “What is a masculine man?”

Next, we can ask if women need masculine men as protectors, if children need masculine men as a parent, and if men need masculine men as comrades? Finally, we can ask “If so, then why?”

This subject has been approached and analyzed by psychologists, anthropologists, biologists, theologians, and philosophers for centuries, but along with other gender preoccupations like Feminists’ demonization of “toxic” (masculine) men it happens to be a hot emotional subject right now. All the more reason a fresh rational look at the subject in the American-led Western civilizations’ current sex-obsessed context is important. If for no other reason, it is important because innocent girls and boys — the future of the human species — are being thrust into a confusing environment of sexuality before they are mentally or physically developed enough to understand the meaning and consequences of premature awareness and possible actions that can permanently alter their lives in a damaging fashion.

At the outset, we must stipulate that a “masculine” man is not an “Alpha” male who (like primates) establishes physical dominance and territorial dominion over all others under his control. We are addressing humans not animals, and although this analogy between humans and primates has been both promoted and denigrated for decades it can be laid aside as irrelevant. Evolution is significant but does not pertain to the contemporary state of humanity. For present purposes, we also confine ourselves to human males who have passed through childhood and achieved adult physical maturity as men.

Masculinity (as with femininity), however, is not a physical state alone. These terms are used to describe the physical, mental, and behavioral state of human adults, and the descriptions have changed throughout the ages as knowledge and understanding of human nature progresses. Even so, basic physical biological facts are demonstrably and scientifically established beyond all other attributes of males and females.

Finally, we must in no way dismiss validity for any and all individual behavioral preferences or practices by adults. “To each his own” is applicable here as it is with all personal choices in life.

What we can ask at this moment in time is an as-accurate-as-possible-description of a masculine man now. And, once described, does he matter and to whom and why?

We start with aforementioned biology. All males are structured to have more and stronger muscle mass than females; they also have a penetrating sexual organ. This means they can overpower women, children, and vulnerable men, putting themselves in a position of superior physical power over others when and if desired or needed. A masculine man does not use this power unless it is desired for rational reasons (defense) or needed (to assist another valued being). We notice men who seem naturally protective of physically smaller and weaker creatures from women and children to puppies and kittens.

Which brings us immediately to psychology and the values a man may hold that guide him toward defense or assistance, both of which primarily affect masculinity because they require mental judgment. Psychologically, a masculine man will be self-confident in the abilities and fitness of his biological body and mental acuity. He will enjoy the efficaciousness of his achievements as a problem solver and capabilities as a “builder” or “fixer” of things.

Even male toddlers exhibit these traits, demonstrating that they are embedded in the male DNA. Later in development if rational values (principles to guide action consonant with reality) are chosen, he will enjoy taking responsibilities, being dependable and courageous in action, unwavering in integrity, and consistent in reliability. He will stand strongly for personal values but be sensitive to opinions of others. He will enjoy camaraderie with other efficacious (masculine) men as witnessed in sports and on the battlefield because fully developed men need to respect, support, and rely on each other as equals in expertise and mutual loyalty to succeed in their endeavors when there are goals to be reached only by cooperative group action.

He also will be emotionally sensitive and sharing with intimates. Above all, he will be a “protector” of his loved ones, his chosen woman, and his children (if he has them).

Children — both boys and girls — are clearly susceptible both physically and mentally to domination by any male or female adult, and on some visceral level — admitted or not — every female knows she is defenseless against physical assault by men. All need protection. Equally important, he will be a good role model for boys, whether his own sons or those he nurtures as a Scout leader or teacher, trains as a sports coach, or the like. It is a statistical fact that young boys without fathers turn to older boys for guidance, often “bad” older boys who may lead them into drugs or crime.

American Feminists have long attempted to emasculate men in order to dominate them — “toxic” is only the latest derogatory term — just as elites now try to do by promoting notions that some boys may be happier if they mutilate their bodies to become pseudo “women” — easier to dominate.

Adult men, secure in their biologically given and individually achieved masculinity, are needed today more than ever before to stand firm against authoritarian-lustful governmental-social elites who would control not only global resources but also the world’s populace. Women can fight courageously and successfully against oppression, but genuinely masculine men exude a distinctive aura of unrelenting power sensed by all, an inner stability that causes pause on the part of predators. Thus, it is likely that masculine men are needed to lead the fight against wannabe dictators like schoolboard members, doctors, federal-state-local legislators, bureaucrats, and elites who would rob us of liberty and individual agency.

In America’s present cultural malaise, it would seem we need more masculine men in a world where it seems there are fewer.

Alexandra York is an author and founding president of the American Renaissance for the Twenty-first Century (ART) a New-York-City-based nonprofit educational arts and culture foundation. She has written for many publications, including “Reader’s Digest” and The New York Times. She is the author of “Crosspoints A Novel of Choice.” Her most recent book is “Soul Celebrations and Spiritual Snacks.” For more on Alexandra York — Go Here Now.

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Brig Gen (ret) Blaine Holt Rick Gates Op-ed: Our Freedom Depends on How Well We Fight the D.C. Swamp

we the people washington dc the capitol us capital

(Paul Hakimata/Dreamstime.com)

By Brig Gen (ret) Blaine Holt Rick Gates | Wednesday, 02 August 2023 10:46 AM EDT Current | Bio | Archive

We’re at war.

We’ve been at war for years and we’re losing miserably.

Don’t wait for President Joe Biden to tell you from the Resolute desk at the White House.

Congress has not issued a declaration either. Don’t assure yourself that all’s well until we see another country’s soldiers attacking on our soil.

For decades we’ve refused to acknowledge that we are in a “hybrid” or “fifth generation” war.

No bazillion dollar bomber or UFO-inspired jet fighter will keep you safe.

In this war, community and knowledge may give us our best chance.

Civil War?

Yes, absolutely, but describing it is difficult and that’s entirely by design.

To understand the players, look beyond the simple Democrat versus Republican construct that the mainstream media marinates you in daily.

Start to focus on a more complex description of the belligerents.

We have a very real cesspool of corrupt Washington D.C. bureaucrats and insiders.

It’s the “Uniparty” Marxists comprised of Democrats and RINOS versus We the People and a handful of brave elected, supported by a scant few whistleblowers.

We see the two-tier “lawfare” system play out daily and although many of the crimes against our Constitution and people are in full view, accountability seems virtually non-existent.

“Get Trump” is their religion, the latest being an unprecedent four count, 45-page criminal indictment to attack the former president’s First Amendment rights.

We are a nation in decline.

We watch the destruction of our culture and values, our wealth and savings, our sovereignty and most importantly, our liberty. If you think President Biden or Leader McConnell want what’s best for this nation, read no further.

“The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse”?

Whether coopted, compromised, or simply forgetful, Biden — after taking the oath to the Constitution — has weakened this nation by administrative measures and executive orders.

When the Lion is weak, the hyenas and jackals see opportunity, and so it is with the Four Horseman of World War III: China, Russia, North Korea and Iran.

Not only are these four in league with each other but are also hell-bent on destroying the power of the dollar in maintaining the current world order.

Look at African nations like Niger spiraling out of control while famine sets in and economy-saving energy projects that would save Europe disintegrate.

Team (Victoria) Nuland is on the case, demanding that Egypt send weapons to Ukraine or else. Super. Nuland is Biden’s under-secretary of state for political affairs

In Cairo they are looking soberingly at the loss of hundreds of millions of dollars and access to IMF support when food and energy cost 3x.

Behold, the wages of the failed Nuland doctrine.

China looks like the winner in the group so far, bankrolling Vladimir Putin’s war in Europe to weaken the West. First, economically and militarily, but ultimately with the objective to destroy American democracy.

That said, Xi and the CCP dynasty of Mao Zedong are on the edge of failure.

The second cultural revolution may be a hard sell with today’s Chinese, who had a taste of freedom and prosperity for a fleeting moment.

At least Xi can depend on his relationships in the U.S.

His investments (alleged) in the Biden administration bear fruit every day.

Sovereignty?

The border and airspace breaches provide the answer. Killing Americans?

Over 100,000 per year with the fentanyl program. Farmland? We’ll take yours.

Wall Street? We paid them off. We are in 143 of your K-12 schools. We have police stations and biolabs in your country.

Whether it’s a Feng Feng for a congressman or 10% for the “big guy,” Xi has paid in full.

Who Is or Are the Real Enemy?

CCP ally, Klaus Schwab and the World Economic Forum (WEF) comprise the globalists who seek to control every aspect of your life. Climate Change is meant to serve as a forcing function, accelerating globalist control to get you vaccinated, eating bugs, and tracked through FASTT pay and Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC).

The foie gras eating, private jet flying, oceanfront mansion crowd want one world government that means more for them and less of you.

The five hundred million allowed to live survive by eating bugs — don’t believe us?

Caution on pushing back.

Schwab’s associates, Yuval Harari wants anyone challenging the elites to be “disappeared.“

The only thing stopping them?

America.

We’re in the way.

Our Constitution, our faith and our inalienable rights are in the way.

You, are in the way.

Evil, well-heeled, smart people have designs on you. America as we knew it needs to collapse to make their dreams come true. Watch soon as CBDC “Worldcoin” is rolled out.

Will you turn in your biometric data for a few crypto-bucks? (Hint: avoid the “Orb.”)

America, we are not done . . . yet.

However, we need to wake up and fight Washington D.C. like our freedom depends on it.

It does.

The views presented are those solely of the authors.

Brig. Gen. Blaine Holt (retired) is a co-founder of Restore Liberty, a former deputy representative to NATO, a lifetime member on the Council on Foreign Relations, and a Newsmax contributor. The views presented are those of the author and do not represent the views of the U.S. government, U.S.Department of Defense, or its components. Read Gen. Holt’s reports — More Here.

Rick Gates is a political analyst and co-founder of America First Policies. He is a Newsmax Contributor and the author of “Wicked Game: An Insider’s Story on How Trump Won, Mueller Failed and America Lost.”

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Elise McCue Op-ed: LA Times Columnist Tries Desperately to Lionize Lying Kamala Harris

Elise McCue / August 02, 2023

Kamala Harris stands at a podium outdoors to give a speech — Vice President Kamala Harris — flanked by President Joe Biden and Michelle Duster, great-granddaughter of civil rights pioneer Ida B. Wells — speaks in the Rose Garden of the White House on March 29, 2022, after Biden signed the Emmett Till Antilynching Act. Los Angeles Times columnist Jackie Calmes last week disingenuously embraced Harris’ baseless implication that Republicans don’t want students to be taught about Till’s brutal 1955 murder. (Photo: Kent Nishimura/Getty Images)

One of the most annoying ploys of liberal journalists is to advise Republicans that the truly wise path in politics is to surrender to liberals on everything, and the dumbest path is to oppose them emphatically.

The latest flagrant example of this is a column in The Los Angeles Times with the provocative headline “Republican racism has finally weaponized Kamala Harris.”

The columnist, Jackie Calmes, was falsely categorized for decades as an “objective journalist.” Moving over to the opinion pages isn’t really a significant change. Calmes begins by acknowledging Vice President Harris is deeply unpopular. But, shazam! Republicans “keep doing stupid stuff underscoring their racial insensitivity” — like Gov. Ron DeSantis and his government in Florida claiming a “silver lining to slavery” in their new African American history standards for schools.

It doesn’t matter that the Florida standards explicitly demand slavery be presented to students as a dehumanizing horror. It doesn’t matter that the original standards that DeSantis criticized also had a passage about a so-called “silver lining to slavery.” It doesn’t matter that the “silver lining” for slaves came after slavery ended or after they escaped slavery. What matters is trying to construct a spin that makes Harris less of a liability for Democrats.

Calmes touted how Harris had a “pretty good week” as “she’s put the lie to the claim that the Left is forcing a guilt trip on white children by fully teaching them about the nation’s sins as well as its triumphs.”

Calmes used to work at The New York Times, the originator of the fact-mangling “1619 Project” that forces a guilt trip on all Americans with the supposition that America hasn’t really changed much since African Americans were held in bondage as subhuman chattel.

If you want to know where identity politics leads, look no further than a stadium of South Africans calling for the murder of their fellow white countrymen.

If you want to see a majority group calling for the slaughter of a minority group.

Stay Woke.
pic.twitter.com/bvsadAGGqB
— Laurence Fox (@LozzaFox) August 1, 2023

🤣 🤣 🤣
This is black privilege!
— AquaEng (@DuncanKiyingi) August 2, 2023

That project was aggressively promoted to schools across America as a curriculum. Then the liberal media pretended no one was teaching critical race theory in schools.

Harris is championed as the opponent of “perilous ignorance,” as conservatives insert “both-sidesism” into teaching the history of American slavery. This sounds just like liberals finding it perilously ignorant to allow both sides of an argument in your newspaper articles. Liberals are always trying to win by intimidating anyone out of dissent.

Calmes quoted Harris asking how could anyone suggest “that there was any benefit to be subjected to this level of dehumanization.” This is why liberals mock “alternative facts.” Disagreeable facts should be shamed out of public discourse.

Calmes also embraced Harris wrapping Emmett Till into this message, that somehow the Republicans won’t teach the children about that brutal murder, or advocate that everyone forget about it. “The vice president — call her [President Joe] Biden’s attack dog, as some accounts have, or simply a truth-teller — is not going to dissuade Republicans from their attempt to rewrite history. Yet even if she’s preaching to the choir, hers is a message that must go out. Maybe she’s finally found her niche.”

When they accidentally let the agenda slip. 🫢 https://t.co/AThal8dpW1
— ZUBY: (@ZubyMusic) July 15, 2023

It’s not “Republican racism” to oppose left-wing propaganda standards in our schools. It’s not “truth-telling” to proclaim that Republicans want to teach American history without a substantive focus on slavery and segregation and lynching and the Ku Klux Klan.

But Democrats and their media allies eternally try to hold on to voters of color by arguing that the Republicans are all undeniable racists, and never mind that inescapable historical fact that the Democratic Party was the staunchest party behind slavery and segregation.

The Daily Signal publishes a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Heritage Foundation.

COMMENTARY BY Elise McCue

Elise McCue is a member of the Young Leaders Program at The Heritage Foundation.

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