Following revelations that he allegedly lied under oath to Congress, Secretary of State Antony Blinken is facing calls from Senate Republicans to turn over communication records related to Hunter Biden and his shady business engagements.
On Monday, Republican Sens. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and Chuck Grassley of Iowa sent a letter to Blinken demanding that he turn over any and all records “referring or relating to Hunter Biden, his business dealings, or his family’s business dealings” by May 15. The request comes as part of Senate Republicans’ investigation into the Biden family’s foreign business ventures.
In the letter, Johnson and Grassley document a series of emails revealing how Blinken seemingly lied under oath about his prior communications with Hunter. While testifying before Congress on Dec. 22, 2020, Blinken was asked if he had any means of correspondence —including phone calls, emails, or texts — with Hunter Biden during his time as President Barack Obama’s deputy secretary of state, to which Blinken replied, “No.”
Emails from Hunter’s laptop, however, appear to contradict Blinken’s December 2020 testimony. As documented in the Johnson-Grassley letter, Hunter emailed Blinken at his personal email address on May 22, 2015, asking if the then-deputy secretary of state was available to meet.
“I know you are impossibly busy but would like to get your advice on a couple of things,” Hunter wrote, to which Blinken replied, “Absolutely.”
Blinken sent another email to Hunter a few months later on July 22, indicating the two met in person.
“Great to… see you and catch up,” Blinken wrote. “You will love this: after you left, Marjorie, the wonderful african american woman who sits in my outer office (and used to be Colin Powell’s assistant) said to me :’He sure is pleasant on the eyes.’ Tell you wife.”
The Johnson-Grassley letter also raises questions regarding Blinken’s knowledge of Hunter’s role as a Burisma Holdings board member. Burisma Holdings is a Ukrainian gas company that paid Hunter $50,000 a month despite the president’s son having no prior energy experience. Joe Biden has claimed that while vice president, he threatened to withdraw U.S. aid if then-Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko “didn’t fire state prosecutor Viktor Shokin, who was investigating Burisma at the time.”
Despite Blinken claiming to have no knowledge of Hunter’s Burisma ties during his December 2020 testimony, emails from Hunter’s laptop reveal that Blinken’s wife, Evan Ryan, “corresponded directly with Hunter Biden (from her personal email address) in an apparent attempt to connect [Blinken] with representatives of Burisma’s U.S. lobbying firm, Blue Star Strategies.”
In what appears to be an email chain dated July 14, 2016, Hunter informed Ryan that “S” and “K” — who appear to be Sally Painter and Karen Tramontano, Blue Star Strategies’ Chief Operating Officer and Chief Executive Officer — told him “they called the State Department and left a message.” In her email to Hunter, Ryan appeared to reference Blinken, writing “He didn’t get the msg” and “He said if we can get him their numbers he can call them late afternoon DC time tmrw.”
While this specific email exchange doesn’t name Blinken, Johnson and Grassley noted that State Department documents obtained during their inquiry “make it clear that [Blinken was] concurrently trying to connect with representatives from Blue Star Strategies.”
“It seems highly unlikely that you had no idea of Hunter Biden’s association with Burisma while your wife was apparently coordinating with Hunter Biden to potentially connect you with Burisma’s U.S. representatives,” Johnson and Grassley wrote. “Because your testimony is inaccurate, Congress and the public must rely on your records as the source for information about your dealings with Hunter Biden.”
These revelations follow testimony from an ex-CIA official, who claimed that Blinken, during his time as a Biden campaign adviser, was the catalyst for the creation of a debunked letter from former intelligence officials that falsely claimed the Hunter Biden laptop was Russian disinformation.
Shawn Fleetwood is a Staff Writer for The Federalist and a graduate of the University of Mary Washington. He also serves as a state content writer for Convention of States Action and his work has been featured in numerous outlets, including RealClearPolitics, RealClearHealth, and Conservative Review. Follow him on Twitter @ShawnFleetwood
The concerted effort by the media and Democrats to delegitimize the Supreme Court is the most consequential attack on our institutions in memory. Make no mistake. Today’s “Supreme Court Ethics Reform” hearing is meant to discredit the high court and slander justices with innuendo. Nothing else. Democrats are angry because the court happens to occasionally uphold basic constitutional principles of American governance. Democrats are nervous that originalist justices are going to weaken the administrative state or hand power back to localities or protect religious liberty or gun rights.
The recent hit pieces on Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuchwere shoddy and transparently partisan. They did not uncover any conflict of interest nor corruption. They exist to give politicians fodder and hackish outlets like The Washington Post the freedom to contend that the Senate is “consider[ing] strengthening ethics rules for the Supreme Court in response to a cascade of revelations about unreported lavish travel and real estate deals.”
Most Post readers will, no doubt, be unaware that there has been no “unreported” lavish travel or real estate deals. There is one amended note in a financial disclosure by Thomas — who had no ethical or legal obligation to check in with Democrats whenever he travels. In Politico’s Gorsuch hit, the reporter didn’t even know how to read a basic disclosure form. Everything, including a real estate deal that Gorsuch was allegedly attempting to conceal, was reported.
The fact that the same histrionic coverage did not accompany Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s amended financial disclosures in 2022 nor Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s amended financial disclosures in 2021 nor Justice Stephen Breyer’s long-term travel arrangements, which were often reimbursed by the wealthy Pritzker family, is no accident.
The committee chair, Dick Durbin, contends he merely wants the justices to abide by the ethics rules that Congress has drafted for itself. If they did, it would mean a complete degradation of standards in the court.
Because while there has not been a scintilla of evidence offered by anyone that the originalist justices have altered their judicial philosophy or approach for personal benefit, one could not say that same thing about the leader of the delegitimization effort, Durbin, who, according to a 2014 Chicago Tribune investigation, used his office and power to help enrich his lobbyist wife:
Among the areas of overlap in the Durbins’ careers: her firm getting a one-year contract with a housing nonprofit group around the time the senator went to bat for the organization and others like it; a state university receiving funds earmarked by Durbin when his wife was its lobbyist; and Durbin arranging federal money for a public health nonprofit when his wife was seeking state support for the same group.
Durbin did not pay a fine or face any repercussions for this conflict of interest. Then again, do you know how many officials the Senate Select Committee on Ethics has issued disciplinary sanctions to since 2007? Zero.
Not Judiciary Committee member Dianne Feinstein, whose husband Richard Blum, an investment banker, made some amazingly prescient trades in the biotech sector during Covid-19.
Not Judiciary Committee member Richard Blumenthal, D-Stolen Valor, and his wife, who happened to trade shares of Robinhood before calling for an investigation and then lie, not surprisingly, about the family’s significant stock ownership.
Not Judiciary Committee member Sheldon Whitehouse, who not only traded health care stock through his and his family’s accounts while pushing to pass a medical bill directly related to that sector but also used his seat to prop up a green energy concern that supported his campaign.
Nor Judiciary Committee member Peter Welch, who was buying stock in a German coronavirus test producer after hearing intelligence briefings on the matter.
Nor Durbin himself, who unloaded investments right after a private meeting with the then-Treasury secretary and Federal Reserve chairman during the 2008 financial collapse.
Remember that Durbin has been a central figure in the corroding Senate decorum and public confidence in the court for decades. In 2003, for the first time in history, a filibuster was used to stop an appeals-court nomination. Miguel Estrada, a talented Honduran immigrant, was targeted for much the same reason Democrats have targeted Thomas: he refused to adhere to the left’s stereotypes. We know this because in leaked memos from Durbin’s office, Estrada is identified “as especially dangerous, because he has a minimal paper trail, he is Latino, and the White House seems to be grooming him for a Supreme Court appointment.”
Durbin supported Harry Reid’s efforts to get rid of the judicial filibuster. When it was gone, he demanded Republicans rubber stamp left-wing nominees. When unable to stop appointments with votes, Durbin engaged in ugly smear campaigns.
In 2017, it was Durbin who asked Amy Coney Barrett to answer for her Catholicism. The implication, of course, was that orthodox Catholics are unable to uphold the law. In 2020, he would announce his “no” vote on Coney Barrett’s SCOTUS nomination before ever meeting with her. During the Brett Kavanagh hearings, Durbin did his best to portray the nominee as a gang rapist.
After years of slandering members of the court for the purpose of delegitimizing them, Democrats will bring up the fact that the polls show a diminishing trust in the Supreme Court as if it happened in a vacuum or as if they did not intend for this to happen. This is their doing. They are the ones creating the perception of corruption where there is none. And why? Because the Constitution is a hindrance to their agenda. It’s that simple.
Durbin tried to get Chief Justice Roberts to participate in his partisan clown show, claiming it was time “for Congress to accept its responsibility to establish an enforceable code of ethics for the Supreme Court, the only agency of our government without it.” The Supreme Court is an equal branch of the government, not an agency for Durbin to bully. And, outside of impeaching someone, Congress has no power to dictate how it conducts business. If anything, Congress should be looking to the justices to learn how to act decently.
David Harsanyi is a senior editor at The Federalist, a nationally syndicated columnist, a Happy Warrior columnist at National Review, and author of five books—the most recent, Eurotrash: Why America Must Reject the Failed Ideas of a Dying Continent. He has appeared on Fox News, C-SPAN, CNN, MSNBC, NPR, ABC World News Tonight, NBC Nightly News and radio talk shows across the country. Follow him on Twitter, @davidharsanyi.
FIRST ON FOX:President Biden and his deputy chief of staff held a meeting with three of Hunter Biden’s business associates, at least one of whom was a foreign national, at the White House in the summer of 2011 when he was vice president, according to emails and White House visitor logs reviewed by Fox News Digital.
At the time of the meeting, Hunter was trying to secure a deal with those associates in bonds worth billions of dollars.
In June 2011, Hunter Biden and his business partner, Rosemont Seneca Partners (RSP) co-founder Devon Archer, were in talks with Sean Conlon, the future CNBC “The Deed” co-host and founder of Conlon & Co., about a potentially lucrative business opportunity if Hunter would be able to secure a meeting between his father and two of Conlon’s associates, Andre Lasserre and “Wang,” who is identified as Xi Wang in the visitor logs.
Earlier, energy executive David Gamperl had emailed Conlon a contract that was sent to him by Nagi Ghawi, chairman/president of since-dissolved Mercantile Investment Group in the West Indies, which Gamperl said had “a real business model here” and would help them make a “substantial profit.”
“Here is the current contract,” Gamperl told Conlon on June 22, 2011. “Proof of funds are in place and we may close this week. It has been a challenge in the management of procedures but I think we have it now. We will make substantial profit on this deal but market is between $230 to $380 million. I’m trying to close this bond immediately, as it opens up the flood gates on 29 other bonds that have less hair and much more value. I will also forward you copy of bond and verification from the perito (who is a government official who inspects the authenticity of the bond). Good stuff and I think we have a real business model here.”
On June 22, 2011, energy executive David Gamperl emailed Conlon a contract that was sent to him by Nagi Ghawi, president of since-dissolved Mercantile Investment Group, which Gamperl said would help them make a “substantial profit.” (Fox News Digital)
On June 22, 2011, Sean Conlon forwarded an email to Hunter Biden and Devon Archer “affirming the validity of the bond and his original report.” David Gamperl told Conlon they are “buttoned up” with this report. (Fox News Digital)
Despite forwarding this email to Hunter Biden and Devon Archer, Conlon said, “I know Absolutely nothing about that” in a Monday email to Fox News Digital. He did not respond to any of Fox News Digital’s other questions.
Conlon then forwarded Gamperl’s email to Hunter and Archer, writing, “This is why I am putting up with this carnival! We need to put our heads together on this.”
Later that morning, Ghawi emailed Conlon an “RSP – Mercantile Oil & Gas Corporation Proposal,” and appeared to suggest that a meeting with the vice president or his chief of staff would have to occur “ASAP” in order to access additional bonds worth billions of dollars through their “Andre Lasserre connection.”
Nagi Ghawi emailed Sean Conlon an “RSP – Mercantile Oil & Gas Corporation Proposal,” and he said a meeting with Vice President Joe Biden or his chief of staff would have to occur “ASAP” in order to access additional bonds worth billions of dollars.” (Fox News Digital)
“I would like to confirm that I accept this letter of engagement based on 7% fees + 3% fees as a bonus if the first structured instrument (LTN) is executed within 60 days,” Ghawi wrote to Conlon. “This fee should cover all intermediaries’ fee and any additional fee should come out from this one. We have access through Andre Lasserre connection to at least 10 LTN’s but if we do not perform on the said meeting ASAP, we may not be in a position to have those LTN’s at our disposal.”
The next day, on June 23, 2011, Conlon forwarded Ghawi’s email to Hunter and wrote, “Ok see below. Need to discuss.”
“Ok- what do we need to do moving forward?” Hunter asked.
“I will discuss,” Conlon replied. “I got letter. I need email about event and a promise about meeting next week.”
Minutes later, Conlon told Hunter that they had an engagement letter from Mercantile Investment, and that the company was stipulating that then-Vice President Biden had to “formally meet” with “these guys,” presumably Lasserre and Wang, in order for “more bonds to move.”
Sean Conlon of CNBC’s New Primetime Original Series “The Deed: Chicago” visits at NASDAQ on March 29, 2017, in New York City. (Photo by Rob Kim/Getty Images)
Sean Conlon of CNBC’s New Primetime Original Series “The Deed: Chicago” visits at NASDAQ on March 29, 2017, in New York City. (Photo by Rob Kim/Getty Images)
In a Tuesday email to Fox News Digital, Ghawi said he “asked Mr. Sean Conlon and Mr. David Gamperl as I knew them from Chicago, to organize a meeting with the VP Biden or President Obama,” claiming it was “in their role as representative of the United States of America and not in their personal capacity.”
“Mr. Sean Conlon and Mr. David Gamperl have good relation [sic] with Hunter Biden so it was easier for them to organize a meeting with the VP Biden,” he added.
“So, we have engagement letter if they get other 10 bonds they have a face value of 10b,” Conlon wrote in the June 2011 email. “While it is far fetched Devon said he talked to his professor and these get traded. We get 10% in fees. We need to get these guys to an event or something where they get to just formally meet your Dad. For follow on they can talk to Chief of Staff. Let me know how soon we can do that. [Very] brief. If Nagi gets that done we get more bonds to move.”
A few hours later, Gamperl emailed Conlon, Ghawi and Conlon’s business associate, Benjie Burford, saying, “the face value is over $21 billion, as each bond is worth over $2.1 billion (this could vary as it depends on each bonds series, etc…)”
On June 23, 2011, Sean Conlon told Hunter Biden that they had an engagement letter from Mercantile Investment, and that the company was stipulating that then-Vice President Biden had to “formally meet” with “these guys” in order for “more bonds to move.” (Fox News Digital)
“We can employ a couple of different strategies in generating profits, which would yield revenue of 22% to par of the face value,” Gamperl wrote. “A joint venture with a potential buyer is one likely methodology to which we would work together with a partner in achieving the highest value over a period of time. The other concept would be to sell a couple of bonds at a high discount and then deploy political capital and invest approximately $2 million per bond to provide full value to the bond.”
Conlon then forwarded Gamperl’s email to Hunter and Archer. At first, Hunter bristled at the suggestion that he set up a meeting between the men and his father, but that demeanor quickly changed when he offered to meet with them himself.
“WTF is he talking about. Mtg with JRB chief of staff????” Hunter said, replying to just Archer.
“I guess,” Archer responded. “I don’t think he understands how this works. I will advise him to stand down.”
“Tell him I’ll do the mtg,” Hunter said.
“Roger that,” Archer replied.
At first, Hunter bristled at the suggestion that he set up a meeting with Wang, Lasserre and his father. But that demeanor quickly changed when he offered to meet with them himself in a June 23, 2011 email. (Fox News Digital)
Responding to Conlon and Hunter, Archer said, “I can’t say this isn’t interesting. Still find it difficult to imagine working out but I’m in!”
“No, I agree,” Conlon wrote to Hunter and Archer. “I ignored them first few times they were introduced to me. Then my friend was holding the first Bond at his bank and he called me to verify it is real. Now that doesn’t mean we can get them sold but its a free look. I guess all we need to figure is a 5 min introduction not a meeting in the next week otherwise the guy who flew over from Paris for event in Chicago will not provide the rest of bonds as he is sulking!”
US President Joe Biden’s sister Valerie Biden (R), and son Hunter Biden (L), board Air Force One at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland on April 11, 2023. (Photo by MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images)
Later that morning, Ghawi sent an email to Conlon informing him that Lasserre and Wang were currently in Washington, D.C., and that it was “extremely crucial and extremely urgent” to set up a meeting with them and “the Chief of Staff or VP or Both.”
“Andre and Wang are in Washington this afternoon and tomorrow meeting the world bank representative for Latin America,” Ghawi wrote. “It is extremely crucial and extremely urgent to have meeting setup either late today or tomorrow morning with the Chief of Staff or VP or Both. This is the only possible outcome possible for all of us. Let us have a conference call to manage this.”
Conlon then forwarded Ghawi’s email, and minutes later, Hunter fired back saying there wasn’t a “chance in hell” for such a meeting on such short notice. In the email, Hunter appeared to refer to at least one of the men as being a “foreign national.”
Sean Conlon forwarded Nagi Ghawi’s email, and minutes later, Hunter Biden fired back saying there wasn’t a “chance in hell” for such a meeting on such short notice. In the email, Hunter appeared to refer to at least one of the men as being a “foreign national.” (Fox News Digital)
“Sorry buddy not a chance in hell either is happening,” Hunter wrote. “Give me more then hours notice then maybe- but they are in middle of debt ceiling negotiations (I.e. Fate of world economy), defending ‘Biden Afghanistan Policy’ and whatever else. Beyond thy anyone who enters WH for a meeting has to be vetted by Secret Service and WH legal team which typically takes about one week- longer for a foreign national. I can meet with them myself but the other is not happening.”
“Hey fair answer,” Conlon replied. “I am sitting in tuscany with Devon.! I will formally organize thru u. Enjoy your weekend.”
Robert Hunter Biden, son of US President Joe Biden at Carlingford Castle, Co Louth, during his trip to the island of Ireland. on Wednesday April 12, 2023. (Photo by Brian Lawless/PA Images via Getty Images)
In the following days, Hunter and Gamperl emailed back and forth ahead of their meeting on June 26, 2011, at “Al Grocery 12 20 Long beach.” It appears they may have had a phone call the day prior to the meeting, and on June 28, Gamperl said, “please let me know if you can talk this afternoon or when? I would like to provide an update to Andre and Nagi.”
In the following days, Hunter Biden and David Gamperl emailed back and forth ahead of their meeting on June 26, 2011, at “Al Grocery 12 20 Long beach.” (Fox News Digital)
A week after Gamperl’s meeting with Hunter, Gamperl met with Alan Hoffman, who was Vice President Biden’s deputy chief of staff, on July 3, 2011, at an unknown location. Lasserre appears to have been present at the meeting also. In the days leading up to the meeting, Gamperl appeared to panic because Conlon allegedly told him he was “concerned that I may not have passed the vet test, I think he is kidding…. Might we have confirmation for Sunday’s meeting?”
Hunter replied that he was “working out the details.” The next day, Hunter told Gamperl he was “cc’d with Alan Hoffman” and to coordinate with him.
“We are set. Thank you,” Gamperl responded.
After David Gamperl’s meeting with Hunter Biden, Gamperl met with Alan Hoffman, who was Vice President Biden’s deputy chief of staff, on July 3, 2011 at an undisclosed location. In the days leading up to the meeting, Gamperl appeared to panic because Sean Conlon allegedly told him he was “concerned that I may not have passed the vet test.” (Fox News Digital)
A little over three weeks later on July 27, 2011, Hoffman met with Gamperl, Wang and Lasserre at the Old Executive Office Building (OEOB), according to White House visitor logs. The three business associates were at OEOB for about 30 minutes, arriving shortly before 5 p.m. and leaving shortly before 5:30 p.m., according to the logs, despite Conlon saying they only needed a “5 min introduction.”
Despite emphasizing the importance of the White House meeting in emails, Ghawi claimed the “discussion that occurred in the White House I was not informed nor I was briefed.” He also claimed, “No business and no transaction was done with Mr. Hunter Biden, nor the VP Biden” even though the emails talk about “substantial profit” and how a brief meeting with then-Vice President Biden and his top aide could help them move bonds.
About a year later, on July 30, 2012, Conor McKay, then-special assistant to Biden’s chief of staff, appeared to reference the meeting in an email to Hoffman and White House intern Sam Cohen saying he received a call from Ghawi seeking a follow-up.
“This guy just called back – his name is Nagi Ghawi, and he is the assistant for Mr. Andre Lasserre and a Mr. Wang,” McKay wrote. “You and the VP met with them at the White House last year? He said he has a message for you as a follow up to that meeting, and would like to talk to you about it.”
“He also said that if you have time while you are in Chicago that you could try to meet in person,” McKay added.
On July 30, 2012, Conor McKay, then-special assistant to Biden’s chief of staff, appeared to confirm the meeting with Joe Biden in an email to Alan Hoffman, who was Vice President Biden’s deputy chief of staff, and White House intern Sam Cohen saying he received a call from Nagi Ghawi seeking a follow-up. (Fox News Digital)
An intern who initially took the call said in the same email chain that Ghawi “said you’d met them at the White House last year and he wanted to send you a text with info you needed for the VP.”
Hoffman forwarded McKay’s email to Hunter, adding, “This is the guy with the magic paper that you had me meet with.” It is unclear whether he is talking about Ghawi or one of the other associates mentioned in the email who visited the White House in July 2011.
Ghawi told Fox News Digital he reached out to the White House a year after the meeting as a “follow up on the meeting on the request of the President of the KUNLUN Family Mr. Xi Wang in order to know if the representative of United States of America in this case VP Biden reached a decision.” He did not clarify what that “decision” refers to.
“Never heard back of the decision all the people involved went radio silence,” he added.
“My Role in this matter was a coordinator for the President of the KUNLUN Family Mr. Xi Wang and Mr. Andre Lasserre,” Ghawi continued, providing a website that included zero references to what was discussed in the emails. “The purpose of the meeting was a humanitarian meeting involving the KUNLUN Family with the representative of United States of America. I enclose the official website of the KUNLUN Family.”
When pressed for clarification regarding the discrepancy between his explanation and the content of the emails, Ghawi did not immediately respond.
The White House, Hunter’s lawyer, Gamperl, McKay, and Hoffman did not respond to Fox News Digital’s requests for comment. It is unclear whether Hunter Biden and now-President Biden profited off the meeting.
U.S. President Joe Biden (L) and his son Hunter Biden (2nd L) attend the annual Easter Egg Roll on the South Lawn of the White House on April 10, 2023, in Washington, DC. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)
Paul Kamenar, counsel to the National Legal and Policy Center NLPC), told Fox News Digital that the news could mean additional alleged violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), for which Hunter is currently being investigated in relation to his business dealings in Ukraine, China and others.
“If this person or persons met with Biden at the behest of his son, Hunter, and Hunter somehow was being paid directly or indirectly to arrange that meeting, then we would argue that, yes, he would have to register as a foreign agent of that foreign entity,” Kamenar said.
He said the emails provide “additional evidence to how the most serious charges of foreign agents registration problems are looming and need to be addressed.”
“It strains credulity to think that his dad is totally clueless of what his son’s up to,” he added.
U.S. President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden (L) attend the annual Easter Egg Roll on the South Lawn of the White House on April 10, 2023 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)
President Biden has repeatedly insisted he had no knowledge of son Hunter’s business dealings, despite meeting with over a dozen of his son’s business associates over the course of his vice presidency.
“I have never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings,” Biden said to Fox News reporter Peter Doocy as he jabbed his finger in his face on the campaign trail in Iowa in 2019. “You should be looking at Trump. Trump’s doing this because he knows I’ll beat him like a drum. … Everybody’s looked at it and said there’s nothing there. Ask the right question.”
“I don’t discuss business with my son,”Biden said again a month later in October 2019.
Fox News Digital reported last month that four business partners, a vice president and two assistants at Hunter’s now-defunct investment firm Rosemont Seneca Partners visited the White House more than 80 times when his father was vice president in the Obama administration.
Fox News’ Haley Chi-Sing contributed to this report.
Cameron Cawthorne is a politics editor for Fox News Digital. Story tips can be sent to Cameron.Cawthorne@Fox.com and on Twitter: @cam_cawthorne
The Biden administration will send 1,500 troops to the U.S.-Mexico border ahead of an expected migrant surge following the end of coronavirus pandemic-era restrictions, a Pentagon spokesperson confirmed Tuesday.
“At the request of the Department of Homeland Security, Secretary [Lloyd] Austin approved a temporary Department of Defense (DoD) increase of an additional 1,500 military personnel to supplement U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) efforts on the U.S. Southwest Border,” Pentagon Press Secretary Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder said in a statement.
“For 90 days, these 1,500 military personnel will fill critical capability gaps, such as ground-based detection and monitoring, data entry, and warehouse support, until CBP can address these needs through contracted support. Military personnel will not directly participate in law enforcement activities. This deployment to the border is consistent with other forms of (?)”
It was unclear when the troops would be deployed.
The COVID-19 restrictions allowed U.S. officials to turn away tens of thousands of migrants crossing the southern border, but those restrictions will lift May 11, and border officials are bracing for an expected surge of migrants. Even amid the restrictions, the administration has seen record numbers of people crossing the border, and President Joe Biden has responded by cracking down on those who cross illegally and by creating new pathways meant to offer alternatives to a dangerous and often deadly journey.
Biden’s actions follow similar moves by then-President Donald Trump, who deployed active duty troops to the border to assist border patrol personnel in processing large migrant caravans, on top of National Guard forces that were already working in that capacity. There are already roughly 2,700 National Guard members at the border.
For Biden, a Democrat who announced his reelection campaign a week ago, the decision signals his administration is taking seriously an effort to tamp down the number of illegal crossings, a potent source of Republican attacks, and sends a message to potential border crossers not to attempt the journey. But it also draws potentially unwelcome comparisons to Biden’s Republican predecessor, whose policies Biden frequently criticized. Congress, meanwhile, has refused to take any substantial immigration-related actions.
It’s another line of defense in an effort to manage overcrowding and other possible issues that might arise as border officials move away from the COVID-19 restrictions. Last week, administration officials announced they would work to swiftly screen migrants seeking asylum at the border, quickly deport those deemed as not being qualified, and penalize people who cross illegally into the U.S. or illegally through another country on their way to the U.S. border.
They will also open centers outside the United States for people fleeing violence and poverty to apply to fly in legally and settle in the United States, Spain or Canada. The first processing centers will open in Guatemala and Colombia, with others expected to follow.
Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
President Joe Biden will not negotiate over the debt ceiling during his meeting with four top congressional leaders on May 9, though he does plan to discuss starting “a separate budget process” to talk about spending priorities, the White House said on Tuesday.
Biden on Monday summoned the four Senate and House of Representatives leaders — two fellow Democrats and two Republicans — to the White House next week, after the U.S. Treasury warned the government could run short of cash to pay its bills as soon as June 1.
“He is not going to negotiate on the debt ceiling,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said. But the president “is willing to have a separate conversation about their spending, what they want to do with the budget.”
The debt limit was increased three times under Republican former President Donald Trump without an issue, she added.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is among those invited to the meeting, and plans ro attend. But on Tuesday, he also prodded Biden to be more flexible. He said Biden has a choice: Accept the bill passed by House of Representatives Republicans or negotiate a deal with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy.
McConnell also told reporters there is no solution to the debt ceiling problem in the Senate, while confirming he will attend the May 9 meeting.
History
The White House and Biden have previously asked Republicans for a clean debt ceiling hike and offered to discuss spending once the risk of default is off the table. Biden’s position to discuss spending reflects a subtle shift in the White House’s position to have discussions even as the risk of default looms.
Treasury’s June 1 estimate raised the risk that the United States could be headed into an unprecedented default that would shake the global economy, adding urgency to political calculations in Washington, where Democrats and Republicans were girding for a months-long standoff.
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said in a letter to Congress that the agency will be unlikely to meet all U.S. government payment obligations “potentially as early as June 1” without action by Congress.
The White House knew Yellen’s letter would be released on Monday, Jean-Pierre said. The president thought it was a “good opportunity to remind Congressional leaders that we must not default,” she said.
Biden called Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy in Jerusalem, where he is on a diplomatic trip, to invite him to the May 9 White House meeting. The two leaders haven’t sat down to discuss the issue since February.
Jean-Pierre said “it is time for the speaker and the MAGA Republicans to stop the brinksmanship and act to prevent default.”
Biden also made calls to the minority leaders in the Senate and House, McConnell and House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries, and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer.
We all know what perverts like Harvey Weinstein and Jeffrey Epstein think of young people. But did you know Bill Gates in among the sickest of the perverts in the land of leftists?
Several stories link Gates with Epstein, as do several mutual “friends,” or as I would call them, victims. Gates’ efforts in preserving eugenics is racist, infantile, and disturbing to say the least. Truly, I wasn’t sure Gates could do much worse than work towards “breeding the black” out of people. But I was wrong. This is definitely worse.
The evil on the left is so grotesque that those of us who have been smeared, defamed, libeled because of our opposition wear our ruin as a badge of honor. When the history books are written, we fought for the good against insurmountable evil.
Washington and California have both moved to allow state-sanctioned kidnapping to help confused kids transition
The UN says that minors can now consent to sex
Big Medicine advocates for genital mutilation of underage youth
Planned Parenthood ripped after approving ‘woke’ sex education
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation donates millions annually to a nongovernmental organization which claims that children are born sexual and should learn about “commercial sex work” under 10 years of age.
The International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) – a separate entity from the U.S. nonprofit – wields significant influence on global sex education. The NGO comprises 120 independent organizations in over 146 countries and has received – including its European network – over $80M from Gates. Other significant donors included the World Health Organization.
A toolkit released in 2017 showed an insight into how the NGO teaches sex education to children around the globe.
“Sexual activity may be part of different types of relationships, including dating, marriage or commercial sex work, among others,” IPPF said about children under 10 should be taught, which was first flagged by Nicole Solas of the Independent Women’s Forum.
Children under 10 should also be told “As you grow up, you might start to be interested in people with diverse gender identities,” the toolkit said. Bill Gates funded an organization which claimed children are born sexual.
The IPPF suggested in multiple instances that children are born sexual.
Children under 10 should be taught that “Sexuality is a part of you from the moment you are born. Your sexuality develops and changes throughout your life.”
“[S]ex positivity acknowledges that human beings, including adolescents and young people, are autonomous sexual beings.”
Sex educators, according to the NGO, should have an “Understanding of young people as sexual beings.”
A House Judiciary subcommittee hearing on Wednesday will feature the testimony from a whistleblower who will warn lawmakers that the U.S. has become the “middleman” in a multi-billion dollar migrant child trafficking operation at the border.
The hearing, “The Biden Border Crisis: Exploitation of Unaccompanied Alien Children,” will be held by the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration Integrity, Security and Enforcement and will examine the surge in unaccompanied children (UACs) at the southern border.
According to Customs and Border Protection (CBP) statistics, the number of UACs who came to the border shot up from 33,239 in FY2020 to over 146,000 in FY 2021 and 152,000 in FY 2022. So far in FY 2023 there have been over 70,000 encounters of unaccompanied children.
When child migrants are encountered at the border, they are transferred into the custody of Health and Human Services (HHS) and then united with a sponsor — typically a parent or family member already in the U.S.
But the Biden administration has been rocked by a number of reports that officials have been unable to make contact with over 85,000 child migrants, and more recently that administration officials ignored signs of “explosive” growth in child labor. A number have been forced into indentured servitude to pay back smugglers and have worked in dire conditions.
Thank God for the Whistleblowers!
Otherwise, we might never know what our administration is willing to ignore.
The Wednesday hearing will hear from three witnesses: Tara Lee Rodas, a whistleblower and former employee at HHS; Sheena Rodriguez, founder and president of Alliance for a Safe Texas; and Jessica Vaughn, director of Policy Studies at the Center for Immigration Studies.
Rodas will warn of a problem that predates the administration, but that has increased significantly during the recent migrant crisis, according to a copy of her written testimony obtained by Fox News Digital.
“Today, children will work overnight shifts at slaughterhouses, factories, restaurants to pay their debts to smugglers and traffickers. Today, children will be sold for sex,” she will say. “Today, children will call a hotline to report they are being abused, neglected, and trafficked. For nearly a decade, unaccompanied children have been suffering in the shadows.”
She will talk about her volunteering at an emergency intake site in California to help HHS’ Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) identify sponsors for minors who have come across the border.
“I thought I was going to help place children in loving homes. Instead, I discovered that children are being trafficked through a sophisticated network that begins with being recruited in their home country, smuggled to the U.S. border, and ends when ORR delivers a child to a sponsor – some sponsors are criminals and traffickers and members of Transnational Criminal Organizations. Some sponsors view children as commodities and assets to be used for earning income – this is why we are witnessing an explosion of labor trafficking,” she will say.
“Whether intentional or not, it can be argued that the U.S. Government has become the middleman in a large scale, multi-billion-dollar, child trafficking operation run by bad actors seeking to profit off the lives of children.”
These are real-life, modern day stories, happening right here, right now, under OUR watch.
This is not okay. Yet, this is what the Biden Administration is busy allowing, while pretending we have a worthy president deserving of a second term.
This right here should be the only thing we need to prove Biden doesn’t belong in public service. Of course, why would we expect more from a man that drove his daughter to addiction after their uncomfortable shower sessions together?
Rodriguez, of the Alliance for a Safe Texas, will share her experiences at the border encountering unaccompanied children, including teenage boys who she said told her that cartel cooperatives transported children through Mexico and held them at warehouses with armed guards. She will also call for the investigation of federal agencies responsible and for the ending of releasing migrants to sponsors.
“We can no longer turn a blind eye and pretend this isn’t happening. Congress has the power to stop this, which is why I am calling on you to do what is right,” her testimony says.
Vaughn will call too for congressional action, including the ending of legal loopholes that she says force the government to “to operate a massive catch and release program for illegally-arriving alien children.”
“They have been carelessly funneled through the custody of U.S. government agencies and contractors, and handed off to very lightly vetted sponsors (who are usually also here illegally) in our communities without regard to their safety and well-being,” she will say. “There is no question that the system for processing minors who cross illegally is dysfunctional, and has been for some time, and needs to be fixed.”
Wow. It’s only April, but I think we just got the understatement of the year.
Image source: Middleborough Educational Television YouTube channel screenshot
A middle school student who says he was sent home for wearing a T-shirt that said “there are only two genders,” bravely, brilliantly, and bluntly addressed the matter at a Middleborough Public Schools Committee meeting.
“I never thought that the shirt I wore to school … would lead me to speak with you today,” 12-year-old Liam Morrison said, having lowered the microphone to deliver his statement.
Young Liam is a seventh-grader at Nichols Middle School in Middleborough, Massachusetts, Fox News Digital reported.
Liam explained that he was taken out of gym class in March for what turned out to be a “very uncomfortable talk.” He said two adults told him the shirt he was wearing was making some people feel “unsafe” and that he would have to remove it to return to class.
The preteen said that though he was told he was not in trouble, it felt like he was.
When he said he did not want to remove his shirt, school officials called his father to pick him up, according to Liam’s account.
“Thankfully, my dad supported my decisions,” Liam said.
“What did my shirt say? Five simple words: There are only two genders. Nothing harmful, nothing threatening. Just a statement I believe to be a fact.”
Then Liam got to the heart of the matter, and the young, bespectacled gentleman held nothing back.
“I was told that my shirt was ‘targeting a protected class.’ Who is this protected class? Are their feelings more important than my rights?”
Liam said he didn’t complain when he saw diversity posters and pride flags in the school “because others have rights to their beliefs just as I do.”
Liam said no students or staff told him they were bothered by what he was wearing. To the contrary, he said. Some students said they supported him and wanted a similar T-shirt.
Despite being told his shirt was a “disruption to learning,” Liam said no one stormed out of class or burst into tears.
“I experience disruptions to my learning every day. Kids acting out in class are a disruption, yet nothing is done,” Liam said. “Why do rules apply to one but not another?”
“I feel like these adults were telling me it wasn’t OK for me to have an opposing view.“
“Their arguments were weak, in my opinion,” Liam said, briefly looking up from his papers, directing his gaze at the adults on stage.
“I have learned a lot in this experience. … I learned that adults don’t always do the right thing or make the right decisions.”
“I know I have the right to wear a shirt with those five words. Even at 12 years old, I have my own political opinions and I have a right to express those opinions, even at school. This right is called the First Amendment to the Constitution.”
“I hope you will speak up for the rest of us so we can express ourselves without being pulled out of class,” Liam concluded, thanking the committee for its time.
Watch 12-year-old Liam Morrison address the Middleborough Public Schools Committee meeting starting at 09:40 below.
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Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy gave NBC News anchor Chuck Todd a basic lesson in biology on Sunday on the issue of biological sex. During an interview on “Meet the Press,” Todd questioned Ramaswamy on his position that affirming gender confusion in children and teenagers is not compassionate, but “cruelty.”
“What makes it compassionate to pass a law that denies a parent making their own health care decision for their kid?” Todd asked.
Pointing out that many that laws already exist limiting what minors can do with their bodies — such as purchasing and consuming tobacco — Ramaswamy told Todd, “I think it’s perfectly legitimate to say that we won’t allow genital mutilation or chemical castration through puberty blockers for the purpose of transition.”
That’s when Todd invoked biology.
“You’re calling it that. But how do you know it’s that? Are you confident that you know that gender is as binary as you’re describing it?” the NBC News anchor pressed.
“I am,” responded Ramaswamy.
“Are you confident that it isn’t a spectrum?” Todd followed up. “Do you know this as a scientist?”
Ramaswamy, in fact, stated that his confidence is rooted in his background as a scientist. He is a Harvard-education biologist and a Yale-educated lawyer.
“There’s two X chromosomes if you’re a woman. An X and a Y — that means you’re a man,” he said.
Full Ramaswamy: GOP has to ‘be the party of free speech and open debate’ youtu.be
In response, Todd claimed — without citing any actual evidence — that “there’s a lot of scientific research out there that says gender is a spectrum.”
Ramaswamy responded to Todd’s appeal to authority by appealing to an actual medical authority. He explained that the accepted handbook for mental disorders, the DSM-5, includes “gender dysphoria.”
“Gender dysphoria for most of our history, all the way through the DSM-5, has been characterized as a mental health disorder,” Ramaswamy told Todd.
“And I don’t think it’s compassionate to affirm that. I think that’s cruelty,” he added of the idea that gender is a spectrum. “When a kid is crying out for help … let’s be compassionate and get to the heart of that rather than playing this game as though we’re actually changing our medical understanding for the last 100 years.”
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North Carolina and Florida Republicans chalked up major wins last week after a series of court rulings upheld their respective election integrity efforts.
On Friday, the North Carolina Supreme Court overturned its previous decision banning gerrymandered districting in the state. Last year, the court’s then-Democrat majority (4-3) “threw out a state Senate map from the Republican-led state legislature and maintained congressional boundaries that had been drawn up by trial judges.” After Republicans won the state’s two Supreme Court races during the 2022 midterms, the high court’s new conservative majority (5-2) opted to rehear the case earlier this year.
“In its decision today, the Court returns to its tradition of honoring the constitutional roles assigned to each branch,” wrote Chief Justice Paul Newby in Friday’s decision. “This case is not about partisan politics but rather about realigning the proper roles of the judicial and legislative branches. Today we begin to correct course, returning the judiciary to its designated lane.”
In December, the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments in Moore v. Harper, a case pertaining to the North Carolina redistricting fiasco. As The Federalist’s Margot Cleveland reported, the justices will ultimately decide whether a state court has the ability to usurp the constitutional power of state legislatures and “impose its own map for congressional districts drawn after the decennial census.”
In addition to gerrymandering, the North Carolina Supreme Court also issued separate rulings upholding a previously passed voter ID law and overruling a trial court decision that permitted convicted felons on probation or parole to vote. In December 2018, the GOP-controlled General Assembly passed a bill mandating citizens show a form of valid ID when voting several weeks after North Carolina voters approved a photo ID constitutional ballot initiative.
In September 2021, a trial court struck down the 2018 statute, repeating the false claim that such laws discriminate against racial minorities. The then-Democrat-controlled Supreme Court affirmed the trial court’s ruling in December. Much like with its prior gerrymandering ruling, the high court’s new Republican majority decided to rehear the case.
According to The News & Observer, a local news outlet, acceptable forms of valid voter ID include a U.S. passport, an unexpired North Carolina driver’s license, a local or state government employee ID card, or a state voter identification card.
Legal Victory for Florida Republicans
Meanwhile, Florida Republicans scored a major victory for election integrity last week after a federal appeals court upheld a 2021 law aimed at enhancing security procedures regarding the use of mail-in ballots and ballot drop boxes. On Thursday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit ruled in a 2-1 decision that the March 2022 ruling by U.S. District Judge Mark Walker — an Obama appointee — was severely flawed.
In his decision, Walker alleged that Florida lawmakers demonstrated “intent to discriminate against Black voters” and asserted that the statute is “the stark result[] of a political system that, for well over a century, has overrepresented White Floridians and underrepresented Black and Latino Floridians.” The appeals court disagreed, writing that “the findings of intentional racial discrimination rest on both legal errors and clearly erroneous findings of fact.”
The court further admonished Walker’s faulty legal analysis, particularly his error in claiming that “a racist past is evidence of current intent.”
“Under our precedent, this history cannot support a finding of discriminatory intent in this case. Florida’s more recent history does not support a finding of discriminatory intent,” wrote Chief Judge William Pryor.
Notably, Walker is also the judge tasked with overseeing Disney’s ongoing lawsuit against Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.
Shawn Fleetwood is a Staff Writer for The Federalist and a graduate of the University of Mary Washington. He also serves as a state content writer for Convention of States Action and his work has been featured in numerous outlets, including RealClearPolitics, RealClearHealth, and Conservative Review. Follow him on Twitter @ShawnFleetwood
Conventional wisdom holds that last week’s vote by the Republican-controlled House of Representatives to approve a debt limit and spending reduction bill is meaningless. Democrats called the legislation dead on arrival in the Senate, making whatever the House decides to do on its own irrelevant.
As with many things in Washington, the corporate media’s conventional wisdom is wrong.
Approving a debt limit bill did more than dispel the narrative that the Republican House, and Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., will remain perpetually in disarray. By eliminating one of the major elements of Democrats’ political argument, it raised questions about their own strategic endgame.
House vs. Senate
Under the traditional, “Schoolhouse Rock” version of lawmaking, the House would pass its version of a bill, the Senate would pass its version, and the two would convene a House-Senate conference committee to reconcile the differences between the measures. That outcome seems unlikely regarding this debt limit increase.
Virtually all Democrats support a so-called “clean” debt limit increase. That is, they want to extend the limit on the nation’s credit card without any accompanying spending reforms. (They claim they will discuss spending levels in separate legislation, just not as part of the debt limit.)
But most legislation requires 60 votes to overcome a filibuster and advance in the Senate, and Democrats only hold 51 Senate seats. As a result, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., must persuade nine Republicans — 10 if Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., who continues to recover from a case of shingles in California, remains absent from the Senate — to approve a clean debt limit increase for the measure to clear the chamber. That scenario appears unlikely, as Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., would lean on his troops not to approve a Schumer-led measure.
Indeed, Schumer may not bring a debt limit bill to the Senate floor at all, rather than wasting precious days of the Senate schedule on a measure he believes will fail. But this strategy would allow members in the lower chamber to ask an obvious question: The House did its work, and approved a debt limit bill — why won’t the Senate do the same?
Republicans Get to ‘Yes’
But amid the larger debate about the debt limit and fiscal policy, a key point about last week’s events has somehow gotten lost. Democrats continue to decry supposed Republican “hostage taking,” alleging that conservative lawmakers are threatening to ruin the country’s full faith and credit unless Democrats acquiesce to their demands.
Ignore for a moment the not-insignificant question of whether the Treasury Department can prioritize government payments in the event Congress doesn’t increase the debt limit, so as to prevent a default on government bonds and protect the country’s credit rating. The Democratic argument in large part rests on the premise that Republican lawmakers would never vote to raise the debt limit.
All the talk about “hostage taking” — which the left has utilized ever since the Republican takeover of the House in 2010-11 turned the debt limit into a bigger political issue — might have merit if lawmakers under no circumstances would vote to increase the debt limit. If there is no possible way someone will vote for a debt limit increase, if a lawmaker’s vote isn’t “gettable,” to use the Beltway parlance, then yes, one might credibly accuse conservatives of wanting to sabotage the country’s credit rating, just to make a point.
That’s where last week’s vote proved revealing, and decisive. Numerous conservative members of Congress, who in the past had never supported legislation that raised the debt limit, voted last week for a bill to do just that. People like my friend and former think-tank colleague Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, probably didn’t like the idea of raising the debt limit, but they did it.
After last Wednesday’s vote, Democrats can’t claim conservatives amount to legislative nihilists who can’t get to “yes” on an issue. Instead, they don’t like the fact that Republicans said “yes” to raising the debt limit and “yes” to reforming federal spending. They can no longer attack Republicans for not approving the debt limit, so now they will try to attack Republicans for the way in which they did so.
That position amounts to an attempt to dictate both sides of the debate. It’s the legislative equivalent of a tennis player whining, “You didn’t hit the ball to me the right way.” It holds a particular irony given quotes like the following: “I cannot agree to vote for a full increase in the debt without any assurance that steps will be taken early next year to reduce the alarming increase in the deficits and the debt.”
That quote comes from none other than Joe Biden himself, circa 1984. Given the way in which he and many other Democrats previously supported the notion of linking a debt limit increase to spending reforms, this egregious flip-flop undermines the integrity of their position still further.
Now that Republicans in the House have agreed to a debt limit bill, Democrats should agree to get in a room, figure out each side’s position, and arrive at an agreement that will hopefully increase the debt limit while addressing the nation’s calamitous fiscal state. It’s called “legislating” — Congress actually doing its job.
The House Ways and Means Committee granted two attorneys representing the Internal Revenue Service whistleblower authority to inspect Hunter Biden’s tax returns and related information. This development promises to accelerate the unraveling of the Justice Department’s Biden family protection racket.
Understanding why requires a fuller understanding of IRS privacy law, so here’s your “lawsplainer.”
A Look at the Law
Section 6103 of the Internal Revenue Code provides that federal tax returns and “return information” “shall be confidential” and makes it illegal for an IRS “officer or employee” to disclose such tax information. In fact, many view Section 6103’s confidentiality mandate as even precluding a government employee from revealing the existence of an investigation into a taxpayer. However, because in December of 2020, Hunter Biden publicly acknowledged the existence of an investigation into his tax matters after federal prosecutors subpoenaed his business records, the public has long known of the investigation into the president’s son.
Several exceptions to the confidentiality provisions of Section 6103 exist, though. Relevant here is the statutory exception authorizing whistleblowers to disclose confidential information to the House Committee on Ways and Means or the Senate Committee on Finance. That exception guarantees whistleblower protection to government agents who reveal confidential information concerning tax issues to either of those committees.
But because the Section 6103 exception does not also allow a whistleblower the right to disclose the information to his attorney, the whistleblower would be forced to face the committees without the benefit of legal counsel. Further, because Section 6103 defines “return information” broadly to include the nature and sources of income, data collected by the IRS, and “any background file document” or “written determination” prepared by the IRS, the whistleblower also could not legally discuss with his attorney many aspects of an investigation to prepare to testify before the congressional committees.
This backdrop explains the purpose of the letter Mark Lytle, one of the lawyers representing the IRS whistleblower, sent to the chairs and ranking members of several congressional committees. In that letter, Lytle conveyed his client’s offer to share information establishing that politics improperly infected the criminal investigation of a “high-profile, controversial subject” — again, widely believed to be Hunter Biden because of the Biden son’s confirmation in 2020 of an ongoing federal investigation into his tax matters.
The letter stressed that because of tax privacy laws, the IRS whistleblower, “out of an abundance of caution,” had “refrained from sharing certain information” with Lytle while seeking his legal advice. Lytle then explained that lacking a full understanding of the situation made it “challenging” for him “to make fully informed judgments about how to best proceed.”
Lytle closed his letter by asking the committees to work with him so his client could share the “information with Congress legally and with the fully informed advice of counsel,” adding: “With the appropriate legal protections and in the appropriate setting, I would be happy to meet with you and provide a more detailed proffer of the testimony my client could provide to Congress.”
Again, to grasp the significance of both this language and last week’s development, it is imperative to understand Section 6103.
The Workaround
As explained above, while Section 6103 authorized the whistleblower to share confidential taxpayer information with two specific committees, he or she could not give that information to Lytle or any other attorney. Section 6103(f)(4), however, provides an important workaround by allowing the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee and Finance Committee to “designate or appoint” an “agent” to inspect the tax returns and return information.
In other words, the committees could appoint the whistleblower’s attorneys as their “agents,” which would allow the whistleblower to discuss freely and fully the tax information with his lawyers. In turn, the whistleblower’s lawyers could brief the committees on those details, albeit in a closed session, which is precisely what Lytle suggested when he wrote that “with the appropriate legal protections and in the appropriate setting,” he would “provide a more detailed proffer of the testimony my client could provide to Congress.”
Thus, that last week the Ways and Means Committee authorized two of the whistleblower’s attorneys to inspect the tax material is huge: It sidestepped a protracted battle over the circumstances under which the whistleblower would testify. It also ensures the House committee can learn, on an expedited basis, the whistleblower’s accusations.
Given that the Republican-controlled House granted the whistleblower’s lawyers authority to access and discuss the tax returns and tax information, authorization by the Democrat-controlled Senate Finance Committee would not be needed. It seems likely, however, that the Finance Committee followed suit to ensure a role in the investigation. Senate Finance Committee Chair Ron Wyden, D-Ore., has yet to state whether he granted the whistleblower’s attorneys Section 6103 authority.
What’s Next?
No timetable has been announced for the next steps, but a source familiar with the investigation indicated a proffer by the whistleblower’s attorneys to the House Ways and Means Committee could occur as early as this week, with the whistleblower testifying soon after. The closed-door testimony could then become public, either because the House Committee concludes it is not confidential information under Section 6103 or because it votes to release it publicly, as allowed by statute.
Likely sensing the inevitable public airing of the purported political protection racket that allegedly saw two Biden-appointed U.S. attorneys declining to seek a grand jury indictment against the president’s son, lawyers for Hunter Biden reportedly met with federal prosecutors last Wednesday. Whether they were on a fishing expedition or attempting to hurriedly negotiate a plea agreement to short-circuit the scandal is unclear, but cutting a deal is unlikely to cap the fallout for two reasons.
First, it seems likely the statute of limitations will have run on some of the tax claims, in which case the congressional oversight committees will probably seek to understand whether politics resulted in lost opportunities to prosecute potentially more serious crimes. Second, the whistleblower’s claims reach beyond the tax case against Hunter Biden.
Specifically, Lytle’s letter states the whistleblower has detailed “examples of preferential treatment and politics improperly infecting decisions and protocols that would normally be followed by career law enforcement professionals in similar circumstances if the subject were not politically connected.” “People directly familiar with the case” provided more texture to this accusation, stating that “specific DOJ employees placed strictures on questions, witnesses and tactics investigators may be allowed to pursue that could impact President Biden.” The unnamed sources also stressed the improper politicization of the case came from the Justice Department and FBI headquarters.
The whistleblower’s accusations thus extend far beyond the tax case against Hunter Biden. Although unraveling the scandal will start there, it won’t end there. With the whistleblower’s attorneys now able to coordinate directly with the House Ways and Means Committee, the timeframe for exposing those complicit in covering for the Bidens just shrunk substantially.
Margot Cleveland is The Federalist’s senior legal correspondent. She is also a contributor to National Review Online, the Washington Examiner, Aleteia, and Townhall.com, and has been published in the Wall Street Journal and USA Today. Cleveland is a lawyer and a graduate of the Notre Dame Law School, where she earned the Hoynes Prize—the law school’s highest honor. She later served for nearly 25 years as a permanent law clerk for a federal appellate judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Cleveland is a former full-time university faculty member and now teaches as an adjunct from time to time. As a stay-at-home homeschooling mom of a young son with cystic fibrosis, Cleveland frequently writes on cultural issues related to parenting and special-needs children. Cleveland is on Twitter at @ProfMJCleveland. The views expressed here are those of Cleveland in her private capacity.
The Republican Party racked up victories in the past week, including keeping its House GOP together on raising the debt ceiling, getting a heavy hitter in the race for a battleground Senate seat, and polling strong against President Joe Biden, Axios reported.
Fiscal conservatives in the GOP do not want to raise the debt ceiling, preferring to cut Democrats’ runaway domestic spending, but they did a bit of both in the bill and effectively put the debt default in the hands of Democrats in the Senate and Biden.
Also, popular West Virginia GOP Gov. Jim Justice jumping into the 2024 Senate primary race for the seat currently held by Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., gives the GOP hope for flipping a Senate seat, if not forcing Manchin into a third-party or Democrat primary against Biden, Axios noted.
The polling is increasingly unfavorable for Biden in prospective 2024 races, including against former President Donald Trump.
“Zoom out from the most eye-catching headlines, and Republicans showed clear signs of momentum — from the GOP’s surprising unity on Capitol Hill to Senate Republicans’ recruitment success to polls showing Trump running competitively against Biden,” Axios wrote.
The RealClearPolitics polling average has the race as a virtual tie, with even the Harvard-Harris poll giving Trump a 5-point edge over Biden. An NBC News poll that found 70% of voters did not want Biden to run again, just days before Biden announced his reelection campaign in a Tuesday morning three-minute video. That same poll found Biden trails a generic Republican by 6 points (47%-41%), a rare sign of weakness for a U.S. presidential incumbent.
“The modest Biden lead in national polls today wouldn’t be enough for him to secure reelection,” Nate Cohn wrote. “If Mr. Trump is doomed, why isn’t he getting trounced in the polls?”
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including NewsMax, Fox News, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Rep. Devin Nunes, Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Chris Salcedo, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and Presiden
Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) outraged a congressional witness on Wednesday with a simple question about her perspective on abortion.
At a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing about “the assault on reproductive rights in a post-Dobbs America,” Kennedy asked University of California-Irvine Chancellor’s Professor of Law Michele Goodwin whether she supports unfettered abortion.
“I think this a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ question. Do you support it being legal to abort an unborn child up to the moment of birth?” Kennedy asked.
Goodwin, however, seemed uninterested in answering the question. She told Kennedy the question is more complicated than he believes, to which he said he simply wants her personal perspective.
“I’m just trying to understand your perspective, and I’m not accusing you of this. But, you know, people sort of talk around this issue,” he responded, before asking his question again: “If there were a bill that said that a woman has an unfettered right to abort an unborn baby for any reason up to the moment of birth, would you vote yes or would you vote no?”
“Senator Kennedy, I refuse to be shackled by your question,” Goodwin shot back.
Democrat witnesses refuse to answer Kennedy: “Do you support abortion up to the moment of birth?”www.youtube.com
After several moments of back-and-forth in which Goodwin and Kennedy talked over one another, Kennedy asked, “You’re advocating a law that says that an unborn baby can be aborted up to the moment of birth for any reason, are you not?”
“Let me clarify what the 14th Amendment says in the first sentence that citizens of the United States are individuals that are ‘born.’ That is what our Constitution says,” she responded. “Do you support our Constitution?”
It’s not exactly clear what Goodwin was trying to say with her reference to the Constitution. Either she was suggesting that the 14th Amendment does not apply to unborn children because they are not yet born, or she was making a reference to the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause.
The exchange ended when Kennedy reassured Goodwin that he didn’t want to argue with her, opining that he believed Goodwin was “afraid” to admit her support for “unfettered” abortion.
“You’re not going to answer it and that’s your right,” he said. “But I would respect you more if you would just say, ‘Here is my answer.'”
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Like just about anything else that undermines the Democrats’ preferred narratives, the Getty Images photo that revealed that President Joe Biden’s responses to questions at his joint press conference with South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol earlier this week were scripted went mostly unreported throughout the corporate press. And, compared to the damage done by the out-of-control spending and woke policies at home and incoherent foreign policy abroad pursued by Biden, perhaps it isn’t earth-shaking that he needs cheat sheets on those rare occasions when his handlers allow him to field live questions from the press.
We’ve already seen plenty of evidence that the 80-year-old commander-in-chief requires printed cards with detailed instructions to navigate public events. He spent most of the 2020 presidential campaign doing virtual events; the press and public were given little or no access to him. That’s continued since he entered the White House.
Starting from his first meeting with his first formal press conference in March 2021, he has been carrying such cards with him in such settings. In March 2022, he was caught holding a card with answers to possible questions about the war in Ukraine. And in both a June 2022 event with wind industry executives and then a November 2022 summit in Indonesia, the cameras were able to see the cue cards he carried that told him precisely what to do, with phrases like “You enter,” “You take your seat,” “You thank participants,” and “You depart.” And to the consternation of his handlers, sometimes he reads the stage instructions aloud.
But this week’s cheat sheet goes beyond the usual embarrassment about an octogenarian president who is unable to perform without a script and often incapable of following the instructions he’s given.
It’s one thing for the White House staff to tell the president what to do or even to supply him with answers to possible questions that he can’t be relied upon to remember without a script in front of him. It’s quite another when members of the White House press corps are actively colluding in the charade. And that is what the photo of his presser cheat sheet revealed.
The card labeled “Question #1” in the “Reporter Q & A” showed a picture of Los Angeles Times White House correspondent Courtney Subramanian (followed by the phonetic guide to pronouncing her name) and then the text of a question about semiconductor manufacturing.
Biden duly called upon Subramanian, who then did ask a question about semiconductors, though not the exact same question that was on his card. In any event, Biden followed the script and gave her the answer to the question he thought he was getting rather than the one she posed.
It’s generally no secret what questions reporters are liable to ask, since most follow the dictates of the news cycle. And while the tradition of White House pressers has generally called for senior reporters for major outlets to be given priority to ask questions, other presidents have been comfortable enough in public to be able to choose for themselves and to be able to answer without scripts or notes.
A New Low for the Press
But the question this incident poses is far more serious than the fact that Biden can’t maneuver through a public event without minute instructions.
The card shows that Subramanian is submitting her questions in advance of the presser. And it is likely that others who are called upon are required to do the same. That means that even when his staff allows Biden to face the press in live events — and he has held fewer press conferences than any president in the last 30 years — what we are seeing is something along the lines of a Kabuki play and not anything that previous generations would have recognized as an actual opportunity for the press to get real answers about the issues of the day.
This is appalling not just because it shows Biden is incapable of behaving as all of his predecessors have done and submit regularly to unscripted grilling from an often-adversarial press corps. Given his age and his inability to get through public appearances without all manners of gaffes and evidence of confusion, what the cheat sheets demonstrate is that the corporate media considers itself obligated to assist the White House in a deceitful show aimed at demonstrating Biden is capable of governing, when that is not the case.
That goes beyond the unwillingness of virtually any member of the current White House press corps other than Fox News’ Peter Doocy to pose tough questions. It means they have abandoned even the pretense that they are there to hold the administration accountable and are instead merely the media auxiliaries of the Democratic Party.
Even more than just this disinterest in basic journalistic ethics, this kind of cooperation shows the lengths to which some reporters and their bosses are willing to go to cover up Biden’s incapacity to serve.
Part of a Pattern
The willingness of the press to go into the tank for Democrats is nothing new.
Last fall, legacy media journalists covered up the extent of Pennsylvania Democratic Senate candidate John Fetterman’s incapacity in the wake of a massive stroke. Their lies were only revealed when, in the sole debate of that race, Fetterman demonstrated that, even with electronic aids, he had trouble comprehending questions and answering them in a coherent fashion. His recent return to the Senate after spending several weeks in a hospital to be treated for severe depression showed that there was little improvement, but even now the corporate media treat any mention of his problems as evidence of bad manners or prejudice against the disabled rather than a justified concern about a senator who cannot fulfill his duties.
Biden’s announcement of his intention to run for re-election next year puts this problem in clear focus. It’s impossible for citizens to judge whether it is wise to elect a man already clearly in decline to serve until he is 86 when the people whose job it is to tell the truth about the government are reduced to supporting actors in a show aimed at covering up the truth.
This transcends the longstanding problem of liberal media bias. Like the press’s conniving to spread the Russia-collusion hoax and their assistance in the silencing of the Hunter Biden laptop story, playing along with the Biden show is clear evidence of corruption. It means it is impossible to believe anything that reporters who play this game write or say. It also means that, in the absence of objective medical tests that are made public and which the White House has shown no interest in conducting, no serious person can possibly accept the assurances about Biden’s mental acuity that we are being asked to believe.
Jonathan S. Tobin is a senior contributor to The Federalist, editor in chief of JNS.org, and a columnist for Newsweek. Follow him on Twitter at @jonathans_tobin.
President Joe Biden has commuted the sentences of 31 people convicted of nonviolent drug crimes who were serving time in home confinement, the White House announced Friday. Many would have gotten a lower sentence if they were charged today with the same offense because of changes in the laws. A commuted sentence means they’ll spend less time in home confinement.
The commutations came as the White House announced a set of policy actions across 20 different agencies meant to improve the criminal justice system, which disproportionately affects Black and other non-white communities. The president announced his reelection campaign this week, and must keep Black voters in his coalition if he wants to win in 2024.
The plan is an effort to expand health care access, affordable housing and education, and make it easier for those who have been mixed up in the system to get jobs, higher education and vote. The effort includes a plan to make more grants available for people who need funding for education, and small business loans.
Those whose sentences were commuted included men and women convicted of drug possession in Iowa, Indiana, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Hawaii and Texas, and they will all finish serving time June 30. If any are in prison, they will finish out their terms in home confinement, and won’t have to pay the rest of their fines which range from $5,000 to $20,000.
Roughly 600,000 U.S. residents leave prison each year, and another 9 million cycle in and out of jail. As many as one in three Americans has a criminal record. That stigma can make it hard to get a job, go back to school or start a business.
“Far too many of them face steep barriers to getting a job or a home, obtaining health care, or finding the capital to start a business,” said outgoing domestic policy adviser Susan Rice, the first person to hold both national security and domestic policy adviser positions in the White House. She is leaving her post after two years and her last day is May 26.
“By investing in crime prevention and a fairer criminal justice system, we can tackle the root causes of crime, improve individual and community outcomes, and ease the burden on police,” she said.
The Democratic president has commuted the sentences of 75 other people so far. He also pardoned thousands who were convicted of “simple possession” of marijuana under federal law, and others who have long since served out their sentences.
Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including NewsMax, Fox News, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Rep. Devin Nunes, Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Chris Salcedo, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and Presiden
Antony Blinken represents neither the beginning nor the end of the info ops run to convince voters the Hunter Biden laptop was Russian disinformation. Revisiting the contemporaneous coverage of the laptop story in light of last week’s revelations about Blinken reveals the scandal extends far beyond the Biden campaign and involves government agents.
Last week, news broke that a former top CIA official, Michael Morell, testified as part of a House Judiciary Committee investigation that Blinken, now-secretary of state and then-Biden campaign senior adviser, had contacted Morell to discuss the New York Post’s Hunter Biden laptop story.
Blinken and Morell reportedly “discussed possible Russian involvement in the spreading of information related to Hunter Biden.” According to Morell, Blinken’s outreach “set in motion” what led to the public statement signed by 51 former intelligence agents that falsely framed the laptop as Russian disinformation.
This revelation is huge — but it’s only a start to understanding the scope of the plot to interfere in the 2020 election by framing the laptop exposing Biden family corruption as foreign disinformation.
The First Clue
The first hint that Blinken’s outreach to Morell was a single spoke in the wheel of the Biden campaign’s deception came from a follow-up email Blinken sent Morell on Oct. 17, 2020. In it, Blinken shared a USA Today article that reported “the FBI was examining whether the Hunter Biden laptop was part of a ‘disinformation campaign.’” The very bottom of Blinken’s email contained the signature block of Andrew Bates, then a Biden campaign spokesman and the director of his “rapid response” team, suggesting Bates had sent the article to Blinken for him to forward to Morell.
Blinken forwarding an article claiming the FBI was investigating the laptop as a potential “disinformation campaign” is hugely significant because we know the FBI was doing no such thing. The FBI knew both that the laptop was authentic and that John Paul Mac Isaac had possession of the hard drive, just as the New York Post had reported, albeit without identifying the computer-store owner by name.
The USA Today article nonetheless furthered the narrative that Morell and the other former intelligence officials would soon parrot in their “Public Statement on the Hunter Biden Emails” — that the emails have “all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.”
For those who lived through the Russia-collusion hoax, it was the USA Today article and the presidential campaign’s use of Russia to deflect attention from the Biden scandal that bore the “classic earmarks” of an information operation — one that mimicked Hillary Clinton’s ploy four years prior. Given the similarities between the two Russia hoaxes, it seemed likely the Biden campaign worked with the press to push the Russian-disinformation narrative.
USA Today Didn’t Start the Falsehood
Sure enough, the legacy press began pushing the narrative days before Blinken emailed Morell the article on Oct. 17.
On Oct. 14, 2020, the same day the New York Post broke the first laptop story, Politico ran an article, co-authored by Russia-hoaxer extraordinaire “Fusion Natasha” Bertrand, raising questions about the authenticity of said laptop. “This is a Russian disinformation operation. I’m very comfortable saying that,” Bertrand quoted former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense and Biden adviser Michael Carpenter.
At the time, Carpenter also ran the Penn Biden Center — the same place a cache of classified documents from Biden’s time as vice president and senator were discovered in a closet.
Politico also quoted Bates, whose signature block would later appear on Blinken’s email to Morell. Bates spun the scandal as one about Rudy Giuliani, who had provided a copy of the hard drive to the Post, and Giuliani’s supposed connection “to Russian intelligence.”
Intel Community Helped Peddle Russia Hoax 2.0
As was the case with the Russia-collusion hoax, the Biden campaign received an assist from the intelligence community. On Oct. 14, 2020, The New York Times reported that U.S. intelligence analysts “had picked up Russian chatter that stolen Burisma emails” would be released as an “October surprise.”
Burisma, of course, was the Ukrainian energy company that paid Hunter Biden nearly $1 million to sit on its board during his father’s final year as vice president.
The chief concern of the intelligence analysts, the Times reported, “was that the Burisma material would be leaked alongside forged materials in an attempt to hurt Mr. Biden’s candidacy.”
Lying Leakers Advance the Narrative
The next day, another foundational Russia-collusion hoaxer, Ken Dilanian, published an “exclusive” at NBC. Citing “two people familiar with the matter,” Dilanian claimed that “federal investigators are examining whether emails allegedly describing activities by Joe Biden and his son Hunter and found on a laptop at a Delaware repair shop are linked to a foreign intelligence operation.” Dilanian also quoted Bates, who again focused on Giuliani and his alleged connection to Russia.
The Washington Post also embraced the narrative on Oct. 15, reporting, “U.S. intelligence agencies warned the White House last year that President Trump’s personal lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani was the target of an influence operation by Russian intelligence.” Based on “four former officials,” The Washington Post reported that Giuliani had interacted with people tied to Russian intel.
More Lies Leaked to USA Today
This brings us to USA Today’s Oct. 16, 2020, article, “FBI Probing Whether Emails in New York Post Story About Hunter Biden Are Tied to Russian Disinformation.”
“Federal authorities are investigating whether a Russian influence operation was behind the disclosure of emails purporting to document the Ukrainian and Chinese business dealings of Hunter Biden, the son of Democratic nominee Joe Biden,” USA Today opened its article, citing “a person briefed on the matter” and immediately bringing up Giuliani.
According to USA Today, that person “confirmed the FBI’s involvement but did not elaborate on the scope of the bureau’s review.”
The next day, Oct. 17, USA Today followed up with the article, “A Tabloid Got a Trove of Data on Hunter Biden from Rudy Giuliani. Now, the FBI is Probing a Possible Disinformation Campaign.”
It began by saying the New York Post portrayed the laptop contents as a “smoking gun.” “Enter the FBI,” USA Today interjected, reporting that “federal authorities” are investigating whether the laptop is “disinformation pushed by Russia” and claiming there are many questions about the laptop data’s authenticity.
“Experts say the story has many hallmarks of a disinformation campaign,” it continued, using language strikingly similar to what the former intel officials would use days later.
Blinken Uses Reporting to Prod Morell
It is unclear which of the two USA Today pieces Blinken forwarded to Morell because both articles included the FBI investigation claims. It seems likely, however, that Blinken sent Morrel the second article because USA Today’s Oct. 17 coverage included a quote from supposed “experts” who said the New York Post “story has many hallmarks of a disinformation campaign.”
That language tracked near-perfectly the wording used by the 51 former intelligence officials in their infamous Oct. 19 statement, which claimed the laptop “has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.”
That’s Not All
Morell’s contact with Blinken reportedly went beyond the phone call and email. According to CNN, following his conversation with Blinken, “Morell had conversations with other former intelligence community officials, which is what led to the letter,” and then Morell “circled back to the Biden campaign to let them know that the letter efforts were underway.”
In testimony to House oversight investigators, Morell told how Biden’s campaign helped strategize releasing the statement, according to a letter Reps. Jim Jordan and Michael Turner sent to Blinken last week. Specifically, “Morell testified that he sent an email telling Nick Shapiro, former Deputy Chief of Staff and Senior Advisor to the Director of the CIA John Brennan, that the Biden campaign wanted the statement to go to a particular reporter at the Washington Post first and that he should send the statement to the campaign when he sent the letter to the reporter.” Shapiro was another signatory of the statement.
Politico, however, eventually first broke the story and published the statement, under the headline “Hunter Biden Story is Russian Disinfo, Dozens of Former Intel Officials Say.”
Mission Accomplished
In his testimony to House investigators, Morell “explained that one of his two goals in releasing the statement was to help then-Vice President Biden in the debate and to assist him in winning the election,” Jordan and Turner wrote. In fact, according to attorney Mark Zaid, who represents several of the signatories, “when the draft [statement] was sent out to people to sign, the cover email made clear that it was an effort to help the Biden campaign.”
Both parts of the ploy worked. When the final presidential debate arrived on Oct. 22, 2020, and then-President Trump confronted Biden with the details revealed in Hunter’s “laptop from hell,” Biden responded by telling the American public:
There are 50 former national intelligence folks who said that what he’s accusing me of is a Russian plant. They have said that this has all the … five former heads of the CIA, both parties, say what he’s saying is a bunch of garbage. Nobody believes it except him and his good friend, Rudy Giuliani.
Biden Campaign Thanks Morell for the Assist
Morell testified that after the debate he received a call from Jeremy Bash, who was one of the 51 signatories of the statement. Bash asked Morell if he had a minute to talk to Steve Ricchetti, head of the Biden campaign. Bash testified that he said “yes,” Bash got Ricchetti on the line, and the Biden campaign representative thanked Morell “for putting the statement out.”
More Than Dirty Politics
Morell’s testimony revealed Blinken and the Biden campaign’s role in prompting the bunk statement from the former intel officials. But the contemporaneous media reporting exposes a larger scandal: Representatives of our government helped promote that narrative by falsely telling media outlets the FBI was investigating whether the Hunter Biden laptop was part of a Russian-disinformation campaign.
The FBI’s role in assisting the Biden campaign’s plot transforms this case from one about dirty politics to a scandal involving government interference in the 2020 election. Accordingly, the House oversight committees need to determine which members of the FBI or intelligence agencies were responsible for the false media leak and whether anyone working on behalf of the Biden campaign collaborated with those government actors.
The committees thus need to gather evidence and question not merely Blinken, but every signatory of the statement, especially Bash; members of the Biden campaign, such as Bates and Ricchetti; and Biden advisers, including Carpenter.
While Blinken provides an entry point to unraveling the Russian-disinformation hoax, there is much more to learn.
Margot Cleveland is The Federalist’s senior legal correspondent. She is also a contributor to National Review Online, the Washington Examiner, Aleteia, and Townhall.com, and has been published in the Wall Street Journal and USA Today. Cleveland is a lawyer and a graduate of the Notre Dame Law School, where she earned the Hoynes Prize—the law school’s highest honor. She later served for nearly 25 years as a permanent law clerk for a federal appellate judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Cleveland is a former full-time university faculty member and now teaches as an adjunct from time to time. As a stay-at-home homeschooling mom of a young son with cystic fibrosis, Cleveland frequently writes on cultural issues related to parenting and special-needs children. Cleveland is on Twitter at @ProfMJCleveland. The views expressed here are those of Cleveland in her private capacity.
Conservative commentator Liz Wheeler was met by dozens of protesters Wednesday evening when she arrived to a Virginia college to deliver remarks about “transgenderism” and its impact in America.
The protest kicked off ahead of Wheeler’s arrival on the campus of James Madison University, where she delievered a speech, “The Ideology of Transgenderism,” and was challenged by a number of her detractors in attendance.
Wheeler, a podcast host who often sounds off on topics critical to the conservative agenda, was invited to speak at the event by the school’s Young Americans for Freedom chapter.
The demonstrators, all of whom appeared to protest peacefully against Wheeler’s appearance on campus, were captured on video gathering outside and inside the venue as they displayed signs and chanted ahead of the event.
Liz Wheeler, a podcast host who often sounds off on topics critical to the conservative agenda, was invited to speak by the JMU Young Americans for Freedom chapter. (Michael S. Schwartz/Getty Images, Liz Wheeler)
Wheeler responded to footage of the protesters prior to taking the stage, writing in a tweet: “Queer Theorists are lying to you. They don’t care about you. They’re using you to push their Marxist political agenda, and when they’re done abusing you, they’ll throw you away. You deserve more.”
Queer Theorists are lying to you. They don’t care about you. They’re using you to push their Marxist political agenda, and when they’re done abusing you, they’ll throw you away. You deserve more. https://t.co/S1wSSt3GDu
While several protesters gathered outside the venue, others gathered inside, just outside the room where Wheeler was slated to speak. Those demonstrators also displayed signs that featured messages protesting Wheeler’s appearance on campus and in defense of transgender people.
“Love and kindness are my family values! Moms for Trans rights,” one handcrafted poster stated. “Dukes against bigotry,” another sign said, making reference to the school’s nickname.
Wheeler took aim at “queer theory” during her speech, concluding it allows people to “choose your identity” and forgo your “evil identity” of being a certain race because it’s a “marginalized identity.”
“You can choose a marginalized LGBTQIA identity that will become your primary identity over the color of your skin,” Wheeler said. “The only thing that the queer theorists demand in return is that you surrender to them your identity, your body, your mind, your spirit, your soul, your family, your religion and your country. If this gives you the chills, it should. Because this is what’s happening across our country.”
Wheeler was also challenged by those who had opposing views about transgenderism at the event after she finished speaking. (Young Americans for Freedom)
Inside the event, Wheeler was also challenged by those who had opposing views about transgenderism after she finished speaking.
“Because you said the left is basically trying to fearmonger a lot of people, couldn’t people argue that you’re doing the same by claiming that people are trying to destroy the family and like mutilate people’s genitals and stuff,” one individual in attendance for the event asked.
“Well, is it or is it not true that children’s genitals are being mutilated in the name of transgender ideology,” Wheeler said in response.
“Do you have proof of that,” the individual responded.
“Oh, I’ve Googled plenty, yes,” the attendee said.
Responding to the initial question, Wheeler said “there’s a difference between warning people about the reality of what’s happening” and “pretending that someone’s words” are hurtful.
Wheeler went on to describe to the individual how sex change surgeries are performed on young males in America and how some sex change surgeries have resulted in death because they are “so dangerous.”
A Fox News Poll released this week found that 48% of respondents believe overly accommodating transgender policies are a major problem for public schools.
The lawmakers are introducing a bill Thursday to repeal the Consumer Financial Protection Act that created the agency and restore federal laws “as if the act had not been enacted,” according to a copy of the bill obtained by Fox News Digital. Since it was established in 2010, Republican lawmakers and financial groups have criticized the CFPB as an unnecessary agency.
“The CFPB is an utter and complete waste of government spending and should be eliminated,” Cruz, who is the ranking member of the Senate Commerce Committee, told Fox News Digital in a statement. “It is entirely ineffective and does very little to protect consumers.”
“The only purpose of this sham, Obama-mandated organization is to stifle economic growth by enforcing burdensome, unnecessary economic regulations,” he continued. “The last thing our economy needs under Bidenflation is further hindrance by government bureaucrats. Ending the CFPB will spur economic growth at a time when Texans and Americans sorely need it.”
Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, speaks at a Senate Commerce Committee hearing on March 1, 2023. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
The CFPB was founded after the Great Recession of 2008 and designed to serve as a financial sector watchdog. According to its website, the CFPB was created, in part, to “increase accountability in government by consolidating consumer financial protection authorities that had existed across seven different federal agencies into one.”
“Consumer financial protection had not been the primary focus of any federal agency, and no agency had effective tools to set the rules for and oversee the whole market,” the CFPB states. “The result was a system without effective rules or consistent enforcement. The results can be seen, both in the 2008 financial crisis and in its aftermath.”
Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., is often credited with establishing the agency. She first proposed it in 2007 when she was a Harvard Law School professor, and former President Barack Obama later appointed her to serve as a White House adviser with the task of overseeing the CFPB’s formation in late 2010.
Sens. Mike Lee, R-Utah, Kevin Cramer, R-N.D., John Barrasso, R-Wyo., and Rand Paul, R-Ky., joined Cruz in introducing the Repeal CFPB Act on Thursday.
Cruz first attempted to repeal the CFPB in 2015 and has since led several similar efforts.
Rep. Byron Donalds, R-Fla., introduced companion legislation of Cruz’s Repeal CFPB Act in the House. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)
“Look no further than the CFPB for the epitome of the Washington Swamp: an unconstitutional, unaccountable, and overreaching government agency with no Congressional oversight,” Donalds told Fox News Digital in a statement. “In addition to the drain of federal resources, the CFPB hinders economic prosperity by imposing burdensome and unnecessary regulations on American consumers.
“It’s high time to eliminate the CFPB once and for all and ease the overarching financial restraints established by Dodd-Frank that permitted unfettered power to unelected activists and the obstruction of fiscal ingenuity and growth.”
Meanwhile, the Supreme Court agreed in February to hear arguments in a case involving the constitutionality of the CFPB. Last year, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit ruled that the agency’s funding structure was unconstitutional since Congress delegates its appropriations power to the CFPB, thereby violating the Constitution’s separation of powers clause.
Oral arguments for the case are expected to take place in the fall and a decision is expected in 2024.
Thomas Catenacci is a politics writer for Fox News Digital.
Extremists have got to learn to take half a loaf. Just like the cheap labor-demanding GOP donors, pro-lifers need to be told: You can’t get everything you want. If Republicans give you this, they’ll lose their jobs, and the people who’ll replace them want you dead.
Unlike a lot of people complaining about the anti-abortion zealots, I am an anti-abortion zealot. That’s why I’m begging them to stop pushing wildly unpopular ideas. These fanatics are going to get millions more babies killed when Democrats win supermajorities in both houses of Congress and immediately pass a federal law making abortion-on-demand the law of the land.
They’re also going to get a lot more adults killed when those same Democratic supermajorities pass laws taking our guns, defunding the police and packing the court, among other great Democratic ideas.
We’ve been rolling our eyes at pro-choicers forever, telling them to calm down, that overturning Roe would just return the issue to the states. Blue states would make abortion legal until the kid turns 14. A few states, like Louisiana, would impose tough restrictions, but most states would come out in the middle — allowing abortions in the first trimester, plus parental notification laws, and exceptions for rape and incest.
Instead, the moment Dobbs was released, pro-life nuts rushed to the mics, saying, This is gonna be great! We’re going to ban abortion from the moment of conception and prosecute the mothers for murder!
The Democratic Party has been using abortion to scare suburban women in every election cycle for 50 years. Now, Republicans are finally giving them something to be scared about.
In Michigan, the Republican gubernatorial nominee, Tudor Dixon, said she opposed abortion for 14-year-old girls who’d been raped because giving birth to her rapist’s baby could be “healing.”
Does the name Todd Akin mean anything to you? Anything at all? Richard Mourdock?
Dixon lost by 11 points.
Pennsylvania responded, Watch this! Doug Mastriano, Republican candidate for governor, called abortion the “number one” issue of his campaign and said he looked forward to signing a six-week abortion ban. In 2019, he’d called for criminally prosecuting women who got abortions and doctors who performed them.
Mastriano lost by 15 points, taking the Republican Senate candidate down with him.
If we don’t bind and gag these pro-life militants, in about two more election cycles, we’ll have no Republicans in office anywhere. Good luck saving babies then!
Of course, it’s possible that there were other things voters didn’t like about Dixon and Mastriano.
Ah, but we also have pure test cases. Since Dobbs, there have been a total of six statewide ballot initiatives exclusively about abortion. The pro-life side lost every single time. They lost in blue states, in purple states and in red states. They were not outspent. These were direct-to-the-people votes. The tiniest restriction on abortion failed — even wholly theoretical restrictions! Every expansion of abortion rights won.
Army of Todd Akins: I don’t care! They’re wrong! They’re evil! What about the babies??? [Please give me a standing ovation now.]
In Montana, a proposal merely to require doctors to give life-saving treatment to babies born alive after a botched abortion lost 53% to 47%. Trump won Montana by 20 points in 2016 and 15 points in 2020.
In Kansas, pro-lifers wrote a ballot initiative that would have amended the constitution to clarify that it said nothing at all about abortion. The initiative placed no new restrictions on abortion, but simply moved the issue from the courts to the legislature.
It failed by 18 points, 59-41, losing in every congressional district in the state. Trump won Kansas by 20 points in 2016 and 15 points in 2020.
Kentucky voted on a similar initiative, proposing to amend the state constitution to say: “… nothing in this Constitution shall be construed to secure or protect a right to abortion or require the funding of abortion.”
That initiative lost 52-48. In 2016, Trump won Kentucky by a whopping 30 points, and in 2020 by 25 points.
In three other states, Michigan, Vermont and California, voters put a right to abortion in their state constitutions.
Six ballot initiatives expressly on abortion, and the pro-life side lost ’em all.
We’ve been waiting half a century to get Roe overruled so Americans could finally vote on the issue. Well, guess what? They’ve voted! In the privacy of the voting booth, the people have spoken, and what they’ve said is: We don’t want the stupid and incompetent having any more babies.
The fanatics cite three Republican governors who won reelection after signing six-week abortion bans as proof that a certain miracle governor in Florida hasn’t just nuked his own presidential chances by approving such a law. All three governors signed their six-week bans when Roe was still the law of the land. All three bans were tied up in litigation on Election Day.
But more important, in the entire country, only one incumbent governor lost in 2022 — pro-life, pro-choice, it didn’t matter. Thirty-six governors up for reelection; 35 won.
The only flipped governorship was in Nevada, where the winning Republican, Joe Lombardo, said he opposed a national abortion ban. Luckily, abortion was a complete nonissue because state law already allows abortion up to 24 weeks and can only be changed by a vote of the people. (Lombardo also said there was no fraud in the 2020 election, for any Republicans who care about winning.)
But even in the face of a brutal 6-0 losing record, there are still pro-lifers who will say, I’m proud and I’d do it again! (Did you see my write-up in Catholic Insights magazine?)
This is our “DEFUND THE POLICE” faction — people whose ideological zealotry outruns their rationality.
Fine, be a showoff. Just understand, you’re going to get a lot more babies killed. I hope that’s worth your moral preening.
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including NewsMax, Fox News, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Rep. Devin Nunes, Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Chris Salcedo, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and Presiden
Screenshot taken from video on the Joe Biden YouTube channel
President Joe Biden officially announced on Tuesday that he will seek re-election, releasing a video in which he trumpets the importance of freedom.
“Every generation has a moment where they have had to stand up for democracy. To stand up for their fundamental freedoms. I believe this is ours. That’s why I’m running for reelection as President of the United States. Join us. Let’s finish the job,” Biden tweeted.
Some people pounced on the “finish the job” language.
“Finish the job? Based on Biden’s record, this sounds like a threat,” Republican Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas tweeted.
“40-year inflation, a stagnating economy, turning over Afghanistan to the Taliban, China flexing its muscles over Taiwan, chaos in the Middle East. Give him four more years, and he’ll finish the job, all right,” conservative commentator Ben Shapiro tweeted.
“What Joe Biden means by ‘Let’s finish the job’: Worsening crime rates. More economic struggles. Higher inflation. Exacerbated border crisis. America’s enemies further emboldened. Increased attacks on religious liberty and our Constitutional rights. Hell no,” Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas tweeted.
“Yes, Joe stands up for fundamental freedoms unless it involves the 1st or 2nd Amendment, search and seizure or the ability to exercise bodily autonomy when it comes to rejecting a dangerous and feckless vaccine. Other than that, he’s ALL about freedom,” country music star John Rich tweeted.
Left-wing figures, including former President Barack Obama, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and current California Gov. Gavin Newsom, expressed their support for Biden’s re-election bid.
“Proud of all that @JoeBiden and his administration have accomplished these last few years. He’s delivered for the American people — and he’ll continue to do so once he’s re-elected,” Obama tweeted.
“Joe and Kamala are the best people for the job of defending our democracy, fighting for our rights, and making sure everyone has a fair shot. Join me in becoming a part of their re-election campaign, starting today,”tweeted Clinton, who lost the 2016 presidential election to Trump.
Joe and Kamala are the best people for the job of defending our democracy, fighting for our rights, and making sure everyone has a fair shot.
If Biden secures the Democratic presidential nomination and former President Donald Trump manages to win the GOP presidential nomination, Americans could face a rematch of the 2020 presidential election during the 2024 contest.
Biden, who is currently 80, would be 86 by the end of a second term in office if he were to win the 2024 contest. Trump, who is currently 76, would be 82 by the end of a second term.
Joe Biden Launches His Campaign For President: Let’s Finish the Job www.youtube.com
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Lia Thomas suggested on a recent podcast that women whose support for so-called “trans women” is conditional are “fake feminists” and cast his critics as bigots. He further stressed that real feminists should be interested in breaking down “patriarchal ideals of what a woman is,” especially if those ideals link womanhood to biology.
Schuyler Bailar, the transvestite athlete who hosted the podcast on which Thomas appeared, raised the matter of a February 2022 letter written by Olympic champion Nancy Hogshead-Makar to the University of Pennsylvania and the Ivy League on behalf of 16 members of the school’s female swim team.
The letter asked that the school not challenge the NCAA’s new transgender athlete participation policies, as they would exclude men who experienced puberty, such as Lia Thomas, from competing against women in the March NCAA championships, reported CNN.
“We fully support Lia Thomas in her decision to affirm her gender identity and to transition from a man to a woman. Lia has every right to live her life authentically,” said the letter.
It went on to say, “However, we also recognize that when it comes to sports competition, that the biology of sex is a separate issue from someone’s gender identity. Biologically, Lia holds an unfair advantage over competition in the women’s category, as evidenced by her rankings that have bounced from #462 as a male to #1 as a female.”
Thomas spoke on “Dear Schuyler” to the letter, saying it is “frustrating in the regard that
they’re like, ‘oh we respect Lia as a woman, as a trans woman, whatever, we respect her identity, we just don’t think it’s fair.’ And I think you can’t really have that sort of half support where you’re like ‘oh, I respect you as a woman here but not here.'”
“You can’t do that, you can’t sort of break down me as a person into little pieces,” added the former male athlete.
Bailar noted that the fight to protect women’s sports has become a big movement, executed “under the guise of feminism. Oh, we’re just feminists. We’re just fighting for women.”
Thomas agreed, later saying, “They’re using the guise of feminism to sort of push transphobic beliefs. I think a lot of people in that camp sort of carry an implicit bias against trans people, but don’t want to, I guess, fully manifest or speak that out. And so they try to just play it off as this sort of half-support.”
After arguing that feminists who sought to keep men out of women’s sports were ideologically incoherent, Bailar likened the corresponding claim of seeking fairness on the basis of sex to the ambivalence of racists about black women competing in sports.
“Please tell me why are all these women, you know, in tears? Why are they crying? What is
the pain that trans women are causing them? And the answer was something about opportunities being taken away,” said Bailar, adding, “It was the same exact arguments that came up when black women began to be in sports. … You don’t want a woman who doesn’t look like you, perhaps, or who is fitting your version of womanhood to win.”
Thomas, having ostensibly agreed with Bailar’s remarks, suggested that “transphobia in sports” should be contextualized more broadly in “patriarchal ideals of what a woman is and who can be a woman.”
The Independent Council on Women’s Sports responded to the podcast, tweeting, “We agree with Lia Thomas on one thing: ‘You can’t really have that sort of half-support.’ We do not in ANY way support the injustice of male participation in women’s sports. We are all in for female athletes. Not half. ALL in.”
We agree with Lia Thomas on one thing: “You can’t really have that sort of half-support”
We do not in ANY way support the injustice of male participation in women’s sports. We are all in for female athletes. Not half. ALL in. pic.twitter.com/zprRMq5sA4
Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Co.) wrote, “There is nothing anti-feminist about saying that Lia Thomas, a man, should not be participating in sports with women. Feminists, and all women, should be outraged that a MAN has the nerve to tell them how they should feel about him invading their spaces and sports competitions.”
“What a joke,” wrote Piers Morgan. “There’s nothing more ‘anti-feminist’ than trans athletes like Lia Thomas using the massive advantages of their male biology to beat women at sport.”
TheBlaze previously reported Thomas was a middling performer on the University of Pennsylvania men’s swimming team until he starting taking hormones in 2019 and competing against women. He went onto crush records set by females in the 500-yard freestyle at the 2022 NCAA championships and tie with All-American all-female swim star Riley Gaines for fifth last April in the women’s 200-meter. According to Gaines, it was around that time Thomas exposed his male genitalia in a women’s locker room.
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One of the most understated yet important aspects of Tucker Carlson’s tenure at Fox News was his unique ability to bridge a seemingly unbridgeable generational divide. Whether he was exploring more complicated topics via long-form documentaries, interviewing the world’s wealthiest man, or simply telling the Republican Party to get its act together, people of all ages tuned in. Grandparents and grandkids alike genuinely love him.
And perhaps this, in part, is why he was able to so easily mainstream the thoughts, theories, and brands of pseudonymous Twitter users who historically have been relegated to the dark corners of the internet with the rest of the weirdos. If a voice has utility, he gives it a platform; people trust him to discern who is worth listening to.
Tucker routinely used his platform to amplify people like Chaya Raichik (Libs of TikTok), which undeniably helped her gain traction and expose more people to the insanity of leftism. And to be sure, this was great, but people would likely be able to understand that sort of thing for themselves, even if they hadn’t encountered LibsofTikTok. We instinctively know when something is out of sync with the natural law and metaphysically disordered, as leftism inherently is.
Arguably some of his finest moments as a communicator were when he embraced the more esoteric, if you will, thoughts being grappled with in the nuanced essays of people like Peachy Keenan and translated them into modern English so the masses, who likely don’t have time to ponder these things on a regular basis, can also participate in the intellectual exercise.
Take, for instance, Tucker’s opening monologue from three weeks ago, in which he described the state of New York as existing in a state of anarcho-tyranny. He explained how this is a framework of “state-sponsored anarchy accompanied by political tyranny” and described how Alvin Bragg’s indictment of Donald Trump and general apathy toward crime embodies it. Anarcho-tyranny, being introduced into the lexicon of paleoconservatives several decades ago, is not a term many people would be familiar with despite being uncomfortably familiar with the concept. Nevertheless, Tucker brought them up to speed.
Or take an example from July 2021, when he read a tweet thread from Darryl Cooper (MartyrMade) providing great insight and clarity as to why conservatives remain skeptical about the outcome of the 2020 election and no longer have faith in institutions like the corporate media or national intelligence apparatus.
But he didn’t only highlight academics. Sometimes he highlighted skeptics for the sake of highlighting skepticism and to prove to us that the “experts” are idiots — as was the case in this past fall’s “The End of Men.” The documentary takes the food and health industries to task and explores the, frankly, dual existential crisis of plummeting male fertility and lack of nutritional sustenance. The documentary features a man by the name of “Raw Egg Nationalist” — a sworn enemy of soy globalism and an advocate for maximizing nutritional intake by slonking raw eggs — and another individual who goes by “Benjamin Braddock” and who believes the key to boosting testosterone is exposing his crotch to redlight.
Similar to how Rush Limbaugh mainstreamed Michael Anton’s “Flight 93” essay by reading it in its entirety on air, Tucker made a lot more voices — who really ought to be heard — and a lot more content accessible by providing a platform that wouldn’t otherwise have been available purely because of unsavory optics.
The conservative movement needs someone like Tucker, who is willing to push the limit and unwilling to pull his punches.
Samuel Mangold-Lenett is a staff editor at The Federalist. His writing has been featured in the Daily Wire, Townhall, The American Spectator, and other outlets. He is a 2022 Claremont Institute Publius Fellow. Follow him on Twitter @smlenett.
Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, revealed in a floor speech on Tuesday that material reviewed by his investigative staff supported whistleblower allegations that the FBI falsely labeled evidence of potential criminal conduct by members of the Biden family “Russian disinformation.” While Grassley had previously discussed the whistleblower allegations, he now confirmed for the first time that an independent review of the pertinent records supported the accusations.
In response to last week’s announcement by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer that he planned to offer a resolution denouncing former President Donald Trump’s call to defund the FBI, Grassley excoriated Democrats for remaining silent while the country faced an uptick in violence against law enforcement officers and the radical left pushed to defund the police. The Iowa senator then chastised Democrats for offering a political resolution that ignored the weaponization of the FBI, proceeding then to catalog the DOJ and FBI’s many abuses.
Here, Grassley stressed that protected whistleblower disclosures made“clear that the FBI has within its possession very significant, very impactful, and very voluminous evidence with respect to potential criminal conduct by members of the Biden family.”
“I know the FBI falsely labeled that evidence as Russian disinformation to bury it,” Grassley continued, revealing that his staff had “independently reviewed records” that support the whistleblower allegations.
Tuesday’s comments came some six months after Grassley revealed that the FBI had possession of “a series of documents relating to information on Mykola Zlochevsky, the owner of Burisma, and his business and financial associations with Hunter Biden.” According to an October 2022 news release and an accompanying letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland, FBI Director Christopher Wray, and Delaware U.S. Attorney David Weiss, Grassley said:
The documents in the FBI’s possession include specific details with respect to conversations by non-government individuals relevant to potential criminal conduct by Hunter Biden. These documents also indicate that Joe Biden was aware of Hunter Biden’s business arrangements and may have been involved in some of them.
At the time, Grassley noted it was “unclear whether the FBI followed normal investigative procedure to determine the truth and accuracy of the information or shut down investigative activity based on improper disinformation claims in advance of the 2020 election…” The senator also expressed concern over whether Weiss had independently evaluated the evidence.
Grassley concluded his October 2022 letter by requesting from the DOJ and FBI all records from Jan. 1, 2014, forward “that reference Mykola Zlochevsky, Hunter Biden, James Biden and Joe Biden.” While his letter sought “all records,” Grassley explicitly highlighted several forms including, among others, FD-209a, which is used to record an “asset contract”; FD-794b, which is used to request a payment; FD-1023, which is used for a source report; and FD-1040a, which is used to close a source.
The specific documents requested suggest the whistleblower had claimed the FBI had a source that provided information on the Burisma owner and the Biden family.
While it is unclear whether the DOJ and FBI provided the documents, Grassley’s floor statement on Tuesday shows his office had access to records corroborating the whistleblower claims that the FBI buried evidence derogatory to the Biden family by framing it as Russian disinformation.
This latest revelation follows last week’s news that an Internal Revenue Service whistleblower claimed FBI headquarters interfered in the investigation into Hunter Biden and that two Biden-appointed U.S. attorneys declined to file tax charges against the president’s son, against the recommendation of career prosecutors.
Yet Garland and Wray remain silent. If it weren’t for Grassley’s various letters and floor statements, Americans would know little about the FBI’s political favoritism and the “get out of jail free card” they seem to be handing out to Hunter Biden at every opportunity.
But now that we know that evidence, likely including a confidential human source, was buried under the guise that it was Russian disinformation, will anything change?
Sadly, for all of Grassley’s efforts to expose the scandal, the last seven years suggest not.
Margot Cleveland is The Federalist’s senior legal correspondent. She is also a contributor to National Review Online, the Washington Examiner, Aleteia, and Townhall.com, and has been published in the Wall Street Journal and USA Today. Cleveland is a lawyer and a graduate of the Notre Dame Law School, where she earned the Hoynes Prize—the law school’s highest honor. She later served for nearly 25 years as a permanent law clerk for a federal appellate judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Cleveland is a former full-time university faculty member and now teaches as an adjunct from time to time. As a stay-at-home homeschooling mom of a young son with cystic fibrosis, Cleveland frequently writes on cultural issues related to parenting and special-needs children. Cleveland is on Twitter at @ProfMJCleveland. The views expressed here are those of Cleveland in her private capacity.
I recently wrote about an extraordinarily misleading Kaiser Family study that claimed “1 in 5” Americans have a family member who has been killed by a gun. Kaiser’s inflated findings were based on a small sample size of self-reported answers to questions that offered no useful limiting parameters. In many ways, another endlessly repeated contention of gun controllers suffers from the same problem: Gun violence is the number one cause of death of children in America. Virtuallyeverymediaoutlet and Democrat repeats this contention — including, recently, the vice president. The claim is meant to conjure up distressing images of frolicking kids in parks and schools being gunned down by assault weapons.
And horrific events certainly happen in the country. We need not gloss over the evil of mass school shootings, even if they’re rarer than gun-control types would have you believe. But that does not give people license to make things up.
We don’t really know which study Harris based her comments on, if any. And different sources come to different conclusions. None of them, however, are grounded in our familiar understanding of “children.” These studies count adults who are 18 and 19, and sometimes up to 25, years of age. Americans under 18 can’t purchase guns legally. That age seems, at the very least, the most obvious divide between adults and children. Because when you take 18- and 19-year-old adults out of the equation, the number of gun-related deaths among kids plummets considerably.
According to the CDC, the number one killer of children between 1-14 are accidents — vehicular, suffocation, and drowning. Twice as many kids under 12 died in cars than from guns. Also, if these studies began at birth rather than starting at one, the leading killer of all children would be diseases and genetic abnormalities. Surely a one-year-old is as much a “kid” as a 19-year-old. (And if you begin at fetal viability, by far the leading killer of young people would be late-term abortions — more than 8,000 viable unborn, and probably more than 50,000 performed after 15 weeks.)
No doubt, after many years of decline, there has been a rise in juvenile criminality. And 19 and 18-year-olds are far more likely to engage in criminality than 14 and 15-year-olds. There has also been a rise in juvenile suicides over the last several years. It’s a mental-health crisis. None of the “reasonable gun safety laws” Harris is pushing address those problems.
Perhaps one day, with the advances in car safety technology and medicine, her claim about guns and kids will be true. Today it’s not.
David Harsanyi is a senior editor at The Federalist, a nationally syndicated columnist, a Happy Warrior columnist at National Review, and author of five books—the most recent, Eurotrash: Why America Must Reject the Failed Ideas of a Dying Continent. He has appeared on Fox News, C-SPAN, CNN, MSNBC, NPR, ABC World News Tonight, NBC Nightly News and radio talk shows across the country. Follow him on Twitter, @davidharsanyi.
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including NewsMax, Fox News, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Rep. Devin Nunes, Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Chris Salcedo, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and Presiden
The matriarchy can fly the “mission accomplished” flag across America. It toppled the man-made meritocracy that imperfectly defined American culture for 200+ years.
The fall of Tucker Carlson at Fox News symbolizes the matriarchy’s prioritizing of message over merit. Performance could not shield Carlson from the consequence of America’s adoption of a feminized culture that levels the playing field by castrating men, reimagining traditional standards, and embracing a false reality.
Monday morning, Fox News cut ties with the most popular host on cable television. According to the Los Angeles Times and other so-called news outlets, Rupert Murdoch, the founder of Fox News, decided to oust Carlson partially because of a discrimination lawsuit filed by Abby Grossberg, a former talent booker on “Tucker Carlson Tonight.” Grossberg claims she was bullied and subjected to anti-Semitic remarks while working for Carlson.
It’s a familiar pattern at Fox News and across corporate media and America. From Roger Ailes to Tavis Smiley to Bill O’Reilly, the misbehavior of men and/or allegations of disgruntled female employees are used to dislodge men from positions of influence.
Let me state this for clarity and transparency. I was a frequent guest on Carlson’s program. I consider Carlson a friend. I find him smart, authentic, and reasonable. I have not spoken to him since he and Fox News parted ways. Nor have I spoken with Bryan Freedman, the brilliant lawyer reportedly representing Carlson in his dispute with Fox. Freedman previously negotiated my settlement with a media outlet.
Now, I don’t buy the allegations against Carlson. According to the L.A. Times, Grossberg worked on Carlson’s show for a short time after being reassigned from a different Fox News show. She was fired.
It’s difficult to fire any employee. Many of them – man or woman – claim they were harassed, bullied, treated unfairly. They’re always reluctant to admit their shortcomings. You catch an employee stealing, and he will instantly claim you overlooked a co-worker committing murder.
Firing a woman is more difficult than open heart surgery. Every communication can be reformulated into an example of sexual harassment or misogyny.
I’m aloof, distant, and measured with all co-workers. It’s the only way I know to protect myself. Media workplaces are minefields. Super attractive women form an obstacle course a Navy SEAL would find difficult to navigate without detonating a blonde, brunette, or red-headed bombshell. For white men, they face the added threat of being charged with racism or anti-Semitism.
The workplace playing field isn’t level. Women have outsized power and control. So do the LGBTQ and people of color who see themselves as perpetual victims of white supremacy. These special-interest groups have used their power and leverage to remake workplace culture. They’ve turned human resources departments into the most powerful force within any company. Managing easily triggered sensibilities takes precedence over maximizing production. Workplaces are day-cares filled with crying babies masquerading as employees.
Over the last 20 years, diversity, inclusion, equity, and other subjective standards unseated performance as king of the workforce. MSNBC’s ratings-deficient Joy Reid has every bit as much job security as Carlson, the highest-rated cable host. So does CNN’s Anderson Cooper. And the ensemble of dimwits hosting ABC’s “The View.”
Reid is black. Cooper is gay. Whoopi (Caryn Elaine Johnson) is black and “identifies” as Jewish. Sunny Hostin is Puerto-Halfrican American. Joy Behar wants to be Bette Midler.
Tucker Carlson is a white man who used his platform to promote Judeo-Christian culture and the patriarchy. There was a time when his dominant ratings would have protected him from the special-interest groups. Ratings used to be the box hosts were required to check.
That time has passed. Message is king. Drawing an audience is optional in the matriarchy matrix. What a host tells his or her audience matters far more than the size of it.
Comedian Steve Harvey is the gold standard for heterosexual Christian men on TV. I like Steve Harvey. He’s funny. He’s likable. He’s also harmless. He bows to the matriarchy. He preaches a homespun prosperity gospel.
He has his own daily talk show. He hosts “Family Feud.” He’s the star of “Judge Steve Harvey.” Corporate America is pouring millions of dollars into Steve Harvey to set him up as the role model for all Christian male influencers.
Be harmless. Bow to the matriarchy. Stay on message.
And the message is simple: The key to improving America is emasculating men and eliminating merit.
You earn only what the prevailing power grants you for your service to the prevailing power.
Tucker Carlson challenged the prevailing power, the matriarchal ideology promoted by leftists. He platformed pundits and experts who challenged Big Pharma on the COVID vaccine, Democrats on the laughable January 6 insurrection narrative, the Alphabet Mafia on transgenderism and drag queens, and the military-industrial complex on the war in Ukraine.
His courageous, afflict-the-powerful, populist style attracted a massive audience. His competitors lack his talent or courage. They conspired to bring him down. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez called for the government to censor Carlson. Chuck Schumer demanded that Rupert Murdoch stop Carlson from showing the January 6 tapes. The ladies on “The View” celebrated his demise.
Women and emasculated men rule. The matriarchy has taken over the patriarchy. Merit has no place here. The order spelled out in the Bible carries no weight in America.
In pursuit of power and influence, the biblically described “weaker vessel” eradicated competition and emphasized a handful of identities. Diversity, inclusion, and equity killed performance, merit, and Christianity.
Jeff Myers, Ph.D., the president of Summit Ministries and co-author of the e-book with The Christian Post’s Brandon Showalter (right), titled “Exposing The Gender Lie,” speaks at an event held at First Baptist Dallas titled, “Unmasking Gender Ideology: Protecting Children, Confronting Transgenderism” alongside counselor Julia Jeffress Sadler (left), on March 23, 2023. | The Christian Post
DALLAS — “Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.”
Voltaire’s famous quote is centuries old, but for Jeff Myers, author and president of Summit Ministries, it’s a warning that is as timely as ever when it comes to the debate over transgenderism.
Speaking at last month’s panel discussion on “Unmasking Gender Ideology: Protecting Children, Confronting Transgenderism” at First Baptist Dallas, Myers said he sees the issue as the “breakdown of language as a way of understanding reality.” Myers compared the path toward human atrocities committed in Nazi Germany and against the Hutu in Rwanda and ongoing efforts to curtail speech as related to the trans movement.
“In those cases, the very first thing that happened is the people in charge dehumanized the vulnerable, stopped calling them human,” he said. “You dehumanize them, and then you can destroy them.”
This tactic has been used multiple times since, most recently by the pro-abortion crowd. Remember the terms they used to describe the baby in the womb? “Lump of tissue”, “Mass of cells”, “Globulin mass”. By “dehumanizing ” the baby, their conscious was seared. Now they are using unhuman terms to describe anyone that doesn’t go along with their terms, definitions and speech.
That same strategy, said Myers, is being used against those who refuse to conform their speech to trans ideology.
“You’ll find that the very people who insist you use language in a particular way, that you use their chosen pronouns, you refer to them using the language that they insist on, if you don’t do it, you will be called all kinds of names — evil, bigoted, transphobic and so forth,” he added.
Myers also disagreed with the suggestion that the debate over trans identity and language is simply partisan politics.
“This is not a left versus right issue,” he said. “The vast majority of Americans, Republican, Independent, Democrat, believe that what is happening through transgenderism is wrong.”
He pointed to a recent poll that found only 9% of Americans believe gender transition procedures on young children are acceptable.
“Yet somehow the nine percent control the agenda for everyone else,” he said
So how can the Church respond in a way that’s both truthful and helpful?
Myers, who co-authored a recent e-book with CP, Exposing The Gender Lie, said Christians must first acknowledge the urgency of the issue and the threat it poses.
“We realized we can’t be silent on the issue of gender ideology because it is an attack on the very idea of truth itself,” said Myers.
He said he’s “very concerned” about transgenderism and pointed to the some 6,500 catalogued biological differences between males and females.
“The idea that you can be a boy and become a girl is a lie, it is a lie about biology and it is a lie about personhood,” he said.
Myers pointed to the teaching of the postmodern view that words are reality — a teaching that stretches back nearly three decades when university students were being taught that no objective reality exists, only “knowable perceptions.”
“So instead of saying people should seek the truth, now people say you should ‘speak your truth,” he explained. “So if words have no relation to reality, then words like ‘male’ and ‘female’ don’t matter anymore.”
That application, said Myers, underpins the entire ideology of transgenderism, which “twists language” to threaten the livelihoods of those whose very job is to communicate facts and data.
“You’re a journalist, you’ll get fired if you don’t do this,” he said. “If you refer to biological men who identify as women as transgender women, you must use that terminology.
“If you’re in the corporate world and don’t do it, you’ll be fired.”
The Montana House of Representatives came to a halt Monday after a crowd of transgender activists flooded the public gallery and shouted down the speaker. Demonstrators chanted “let her speak” after lawmakers refused to lift a censure on Democrat Rep. Zooey Zephyr over spewing hate-filled comments on the House floor last week. Zephyr, a first-term representative from Missoula and the first transgender-identified member of the lower chamber, mocked Republican prayers during debate on a bill to ban medical interventions for minors with gender dysphoria.
“The only thing I will say is if you vote yes on this bill, and yes on these amendments, I hope the next time there’s an invocation when you bow your heads in prayer, you see the blood on your hands,” Zephyr said.
Rep Zooey Zephyr of Missoula said the following when debating SB99 Amendments.
“The only thing I will say is if you vote yes on this bill and yes on these amendments I hope the next time there’s an invocation when you bow your heads in prayer, you see the blood on your hands.” pic.twitter.com/wuhlympbLq
— Montana Freedom Caucus (@MTFreedomCaucus) April 18, 2023
The bill in question ultimately cleared the chamber.
Republicans revoked Zephyr’s ability to speak on the House floor until issuing an apology.
“It is up to me to maintain decorum here on the House floor, to protect the dignity and integrity,” said House Speaker Matt Regier last week, according to the Associated Press. “Any representative that I don’t feel can do that will not be recognized.”
“Hate-filled testimony has no place on the House floor,” said Republican Rep. Caleb Hinkle, who serves on the House Freedom Caucus, which introduced the measure to censure Zephyr.
Mob demonstrators descended on the Capitol Monday to demand the lower chamber reinstate debate privileges. The crowd erupted after lawmakers voted again to keep Zephyr quiet when the freshman representative tried to speak on a bill restricting child pronoun changes in K-12 classrooms. Speaker Regier refused to acknowledge the chamber’s censured colleague igniting a roar of interruption from the gallery. Lawmakers were forced to pause proceedings as police in riot gear arrested disruptors, according to Montana Public Radio.
BREAKING: The Montana House of Reps has been shut down by left-wing protesters who are there protesting the censure of transgender Democrat Rep. Zooey Zephyr, that was led by the @MTFreedomCaucus, for telling his Republican colleagues they have "blood on their hands" for passing… pic.twitter.com/MnOyO4FhlN
Riot Police clear the Montana Capital making 5 arrests after a mob of Trans Activists stormed in demanding ‘trans rights’ and ‘her her speak’ in reference de to a Transgender legislator who had been silenced by the House Speaker for his violent rhetoric. pic.twitter.com/UijIeCd41t
Zephyr defended those arrested outside the statehouse.
“My constituents and community came up and shouted ‘let her speak’ — I felt pride in them,” Zephyr said. “Because when they stood up, they are standing on behalf of democracy.”
The scenes on day three of the saga at the Montana Capitol come weeks after transgender activists stormed the Tennessee statehouse at Nashville over similar legislation. The “insurrection,” as defined by an assault on a Capitol building, was led by a trio of Democrat lawmakers who were stripped of their committee assignments. Reps. Justin Jones and Justin Pearson were temporarily expelled from the legislature for using a bullhorn amid the demonstrations. Both were reinstated by local officials.
Tristan Justice is the western correspondent for The Federalist and the author of Social Justice Redux, a conservative newsletter on culture, health, and wellness. He has also written for The Washington Examiner and The Daily Signal. His work has also been featured in Real Clear Politics and Fox News. Tristan graduated from George Washington University where he majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow him on Twitter at @JusticeTristan or contact him at Tristan@thefederalist.com. Sign up for Tristan’s email newsletter here.
Moments after Fox News abruptly announced that it “mutually agreed to part ways” with the host of “Tucker Carlson Tonight” on Monday, leftists and their allies in the corporate media began gloating about the ousting of one of the nation’s most influential critics of the corrupt ruling class.
While some, like former CNN talking head Brian Stelter, penned “fan fiction” gleefully theorizing about the reason for the split, others joined the hundreds of Twitter trolls celebrating Carlson’s exit as a win for their political agendas.
Democrats
Mere weeks after Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries demanded Fox News silence hosts like Carlson who discuss election inconsistencies, congressional Democrats cheered at their political enemy’s downfall.
Schumer: "Rupert Murdoch has a special obligation to stop Tucker Carlson from going on tonight [and] from letting him go on again and again and again [because] our democracy depends on it." pic.twitter.com/uld6eaCl3C
“Don’t know for sure if the firing of Tucker Carlson is connected to the lies & accusations of voter fraud perpetrated by Fox News, Trump, & his sycophants against you, Dominion Voting Systems,” Rep. Maxine Waters tweeted. “Thank you for your fight and your lawsuit, you beat the hell out of them, bye-bye.”
“Glad to hear that one of the most divisive, racist and destructive forces on television is off his prime time show. Tucker Carlson will not be missed,” Rep. Robert Garcia wrote.
Leftist Squad member Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez told her Instagram and Facebook followers that Carlson’s departure is proof that “Deplatforming works and it is important.” She also used the news to fundraise.
AOC on Tucker “Deplatforming works and it is important.”
The harpies-er-ladies at ABC’s “The View” paused their regularly scheduled programming on Monday to triumphantly recognize Tucker’s exit. Host Whoopi Goldberg started a wave in the audience that was closely followed by an Ana Navarro-led acapella chorus of “Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye.”
“He is responsible for the degradation that we see somewhat of our democracy in this country,” co-host Sunny Hostin said.
The View celebrates Tucker Carlson leaving Fox News. The cast does the wave and Ana Navarro leads the audience in singing "Hey, hey, they Goodbye!" Sunny Says he's responsible for the "degradation" of our "democracy." pic.twitter.com/uaY0l2COck
The View women previously called on the Biden administration to investigate and potentially arrest Carlson for “shilling for [Vladimir] Putin.”
The Daily Show
Desi Lydic said she’s “glad” Carlson is gone after trying to “topple America’s democracy.”
“You know that stupid look that’s always on Tucker Carlson’s face?” The Daily Show correspondent quipped on Monday night. “Today, he has a good reason for it. I can’t believe that a network that is so opposed to gender-affirming surgery just cut off their own d-ck.”
Maren Morris
The female country singer and drag queen enthusiast, who called Jason Aldean’s wife an “Insurrection Barbie” after she criticized the mutilation of children, also celebrated the personality’s unemployment.
“Happy Monday, MotherTucker,” Morris wrote in her Instagram story on Monday.
The story features a picture of Morris with a chyron from “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” labeling her a “lunatic country music person.”
Some Guy Named Steve
Facebook Censorship partner Stephen Hayes, who took a contributor role with NBC after leaving Fox News to protest Carlson’s programming, told the New York Times on Monday that he hopes Carlson’s leave “signals some kind of broader institutional change” at the right-leaning network.
“On a lot of the mainstream channels, there was a race to be first to condemn Trump to celebrate his problems,” Hayes said. “And on Fox, in prime time especially, there was this over-the-top effort to defend him and amplify his lies.”
A Star Trek Actor
“Don’t let the door hit you on your way out, you horrid, soulless man. #TuckerCarlson,” raging leftist activist George Takei tweeted.
Fox News Staffers
“Fox News Staffers Celebrate Tucker Carlson’s Departure: ‘Pure Joy,’” a Rolling Stone headline excitedly blared on Monday night.
The article lists several unnamed “staffers” who were apparently overjoyed that the biggest source of their employer’s views was finally gone.
“Pure joy. No one is untouchable. It’s a great day for America, and for the real journalists who work hard every day to deliver the news at Fox,” one of the sources allegedly said.
“These are the consequences that Carlson’s own actions inspired, and they are owed only to best business practices,” National Review’s senior writer Noah Rothman claimed in an article, completely ignoring the fact that Fox News is on track to lose the audience of its most popular show.
Washington Examiner Editor
“RIP to a fashy, sh-tty show no more than one percent of Americans watched on a good night, including more Democrats than MSNBC, thus making it hard to argue it had a large influence on American electoral politics except in driving loud people nuts,” Nick Clairmont, the Washington Examiner’s life and arts editor tweeted on Monday.
Jordan Boyd is a staff writer at The Federalist and co-producer of The Federalist Radio Hour. Her work has also been featured in The Daily Wire, Fox News, and RealClearPolitics. Jordan graduated from Baylor University where she majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow her on Twitter @jordanboydtx.
AU.S. district court judge ordered University of Wyoming sorority sister plaintiffs to reveal their names in a lawsuit against Kappa Kappa Gamma’s University of Wyoming chapter for allowing a transgender-identifying man to be inducted.
According to local news, “The six sorority sisters sued the Kappa Kappa Gamma’s parent organization, its president and the school’s first transgender sorority member late last month in a closely watched case. They alleged that the sorority did not follow its bylaws and rules, failed to uphold its mission, breached its housing contract with members, and misled them by admitting a transgender student.” The plaintiffs filed the suit anonymously as “Jane Does” and assigned the pseudonym “Terry Smith” to the trans-identifying sorority member.
Patsy Levang, a member of Independent Women’s Network’s North Dakota Chapter and former Kappa Kappa Gamma National Foundation president, told The Federalist that the plaintiffs asked for anonymity twice out of fear of “retribution,” but the judge denied their requests. Concerns for the women’s safety have become extra heightened after college swim athlete Riley Gaines was attacked by transgender radicals at San Francisco State University. According to Levang, one of the original seven plaintiffs left the case after the judge’s decision.
“These are young, young women — between 18 and 21, and we want to do nothing to jeopardize their safety,” said Levang, who added that the girls will have “guaranteed” security at all times during public appearances.
‘An Erection Visible Through His Leggings’
If the lawsuit is unsuccessful, transgender-identifying man Artemis Langford, who was admitted into the sorority in 2022, will move into the Kappa Kappa Gamma chapter house in the fall of 2023.
The lawsuit states that Langford is 6’2’’ tall, weighs 260 pounds, has not undergone any apparent chemical or surgical trans medical interventions, and rarely attempts to look like a female. It also reveals that the female plaintiffs feel extremely uncomfortable around Langford, who has allegedly engaged in bizarre and even “threatening” behavior, such as staring at the women without talking for hours, asking inappropriate questions, and at one point having “an erection visible through his leggings.”
During the recruitment process, Langford “avoided answering questions about his hobbies, passions, or involvement in other organizations,” according to the lawsuit. Instead, it says, he inquired about whether he could live in the sorority house and “talked about his desire to be near cadavers and to touch dead bodies.”
“One sorority member walked down the hall to take a shower, wearing only a towel. She felt an unsettling presence, turned, and saw Mr. Smith watching her silently,” the lawsuit reads. The suit also alleges that Langford “repeatedly questioned the women about what vaginas look like, breast cup size, whether women were considering breast reductions and birth control.”
During a yoga class sponsored by the Panhellenic Union for sorority members at the University of Wyoming, Langford allegedly “sat in the back of the room for an hour and watched the assembled women flex their bodies.” The suit also alleges that Langford has repeatedly used his phone to covertly take pictures of the women in the sorority house without their consent.
When one plaintiff raised her concerns about Langford, chapter officials — under the direction of national leadership — gave her materials so she could “educate” herself. And a witness in the case was allegedly “threatened with discipline if she does not agree that [Langford] is a woman.”
‘Intimidated’ into Inducting a Man
The plaintiffs said they were “intimidated” into inducting Langford into the sorority, and according to reports about the lawsuit, officers and employees from the national organization “actively pressured members of the chapter to support [Langford’s] admission to the sorority, ignoring bylaws and standing rules that would have foreclosed his initiation.” The voting process was also allegedly altered for Langford, and he was not admitted via secret ballots, as is standard practice.
The lawsuit contends that instead of following official bylaws, Kappa Kappa Gamma admitted Langford based on a 2018 “Guide for Supporting Our LGBTQIA+ Members,” which says the sorority accepts both “women” and “individuals who identify as women.” After the lawsuit was filed, Kappa Kappa Gamma Executive Director Kari Kittrell Poole reiterated the sentiments within the guide, telling the Associated Press that the sorority does not discriminate based on so-called gender identity.
However, the collegiate plaintiffs disagree with Poole on what it fundamentally means to be a woman. “An adult human male does not become a woman just because he tells others that he has a female ‘gender identity’ and behaves in what he believes to be a stereotypically female manner,” they said.
“[Kappa Kappa Gamma] has been a place that values the good, the true, the beautiful, the leadership growth in women,” Levang told The Federalist. Levang made it clear she doesn’t oppose Langford’s decision to identify as a woman. She does, however, oppose the destruction of female-only organizations, the integrity and politicization of her former sorority, and the safety of the University of Wyoming Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority sisters.
“I look at those young women, and I think they deserve at least what I was afforded,” said Levang. “This whole thing takes single-sex organizations and just throws it out the door. It’ll literally destroy [women’s spaces]. But then I think the overall plan is to destroy the level that women have gained.”
Evita Duffy-Alfonso is a staff writer to The Federalist and the co-founder of the Chicago Thinker. She loves the Midwest, lumberjack sports, writing, and her family. Follow her on Twitter at @evitaduffy_1 or contact her at evita@thefederalist.com.
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including NewsMax, Fox News, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Rep. Devin Nunes, Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Chris Salcedo, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and Presiden
NBC News’ Chuck Todd has been pilloried by Democrats online for daring to confront viewers with the reality of President Joe Biden’s unpopularity. Todd, the host of “Meet the Press,” detailed the findings of a recent NBC News survey of 1,000 adults, conducted April 14-18. The survey found that 54% of respondents disapprove of the job Biden is doing as president, up from 50% in January.
When asked to rank their feelings of Biden, 38% of respondents indicated that they had a “very negative” impression and another 10% said they had a “somewhat negative” impression. Only 17% of respondents said they had a “very positive” feelings about the Democratic president.
NBC POLL, among Democrats:
☝️ "53% of 2020 Biden voters say he shouldn’t run"
☝️ "64% of Democrats who voted for Sanders or Warren in the 2020 primaries think he shouldn’t run"
Democratic pollster Jeff Horwitt of Hart Research told NBC News, “President Biden’s numbers are not where they need to be at this stage.”
Todd zeroed in on how 70% of respondents, including 51% of Democrats, said that Biden — the oldest president ever to take office — should not run for re-election in 2024. By way of comparison, 60% of prospective voters, including roughly 33% of Republicans, said that former President Donald Trump should not run again for office. Roughly half of those who don’t want Biden to run again suggested age was a “major” factor behind their reasoning.
In addition to his routine gaffes, missteps, and tumbles, Biden has explicitly invited scrutiny over his waning vitality. Biden told MSNBC’s “The Sunday Show” in October, “I could drop dead tomorrow.”
“In terms of my energy level, in terms of how much I am able to do, I think people should look and say, ‘Is he still have the same passion for what he’s doing?’ And if they think I do and I can do it, then that’s fine,” he said. “If they don’t, they should vote against me.”
The new NBC News poll indicated that many voters might do just that. When asked who they would vote for if Biden ultimately ran for re-election — an announcement expected later this week — 21% of respondents suggested they would “definitely vote for Biden,” 20% said they might vote for Biden, and 47% of respondents indicated they would vote for the Republican candidate.
Todd told NBC’s “Sunday Today” that Biden’s flagging support and apparent undesirability among voters, including Democrats, is “not because of his policies, it’s simply because of questions about his physical ability to do it and his current age.”
The “Meet the Press” host noted that “the thing that is most striking in our poll is how much Republicans are rallying around Donald Trump. … You have 70% of Republican primary voters tell us, basically, that these charges against Donald Trump mean that it’s more important to rally around Donald Trump rather than giving them a choice that says, you know, he was a good president but these could be distractions in defeating Joe Biden. Only one in four Republican primary voters believe that.”
After Todd suggested that America wasn’t keen on maintaining a gerontocracy helmed by one of two relatively unpopular candidates, leftist Twitter directed its collective anger his way.
The Wrap reported that various Biden supporters and other Democrats accused Todd of spreading ageism, Republican propaganda, and fake news. One user tangled up in a thread questioning Todd’s credibility wrote, “Chuck Todd should be fired! I do not believe this poll. I do believe his age might be an issue for some. I think he’s accomplished so much for this country.” For having reported on the survey results, one user called for Todd to be muzzled.
Howard Altman, a Twitter user who peddles foul screeds about Trump, wrote, “Screw you, Chuck Todd, and screw you Me-lennials. The people who vote, the people you deride as ‘the establishment’ I want Biden/Harris, and they will win.”
"There are only 6% of Americans that would like to see both Trump and Biden run." – @ChuckTodd on a new @NBCNews poll. “It looks like both parties are about to nominate two people that the country doesn’t want to have, and there are going to be unintended consequences to that.” pic.twitter.com/PmJLBnlEGt
While immensely unpopular, recent polls suggest Biden remains the Democratic front-runner.
The latest Harvard-Harris poll has Biden up 27 points over Vice President Kamala Harris. Bernie Sanders is a distant third, neck-and-neck with Department of Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg. California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Elizabeth Warren are even further behind.
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Legacy media claim so-called ‘election deniers’ are constantly threatening and harassing election workers throughout the country. But the facts say otherwise.
It didn’t take long after the 2020 election for legacy media to conjure up a new smear to use against conservatives. For two years, leftists have employed the malicious term “election denier” to silence any American with legitimate concerns about the integrity of U.S. elections.
But in the lead-up to and following the 2022 midterms, media began incorporating this smear into their next phony narrative, which is that these so-called Republican “election deniers” are constantly threatening and harassing election workers throughout the country. Prior to the Nov. 8 election, for example, left-wing outlets ran hit piece after hit piece warning that Republicans were secretly plotting to disrupt local precincts on Election Day.
And while their doomsday predictions (unsurprisingly) never came true, that hasn’t stopped Democrats from attempting to convince the public there’s a widespread conspiracy of Trump supporters threatening local election officials. Within the past several weeks, NBC News and The New York Times have run exposés highlighting election officials in Virginia and Texas, respectively, who recently resigned amid confrontations with fellow Republican officials.
When it comes to the Times’ reporting, however, the article’s headline distorts the reasoning behind the Texas official’s resignation. While the headline reads, “After Threats and Clashes With Republicans, Another Texas Election Official Quits,” the article tacitly admits that Heider Garcia, the elections director for Tarrant County, resigned due to the county’s “creation of an election integrity task force” — not because of the alleged threats against him.
Other outlets to publish similar articles in recent weeks include The Hill and USA Today.
The Facts Tell a Different Story
While there are certainly cases of threats being made against election workers, the relentless narrative pushed by the corporate press that it’s a widespread problem is not true. But you don’t have to take The Federalist’s word for it. President Joe Biden’s own Department of Justice (DOJ) has all but admitted so.
Back in July 2021, the DOJ launched a task force designed to address this alleged “rise in threats against election workers, administrators, officials, and others associated with the electoral process.” According to an agency press release, the task force would “receive and assess allegations and reports of threats against election workers” and work with U.S. attorneys’ offices and the FBI “to investigate and prosecute these offenses where appropriate.” As part of the initiative, the DOJ also launched an election worker hotline, where individuals can report “suspected threats or acts of violence against election workers” to the agency for review and potential investigation.
Predictably, the DOJ did not include any data to justify its claim that there was a “rise in threats against election workers.”
On Aug. 3, the Democrat-controlled Senate held a hearing, titled “Protecting Our Democracy’s Frontline Workers,” in which Judiciary Committee members heard testimony from various federal, state, and local election officials about their experiences working in recent elections. Testifying in the hearing’s first panel was Kenneth A. Polite Jr., the assistant attorney general for the criminal division of the Department of Justice.
In his opening statement, Polite Jr. claimed the DOJ’s Election Threats Task Force had reviewed and assessed roughly 1,000 allegedly “threatening and harassing” communications directed toward election officials, including one incident of physical violence against an election worker. Two days prior, however, the DOJ issued a press release revealing that only about 11 percent of those 1,000 contacts “met the threshold for a federal criminal investigation” and that the “remaining reported contacts did not provide a predication” for such an inquiry.
“In investigations where the source of a reported contact was identified, in 50% of the matters the source contacted the victim on multiple occasions,” the press release reads. “These investigations accordingly encompassed multiple contacts. The number of individual investigations is less than 5% of the total number of reported contacts.”
The DOJ also claimed the task force had charged five individuals at the time, a number Polite Jr. confirmed during his Aug. 3 Senate testimony.
So, to recap: In a country of roughly 331 million people, the DOJ — in the span of a year — received roughly 1,000 calls alleging threats toward election workers, in which only about 11 percent of cases warranted a federal investigation. On top of that, only five individuals had been charged with any type of crime as of the DOJ’s August 2022 press release.
The Verdict
So why are legacy media continuing to push the lie that election workers everywhere are under constant attack, despite publicly available data showing otherwise? And why are Democrats in states such as Nevada and New Mexico advancing legislation based upon this lie, even when there are federal statutes prohibiting the harassment of election workers?
For Democrats, the strategy is two-fold. The first reason is to further the narrative perpetuated by Biden that “MAGA Republicans” represent an existential threat to democracy and Democrats are the party of virtue, “voting rights,” and normalcy. The left hopes that by painting their political opponents as extremists, they’ll be able to sway moderates and independents to their side, even as their political allies use the justice system to target former presidents, chemically castrate children, and collude with Big Tech to censor dissenting voices online.
The second reason is to discourage conservatives with legitimate concerns about election integrity from partaking in completely legal forms of electoral oversight. Ahead of the 2022 midterms, for instance, the Republican National Committee recruited more than 70,000 new poll watchers and workers ahead of Election Day to “help deliver the election transparency that voters deserve.” And of course, Democrats went ballistic, parroting the same “threat to democracy” talking point.
Unlike Democrats, Republicans actually welcome transparency in the electoral process. The attempt by legacy media and leftist politicos to spin a false narrative about conservatives threatening election workers on a grand scale is an attempt to avoid accountability at the ballot box and cast their political opponents as enemies of democracy. It’s a strategy steeped in falsehoods and smears, which for Democrats is nothing new.
Shawn Fleetwood is a Staff Writer for The Federalist and a graduate of the University of Mary Washington. He also serves as a state content writer for Convention of States Action and his work has been featured in numerous outlets, including RealClearPolitics, RealClearHealth, and Conservative Review. Follow him on Twitter @ShawnFleetwood
An Internal Revenue Service (IRS) whistleblower hinted to congressional leaders last week that the FBI improperly blocked aspects of the Hunter Biden investigation and that Biden-appointed U.S. attorneys blocked an indictment against the president’s son on tax charges. The carefully worded letter also indicated Attorney General Merrick Garland had testified inaccurately when he told the Senate Judiciary Committee that the Trump-appointed Delaware U.S. attorney had the authority to file charges against Hunter Biden in other jurisdictions.
Here are six reasons this whistleblower should terrify those behind the DOJ’s Biden family protection racket.
1. Whistleblower Has Corroborating Evidence
While Wednesday’s letter from the whistleblower’s attorney to the congressional oversight chairs spoke only in cryptic terms, as I detailed on Friday, individuals claiming to be “directly familiar with the case” revealed the whistleblower had accused two Biden-appointed U.S. attorneys of refusing “to seek a tax indictment against Hunter Biden despite career investigators’ recommendations to do so.”
The sources also claimed the whistleblower’s disclosures establish that Garland refused Delaware U.S. Attorney David Weiss’s request for special counsel protection and that Garland testified inaccurately when he represented to the Senate Judiciary Committee that Weiss had full authority “to bring cases in other jurisdictions if he feels it is necessary.”
It isn’t merely the seriousness of the whistleblower’s accusations that should shake those sheltering Hunter Biden, however, but the promise of corroborating evidence.
The whistleblower’s attorney, Mark Lytle, reportedly maintains his client can “identify contemporaneous witnesses to corroborate his claims of political interference.” The whistleblower will “be able to talk about these meetings that he attended, that were with both agents and prosecutors … and how he summarized those meetings and put it in writing and distributed those to folks within the IRS and sometimes other agents,” Lytle claims, adding that those contemporaneous memoranda and emails will “end up corroborating his credibility.”
Sources also maintain DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz has already begun reviewing documents that purportedly corroborate the whistleblower’s claims. They say he has sought out both IRS and FBI witnesses, indicating several paths exist to confirm the accusations of political bias.
2. IRS Agent Is Nonpartisan and Credentialed
The whistleblower’s apparent nonpartisan pedigree is another reason for participants in the Biden protection racket to be afraid. The whistleblower is “not a political person” and does not have a “political agenda,” Lytle told Fox News last week. He “is a career law enforcement official who hasn’t made any political donations and doesn’t even use social media,” the IRS agent’s attorney told Just the News.
“He is just a guy who likes his job as a law enforcement officer, as an investigator, and he takes it seriously, and he’s dedicated,” Lytle explained, adding, “And when he sees something that is not routine and doesn’t follow the rules, or … something maybe is affected by politics — that’s what made him come forward.”
“My client wrestled with whether or not to come forward,” the whistleblower’s attorney told Fox News. He had “sleepless nights. He decided he could not live with himself if he stayed quiet and said nothing.”
Also strengthening the whistleblower’s claims of a nonpartisan motivation is his insistence that “when he comes forward, this is not to talk to just one party or the other party.” Lytle stressed his client wants both sides of the political aisle to “ask him questions and cross-examine him.”
That Lytle is one of the whistleblower’s attorneys will also negate concerns of partisanship, given the attorney previously represented Yoel Roth, Twitter’s former head of trust and safety, during the heated Republican-controlled weaponization hearings. Lytle is also “currently defending a former FBI supervisor named Timothy Thibault who has been accused of pro-Biden political bias.” Before retaining Lytle, the whistleblower hired “prominent Democrat lawyer Mark Zaid, who previously represented clients whose allegations about a call with the Ukrainian president led to Donald Trump’s first impeachment in 2019.”
His dedicated service at the IRS will likewise bolster the whistleblower’s credibility. As an IRS special agent for more than 10 years, the whistleblower reportedly has been “trusted with international investigations,” received several commendations, and taught “other agents how to properly do investigations.” His lengthy experience will strengthen his claims that “protocols that would normally be followed by career law enforcement professionals in similar circumstances” were not followed in the case of the politically connected Hunter Biden.
3. Dual Authorization Was Required
The IRS whistleblower’s claims that two Biden-appointed U.S. attorneys inappropriately, and for political reasons, “declined to seek a tax indictment against Hunter Biden” carry more weight given the dual-authorization procedures required by the DOJ for criminal tax cases.
The Department of Justice Manual provides that the tax division oversees federal criminal tax enforcement. Thus, while a grand jury is empowered to investigate tax crimes, “the Tax Division must first approve and authorize the United States Attorney’s Office’s use of a grand jury to investigate criminal tax violations.” Accordingly, in tax cases, prosecutions generally require two independent assessments that criminal prosecution is appropriate.
In the case of Hunter Biden, both career investigators and career prosecutors in the DOJ tax division signed off on the recommended charges, the whistleblower maintains. That dual approval suggests the evidence underlying the proposed charges was strong. It also pits the two Biden-appointed U.S. attorneys, who allegedly declined to seek charges against the president’s son, against the recommendations of two distinct sets of career employees.
4. Criminal Violations Seem Obvious
“Of course, Biden officials are interfering in his son’s case — why else has Hunter skated for five years?”
That title from former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy’s Friday New York Post article capsulizes perfectly another reason those running the Biden family protection racket should be shaking: The political favoritism shown Hunter Biden is obvious.
Who else could lie on a federal firearm form to purchase a handgun — only to lose physical possession of the gun and have it turn up across the street from a school — without getting charged with a federal crime?
As McCarthy wrote, “The gun offenses are so straightforward that they’d take a competent investigator five days, not five years, to wrap into a prosecutable case.” Likewise, “[s]ome of the tax offenses, which stretch back seven years or more, are so undeniable that liens were placed on Hunter’s properties…”
A public that for years has witnessed the president’s son escape any consequence for his clearly criminal conduct will easily nod along to the whistleblower’s claims of political favoritism: The IRS agent’s accusations aren’t just believable — they are self-evident.
5. The Timing Is Suspect
The timing also renders the whistleblower’s claims believable. Recall that in March of 2022, The New York Times began prepping the country for an indictment of Hunter Biden by soft-peddling his criminal conduct. The Times even previewed several potential defenses the president’s son could assert to counter the series of predicted criminal charges.
The Times article was a transparent attempt to get ahead of an anticipated story, namely that a grand jury had indicted Hunter Biden. But a grand jury indictment never dropped. Instead, about six months later, the whistleblower reportedly filed complaints related to the investigation with the U.S. Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration and the DOJ’s Office of Inspector General. The whistleblower’s complaints indicated charges had been recommended and approved by the tax division but never materialized because the Biden-appointed U.S. attorneys did not seek grand jury indictments as recommended.
The New York Times’ efforts to groom Americans to discount the seriousness of the expected criminal charges wasn’t needed because the DOJ and FBI already had the president’s son covered.
6. The Scandal Reaches the FBI and POTUS
The Biden-appointed U.S. attorneys who allegedly declined to seek grand jury indictments against the president’s son are not the only ones implicated, however. The whistleblower’s allegations reportedly also reach FBI headquarters, although that does not necessarily mean Director Christopher Wray.
The unnamed sources further maintain the whistleblower’s disclosures claim that “specific DOJ employees placed strictures on questions, witnesses and tactics investigators may be allowed to pursue that could impact President Biden.” This accusation suggests political corruption beyond the refusal of the DOJ to charge Hunter Biden with tax crimes.
Whether the “specific DOJ employees” refers to individuals working at FBI headquarters or elsewhere with the DOJ is unclear. Either way, the whistleblower’s claim conflicts with Garland’s testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee that he had left the matter of Hunter Biden to the Delaware “U.S. Attorney’s office and the FBI squad working with him.”
Garland’s testimony suggests that whoever instituted those “strictures” acted without the authority to do so. That is bad enough, but the implication is worse: namely that either FBI headquarters or other DOJ employees have kept the president from being incriminated during the multi-year unraveling of Hunter Biden’s complicated “business” ventures.
Margot Cleveland is The Federalist’s senior legal correspondent. She is also a contributor to National Review Online, the Washington Examiner, Aleteia, and Townhall.com, and has been published in the Wall Street Journal and USA Today. Cleveland is a lawyer and a graduate of the Notre Dame Law School, where she earned the Hoynes Prize—the law school’s highest honor. She later served for nearly 25 years as a permanent law clerk for a federal appellate judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Cleveland is a former full-time university faculty member and now teaches as an adjunct from time to time. As a stay-at-home homeschooling mom of a young son with cystic fibrosis, Cleveland frequently writes on cultural issues related to parenting and special-needs children. Cleveland is on Twitter at @ProfMJCleveland. The views expressed here are those of Cleveland in her private capacity.
An LGBT activist recently took to Tiktok to threaten anyone who would bar him or other male transvestites from entering women’s washrooms, daring concerned parents to try to protect their children. Despite these and other threats made both before and after the Nashville massacre, when six Christians were murdered by a transgender extremist, Thomas Jay White‘s account remains active on the platform.
Reduxx reported that White, who calls himself “Tara” and identifies as “Poly Trans Lesbian,” is a “baby fetishist” into “ageplay” and “diapers.” He indicated on his Twitter account that he is into various other deviant behaviors including “bloodletting.”
In a now-deleted video, White said, “If you back a wild animal into a corner, they are going to become a dangerous animal. So if you want to die on that hill of yours — of righteousness and moral majority — then you go right ahead.”
“I dare you to try and stop me from going into a women’s bathroom. It will be the last mistake you ever make. I dare you to try to stop a transgender woman in my presence from using the bathroom. It will be the last mistake you ever make,” he continued.
The radical transvestite clarified that this was indeed “a call to action and a call to arms to everybody within the United States” and told others within the so-called LGBT community to “arm up, plain and simple.”
“Go out and buy a gun. Learn how to use it efficiently, through and through, because the time to act is now,” White added, indicating he had done likewise.
“There are lots of people like me who are not afraid to die,” he said, adding sardonically, “So you go ahead, you protect your kids.”
According to the Daily Mail, White recorded the video after the March 27 Covenant School massacre in Nashville.
‘Tara’ who identifies as a lesbian issues threatening message to women:
“If you back a wild animal into a corner, they are going to become a dangerous animal…I dare you to try and stop me from going into a women’s bathroom”
This was not the first time that White intimated LGBT radicals should use violent means to get what they want. In a video posted Feb. 15 framed by rainbow #ForYourPride captions, the transvestite radical railed against Tennessee’s Senate Bill 3, the Republican legislation since ratified that protects children from sexually graphic drag shows. Alluding to similar bills in his home state of Kansas, White said, “I am not going to go down without a fight and I call upon everyone in this country … do not sit back and just take this.”
“If it means me going to jail or prison or worse, I’m going to do everything in my power to fight,” he added.
White noted in a subsequent video that he would be migrating his channel to the social media site Clapper, where he could better “tackle and defeat and shred all of these Christians and evangelicals that love to cherry-pick Bible verses to justify their bigoted behavior and bull****.”
Oli London, a critic of the transgender movement who announced he was converting to Christianity and de-transitioning last year, told Fox News Digital, “This is just another example of a biological man feeling emboldened to invade women’s spaces in the name of ‘self-identity’ and threatening women’s safety without any fear of repercussions.”
“In today’s America, people like this man, who identifies as a Poly Trans Lesbian, are encouraged to do this and praised as ‘stunning and brave’ for entering women’s spaces. Anyone that calls out men like this are immediately deemed ‘transphobic’ and ‘hateful bigots,'” added London. “This is a harmful narrative, but sadly has become all too common across society.”
While White’s Tiktok and Twitter accounts remain active, his Instagram page appears to have been shut down.
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Ousted Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, a Democrat, said that other liberal mayors have to be honest about violent crime that is terrifying residents. Lightfoot made the comments while speaking on a panel at the African American Mayors Association Conference in Washington, D.C., on Friday.
“As Democrats, if we do not speak the truth about violent crime in our cities, we will be the worse for it,” Lightfoot said.
“I come to this conversation as a former federal prosecutor. I come to this as a former defense attorney, I am the sister of a returning resident. But I know that there are people in my city that are wreaking havoc every day and need to be off the streets. That’s reality,” she added.
Lightfoot appeared to argue for harsher punishment to deter crime, a talking point common among Republicans but not Democrats.
“What do we say to, not only the victims of crime, but the people who are terrified about crimes in their neighborhood, most of whom look like us. If we say, ‘yeah, the police department is spending all this time and resources to arrest, put a case on,’ and the judges and the prosecutors say, ‘you know what? We’re going to let you out on electronic monitoring to wreak havoc again,'” she continued.
She went on to ask what kind of message they are sending to someone who courageously steps up to volunteer information about shootings in their neighborhood only to see “Pookie walking bold as day back on the street two days later.”
“You’re telling them that the criminal justice system doesn’t care about victims and witnesses,” Lightfoot said.
“And if we don’t call that out every single day with these prosecutors and with these judges, many of whom don’t live in our cities and don’t care about what’s happening, then we are going to lose an opportunity to advocate for the victims and the witnesses and the residents who just want and deserve peace,” she added.
“We gotta say it,” Lightfoot concluded. “We gotta say it.”
Many on the left have been accusing conservatives of anti-Semitism for criticizing lenient prosecutors who have been put into office with the help of left-wing billionaire financier George Soros, a Jewish man.
Lightfoot lost her re-election campaign in February and became the first Chicago mayor to do so in four decades. She had been the first female black mayor of Chicago.
Here’s more about violence in Chicago:
After teens cause chaos, Chicago mayor-elect Johnson says ‘Not constructive to demonize youth starve www.youtube.com
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Tucker Carlson told attendees at The Heritage Foundation’s 50th-anniversary gala that the biggest variable changing everyday Americans’ lives in recent years is the ruling class’ monopoly on information.
“What do you think over the last 10 or 20 years — whatever timeline you think is appropriate —has changed the most?” Roberts asked. “I mean that socially and culturally, I don’t mean that politically, although you can go there if you want, that has affected everyday Americans’ lives?”
“The lack of information,” Carlson quickly replied.
Despite living in a digital world where data and details are available to everyone with access to the internet, Carlson said normal Americans’ access to the information pipeline is significantly hampered.
“The core promise of the internet was as much information as we’ve ever had at your fingertips, and the result has been a centralization of information. This is deliberate, needless to say, but unnoticed by most people. That results in more controlled information than we could even have imagined more than 20 years ago,” he said. “A lot of information just is not available because it’s digital and it’s controlled by a small number of companies.”
Carlson said “hundreds of millions” of Americans “have no idea what’s going on” because the ruling class does not want them to know the facts.
“It’s not just because they’re dumb or they’re distracted on their iPhones. The whole point of the iPhone was to inform you, and the net effect has been to make people completely ignorant of the core, the actual facts, like the non-disputed facts about a lot of different things. And you saw this, certainly, during covid,” Carlson remarked.
Keeping Americans clueless, Carlson said, is advantageous to those who control information pipelines because it “challenges the idea of democracy, which rests on the notion of an informed voting public, of a citizenry.”
“We don’t have that, and that really, I never would have expected that at all,” Carlson said.
Next, Carlson warned listeners not to throw away hardcopy books and to consider buying “gold and ammo.”
“Definitely don’t throw away your books because they can’t be disappeared, because they exist physically,” Carlson repeated.
Similarly, Carlson said Americans should be keen not to throw away “relationships with other people because they can’t be disappeared either.”
“The material, the physical, things that you can smell, those are the things that you can trust,” Carlson said between a smattering of applause. “Your spouse, your dogs, your children, especially your dogs, but your actual friendships, your college roommates, people in person. As the world becomes more digitized and people live in this kind of this realm that’s disconnected from physical reality, I think the only way to stay sane is to cling more tightly to the things that you can smell.”
Carlson said that he’s “gotten to the point where if I can’t smell it, I’m not dealing with it.”
“Books, relationships, and ammo: Tucker Carlson’s guide to the universe,” Roberts remarked.
“Yes!” Tucker replied.
During the more lighthearted portion of the q-and-a session, Roberts joked that “if things go south for you at Fox News, there’s always a job for your Heritage.”
Mere days after the event and Roberts’ teasing, Fox News abruptly announced that it “mutually agreed to part ways” with the host of “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” which is consistentlyranked the highest-rated cable news show. Carlson has yet to announce his plans for the future.
Jordan Boyd is a staff writer at The Federalist and co-producer of The Federalist Radio Hour. Her work has also been featured in The Daily Wire, Fox News, and RealClearPolitics. Jordan graduated from Baylor University where she majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow her on Twitter @jordanboydtx.
Given the recent stupidity on the view regarding Christianity vs Taliban – Joy Behar enjoying Sharia Law.
Actress and singer Patti LuPone recently appeared on The View, saying that she does not know the difference between the “religious right” in the US and the Taliban. The Taliban has been constantly monitored by human rights organizations for extrajudicial murder, public executions, torture, and floggings.
Whoopi Goldberg chimed in: “You’re not the only person who has said that.” – Full story at Human Events
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including NewsMax, Fox News, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Rep. Devin Nunes, Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Chris Salcedo, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and Presiden
If American society ever descends into open racial conflict, the corporate press will have played a large part in getting us there. President Trump was right: The media are the enemy of the people.
Journalists often leave the public less informed about important stories, especially when race is involved. One example is how the trial and acquittal of Kyle Rittenhouse were so poorly reported that many public figures spoke as if he shot three black people.
The nation experienced something similar this week with several high-profile shooting incidents across the country that involved homeowners.
The first involved Ralph Yarl, a 16-year-old in Kansas City, Missouri, who was shot after going to the wrong home to pick up his sibling. The shooter was Andrew Lester, an 84-year-old homeowner. Yarl, who survived the shooting, is black and Lester is white, so it goes without saying that the media immediately made this a case about racial bias and the ubiquitous, unrelenting threats to black life in this country. The Yarl family attorney, Lee Merritt, made that point crystal clear when he claimed, “Ralph Yarl was shot because he was armed with nothing but other than his Black skin.”
The media’s ability to claim incidents like this only occur because of race didn’t last long.
A 20-year-old woman named Kaylin Gillis was shot and killed while she sat in the passenger side of a car that turned into the wrong driveway in upstate New York. The homeowner, 65-year-old Kevin Monahan, was arrested and charged with second-degree murder. The case received coverage from the New York Times, but the racial dynamics – both the suspect and victim are white – were not a part of the reporting.
The race-crime dynamic really got complicated after reports emerged that a six-year-old and her parents in North Carolina were shot after her basketball rolled into the yard of a neighbor. Everyone survived, but the suspect – Robert Louis Singletary – was apprehended two days later in Florida. The media’s reporting on this case has been noteworthy considering the racial angle. The victims are white, and the suspect is black, but race has not been included in any of the headlines. In fact, a search of the shooter’s name on CNN returns one story.
“Suspect who allegedly shot 6-year-old neighbor and her parents in North Carolina has been apprehended in Florida.”
Compare that to how CNN has covered Ralph Yarl’s shooting:
“White homeowner accused of shooting Black teen who went to the wrong house in Kansas City will face 2 felony charges, officials announce”
“Recovery of Black teen allegedly shot by White homeowner after ringing wrong doorbell is a miracle, attorney says”
“The White homeowner accused of shooting a Black teen who rang his doorbell turns himself in and is released on bail”
The message here is crystal clear: Race only matters to the corporate press when it supports a certain color-coded worldview. For CNN, that typically translates into using racial descriptors when a suspect is white and his victims are not. But even people who claim to abhor race politics can find themselves entranced by the siren song of tribalism.
One of Tucker Carlson’s monologues earlier this week included a rebuke of the left’s assumption that Yarl’s shooting was racially motivated. The tendency to jump to conclusions about motive without evidence is common on CNN, on MSNBC, and at the New York Times. Then Carlson proceeded to do the exact same thing he criticized when he imputed racist intent to the violent assault of a white woman in Chicago over the past weekend. The woman appeared on a different Fox News show along with her boyfriend – who was there at the time – and stated the attack was random and not a targeted act of racial violence.
This is why journalists, politicians, and pundits need to resist the impulse to ascribe motive to violent crime based solely on the fact that the criminal and perpetrator have different skin tones. Acts of violence should be universally condemned, regardless of the color combinations of victim and suspect that are involved. But media crime reporting is always done through race-colored lenses.
Incidents in which both the suspects and victims are black expose the media’s dirty little secret. The progressive press – including “pro-black” platforms – only care about black lives when they are threatened by white people. That explains why the recent mass shooting in Alabama that ended with 20 people shot and four dead has not generated nearly as much coverage or outrage as what happened to Ralph Yarl.
When they do choose to cover these stories, what’s absent is any mention of “root causes” other than guns. Stories involving white shooters give them an opportunity to criticize “white supremacy” and racism. But incidents involving black shooters don’t come with the same type of analysis. There is no mention of racial self-hatred, fatherlessness and family structure, media and hip-hop culture, or any other factor that would speak to motive.
America is a nation of more than 330 million people spread across 3.5 million square miles. In other words, this is a big country with a large and diverse population that exists in a fallen world. If you can think of it, there is a good chance someone in this country has done it in the past, is doing it now, or will do it in the future. For example, a woman was recently arrested on allegations of bestiality. I did a Google search for “bestiality arrest” to find details and was shocked by how many different cases came back, including ones involving men, women, and couples.
The media can’t possibly cover every crime story. But what it can do is provide facts in an objective fashion on a consistent basis regardless of the identities involved. This doesn’t mean intent can’t be part of crime stories. It just means the media should resist the temptation to assign motives based on skin color, especially when they see the world through the lens of white “oppressors” and “oppressed” minorities. Outlets like the Root that cater to a black audience should be leading the charge to turn down the racial rhetoric. A small minority group whose leaders advocate killing its future soldiers and disarming its current ones should be the last people stoking racial conflict.
This week, Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., went back to work after spending several weeks away from Congress due to being hospitalized for severe depression. But while Democrats, who were sorely pressed to maintain their narrow majority in his absence, celebrated his return, C-Span video of him chairing a Senate subcommittee provided sobering evidence of the recovering stroke victim’s limitations. Much like his disastrous election debate last October, at the hearing, Fetterman’s halting speech, barely understandable comments, and inability to communicate without electronic aid illustrated his incapacity.
But while Democrats are quick to slam as bigots anyone who had the temerity to notice Fetterman’s problems, they are not feeling quite so generous about another member of their Senate caucus. The double standard creates an ominous precedent that ought to hang over the 2024 presidential election.
While they’ve been circling the wagons around Fetterman, Democrats have been pressuring Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., to resign due to the perception that she lacks the physical energy or the mental acuity to do her job. But unfortunately for Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and the California Democrats who want to replace her, the ailing 89-year-old has refused to step down, though she has already announced she won’t run for re-election next year.
Feinstein vs. Fetterman
Feinstein was hospitalized for shingles in February and has remained absent since then. With no date set for her return, the vacancy on the Judiciary Committee, where her absence leaves the Democrats without a majority, has created a serious problem for the efforts of the Biden administration and Schumer to confirm federal judges. The duel between the ailing Feinstein and her party has, at least for the moment, benefited Republicans. But the implications of the controversy go beyond its impact on her desire to stay on until her term expires in January 2025.
There are currently four senators who are over 80, including Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., who returned this week from an extended medical absence after a fall. Thirty senators are in their 70s. Whatever one thinks about the question of elderly senators serving, the campaign to push Feinstein out of her seat sets an interesting precedent.
Democrats have reacted to questions posed by Fetterman’s obvious limitations as a senator with both denial and an attempt to shame skeptics with pious rhetoric about ableism. They have attempted to depict him as a poster child for tolerance for those who suffer from mental health issues.
But they are indifferent to criticisms of their effort to push Feinstein out of her seat on the grounds of ageism, which have just as much validity as their defense of Fetterman.
Feinstein vs. Biden
Even worse, their belief that Feinstein’s diminishing capacities render her ineligible for a seat in the Senate stands in even starker contrast to the position President Joe Biden’s mental state has placed Democrats in.
Ever since Biden became their presumptive presidential nominee in March of 2020, ignoring his decline has become a political necessity for Democrats, and even more so with each passing month. At the very least, his never-ending stream of gaffes, frequent confusion in public, and erratic behavior raises questions about his mental acuity. Yet the corporate media treat questions about his health as off limits and proof of the bad morals of conservatives.
Still, as was the case with Feinstein until recently, the 80-year-old Biden remains fit enough to silence inquiries from Democrats. As president, it’s far easier to shield him from public scrutiny. More importantly, most in the party are coming to terms with the fact that they may be stuck with him for the 2024 election.
No matter his mental state, having spent his entire life working to become president, Biden clearly has no intention of giving up after only one term. He will have to be dragged from the White House kicking and screaming. The obvious alternatives — Vice President Kamala Harris or California Gov. Gavin Newsom — lack much appeal for the party’s grassroots or its donor class. So, many on the left are convinced Biden may be their best bet for victory next year, especially if the election is a rematch of the 2020 race against former President Donald Trump.
Double Standard
Yet whether you think Democrats’ decision to get rid of someone who can’t do her job is sensible or insensitive and nasty, it does raise questions about the same standard not being applied to Fetterman and most especially to Biden.
Feinstein has met her Democratic colleagues halfway by asking to be replaced on the Judiciary Committee so they can continue confirming leftist judges at an even faster pace than McConnell confirmed conservatives during the Trump administration. But replacing her on the committee requires GOP acquiescence and, for understandable reasons, Republicans are only too happy to let the current stalemate created by her absence continue. That’s led to mounting anger from Democrats, who think Feinstein is being selfish.
The empty seat on the Judiciary Committee has turned the issue into a crisis for Democrats, but many of them have been pushing for her resignation for years. Feinstein’s voting record can’t be criticized by the left, but she has at times engaged in collegial or commonsensical behavior that they regard as insufficiently woke.
Feinstein Too Reasonable for Some
In 2019, she enraged global warming extremists when she brusquely lectured a group of visiting schoolchildren about the importance of compromise when they began to virtue signal to her about not supporting the most alarmist environmental measures.
Just as bad from their point of view were allegations that she behaved decently toward conservative judicial nominees such as Justice Amy Coney Barrett, which some characterized as treating her with “kid gloves.” That’s despite the fact that Feinstein had intolerantly targeted her for her Catholic faith, saying that “the dogma lives loudly within you.”
That goes a long way toward explaining why Feinstein’s incapacity has been an issue for left-wingers who have no problem tolerating a leftist like Fetterman, who, leaving aside his hospitalization for depression, also still needs special equipment to be able to understand his colleagues and who appears to converse only with difficulty.
But there’s more at stake in this discussion than the Democrats’ hypocrisy on the question of fitness for office.
What if Biden’s Health Can’t Be Hid?
Democrats appear to be serious about asking the American people to re-elect an already diminished man who will be 82 in January 2025 and presumably serve until he’s 86. So, the idea that the questions they are currently raising about Feinstein can’t be raised about Biden ought to be a bridge too far even for inveterate Trump haters.
Just as important, they need to ask themselves in the coming year what they will do if Biden’s health continues to decline and ultimately puts him in the same position as Feinstein, where the problems can no longer be concealed. By declaring that questions about Biden’s mental acuity are off-limits or in bad taste, they are essentially setting up a situation where Harris being forced to step in and govern is a realistic possibility sometime in the next five years.
The only realistic alternative to simply hoping and praying Biden will continue to decline at a slow enough rate that his problems can continue to be concealed or smoothed over without political consequences is to begin asking the same hard questions about his health that they are currently posing to Feinstein. It remains to be seen whether anyone of consequence in the party has the guts or the wisdom to point this out before it is too late.
Jonathan S. Tobin is a senior contributor to The Federalist, editor in chief of JNS.org, and a columnist for Newsweek. Follow him on Twitter at @jonathans_tobin.
Did Biden-appointed U.S. attorneys in California and Washington, D.C., block the filing of criminal tax charges against Hunter Biden?
Accusations levied by an IRS whistleblower on Wednesday suggest the federal prosecutors did just that, contradicting Attorney General Merrick Garland’s recent congressional testimony and raising an avalanche of questions concerning the independence of the Delaware U.S. attorney’s office overseeing the Hunter Biden investigation. Given the severity of the claims, the U.S. attorney should speak up immediately.
A cryptic letter sent to a slew of congressional committee chairs on Wednesday revealed an Internal Revenue Service (IRS) whistleblower’s claims of political interference in the criminal investigation of a high-profile, politically connected individual. While the letter omitted the specific details the whistleblower sought to present to the oversight committees, unnamed sources reportedly confirmed the criminal case concerned Hunter Biden; they also revealed several more scandalous claims.
In attorney Mark Lytle’s letter to the congressional chairs and ranking members, the Nixon Peabody partner explained that his client, “a career IRS Criminal Supervisory Special Agent,” sought to “make protected whistleblower disclosures to Congress.” After noting that his unnamed client “had been overseeing the ongoing and sensitive investigation of a high-profile, controversial subject since early 2020,” Lytle broadly identified three disclosures the whistleblower was prepared to make.
First, the whistleblower’s testimony would “contradict sworn testimony to Congress by a senior political appointee,” the letter said. Second, according to Lytle, the career IRS agent would reveal the “failure to mitigate clear conflicts of interest in the ultimate disposition of the case.” And finally, the letter claimed the whistleblower had detailed evidence of “preferential treatment and politics” that improperly infected “decisions and protocols.”
Individuals claiming to be “directly familiar with the case” put flesh on the barebones allegations summarized by Lytle. Those sources claim Hunter Biden is the “high-profile” individual under investigation and “that at least two Biden DOJ political appointees in U.S. attorneys’ offices have declined to seek a tax indictment against Hunter Biden despite career investigators’ recommendations to do so.” The sources further claimed career prosecutors in the Department of Justice tax division had cleared the prosecution of Hunter Biden — something generally required in criminal tax cases.
The whistleblower, who had previously filed complaints with the U.S. Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration and the DOJ’s Office of Inspector General, decided to inform congressional oversight committees of the claimed political improprieties after hearing Garland’s March 1, 2023, testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, sources claim.
During the Judiciary Committee’s oversight hearing, Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, questioned Garland on the ability of the federal prosecutor investigating Hunter Biden, Delaware U.S. Attorney David Weiss, to pursue criminal charges in a different judicial district, without special counsel authority.
Garland responded that the Delaware U.S. attorney had been advised he has authority “to bring cases in other jurisdictions if he feels it is necessary.” “If he needs to bring [a case] in another jurisdiction, he will have full authority to do that,” Garland assured.
It was that testimony by Garland, who was reportedly the unnamed “senior political appointee” referenced in Lytle’s letter, that the whistleblower’s disclosures would reportedly contradict. Specifically, sources claim the whistleblower intends to reveal that the Delaware U.S. attorney sought permission to bring tax charges in other districts, but two U.S. attorneys appointed by Biden denied the requests. The whistleblower allegedly also claims that Weiss had asked “to be named a special counsel to have more independent authority in the probe but was turned down.”
Weiss’s supposed need to enlist the Biden-appointed U.S. attorneys to move forward with criminal charges seemingly stems from a DOJ policy that criminal tax prosecutions proceed in the judicial district where the defendant lived at the time the pertinent tax returns were filed. And here, Grassley gave a clue of the U.S. attorney offices that allegedly refused to pursue criminal charges when he asked Garland whether the D.C. or California U.S. attorney’s offices had denied a request by Weiss to bring charges against Hunter Biden.
Garland responded that he did not know the answer to that question and did not want to “get into the internal decision-making” of the U.S. attorneys, but that Weiss had been advised he will not be denied anything he needs.
Grassley’s reference to the California and D.C. U.S. attorney’s offices meshes with details of Hunter Biden’s various residences. Before moving to California, the Biden son listed his residence in 2018 as his father’s house in Wilmington, Delaware, but he claimed a D.C. address prior to that. Hunter also rented office space in D.C. for Rosemont Seneca Advisors, one of his many LLCs — another basis for bringing a federal criminal tax case in D.C.
Biden has since moved to California, reportedly living in Hollywood Hills and Venice, establishing connections to the second judicial district Grassley referenced. Both Hollywood Hills and Venice fall in the Central District of California, so The Federalist asked the office of the Biden-appointed U.S. Attorney E. Martin Estrada whether he had rejected recommendations of career prosecutors to charge Hunter Biden. A press representative said they had no comment.
The Federalist also contacted the D.C. U.S. attorney’s press office for comment, and a representative of U.S. Attorney Matthew Graves said they neither confirm nor deny the existence of any investigation.
Whether these two U.S. attorneys prevented the filing of criminal tax charges against Hunter Biden is unknown — at least to the public. Weiss, however, knows what happened, and rather than force the whistleblower to suffer through what will surely be months of attempted character assassination, Weiss should clear the record.
Margot Cleveland is The Federalist’s senior legal correspondent. She is also a contributor to National Review Online, the Washington Examiner, Aleteia, and Townhall.com, and has been published in the Wall Street Journal and USA Today. Cleveland is a lawyer and a graduate of the Notre Dame Law School, where she earned the Hoynes Prize—the law school’s highest honor. She later served for nearly 25 years as a permanent law clerk for a federal appellate judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Cleveland is a former full-time university faculty member and now teaches as an adjunct from time to time. As a stay-at-home homeschooling mom of a young son with cystic fibrosis, Cleveland frequently writes on cultural issues related to parenting and special-needs children. Cleveland is on Twitter at @ProfMJCleveland. The views expressed here are those of Cleveland in her private capacity.
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including NewsMax, Fox News, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Rep. Devin Nunes, Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Chris Salcedo, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and Presiden
John Sopko, Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, told Congress on Wednesday that taxpayer dollars are flowing into the Taliban’s pockets. The shocking admission was made during a House Oversight Committee hearing about the Biden administration’s disastrous and deadly withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021.
“Unfortunately, as I sit here today, I cannot assure this committee or the American taxpayer we are not currently funding the Taliban,” Sopko said. “Nor can I assure you that the Taliban are not diverting the money we are sending from the intended recipients, which are the poor Afghan people.”
🔥🔥🔥
“The lack of cooperation by @StateDept…is unprecedented in the nearly 12 years that I have been the SIGAR.”
Inspector General John Sopko CONDEMNS the Biden Administration for not cooperating with Afghanistan oversight. pic.twitter.com/00pa8w5umY
Sopko explained that obstruction from the State Department and the United States Agency for International Development in the Biden administration has been “unprecedented.” He said both agencies have demonstrated an “abject refusal to allow oversight” of the billions of taxpayer dollars that have been sent to Afghanistan.
“I don’t trust the Taliban as far as you can throw them,” Sopko later said. “The information we’re getting — again, not from the State Department, who isn’t talking to us, or USAID — is the Taliban is already diverting funds.”
“I would just say: I haven’t seen a starving Taliban fighter on TV, they all seem to be fat, dumb, and happy,” he added. “I see a lot of starving Afghan children on TV, so I’m wondering where all this funding is going.”
According to his testimony, the U.S. has “made available” to Afghanistan more than $8 billion since the withdrawal less than two years ago.
Throughout his testimony, Sopko repeatedly returned to the Biden administration’s obstruction. In fact, he said SIGAR has not heard from “anybody in the administration, really,” and said that routine meetings with top government and military leaders that happened in previous administration have ceased under Biden. Now, it’s just “radio silence,” he said.
Sopko’s eye-opening testimony came about two weeks after the Biden administration released its after-action report about the Afghanistan withdrawal. The report blamed former President Donald Trump for what happened under Biden’s watch, completely absolving Biden and his administration.
That blame-game continued on Wednesday prior to the hearing, CNN reported. The White House, moreover, is denying they are obstructing Sopko’s oversight efforts.
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What’s behind California’s shift to paying for electricity based on income? In a few words, it’s the consequence of California’s futile fight against climate change.
California’s quixotic pursuit to save the planet by reducing greenhouse emissions has had three broad and irrefutable consequences. It has made energy more expensive; costlier energy has accelerated the deindustrialization of the state; and, the best irony of all, the offshored manufacturing has increased greenhouse gas emissions by pushing production to dirty, coal-fired China, with goods then shipped back to California for consumption.
The latest twist in California’s arrogant tale of energy virtue signaling is playing out with a major restructuring in how Californians are charged for their electricity. For decades, consumers paid for electricity — as well as other utilities such as water and natural gas — with a tiered system that charged more for resources used above a baseline amount. For electricity, the baseline was determined by three things: the consumer’s use of electricity, the region, and the season.
This system meant consumers who used a lot of electricity would pay far more for each kilowatt hour of that additional electricity than they would for their baseline allocation.
This tended to hit lower-income consumers who ran their air conditioning too much, though the Golden State also has a separate program to reduce costs for low-income residents known as California Alternate Rates for Energy (CARE).
Thus, the California legislature last year passed Assembly Bill 205, which mandated an end to the tiered system of electric rates and instituted in its place a system where each would pay according to his ability to help those in need. (Of course, it sounds better in the original German, “Jeder nach seinen Fähigkeiten, jedem nach seinen Bedürfnissen.”) The bill goes into effect no later than July 1, 2024, with the stated aim that “low-income ratepayers in each baseline territory would realize a lower average monthly bill without making any changes in usage.”
One unintended consequence of ditching the old baseline allocation scheme is all ratepayers, regardless of income, will now have far less incentive to conserve electricity, since each additional unit of electricity used will be priced the same, with overall prices reduced.
Higher Income Will Pay More
In preparation for the rollout of the new electric charges, California’s big, regulated utilities have proposed their new rate plans to the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC). Depending on the provider, ratepayers would pay a fixed fee based on three household income tiers, plus charges for electricity use. Household income would be validated by a third party, likely the agency that collects the state income tax, the California Franchise Tax Board. The three proposed household income tiers and their fixed rates are: $28,000 to $69,000 — $20 to $34 a month, depending on the provider; $69,000 to $180,000 — $51 to $73 a month; and more than $180,000 — $85 to $128 a month.
Median household income in California in the years 2017-2021 was $84,097, meaning that an average California family could, under the proposed rate structure, pay a flat fee of $876 per year for their electricity while charges for kilowatt hours used would decline by 33-42 percent depending on the provider. The net effect would be an increase of about $90 a year for the average household and up to $750 more annually for higher-income households. Ironically, households living in homes with rooftop solar would see some of the highest increases in electrical costs under the new rate structure. Lower-income households are expected to see savings of up to $300 per year.
Increasing Fees Rather Than Taxes
One big advantage to California policymakers of heavily regulating public utilities is the ability to use these energy and water corporations as de facto arms of the welfare state.
California’s Constitution requires a two-thirds majority to increase taxes, but a simple majority to increase fees. The CPUC’s total control over California’s utilities means state lawmakers can direct the CPUC to change its rate structures to take more from those earning more and give to those earning less — all without a penny flowing into or out of the state treasury — something that’s particularly attractive today in a state that went from an almost $100 billion surplus last year to an expected $30 billion deficit this year.
And in that, the CPUC commissioners, appointed by Gov. Gavin Newsom, are willing accomplices in the class struggle for fair electricity bills and energy justice. Of the five commissioners, four are attorneys, with backgrounds in “environmental justice,” air quality, low-income assistance, and climate change — electricity generation, not so much. Though the CPUC’s mission is to ensure “that consumers have safe, reliable utility service at reasonable rates, protecting against fraud, and promoting the health of California’s economy,” it’s clear now that all that really matters is figuring out how to shield low-income voters from the costly consequences of California’s green energy crusade.
Moreover, while the electrical pricing scheme may work as income redistribution social policy, it fails the test of reducing energy consumption — laying bare the fact that California policymakers care more about control than they do the climate.
Chuck DeVore is chief national initiatives officer at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, vice chairman of the Golden State Policy Council, a former California legislator, and a retired U.S. Army lieutenant colonel. He’s the author of “The Crisis of the House Never United—A Novel of Early America.”
Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee is asking lawmakers to support “new legislation that would temporarily block someone who is deemed a threat to themselves or to others from having guns,”writes Axios.
That’s one way of putting it.
Another, more precise, way would be to say Lee supports a law that forces people accused of a precrime to sit down with state-appointed psychiatrists and lawyers and prove their innocence before the government decides if they can keep their guns. If that person says the wrong things, cops can show up at his home, search it, demand the accused hand over his property — not just any property, but property explicitly protected by the Constitution — without offering any evidence that he’s committed, or ever planned to commit, a crime.
In selling his bill, Lee claims that guns can be taken from those accused of having a “psychiatric disorder, alcohol dependence, or drug dependence.” But federal law already prohibits the sale of a gun to anyone who “has been adjudicated as a mental defective.” And most people who drink or take drugs don’t have a propensity towards violence. Excessive drinking might be bad for you, but it’s legal. As is grumbling about chemtrails, pondering how to overthrow the government, and hating your neighbors.
Incidentally, if an alcoholic is found guilty of a precrime, Lee’s bill only affords him a single hearing to rectify the situation for each act of suspension, which can be in effect for up to 180 days — even if he pulls his life together, repents, and becomes a devout Seventh-Day Adventist. The state can keep asking for extensions in perpetuity.
Of course, even those with persistent depression, an emotional disorder, aren’t often would-be killers. One in eight Americans takes antidepressants. Yet, one suspects laws like this will only stigmatize depression and make gun owners less inclined to seek help.
More importantly, though, Lee fails to mention in his factsheets that the bill allows the state to take firearms on the basis of a “serious behavioral condition,” which includes “functional impairment that substantially interferes with or limits the person’s role or functioning in family, school, occupational, or community activities.” The incredulous italics are mine, because Lee’s standard, despite his contention that there is a high burden of proof, could include basically anyone who’s met the psychiatric diagnostic criteria for depression and stopped going to a weekly softball game.
Sure, the law includes penalties for false and bad-faith statements by cops and third parties, but those would be all but impossible to prove or prosecute because the basis for the state issuing a “temporary mental health order of protection” is extraordinarily broad.
If someone is threatening others with violence, Tennessee already has numerous laws on the books that allow for arrest. It already has a law that allows for the immediate detention of people deemed dangerous to themselves or others. Every state does. And yet, in numerous recent mass shootings, the perpetrator has been known to the police, and they did nothing.
The Covenant School shooting, Lee maintains, makes it impossible not to act. But it’s important to remember that, as far as we know, nothing in Lee’s proposal would have stopped that shooter. The mother, who never appears to have reported her daughter for mental illness, probably wasn’t even aware that her adult child still owned guns. As far as we know, the killer never threatened anyone publicly before the shooting, nor did she pose a danger to herself. For all we know, the shooting was an act of terrorism or conducted over some personal grudge. We won’t know until, or if, the sheriff in Nashville releases her manifesto.
One suspects that gun controllers will soon cook up studies to tell us red flag laws are amazing, but to this point no major study — including a meta-analysis conducted by RAND Corporation — has conclusively found them to be effective. Many of these state laws are even worse than Lee’s proposal as they are permitted ex parte orders. But even if these laws were useful on the margins, they are a serious attack on the Second, Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Amendments. Red flag laws just give authorities power to work around normal evidentiary standards. Perhaps we should try upholding the tens of thousands of laws that already govern gun ownership before passing new ones.
In his platitude-laden Twitter video, Lee frames himself as a courageous nonpartisan, accusing anyone who opposes his proposal of being blinded by politics. The truth is, the governor’s do-something-ism is about the laziest, most politically motivated breed of leadership imaginable.
David Harsanyi is a senior editor at The Federalist, a nationally syndicated columnist, a Happy Warrior columnist at National Review, and author of five books—the most recent, Eurotrash: Why America Must Reject the Failed Ideas of a Dying Continent. He has appeared on Fox News, C-SPAN, CNN, MSNBC, NPR, ABC World News Tonight, NBC Nightly News and radio talk shows across the country. Follow him on Twitter, @davidharsanyi.
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What Did You Say? 
Virginia college students get heated protesting Liz Wheeler’s ‘Ideology of Transgenderism’ speech
By Kyle Morris | Fox News | Published April 27, 2023 4:27pm EDT
Read more at https://www.foxnews.com/politics/virginia-college-students-get-heated-protesting-liz-wheelers-ideology-transgenderism-speech
Conservative commentator Liz Wheeler was met by dozens of protesters Wednesday evening when she arrived to a Virginia college to deliver remarks about “transgenderism” and its impact in America.
The protest kicked off ahead of Wheeler’s arrival on the campus of James Madison University, where she delievered a speech, “The Ideology of Transgenderism,” and was challenged by a number of her detractors in attendance.
Wheeler, a podcast host who often sounds off on topics critical to the conservative agenda, was invited to speak at the event by the school’s Young Americans for Freedom chapter.
The demonstrators, all of whom appeared to protest peacefully against Wheeler’s appearance on campus, were captured on video gathering outside and inside the venue as they displayed signs and chanted ahead of the event.
FOX NEWS POLL: BOOK BANNING, TRANSGENDER ISSUES SEEN AS PROBLEMATIC
While several protesters gathered outside the venue, others gathered inside, just outside the room where Wheeler was slated to speak. Those demonstrators also displayed signs that featured messages protesting Wheeler’s appearance on campus and in defense of transgender people.
KANSAS BOARD SETS NEW TRANSGENDER ATHLETE RULE FOR STUDENTS
Wheeler took aim at “queer theory” during her speech, concluding it allows people to “choose your identity” and forgo your “evil identity” of being a certain race because it’s a “marginalized identity.”
Inside the event, Wheeler was also challenged by those who had opposing views about transgenderism after she finished speaking.
Wheeler went on to describe to the individual how sex change surgeries are performed on young males in America and how some sex change surgeries have resulted in death because they are “so dangerous.”
A Fox News Poll released this week found that 48% of respondents believe overly accommodating transgender policies are a major problem for public schools.
Kyle Morris covers politics for Fox News. Story tips can be sent to kyle.morris@fox.com and on Twitter: @RealKyleMorris.
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