A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including NewsMax, Fox News, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Rep. Devin Nunes, Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Chris Salcedo, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Donald Trump.
President Biden has finally found a solution to address the surge in illegal crossings at the southern border: tell the tens of thousands of aliens unlawfully entering the United States from Mexico that they can come to America “legally” if they instead fly to a port-of-entry in the interior of the country.
Seriously, for all the Biden administration’s spin, that’s his plan — and it is illegal.
Of course, when Biden announced his administration’s newest policy on Thursday in advance of his midterm inaugural trip to the southern border on Sunday, the press release heralded the plan as a “new border enforcement action.” But as National Review’s Andrew McCarthy exposed in his weekend column, it’s a scam.
The scam, though, is layers thick, both legally and politically. And to reach the core truth — that Biden refuses to faithfully execute his duties as the president of the United States by defending our sovereign border — one must first unpeel the specifics of the newest plan buried in the Department of Homeland Security’s official notice of the changes, while also analyzing the relevant immigration law.
The Plan
Today’s edition of the Federal Register, which serves as “the Daily Journal of the United States Government,” contains the details of DHS’s supposed “new border enforcement action,” in four separate “notices,” titled respectively: “Implementation of a Parole Process for Cubans,” “Implementation of a Parole Process for Haitians,” “Implementation of a Parole Process for Nicaraguans,” and “Implementation of Changes to the Parole Process for Venezuelans.”
Each notice summarizes the Biden administration’s supposed “solution” to the flooding of the southern border, which in short consists of allowing, on a monthly basis, a total of 30,000 aliens to enter the United States “legally” if they are Cuban, Haitian, Nicaraguan, or Venezuelan nationals. To qualify, aliens must have a “U.S.-based supporter,” which could be “non-governmental entities or community-based organizations,” and must “provide for their own commercial travel to an air [port-of-entry] and final U.S. destination.” National security and public safety vetting are also required, as well as any additional public health requirements, such as vaccinations.
But how is it that illegal-alien border crossers can become lawful noncitizens by just jumping through a few hoops and flying to the interior of the country, rather than sneaking over the southern border? They can’t. And in crafting its latest immigration plan, the Biden administration is again acting lawlessly.
Biden’s Lawlessness
The Biden administration maintains it has the authority to allow aliens from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela to enter the United States legally under section 212(d)(5)(A) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, or INA. That section provides the secretary of homeland security the authority to “parole” noncitizens “into the United States temporarily under such reasonable conditions as [the secretary] may prescribe only on a case-by-case basis for urgent humanitarian reasons or significant public benefit.”
“parole” for purposes of the INA is a “legal fiction” in which “a paroled alien is physically allowed to enter the country,” but the alien maintains the same legal status as if he or she were held at the border waiting for an application for admission to be granted or denied. But besides obtaining the legal right to be present in the United States, an alien paroled into the United States may obtain employment authorization to work here lawfully.
As the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals recently explained, “Parole began as an administrative invention that allowed aliens in certain circumstances to remain on U.S. soil without formal admission, with Congress codifying the practice when it initially enacted the Immigration and Nationality Act (the ‘INA’) in 1952.” At that time, Congress gave the attorney general “discretion to parole into the United States temporarily under such conditions as he may prescribe … any alien applying for admission to the United States.”
However, “throughout the mid-twentieth century, the executive branch on multiple occasions purported to use the parole power to bring in large groups of immigrants,” prompting Congress twice to amend the INA “to limit the scope of the parole power and prevent the executive branch from using it as a programmatic policy tool.” First, as the Fifth Circuit explained, in 1980, Congress added a requirement that the executive branch only parole refugees where “compelling reasons in the public interest with respect to that particular alien,” exist. Then, in 1996, Congress amended the INA to provide “parole may be granted ‘only on a case-by-case basis for urgent humanitarian reasons or significant public benefit.’”
While the DHS’s just-announced parole plans claim the department is making parole decisions on a case-by-case basis, the qualifications set forth by the DHS establish that the Biden administration is illegally using parole power “as a programmatic policy tool,” rather than as designed by Congress, for example, by “paroling aliens who do not qualify for an admission category but have an urgent need for medical care in the United States and paroling aliens who qualify for a visa but are waiting for it to become available.”
The Biden administration’s lawless use of its parole power should come as no surprise, though, as since November of 2021, the president’s team has relied on Section 212(d)(5)(A) to release “family units” at the border to supposedly deal with “capacity constraints.” Florida has challenged the Biden administration’s granting of such carte blanche parole, as well as the president’s failure to detain illegal aliens as mandated under the INA, and trial is set to begin on both those claims later today in a federal court in Florida.
The ‘Standing’ Problem
A similar legal challenge to the Biden administration’s recent parole plan seems likely, although by requiring applicants to secure a vetted “supporter” who will commit to providing for the parolees’ financial needs while they are present in the United States, it will be challenging for anyone to show “standing” to challenge DHS’s plan.
For instance, in the Florida case, while the Biden administration argued the state lacked “standing,” or the right to sue, the court rejected that argument, reasoning Florida “plausibly alleged that the challenged policies already have and will continue to cost it millions of dollars, including the cost of incarcerating criminal aliens and the cost of providing a variety of public benefits, including unemployment benefits, free public education, and emergency services to aliens who settle in Florida after being ‘paroled’ into the country.”
But other than providing “free public education,” the same types of monetary harms are lacking in the case of the Biden administration’s latest parole proposal. And it is questionable whether a court will find that providing free public education to children paroled under DHS’s plans will be enough to establish standing.
Absent a plaintiff with standing to challenge DHS’s plan to parole some 30,000 aliens into the United States every month, the only way to fight the Biden administration’s latest lawless move will be politically. Here, those seeking to secure the southern border have ample ammunition, including highlighting the fact that the Biden administration’s plan does nothing to address that portion of the 200,000-some individuals crossing the southern border every month that herald from countries other than Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela.
Further, while converting 30,000 illegal border crossers into parolees at ports of entry in the interior of the country may provide a reduction to the problem on paper, it does not secure the border nor promise any reduction in the number of individuals attempting to enter via Mexico.
The parole plan presumes, though, that there will be an even greater reduction in illegal border crossings than the 30,000 who enter as part of the parole process. The parole plan, according to the Biden administration, creates a disincentive for citizens of Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela to enter illegally at the southern border because the DHS’s new policy also provides that aliens who bypass the parole process and enter the United States without authorization will be subject to an expedited removal to Mexico or their country of origin.
If so, then why not just institute a policy of expediting the removal of individuals who enter illegally at the southern border?
Biden’s Border Disaster
According to the figures included in last week’s DHS notices, prior to the surge at the southern border that followed the Biden administration’s change in enforcement policies, there weren’t even 30,000 aliens from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela crossing the border illegally on an annual basis.
For instance, the notice reported that for fiscal years 2019 and 2020 respectively, DHS encountered only 3,039 and 4,431 Haitian nationals at the southwest border, but by 2021 the number exploded to 43,484.
From 2014 to 2019, DHS encountered 589 Cubans on average every month, but by 2022, the average monthly encounter at the land border totaled 17,809, and in October and November of 2022, some 62,000-plus Cuban nationals attempted to cross the border.
From fiscal 2014 through 2019, border agents encountered a monthly average of 127 Venezuelan nationals, but by fiscal year 2022, the average number of Venezuelans crossing the border illegally on a monthly basis totaled 15,494 and rose to more than 33,000 in September of that year.
For Nicaraguan nationals, in 2022, DHS encountered an estimated 157,400 aliens, or an average of 13,113 per month, compared to an average of 316 per month from fiscal years 2014-2019.
These figures show the Biden administration does not need a parole policy: It needs an enforcement policy.
No End in Sight
There is a telling admission hidden in the DHS notice from last week that announced changes to the parole plan established for Venezuela in October of 2022. As originally established, the Venezuela plan capped the number of “parolees” at a total of 24,000 beneficiaries. But, as the DHS acknowledged in its notice modifying that plan, just two months in, “demand for the Venezuela process has far exceeded the 24,000 limit.”
“Absent immediate action,” the DHS notice explained, “there is a risk that DHS meets the 24,000 cap, which would in turn cause the [government of Mexico] to no longer accept the return of Venezuelan nationals and end the success of the parole process to date at reducing the number of Venezuelan nationals encountered at the border.” Further, should it reach the 24,000 limit, thereby making prospective migrants no longer eligible for parole, the “DHS anticipates that we would then see increased irregular migration of Venezuelans.”
In other words, the Biden administration is allowing aliens to come to America “legally” because if it doesn’t, foreign nationals will just start crossing the border illegally again.
Further, while the Biden administration’s current plan caps the number of parolees at 30,000 per month, the DHS notices indicate it may revisit that figure if necessary. What then, is there to stop the Biden administration from increasing the 30,000 cap two-fold or ten-fold? Or what is there to prevent the administration from expanding parole to aliens from countries beyond the four — maybe 14, or even 40?
While the intricacies of immigration law are detailed and often convoluted, the bottom line of the Biden administration’s parole plan should be clear to all Americans: Joe Biden has no intention of securing our border or faithfully executing his duties as the president of the United States.
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.
Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) delivers a speech after he was elected on the 15th ballot at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, on Jan. 7, 2023. (Olivier Douliery/AFP via Getty Images)
Tough negotiations in Congress that on Saturday ended with Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) taking the gavel as House speaker have led to a series of compromises, including seven conservative bills that are guaranteed to be put to a vote.
McCarthy had to make numerous concessions to win over a holdout group of populist Republicans, including one that gives him a fragile grip on power by allowing just one member to move to vacate the speaker’s chair.
The rocky road to the gavel—which saw 14 failed votes before the 15th finally saw McCarthy ascend to the House top job—led to a compromise on a rules package, which includes seven bills that the 20 holdout Republicans pushed for.
The House rules package is expected to be put to a vote on Jan. 9.
“This is what we’ve been fighting for,” Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), one of the Republicans who opposed McCarthy’s bid for the speakership and pushed for concessions, said in a Sunday post on Twitter.
The rules package includes the following seven bills that are guaranteed to come up for a vote in the House under a subsection of the package that calls for separate consideration of the bills under a closed rule with one hour of debate.
A bill to cut some of the additional funding that was made available to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).
A bill to authorize the secretary of Homeland Security to turn away people crossing the border illegally.
A bill that includes prohibiting the secretary of energy from sending petroleum products from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to China.
A tough-on-crime bill that includes amending the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act to direct the district attorney and prosecutor’s office to report to the attorney general.
A bill to require a national instant crime background check system to notify U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other law enforcement agencies when information surfaces that a person present in the United States illegally may be trying to obtain a firearm.
A bill to prohibit taxpayer funded abortions.
A bill to amend Title 18, United States Code, to prohibit a health care practitioner from failing to exercise the proper degree of care in case of a child who survives an abortion or attempted abortion.
McCarthy said on Jan. 7, shortly after being elected as House Speaker, that the first bill he wants to see taken up and passed is the IRS-related one.
“When we come back, our very first bill will repeal the funding for 87,000 new IRS agents,” McCarthy said. He didn’t specify when the bill would be introduced on the House floor but said Republicans “believe government should be to help you, not go after you.”
U.S. House Republican leaders Steve Scalise (R-La.) (L) and Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) talk in the House Chamber during the fourth day of elections for Speaker of the House at the U.S. Capitol Building in Washington on Jan. 6, 2023. (Win McNamee/Getty Images)
1st Legislation for Republican House
House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) said in a recent letter that there’s legislation that’s “ready to go” that Republicans will bring to the House floor during the first two weeks of 2023.
The seven bills in the compromise House rules package largely mirror Scalise’s list.
According to Scalise’s letter, the first bill, dubbed the Family and Small Business Taxpayer Protection Act (pdf), aims to revoke some of the additional IRS funding that Democrats passed as part of their Inflation Reduction Act that the agency plans to use for tax enforcement.
With the first bill, Republicans are targeting what Scalise said was “tens of billions of dollars allocated to the IRS for 87,000 new IRS agents.” That figure is in dispute, with the Biden administration saying much of the money would go to non-enforcement staff like customer service.
Another bill Scalise put in the schedule is the Strategic Production Response Act (pdf), which would prohibit non-emergency drawdowns of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve without a parallel plan to boost energy production on federal lands.
Republicans have been highly critical of President Joe Biden for ordering the release of oil from the strategic reserve, arguing that it was a ploy to win votes ahead of the midterms by trying to lower pump prices.
Biden, for his part, has insisted the release was meant to stabilize global oil markets amid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the ensuing energy price shock, as well as trying to lower prices for Americans amid decades-high inflation, of which a major component is the cost of energy.
Scalise has scheduled another related bill, called Protecting America’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve from China Act (pdf), which would restrict the energy secretary from selling oil from the strategic reserve to China.
Another bill is the Prosecutors Need to Prosecute Act (pdf), which would allow the public to see how many cases prosecutors are declining to prosecute, along with the number of criminals released onto the streets and the number of offenses committed by career criminals.
On border security, Scalise put forward a bill called the Border Safety and Security Act (pdf), which would give the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) the power to turn away people crossing the border illegally in order to gain “operational control” of the border.
Another bill, called the Illegal Alien NICS Alert Act (pdf) would require the National Instant Criminal Background Check system (NICS) to notify U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and relevant local law enforcement if someone trying to buy a firearm is an illegal immigrant.
One bill, called the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion and Abortion Insurance Full Disclosure Act (pdf), seeks to make the Hyde Amendment permanent and prohibit federal funding for abortions as well as funding for any insurance plans that include on-demand abortion.
Another bill, called Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act (pdf), would ensure that infants born alive after a failed abortion would receive the same legal protection and health care as a newborn.
McCarthy’s Concessions
Besides the bills, McCarthy had to make numerous concessions to win over the holdout Republicans, including giving the Freedom Caucus members seats on the powerful House Rules Committee, taking a hard line on the debt limit, and reducing spending.
While it normally takes 218 votes—a majority of the House—to become speaker, that threshold can be reduced if members are absent or merely vote present.
It’s precisely this maneuver that gave McCarthy his coveted win, as six Republicans voted “present” instead of “yea” in the final vote: Reps. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.), Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.), Eli Crane (R-Ariz.), Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), Bob Good (R-Va.), and Matt Rosendale (R-Mont.).
In a 20-minute speech following the vote, McCarthy laid out his priorities for the 118th Congress, including securing the southern border, combating “woke” indoctrination in American schools, and unleashing domestic energy production.
“We must get America back on track,” he said. “We’ll hold the swamp accountable.”
Tom Ozimek is a senior reporter for The Epoch Times. He has a broad background in journalism, deposit insurance, marketing and communications, and adult education.
A 55-page set of rules for the House that Speaker Kevin McCarthy hopes to pass on Monday will set ambitious new curbs on federal spending, part of the GOP’s effort to stop piling on trillions of dollars in new debt each year. One of the biggest changes is a return to a “Cut-As-You-Go” policy that says legislation cannot be considered if it increases mandatory spending over a 5- or 10-year period. This “CUTGO” policy requires bills that call for new spending to find offsetting spending cuts elsewhere in the federal budget.
That is a more aggressive stance compared to the “Pay-As-You-Go” policy under Democratic control. “PAYGO” also requires offsets to new spending, but those offsets can either be spending cuts or tax increases – and in either case, PAYGO rules were often waived entirely by Democrats.
House Republicans, led by Speaker Kevin McCarthy, hope to pass a rules package on Monday that will put severe curbs on new federal spending. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
The decision to go with CUTGO shows the new GOP’s aversion to possible tax hikes, which can be seen elsewhere in the new rules package. For example, the rules require a supermajority in the House to approve new tax increases.
“A bill or joint resolution, amendment, or conference report carrying a federal income tax rate increase may not be considered as passed or agreed to unless so determined by a vote of not less than three-fifths of the Members voting, a quorum being present,” the rules state.
In another push to stop piling on new debt, the rules will end the practice of allowing the House to automatically increase the debt ceiling through passage of a budget resolution that would require borrowing above the current ceiling. Instead, the GOP will require separate votes to raise the debt ceiling in a bid to restore accountability to Congress.
Since 2001, the federal government’s budget has run a deficit each year. Starting in 2016, increases in spending on Social Security, health care and interest on federal debt have outpaced the growth of federal revenue. (U.S. Department of the Treasury)
The rules package also instructs House committees to prepare plans for strict oversight of the Biden administration, including an assessment of which programs continue to receive funding from Congress even though their authorization lapsed. It calls on committees to make recommendations on how to either consolidate or terminate those programs.
The package brings back the so-called Holman Rule, which allows members to chop specific agencies or even the salaries of specific federal employees when appropriations bills are being considered.
Republicans have argued for the past year that excessive federal spending is a major cause of inflation levels that have not been seen in 40 years. They say spending reductions will help to curb inflation. Along those lines, the rules package calls on the Congressional Budget Office to analyze the impact of spending bills on inflation whenever they spend a significant amount of money, or whenever this analysis is requested by the House Budget Committee chairman.
House GOP leaders say excessive spending by Democrats has ramped up inflation, and are looking to establish a set of rules aimed at curbing that spending. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
The rules package does not include other spending goals held by the GOP, such as its desire to cap fiscal year 2024 discretionary spending at FY 2022 levels. However, Republicans are also reportedly pursuing that as a goal as well, which has some GOP lawmakers worried about possible defense cuts.
Elsewhere, the rules package includes language requiring all bills to be available for 72 hours before they get a vote – a reaction to the way the Democrats rushed through a $1.7 trillion spending bill last month.
It creates new House committees and subcommittees on the origin of the COVID-19 pandemic, strategic competition with China, and the weaponization of the federal government.
Pete Kasperowicz is a politics editor at Fox News Digital.
Immigrants who entered the U.S. illegally sleep on a sidewalk near a migrant shelter on January 06, 2023, in El Paso, Texas. President Joe Biden visited El Paso on Sunday for his first-ever visit to the border in his decades-long career in politcs. U.S. Border authorities took into custody some 2.5 million illegal migrants in 2022, the highest number on record. | John Moore/Getty Images
Critics of the Biden administration’s handling of the immigration crisis at the U.S. southern border say President Joe Biden’s trip to Texas and Mexico amounted to a “photo-op” and expressed concern that the administration’s policies will only exacerbate the humanitarian crisis.
President Joe Biden visited the southwest border for the first time Sunday, as concerns grow about the high volume of illegal immigration negatively affecting U.S. citizens and border communities. Statistics compiled by U.S. Customs and Border Patrol show there were 465,034 encounters between migrants and law enforcement officials at the southwest border in the first two months of fiscal year 2023, which began in October. By comparison, just 339,682 encounters occurred during the same period in fiscal year 2022.
Biden’s border visit occurred against the backdrop of his administration’s efforts to abolish Title 42, which enables border officials to quickly turn away migrants seeking entry into the U.S. due to public health concerns posed by the coronavirus pandemic. The U.S. Supreme Court has ordered Title 42 to remain in place as the justices are slated to hear a case involving the matter later this year. The abandonment of Title 42 is expected to cause the number of illegal border crossings to increase to an even higher figure.
The president announced his intention to visit the border city of El Paso, Texas, in a press conference last week. During the address, Biden laid out actions his administration was taking to address the surge at the U.S.-Mexico border, including the expansion of a parole program allowing Venezuelan migrants with sponsors in the U.S. to come to the country for two years and receive work permits as long as they pass a background check to Cubans, Haitians and Nicaraguans.
The president predicted that expanding the parole program to three additional countries will “substantially reduce the number of people attempting to cross the southwest border without going through the legal process.” He contended that since the establishment of the existing parole program, “the number of Venezuelans trying to enter America without going through a legal process has dropped dramatically from about 1,100 per day to less than 250 per day on average.”
When Biden arrived in El Paso, Gov. Greg Abbott gave him a letter declaring that “your visit to our southern border with Mexico today is $20 billion too little and two years too late.”
Abbott added, “Your visit avoids the sites where mass illegal immigration occurs and sidesteps the thousands of angry property owners whose lives have been destroyed by your border policies.”
Hand-delivered a letter to President Biden today during his first visit to the border.
His trip is billion too little & 2 years too late.
“Even the city you visit has been sanitized of the migrant camps which had overrun downtown El Paso because your Administration wants to shield you from the chaos that Texans experience on a daily basis,” he wrote. “This chaos is a direct result of your failure to enforce the immigration laws that Congress enacted.”
Abbott elaborated on the consequences of mass illegal immigration at the southwest border, including the emboldening of the drug cartels engaged in “trafficking deadly fentanyl and even human beings.” He told the president “when you finish the photo-ops in a carefully stage-managed version of El Paso, you have a job to do.”
The Texas governor urged Biden to “comply with the many statutes mandating that various categories of aliens ‘shall’ be detained, and end the practice of unlawfully paroling aliens en masse,” stop “sandbagging” Title 42, “aggressively prosecute illegal entry between ports of entry, and allow ICE to remove illegal immigrants in accordance with existing federal laws,” immediately resume the construction of the border wall separating the U.S. from Mexico and “designate the Mexican drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations.”
Newly elected Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., issued a statement of his own, characterizing Biden’s visit to the border as a “photo-op,” suggesting that any calls for border security from the administration ring hollow as long as the president continues “pushing for amnesty for millions of immigrants who have crossed into the U.S. illegally.” McCarthy vowed that “House Republicans will hold him and [Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro] Mayorkas accountable for creating the most dangerous border crisis in American history.”
Biden is making his first border visit of his life—a photo op—while pushing for amnesty for millions of immigrants who have crossed into the US illegally.
House Republicans will hold him and Mayorkas accountable for creating the most dangerous border crisis in American history.
Ahead of Biden’s visit to the border, the Democratic mayor of El Paso declared a state of emergency, citing the impacts of the migrant surge on his city. Critics of the Biden administration previously attributed the rise in illegal border crossings, which began at the beginning of his presidency in 2021, to the abandonment of the Migrant Protection Protocols that required those seeking asylum in the U.S. to remain in Mexico while their asylum claims were adjudicated.
During his speech last week, Biden touted the CBP ONE app, which enables migrants “to schedule an appointment at a port of entry and make their asylum claim there without crossing the border unlawfully.” Additionally, the White House released a fact sheet last week outlining additional actions the administration was taking to reduce illegal immigration at the southwest border.
Specifically, the fact sheet proclaimed that “… individuals who attempt to enter the United States without permission, do not have a legal basis to remain, and cannot be expelled pursuant to Title 42 will be increasingly subject to expedited removal from their country of origin and subject to a five-year ban on reentry.”
“DHS and DOJ are surging asylum officers and immigration judges to review asylum cases at the border more quickly — with the aim of reducing initial processing times from months to days,” the document added. The administration also intends to mobilize “faith-based and nonprofit organizations supporting migrants, including those providing temporary shelter, food, and humanitarian assistance.”
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An illegal alien and so-called “Dreamer” who brutally murdered three American citizens in 2018 was sentenced Friday to five consecutive life sentences.
27-year-old Luis Perez, a Mexican national, shot and killed his former roommates Steven Marler and Aaron Hampton on Nov. 1, 2018, and injured two others in Springfield, Missouri. The next day, the criminal noncitizen murdered Sabrina Starr, the 21-year-old who provided him with the weapon he used in the first two slayings.
TheBlaze reported at the time of the murders that Perez had been locked up in the Middlesex County Jail just months before on suspicion of various felonies, including assault, aggravated assault, and child abuse. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials requested that the jail hold Perez while it started deportation proceedings against him, however, the jail elected instead to release the criminal noncitizen. Perez summarily went on to kill Marler, Hampton, and Starr.
John Tsoukaris, the ICE Newark field office director said, “This tragedy might have been avoided had it not been for the reckless policy required of the Middlesex County Jail by their county officials.”
County officials suggested that the blame instead lay with ICE, as the agency “has the legal authority and the resources to secure such orders from a federal judge with regard to any inmate in the county’s custody it seeks to detain or deport.”
While Greene County prosecutors initially sought to have Perez put to death for his crimes, they ultimately fought to ensure he would never again walk free, reported the Springfield News-Leader.
Assistant Greene County Prosecutor Phil Fuhrman said, “Mr. Perez is dangerous, he is violent, and he is deserving of the maximum sentence.”
Perez’s attorney pushed for leniency in terms of his client’s sentencing, suggesting that the murderous illegal alien should receive his life sentences at the same time rather than one after another, so that he might one day become eligible for parole. The thinking behind this leniency: Perez, in the U.S. unlawfully, allegedly had a tough time growing up in New Jersey.
A spokesman for ICE revealed that Perez was previously a recipient of the “Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals” program in 2012 and 2014, enabling him to dodge deportation and to receive a work permit.
Judge Thomas Mountjoy, who found Perez guilty of the murders in October, was not swayed by this line of argumentation, noting he was “struck by the magnitude of the violence” and that the “magnitude speaks to requiring the most severe sentence that the law would structure.”
Mountjoy gave Perez consecutive life sentences, ensuring the murderer will die in prison.
The News-Leader reported that Deboray Elkins, the mother of victim Aaron Hampton, called Perez’s victims “fallen heroes” and said Perez’s conviction in October marked a “day of jubilation.”
According to ICE, 62 illegal aliens were convicted in fiscal year 2022 for murder or manslaughter; 1,142 were convicted with assault, battery, or domestic violence; 896 were convicted for burglary, robbery, or fraud; 1,614 were convicted for driving under the influence; 365 were convicted for sex offenses; and many more faced convictions for other crimes.
While Perez’s co-defendant Nyadia Burden previously pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit murder, having bought the bullets Perez used in the murders, two others have pending charges.
Dalia Garcia stands accused of tampering with evidence, having allegedly burned clothing worn during the murders.
Aaron Anderson also remains on the hook, having been charged with being an accessory to murder.
Image source: Portland Fire & Rescue, photo by Dennis Weis
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A 27-year-old transsexual has reportedly admitted to burning down a historic Korean church in Portland, Oregon, underscoring how he wanted to “take credit” for this act of apparent anti-Christian hatred. The 118-year-old, 3,000-square-foot Portland Korean Church at Southwest 10th and Southwest Clay Street, formerly the First German Evangelical Church, was set ablaze around 5:30 p.m. on Jan. 3.
In response to multiple reports indicating that the structure was fast becoming an inferno, 12 fire engines, six ladder trucks, four battalion chiefs, and 75 Portland Fire and Rescue Personnel arrived on the scene. Portland Fire and Rescue indicated that the church was not occupied when the three-alarm fire broke out.
According to the Multnomah County District Attorney’s office, by 5:40 p.m., the south side of the church had partially collapsed along with the roof. The fire had also spread to a neighboring home, which was evacuated.
Video of the historic downtown #Portland, Ore. church that was destroyed allegedly by New England #trans woman Cameron “Nicolette” Storer: https://t.co/6feMy6Nnst
The toppling of its 35-foot steeple, which reached a height of 70 feet, was captured on video:
A construction rig toppled the charred wooden steeple of the historic former Portland Korean Church shortly after noon on Friday – the first step in demolishing the building after it was ravaged by a fire Tuesday night.
Mike Schmidt, the leftist Multnomah County District Attorney who made a name for himself by refusing to prosecute BLM rioters and other violent suspects, announced that 25-year-old Cameron David Storer was arraigned on four charges, including two counts of arson in the first degree, one count of arson in the second degree, and two counts of burglary in the second degree.
Storer, a transsexual who prefers to be called by a woman’s name, reportedly walked into the Multnomah County Detention Center on Jan. 4 to confess to setting the fire, claiming that he wanted to “take credit” for the attack and detailing how he had gone about doing so with a Bic lighter. Court documents indicated that Storer lit papers on fire in the church, waited nearby to make sure it had spread, then walked over to Plaid Pantry to observe his handiwork.
The alleged arsonist claimed to have taken 10 oxycodone daily and to have been addled by schizophrenia. He also suggested that voices had told him to burn down the church.
Andy Ngô reported that the bearded suspect is currently being jailed in a co-ed medical dorm in a single cell.
In light of Schmidt’s recent admission that Multnomah County can’t bring all dangerous criminals to justice — letting alleged stranglers, domestic abusers, sex offenders, human traffickers, child abusers, and berserkers of various intensities off without any penalty for their misdeeds — it is presently unclear if Storer will ultimately be penalized for the alleged crimes for which he has taken credit.
The Portland Korean Church, which the Oregonian noted was owned by Hadi Nouredine, a Beaverton and Lake Oswego dentist, was also targeted in September 2020.
Christian churches have been routinely targeted in Portland, primarily by leftist marauders.
A transsexual Antifa militant was charged with a Nov. 3, 2020, attack on Saint André Bessette Catholic Church — a church known for housing, cleaning, and feeding the city’s poor.
Father Tom Gaughan said, “The actions of this one individual has forced us to cease our outreach and its hundreds of people we normally give food to.”
"The act of one person has prevented us from providing for hundreds of people."
In April 2021, the First Christian Church was targeted in an attack, having its windows shattered.
At least four Catholic churches were vandalized by radicals with threatening and vulgar remarks in summer 2021.
The century-old Portland Stake Tabernacle in southeast Portland was abandoned in summer 2022, after its Mormon congregants fled the state, citing the leftist violence plaguing the city.
The Democrat-run city scores a three on Neighborhood Scout’s crime index, where 100 is safest. The chances of becoming a victim of a violent crime are one in 187. In the Democrat-controlled state of Oregon, the odds are one in 342.
In one week, Cori Bush proved she is more supportive of trans murderers than of black conservatives. The congresswoman from Missouri joined fellow Democrat Emanuel Cleaver in an attempt to stop the execution of Amber McLaughlin – formerly Scott McLaughlin – who was convicted of rape and murder in 2006.
Their efforts failed.
Bush’s tweet lamenting that McLaughlin’s execution – the first involving a transgender inmate – was much different in tone from the one she sent regarding a very different historic event.
Bush called Rep. Byron Donalds, a black Republican from Florida, a “prop” and supporter of “white supremacy” in a recent tweet criticizing his bid to become speaker of the House. Donalds would be the first black person to hold that position – the type of milestone that the left openly celebrates. Leftists certainly have celebrated for Hakeem Jeffries, the black Democrat and noted election denier, who will lead his party in the new session of Congress.
Byron Donalds is different. He describes himself as a “Trump-supporting, gun-owning, liberty-loving, pro-life, politically incorrect Black man.” His entire political persona is in complete opposition to that of Cori Bush and the members of the Congressional Black Caucus. This fact should be welcome news to black voters. Our political system is all about debating worldviews, priorities, and policy ideas. The black community would benefit from elected officials from opposite sides of the political spectrum debating the merits of charter schools or education savings accounts.
But instead of engaging ideas, Bush went straight to attacks on what she believes black people value most: our racial identity. Bush is just like President Biden and prominent liberals in media and politics who think they are the gatekeepers of racial authenticity. They think anyone who doesn’t follow the left’s script “ain’t black.” But as is often the case in life, the foot soldiers of “Biden blackness” are engaging in projection.
Cori Bush is an abortion absolutist who thinks black babies are better off being killed in the womb than being born to poor black mothers. She also supports Black Lives Matter, the organization that wants to dismantle the nuclear family and believes black children are better off being raised in “villages” full of women where the only “dad” is the government.
Bush is most infamous for her support of the “defund the police” movement. A woman who represents one of the most violent cities in the country thinks that police are the ones making her city dangerous. She is a more zealous advocate for rapists and murderers on death row than for the law-abiding citizens in her district.
There is an important lesson to learn here. People who see themselves as oppressed, marginalized slaves will do anything — even kill themselves and their offspring — if they can be convinced that murder is a form of liberation.
The worst part about Bush’s comments is how normal they have become in our political discourse. The left has directed the vitriol it used to reserve for Justice Clarence Thomas to any black person who is right of center.
Winsome Sears, the lieutenant governor of Virginia, was accused of being a “black mouth” justifying white supremacist ideas by Michael Eric Dyson on MSNBC. Larry Elder was called the “black face of white supremacy” in a Los Angeles Times column during his bid to unseat Gavin Newsom as governor. Condoleezza Rice was called a “foot soldier for white supremacy” by culture critic Touré for her rejection of CRT in American classrooms.
This is the new norm in our political and racial discourse. Black children are told they can be anything they desire – as long as they are not out-of-the-closet conservatives.
Black drug dealers, pimps, and shooters are all treated with more respect than black Republicans. Rappers can degrade black women and glorify violence against black men without any fear of having their BET Awards invitation revoked. But if a black politician or artist says he is glad Roe is dead, he can expect to watch the show at home.
When you reward degeneracy and punish unapproved political thoughts, you shouldn’t be surprised when you get more of the former and less of the latter.
This is why one of the most needed developments in American politics today is to break the notion that fealty to the Democratic Party is a litmus test for maintaining good standing in the black community. All black voters should feel free to support candidates based on policy positions that reflect their values.
This is the sad state of race in America today. Liberals like Robin DiAngelo who tell white people they are the key to black social progress are hailed as heroes. Black politicians like Cori Bush who spend more time championing the rights of “pregnant men” than the benefits of the natural family are treated like bold revolutionaries. But black conservatives like Byron Donalds are treated like race traitors online, by corporate media, and in Hollywood. Their motto for social control is simple, yet effective: “When in doubt, pull the race card out.” The problem is that too many black people see the death and destruction being promoted by the left’s agenda and won’t be silenced.
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including NewsMax, Fox News, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Rep. Devin Nunes, Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Chris Salcedo, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Donald Trump.
Those conservatives who want to shape the nascent pro-family movement emerging on the right must be willing to embrace a controversial — and countercultural — reality: Healthy families require strong, stable, and secure men. That means Republicans interested in crafting pro-family policy must focus on the well-being of America’s boys and men.
Democrats have spent decades supporting policies that make men and fathers economically and socially obsolete. They’ve promoted the notion that families and societies flourish when women are empowered, even to the detriment of men. For instance, they see the fact that women outnumber men in the college-educated labor force as a win for gender equality.
It’s not all progress, however, from the perspective of modern feminists. So-called access to abortion, a major plank in the women’s empowerment agenda, was dealt a serious blow when the Supreme Court’s Dobbsv. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision struck down Roe v. Wade and returned the issue of abortion to the states.
This seismic shift, combined with the economic challenges brought on by Covid-19 shutdowns and parental discontent with public schools, has opened the door for some conservatives to seek to rebrand Republicans as the party of families.
The initial push for this political pivot came from Republicans in the U.S. Senate. The most recent iteration of Utah Sen. Mitt Romney’s proposed Family Security Act would provide between $250 and $350 a month per child, based on age. Florida Sen. Marco Rubio’s Provide for Life Act would expand the child tax credit, enable parental leave, expand support for pro-life crisis pregnancy centers, and fund mentoring services for low-income mothers. Conservative social commentators have also made the case that limited government and support for families are compatible policy goals.
Whatever the merits of these efforts, the success of pro-family policies will depend on more than bipartisan support in Congress. The social and economic outcomes conservatives want to see must start with the understanding that men and women are not generic, interchangeable parts in the machinery of family life.
Recognizing Roles
Men have played the role of provider throughout human history, though in recent decades that role has been shared. Still, no culture teaches that it’s a woman’s responsibility to take care of an adult male and the children they have together. This is why women generally seek men who earn more than they do. One analysis of U.S. Census data found that female physicians married men in the same field. Male doctors, however, often married nurses and teachers.
This is not an argument against women in the workplace. It’s an appeal for conservatives to recognize that disregarding the natural order in the name of “women’s empowerment,” whether through public policy or cultural norms, will make it harder for Americans to form strong, stable families.
Conservative politicians and pundits need to become comfortable talking about what boys and men need in terms of education, economic opportunity, religion, social norms, and relationships.
Their political speeches, op-eds, and podcast appearances need a renewed emphasis on vocational education that is aspirational, not framed in terms of a fallback option for young men who are unable — or unwilling — to attend college. Conservatives need to speak with a similar sense of clarity and concern when it comes to men, sex, and family formation.
Every conservative bill, statute, policy, or regulation that directly affects families should include some version of the following statements:
Children have a right to the love and support of the man and woman who created them.
The ideal family structure for every child is to be raised by his or her married biological parents in a stable and loving home.
Men, not the state, are ultimately responsible for the children they father.
These self-evident truths should function as the “iron triangle” of social conservatism. Men need something they are willing to both live and die for. The responsibilities that come with a family give them both.
Critics on the left — as well as some on the right — will undoubtedly accuse conservatives focusing on men of promoting a regressive return to the rigid sex roles of the 1950s. What they fail to realize is that the sexual revolution and 60 years of liberal social policy did not destroy patriarchy — they distorted it by minimizing the importance of men while maximizing the influence male-dominated institutions have in every area of American family life.
Different Forms of Patriarchy
“Bureaucratic patriarchy” was introduced through the war on poverty’s expansion of the welfare state and policy incentives that provided aid and basic necessities for unmarried mothers. It has grown because of the symbiotic relationship between elected officials seeking votes, social service administrators overseeing the poverty economy, and single mothers who need financial support.
Conservatives have a hard time criticizing “corporate patriarchy,” by contrast, because it promotes financial independence for women and exploits conservative deference to the private sector. A recent video from the pro-life organization Live Action satirizes an unfortunate reality brought about by the right’s allegiance to corporations: Many businesses would rather fund abortions than paid maternity leave for their female employees. Perhaps business executives are simply taking cues from Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, who said, “eliminating the right of women to make decisions about when and whether to have children would have very damaging effects on the economy and would set women back decades.”
The advent of “trans patriarchy” further complicates the pro-life, pro-family movement because men who believe they are women are committed to erasing biological sex altogether. In addition to attacking the foundation of human existence itself, this deformed version of patriarchy also seeks to usurp the family’s role as the primary shaper of children’s values.
Many conservatives fail to see how the daycare-to-demisexual pipeline was built over time by politicians increasing funding for childcare and schools, corporations offering generous benefits in exchange for employee loyalty, and gender ideologues who want access to shape the next generation of children.
The actors involved in all three deformed patriarchies are cruel taskmasters because they take a utilitarian view of women and children. A man who accepts his God-given responsibilities has a completely different orientation toward his family. His relationship with his wife is a covenant, not a contract. His children are the fruit of that union and the linchpin to multi-generational prosperity. They’re not mere “consequences” of sex and burdens to be overcome for the sake of economic productivity.
In a sense, some form of patriarchy is inevitable. The question conservative policymakers need to answer is which form they believe produces the best outcomes for men, women, and children. This is why clear thinking about families must be preceded by honest reflection on the different natures of men and women and how they can be harnessed to fortify American households. That is why now is the perfect time for conservatives to lean into the connection between strong men and stable families.
Delano Squires is a research fellow in the Richard and Helen DeVos Center for Life, Religion, and Family at The Heritage Foundation. Follow him on Twitter @DelanoSquires.
Every so often, a moment of sanity prevails in our culture, quite unintentionally. At such times, reality hits home, and most people don’t even notice it. But that’s exactly what happened with the announcement of the findings of a major scientific study. For a split second, reality overtook ideology, as left-leaning journalists shared the results of this study without thinking through the implications.
I’m referring to the news, first reported widely on Fortune.com that, “Women are more empathetic than men, study of hundreds of thousands of people finds — at any age and in any country in the world.”
In response I tweeted sarcastically, “A major new study has revealed that ‘women are more empathetic than men.’ This leads to two startling revelations: 1. there is such a thing as women and men. 2. there are real differences between women and men. What do you know!”
Yes, presupposed in this major international study, which involved 300,000 participants, is the fact that there is such a thing as males and females. They really exist, and their existence can be defined, despite efforts to make “woman” (and, by extension) “man” undefinable. (Think of Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s now infamous answer to the “What is a woman?” question and see Matt Walsh’s “What Is a Woman?” documentary.)
Without this presupposition, namely, that there is such a thing as women and men, the study would have no meaning. In fact, it would be impossible even to conduct the study. Otherwise, all we would have is the difference between humans and humans. That’s it!
We could not report on differences between women and men, since sex and gender are merely what we perceive them to be. Instead, we would have differences between humans, and the results would be, “On average, certain humans are more empathetic than other humans.”
It would be like doing a major survey comparing the health of taller people (let’s say people 6 feet tall or more) to shorter people (here, under 6 feet tall). The only way it could work would be if height was definable and tangible. But if my height was whatever I perceived it to be, so much for the study. I would have no meaning or purpose at all.
It’s the same with differences between the sexes. If sex (and, consequently, gender) is whatever I perceive it to be, then scientific studies like this are worthless. After all, if I’m a biological male who identifies as a female, then I have undermined the whole premise of the study.
How, then, did the makers of this health study craft their questions so as to get tangible, substantive answers?
When you click on the test itself, conducted under the auspices of the University of Cambridge, you are asked a series of background questions, beginning with, “What is your age?” This reminds us that “age” is not a matter of perception, even if we feel younger or older than our actual years. Our age is identifiable, going back to the year we were born. That is a fact.
The second question is: “What was your biological sex assigned at birth?” What do you know! Despite the use of radicalized leftist language, as if your sex was arbitrarily assigned to you at birth by the doctors and nurses, the survey must ask for biological reality. Otherwise, to repeat, the survey has no meaning at all.
Quite tellingly, in today’s upside down culture, you can’t simply ask, “What is your sex?” Instead, you need to ask what was written on your birth certificate when you were born. Your actual, biological sex matters!
Even so, the survey listed the options of: “Male; Female; Intersex; I prefer not to say; I do not know.” (Are we really supposed to believe that some people do not know if they were born male or female? We’re not talking here about the very real biological category of Intersex, where there is potential ambiguity.)
Not surprisingly, given the madness of our woke society, the next question asks, “What is your gender?”
Here the choices are more expansive (but of course!): “Female; Male; Transfemale; Transmale; Non-binary; Other; I prefer not to say; I do not know.” (Enough said. I don’t need to make any commentary here.)
What is remarkable, though, is the test results page (I took the test to see how I scored).
Under, “Your Empathy score (EQ)” we are told that, “Most females score 6 to 16” and “Most males score 4 to 15.”
What happened to all the other categories? What happened to the transfemales and transmales and non-binary people? Those categories no longer exist, displaced by differences between “females” and “males,” and that information was gleaned in question 2: When you were born, what was your biological sex? That’s what really matters.
Later, the test results page explains that, “On average, more men than women have a Type S brain type and more women than men have a Type E brain type. It is suggested that these brain types are caused by genetic and prenatal hormonal levels (2,3), as well as by environmental factors.”
Accordingly, the Fortune.com article reported that, “Females, on average, score significantly higher in cognitive empathy scores than males regardless of nationality, language spoken, and age, a massive new study published on Monday in the journal PNAS found.” And the 250-word abstract of the study references “females” 8 times — without qualification or equivocation.
Accordingly, David Greenberg, a psychologist and social neuroscientist at Israel’s Bar-Ilan University and lead author on the study, commented, “Our results provide some of the first evidence that the well-known phenomenon — that females are on average more empathic than males — is present in a wide range of countries across the globe. It’s only by using very large data sets that we can say this with confidence.”
My wife, Nancy, saw this reported on CNN in the most matter-of-fact way, with both the CNN newscaster and the doctor brought in for commentary seeming to forget that is bigoted and transphobic to speak of differences between women and men. In the words of NARL (the National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws), “We use gender-neutral language when talking about pregnancy, because it is not just cis-gender women who get pregnant.” But of course. And men can menstruate too. All clear!
As I wrote in 2017 (with reference to “menstruating men”), “There is an all-out war on sexual difference (often referred to as ‘gender’), and if it wins the day, it will lead to societal chaos.”
That chaos is already here, growing by the day. But for a moment this week, quite unintentionally, reality crept back in and sanity prevailed as news outlets reported the simple, verifiable (and, widely known) fact that women, on average, are more empathetic than men.
Men and women do exist, and there are differences between the two.
Image source: (Left) Video screenshot/ (Right) Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
On “The Rubin Report,” BlazeTV host Dave Rubin shared a clip of Libs of TikTok creator Chaya Raichik telling Tucker Carlson about the stunning offer Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) made to her after she was doxxed and threatened.
“When I was doxxed, someone from Ron DeSantis’ team called me … and she said, ‘The governor wanted me to give you a message. He said if you don’t feel safe, you or your family, if you need a place to go to hide, to stay, you can come to the governor’s mansion.’ He said, ‘We have a guest house for you, and you can come and stay as long as you need,” Raichik said during an appearance on Fox News’ “Tucker Carlson Today.”
“The governor of Florida did this?” asked a clearly stunned Carlson.
“Yes,” Raichik confirmed. “I was almost in tears.”
“And you were living in California?” Carlson asked, still agog.
“I [was] living in California and [DeSantis] took time out of his, I’m assuming, extremely busy schedule … to send someone to call me to make sure I’m safe,” explained Raichik.
Watch the video below or find full episodes of “The Rubin Report” here. Can’t watch? Download the podcast here.
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A Loudoun County father, whose arrest at a June 2021 school board meeting was used by the Biden administration to justify a politicized attack on concerned parents, was found not guilty of trespassing on Wednesday.
Law enforcement arrested Jon Tigges at a Loudoun school board meeting on June 22, 2021, after he tried expressing concerns about the school district’s “moral decay.” A Virginia district judge found Tigges guilty in October of 2021. Loudoun Circuit Judge Douglas Fleming Jr., however, cleared Tigges of any wrongdoing. Fleming determined that Tigges not only had a First Amendment right to attend the heated meeting but also that the superintendent who shut down the official gathering last summer had no right to declare it an “unlawful assembly.”
“My thanks to God for justice,” Tigges wrote on Twitter on Wednesday afternoon.
Tigges was one of the more than 250 people who had signed up to speak during the public comment section of the Loudoun County School Board meeting that summer night. He intended to voice opposition to the board’s new transgender policy proposal, which mandated that employees use students’ so-called “preferred pronouns” and preferred restrooms regardless of their sex. Before Tigges could speak, School Board Chairwoman Brenda Sheridan called off the meeting, and the now-recently fired Superintendent Scott Ziegler declared the gathering an “unlawful assembly.” Ziegler ordered the hundreds of people waiting to express their outrage at the government school district to vacate the premises or risk arrest.
Tigges refused to leave.
“I just felt led to realize that we could still speak,” Tigges told The Federalist last year. “It’s a public forum, a public room. It had been scheduled until seven o’clock for people to speak. I stood up to encourage folks to stay and if they had something to say whether they were on the left or the right, didn’t matter. They’d be heard and we’d respect one another and do so and so people started doing that without any amplification at all and you could hear them fine because it was a peaceful assembly.”
Despite Tigges’ claim on the First Amendment, police officers handcuffed, arrested, and charged him with trespassing.
Two arrests made at the Loudoun County, Virginia school board meeting after it was declared an unlawful assembly and some parents here to protest against critical race theory and a transgender policy refused to leave right away #CriticalRaceTheorypic.twitter.com/dsZDrqJ0Gp
Tigges’ arrest in June of 2021 was used by the National School Boards Association (NSBA), in collusion with the Biden White House, to justify the smearing of concerned parents as “domestic terrorists” who required punishment from federal law enforcement. In September of 2021, the NSBA sent its infamous complaint letter, secretly solicited by Education Secretary Miguel Cardona, to the Department of Justice, which sparked a politicized attack on parents who wanted to speak out against corrupt school boards.
“Despite this victory, I have serious concerns about where we are as a country. We’ve been subverted by a darkness that is spilling out in rot at all levels and in both political parties,” Tigges tweeted after the decision. “Nothing will change until We the People value conviction over comfort.”
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 and Fox News. Jordan graduated from Baylor University where she majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow her on Twitter @jordanboydtx.
Fox News host Tucker Carlson called out Republican Rep. Dan Crenshaw of Texas Wednesday for calling opponents to Rep. Kevin McCarthy’s speaker bid “terrorists,” saying that Crenshaw was ignoring “real concerns” raised by conservatives.
“They’re terrorists now? It’s hard not to see the connection, because over the past few years pretty much every part of the war on terror has been turned against the domestic political enemies of the neocons,” Carlson said after airing a soundbite of Crenshaw. “So now they’re coming out and telling you what they told you about Iraq: Either you’re with us or against us. You’re on the side of light or darkness. You’re good or evil.”
Republican Rep. Byron Donalds of Florida received 20 votes for speaker during Wednesday’s ballots after he switched from McCarthy to Jim Jordan on the third ballot Tuesday.
WATCH:
“Dan Crenshaw went all the way, as neocons always do, he proceeded to go to CNN to call his political opponents enemies of the state,” Carlson said, before airing Crenshaw’s comments from an interview on CNN.
McCarthy agreed to some proposals put forth by the House Freedom Caucus, but failed to convince enough of them to back his bid to win the necessary votes to become speaker. The threshold for a “motion to vacate,” which allows rank and file members of the House of Representatives to unseat a speaker, is a sticking point, according to Donalds.
“No matter how you feel, you have to acknowledge, if you’re being honest, that people who don’t like Kevin McCarthy have a reason for that,” Carlson said. “They have real concerns, real issues, but you’ll notice that Dan Crenshaw didn’t address any of those, none of them, instead he impugned their motives, their character, their intelligence, their moral standards.”
“What you just saw as Dan Crenshaw just spoke, what you just saw is the snarling face of the donor class, revealed for all to see finally,” Carlson said. “The deep loathing of disobedient voters that may be their most passionate secret emotion. They’re not bothering to hide that emotion anymore. Now you know how they really feel.”
A spokesperson for Crenshaw referred the Daily Caller News Foundation to a tweet by the congressman, urging people to “unclutch your pearls” and “grow thicker skin.”
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including NewsMax, Fox News, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Rep. Devin Nunes, Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Chris Salcedo, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Donald Trump.
Nearly three years after bureaucrats shuttered businesses, forced people to stay home, and threatened fines for those who didn’t comply, all in the name of preventing the spread of a respiratory virus, the Covid regime is quietly reviving the “forever pandemic.”
Ahead of the midterms, the Biden administration, Democrats, and corporate media championed the end of years of pandemic panic.
“The pandemic is over,” President Joe Biden declared during a “60 Minutes” interview in September.
The Covid regime’s grip on the country may have loosened during the heat of the 2022 election cycle, which gave Americans the false hope that everything was finally returning to normal. Shortly after the election, however, when Democrats realized the Republican Party isn’t as big of a threat as expected, fearmongering about a “surge” in the nearly three-year-old pandemic thanks to a new variant resumed.
“Should Everyone Be Masking Again?” one Atlantic writer inquired in December. His article is littered with comments from “experts” who eagerly and unanimously answered “yes.”
“You really should mask up again, says infectious disease expert: The tripledemic is hitting ‘too fast and too furious,’” one CNBC headline blared a few days before Christmas.
“The ‘Tripledemic’ Holiday: How to Fly More Safely (Hint: Wear a Mask),” The New York Times wrote.
When corporate media mouthpieces aren’t virtue signaling about staying home on New Year’s Eve, alleging that emergency rooms are “packed and doctors are rationing care,” they are offering favorable coverage of communist China’s forced lockdowns and wondering aloud why certain counties aren’t heeding the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s recommendations to mask communities with “high” levels of virus transmission.
Despite the legitimate scrutiny the CDC has received for its bureaucratic malfeasance, its Director Rochelle Walensky all but confirmed the agency’s commitment to reintroducing protocols that, according to the science, don’t stop infection from spreading.
“We wanted you to put your masks away, not to throw your masks out,” Walensky said in an interview with NPR in early December.
Public schools all around the nation, similarly, are backsliding. Evidence indicates that forced masking takes a toll on children’s ability to learn and speak. That hasn’t stopped some of the largest school districts in Philadelphia, New Jersey, and Boston from reintroducing forced masking for the beginning of the spring semester.
“We don’t think that learning will stop or that students will be inherently prohibited from learning,” Philadelphia School District Superintendent Tony Watlington Sr. told NBC.
Some cities such as Oakland have decided to reinstate mask mandates for government buildings. Others are contemplating a return to masks at the behest of so-called “infectious disease experts.”
Bureaucrats justify these useless and harmful mandates under the claim that the rise of RSV, the flu, and Covid cases could, combined, overwhelm local hospitals. Sound familiar? That’s the same excuse bureaucrats used to extend “two weeks to flatten the curve” to keep the U.S. locked down for most of 2020.
Mask mandates aren’t the only indicator that the Covid regime is trying to claw its way back into the driver’s seat. Biden, who smeared former President Donald Trump as xenophobic for introducing a similar policy in 2020, quietly enacted testing restrictions on travelers from Covid-plagued China last week.
Furthermore, Anthony Fauci, the now-retired former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases who was mostly absent from TV screens for months leading up to the midterms, was back on corporate media shows shortly after Election Day telling Americans what to do with their lives.
Republicans have threatened to hold Fauci and other “forever pandemic” spokesmen accountable for the havoc they wreaked on the economy and Americans’ health and education. But while the GOP, which only holds a razor-thin majority in the House, is distracted by infighting, the Covid regime is emboldened to further encroach on Americans’ lives once more.
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 and Fox News. Jordan graduated from Baylor University where she majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow her on Twitter @jordanboydtx.
Fox News contributor David Webb reacts to Pelosi’s potential successor supporting a House commission to study reparations.
As House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy struggles to garner the 218 required votes to obtain the speaker’s gavel, Democrats are repeatedly delivering votes for incoming Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries, who has a history of denying the legitimacy of elections.
The final tally in the fourth round of voting on Wednesday was 201 votes for McCarthy, 212 for Jeffries, 20 for Rep.-elect Byron Donalds, R-Fla., and Rep.-elect Victoria Spartz’s lone “present” vote. All Democrats voted for Jeffries in the last five votes and no other Democrat has been nominated by the party to serve as speaker.
President Biden and other prominent Democrats, as well as White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, have fumed over individuals who question or deny the legitimacy of elections, referring to them at times as “extremists” and threats to democracy. But Jeffries, who was first elected to Congress in 2012 and now has widespread support among members in his party, has a history of displaying the very behavior that many in the Democratic Party now accuse their opposition of.
President Biden has expressed particular criticism of “MAGA Republicans,” who he claimed “refuse to accept the results of a free election.” (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)
In multiple tweets, ranging from June 2017 to January 2018, Jeffries seemingly refused to acknowledge Donald Trump as the rightful winner of the 2016 presidential election.
“Climate Change is NOT a hoax. But 45’s election may have been,” Jeffries wrote in a June 2017 tweet, nearly five months after Trump entered the White House.
Jeffries — who was elected in November by his Democratic House colleagues to succeed Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., as leader — has faced scrutiny from high-ranking Republicans over previously resurfaced remarks he made apparently denying the legitimacy of Trump’s presidential election victory. But numerous times in tweets during Trump’s presidency, Jeffries repeatedly suggested that Trump’s election was fraudulent.
Rep. Hakeem Jeffries has received support from all 212 Democrats as McCarthy struggles to reach the required 218 to earn the speaker’s gavel. (Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images)
In September 2017, Jeffries stated in a tweet that Trump’s “Election Integrity Commission is the real FRAUD” and that it “should investigate his so-called victory.”
That same month, Jeffries, responding to remarks made by the president on Twitter, issued a similar tweet and called Trump’s “so-called election victory” a “hoax.“
“The real hoax is likely your so-called election victory,” Jeffries claimed at the time. The congressman also included “#RussianHacking” in the tweet, appearing to suggest that Russia helped to elect Trump in the 2016 presidential election by hacking into America’s elections.
Other tweets denying Trump’s election victory from Jeffries have also been made public, primarily from the Republican National Committee, which criticized Jeffries as an “election denier” and posted tweets that Jeffries had posted in 2018.
President Biden has expressed particular criticism of “MAGA Republicans,” who he claimed “refuse to accept the results of a free election.”
“Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our Republic,” Biden said during a September speech in Philadelphia. “MAGA Republicans do not respect the Constitution. They do not believe in the rule of the law. They do not recognize the will of the people. They refuse to accept the results of a free election.“
This is the only “So Long, 2022!” column you need to read. I combed The New York Times’ archives for all the pivotal moments.
It turns out that 2022 was a MAJOR year for firsts. True, other years had their noteworthy events — the first flight, the first man to walk on the moon, the first iPhone and so on. But step aside, 1903, 1969 and 2007! This past year was a goldmine of firsts. Below are just some of the epochal moments registered by the newspaper of broken record.
January 5: “Adrienne Adams Makes History as First Black N.Y.C. Council Speaker.”
Boise, Idaho, held a special parade to mark the occasion!
February 13: Erin Jackson wins gold in the 500 meters, “becoming the first African American woman to win a medal” in speedskating.
If this historic trend continues, could we one day see a black man in the NBA?
February 27: Burna Boy “will be the first Nigerian musician to headline Madison Square Garden.”
Just think of how much history we have to look forward to — the first Mauritian to headline MSG, the first Gambian to headline MSG. (There are unconfirmed rumors that a Djiboutian may have played cymbals at the Blue Note once, but apparently that moment was lost to history.)
March 6: Memoirist Silvia Vasquez-Lavado is “the first openly gay woman to complete the Seven Summits and the first Peruvian woman to summit Everest.”
She practiced by hiking up the remains of Peru’s mass child sacrifice — believed to the largest in the world!
March 17: “[Lia] Thomas, who competes for the University of Pennsylvania, became the first openly transgender woman to win an NCAA swimming championship.”
Now that Thomas has definitively proved that people born with vaginas cannot hold a candle to people born with penises in physical strength, please don’t tell me we’re going to have to rethink girl firemen?
March 28: “State Representative Carlos Guillermo Smith, an Orlando Democrat and [Florida’s] first openly gay Latino lawmaker …”
A sentence that CANNOT BE SPOKEN in Florida, thanks to Ron Death-Santis’ “Don’t Say ‘Gay’” law that never uses the word “gay.”
April 20: [Announcing new editors, Marc Lacey and Carolyn Ryan]: “Ms. Ryan will be the first openly gay journalist to serve as managing editor of The Times. Mr. Lacey is the third Black journalist to serve in the role.”
And thank God the Times has rid itself of those nonentities, Donald McNeil, Bari Weiss and James Bennet.
April 29: “[Maye Quade] had been seeking to become the first Black woman and first openly gay woman elected to the State Senate in Minnesota.”
The Times neglected to mention that Minnesota also boasts of the first member of Congress who married her own brother.
May 5: “Ms. [Karine] Jean-Pierre, who will succeed Jen Psaki, will be the first Black woman and the first openly gay person to serve in the role.”
Biden delighted his base with the first black lesbian press secretary. But in a bow to tradition, she IS a complete moron.
May 9: “L Morgan Lee made theater history on Monday, becoming what production officials described as the first openly transgender performer to be nominated for a Tony Award for her performance as a featured actress.”
In this one case, the Times returned to the anachronistic, misogynistic word “actress” in lieu of “actor.”
June 8: “[G]ov. Gavin Newsom played up [Rob] Bonta’s status as the first Filipino American in the role [of California’s attorney general].”
… between bites of succulent roasted pig and sips of a fine French wine with a piquant floral bouquet at the French Laundry restaurant.
July 6: “San Jose Hires a Retired Player as the N.H.L.’s First Black General Manager.”
And no one knows ice hockey like San Jose!
July 8: “Black Woman Named President of Raiders In a First for the N.F.L.”
Well, “black” under the one-drop rule, in view of her Korean mother.
July 8: “[Brittney Griner] … the first openly gay athlete signed to an endorsement contract by Nike.”
Also the first openly gay athlete to take precedence over a former U.S. Marine in a prisoner exchange with Russia!
July 27: [New York Times Bonus Content!]: “[Kamala Harris] was a historic choice, becoming the first woman, the first African American and the first South Asian American to serve as vice president.”
And she did it by being the only person in the country who met Biden’s three exacting requirements: 1) Must be black; 2) must be a woman and 3) That’s about it.
August 28: “Serbia’s prime minister, Ana Brnabic … is the first woman and first openly gay person to hold that position in the country.”
Yeah, they saw what happened when American gays turned against Russia.
September 10: “[Ons Jabeur of Tunisia] could become the first African woman to win the U.S. Open.”
Jabeur lost to Iga Swiatek from Poland (BO-ring!), who beat her in straight sets in the women’s final — but still.
September 27: Lizzo, the Black rapper, was the first to play a “200-year-old crystal flute that a French craftsman and clockmaker had made for President James Madison in 1813.” Serendipitously, she had been handed the flute by Carla D. Hayden, “the first African American and first woman to lead the Library of Congress.”
The moment was not sullied by anyone knowing who James Madison was because, luckily, all his busts and statues have been torn down.
October 2: “’Bros,’ the first gay romantic comedy from a major studio …”
For some reason, the Times minimized this achievement by headlining the piece: “‘Bros’ Fails at the Box Office …” — as if that matters to history!
November 6: Jacob Caswell became “the first nonbinary winner to earn prize money from the [New York City Marathon].”
Do any athletes who were born female bother competing in the “nonbinary” category? Can we get back to the question of girl cops and girl firemen now?
November 20: Actor Kumail Nanjiani pointed out to the Times — as if it didn’t already know! — that he was “the first South Asian superhero [in a Marvel movie, ‘Eternals’].”
The November elections was a cornucopia of firsts for the Times! Take a deep breath —
“The first Black governor of Maryland, the first woman elected to the Senate from Alabama and the first openly transgender state legislator in Montana …
“The nation’s first openly lesbian governor …
“The first openly gay immigrant elected to Congress. …
“The first openly gay Black person elected to any statewide executive office. …
“The first transgender man elected to a state legislature. …
“The first woman and the first L.G.B.T.Q. person elected to Congress from Vermont …
“The first woman elected governor of New York. …
“The first Black woman elected to statewide executive office in Massachusetts …
“The first transgender person elected to the Minnesota Legislature …
“The first Hispanic woman elected to Congress from the state [of Illinois] …
“The first Black woman elected to Congress from [Pennsylvania] …”
Condi Rice still awaits the Times noticing that she was the nation’s first black female secretary of state.
November 12: Biden’s Customs and Border Protection commissioner, Chris Magnus, “is the first openly gay commissioner of the agency.”
On the other hand, he tried to enforce the border, so naturally Biden had no choice but to fire him.
December 5: Emma Corrin was “the first nonbinary star to appear on the cover [of Vogue].”
It’s outrageous that some people want to split hairs by arguing she’s actually a nonbinary nonstar.
December 5: Swiss writer Kim de l’Horizon “was the first nonbinary writer to win the [German Book Prize].”
I wonder if his nonbinary status cost the author of “Mein Kampf” that distinction.
December 25: “Adrienne Adams is the first-ever Black [New York City] Council speaker, a majority of those serving are women and the Council has its first South Asian members.”
Wait! Shouldn’t those South Asians be Marvel superheroes?
Medical freedom needs to become the new pro-life movement on the right. It quite literally affects even more human beings than abortion.
This week, all eyes in the political world will turn to Washington as the excitement builds over the transition of power in the House of Representatives. But what good is a narrow RINO majority in just one branch of the federal government when Republicans ceded the budget leverage they otherwise would have commanded this month? Why not focus on half the state governments where Republicans enjoy trifecta control, in most of them with supermajorities in the legislatures? Indeed, this year kicks off the most important legislative sessions of our lifetime. The intensity of grassroots pressure placed on these equivocating Republicans will determine whether red-state America is just a pro-gun, anti-abortion version of blue-state hell or whether we can fully reconstitute the America we once loved in portions of the country.
There’s no reason to focus on the presidential election and what might happen two years from now. We can’t wait two years for change, nor are we likely to actualize it on the federal level. The American Revolution was catalyzed by state legislatures organizing together. The reconstitution of that revolution will also have to unfold in the bodies of government closest to the people, at least in the states where a majority of the people haven’t already succumbed to the spirit of the age.
Throughout the next few weeks, I’ll be posting legislative goals for various issues, but for today, we will focus on the most important issue of our time: medical freedom. It is the ultimate pro-life issue of our time. There is no evidence that the genocide that has occurred over the past few years from COVID and COVID fascism is even being addressed at the federal level. Therefore, it is up to the red states to reconstitute the Nuremberg Code and learn the lessons from the travesty of Covidstan.
Here are the legislative ideas and objectives that must be pursued in red states this session. If not now, while the malfeasance of the government is fresh on the minds of the people, then it will never be accomplished. This is a checklist of ideas that activists should use to determine whether there is legislation in your respective states addressing the issue of our time – to ensure there are legal, structural, and political barriers in place so that what occurred the past few years is immediately halted and cannot happen again.
Permanently ban all COVID biomedical security mandates:
Now is precisely the time not only to reverse the COVID policies, but to plow over the ground of tyranny and salt it with provisions permanently banning and even criminalizing its implementation. This means banning all public and “private” mask and vaccine mandates in any setting under any circumstance. This is no longer 2020 when we were merely playing defense. Now we have reams of data and studies showing these policies are not only ineffective but downright harmful.
Until now, some states agreed to a health care exemption from the prohibition on mandates, but that is precisely the setting where cancer patients, pain patients, and Alzheimer’s patients who are forced to use medical services regularly are still being coerced to cover their faces. This is unacceptable. Disability law mandates affirmative accommodations for people with health issues, yet somehow we are to believe hospitals can force patients to wear something hazardous? The bill must be backed by a stiff fine for any violator, and in the case of anyone caught forcing schoolchildren to wear a mask, there must be prison time.
Make health status a protected class under anti-discrimination law:
One way of accomplishing the aforementioned goal is to codify health status into state anti-discrimination law, making it unlawful to discriminate in any way on account of opting against a particular medical intervention to one’s body. It might also be worthwhile codifying such rights into the state’s constitution along the lines of the following: “The right of a person to refuse any medical procedure, treatment, injection, device, vaccine, or prophylactic shall not be questioned or interfered with in any manner. Equality of rights under the law or in the realm of public accommodation shall not be denied or abridged to any person in this State because of the exercise of the right under this section.”
Preserving doctor-patient autonomy:
No doctor shall be penalized with loss of licensure or board certification on account of speaking out against vaccines and mask-wearing.
No doctor can be punished for using off-label FDA-approved drugs, and all pharmacists must fill such prescriptions absent a religious conscience concern. There should be a cause of action in court for patients to sue pharmacies that block valid prescriptions.
Also, any barriers to doctors themselves dispensing drugs they prescribe should be lifted. Some states allow doctors to dispense drugs in the office, but this power is generally limited and must be expanded.
Finally, the complaint process against doctors with the state’s medical board must be overhauled. Complaints can only be accepted from patients alleging injury, surviving family of injured patients who die, or from medical professionals with direct contact who allege patient harm. All complaints in absence of patient harm must be ignored.
Abolish the state’s immunization register:
No good will come of the state holding onto a person’s vaccination status, and it will only be used to enforce the biomedical security state and should therefore be abolished. At a minimum, anyone administering a vaccine must obtain written consent from the patient prior to reporting the administration of a vaccine or immunization to the statewide immunization registry.
An immediate termination of mRNA vaccine promotion:
We are long past the time when the shots should merely not be mandated. The jabs must be taken off the market. State legislatures must bar their respective departments of health from promoting or purchasing any mRNA vaccines, ban all marketing or advertising of the COVID shots, create a commission to study the effects of the COVID shots by researching all those who died within 30 days of vaccination, and force the departments of health to fund treatment and diagnostics for those injured by the shots. Also, depending on state law, legislatures should follow Florida’s lead and work to convene grand juries to investigate the willful misconduct of hospitals, the departments of health, and the pharma companies throughout the pandemic.
Suspend the childhood immunization schedule:
All state indulgence and recognition of the CDC’s childhood vaccination schedule must be suspended pending the outcome of a commission to study the need, safety, and efficacy of every vaccine category and prototype on the market. Health departments could still support the other shots pending the commission’s recommendations, but all health care and school settings would be prohibited from discriminating against those who opt out of those shots.
Patient Bill of Rights for those in hospitals and senior care facilities:
Some states have pursued a few of these ideas, but there must be strong criminal and civil penalties for violators. Every hospital or senior care facility must always:
allow one surrogate present in the hospital (or as a visitor in a nursing home);
permit patients to access FDA-approved drugs off label prescribed by a doctor at their own expense if they agree to assume liability;
accord every patient the right to refuse any hospital-prescribed treatment or the right to refuse to remain in the facility if they have the mental capacity to leave (a ban on medical kidnapping).
There must be a cause of action created to sue any hospital and possibly for the district attorney to bring criminal charges against hospitals that deny these rights. All hospitals violating the patient bill of rights should be on the hook to lose state tax-exempt status.
A complete ban on remdesivir:
There is no sane doctor alive who can look you in the eye and declare remdesivir to be a safe and effective drug. Yet to this day, it remains the standard of care for inpatient COVID care. States must ban its use as they would any toxic and potentially lethal drug with zero benefit.
Ban on medical kidnapping via child protective services:
There is a growing trend of hospitals or doctors working with the state’s child protective custody agency to steal children from parents who refuse to go along with their course of treatment or bio-medical goals. States must ban all investigations and agency decisions to suspend parental rights on account of a parent’s refusal of specific medical treatments, diagnostics, or devices unless there is proof that the parent acted with malicious intent. Idaho House Bill 821 is a good model. This includes refusal to engage in masking or vaccination of a child. Also, such actions, opinions, or beliefs shall not be used as a factor in family court in determining custody arrangements.
Hold pharma accountable:
Although the federal government protects vaccine companies from liability, and this issue must be redressed at the federal level, states can still broaden their consumer protection and anti-fraud statutes to target pharma for blatant fraud. There is a wealth of material showing that the manufacturers knew the vaccines didn’t work and injured people, yet falsely marketed them. Also, state health departments, which assiduously pushed the vaccines in red states just as much as blue states, must use their remaining COVID funds to fund diagnostics, detection, and treatment of vaccine injury.
State legislatures should also form commissions to study the scope of injury through studies, death certificate and medical billing data, and investigating all deaths in the state within 30 days of taking the shots. Finally, they must create a state-based vaccine adverse events reporting system that is user-friendly and must use state resources to require and encourage medical professionals to report injuries to that system.
Ban endorsement of experimental shots:
States must bar their respective health departments from endorsing or marketing any shot to the broad public that has not undergone a human clinical trial with a sustained and maintained placebo control group. That clinical trial must have some third party supporting its safety data, which is independent from the manufacturer. Any trial based on “immonobridging” – measuring antibody titers and comparing them to various study groups – does not qualify.
Criminalize gain-of-function research:
There’s no need to wait for the feds to act. States should ban research institutions from engaging in gain-of-function research with a statute backed by criminal penalties. Individuals potentially harmed by such research should be granted a cause of action to sue those institutions.
Tax-credits for direct primary care:
Some states are already doing this, but there is a need to even the tax playing field between “cartel” health care and direct primary care. The core problem we experienced during the pandemic was a lack of individual thinking among practitioners, much of which is connected to the fact that they are all controlled by systems, insurance companies, and networks. With so much tendentious governmental treatment for the current cartel, states need to find ways to even up the score to incentivize people to use more free market and free-thinking doctors. Offering direct primary care the same tax benefits – both on the employer side and individual side of the ledger – we offer to the insurance companies is a good start. How many of these ideas have already been adopted by your governor? How many are represented by a piece of legislation pending in your legislative body? Now is the time to get to work. If not us, who? And if not now, when?
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including NewsMax, Fox News, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Rep. Devin Nunes, Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Chris Salcedo, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Donald Trump.
U.S. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., walks to a meeting with House Republicans at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 03, 2023, in Washington, D.C. Today members of the 118th Congress will be sworn in and the House of Representatives will hold votes on a new Speaker of the House. | Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images
The United States House of Representatives failed to elect a speaker for the 118th Congress on Tuesday, as Republican Rep. Kevin McCarthy of California was unable to get the necessary number of votes in support of his bid. For the first time since 1923, the Republican majority was unable to elect a new House Speaker on the first ballot, despite McCarthy being the favorite to win the position.
McCarthy was first nominated by Representative Elise Stefanik of New York, chair of the Republican Caucus, with her floor announcement receiving much applause by GOP congressmen. Stefanik championed McCarthy’s time as minority leader in the House, stating that he “has taken the fight to one-party Democratic rule on behalf of the American people.”
“A proud conservative with a tireless work ethic, Kevin McCarthy has earned this speakership of the people’s house,” Stefanik declared.
While McCarthy was expected by many to become the next Speaker, he faced key opposition from multiple Republican congressmen, among them Representative Andy Biggs of Arizona. Biggs had announced his intention to run for Speaker last November, explaining in a statement at the time that he was “about changing the paradigm and the status quo.”
“Minority Leader McCarthy does not have the votes needed to become the next Speaker of the House and his speakership should not be a foregone conclusion,” Biggs stated.
“There are reforms that must be made in the House in order to facilitate representation of our constituents. Items such as allowing members to move to amend bills, only allowing bills that cover a single subject, and requiring bills to go through committees before bringing them to the floor.”
Biggs also felt that members of the House “must also be granted more time to read the legislation and debate the merits of it.”
In response to Republican critics, McCarthy wrote a letter in advance of Tuesday’s vote pledging to “work with everyone in our party to build conservative consensus.”
“It’s time for our new Republican majority to embrace these bold reforms and move forward as one,” wrote McCarthy.
“That’s why on January 3 — and every day thereafter — I stand ready to be judged not by my words, but by my actions as Speaker.”
On the first ballot, McCarthy received 203 votes, while Biggs received 10 votes, and Jordan received six votes, while other elected officials received the rest.
After the first ballot results were announced, Jordan addressed Congress and expressed his endorsement of McCarthy, advocating for conservative policies during his remarks. After Jordan spoke, however, Republican Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida proceeded to nominate Jordan, and expressed his intention of voting for Jordan for the second ballot. On the second ballot, McCarthy again received 203 votes and failed to get the necessary majority, while Jordan, who had earlier endorsed McCarthy, received 19 votes.
For the third ballot, Representative Steve Scalise of Louisiana nominated McCarthy while Representative Chip Roy of Texas nominated Jordan. McCarthy saw his lead slightly decrease to 202 votes, while Jordan received 20, due to Representative Byron Donalds of Florida changing his vote.
“The reality is Rep. Kevin McCarthy doesn’t have the votes. I committed my support to him publicly and for two votes on the House Floor. 218 is the number, and currently, no one is there. Our conference needs to recess and huddle and find someone or work out the next steps,” tweeted Donalds shortly after voting in the third ballot.
During the same session, Democrat members of the House officially elected Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York as the new House Minority Leader, with all 212 voting for him.
Representative Pete Aguilar of California, chair of the Democratic Caucus, gave remarks on the floor in support of Jeffries, spotlighting his religious convictions and his being a regular church attender.
“He is guided by every step of the way by his faith that his mom instilled in him,” stated Aguilar. “Hakeem goes to church every weekend, sometimes that one where his church family is at Cornerstone Baptist, or somewhere else in the District, where he can meet his constituents where they are.”
Lindsey Nicholson/UCG/Universal Images Group via Getty Images
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Heading into the new year, numerous notable economic experts and financial institutions delivered dire predictions of a recession in 2023.
What is a recession?
In July, the U.S. economy contracted for a second straight quarter – which signals that the country was in a technical recession. The real gross domestic product (GDP) – the inflation-adjusted value of goods and services for sale produced by an economy – decreased by 0.9% in the second quarter of 2022, the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) declared in July.
Investopedia defines a recession as a “significant, widespread, and prolonged downturn in economic activity. Because recessions often last six months or more, one popular rule of thumb is that two consecutive quarters of decline in a country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) constitute a recession.“
Disputes over the definition of a recession
U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen refuted the notion that the nation is in a recession.
President Joe Biden claimed that the United States’ economic situation “doesn’t sound like a recession.” President Biden declared that a recession “hadn’t happened yet.” He said he didn’t think there would be a recession, and added that there could be a “very slight recession.” Biden proclaimed that Americans don’t need to prepare for a recession.
Experts deliver predictions on a recession in 2023
However, many economic experts and business leaders are warning that a recession will happen next year. The 2023 recession could be brought on by inflation, interest rate hikes, and supply chain issues.
In October, JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon warned of a “hard” U.S. recession that begins within the first six months of 2023. In December, Dimon stated, “Inflation is eroding everything.”
Nouriel “Dr. Doom” Roubini – who predicted the 2008 U.S. housing bust – gave a troubling economic forecast for 2023.
“In a short and shallow recession, typically, from peak to trough, the S&P 500 falls by 30%,” Roubini told Bloomberg. “So even if we have a mild recession…you’ll have another 15% leg down.”
“If we have something more severe than a short and shallow recession, but not as severe as the GFC…you have another 25% downside potentially,” said Roubini – a professor emeritus at New York University’s Stern School of Business.
Billionaire investor Carl Icahn said in September, “The worst is yet to come.”
“We printed up too much money, and just thought the party would never end,” Icahn explained. “Inflation is a terrible thing. You can’t cure it.”
Kay Daniel Neufeld – director and head of forecasting at the Center for Economics and Business Research – said this week, “It is likely that the world economy will face a recession next year as a result of the rises in interest rates in response to higher inflation.”
Citi Global Wealth Investments forecasts the U.S. will suffer a “mild” recession in 2023 – which will include 2 million job losses that will push unemployment to 5%.
“We believe that the Fed’s rate hikes and shrinking bond portfolio have been stringent enough to cause an economic contraction within 2023,” the economists declared in the 2023 outlook report. “And if the Fed does not pause rate hikes until it sees the contraction, a deeper recession may ensue.”
KPMG – the fourth-largest accounting firm in the world – released a report that surveyed top executives in October that revealed, “While confidence is up over the next three years, CEOs anticipate challenges in the shorter term. Nearly nine out of 10 (86 percent) CEOs believe a recession will happen over the next 12 months, but three out of five (58 percent) feel it will be mild and short and 76 percent have plans in place to deal with it.”
“Seventy-three percent of CEOs believe a recession will upend anticipated growth over the next 3 years, and three-quarters (75 percent) also believe a recession will make post-pandemic recovery harder,” the report said.
A recent Bloomberg poll of 38 economists found, “Economists say there is a 7-in-10 likelihood that the U.S. economy will sink into a recession next year, slashing demand forecasts and trimming inflation projections in the wake of massive interest-rate hikes by the Federal Reserve.”‘
A global recession could be imminent
In September, the World Bank warned, “As central banks across the world simultaneously hike interest rates in response to inflation, the world may be edging toward a global recession in 2023 and a string of financial crises in emerging market and developing economies that would do them lasting harm.”
In October, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) predicted that global growth would slow to 2.7% in 2023.
“More than a third of the global economy will contract this year or next, while the three largest economies — the United States, the European Union, and China — will continue to stall,” the report warned. “In short, the worst is yet to come, and for many people 2023 will feel like a recession.”
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including NewsMax, Fox News, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Rep. Devin Nunes, Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Chris Salcedo, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Donald Trump.
The House Select Committee on Jan. 6 released the transcript of the probe’s interview with conservative activist Virginia “Ginni” Thomas Friday, revealing why she wasn’t mentioned once in the panel’s more than 800-page final report. Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, had nothing of consequence to offer her inquisitors — whether it be about the Capitol riot, efforts to overturn the 2020 election, or her husband’s work on the high bench — despite attempts by the panel and its corporate media allies to malign and bully her and her family.
In September, Thomas appeared before lawmakers to justify her choice as a private citizen with political opinions to petition her own government in the aftermath of the last presidential contest. Text messages published by the committee between Thomas and former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows in March revealed the longtime activist pressing the administration to “stand firm” in its challenges against the final result.
“You are the leader, with him, who is standing for America’s constitutional governance at the precipice,” Thomas wrote as news organizations began to call the race for President Joe Biden. “The majority knows Biden and the Left is attempting the greatest Heist of our History.”
Publicizing her private messages had its intended effect: tar the Thomas name and even provoke left-wing calls to impeach the sitting justice. Several Democrats on Capitol Hill demanded Justice Thomas recuse himself from relevant cases to the 2020 election, resign altogether, or face impeachment because his wife is politically active. But out of the 29 messages between Meadows and Ginni — among more than 2,300 text messages recovered from Meadows’ trove of data handed to the committee — not one, according to The Washington Post, included a direct reference to Justice Thomas. And Ginni made that clear to the panel.
“Regarding the 2020 election, I did not speak with him at all about the details of my volunteer campaign activities,” Ginni said. “And I did not speak with him at all about the details of my post-election activities, which were minimal, in any event. I am certain I never spoke with him about any of the legal challenges to the 2020 election, as I was not involved with those challenges in any way.”
While dispelling myths about alleged collusion with her husband, Ginni did not back down from her conviction, shared by millions of Americans, that the 2020 election was conducted unfairly with irregularities that warranted challenges. When pressed by Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney, the vice chair of the panel, on the avenues to contest an election result, Ginni brought up Democrats’ challenges to every presidential election won by Republicans since the start of this century.
“Democrats have done that in many instances — 2000, 2004, 2016,” Ginni said. “It seemed like there were a lot of people who claimed President Trump was illegitimate for 4 years and tried to undermine his administration.”
In 2017, Democrats objected to electoral votes from more states than Republicans did last year.
“As she told the Committee, Mrs. Thomas had significant concerns about potential fraud and irregularities in the 2020 election, and her minimal activity was focused on ensuring that reports of fraud and irregularities were investigated,” Mark Paoletta, Ginni’s attorney, told The Federalist in an exclusive statement. “Beyond that, she played no role in any events following the 2020 election. She also condemned the violence on January 6, which was reflected in one of her texts to Mark Meadows at the time. In short, the Committee discovered nothing new because there was nothing to discover.”
Despite the committee’s decision to thrust Ginni into the spotlight of the Jan. 6 investigation over her messages to Meadows, her name was never mentioned in a single one of the committee’s show trial hearings.
At the conclusion of Ginni’s deposition, the committee asked whether there was anything Ginni would like to add. Ginni responded by condemning political violence on all sides and reminding lawmakers of her security concerns after Democrat Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer demanded justices “pay the price” for decisions that run counter to his leftist wishes.
“Violence on both sides is abhorrent, and the more you guys focus on just one side, it can do significant damage to our country,” Ginni said. “And, certainly, I’m living with Senator Schumer having said some things on the steps of the Supreme Court that unleashed a lot of things that have us living with Marshals right now.”
Tristan Justice is the western correspondent for The Federalist. 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.
‘I’d say it’s, it is, I haven’t… look. I have trouble even mentioning, even saying to myself, in my own head, the number of years. I no more think of myself as being old as I am than fly.’
It’s no secret President Joe Biden is no longer in his prime physical and cognitive state. The 80-year-old isn’t just a serial liar. He’s a chronic gaffe machine who puts the country at risk pretty much every time he opens his mouth. The president is so bad at giving speeches that Generation Z made some of his most notable verbal stumbles into a TikTok trend.
Contrary to corporate media claims, these blunders aren’t just byproducts of Biden’s childhood stutter, they are signs of a bigger problem. Here are 10 gaffes from the grandpa in the White House that should make every American question whether he’s just a figurehead.
1. Biden Forgets What Year It Is
Biden started off 2022 strong with a New Year’s-themed White House address in which he forgot what year it is.
“There’s a lot of reason to be hopeful in 2020,” Biden said.
Joe Biden — January 4, 2022: "There's a lot of reason to be hopeful in 2020…" pic.twitter.com/Ipc3m1tz0g
Regime change in Russia is the unofficial policy of our ruling class, but the corporate media, unwilling to admit it, called Biden’s outburst a “gaffe.” The White House, similarly, couldn’t decide between standing by Biden’s comments or downplaying them as simple “moral outrage” toward Putin.
4. ‘Repeat the Line’
In July, during a speech about his new abortion-focused executive order, Biden struggled to properly vocalize the script on his teleprompter.
Joe Biden accidentally reads the part on the teleprompter that says "repeat the line" when they wanted him to say the line again lmfao pic.twitter.com/pS3GdXPe5N
Clips of the speech clearly show the gaffe-prone president saying, “End of quote. Repeat the line.” The White House transcript of Biden’s address, however, claims Biden said, “End of quote. Let me repeat the line.”
When pressed about the retroactive edits, White House Assistant Press Secretary Emilie Simons tried to gaslight her Twitter followers into believing Biden wasn’t really reading cues directly from the teleprompter.
“No. He said, ‘let me repeat that line,’” she wrote.
5. Biden Falsely Claims He Had Cancer
In a “climate crisis” speech about fossil fuels in Massachusetts in July, Biden incorrectly claimed he has cancer caused by oil pollution. Biden said that growing up, pollution in Delaware was so bad that his mother had to use windshield wipers to “get literally the oil slick off the window.”
“That’s why I and so damn many other people I grew up [with] have cancer,” Biden said.
Biden says that his mother using windshield wipers to "get literally the oil slick off the window" is "why I and so damn many other people have cancer." pic.twitter.com/YIoBlZadRJ
The White House physician rushed to release a statement clarifying that Biden does not, in fact, have cancer.
6. Biden Says American Troops Are ‘Selfish’
During a trip to the Middle East in July, Biden mixed up the words “selfish” and “selfless” at the most inconvenient time possible.
“We’ll always honor the bravery and selfishness — selflessness,” Biden said. “And sacrifices of the Americans who served, including my son, Major Beau Biden, who was stationed in Iraq for a year.”
7. Biden Calls the Holocaust Honorable
During a visit to Israel, Biden claimed he was there to “keep alive the truth and honor of the Holocaust.”
“And continue — which we must do every, every day — continue to bear witness, to keep alive the truth and honor of the Holocaust,” Biden said.
He later corrected himself by saying the “horror of the Holocaust.”
8. ‘Where’s Jackie?’
Perhaps the worst of Biden’s 2022 blunders was when he tried to call upon Rep. Jackie Walorski weeks after she died in a car accident in her home state of Indiana.
“Jackie, are you here? Where’s Jackie? She must not be here,” Biden said at the Conference on Hunger, Nutrition, and Health on Sept 28.
President Biden seems to forget that Rep. Jackie Walorski (R-IN) died in a car crash in August, seeking her out in the audience:
White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre tried to brush off Biden’s mistake by claiming Walorski was “on top of mind.”
“These moments of confusion are happening with increased frequency, Karine,” one reporter, unsatisfied with Jean-Pierre’s answer, shouted above the hubbub.
W.H. Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre battles the media after President Biden called out the name of deceased congresswoman Jackie Walorski, as if she were in the room. "Jackie, where's Jackie?," Biden asked.
Polling conducted shortly after the Jackie incident found that a majority of Americans, including Democrats, were at least “somewhat concerned” about Biden’s mental state.
9. A ‘Mental Focus’ Word Salad
Biden isn’t particularly fond of people questioning his cognitive abilities, and his attempts to convince Americans he is mentally equipped for office, or even a walk in the park, fall short.
“How would you say your mental focus is?” CBS’s Scott Pelley asked during a “60 Minutes” interview in October.
“Oh, it’s focused,” Biden replied. “I’d say it’s, it is, I haven’t… look. I have trouble even mentioning, even saying to myself, in my own head, the number of years. I no more think of myself as being old as I am than fly.”
REPORTER: How is your mental focus?
JOE BIDEN: *nervous wheeze* “Oh focused. Ha ha ha I’d say it’s, it is I haven’t … here, look. I have trouble even mentioning, even saying to myself, in my head, the number of years. I no more think of myself being old as I am than fly.”
Even when he’s not speaking, Biden shows severe signs of mental impairment. Shortly after his speech during the Global Fund’s Seventh Replenishment Conference in New York, Biden appeared to get lost on the stage before eventually finding his way down.
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 and Fox News. Jordan graduated from Baylor University where she majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow her on Twitter @jordanboydtx.
“Sometimes when you win, you really lose, and sometimes when you lose, you really win, and sometimes when you win or lose, you actually tie, and sometimes when you tie, you actually win or lose. Winning or losing is all one organic mechanism, from which one extracts what one needs.”
That quote from the 1992 film “White Men Can’t Jump” reminds us all that while everything is subject to interpretation, or personal exegesis, does not change its original intent or meaning.
There has been much said about the word speech. It, along with the prefixes “free” and “hate” rule most news and social media cycles, especially in recent years. More specifically, since the election of America’s 45th president. So, what exactly does it mean?
Defining Terms
Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary describes speech as the following: “the communication or expression of thoughts in spoken words.” Simply put, words are only words, speech is only speech, regardless of your personal issues.
According to an article in Business Standard, there has been a reported 500% rise in hate-speech cases in the last seven years; again ironically, since around 2017. Another article, this time in the American Library Association, states: “In the United States, hate speech is protected by the First Amendment.
Courts extend this protection on the grounds that the First Amendment requires the government to strictly protect robust debate on matters of public concern even when such debate devolves into distasteful, offensive, or hateful speech that causes others to feel grief, anger, or fear.” It also offers that, “There is no legal definition of “hate speech” under U.S. law, just as there is no legal definition for evil ideas, rudeness, unpatriotic speech, or any other kind of speech that people might condemn. Generally, however, hate speech is any form of expression through which speakers intend to vilify, humiliate, or incite hatred against a group or a class of persons on the basis of race, religion, skin color sexual identity, gender identity, ethnicity, disability, or national origin.”
Speech, much like crime, has been nitro-fueled by many adding their own levels of toxicity personal biases. While sticks and stones can indeed break your bones and words alone can never hurt you, in the proper context words can be very powerful. Unfortunately, many of those on the right don’t realize the power of words.
Unrecognized Powers
As talk-show host and journalist Tucker Carlson once reminded his audience, “only the Left understands the importance of language.” Unfortunately, we have arrived at a time where if something is said that you’re uncomfortable with, it need not break any laws or statutes for the ‘accused offenders’ sentence to be carried out. The only requirement to fulfill my animus- filled retribution is to add “hate” as a prefix.
“Upholding free speech is hugely important to open societies that respect human rights. Human Rights Treaties outlaw offensive speech when it poses a risk or threat to others. Speech that is simply offensive but poses no risk to others is generally NOT considered a human rights violation.
Hate Speech becomes a human rights violation if it incites discrimination, hostility or violence towards a person or a group defined by their race, religion, ethnicity, or other factors.”
So, who determines the line between ‘speech’ and ‘hate-speech? Good question. One of the best examples of apparent purveyors of grief is of course, former president Donald Trump, who offers a never-ending supply of this type of “speech.”
In one example of such ‘speech,’ Trump tweeted this during the George Floyd riots: “Either the very weak Radical Left Mayor, Jacob Frey, get his act together and bring the City under control, or I will send in the National Guard & get the job done right. These THUGS are dishonoring the memory of George Floyd, and I won’t let that happen.”
Were those that attempted to level and burn Minneapolis to the ground not thugs? Another example considered inciteful was the following (in the same Tweet): “Just spoke to Governor Tim Walz and told him that the Military is with him all the way. Any difficulty and we will assume control but, when the looting starts, the shooting starts. Thank you!”
Inserting Common Sense
Was that hateful or incendiary? Doesn’t the shooting usually follow the looting? Regardless of never having crossed any lines or expressed guidelines, including during in his January 6th address, his Twitter account was permanently locked.
Despite the constant barrage of hate speech claims, two things irrepressibly come to mind. First, such claims have no legally defined perimeters, because making offensive, disparaging statements- regardless of the wording, crosses no legal or ethical boundaries; only moral and/or personal ones. Secondly, anti-white, and other racially degrading statements by Blacks (regardless of context) against ANY race including Blacks are strangely ignored on both mainstream and social media platforms.
In 2021, 22-year-old Gabby Petito’s body was found in Wyoming after she was missing for several weeks. In response to the horrific discovery, Joy Reid stated the following on her MSNBC show, “The Reid Out” concerning the missing hiker: “the way the [Petito] story has captivated the nation has many wondering why not the same media attention when people of color go missing (keep in mind that Reid, as part of the media herself ignored such stories)?
Double Standards at Play
Well, the answer actually has a name: “missing white woman syndrome,” determined by the late and great Gwen Eiffel to describe the media in public fascination with missing white women like Lacey Peterson & Natalie Holloway, while ignoring cases involving missing people of color.” On yet another episode she opined, “In America, there’s a thing about both white vigilantism and white tears,” Reid said. “Particularly male, white tears. Really white tears in general, because that’s what Karens are, right? They can Karen-out and then as soon as they get caught, bring waterworks.”
Regardless of having crossed many lines and expressed guidelines, including several anti-gay statements, her Twitter account was never locked. There are clearly double standards, especially where color and political affiliations are concerned. Truth be told, words are still merely words; speech is still merely speech- regardless of content. Like the old saying concerning “sticks and stones,” if you allow words to hurt you- it is a choice you make.
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including NewsMax, Fox News, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Rep. Devin Nunes, Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Chris Salcedo, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Donald Trump.
Billionaire Elon Musk, who recently purchased the social media giant Twitter, said that “almost every conspiracy theory that people had about Twitter turned out to be true.”
Many Americans were silenced in recent years when they attempted to exercise free speech online and share their opinions on various issues.
Elon Musk "To be totally frank, almost every conspiracy theory that people had about Twitter turned out to be true." pic.twitter.com/zBDY3AcrRq
Specifically, Americans were often banned or censored if they criticize Joe and Hunter Biden’s shady overseas business dealings. People were also banned from mentioning the possible origins of the COVID-19 virus from a lab in China or the possible adverse effects of the recently developed COVID-19 vaccine.
It’s been widely speculated that government officials and intelligence agents were colluding with social media giants behind closed doors. It turned about to be true.
Musk said, “To be totally frank, almost every conspiracy theory that people had about Twitter turned out to be true.”
Nearly every conspiracy theory everyone had about Covid was also true. There’s a long list of true “conspiracy theories”. That’s why silencing dissenting voices is catastrophic to a functioning society.
Musk revealed shocking and disturbing documents proving that FBI agents and others inside the intelligence community colluded with social media giants to censor Americans and protect Joe and Hunter Biden.
The FBI wrongfully claimed that news about Hunter’s laptop right before the 2020 presidential election was part of a Russian misinformation campaign. These “Twitter Files” showed the FBI has regularly contacted employees at Twitter to target Americans who “may” be violating the company’s terms of service.
The FBI has responded to Musk by claiming they never told Twitter to “take action” using their false information about the Bidens. Twitter took action nonetheless and banned accounts. FBI officials told Fox News, “We are providing it so that they can take whatever action they deem appropriate under their terms of service to protect their platform and protect their customers, but we never direct or ask them to take action.”
Journalist Matt Taibbi showed multiple internal files between Twitter workers and FBI employees.
One email reads: “Hello Twitter contacts, FBI San Francisco is notifying you of the below accounts which may potentially constitute violations of Twitter’s Terms of Service for any action or inaction deemed appropriate within Twitter policy.”
A Twitter employee responded that three of the four accounts were suspended. One of the banned accounts tweeted on Nov. 8, “I want to remind republicans to vote tomorrow, Wednesday November 9.”
The FBI also suggested another tweet needed to be censored because the person joked on November 8th, saying, “Americans, Vote today. Democrats you vote Wednesday 9th.”
An FBI employee wrote in an email that one user “claimed in her posts that she is a ballot counter in her state and, in additional posts, states, ‘For every negative comment on this post, I’m adding another vote for the democrats’ and ‘If you’re not wearing a mask, I’m not counting your vote.’”
Taibbi said these tweets were merely jokes and satirical, but the FBI still suggested the company should ban or censor these Americans exercising their free speech.
Exactly. There are no conspiracy theories, just truth suppressed by governments. 🤔🔥
Tolerance is a good thing in most aspects of life. But when it comes to the immune system, artificially juicing up the body to create antibodies with long-term tolerance to a pathogen is a recipe for disaster. Amid thousands of papers on COVID and the vaccines, a new German paper published in Science Immunology should be the headline story this week. Although the subject matter is very dense, the implication of it is that the Pfizer shots (and possibly other mRNA spike protein shots) caused the immune system to misfire, thereby creating an endless feedback loop of viral immune escape, perpetuating the pandemic in the macro, and creating immune suppression for the individuals who received them.
The vexing question of 2022 is why the virus is even still with us to this day. Why is it that so many countries in the Pacific Rim that did so well in 2020 and 2021 now have a bigger problem in 2022 with less virulent strains of COVID? Why does it appear the pandemic will never end and so many people continue to get the virus multiple times? None of this is normal.
Wherever you turn, the most vaccinated countries are not only experiencing rampant side effects from the shots, but worse outcomes from COVID itself following their endless booster campaigns.
During the last six months, 98% of all reported covid deaths have occurred in nations where more than 1 vaccine dose has been administered per person.
Portugal is the most vaccinated nation in all of Europe (95% vax'd, 70% boosted) and yet just as many people are dying now as in 2021 and significantly more people than in 2020 (when no one was vax'd and no one had immunity and covid was more virulent).
But even more telling than an epidemiological comparison of one nation to another is a comparison of outcomes within nations themselves between pre- and post-vaccination/booster campaign. Prior to the mass vaccination, two parts of the world largely escaped excess deaths from the virus: continental Africa and the Pacific Rim nations. Yet whereas Africa flatlined in terms of COVID deaths throughout 2021-2022, countries like Japan only experienced meaningful numbers of deaths after the mass vaccination program.
Here is a chart of the daily COVID deaths per million in Japan, a country that is super vaccinated (and mask-obsessed).
Notice how Japan is experiencing progressively worse death curves, which only began after everyone (particularly seniors) was boosted, even though Omicron is less pathogenic than the earlier strains. Japan is also the current world leader in cases per million.
Australia is a similar story:
Now contrast these two countries to Nigeria, the most populous country in Africa.
One could assert that there are some unknown factors as to why Africans appear not to die from COVID, compared to the high death rates in North America, South America, and Europe. However, the Pacific Rim countries like Japan and Australia seemed to enjoy almost as low a death rate prior to the booster campaign. After that point, Nigeria (and the rest of Africa) seemed to flatline and be done with the virus, as we would typically expect by now, while the other countries incurred skyrocketing cases and a relatively massive spike in deaths. Obviously, Nigeria’s vaccination rate is much lower than these other countries, but its booster rate is almost nonexistent.
Even within Europe, Scandinavian countries like Norway largely escaped a massive death curve during the first two years of the pandemic. That all changed in 2022. Norway now has the highest COVID death rate per million in the world.
Adding these three Omicron waves together, we see that Norway is beginning to rival the U.S. in terms of death curves. However, America is a much unhealthier country, and America experienced the death curves with the more pathogenic Wuhan and Delta strains.
If you track the number of boosters given per 100 people in some of the aforementioned countries, you will see that the current death curves track almost perfectly in a positive correlation.
Indeed, Chile now has the most deaths per capita in South America, even though the country already suffered a substantial number of deaths and should be done with the pandemic. Nigeria and the rest of Africa indeed are done with the pandemic, and the U.S., which has an average booster rate, is somewhere in the middle in terms of current COVID rates.
So, this is about a lot more than “oh, the vaccines don’t stop transmission.” They appear to proliferate it and also to worsen clinical outcomes. But why?
A group of German researchers tested for which specific antibody levels spike at what time. Specifically, they tested the Pfizer shot against the AstraZeneca shot and discovered something very concerning. Increasingly over time, and particularly with three doses of Pfizer, the immune response switched from the more neutralizing IgG1 and IgG3 antibodies to the non-neutralizing “tolerating” IgG4 antibodies:
High levels of neutralizing SARS-CoV-2-antibodies are an important component of vaccine-induced immunity. Shortly after the initial two mRNA vaccine doses, the IgG response mainly consists of the pro-inflammatory subclasses IgG1 and IgG3. Here, we report that several months after the second vaccination, SARS-CoV-2-specific antibodies were increasingly composed of non-inflammatory IgG4, which were further boosted by a third mRNA vaccination and/or SARS-CoV-2 variant breakthrough infections. IgG4 antibodies among all spike-specific IgG antibodies rose on average from 0.04% shortly after the second vaccination to 19.27% late after the third vaccination. This induction of IgG4 antibodies was not observed after homologous or heterologous SARS-CoV-2 vaccination with adenoviral vectors [emphasis added].
Why is this so important?
Importantly, this class switch was associated with a reduced capacity of the spike-specific antibodies to mediate antibody-dependent cellular phagocytosis and complement deposition. Since Fc-mediated effector functions are critical for antiviral immunity, these findings may have consequences for the choice and timing of vaccination regimens using mRNA vaccines, including future booster immunizations against SARS-CoV-2 [emphasis added].
So not only do these shots fail to produce the first line of defense antibodies known as IgA in the mucosal, something we knew from day one, but even the blood-based antibodies are increasingly the wrong type. This problem seems to get worse over time and with more doses of the shot, which correlates perfectly with numerous studies showing negative efficacy increasing over time, with more doses, and how the vaccinated take longer to clear the virus.
This topic is both very dense and fascinating. You can find clear explanations of this study about IgG4 antibodies in layman’s terms here, here, and here. But the important outcome for us from a policy standpoint is understanding the deadly subterfuge that has been foisted upon 5.5 billion people of the world and how it will be used with many more novel vaccines coming down the pipeline. The medical establishment successfully convinced the world that a vaccine is nothing more than simply stimulating an antibody response and is something that can be done within days of discovering a virus. This is why they now seek to get vaccines approved not based on accurate clinical trials and clinical outcomes but on “immunobridging” – the measuring of antibody levels. Indeed, this is how they got the bivalent booster shots and the JYNNEOS monkeypox vaccine approved and how they plan to get future shots approved.
However, merely measuring antibody levels in the abstract is meaningless and potentially masks harms to the body. God designed our bodies to create the right sort of antibodies, in the right amount, at the right time, in the right place. Any fault in any of those factors can create auto-antibodies, Trojan horse antibodies (antibody dependent disease enhancement) or a misfiring of the immune system, which is some form of original antigenic sin or pathogenic priming that teaches the body to tolerate a specific strain of the virus or respond for a wrong strain. This is why vaccines take years to develop. And this is before we even discuss the fact that these shots are not even vaccines, but are gene therapies that code your body to produce a pathogenic spike that was the result of gain-of-function research and seems to potentially damage every organ system, particularly the cardiovascular system.
In the case of the COVID shots, what the German study discovered is that over time and with increased doses it actually trains your body to tolerate rather than fight the virus it was designed to destroy. The other class of blood-based antibodies are designed to neutralize pathogens; however, the IgG4 class was specifically designed to tolerate innocuous cells (that don’t reproduce) that it repeatedly contacts, such as pollen or peanut particles. They serve an important role and help ensure that people don’t respond with excessive inflammation to everyday encounters with pollen, but to see 20% of the antibody response to SARS-CoV-2 (it was as high as 42% in those experiencing infection after boosters) be something that tolerates it is astounding … and dangerous! In other words, whereas your IgG1 or IgG3 antibodies are like the SWAT team, your IgG4 antibodies are like social workers. You don’t want social workers responding to replicating pathogens like the SARS-CoV-2 spike.
The long-term implications of this study are still unclear, but like every earth-shattering finding, this one will not be studied by governments. If this shot is really upregulating an IgG4 response for most of the population, it could easily explain why herd immunity is out the window with SARS-CoV-2. It’s literally teaching the body to not only respond to the wrong pathogen but to tolerate its existence and not remember to fight it. Also, what does this mean long-term for people who don’t create pro-inflammatory antibodies to defend against pathogens? What sort of damage is being done by not having the virus sufficiently neutralized before it invades the system so deeply?As Kilian Schober, one of the authors of the study, notes (after calling our interpretation of the study too “simplistic”),”Our findings do, however, raise some questions about how to proceed.” But in the past, we used to answer those questions before experimenting on humans, not begin to raise them (and then never answer them) after 5.5 billion people were already injected with the product.
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Former first lady Michelle Obama revealed that she “couldn’t stand” former President Barack Obama for a decade. During an interview with Revolt TV, while promoting her book, Michelle Obama recounted how she was disgusted with her husband for a decade. Michelle Obama declared, “People think I’m being catty for saying this: It’s like, there were 10 years where I couldn’t stand my husband.”
The former first lady of eight years added, “And guess when it happened? When those kids were little.”
The wife of the 44th president added, “For 10 years while we’re trying to build our careers and worrying about school and who’s doing what and what, I was like, ‘Argh, this isn’t even!’”
She continued, “And guess what? Marriage isn’t 50/50, ever. Ever. There are times I’m 70, he’s 30. There are times he’s 60, 40. But guess what? Ten years. We’ve been married 30. I would take 10 bad years over 30 — it’s just how you look at it. People give up — ‘Five years; I can’t take it.’“
Michelle Obama said, “Do you like him? I mean, you could be mad at him, but do you still look at him and go, ‘I’m not happy with you, but I respect you. I don’t agree with you, but you’re still a kind, smart person.‘”
She proclaimed, “Little kids, they’re terrorists. They have demands. They don’t talk. They’re poor communicators. They cry all the time.“
Michelle, 58, met Barack, 61, at a law firm in Chicago in 1989. Michelle married Barack Obama on October 3, 1992. The couple had two daughters: Malia and Sasha. Michelle, Barack, and their daughters lived in the White House from Jan. 20, 2009, until Jan. 19, 2017. The Obama children were ages 7 and 10 when they moved into the White House.
In 2017, Michelle Obama secured a $65 million book deal. In 2018, the Obamas notched a $50 million deal with Netflix.
The New York Post reported in 2018, “Forbes estimated the couple made $20.5 million in salaries and book royalties between 2005 — when Barack Obama became a US senator and they first arrived in Washington — and 2016. They are now worth more than $135 million. And like her husband, Michelle Obama is currently in demand as a speaker for corporations and nonprofits, commanding $225,000 per appearance.”
You can watch the entire Revolt TV interview with Michelle Obama below.
REVOLT x Michelle Obama: The Cross-Generational Conversation www.youtube.com
There’s a strange thing happening in the American economy right now — what we read in the newspaper or see on TV doesn’t match what we’re witnessing with our own eyes. Job numbers reported in the media seem wonderful. Amazingly low unemployment that hasn’t been witnessed in 50 years! Hundreds of thousands of new jobs created monthly. Yet for all these rosy numbers, when we look at the real world, we see critically understaffed businesses, long waits for repairs, and customer service in the gutter.
America’s young men are in crisis, and the answer to this problem is spiritual, not economic or political. While the media continues to trumpet good news about the economy, the reason your real-life experiences don’t match such optimism is because these reports typically only give you part of the picture. What corporate media doesn’t tell you is that about 11 million jobs remain unfilled right now.
That’s why service is lousy everywhere and you can’t get a plumber. Those jobs go unfilled because millions of young American men between the ages of 25 and 54 aren’t working. At all. As Bloomberg reports, they’ve been left behind, with a lower percentage of men between those ages working than in 1970 — a statistic that emerged before the economic disaster brought by coronavirus lockdowns.
Millions of Young Men Doing Nothing All Day
So, how can millions of men be out of work when unemployment is extremely low? Easy, if you don’t count them.
Yes, the unemployment rate hovers at a record low figure, but this number doesn’t count all unemployed people. It only includes those who don’t have a job and are actively seeking one. This cheery (and erroneous) unemployment rate doesn’t count the millions of young men who aren’t looking for a job. Young males fitting this description are often referred to as “NEETs,” an acronym originating in the U.K. that stands for “Not in Employment, Education or Training.” These fellows aren’t working and, worse, aren’t interested in work.
Of course, this was already a growing problem in the last decade. But unemployment went full supernova during the coronavirus lockdown — and finally smart people are paying attention to it. Mike Rowe of “Dirty Jobs” fame recently hosted a podcast discussion on the crisis of young men not working.
To further understand the problem’s depth, Rowe interviewed economist Nicholas Eberstadt, who wrote “Men Without Work.” It explains the seriousness of this issue, documenting how the unemployment crisis goes far beyond simply not having a job. Too many men in their prime have fallen into a hollow existence. And their parents — and our tax dollars — subsidize such incredible waste.
What do such men do with their copious amounts of leisure? According to Eberstadt, they aren’t only not working. They aren’t going to church. They typically aren’t dating. They aren’t engaging in charity work or civic activities either, or even helping with housework.
Instead, they play video games, binge watch TV and movies, and, perhaps most concerningly, abuse drugs. So many young men are not only lost to our economy but lost to their families as well. They are at risk of becoming another gloomy statistic in the opioid epidemic.
Social and Spiritual Solutions
So, what is the answer? Unsurprisingly, it depends on who you ask. Eberstadt, the expert on young men dropping out of the economy, believes in secular and market-driven solutions to this crisis. He explains to Rowe on the podcast that we could use shame as a powerful motivator, much like our nation has shamed smokers to give up the habit.
But a campaign to shame men is already widespread in America — and not particularly helpful. In recent years, so many expressions of traditional male values have been labeled “toxic masculinity.” Combine this message with readily available drugs ranging from prescription opioids and fentanyl to legal marijuana in many states, and it almost feels like society is encouraging young men to disconnect from the real world and play “Call of Duty” all day.
We therefore believe the real solution to this crisis is spiritual. And we don’t mean just dragging young men away from the TV and into church. When Eberstadt’s book was first published in 2016, The New York Times highlighted it with an op-ed that made an eye-opening point about the root cause of the problem.
In the article, the journalist explored the issue via an interview with a young man who lost his job in the oil industry. He told the interviewer he feels as if America doesn’t care about him. He says he feels as if he’s “considered nothing.” This is a tragedy that likely resonates with millions of other young men not working. No shaming campaign will solve this. It will only worsen things.
Instead, these men would do well to unite. We suggest they form small groups with other men to help each other and provide non-judgmental spaces to work through life’s problems.
If young men feel isolated and valueless, the answer is to bring them together in brotherhood to help them understand their worth. “Power of 4” emphasizes how much more powerful men can be when they don’t try to go it alone. When a man has three brothers to meet with regularly to work through life’s challenges, he is much better off than trying to handle his problems on his own.
Consider a hypothetical Power of 4 group comprised of men not in the workforce. They could work together to build each other up, for instance, by engaging in charity work while also collaborating on resumes and professional networking. (Simply having regular face-to-face contact with other men who are not keen on blaming themselves for their station in life will do worlds of good for young men in crisis).
An even more powerful approach to a Power of 4 group might be to mix together men with established careers with those not in the workforce. Young men who feel lost and without purpose could get unimaginable benefits from spending time with men who are on solid footing in their profession. Such successful men might even assist their Power of 4 brother by arranging an internship or introductory position.
What’s more, men currently working know just how nearly every employer is screaming out for quality employees now. That means a resume with some gaps in it won’t necessarily hold back a man who wants to better his situation. Undoubtedly, our young men in crisis can transform their lives once they realize they do have value — and even the potential for greatness. All it takes is a determination to relinquish those behaviors holding them back — whether it be drugs and alcohol or Netflix and PlayStation (or all of the above!).
Ultimately, we are deeply concerned by the crisis of young men dropping out of society. Despite so much bad news, we see many positives in the future. If men come together to support each other, this problem can and will correct itself.
With the right support system, young men can achieve tremendous personal growth. Every human has value, a fact lost on so many men for far too long. With the help of three brothers, our blueprint for the Power of 4, and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, American men will return to a society that so desperately needs them.
What’s the modus operandi of our dystopian government? Creating a needless deadly crisis, blocking the effective way for dealing with it thereafter, and foisting upon the world instead a dangerous and ineffective way of dealing with it. That might sound a lot like COVID, but it’s largely what officials have been planning for a long time with energy, and now that the population is primed for lockdowns, disruptions, and total authoritarian control as a result of COVID, that is what they plan to do with our energy grid. All for a lie.
This was the coldest Christmas in a half-century in much of the U.S., with many localities setting records, including those not accustomed to the cold like Tallahassee, Florida. Many of us are disgusted at those limiting our natural energy in favor of novel, ineffective energy, thereby causing a doubling or even tripling of home heating bills. But we must also realize that if they had their way, we’d have no heating in our homes at all.
Just like the supposed source of COVID and how to deal with it were lies, our energy crisis is wholly contrived and built upon the lie of global warming. Typically, you would have to make sure we are 100% correct about the “science” behind such irrevocable economic and societal changes before committing civilization suicide by destroying the only reliable sources of energy we have. But in a post-“Great Reset” world, this is par for the course. In fact, the science behind global warming is just as flimsy as the science behind lockdowns, masks, and mRNA shots.
During the Copenhagen climate summit in 2009, chief climate priest Al Gore asserted, “Some of the models suggest … that there is a 75 percent chance that the entire north polar ice cap, during the summer months, could be completely ice-free within five to seven years.” Predictions like this upended our lives with more expensive and more decrepit vital products and services being produced for a generation under the false pretense of taming a crisis that never existed. It turns out that since 2012, the mass of Arctic sea ice is up 31% and Greenland is gaining, not losing, ice. Meanwhile, Antarctica, which was always gaining ice during the period when the Arctic was losing ice, subsequently lost ice last decade and is now regaining it. In other words, the science behind polar ice caps seems to be rooted in the same cherry-picked timing and data as the faux science behind global warming causing either fewer or more hurricanes.
Yet somehow, we are to believe the science is all figured out on how to tamper with global temperatures, just like it was with COVID. Rather than people being more primed to believe in government control after COVID, any thinking person should be even more suspect of official climate lies and the accompanying life-altering policy changes governments want to induce based on them. And boy, would these policy changes be life-altering.
When officials speak of “net zero” for carbon emissions, it means, many times of the year, you would have net zero energy for heating. Picture those nights this past week of below-zero temperatures for much of the nation. Would you want to rely on “renewable energy,” even after billions upon billions in subsidies failed to move the needle on its effectiveness?
At 8am this morning, wind was providing about 1% of the electricity to 13 Mid-Atlantic states and Wash DC.
'Net zero' is how much electricity you will be able to have under climate idiocy. pic.twitter.com/UuMXeQmagA
Temperatures dropped to near zero in Amarillo, Texas, over the Christmas weekend, with wind chills well below zero. Even south Texas faced several nights of once-in-a-generation record cold. Yet even with all that wind blowing, when Texans needed energy most, it was natural gas that held the grid for Texans, while wind and solar collapsed, according to the grid tracking info from the Energy Information Administration.
God might have been sending those wind gusts of 50 mph, but Santa most certainly was not delivering wind energy through the chimney to Texans on Christmas. Now imagine how much better Texas would be doing if the state had invested a fraction of the $66 billion it used for wind and solar in energy sources that actually energize the world rather than in sources that need help from other energy to produce a fraction of the output at a higher cost? Imagine how much cheaper heating prices would be without the global warming mandates and green energy diversions.
If Republican states don’t start looking at how to expand natural God-given fuels and end the green energy scam, the next cold wave could be worse, and we will face energy rationing like the Europeans. For example, depending on the type of job, German regulators now set the thermostats in Germany’s workplaces anywhere between 54 and 66 Fahrenheit. France is preparing for rolling blackouts to close hospitals and schools in a shutdown scenario that could rival the COVID lockdowns used in 2020 to strategically acclimate the public to the new climate of scarcity, pain, and control. Keep in mind, Europe is facing this magnitude of an energy crisis after it has already spent over $1 trillion on “renewable” energy since 2004.
As much as Republicans appear united on energy policy, if you watch carefully, they drop buzz words like a “smarter transition” to “clean” energy and a “better” way of dealing with global warming. Half the Senate Republicans, including Mitch McConnell, just voted to expand an international treaty banning the key coolants in air conditioners, thereby agreeing to the false premise of global warming. Most GOP governors continue to promote tendentious treatment for wind, solar, electric cars, and biofuels that are enabling the dangerous globalist quest to phase out viable energy.
Republicans must end this mealy-mouthed agenda of pursuing a “smarter transition” to green energy, all built upon acceptance of the false premise of global warming. States must audit every regulation that accepts the premise of global warming and harms consumers and work to eliminate it from state policy – be it a law, mandate, subsidy, or regulation.
As we are seeing in Europe, there is no middle ground on this road to the hell of scarcity, which will lead to complete government control every aspect of our lives. In a post-COVID/Great Reset world, there is no longer an excuse to feign ignorance about the “science.” Anyone with working cells in their brain should realize the dark end to that path. The road to a transhumanist hell is paved with “the scienceTM”.
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A spokesperson for Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said his office was investigating a “Drag Queen Christmas” show for possible violations of the state’s laws against exposing children to sexually explicit themes. The Christmas drag show was held on Monday at the Broward Center of the Performing Arts in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. Chris Nelson, a local activist, recorded a video at the event where he claimed several young children were present. Nelson left the event after interrupting with a protest against the presence of children at the drag show. He was escorted off of the premises by Broward sheriff’s deputies.
On Tuesday, DeSantis spokesperson Bryan Griffin said the event would be investigated for possible legal violations.
“The Department of Business and Professional Regulation (DBPR) is aware of multiple complaints about a sexually explicit performance marketed to children held in Fort Lauderdale on December 26th,” Griffin wrote in the statement.
“The Department is actively investigating this matter, including video footage and photographs from the event. DPBR will, like in other cases, take action,” the statement read. “Exposing children to sexually explicit activity is a crime in Florida, and such action violates the Department’s licensing standards for operating a business and holding a liquor license.”
DeSantis has previously expressed his opposition to drag shows with explicit themes allowing children to be present.
One online advertisement for the Broward Center “Drag Queen Christmas” made it clear that there were “adult themes and content” in the performance and limited attendance to people over 18 years old unless the minors were accompanied by a parent.
“The Department frequently conducts investigations into these matters upon tips provided by the public, and we thank the public for continuing to bring attention to these incidents. Investigations of such allegations will remain a priority for the Department and, indeed, are ongoing,” the statement concluded.
Here’s more about the drag show controversy:
Biden Subtly Defends Drag Shows for Kids…Internet ERUPTS www.youtube.com
The dust of the 2022 midterm contests has barely settled and Democrats — invigorated by the Red Wave that evaporated under extended lax voting policies — are out to make sweeping changes to our nation’s election laws once again.
Think back to 2020, when Democratic governors and unsuspecting Republican lawmakers made unprecedented changes to state election policies in the name of Covid that included mandating universal mail-in balloting and a month of early voting. Some states have kept these changes permanently. But Democrats are not satisfied, and why should they be? With their gubernatorial power retained (they kept all but one of the governor’s offices) and newfound control of state legislatures in both Michigan and Minnesota, Democrats are keen to ram through a whole gamut of unprecedented and unconstitutional changes. It’s working, so they’re going to keep doing it.
As The New York Times reported, Democrats’ list of policy proposals for 2023 includes expanding automatic voter registration systems, preregistering teenagers to vote, granting the franchise to felons, and criminalizing what the left thinks is election “misinformation.” Of course, all these policy prescriptions have little to do with “voting rights,” but Democrats package them as such, and slander their opponents as — you guessed it — racists.
Make no mistake about what these proposals are meant to accomplish. Take automatic voter registration. The New York Times notes that such a system — already adopted by 20 states — “adds anyone whose information is on file with a government agency — such as a department of motor vehicles or a social services bureau — to [a state’s] voter rolls unless they opt out.”
During the 2020 election, Michigan’s Democratic Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson sent out automatic voter registration forms to all eligible Michigan residents. As a result of the mailer, 114,000 people were automatically added to Michigan’s voter rolls. Many were duplicate and otherwise inaccurate registrations. By padding state voter rolls with new unlikely voters, Democrats can target unsuspecting blocs of voters, harvest their ballots, and put their candidates over the top. Various leftist 501(c)(3) nonprofit organizations are solely dedicated to this.
As I’ve previously reported regarding Democratic attempts to court high school-age kids, multiple left-wing organizations are targeting young people to effectively propagandize them into future Democratic Party voters. As two-thirds of Gen Z voters backed Democrats this past midterm election cycle, Democrats are hoping to capitalize on this emerging voting bloc while also setting their sights on even younger kids. While leftist organizations have tried to couch their outreach efforts as bipartisan, Democrat politicians admit they’re going after younger voters to benefit the left.
“[Targeting young people] is something the left’s been pushing for quite a while — along with enfranchising noncitizens and automatic restoration of felon voting rights,” executive director of the Honest Elections Project Jason Snead told me earlier this month. “They’re always looking for new people to bring into the election system and calculating the targeted groups who will be more likely to vote Democratic.”
Along with making the state a key player in their efforts to pad voter rolls in their favor, Democrats are also intent on criminalizing any information that could hurt their electoral prospects. Known Democratic Party hack and Michigan Secretary of State Joycelyn Benson told the New York Times that she wants new rules and penalties for individuals peddling “misinformation” in election mailers or language on proposed ballot amendments.
“The greatest threats to our democracy right now continue to be the intentional spread of misinformation and the threats and harassment of election officials that emerge from those efforts,” Benson said.
With Democrats’ history of using Big Tech to label the New York Post’s verified story on Hunter Biden as misinformation and its subsequent censorship during the 2020 election, as well as myriad true scientific claims that countered the bureaucracy’s Covid narrative, it’s clear Benson and fellow Democrats’ desire to censor “misinformation” is code for cracking down on any information Democrats don’t like.
What’s To Be Done
Republicans must be wary of Democratic efforts to fortify elections in 2023 and beyond. While some congressional Republicans might think the post-2020 election integrity fight is over, that couldn’t be farther from the truth. Democrats have a massive ground game advantage over Republicans already, and if they pass these policy proposals — under the insufferable label of “voting rights” — in key swing states, that advantage will only grow to an insurmountable one. Republicans must realize election integrity is not a seasonal push nor a battle isolated to 2020. Rather, they must be on offense for years to come.
Victoria Marshall is a staff writer at The Federalist. Her writing has been featured in the New York Post, National Review, and Townhall. She graduated from Hillsdale College in May 2021 with a major in politics and a minor in journalism. Follow her on Twitter @vemrshll.
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is relying on a network of foreign investors to present an illusion of broad support for the agency’s proposed climate disclosure rule, which threatens to increase structural risks to the American economy.
In March, the trade agency outlined new regulations requiring firms to report their estimated energy emissions. While the SEC technically only has jurisdiction over publicly traded companies, the broad nature of the agency’s proposal aims to coerce private businesses into carbon calculations that track the behavior of their customers. Firms that fail to comply with government standards are subject to fines and lawsuits.
The new rules are “a disingenuous power grab by the SEC,” Will Hild, the executive director of Consumers’ Research, said in an interview.
“By requiring the corporations the SEC regulates to make scope 2 emissions disclosures, those corporations will be forced to require the businesses they source from to calculate and disclose their emissions or stop doing business with them,” Hild told The Federalist. “So even if a business is private (not publicly traded) but their customers are public companies, then the SEC will have effectively forced them to participate in the disclosures scheme.”
According to an analysis of the SEC’s proposal from the Western Energy Alliance, a coalition of predominantly small independent oil and gas producers, more than 80 percent of asset managers cited by the agency as supportive of the new regulations are foreign. Just 7 percent of American asset managers support the disclosure rules.
The white paper from the Alliance published in June outlines how activist investors are masquerading as representative of majority sentiment on Wall Street despite just a handful of firms forming multiple coalitions. According to the report, seven major climate change advocacy organizations cited by SEC as behind the agency on mandated disclosure include the same investor coalition groups working in close collaboration. It’s as if the same 50 members of Congress formed 100 different caucuses that pledged support to particular legislation to show proof of consensus.
“These groups are so intertwined that it is not at all clear they represent anything other than a minority of investors advancing a particular policy agenda,” the Alliance report reads. “Across those seven climate initiatives and the global network of non-profit organizations that support them, only 19 percent are American. More than half are European.”
Among the groups behind the SEC climate disclosure is Climate Action 100+, a coalition of investors pushing to eliminate highly efficient fossil fuels through public and private policy. Earlier this month, House Republicans on Capitol Hill launched an antitrust probe into the group, where they described Climate Action 100+ as a “cartel” to “ensure the world’s largest corporate greenhouse gas emitters take… action on climate change.’”
The Alliance white paper also highlights Russian influence at the center of the SEC’s proposed rule via an endorsement from the Sea Change Foundation. In 2015, the Environmental Policy Alliance described the Sea Change Foundation as “a conduit for funneling Russian government money to U.S. environmental groups in order to undermine American natural gas and oil production to Russia’s benefit.”
Kremlin oligarchs stand to profit by Washington’s elimination of fossil fuels because that would force global markets to rely on Moscow for their energy needs.
In March, 20 House lawmakers sent a letter to Oversight Committee Chairwoman Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., that raised the alarm on Russian interference in the American environmental lobby sabotaging energy security.
“Given the impact that Russia’s control of the European energy market has had in the lead up and prosecution of the war in Ukraine, it is critical that Congress gains a better understanding of the role that Russian financing has had in shaping American environmental policy and sentiment,” lawmakers wrote.
Maloney, however, continued to preside over hearings that targeted oil and gas producers as Democrats demand that reliable power from fossil fuels be replaced by less-reliable wind and solar.
Tristan Justice is the western correspondent for The Federalist. 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.
It seems like every time I turn around, an editor assigns me a story related to the mental health crises of our children. Most of the health experts I speak to correlate Covid lockdowns and our children’s fragile state. Closing schools played a major role in this phenomenon, but what if other crucial factors are being overlooked?
Another story, seemingly unrelated to the mental health crisis, is making the rounds in the corporate press. Church attendance is on a rapid decline. The “nones,” survey respondents who say they have no religious affiliation, are the fastest-growing group in the United States every year. We now have a generation of adults that grew up not attending worship services weekly, and they are raising their children in a similar fashion.
The “nones” seem to prefer a parenting style that says: “We’re fine without church and worship and religious instruction and institutions, thank you very much.” But they are not fine. Their children are not coping and managing the day-to-day stresses and inconveniences thrown at them. They are fragile and increasingly so.
The “nones” will tell you it is because we need to better embrace children’s differences and preferences (like their pronouns) while empowering them with positive affirmations and encouraging personal acceptance through self-esteem workshops. We clutter their calendars with sports, theater, STEM clubs, and dance classes. If none of that pans out, we allow our kids to self-medicate with hours spent on social media.
Parents will do all of this, but won’t take their families to church. Yet research shows that children who attend weekly worship services have higher GPAs, score higher on standardized tests, and are less likely to be held back a grade. They also are more likely to achieve a bachelor’s degree in college.
So why aren’t parents taking their children to weekly worship?
When surveyed, parents often respond that their children and teens do not want to attend worship. This democratic approach to family decision-making only seems to apply to church attendance, however. For other important decisions like wearing a seatbelt or vaccinations, parents balk at giving their children voting privileges. A child’s vote carries more weight when it aligns with a parent’s desire to stay home in pajamas on a Sunday morning.
Why should church attendance be considered a powerful tool for parents to boost their children’s mental health? We can look to the research for the answer.
In a 2018 study, Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health found some surprising benefits to children and adolescents who attend weekly worship. It turns out that children and teens who attend church grow up to be young adults with higher rates of reported happiness and life satisfaction. They were less likely to suffer from anxiety and depression, less likely to use illicit drugs, and less likely to engage in early sex and contract sexually transmitted infections.
In addition, these same young adults were more likely to embrace volunteering and reported feeling a sense of mission and purpose than their non-church-attending counterparts.
With all of these positive outcomes for children who attend weekly worship, should we be surprised that children who do not have a similar structure in their lives experience an inverse phenomenon? Is it any wonder that anxiety and depression among children and teens are on the rise when every day, their still-forming brains are bombarded with information about doom and destruction while they drown in a sea of gender confusion and racial animus?
We think we can combat all the negativity by telling children: “You are perfect! You are awesome! You keep being you!” We put these pithy platitudes on T-shirts and backpacks and stickers with unicorns and rainbows. At the end of a bad day, our kids know that this is no substitute for the real deal.
Each of us knows these sentiments are superficial. We are poor, miserable sinners in need of forgiveness. Where do we go with all our baggage when the church is not an option? We go to therapists and pharmacists, but trends show that the last place parents want to go is the place actually offering a solution.
What could families find at church that they won’t find anywhere else? Hopefully, something that is woefully lacking in the world around them: the truth.
Newsflash, kids! You are not perfect! You know that mean thing you did to your classmate in the cafeteria? That was a sin. And that nasty thought you had about that person? That was a sin. And the snide comment you made to your mom when you were hangry? Yep. Are you starting to see a pattern here?
Good news: you’ve come to the right place! Jesus came for sinners. As a matter of fact, the church is filled with them. Each week, they come to hear the message that even though we are sinful human beings, Jesus died for those sins. When we confess those nasty thoughts and horrible things we did, we can receive forgiveness — a clean slate!
Will we mess up again on Monday? Of course. But that’s why we can look forward to church. Can we try harder to be better people? Kinder people? Yes, we can. Does our forgiveness depend upon what we do and how we perform each week? Nope. You are forgiven because God loves you that much, so much that he sent his son to take the punishment that should have been yours and mine.
Imagine what a burden could be lifted from our children if they had a place to go each week that offered them that grace. How much better could they cope with a bad day, knowing that each moment offers a fresh start? How much more resilient could our children become?
Parents, we put our children at a disadvantage when we do not give them the very thing they need for their mental and spiritual health. It is time to put a new priority on the family calendar every Sunday. If we won’t do it for ourselves (and we should), let’s do it for our children. The next generation depends on it.
Mary Rose Kulczak is a writer for various parent and child publications. She is a wife and mother of three sons, and currently resides in Saline, Michigan.
It seems like all I hear these days is how liberals are red-hot for teaching history, while retrograde troglodytes on the right are demanding that we suppress the teaching of history by banning critical race theory (CRT). Haranguing students, day in day out, about their white privilege is just teaching history.
On this beloved Kwanzaa week, here’s some history for you.
Celebrated exclusively by white liberals, Kwanzaa is a fake holiday invented in 1966 by black radical/FBI stooge Ron Karenga — aka Dr. Maulana Karenga, founder of United Slaves, the violent nationalist rival to the Black Panthers. Liberals have become so mesmerized by multicultural gibberish that they have forgotten the real history of Kwanzaa and Karenga’s United Slaves.
In what was ultimately a foolish gambit, during the madness of the ’60s, the FBI encouraged the most extreme black nationalist organizations in order to discredit and split the left. The more preposterous the group, the better. (It’s the same function Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez serves today.)
By that criterion, Karenga’s United Slaves was perfect.
Despite modern perceptions that blend all the black activists of the ’60s, the Black Panthers did not hate whites. Although some of their most high-profile leaders were drug dealers and murderers, they did not seek armed revolution.
No, those were the precepts of Karenga’s United Slaves. The United Slaves were proto-fascists, walking around in dashikis, gunning down Black Panthers and adopting invented “African” names. (I will not be shooting any Black Panthers this week because I am Kwanzaa-reform, and we are not that observant.)
It’s as if David Duke invented a holiday called “Anglika,” which he based on the philosophy of “Mein Kampf” — and clueless public schoolteachers began celebrating the made-up, racist holiday.
In the category of the-gentleman-doth-protest-too-much, back in the ’70s, Karenga was quick to criticize Nigerian newspapers that claimed that certain American black radicals were CIA operatives.
Now we know the truth: The FBI fueled the bloody rivalry between the Panthers and United Slaves. In the annals of the American ’60s, Karenga was the Father Gapon, stooge of the czarist police. Whether Karenga was a willing FBI dupe or just a dupe remains unclear.
In one barbarous outburst, Karenga’s United Slaves shot two Black Panthers to death on the UCLA campus: Al “Bunchy” Carter and John Huggins. Karenga himself served time, a useful stepping-stone for his current position as the chair of the Africana Studies Department at California State University at Long Beach.
The left has forgotten the FBI’s tacit encouragement of this murderous black nationalist cult founded by the father of Kwanzaa. The esteemed Cal State professor’s invented holiday is a nutty blend of schmaltzy ’60s rhetoric, black racism and Marxism. The seven principles of Kwanzaa are the very same seven principles of the Symbionese Liberation Army, another invention of The Worst Generation.
In 1974, Patty Hearst, kidnap victim-cum-SLA revolutionary, famously posed next to the banner of her alleged captors, a seven-headed cobra. Each snakehead stood for one of the SLA’s revolutionary principles: Umoja, Kujichagulia, Ujima, Ujamaa, Nia, Kuumba and Imani. These are the exact same seven “principles” of Kwanzaa.
When Karenga was asked to distinguish Kawaida, the philosophy underlying Kwanzaa, from “classical Marxism,” he essentially said that, under Kawaida, we also hate whites. (And here’s something interesting: Kawaida, Kwanzaa and Kuumba are also the only three Kardashian sisters not to have their own shows on the E! network.)
While taking the “best of early Chinese and Cuban socialism” (is that the mass murder or the seizure of private property?), Karenga said Kawaida practitioners believe one’s racial identity “determines life conditions, life chances and self-understanding.”
There’s an inclusive philosophy for you!
Sing to “Jingle Bells”:
Kwanzaa bells, dashikis sell
Whitey has to pay;
Burning, shooting, oh what fun
On this made-up holiday!
Kwanzaa emerged not from Africa, but from the FBI’s COINTELPRO. It is a holiday celebrated exclusively by idiot white liberals. Black Americans celebrate Christmas.
The United States Department of State has just issued its annual watchlist of the world’s worst religious freedom offenders, and strikingly, Nigeria did not make the cut. The country is among the most dangerous in the world to be a Christian, and daily we hear news of abuses imperiling the human rights of all Nigerians. In breaking news: Since at least 2013, the Nigerian military has conducted systematic, wide-scale forced abortions on at least 10,000 women and girls, many of which were kidnapped and raped by Islamist militants.
Yet in spite of clear-cut evidence of mass human rights atrocities, the U.S. government remains silent, failing to designate Nigeria as a “country of particular concern.” Between January 2021 and March 2022, more than 6,000 Christians were targeted and killed in Nigeria. In May of this year, Christian student Deborah Yakubu was stoned to death and her body burned in Sokoto State, Nigeria, after classmates deemed her WhatsApp messages blasphemous. Following this tragedy, Rhoda Ya’u Jatau, a Christian woman from the northeast, is now on trial for blasphemy for sharing a WhatsApp message condemning Deborah’s brutal killing. And earlier this year, humanist Mubarak Bala was sentenced to 24 years in prison for social media posts critical of Islam.
What will it take to break the Biden administration’s silence? Now, Nigeria is garnering international attention as a result of an upcoming case at its Supreme Court challenging a law criminalizing so-called “blasphemous” expression. You can be put to death under Nigerian law for this “crime.” Musician Yahaya Sharif-Aminu, currently imprisoned and facing the death penalty for blasphemy charges, has petitioned the court to protect his fundamental human rights after being convicted under the Sharia Penal Code of Kano State.
In March 2020, Yahaya shared song lyrics via WhatsApp. This simple act would forever change his life. Accused of insulting the Prophet Muhammad for what he shared, his house was burned to the ground by a mob, and he was arrested and charged with blasphemy. Without the support of a lawyer, he was tried, convicted, and sentenced by a local Sharia judge to death by hanging.
Innocent of any crime, Yahaya filed his notice of appeal in November at the Supreme Court, and this potential landmark case could abolish once and for all Northern Nigeria’s Sharia blasphemy law.
Twenty years ago, the 12 states in Northern Nigeria introduced Sharia into their criminal law codes, despite the Nigerian Constitution’s protections for religious freedom. These laws are only supposed to apply to Muslims, but leave little room for theological diversity among Muslims, and could potentially be applied to converts to Christianity or those who have left Islam. It is imperative that the Supreme Court bring justice to Yahaya, saving his life and offering much-needed legal clarity to end the horror of blasphemy laws for all in Nigeria.
International law, including the international treaties to which Nigeria is bound as a party, is unambiguous — the right to religious freedom is for everyone, and nobody should be punished, much less killed, for what they believe. Moreover, Nigeria’s own constitution protects Yahaya’s rights to free expression and religious freedom. Any person of faith or no faith at all can be penalized, and even killed, as a result of a blasphemy accusation. In a country of more than 200 million, split nearly evenly between Christians and Muslims, it is clear that all Nigerians stand to lose under the blasphemy regime.
Blasphemy laws are not unique to Nigeria. Approximately 40 percent of countries in the world have blasphemy laws in some form, and there are currently at least seven countries where a conviction for blasphemy can result in the death penalty. Nigeria has before it a crucial opportunity to step out as an international leader, serving as a model for the abolishment of these dangerous laws.
The world awaits justice for Yahaya. Last week, the U.K. prime minister’s special envoy for freedom of religion or belief, Fiona Bruce, urged “the international human rights community to speak out on behalf of Sharif-Aminu and for Nigeria to repeal its blasphemy laws.” As he fights for his life, let us remember that this is a fight for the human rights of all Nigerians, and stand with him in advocating for the rights of all people to express themselves without fear.
Paul Coleman is the author of Censored and serves as executive director of ADF International overseeing the global, alliance-building legal organization. ADF International is supporting the case of Yahaya Sharif-Aminu at the Supreme Court of Nigeria. Find him on Twitter @Paul_B_Coleman.
When the bureau’s own former general counsel calls the FBI’s conduct ‘odd,’ it’s clear who’s discrediting the agency: It isn’t conspiracy theorists — it’s the FBI.
Emails released on Saturday as part of the latest dump of the “Twitter Files” reveal that the week before the 2020 presidential election, the FBI field office investigating Hunter Biden sent multiple censorship requests to Twitter — so many in fact, a top attorney for the tech giant found it “odd.” This blockbuster detail from the weekend came mere days after the FBI issued a statement framing coverage of the “Twitter Files” as “misinformation” being peddled by “conspiracy theorists.”
The FBI has “some folks in the Baltimore field office and at HQ that are just doing keyword searches for violations,” then-Twitter legal executive Stacia Cardille stressed in a Nov. 3, 2020, email to Jim Baker, the then-deputy general counsel for Twitter. “This is probably the 10th request I have dealt with in the last 5 days,” Cardille continued, before telling Baker to let her know if he had any other questions.”
Less than an hour later, Baker responded to Cardille, noting it was “odd” that the FBI is “searching for violations of our policies.”
Independent journalist Matt Taibbi published these emails as part of a 50-something Christmas Eve “Twitter Files” thread that he remarked showed “the FBI acting as doorman to a vast program of social media surveillance and censorship, encompassing agencies across the federal government – from the State Department to the Pentagon to the CIA.”
The entire thread is newsworthy, but that FBI agents in both the Baltimore field office and at FBI headquarters were running keyword searches for supposed Twitter violations proves hugely significant because both offices were involved in the Hunter Biden investigation.
While the Delaware U.S. Attorney’s Office is — and was at the time of the 2020 election — handling the investigation into Hunter Biden, reportedly for potential money laundering and tax crimes, there is no separate Delaware FBI field office. Rather, the Baltimore FBI field office covers all of Delaware for the bureau and thus supported (and continues to support) the Delaware U.S. Attorney’s Office in its investigation of Hunter Biden.
We also know from multiple FBI whistleblowers that FBI headquarters entangled itself in the Hunter Biden probe: In July 2022, Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, announced that “multiple FBI whistleblowers, including those in senior positions,” had claimed that “in August of 2020, FBI supervisory intelligence analyst Brian Auten opened an assessment, which was used by a team of agents at FBI headquarters to improperly discredit and falsely claim that derogatory information about Biden’s activities was disinformation, causing investigative activity and sourcing to be shut down.”
“The FBI headquarters team allegedly placed their assessment findings in a restricted access subfolder, effectively flagging sources and derogatory evidence related to Hunter Biden as disinformation while shielding the justification for such findings from scrutiny,” according to Grassley.
Given the involvement of both Baltimore FBI and FBI headquarters in the investigation of Hunter Biden — and the latter’s attempt to shut down the probe — the revelation that “some folks in the Baltimore field office and at HQ” were “doing keyword searches for violations,” suggests the FBI undertook a full-court press to interfere in the 2020 election.
Previously released “Twitter Files” and statements from Twitter and Facebook established the FBI lied to the tech giants, representing the Hunter Biden laptop story as Russian disinformation and prompting the censorship of the Biden-family scandal mere weeks before the 2020 election. Internal Twitter communications also revealed that the night before the New York Post published emails from Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop that implicated Joe Biden in a pay-to-play scandal, “the FBI used a private communications channel to send 10 documents to a top Twitter executive.”
The “Twitter Files” also exposed “Twitter’s contact with the FBI was constant and pervasive, as if it were a subsidiary of the FBI,” as Taibbi explained in an earlier thread. The “Twitter Files” Taibbi previously reported showed that from “January 2020 to November 2022, there were over 150 emails between the FBI and former Twitter Trust and Safety Chief Yoel Roth.” Those communications indicated “agencies like the FBI and DHS regularly sending social media content to Twitter through multiple entry points, pre-flagged for moderation.”
These earlier threads, however, all focused on either communications coming from the San Francisco FBI field office or discussed the monthly and then weekly meetings between Twitter and the federal government’s Foreign Influence Task Force, or FITF. As Taibbi noted, the FBI greatly expanded the number of agents assigned to the FITF following the 2016 election, with the task force swelling to 80 agents.”
With FBI San Francisco and the FITF already liaisoning with Twitter, why then would the Baltimore field office and FBI headquarters have any involvement in communicating with Twitter? And as Saturday’s emails reveal, those officers were not merely passing on information they received, they were, according to a Twitter legal executive, running “keyword” searches — something even Baker, who was previously general counsel for the FBI, found “odd.”
And the Baltimore field office and FBI headquarters conducted these “keyword” searches and shared the results with Twitter for one reason only: to prompt Twitter to censor the speech the week before the 2020 presidential election.
“Odd” doesn’t even begin to capture the situation — which, given the connection between those two FBI offices and the Hunter Biden investigation, suggests a new wing to the Big Tech scandal: one in which FBI agents proactively sought out people and speech to censor for the benefit their politician of choice.
Ironically, the Wednesday before Taibbi broke this latest news, the FBI issued a statement claiming that “the correspondence between the FBI and Twitter show nothing more than examples of our traditional, longstanding and ongoing federal government and private sector engagements, which involve numerous companies over multiple sectors and industries. … It is unfortunate that conspiracy theorists and others are feeding the American public misinformation with the sole purpose of attempting to discredit the agency.”
When the bureau’s own former general counsel calls the FBI’s conduct “odd,” it’s pretty clear who is discrediting the agency: It isn’t conspiracy theorists — it’s the FBI.
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.
Well, the Jan. 6 committee has produced its long-awaited report. In a surprise move, the committee referred former President Donald Trump for criminal prosecution, accusing him of inciting insurrection, among other crimes.
In fairness, Jan. 6, 2021, was the day that Trump announced he would open our southern border and allow nearly 5 million unvetted illegal immigrants into our country, whereupon they would be flown to various cities around the U.S. and given full access to all our welfare programs.
Obviously, this constitutes insurrectionary behavior. The committee had no choice but to demand criminal charges.
LATE BULLETIN: It was NOT the former president who did this, but the current president, Joe Biden. In another development, it turns out that engineering a foreign invasion of our country has been redefined as a “humanitarian mission.”
When will this “humanitarian mission” end? Apparently, never — not until all 7 billion humans living in places less luxe than America have moved here, at which point America won’t be so hot anymore, so no one will want to come.
Thus, The New York Times quoted Jennifer Quigley, of Human Rights First, saying of our intervention in Afghanistan: “We can’t claim mission accomplished. There are still too many vulnerable people abroad.”
After spending billions of dollars trying to build a semblance of civil society in that stone-age culture, evidently now we’re supposed to open our doors to everyone who lives there. Even granting that absurd notion, I can’t help but notice that Quigley seamlessly shifted from “Afghanistan” to “people abroad.”
So we have to take in every “vulnerable” person who doesn’t already live in the U.S.? Is there any other way to interpret her statement?
CNN demands that we fly Afghans here directly, not content to wait for these future Nobel Prize-winners to take the air-land route from Afghanistan through Central America into our country — which they are also doing.
For the last few weeks, CNN has aired a story almost every hour about how Afghans “risked their lives” to save Americans, so now we owe them permanent residency in our country. It’s unclear whom we were ever fighting, inasmuch as everyone in the country seems to have been a “translator.”
CNN hosts triumphantly produced a letter by “retired diplomats,” warning that if the U.S. doesn’t “support its allies” [by allowing them to move here], “in the future our allies will be less likely to support the U.S. missions.” (And then who will teach third-worlders about feminism, gays and George Floyd?)
Former U.S. Marine Paul Whelan must be relieved to hear liberals admit that how we treat those who put their lives on the line for our country will determine how we are willing to do so in the future. Whelan, you’ll recall, is rotting in a Russian prison, because a lesbian, Women’s National Basketball Association star (but I repeat myself) took precedence over him in a prisoner trade. We’re looking for a few good men. Anybody? Anybody?
We’ve already taken in 76,000 Afghans since Biden’s smooth withdrawal last year. (Please, God, tell me we rescued the Afghans who helped paint the George Floyd mural.)
And look at what a blessing they’ve been!
Mohammad Haroon Imaad was among the first batch of beloved Afghan “translators” brought to America last year. He was still living on the Fort McCoy military base in Wisconsin when he was charged with beating and choking his wife. She explained that he beat her all the time back in Afghanistan, once blinding her in both eyes.
Obviously, the Imaad household is going to be a real boon to our country. Yeah, we’re gonna have to raise the Social Security retirement age and start means-testing, but on the bright side, we’ve provided housing to Mrs. Imaad and paid for her astronomically expensive eye operations.
On the very same military base, another cherished Afghan ally, Bahrullah Noori, committed multiple forcible sexual assaults on children within weeks of arriving. Other Afghans flown to Fort McCoy showed up with child brides and multiple wives.
Just weeks after the Afghan-of-the-Month competition at Fort McCoy, another Afghan on our “must-have” list, Zabihullah Mohmand, was accused of raping a woman in Missoula, Montana. How long had he been here? A week? But the good news is, Mohmand was fully vetted by our government, according to U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas. If you can’t trust those guys …
In response, the media promptly stopped reporting those stories. Perhaps a better idea would be for CNN to have a word with the 76,000 “translators” already deposited on our shores. Hey, guys! Remember, for the next few months, NO RAPING!
Again, these were the most-favored Afghans, the ones who qualified for the first round of emergency admissions. And they just keep coming.
Now, that’s what most people call an “insurrection.”
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In 2010, Bill Gates famously articulated a four-part equation to reducing the world’s carbon output. Seemingly bizarrely, his first component was reducing the population — through vaccination. “The world today has 6.8 billion people. That’s headed up to about nine billion,” bemoaned Gates in his now infamous TED Talk. “Now, if we do a really great job on new vaccines, health care, reproductive health services, we could lower that by, perhaps, 10% or 15%.” Until recently, I thought this must have been a gaffe. After all, how could vaccines reduce the world’s population? Well, enter the COVID jabs – if you even want to call them vaccines – and we might have our answer.
Questions about fertility issues, stillbirths, and neonatal deaths began to be raised last winter when Scotland experienced a month of higher infant mortality than at any time over the past three decades. Then in the spring of 2022, roughly nine months after most young adults were jabbed with the COVID shots, COVID data analysists began noticing unusual drops in birth rates. The hope was that these numbers were just short-term aberrations due to some unknown transient cause. But months later, the evidence is growing too strong to ignore, suggesting a much longer-term problem, which bizarrely has garnered little concern from policymakers, governments, the medical establishment, or the media. It ranks alongside “died suddenly” both in terms of its magnitude to humanity and the shocking degree of silence in response.
In fact, some media outlets were even celebrating the low birth rates without expressing any curiosity as to the sudden cause. While it’s impossible to prove definitively that the correlation equals causation, it’s stupefying that these shots are not under suspicion given that they are already tied to heart problems, blood clots, massive inflammatory syndromes, and menstrual irregularities and that the lipid nano particles are deposited largely in the ovaries and the testes.
When you are dealing with 1-in-1,000-year anomalies, it takes a civilization-changing event to account for the anomaly. COVID itself cannot be a factor in the sudden drop, because the birth rates were not declining nine months after COVID hit or even in the first year and a half. The other culprit could have been lockdowns, which perhaps disrupted travel, relationships, and cohabitation. But if that were the case, by now we should be seeing a bounce-back effect. Instead, as my friend “Gato Malo” points out on his Substack, the numbers are getting worse.
Sweden is a perfect country to study because it never locked down and should not have been affected socially by the lockdowns. Yet not only did the Swedes experience a sharp decline in births nine months after their vaccination program, the numbers are further deteriorating over time. According to Statistics Sweden, live births are down 8.1% for the year (8.7% per capita), but as Gato observes, the worst month was October 2022 (the most recent month with data), which saw a 13.2% per capita decline. What on earth could explain the fact that this trend is getting worse, other than … you know what? He collated the data from 25 years, and this data, which is in plain sight, raises the question of why there is no policy concern whatsoever.
He further demonstrates that the plummeting birth rates correlate perfectly with the uptake of the vaccines in Sweden among the childbearing population.
Furthermore, any hypothesis as to the cause of the plummeting birth rates would also have to logically account for the rise in neonatal deaths. For example, lockdowns would not explain why the babies being born are experiencing more health problems. The spike protein embedded in the babies’ blood, however, would. Israeli researcher Josh Guetzkow obtained neonatal death data from Israeli health insurance fund Maccabi, which covers 25% of Israelis. He found a tripling of neonatal deaths in two of the quarters post-vaccination.
The timing is very peculiar, according to Guetzkow:
In February, 2021, the Israeli Ministry of Health started to officially recommend COVID-19 vaccines for pregnant women in their 2nd and 3rd trimesters, so the timing of the second quarter spike would coincide with women being jabbed later in their pregnancy 2-4 months prior.
The 4th quarter spike coincides with the booster vaccination campaign in Israel in August and especially September — a drive that aggressively targeted pregnant women. Unfortunately the health insurer claimed not to have information on the vaccination status of pregnant women, so we are not able to differentiate by vaccination status.
This clearly rules out COVID as the culprit, because the neonatal deaths in the earlier quarters in 2020 were low. He goes on to note that this data complements earlier findings he publicized from two major Israeli hospitals showing a sudden increase in stillbirths, miscarriages, and abortions (collectively, SBMA) around the same time. The insurance data does not illuminate the vaccination status of the mothers suffering these reproductive problems, but his earlier data showed a 34% higher rate of SBMAs in Rambam hospital in Haifa among vaccinated women through October 2021.
Obviously, we all understand that you can’t definitively prove causation from correlation, but the lack of any curiosity from the medical community or the government is appalling, especially when the mechanism of action of the spike protein can logically cause these complications (including low sperm count and motility). We have now entered a new era of “speed of science” in which governments can foist novel products upon our bodies with multiple glaring and blaring safety signals setting off alarm bells all over the world, yet until we can prove conclusively the therapeutics are responsible for 100% of the anomaly, they will continue to be promoted. That is completely backward and represents a flagrant violation of the Nuremberg Code.
In a sane world, the makers of these therapies would be behind bars, but instead they are getting a promotion to concoct even more products with this same dangerous technology. Last week, the U.K. announced the formation of a 10-year partnership with Moderna to invest in more R&D for mRNA technology and to build a vaccine manufacturing center that can produce 250 million vaccines a year, particularly for the very problematic RSV shot the company is planning to release next year. In the irony of all ironies, the U.K.’s Health Security Agency will be overseeing this partnership. The UKHSA was the first health surveillance body in the world that published comprehensive weekly COVID updates showing negative efficacy of the shots almost a year and a half ago.
Typically, failure of a corporate partner is an impetus for a government to break the partnership. In the case of vaccines, however, the more they fail, the more they are elevated, subsidized, and even mandated. Unless their definition of failure is the opposite of how humanity would define it.
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including NewsMax, Fox News, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Rep. Devin Nunes, Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Chris Salcedo, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Donald Trump.
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While electric vehicles may seem to be all the rage in the automotive space, Toyota Motor Corporation president Akio Toyoda is pumping the brakes on the idea of an all-in approach.
“People involved in the auto industry are largely a silent majority,” Toyoda told reporters during a trip to Thailand, according to the Wall Street Journal. “That silent majority is wondering whether EVs are really OK to have as a single option. But they think it’s the trend so they can’t speak out loudly.”
“Because the right answer is still unclear, we shouldn’t limit ourselves to just one option,” he said, according to the outlet — during the past few years, he said, he has attempted to communicate this idea to stakeholders in the automotive space, including government figures, but he indicated that his effort had been tiring at points.
“Is there interest in electric vehicles? Yes. Is it more than 10% to 15% of our customer base? No way,” said Ryan Gremore, a dealer based in Illinois who owns a number of brand franchises, according to the outlet.
According to the Journal, Toyoda said that other options like hydrogen-powered vehicles were starting to receive a better reception from government leaders, media figures, and people in the vehicle industry.
The left has been fanatically pushing electric vehicles as it peddles climate change alarmism.
But electric vehicles remain impractical in many cases — for instance, they require significant time to recharge, which could be an inconvenience when recharging in the middle of a long trip. They are also less affordable to purchase than traditional gas-powered vehicles.
Conservatives on Twitter blasted the news that the Senate had passed the massive $1.7 trillion omnibus bill on a 68-29 vote Thursday, especially targeting the 18 Senate Republicans who voted in favor of more government spending. The Senate approved the 4,000-page bill that funds the government for the rest of the fiscal year, until Sept. 2023. The omnibus included $858 billion for defense, $787 billion for non-defense domestic programs and more than 7,200 earmarks costing over $15 billion.
Though many Republican Senators had spoken out against the large bill, the final tally revealed several Republicans voting in line with the 50 Senate Democrats. Right-leaning social media users and other Republican senators were quick to pile on the “sellouts” who voted in favor of massive Democratic projects and more spending despite high inflation rates.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., voted for the omnibus bill Thursday. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)
“I’m looking forward to 7% approval rating Mitch McConnell’s next lecture on candidate quality after leading the charge to take away the new GOP House majority’s leverage over the budget for an entire year,” X Strategies Senior Digital Strategist Greg Price tweeted.
I'm looking forward to 7% approval rating Mitch McConnell's next lecture on candidate quality after leading the charge to take away the new GOP House majority's leverage over the budget for an entire year.
ACT for America founder Brigitte Gabriel wrote, “Who is worse? The Democrats who are actively destroying the country or the Republicans who are sitting on their hands watching it burn?”
“Yuck,” American Commitment President Phil Kerpen exclaimed.
Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., wrote, “I’m disappointed in some of my fellow Republicans, who voted against respecting the taxpayers and for empowering themselves to spend your money with reckless abandon.“
Sen. Rand Paul called out his fellow Senate Republicans for voting in favor of the spending bill. (Associated Press)
Internet Accountability Project senior counsel Will Chamberlain tweeted, “Every single Republican Senator should be asked – point blank – is the Russia/Ukraine border more important than our own southern border?“
“I never want to hear any of the Republicans who voted for this monstrosity pretend that they’re for fiscal sanity or border security ever again,” Rep. Dan Bishop, R-N.C., wrote.
I never want to hear any of the Republicans who voted for this monstrosity pretend that they’re for fiscal sanity or border security ever again. https://t.co/hvXet6fvFm
Bishop previously went viral after tweeting a lengthy thread on the projects that will be funded within the omnibus bill. Among them included over half a billion dollars into “reproductive health” in areas that “threaten” endangered species.
“On a more sinister note, here’s at least $575 million for ‘family planning’ in areas where population growth ‘threatens biodiversity.’ Malthusianism is a disturbing, anti-human ideology that should have ZERO place in any federal program,” Bishop tweeted.
Rep. Dan Bishop, R-N.C., called out the $1.7 trillion spending bill in a Twitter thread. (Andrew Harnik/Pool via REUTERS)
Other stipulations in the bill included funding for a DEI and “structural racism” National Institute of Health subdivision and the prohibition for the Customs and Border Patrol “to acquire, maintain or extend border security technology and capabilities.”
Lindsay Kornick is an associate editor for Fox News Digital. Story tips can be sent to lindsay.kornick@fox.com and on Twitter: @lmkornick.
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The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration has announced that it seized more than 50.6 million fentanyl-containing “fake prescription pills” and in excess of 10,000 pounds of fentanyl powder during the 2022 calendar year — the DEA laboratory estimated that this amounts to greater than 379 million possibly lethal doses of the dangerous drug.
Fentanyl “is a highly addictive man-made opioid that is 50 times more potent than heroin,” according to the DEA’s press release, which also said that a mere two milligrams of the drug is viewed as a potentially lethal dose.
“These seizures – enough deadly doses of fentanyl to kill every American – reflect DEA’s unwavering commitment to protect Americans and save lives, by tenaciously pursuing those responsible for the trafficking of fentanyl across the United States,” DEA administrator Anne Milgram said, according to the press release. “DEA’s top operational priority is to defeat the two Mexican drug cartels—the Sinaloa and Jalisco (CJNG) Cartels—that are primarily responsible for the fentanyl that is killing Americans today.”
The press release noted that “Most of the fentanyl trafficked by the Sinaloa and CJNG Cartels is being mass-produced at secret factories in Mexico with chemicals sourced largely from China.”
DEA laboratory testing this year found that six out of 10 fentanyl-containing fake prescription pills included a possibly deadly amount of fentanyl, according to the government agency, which also noted that it seized more than twice as many of the fentanyl-laced pills in 2022 as it did in 2021.
The pills are created to appear the same as genuine prescriptions, but include filler and fentanyl and are frequently lethal, according to the DEA.
The DEA has also nabbed almost 131,000 pounds of methamphetamine, over 4,300 pounds of heroin, and more than 444,000 pounds of cocaine this year.
Democrats and RINO Republicans are pushing a $1.7 Trillion Omnibus bill that spends $47 Billion for Ukraine and $410 Million for Border security in the Middle East but nothing for our southern border.
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including NewsMax, Fox News, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Rep. Devin Nunes, Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Chris Salcedo, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Donald Trump.
Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., exposes left-wing agenda in omnibus bill.
The massive $1.7 trillion omnibus bill that was made public by federal lawmakers Tuesday includes a $750,000 earmark for a Los Angeles-based transgender Latina group that wants to “dismantle” the U.S. criminal justice system and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and inject “transgender history and discourse” into elementary schools, among other progressive initiatives.
The release of the bill, which spans 4,155 pages, came after negotiations between Senate Republicans and House and Senate Democrats. The sprawling package, which contains $858 billion in defense spending and $772.5 billion in non-defense discretionary spending, has to pass by the end of the week to avoid a partial government shutdown.
The bill, under “disclosure of earmarks and congressionally directed spending items,” directs $750,000 to the TransLatin@ (pronounced “trans Latina”) Coalition, which has local chapters in nearly a dozen states, for “workforce development programs and supportive services.”
The earmark was requested by Rep. Jimmy Gomez, D-Calif., who sits on the Congressional LGBTQ+ Equality Caucus.
Rep. Jimmy Gomez, D-Calif., center, and Los Angeles mayoral candidate Rep. Karen Bass, second from right, call on civic leaders from all over Los Angeles to initiate a plan of action to address the racist, anti-Black, antisemitic, anti-LGBTQ, anti-Indigenous, anti-Armenian recordings at a press conference on Oct. 21, 2022. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)
Gomez’s office did not respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.
According to the TransLatin@ Coalition’s “#TransPolicyAgenda,” posted on its website, the group wants to end all construction of detention centers, shut down existing jails and prisons, and decriminalize what it describes as “survival crimes,” like loitering, sleeping outside, panhandling and sex work.
“In an ideal world, we’d begin by abolishing the police force as it currently exists, however this is not a realistic outcome through policy,” the group’s agenda states. “We approach criminal justice work with an internal abolitionist lens, intending to critique, dismantle and rebuild our criminal justice system with community members in and out of jail and prison.”
Bamby Salcedo, president and CEO of the TransLatin@ Coalition, gives remarks at the White House summit on “The United State of Women” in Washington, D.C., on June 14, 2016. (Getty Images/File)
The group also wants the U.S. to “dismantle” ICE and completely open its borders to transgender, gender non-conforming and intersex (TGI) individuals, stating that “our freedom to access and protections is a divine right.“
“Migration is not a crime and our policies must reflect this truth,” the agenda states. “TGI communities should be free to migrate without fear of government terrorism, especially when escaping government violence.“
“To truly reach global trans rights and work toward TGI liberation, we must collectively eliminate the ongoing violence ICE continues to ensue against TGI migrants,” it continues. “ICE has done more harm than good and it must be dismantled.“
The group also wants transgender-specific “history and discourse” to be mandated at the state level for elementary and middle school students. The group argues that while the FAIR Education Act in California mandated the inclusion of LGBTQ people in school curricula, it often leaves out TGI communities.
“Implementation of the policy began in 2017, and although there is acknowledgement [sic] of two-spirit people history and other Transgender leaders, the majority of curriculum is focused on the Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual community,” the agenda states. “Transgender history and discourse must begin in schools and primary education to promote respect and acceptance from early ages.“
From left: Reps. Mondaire Jones, D-N.Y.; Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y.; Jimmy Gomez, D-Calif.; and Al Green, D-Texas, applaud during a rally on the eviction moratorium at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., on Aug. 3, 2021. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
Rep. Jimmy Gomez, D-Calif., wears a mask reading, “EXPEL MTG,” referring to Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., outside the Capitol on May 13, 2021. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call Inc. via Getty Images)
The group also wants taxpayer-funded paid medical leave for gender transition surgeries and treatments.
“Medical leave access in employment is centered around family or pregnancy, which is necessary, but access to medical leave should also extend to address the health needs of TGI people,” the agenda states. “We advocate for policy that expands existing medical leave law to include transition related and gender affirming care and protects employees from being denied medical leave for reasons related to recovery from said surgeries.”
GENDER AFFIRMING CARE RESULTS.
According to its Strategic Plan for 2022-2027, the group is exploring the possibility of dropping the word “Latinx” in favor of “Latine” for Latin transgender individuals.
“While we recognize the use of the term Latinx in the English language, we are cognizant that does not improve the perception of Trans individuals,” the plan states. “We have been exploring the use of the term Latine, the projection and use it has in the Spanish language. Our board will continue to explore the impact it will have in adopting its use in our organization and potential changes our organization will adopt.”
The TransLatin@ Coalition recently announced that its president and CEO, Bamby Salcedo, joined the transition team for Los Angeles Mayor-elect Karen Bass, whom Gomez endorsed and campaigned with ahead of the November election.
It’s official: @RepKarenBass is the next mayor of LA!
Congratulations Madam Mayor on making history. Looking forward to continue our work together from the halls of Congress to City Hall!https://t.co/DYS9xcp2SZ
Salcedo was celebrated several times by the Obama White House and joined then-Vice President Joe Biden onstage during a June 2016 “United State of Women Summit.”
The group made headlines in October 2018 after members protested the Trump administration’s policies by unfurling a banner that read, “Trans People Deserve to Live,” during Game 5 of the World Series in Los Angeles.
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Schools across America are affirming the gender dysphoria of children without parental consent. While some educators have been exposed for intentionally confusing children on matters of sex and identity, entire school boards are doubling down, with some battling in court to keep facilitating students’ so-called transitions without telling parents.
When Jennifer — who omitted her surname for the sake of her child’s privacy — caught her school covertly transitioning her 10-year-old daughter; she rescued her little girl and began homeschooling.
In many similar cases, the cards appear stacked against parents, particularly those unable to homeschool but wary of strangers confusing their kids and putting them on paths to sterile, drug-dependent, and disenchanted lives.
Jennifer recognized that while her little girl was spared, she wouldn’t be the last targeted; that educators, school administrators, pharmaceutical companies, psychologists, and other power- and profit-incentivized parties were just getting started. Recognizing that other parents may need help and that this is a battle worth winning, Jennifer and other parents are now going on the offensive.
TheBlaze recently spoke to Jennifer about the fight her volunteer organization, Partners for Ethical Care, is taking to the loose coalition of bad actors apparently eager to transmogrify children, usurp parental rights, and turn a profit at the expense of innocence.
What are the details?
In November, Jennifer told Wesley Yang, who runs the Substack “Year Zero,” about how her school first socially transitioned her 10-year-old daughter without informing her.
“The school was using a name that she made up, so not her name that was given to her, and different pronouns,” said Jennifer.
Jennifer’s daughter no longer used the girl’s bathroom. Had she been 13 or older, she would have been able to use boy’s facilities without Jennifer knowing, but as she was still only 10 at the time, she instead used the office washroom.
A school therapist would regularly meet with Jennifer’s daughter, ultimately in excess of five hours.
In these meetings, the therapist would reportedly employ biologically inaccurate pronouns in reference to the little girl and egg on the child’s temporary identity crisis.
One teacher went so far as to suggest that Jennifer’s little girl be assigned to a boys’ cabin at camp.
For the most part, the school elected not to keep Jennifer’s family in the loop.
“It just felt so much like an injustice,” she told TheBlaze. “I knew I was gonna try to do whatever I could to push back against it.”
Despite fearing that Child Protective Services might break up her family, citing her refusal to accommodate the so-called transition, Jennifer ultimately pulled her daughter out. CPS fortunately never came, and Jennifer now homeschools her child.
Her daughter’s previous confusion, exacerbated by her LGBT friend group and by social media, dissipated over time.
While her battle for her daughter’s well-being was over, Jennifer’s war against the “medicalization of children” was just beginning.
Partners for Ethical Care
While Jennifer and her family enjoyed the requisite stability to homeschool, she recognized that not all parents have that as an option. She also suspected that soon, CPS and other state agencies would be weaponized against families antipathetic to the medicalization of their children.
“I do remember at some point, my mother’s saying to me, ‘This is so huge. … What are you going to be able to do?’ I said I don’t know, but if I don’t, who will do something?” said Jennifer. “Everything has to start somewhere, right?”
Jennifer noted that at the time, she wasn’t aware of some of the other groups committed to protecting children from the transsexual agenda but is now well acquainted with the work of Stephanie Davies-Arai of Transgender Trend and others in the U.S. extra to the “vast underground network of parents” committed to the fight.
Keen to do undertake an initiative of their own, Jennifer, Alix Aharon of the Gender Mapping Project, Jeannette Cooper, and several others banded together in fall 2020.
Jennifer recalled the sentiment early on: “We’re like, let’s start this organization. Let’s fight. Let’s fight the medicalization. … We were looking to create awareness because there didn’t seem to be much outside of our tiny bubble. And to gather stories to potentially help [in legal efforts].”
The group they founded is called Partners for Ethical Care.
“No child is born in the wrong body” is the understanding underpinning the work undertaken by the volunteers behind PEC, all committed to stopping the “medicalization of children.”
As part of its campaign to raise awareness, PEC shares testimonials on both its website and podcast from families adversely affected by transsexual ideology as well as from those who have “desisted” (i.e., ended social and or medical transmogrifications.)
PEC also provides parents with resources detailing methods by which they can opt their kids out of gender education programs and find “gender-critical” therapists as well as what to look out for in the way of deceptive practices widely employed by school administrators and educators.
The awareness and resource campaign is critically important, suggested Jennifer, since the fight against the medicalization agenda targeting minors and the true nature of the underlying problem is “under a media blackout, especially in left-wing media, mainstream media.”
Best practices
Jennifer highlighted three major ways parents can confront this threat posed to their children.
First, she suggested that parents should regulate and monitor their kids’ interactions online.
“The biggest thing is for parents to keep their kids off the internet for as long as possible,” she said. “My daughter did learn some of these things in an online forum — a drawing forum.”
Whether it’s on Discord or in online games, “The internet is a predator’s playground right now.”
According to Jennifer, both predators and the ideologically-motivated seek out the vulnerable online.
Narrowing kids’ exposure to content that inspires and promotes gender dysphoria online is important but only a partial measure.
Second, Jennifer suggested that parents need to stand up for their kids in their school districts.
Any ground conceded by parents regarding how their children are to be raised is ground that will ultimately be taken by bad actors. Thus, parents need to keep “standing up for their kids and trying to change the harmful policies” in schools.
“I will say it’s scary for a lot of people to go up [against school boards and educators],” she said, noting how parents critical of transsexual bathroom policies and the crimes they enabled in Loudon County, Virginia, “got framed as terrorists.”
Jennifer suggested that the PEC, like the parental rights movements combatting transsexual propaganda and policies in Virginia and the coalition of Muslim and Christian parents who recently sued a school board in Ohio, are not, contrary to the suggestion of some LGBT activists, “powered by hate.”
“We are not getting paid. We’re doing this out of love. We’re doing this because we care that much,” she said.
This can be hard, she said, because oftentimes schools keep their real intents and policies hidden.
The foundation for these three tactics is awareness.
We’re proud to announce our first event—and it’s a big one. Join us in Austin, TX on April 20, 2023 to learn from a panel of experts from around the world going step-by-step through the process of how Gender Inc Manufactures Trans Kids. Tickets: https://t.co/9WjVuO3RGG
— Partners for Ethical Care (PEC) (@ethical_care) December 5, 2022
American Family Association
American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
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American Family Association
American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
American Family Association
American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
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American Family Association
American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
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American Family Association
American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
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