Maxine Mosley was trailing her Republican opponent Larry Gagne in the Hillsborough 16 House District race last week by 23 votes.
But the machine recount gave the win to Mosley the Democrat.
Imagine that!
Shocker in Manchester’s Ward 6 @NHHouseofReps race — after she congratulated Gagne, there was still counting left & it turns out Maxine Mosley won by a single vote. A flip for the Democrats. #NHPolitics#WMUR
Following a recount, Democrat Maxine Mosley has now defeated Republican Larry Gagne in the Hillsborough 16 House District, consisting of Manchester’s Ward 6, by a final total of 1799 to 1798.
Heading into Monday, Mosley trailed Gagne, 1797 to 1820.
On Monday evening, Mosley said she was overwhelmed by the result, and was told by Secretary of State representatives that a swing of more than nine votes is rare, so this result was historic.
“I did not really anticipate that I could pull it off, but I wanted to use the process of recount to make sure that everyone that supported me knew I was doing everything in my power to have the most verifiable vote at the end,” she said. “I will take today as a win with great, great gratitude.
“It’s very unusual, especially in Manchester with the machines we have to make up 24 votes, we were winning by 23. I don’t know what happened,” said Gagne.
Jim Hoft is the founder and editor of The Gateway Pundit, one of the top conservative news outlets in America. Jim was awarded the Reed Irvine Accuracy in Media Award in 2013 and is the proud recipient of the Breitbart Award for Excellence in Online Journalism from the Americans for Prosperity Foundation in May 2016.
Despite a general lack of concern among Democrats and corporate media, the U.S.-Mexico border continues to spiral out of control, setting new records for illegal border crossings nearly every month now. In October, more than 230,000 illegal immigrants were arrested along the southwest border, the third-highest monthly total in U.S. history, according to new data released by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP). Only May and April of this year have been worse than October, with 235,785 and 241,136 arrests, respectively.
Prior to the Biden administration, monthly arrests at the border rarely exceeded 100,000. In October 2020, for example, roughly 45,000 illegal border-crossers were arrested by CBP. But now it has become commonplace. Every month since March, arrests have surpassed 200,000.
For some historical perspective on the October 2022 numbers, consider that in all of 2017 there were only about 303,000 border arrests, total. And just 46,000 in October of that year.
Since President Joe Biden has taken office, more than 5 million illegal immigrants, including so-called “gotaways” whom Border Patrol wasn’t able to arrest, have crossed the southern border. And unlike previous years, there is no sign of a seasonal ebb and flow at the border. At a time of year when crossings are typically slow, we are now seeing a massive surge.
Apologists for President Biden’s border crisis in the corporate press tend to dismiss these shocking figures and attempt to explain them away by claiming the high monthly totals represent the same people crossing illegally, being expelled under Title 42, and attempting to cross again.
What they don’t mention is that border data has always reflected this phenomenon. Of the 230,000 arrests last month, about 19 percent “had at least one prior encounter in the previous 12 months,” according to CBP. This is only a 5 percent rise compared to the average 14 percent reencounter rate from 2014 to 2019.
Despite these outrageous statistics, Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas has doubled down on his claim that the border is “secure.”
Asked recently whether he “continue[s] to maintain that the border is secure” by Rep. Dan Bishop, R- North Carolina, Mayorkas responded, “Yes, and we are working day in and day out to enhance its security.”
Sophia is an intern at The Federalist and a student at Le Moyne College. She majors in English and intends to pursue a career in journalism.
Since a civil war is about to break out and destroy the modern Republican Party — fingers crossed — let me tell you what grinds my gears.
Young NatCons, many of whom I know and like, seem to be under the impression that they’ve stumbled upon some fresh, electrifying governing philosophy. Really, they’re peddling ideas that already failed to take hold 30 years ago when the environment was far more socially conservative and there were far more working-class voters to draw on. If Americans want class-obsessed statists doling out family-busting welfare checks and whining about Wall Street hedge funds, there is already a party willing to scratch that itch. We don’t need two.
“National conservatism”— granted, still in an amorphous stage — offers a far too narrow agenda for any kind of enduring political consensus. It lacks idealism. It’s a movement tethered to the grievances of a shrinking demographic of rural and Rust-Belt workers with high school degrees at the expense of a growing demographic of college-educated suburbanites.
The “New Right” loves to mock “zombie Reaganism.” Well, the ’80s fusionist coalition, which stressed upward meritocratic mobility, free markets, federalism, patriotism, and autonomy from the soul-crushing federal bureaucracy, was by all historical measures more successful than the Buchananism that followed or Rockefellerism that preceded. Zombie Reaganism was a dramatic success not only in 1980 but also in 1994 and again in 2010 and 2014. The “shining city on a hill” might sound like corny boomerism, but it’s still infinitely more enticing than the bleak apocalypticism of Flight 93.
Too many conservatives misconstrued Donald Trump’s slim 2016 victory as a national realignment. It was a mirage. Trump, a uniquely positioned celebrity candidate, benefitted not only from Obama fatigue but, more than anything else, the cosmic unlikability of Hillary Clinton. Yes, the GOP needed an attitude adjustment, a stiffening of the spine. There is no denying Trump’s presidency achieved some positive results (most of them, incidentally, also on the “zombie Reaganism” front with deregulation and the judiciary), and he made inroads with working-class voters and Latinos. But Republicans have now blown three elections catering to largely incoherent NatCon populism.
There is no one reason or person culpable for the right’s failures in 2022, but there are certain types of candidates finding success. Ron DeSantis, Brain Kemp, and (in 2020) Glenn Youngkin can call out crony capitalism without sounding like Ralph Nader’s comms director. All of them have been highly critical of lawlessness of illegal immigration, but none of them come off like chauvinists. All of them supported heartbeat bills and election integrity laws, and above all, they are competent administrators of government.
The white-collar worker in Virginia or North Carolina, living in a multi-use neighborhood, probably isn’t as preoccupied with drag queen story hour or the intrigues of Big Tech or the Justice Department or Chinese tariffs — as important as those issues might be — as Josh Hawley seems to believe. The suburban voter might be more socially liberal these days, but they are still dispositional conservative. And one strongly suspects they would rather see public school reform, bigger retirement accounts, and lower property tax bills than a commissar regulating the internet or some protectionist policy killing economic dynamism.
Of course, the New Right would like to claim DeSantis as one of their own. Allie Beth Stuckey, like many on the “New Right,” maintains that the Florida governor’s impressive win tells us: “we’re done with the old, corporate tax cuts GOP. We want you to use all the power available to you to crush the entities crushing us.”
That’s a Twitter reality. In the real world, hundreds of thousands of people flock to Florida (and Texas and Arizona) to enjoy an inviting regulatory environment, low taxes, and relative freedom — not to watch the governor teach Disney a lesson. A politician who cuts taxes and opens schools and businesses, despite pressure from the federal government, isn’t “crushing” anyone, he is freeing them. A politician who insists that state-run elementary schools should teach kids math, science, and history rather than identitarianism, myths, and sexuality has a compelling story to tell parents.
DeSantis is also a politician. So he shows up at trendy NatCon conferences, in the same way he used to chase trendy Tea Party endorsements from Club For Growth and FreedomWorks. Despite the left’s claims, DeSantis doesn’t strike me as an ideologue, but rather a champion of normalcy. Maybe incumbents were successful in 2022 because people are sick of drama?
What about J.D. Vance, though, David? Different types of candidates appeal to different regions. No one is arguing that Zombie populism is without any traction. Before Vance, there was Rick Santorum, whose message also had a limited allure. Yes, Vance can win in Ohio. Mike DeWine, about the most milquetoast moderate imaginable, can also win in Ohio, and by a bigger margin. Does Vance win Arizona or Nevada? Probably not. Does Blake Masters win in Ohio? Probably. But Americans are moving to Henderson, Nevada, and Boise, Idaho, not Akron, Ohio.
In the meantime, the New Right’s intellectual movement is a Trojan horse for a bunch of corrosive authoritarian “post-liberal” ideas. If a malleable “common good” means jettisoning limiting principles, well, no thank you. Plenty of secular right-wingers like myself have been defending religious freedom on neutral, classical liberal grounds. Today, the New Right tells me those notions are dead. If that’s true, I wonder who will be left to defend them 10 years from now?
By the way, if you’re under the impression that the New Right think-tankers and technocrats who rail against “elites” and “libertarians” and romanticize lunch-pail unionism are going to send their kids to work in warehouses for minimum wage, I have news for you. That’s reserved for the plebs. It’s no surprise that Compact, the New Right magazine standing athwart the “libertine left and a libertarian right,” employs a Marxist editor or that so many anti-woke socialists feel comfortable allying with the New Right. That’s a Twitter realignment, however, not a real-world one.
Fortunately, it’s highly unlikely that the average Republican with a small business is as antagonistic to the notion of individual liberty as the average First Things editor. The average voter tends not to treat every loss as if it were the end of Rome. It’s bad out there. But people who tell you this is the worst era in history or that we’re facing insurmountable unique problems are just as hysterical as the people who tell you democracy is over. Most Americans realize politics is a grind. I’d love to live in a minarchist paradise, but I’m a realist. There are approximately 349,999 million people who think differently. That’s how it shakes out in a diverse, sprawling nation. A national party needs to broaden its message to convince — not just follow the whims — of as many voters as possible. NatCons are headed in the wrong direction.
My friends believe the Republican Party establishment is incompetent and cowardly. Maybe. Thankfully, we don’t have a binary choice. May both factions fail.
David Harsanyi is a senior editor at The Federalist. Harsanyi is a nationally syndicated columnist and author of five books—the most recent, Eurotrash: Why America Must Reject the Failed Ideas of a Dying Continent. His work has appeared in National Review, the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Reason, New York Post, and numerous other publications. Follow him on Twitter, @davidharsanyi.
In a direct rebuke to Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s radical abortion agenda, the City Council of Hobbs, New Mexico, unanimously voted last week to become a sanctuary city for the unborn. Overwhelming support for and passage of the ordinance mean abortion is now classified as murder and outlawed within Hobbs city limits. It also means that any blue politicians or abortion facilities that try to go against the city’s wishes could face an uphill legal battle.
The vote was vehemently opposed by Lujan Grisham, who called the architects of the ordinance “out-of-state extremists.” The governor’s reaction is no surprise considering her own history of abortion extremism.
Shortly after the Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson decision, Lujan Grisham signed an executive order designating $10 million in taxpayer funds toward the development of an abortion facility in Doña Ana County, an area that shares a border with El Paso, Texas. That was just a couple of months after Lujan Grisham signedan executive order “protecting medical providers from attempts at legal retribution” for granting abortions and refusing to comply with other states’ abortion extradition laws.
“As more states move to restrict and prohibit access to reproductive care, New Mexico will continue to not only protect access to abortion, but to expand and strengthen reproductive health care throughout the state,” Lujan Grisham said in a statement. “Today, I reaffirm my resolve to make sure that women and families in New Mexico — and beyond — are supported at every step of the way.”
Since then, abortion dominated the state’s political scene and even became a focal point in Lujan Grisham’s re-election race against Republican challenger Mark Ronchetti.
Amy Hagstrom Miller, the CEO of Whole Woman’s Health, one of the nation’s largest dealers of abortion, previously told Reuters that Lujan Grisham’s friendliness toward abortion led her to consider relocating some of their Texas facilities closer to the border with New Mexico.
The goal was to offer abortion to women in neighboring Texas cities such as Lubbock, which voted to become a sanctuary city for the unborn in May of 2021, following the Lone Star State’s ban on abortion via the Texas Heartbeat Act.
Residents of Hobbs, a nearly 40,000-person town, however, weren’t taking any chances on getting swept up in Lujan Grisham’s pro-abortion executive spree. The pro-life community in Hobbs as well as the nearby city of Clovis revolted with the introduction of ordinances designed to protect unborn babies.
The threat of legal challenges thanks to widespread support for those sanctuary city ordinances, Hagstrom Miller confessed, “has given her pause about operating in eastern New Mexico.”
“In this post-Dobbs era, where anti-abortion folks are emboldened, I want to be sure we’re in a place where our patients can be safe, where our doctors and our staff can be safe,” she said.
The Clovis City Commission postponed its vote on the ordinance allegedly so it can “perfect the language to better protect against litigation.” “We hope this sends the message to our state legislature that there are pro-life cities out there and we want to self-determine on this issue,” Clovis Mayor Mike Morris said shortly after a vote to advance the ban.
If Clovis passes the ordinance, it will join Hobbs and a myriad of other towns that all recently decided to push back against Democrats’ abortion extremism.
“Between Governor Abbott’s resounding defeat of Robert Francis O’Rourke to four more municipalities joining over fifty towns with existing sanctuary city for the unborn ordinances, this is an exciting time for Texans as we work to end abortion,” Texas Right to Life President Dr. John Seago told The Federalist. “Additionally, as the abortion industry looks to target Texas women from just outside our borders, it is equally exciting that Hobbs, New Mexico has joined the fight and passed the ordinance to keep the desperate abortion industry out of their city limits.”
The pro-life movements in Texas and New Mexico have been so effective recently that they’ve even earned the wrath of the Biden White House.
“We have been very clear about what MAGA extreme Republicans are trying to do when it comes to a woman’s rights to choose,” White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said during a recent trip to New Mexico with President Joe Biden. “They’re trying to take that away, clearly, and in the most extreme ways. What it’s doing is it’s putting women — women and girls’ lives at risk.”
This article was updated on 11/16 to reflect that members of the Clovis City Commission are no longer unanimously “expected to vote in favor of the ban.”
“The Ordinance, as it stands now, is ready. The commission, however, is unready and unwilling,” Mark Lee Dickson, founder of the Sanctuary Cities for the Unborn Initiative, told The Federalist.
Dickson also said that Clovis Mayor Mike Morris is facing backlash after he was “pressured by several Republicans to push things past the election and even past the legislative session.”
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.
There’s plenty of blame to go around for the disappointing results of the last week’s election: the current post-Covid rules (or lack thereof) for voting, mismanaged ballot collection and counting, Republican leadership, and American voters. Naturally, all of these factors played a role in helping a party that has failed on multiple fronts to stay securely in power.
However, one major reason for Democrats winning was Gen Z voters coming out in large numbers to vote for them — though this was not quite as big a reason as Democrats believe. This cohort was responsible for electing cognitively impaired man-child John Fetterman and incompetent shrew Kathy Hochul as well as reelecting Covid tyrant Gretchen Whitmer. Less unsurprisingly, they’re also responsible for supporting the legalization of marijuana and expanding abortion.
Why did these young people feel motivated enough to go and vote against their interests and keep the country on a downward trajectory? Do they like rising crime, high inflation, mass illegal immigration, homeless encampments, high gas prices, and a shrinking economy? Did they really think Biden would pay off their student loans? Are they just brainwashed zombies who comply with the narratives of TikTok?
Based on my extensive experience as an English teacher, I would say that yes, the average Gen Z American is largely indifferent to important issues that affect the country, even ones that affect their general quality of life. Every day, I witness their lack of reasoning skills and personal drive.This in turn causes them to be disturbingly introverted and handle most of their interactions with people through social media. Many have no real community or deep-seated beliefs and act more on feelings than principle.
Instead, they spend most of their waking life on the internet, consuming mindless content and dreaming up fake personas for themselves. And as a result, they are largely immature, lonely, and neurotic.
This much is argued by writer and former English professor Mark Bauerlein, who writes that Gen Z, “will be the most conformist cohort in American history, already favoring cancellation more than any other age group, and politics will be a primary mode of grouping.” This generation is told what to think by various online influencers, and they passively comply.Because of screen addiction, they will never learn to think or act for themselves, nor will they ever really want to.
The propagandizing effect of heavy social media usage cannot be overstated. For young people, nearly every narrative and social phenomenon now originate from the internet. This means that it’s the dumb and disturbed “influencers” online, not parents or teachers, informing this next generation about politics, economics, and culture. And the algorithms of popular social media sites are designed to curate and amplify this same defective messaging a million times over. The subversive effect on people with still-developing frontal cortexes is not all that different from the “Ludivico technique” in “A Clockwork Orange” in which criminals are forcibly bombarded with images and music in order to condition them against misconduct.
Why is Gen Z so glued to their screens? Two friends and fellow teacher-writers Jeremy Adams and Shane Trotter have examined this question in depth. In his book “Hollowed Out,” Adams argues how the breakdown of family, schools, and the culture at large has left today’s young people morally and intellectually adrift: Not working? Not supporting oneself? Playing video games all day on somebody else’s dime? Not feeling a crumb of shame about it — even describing such a state as happy? That is hollowness.
The many norms and standards (these things that would “fill in” a person) that used to be reinforced by their parents, pastors, teachers, politicians, entertainers, and artists simply aren’t anymore. Should it surprise people that the kids carelessly withdraw from the world and play on their phones?
In Trotter’s book “Setting the Bar,” he attributes the failures of Gen Z to low standards and a permissive parenting culture that coddles kids:
The typical modern youth experience — from the school environment, to the parenting norms, to the broader cultural value structure — is ingraining limiting beliefs and destructive habits that leave our kids ill-equipped for the challenges that lie ahead of them.
No one challenges the kids, so they grow up soft and slow, making them the perfect sheep to be manipulated en masse.
Adams and Trotter demonstrate how circumstances have turned many Zoomers into sad, confused individuals doomed to have an impoverished adulthood. Instead of receiving lessons on independence, critical thinking, and disciplined living, too many of them are protected from all forms of adversity and given an iPad to keep them pacified. This treatment insulates them so much from reality that they never come to know themselves and are bored to the point of despair.
Ironically, understanding this dark reality may be the key to generational reform. True, it might be easy to agree with Bauerlein that Gen Z is hopeless and will probably bring the rest of the nation down with them, but this theory assumes that the Gen Z lifestyle is actually sustainable. The students in my classes all share a natural desire to be better people. I do what I can to offer them a way out; that is, I talk to them and push them to do more. At first, they resist and resort to their phone for comfort but this attitude changes when they feel the profound joy of actually learning and accomplishing something.
Conservatives can shake their heads at today’s young adults refusing to grow up, or they can actually try to reach these kids. It’s not like they want to be lonely, ignorant, or “neurodivergent.” And most, if they’re being honest, don’t want to be slaves to their smartphones. Rather, like everyone else, they want goodness, beauty, and truth. They want loving relationships, authentic experiences, and some degree of mastery over their emotions and impulses. Above all, they want meaning.
If they have those things, then they will stop voting for corrupt mediocrities and suicidal social policies. More importantly, they will stop wasting away their lives on frivolity and enjoy a fruitful and fulfilling adulthood. Although election results are technically a political matter, what they reveal about voters is a cultural and moral one. We should treat this midterm as the Gen Z cry for help. It’s time for us to go out and save them.
Auguste Meyrat is an English teacher in the Dallas area. He holds an MA in humanities and an MEd in educational leadership. He is the senior editor of The Everyman and has written essays for The Federalist, The American Conservative, and The Imaginative Conservative, as well as the Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture. Follow him on Twitter.
A court has ruled against the Biden administration’s requirement that healthcare providers perform sex-change procedures, concluding that federal Title IX’s definition of sex discrimination does not include sexual orientation or gender identity. The case centered on two Texas physicians who filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Health and Human Service’s Notification of Interpretation and Enforcement of Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act and Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, which interpreted Title IX’s definition of sex to include sexual orientation and gender identity. The physicians sued, arguing that the Notification forced them to provide services such as body-mutilating surgeries on people suffering from gender dysphoria, such as castration and double mastectomies, and that it violated federal administrative procedures.
In a decision released Friday, U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk of the Northern District of Texas, Amarillo Division, ruled that “Title IX operates in binary terms — male and female — when it references ‘on the basis of sex.’”
“If ‘on the basis of sex’ included ‘sexual orientation’ and ‘gender identity,’ as Defendants envision, Title IX and its regulations would be nonsensical,” Kacsmaryk ruled. “Title IX expressly allows sex distinctions and sometimes even requires them to promote equal opportunity.”
“Defendants’ reinterpretation of Title IX through the Notification imperils the very opportunities for women Title IX was designed to promote and protect — categorically forcing biological women to compete against biological men.”
Kacsmaryk also rejected the claim by the defendants that their reinterpretation of Title IX was justified in light of the 2020 U.S. Supreme Court v. Clayton County, in which the high court concluded that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which protects against employment discrimination, applies to sexual orientation and gender identity.
“Title IX is not Title VII,” Kacsmaryk continued. “The Court will not reflexively apply new Title VII precedent in the Title IX context.”
In May 2021, the HHS announced that it was going to interpret Title IX’s explicit prohibition on sex discrimination to include sexual orientation and gender identity. Under the new interpretation, the HHS Office for Civil Rights would enforce Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act to protect “the civil rights of individuals who access or seek to access covered health programs or activities” and stop discrimination “against consumers on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity.”
The proposed reinterpretation of Title IX was met with multiple lawsuits, with a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit unanimously deciding to block the implementation of the rule back in August.
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Ivanka Trump, who is one of former President Donald Trump’s daughters, has said that she does not plan to jump back into the political world.
“I love my father very much. This time around, I am choosing to prioritize my young children and the private life we are creating as a family,” she told Fox News Digital. “I do not plan to be involved in politics.”
“While I will always love and support my father, going forward I will do so outside the political arena,” she said, according to the outlet. “I am grateful to have had the honor of serving the American people and will always be proud of many of our administration’s accomplishments.”
“I’m very proud of what I was able to accomplish,” Ivanka Trump noted. “I left it all on the field and I don’t miss it.”
The former president announced on Tuesday that he will run for president again. Donald Trump previously served from early 2017 through early 2021 after defeating Democrat Hillary Clinton during the 2016 election — but he lost the 2020 contest to Democrat Joe Biden.
Ivanka Trump told Fox News Digital that she is “extremely close” to her dad. “That hasn’t changed and will never change,” she noted. “I’ve had many roles over the years, but that of daughter is one of the most elemental and consequential.” She also said, “I will always love and support my father, just outside of the political arena.”
“My focus is prioritizing our young children and the private life we’re creating as a family,” she said. “I am loving this time with my kids, loving life in Miami, and the freedom and privacy with having returned to the private sector — this has been one of the greatest times of my life.”
Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky has been reelected the Leader of the Senate Republican Conference after a last-minute challenge from his colleague, Sen. Rick Scott of Florida, on Wednesday. McConnell won the support of 37 members of the conference to continue as leader of the Senate GOP, a role he has held since 2007. He will continue as the Senate Minority Leader in the 118th Congress after Republicans failed to oust Democrats from the Senate majority in this year’s midterm elections.
McConnell had been challenged by Sen. Rick Scott, who heads the National Republican Senatorial Committee, for the job after Scott announced on Tuesday, during a luncheon with other GOP Senators, that he would do so. The move, part of a long-running feud between Scott and McConnell, caught many members of the conference by surprise.
Rick Scott spent approximately $200 million of his own money to beat Bill Nelson by approximately 10,000 votes in 2018 & just got defeated 37-10 by McConnell to lead Senate Minority. Trump supported Scott
The McConnell-Scott feud stems from a dispute over the funding of battleground Senate candidates in this year’s midterm election. McConnell’s affiliated Super PAC, the Senate Leadership Fund (SLF), raised and spent over $250 million this electoral cycle to elect Republicans, and was the top outside spender (i.e., not contributing directly to candidate committees, but spending independently to influence the race) on Senate elections in the United States. The SLF withdrew funding from Republican Senate candidates in New Hampshire and Arizona, which were widely seen as critical-to-win races for the GOP to gain a majority in the Senate. Both Republican candidates, Blake Masters in Arizona and Don Bolduc in New Hampshire, lost to Democratic Sens. Mark Kelly and Maggie Hassan even as pre-election polls showed them in close races. The SLF also spent significant amounts of money in Alaska, seeking to defend Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski, a close McConnell ally who was being challenged by Republican candidate Kelly Tshibaka in the general election under the state’s new Ranked Choice Voting system. Tshibaka and the Alaska Republican Party later criticized the SLF for wasting resources on opposing her candidacy.
McConnell had openly mused that “there’s probably a greater likelihood the House flips than the Senate,” in an appearance in Kentucky in August, which was widely reported. He lamented that “candidate quality has a lot to do with the outcome,” which was interpreted as criticism of former President Donald Trump, who endorsed candidates who won GOP Senate primaries in Arizona, Pennsylvania and Nevada yet, later, lost the general election. Shortly after McConnell’s comments, Scott acknowledged in an interview with Politico that he had a “strategic disagreement” with McConnell about funding races, and later implicitly criticized him for “treasonous…trash-talking our Republican candidates” in an op-ed for the Washington Examiner.
Scott’s bid to become Senate Republicans’ leader had been endorsed by Republican Sens. Mike Braun of Indiana and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, while Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri said that he does not support McConnell’s continuance in office, though he didn’t expressly endorse Scott. Other GOP Senators, such as Ted Cruz of Texas, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Marco Rubio of Florida and Mike Lee of Utah, had called for the vote to be delayed until after Georgia’s Senate runoff election.
McConnell and Scott’s offices did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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.
Pro-Trump Republican Lauren Boebert is currently leading in her race against far left Democrat Adam Frisch in rural Colorado. Boebert currently leads the race by 1,ooo votes and 0.4%. Boebert has been leading the race for several days now.
Her opponent is a sleazebag who was caught having an affair in a storage locker in the district.
-But guess what just happened?Democrats have found several thousand potential Democrat votes to be counted! What luck!
Newsweek reported without the slightest bit of irony.
The race for Colorado’s third congressional district remains too close to be called, as Trump-endorsed Rep. Lauren Boebert is currently only slightly ahead of her rival, Democrat Adam Frisch.
But the incumbent congresswoman’s narrow lead could once again be overturned if thousands of likely rejected votes in favor of her challenger were to be fixed, as a recount looms over the Colorado race.
Boebert was widely projected to win the midterms, with polling website FiveThirtyEight giving her a 97 in 100 chance of victory in the days ahead of the vote.
As of November 14 and with nearly all of the ballots being counted, Boebert is leading with 50.1 percent of the vote (162,040 votes) against Frisch’s 49.8 percent (160,918 votes).
Jim Hoft is the founder and editor of The Gateway Pundit, one of the top conservative news outlets in America. Jim was awarded the Reed Irvine Accuracy in Media Award in 2013 and is the proud recipient of the Breitbart Award for Excellence in Online Journalism from the Americans for Prosperity Foundation in May 2016.
Students sitting at their desks in a classroom raise their hands. | Getty Images
States are taking different approaches to how their schools teach sensitive subjects in history classes, with Colorado and Virginia taking the spotlight last week.
Colorado’s State Board of Education voted last Thursday in a 4-3 party-line vote to update the state’s social studies curriculum for all grade levels, restoring references to the LGBT community and marginalized racial minorities that had been cut earlier this year after some parents expressed concerns over a lack of diversity.
CPR News reported that the state board of education would require schools’ social studies curriculum to reference minority groups throughout all grade levels in compliance with Colorado law. Board member Lisa Escárcega said that she included references to certain races and LGBT individuals at the top of the recommendations due to the importance of such groups.
The changes come as the state conducts its annual revision of academic standards, something Colorado does every six years. The Colorado State Board of Education did not immediately respond to The Christian Post’s request for comment.
The board made recommendations for the curriculum standards last November that caused controversy.
The recommendations updated social studies standards to include references to minority groups highlighted in a law passed by the legislature in 2019 calling for the inclusion of more diverse views in children’s history lessons. The law requires schools to include perspectives of LGBT people, African Americans, Latinos, American Indians and Asian Americans.
After concerns were raised about “age-appropriateness,” the committee eliminated references to LGBT people for students below fourth grade in April.
Republican Board member Steve Durham objected to exposing preschoolers to LGBT topics, arguing that the “impact and discussion of sexual issues is the same for kindergartens as it is for high school students.”
Democratic board members and Escárcega argued that LGBT issues are not sexual topics, claiming the topic may come up during discussions about families, even in lower grades, according to CPR.
In a Monday statement to The Christian Post, a spokesperson for the Colorado Statewide Parent Coalition, which supported references to LGBT people, said the standards were based “on research and best practice.”
“The cuts that were made to eliminate certain references to the LGBTQ community and the realities of racism in our history perpetuate xenophobia, homophobia and false understandings of our collective histories,” the spokesperson wrote.
Before the vote, the board allowed for public comments. Except for two speakers, all who spoke called for restoring references to LGBT individuals. One parent who opposed restoring references to the LGBT community, Mary Goodley, stated that parents reserve the right to teach their children about complex social issues.
“Teaching children about particular sexual or gender notions is a clear violation of parental rights and not only serves to further discredit, but also decreases trust in the public education model,” she said, as quoted by CPR.
The standards will go into effect next year.
Last month, the Colorado school board voted 4 to 3 to reject American Birthright social studies standards, a model promoted by the conservative National Association of Scholars. Those standards aim to teach children where their freedoms come from and “why their country deserves to be loved.”
Thursday’s vote in Colorado came the day before the Virginia Department of Education under Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin proposed new revisions that would alter former Gov. Ralph Northam’s proposed history and social science guidelines in the state’s schools.
“The standards will recognize the world impact of America’s quest for a ‘more perfect Union’ and the optimism, ideals and imagery captured by Ronald Reagan’s ‘shining city upon a hill’ speech,” the proposal reads. “Students will know our nation’s exceptional strengths, including individual innovation, moral character, ingenuity and adventure, while learning from terrible periods and actions in direct conflict with these ideals.”
The 53-page proposal includes teaching kindergarteners about patriotism and how certain symbols are used to honor the country. Fourth-grade students would learn about the Civil War and Reconstruction eras, and 11th-grade students would study Christopher Columbus and the enslavement of African-Americans.
If the Virginia Board of Education adopts the draft proposal, the new standards will go into effect for seven years, according to a factsheet sent to Virginia legislators on Friday. The new standards would be taught during the 2024-2025 school year, and professional development will start in the summer of 2023. The administration claims these changes are necessary to provide clarity for educators and expand parental involvement.
“The August 2022 draft standards were unnecessarily difficult for educators to understand and implement; they were also inaccessible for parents and families,” the factsheet reads. “The November 2022 revised standards are easily understood and implemented through a logical progression with a recommended grade level sequence.”
The proposed history curriculum under Northam would have included lessons on LGBT issues and social justice, in addition to halting requirements to teach lessons on Christopher Columbus and Benjamin Franklin. The Northam standards also would not have included lessons on why James Madison is called the “Father of the Constitution” and George Washington is called the “Father of our Country.” Under the new draft, fourth-grade students would once again learn why Madison and Washington have these titles.
Critics, such as the Virginia Education Association, a union representing more than 40,000 education workers, contend the proposed standards will impede academic instruction. VEA President James J. Fedderman said in a Saturday statement to The Washington Post that he believes the new standards contain “political bias” and refer to enslaved people with “outdated language.”
Former Trump administration official and founder of the education advocacy group Fight For Schools, Ian Prior, supports the changes. Prior told The Post that if applied “correctly,” the changes could unlock key critical thinking skills that students can use to make their own analysis and decision as they mature into young leaders.”
The Virginia Education Association did not immediately respond to The Christian Post’s request for comment.
Education appeared to be a relevant issue last November when Youngkin defeated Democratic challenger Terry McAuliffe in the Virginia gubernatorial race. Amid national attention surrounding parental involvement in education, McAuliffe argued in a debate against parents being able to tell schools what to teach. Youngkin responded to these concerns by promoting himself as an advocate for parental involvement in education.
In September, the state’s Department of Education reversed another one of Northam’s directives involving trans-identifying students. The new directive prohibits students from identifying as the opposite gender without documentation and requires schools to keep parents informed about their child’s “psychological development.”
Detransitioner Chloe Cole, 17, speaks about her experience undergoing trans medicalization as a young teenager in a meeting with Florida Surgeon General Joseph A. Ladapo in July 2022. | Screengrab: Twitter/Joseph A. Ladapo
A detransitioner is suing doctors who performed body mutilating sex-change surgeries on her as a minor, seeking to hold accountable the “mutilators” who “butchered” her.
Chloe Cole, an 18-year-old detransitioner residing in California, has filed a notice of intent to sue the medical facilities that performed procedures that have left her disfigured. The notice of intent to sue in California Superior Court lists three doctors practicing in the Los Angeles area and two medical companies based in California as defendants in the pending lawsuit. The lawsuit will move forward 90 days after the publication of the notice of intent to sue, on Feb. 9, 2023, “unless this matter can be resolved prior to that time.”
A detransitioner is a person who formerly self-identified as the opposite sex but has now become comfortable with their biological sex.
In a statement announcing the letter of intent to sue, Cole described her teenage years as “a culmination of excruciating pain, regret, and most importantly injustice.” Cole recalled that she was “emotionally and physically damaged and stunted by so-called medical professionals in my most important developmental period.”
My teenage life has been the culmination of excruciating pain, regret, and most importantly injustice. It is impossible for me to recoup what I have lost, but I will insure no child will be harmed at the hands of these liars and mutilators. I am suing these monsters. @pnjabanpic.twitter.com/i80VHvGXJn
“I was butchered by an institution that we trust more than anything else in our lives,” she added. “What is worse is that I am not alone in my pain. I will ensure that the blood and tears of detransitioners like me will not be in vain. It is impossible for me to recoup what I have lost, but I will fight to ensure that no other children will be harmed at the hands of these liars and mutilators.”
Harmeet Dhillon, CEO of the Center for American Liberty, is representing Cole in her litigation. Dhillon vowed to “hold the ‘professionals’ involved accountable for their deliberate choices to mutilate children and financially benefit from it without regard to the human tragedies they’ve created,” adding, “We will break the cycle of them breaking America’s children before it’s too late.”
The notice of intent to sue elaborates on Cole’s circumstances: “Chloe is a biological female who suffered from a perceived psychological issue ‘gender dysphoria,’” the document states. “Under Defendants’ advice and supervision, between 13-17 years old Chloe underwent harmful transgender treatment, specifically, puberty blockers, off-label cross-sex hormone treatment, and a double mastectomy.”
The notice classified Cole’s experience as a form of “medical experimentation,” adding, “She now has deep emotional wounds, severe regrets, and distrust for the medical system.” Specifically, the letter adds that because of acts carried out by the defendants, Cole “suffered mutilation to her body and lost social development with her peers at milestones that can never be reversed or regained.”
“Defendants coerced Chloe and her parents to undergo what amounted to a medical experiment by propagating two lies. First, Defendants falsely informed Chloe and her parents that Chloe’s gender dysphoria would not resolve unless Chloe socially and [medically] transitioned to appear more like a male. Chloe has been informed by her parents that Defendants even gave them the ultimatum: ‘Would you rather have a dead daughter or a live son?’”
The notice of intent to sue notes that “the vast majority of childhood gender dysphoria cases resolve by the time the child reaches adulthood, with the patient’s self-perception reverting back to align with their biological sex.”
According to the letter, “Despite an undeniable body of relevant medical literature, Defendants never once informed Chloe of the possibility, indeed the high likelihood, that her gender dysphoria would resolve, without cross-sex treatment, by the time she reached adulthood.”
“Defendants fraudulently concealed that information from Chloe that the only way to resolve her psychological condition was to undergo physical, chemical, and social transition to a male role,” the document added.
Citing a longterm study finding that “gender dysphoric individuals who undergo sex reassignment continue to have considerably higher risks for mortality, suicidal behavior, and psychiatric morbidity as compared with the general population,” the letter lamented that “Defendants intentionally obscured these facts and defrauded Chloe and her parents in order to perform what amounted to a lucrative transgender medical experiment on Chloe.”
Although Cole was “advised that the distress she experienced because of her gender dysphoria would resolve as she transitioned,” her “distress always came back worse” following the “initial relief” that occurred after “each phase of transition.”Cole’s double mastectomy, which was performed on her at 15, caused her to experience suicidal thoughts and a deteriorating state of mental health.
Cole told Fox News opinion host Tucker Carlson last week that the doctors named as defendants in the letter committed medical malpractice. The notice of intent to sue outlined some of the claims of medical malpractice, including the absence of “specific information regarding the actual risks of the testosterone and puberty blockers” she was first prescribed at age 13.
Side effects of puberty blockers include: “Permanent fertility loss, painful intercourse, impairment of orgasm, reduced bone development and inability to obtain peak or maximum bone density, stopped or stunted widening and growth of the pelvic bones for reproductive purposes, increased risk of osteoporosis and debilitating spine and hip fractures as an adult, increased morbidity and death in older age due to increased risk of hip fracture, negative and unknown effects on brain development, emotional liability such as crying, irritability, impatience, anger, and aggression, and reports of suicidal ideation and attempt.”
While much of the notice of intent to sue contains redacted information about the medical consequences of the experimental procedures performed on Cole’s body, the document concludes with an assessment of damages caused by the drugs and operations performed on her body over the course of several years. Cole will seek $350,000 from each of the three doctors named as defendants in the lawsuit and both healthcare organizations where the procedures were performed, making it possible that she could be awarded up to $1,750,000 in damages altogether.
The notice of intent to sue comes shortly after Cole has emerged as one of the most prominent detransitioners in the U.S. Cole founded the support group Detrans United, established to provide detransitioners who regret their attempts at gender transitions with a platform to voice their “dissent against ‘gender-affirming care,’ [and] influence policy.”
Cole has voiced her dissent against sex-change surgeries for minors by calling into a school board meeting last month at Conejo Valley Unified School District in Ventura County, California. Cole expressed concern about the school district’s distribution of a book to 8-year-old students teaching that children could be born in the wrong body. Cole warned that exposing children to such material could lead them to make ill-fated decisions like the ones she made when she was experiencing gender dysphoria.
“I will not be able to breastfeed any children I have in the future and my sexuality has permanently been affected because I was allowed to make adult decisions starting at 13, and then again at 15,” she said at the meeting. “This is what happens when children are sexualized and exposed to developmentally inappropriate and confusing content and ideas from a young age. This is what happens when we treat children like adults and expect them to have the mental faculties for proper long-term decision making.”
In light of the concerns about the longterm impacts of puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and body-mutilating surgeries on minors, the states of Alabama, Arizona and Arkansas have banned such procedures for children younger than 18, while the Florida Boards of Medicine and Osteopathic Medicine voted to do the same earlier this month. The Texas Department of Family and Protective Services classified such procedures as a form of child abuse, as has the state’s Republican attorney general.
During the campaign, she had frequently questioned the integrity of the 2020 election that led to Joe Biden’s presidency, and last month she had told ABC News that she would concede the gubernatorial race only if “it’s fair, honest and transparent.”
“When I first started voting back in the ’80s, we had Election Day,” Lake said in that interview. “Our Constitution says Election Day. It doesn’t say election season, election month, and we’ve watched as our Election Day has turned into election week and election weeks and now election month. And the longer you drag that out, the more fraud with problems there are.”
On Monday, nearly a week after the midterm elections, ABC News projected Hobbs to be the winner of the Arizona race, concluding that her election was part of “a stunning rejection of election deniers in midterm contests.”
CNN also projected the Democrat to win, saying she was “defeating one of the most prominent defenders of former President Donald Trump’s lies about the 2020 election.”
Fox News joined the chorus declaring Lake had been defeated but noted that according to Arizona’s rules, the contest might face a recount.
The Associated Press explained its call for Hobbs by saying “the latest round of vote releases gave her a big enough lead that the AP determined she would not relinquish it.”
“The AP concluded that, even though Lake had been posting increasingly larger margins in vote updates from Maricopa County, she was not gaining a big enough share to overtake Hobbs and was running out of remaining votes,” the wire service said.
AP numbers posted in The New York Times on Monday night gave Hobbs a margin of about 20,000 votes out of the roughly 2.5 million votes cast with 95 percent reported.
Hobbs issued a statement after media outlets proclaimed her to have won.
“I want to thank the voters for entrusting me with this immense responsibility. It is truly an honor of a lifetime, and I will do everything in my power to make you proud. I want to thank my family, our volunteers, and campaign staff. Without all of your hard work, passion, and sacrifice this night would not be possible. Thank you from the bottom of my heart,” she said.
“For the Arizonans who did not vote for me, I will work just as hard for you – because even in this moment of division, I believe there is so much more that connects us,” she said, adding, “Let’s get to work.”
Just like you can reject Covid mRNA shots and not be an 'anti-vaxxer,' you can recognize an election is run in a corrupt manner and not be an 'election denier.'
Democrats throw around lazy personal attacks that are meant to avoid debating the issues or solving the problems.
It implies that anything Democrats say is a free, fair, transparent & legitimate election must be one & anyone questioning them is guilty of being an 'election denier.'
No one is supposed to question whether Democrats have corrupt motives for framing a debate this way.
Jack Davis is a freelance writer who joined The Western Journal in July 2015 and chronicled the campaign that saw President Donald Trump elected. Since then, he has written extensively for The Western Journal on the Trump administration as well as foreign policy and military issues.
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Former Hallmark star Candace Cameron Bure appears excited that the new network she has joined will offer stories with “more meaning and purpose and depth” that will still reflect her Christian values.
Back in April, Bure announced that she was leaving the Hallmark Channel after more than a dozen years and 30 movies with the network. Bure had become a fan favorite, especially in Christmas-themed movies. However, Hallmark has veered leftward in recent years, promising to include more LGBTQ content in its otherwise family-friendly movies. This year, Hallmark will even include a movie with an LGBTQ romance as its central focus. That movie, “The Holiday Sitter,” will debut on December 11.
By the time she left, Bure lamented that Hallmark had become “a completely different network” than it had been a decade earlier, and she attributed the change in network identity to a “change of leadership.”
From Hallmark, Bure, 46, moved to a new network founded by Bill Abbott, the former president and CEO of Crown Media, the parent company of Hallmark. According to Bure, this new network, Great American Family (formerly named Great American Country), will compete with Hallmark for audiences looking for more traditional, family-oriented content.
“GAC fits my brand perfectly,” Bure stated at the time. “We share a vision of creating compelling, wholesome content for an audience who wants to watch programming for and with the whole family. Great, quality entertainment with a positive message is what my partnership with GAC is all about.”
“My heart wants to tell stories that have more meaning and purpose and depth behind them,” Bure added.
Now with the holidays fast approaching and a “Great American Christmas” series set to rival Hallmark’s annual “Countdown to Christmas” programming, Bure has hinted that, unlike Hallmark, GAF will present basic Christian teaching, including marriage as a covenant between one man and one woman.
“I think that Great American Family will keep traditional marriage at the core,” Bure said, though she stopped short of promising that GAF would never feature same-sex couples.
Abbott likewise did not preclude the possibility of same-sex romance storylines in the future. “It’s certainly the year 2022, so we’re aware of the trends,” he stated. “There’s no whiteboard that says, ‘Yes, this’ or ‘No, we’ll never go here.'”
Still, Bure sounds enthusiastic about the potential at GAF, especially around the holidays.
“I think we know the core audience and what they love is exactly how Bill originally built the Hallmark Channel,” Bure said. “That was Christmas and those traditional holidays, so that’s what the focus is going to be. You’ve got to start somewhere. You can’t do everything at once.”
Because Bure has embraced a network focused on “traditional holidays” and “traditional marriage,” other celebrities have since criticized her for supposed bigotry and hypocrisy.
“I don’t remember Jesus liking hypocrites like Candy,” tweeted former “One Tree Hill” actress Hilarie Burton. “But sure. Make your money, honey.”
Burton elsewhere called Bure a “bigot” and said that Abbott and “his network are disgusting.”
“There is nothing untraditional about same-sex couples,” Burton, 40, asserted.
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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A Bible verse painted on a teacher’s parking space at a Florida public high school has angered a fellow staff member — so much so that instructional assistant Marina Gentilesco told WFLA-TV she feels as though the verse is “attacking” her.
Gentilesco — who works at Wiregrass Ranch High School in Wesley Chapel about a half hour north of Tampa — told the station she grew up hearing stories about her parents in the Holocaust. That’s why passing by the parking space — adorned with the words from Philippians 4:13 in the New Testament: “I can do all things through Christ which strengthens me” — every school day angers her so, WFLA said.
“I feel like it’s attacking me as a Jew,” Gentilesco told the station, adding that “it brings me to the verge of tears, because it brings me back to the 6 million that perished. Six million perished because of our faith — because we’re Jews.”
Gentilesco added to the station that she wouldn’t mind the verse in a place like a church — but that letting it be on school grounds is going too far.
“You put it on a state-funded property, I’m not OK with it,” she told WFLA.
The station said Gentilesco brought up her grievances about the Bible verse to the school’s principal, who then checked in with the school district. The verdict? Pasco County Schools won’t be removing the Bible verse, WFLA said.
“It’s not a violation,” the district’s Public Information Officer Stephen Hegarty told the station. “This is personal expression.”
Hegarty added to WFLA that “there is no proselytizing going on; it’s not compelling students to do anything one way or the other.”
What’s more, he added to the station that the painted Bible verse on the parking lot space doesn’t reflect what students are being taught.
“It has nothing to do with instruction,” Hegarty told WFLA. “It’s just a teacher expressing themselves just like they might wear a crucifix on their shirt.” He added to the station that “teachers and students are free to express themselves.”
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The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued an emergency use authorization (EUA) for the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine on Dec. 11, 2020. A week later, the FDA issued an EUA for Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine. Now, nearly two years later, Pfizer and Moderna will launch clinical trials to track adverse health issues stemming from the COVID-19 vaccines, such as myocarditis – inflammation of the heart muscle.
Pfizer is in the infancy of beginning clinical trials to determine if there are any health risks associated with their own vaccine. In a partnership with the Pediatric Heart Network, the trial will focus on vaccine recipients who have suffered heart issues following being jabbed with the COVID-19 vaccine. The clinical trials will monitor patients for five years.
Enrollment for the study in the U.S. and Canada has not started yet. However, the research team has already identified more than 250 patients with myocarditis, according to Dr. Dongngan Truong – a pediatrician at the University of Utah Health and a co-lead on the Pfizer study.
NBC News reported on Friday, “The team will also compare the patients to a subset of patients with multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children, also known as MIS-C, which is associated with a COVID infection.”
The first findings are not expected to be released until sometime next year.
Moderna will be conducting their own studies about possible side effects of the COVID vaccines in five countries with the assistance of the European Medicines Agency. The data from those studies are not expected to be released to the public until next summer. Dr. Paul Burton – Moderna’s chief medical officer – admitted that scientists are not certain as to what causes the possible heart issues from the COVID-19 vaccine.
“We don’t understand yet and there’s no good mechanism to explain it,” Burton conceded to NBC News.
Burton theorized that the spike protein in the vaccine may stimulate a negative reaction in the body that could cause inflammation in the heart.
NBC News highlighted the alarming struggles of one Michigan man who suffered major health issues after receiving a COVID vaccine.
In October 2021, Detroit native Da’Vion Miller was found unconscious in the bathroom of his home one week after receiving his first dose of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine. Miller, who was only 22 years old at the time, experienced chest pain two days after getting vaccinated. He also suffered from fatigue, dizziness, and shortness of breath. Miller was rushed to the Henry Ford West Bloomfield Hospital, where he was diagnosed with myocarditis and pericarditis – inflammation of the outer lining of the heart. Miller’s doctor advised him not to receive his second dose of the COVID vaccine.
In the year since being diagnosed with myocarditis, Miller is still experiencing chest pain and has been in and out of the hospital.
In July 2021, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released a report that stated: “An elevated risk for myocarditis among mRNA COVID-19 vaccinees has been observed, particularly in males aged 12–29 years.”
The report found, “Myocarditis reporting rates were 40.6 cases per million second doses of mRNA COVID-19 vaccines administered to males aged 12−29 years.”
The CDC added, “Myocarditis and pericarditis have rarely been reported. When reported, the cases have especially been in adolescents and young adult males within several days after mRNA COVID-19 vaccination (Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna).”
In April, an Israeli large-population study of 196,992 unvaccinated adults who were post-COVID-19 infection were “not associated with either myocarditis or pericarditis.”
“We did not observe an increased incidence of neither pericarditis nor myocarditis in adult patients recovering from COVID-19 infection,” the authors wrote.
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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A dean at a high-priced Connecticut private school has been placed on leave after a Project Veritas video appears to show him sexualizing his students.
Iman Rasti is the middle school dean, writing center director, and seventh-grade English teacher at the Greens Farms Academy, according to his LinkedIn account. He was reportedly caught on video making sexually explicit comments about his underage students entrusted to his care. Rasti seemingly admits to being sexually turned on by his seventh-grade students.
The undercover Project Veritas journalist asked Rasti if he was ever “tempted” by his students, and he nodded in agreement, then said, “Every day.” Rasti then appeared to confess being sexually aroused by his students: “It’s very hard. I mean, literally and figuratively.”
When asked about being sexual with his students, the dean noted, “That possibly means me losing my job, my reputation – it’s risky, way too risky.”
Project Veritas founder James O’Keefe said the female journalist recorded two hours of video speaking with Rasti – including the teacher making sexual remarks about his students.
“Like, one thing they [students] do these days, they sit down in front of me, they purposefully sit down somewhere in the class that is literally directly in front of me,” Rasti said. “They spread their legs wide open and that is just brutal. Brutal.”
“Every day, there is different panties on: green, black, white,” he stated. “And they [students] make sure – it’s like they talk to each other, the three of them do that.”
“They open their legs, and I am teaching, and I see what I see,” Rasti told the undercover journalist at a restaurant. “They make sure that the panties are positioned in a way that I actually see the thing.”
Rasti is seen on video telling the Project Veritas journalist that he has seen the genitalia of his female students.
Rasti – who was hired by the school in 2019 – said he is distracted by the girls spreading their legs during the class. He said, “Well, how can you concentrate? How can you continue talking with your classroom when you see that?”
“I don’t know for women – if you see, I don’t know, I guess for women it’s sexy to see a man with a hard-on,” Rasti continued. “Maybe it’s sexy, I don’t know.”
The teacher said of his students, “And they smile, and they smirk at me, and they close and open, close and open a couple of times. They’re naughty.”
“When girls start having sex, it’s interesting for someone like me who has been in and out of relationships all my life, and married, and all of that,” he admitted.
Rasti theorized that you can see “changes in face and appearance” of adolescent girls once they begin having sex.
“You see a 15-year-old girl, and then next year they come back to school and she’s a woman,” he declared. “There is no way she has gained weight just doing nothing, so it is clear that she has had sex. A lot of sex.”
“Part of the reason why those girls give me attention – in addition to me being genuine with them and honest with them – I think it’s maybe they get that vibe, that sexual tension. I feel like they get it now,” he added. “They lost their head with the TikToks.”
Rasti met with the Project Veritas journalist a second time, and he made a shocking confession.
“I get the vibe, it’s obvious, but I refuse, because I don’t f*** my students. That’s my principle,” the dean said, but added, “I don’t do that, but sometimes I make exceptions. Sometimes.”
Rasti then admitted that he had numerous sexual encounters with his students when he was a college professor.
“Not with my K-12, but college, I had sex with many, many, many, many of my students,” he seemingly bragged.
After Rasti’s exposure in the Project Veritas video, Greens Farms Academy placed Rasti on leave.
“We have just been made aware of a report of inappropriate comments allegedly made by a teacher at GFA,” Greens Farms Academy spokesperson Michelle Levi told the Hartford Courant. “We are placing the employee on leave and will be promptly investigating this matter and taking appropriate action.”
Levi said the school sent a message about the situation to the parents of students on Thursday night. The school also provided parents with “resources” that could offer assistance.
Westport Police Capt. David Wolf told the outlet that police are aware of the damning video, but there is no investigation at this time.
Tuition for seventh-grade students at Greens Farms Academy is $48,770.
(WARNING: Explicit language)
Connecticut School Director Placed “On Leave” After Detailing Sexual Fantasies with Minor Students www.youtube.com
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including NewsMax, Fox News, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Rep. Devin Nunes, Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Chris Salcedo, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Donald Trump.
If there’s a clear lesson to come out of Tuesday night’s bizarre midterm election, it’s that Republicans can no longer be content with defensive victories or defensive politics. To win political power and do what must be done to save the country, Republicans will have to go on offense, present a compelling vision for the future, and engage culture war issues like abortion and critical race theory without apologies.
When they do that, they win. But it stands in stark contrast to the perennial advice of Beltway GOP consultants, who think it best to avoid major culture war issues like abortion. Indeed, the “official narrative” of corporate media in the wake of Tuesday’s midterms is that abortion was a big winner for Democrats, who supposedly capitalized on the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade, successfully making abortion a major electoral issue and blunting a red wave by boosting turnout among young, pro-abortion voters.
It sounds good, but it’s not quite right. Republicans who didn’t shy away from talking about abortion after Dobbs, and who signed into law abortion legislation earlier this year without flinching or apologizing, did really well — they were Tuesday night’s winners. As Marc Thiessen noted on Fox News, Republican governors in Ohio, Georgia, New Hampshire, Texas, and Florida all signed post-Dobbs abortion restrictions, and they all won reelection by comfortable margins.
That’s not to say abortion was a non-factor. Democrats squeezed every last electoral drop they could out of Dobbs, spending $320 million on abortion-related TV ads (much more than on all other issues combined) which helped motivate a voter base that might have otherwise been depressed.
Still, there was a clear contrast between Republicans who heeded the advice of Beltway consultants and tried to dodge abortion questions or take a noncommittal stance and those who defended their anti-abortion positions and pushed for post-Roe legislation. Only one of those groups fared well Tuesday.
The larger lesson here is that Republican candidates should lean into the culture war and make no apologies for their positions, even on contentious issues like abortion. Fighting back against the left, it turns out, is what a lot of voters on the right want from Republicans.
Consider what Ron DeSantis achieved in Florida, winning 60 percent of the vote after narrowly eking out a victory four years ago. He did that by not shying away from big, high-profile fights over hot-button culture war issues like critical race theory and transgender indoctrination. Glenn Youngkin did the same thing last November to pull off an upset in the Virginia governor’s race.
But DeSantis and Youngkin are, sadly, exceptions to the general rule that Republicans tend to be reactionary and defensive. Indeed, the failure of the conservative movement is largely attributable to this default defensiveness, and it needs to end. For decades, conservatives whined about just wanting to be left alone even as the radical left was marching through our institutions and transforming society, showing us at every turn they had no intention of leaving us alone. Yet some on the right still don’t seem to get it. On Tuesday morning, anticipating a red wave, Ben Shapiro tweeted: “The mandate for Republicans will be to stop Biden’s terrible agenda dead. It will not be to make very loud but tactically foolish moves.”
Shapiro didn’t specify what he meant by “very loud but tactically foolish moves,” but he followed it up with this:
The American people keep saying the same thing over and over: we want some semblance of normalcy. Stop bothering us. Leave us alone. This is not a difficult thing to achieve.
Sorry, but the era of normalcy and being left alone is over. The left will never leave us alone. They want to win and wield power, and if we want to stop them, we will have to win and wield power ourselves. Conservatives who want to be left alone will simply lose, as they have been for decades now.
Those like Shapiro who long to be left alone are also apt to argue that the conservative project has been moderately successful over the years, moving slowly to notch wins. Look at Dobbs. Look at religious liberty and the Second Amendment. Look at all the good judges appointed to the federal bench during the Trump administration.
But this is a cope. Yes, there have been a few victories for conservatives. The Dobbs decision was the greatest policy victory of the conservative cause in a generation, and it was due mostly to the dogged work of the Federalist Society and the Heritage Foundation, two institutions often unfairly maligned as “Conservative, Inc.” by the New Right, and — at least before Dobbs dropped — dismissed as failures.
Yet even the Dobbs decision was a defensive victory, handed down like a gift from on high by the Supreme Court. But it didn’t end legal abortion, and indeed the ruling itself bent over backward to avoid the broader implications of its own constitutional logic, which, as Justice Clarence Thomas explained in his concurring opinion, calls into question the constitutionality of substantive due process and the long train of Supreme Court rulings that have followed its invention more than a century ago.
As Dobbs itself suggests, defensive victories delivered by the federal judiciary aren’t going to reverse what has been, with few setbacks, a relentless, decades-long march by the left through every institution of American life. Anyone who tells you things aren’t that bad because we happen to have five mostly reliable Supreme Court justices is either delusional or quietly willing to acquiesce to leftist tyranny.
They’re probably also inclined to think Republicans didn’t really do so bad in the midterms, and that what Americans really want is just some tinkering with Social Security and the welfare state. Nothing too loud and tactically foolish. That’s more or less Rep. Kevin McCarthy’s plan if he becomes speaker of the House. After all, the country just wants to heal.
No. The country does not want to heal. It does not want “some semblance of normalcy.” There are two diametrically opposed moral systems at war right now in America, and it’s not enough at this late hour to be content with the status quo, to repose in the overturning of Roe v. Wade, and hope the five good justices will somehow stop the revolutionaries.
Just look at the successful pro-abortion midterm referendums in Michigan, Vermont, and California, where the right to kill the unborn is now enshrined in those states’ constitutions. What’s true of the abortion issue is true of nearly every other major issue in American public life. Being passive and defensive is not going to cut it. If Republicans want to win, they’d better be willing to fight. Let’s hope they are. The future of the republic depends on it.
John Daniel Davidson is a senior editor at The Federalist. His writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the Claremont Review of Books, The New York Post, and elsewhere. Follow him on Twitter, @johnddavidson.
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 “Fox News”, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Donald Trump.
Election night can feel a rush for conservatives, which makes sense: After a few years, those politicians who rejected the country’s history, attacked the police, weaponized science, and persecuted Christians and their children were finally sent packing.
It’s always good to get a little separation from something as destructive as the modern Democratic Party, but there’s one problem, and it’s what comes next?
Really. Most of us lived through Scott Brown’s special election to replace the late Sen. Ted Kennedy. Just two years after he’d been elected in a historic victory, President Barack Obama had launched his signature legislation to increase government control over health care, and the reaction to his (and the GOP’s) elitist overreaches had finally brought out a previously quiet base of Americans. If he won the election, Scott Brown would break Obama’s supermajority, and stop Obamacare from becoming law.
As the election approached, the excitement spread. My parents took a commercial flight a few days before Election Day where the pilot pranked the intercom system, asking a “Sen. Scott Brown to please come to the front of the plane” to raucous applause. When the day finally came, I was off at the D.C. bar I was working at, so flew home to vote and spend my last dollar sharing a room at the campaign’s hotel. “Tonight’s Gonna Be A Good Night” blasted out of the speakers, while a smiling Gov. Mitt Romney gave television interviews from the ballroom risers.
I still have the issue of the arch-liberal Boston Globe announcing Brown’s win that night. I saved it because I thought he’d stopped Obamacare from becoming reality. And Brown did try! (At least on that issue.) The Republican Party, however, underestimated the lengths their political opponents would go to wield power and defeat their opponents. Twelve years later, Obamacare is still the law of the land and by now, not even talked about.
Ten months after the special election, Americans got another go at sending their men to Washington. The “tea party wave” was so strong, even the always-confident president appeared quiet and chastened, admitting to reporters his party had lost touch and taken “a shellacking.”
But he didn’t give up, eventually warning his opponents, “I’ve got a pen, and I’ve got a phone,” before embarking on an ambitious agenda (that included remaking American citizenship) wielding solely executive power.
There was something to 2016, sure. A total outsider was elected president and, despite years of conspiracy theories, owed nothing to anyone. He’d serve as a wrecking ball, fighting the left on every front they opened, but by 2021, was gone. If just under two years on, Republicans are back, to what end?
Sure, neither Mitch McConnell nor Kevin McCarthy will be winning the presidency (a fact they’ll remind you of ad nauseum), but if they win the power of nominations and the power of the purse, how viciously will they wield the power they’ve been handed?
Will they halt the president’s extremely successful judicial nomination record? Halt it completely, without exception?
Will they ask where the billions in dollars and arms going to Ukraine ended up, or just keep sleepwalking toward a nuclear standoff?
Will they claw back the IRS’s newfound funds, or leave their tens of thousands of new agents on the job?
Will they continue to send $45 billion to America’s hard-left universities without a word of objection, as they have for years?
Will they demand funding for a wall, end funding toward abortions here and abroad, and refuse to confirm ambassadors and other posts devoted to spreading the left’s culture war to Vatican City and further abroad?
Will they break up the Big Tech companies who wield their power to control the flow of information to voters?
Or on all these issues, will they just tinker around the edges and go on Fox News to crow about it?
While election nights like last night can be a whole lot of fun, the reality is voters often wake up next to a stranger who’s planning to stick around for the next two years.
Conservatives have been losing for about a century now, and at this point rightly find little to conserve. If this will change any at all, they’ll need to think of themselves not as conservatives, but as revolutionaries. If they’re going to make a difference, they might as well: They’ll be up against a powerful executive, its sprawling army of lifelong employees, its allies in the intelligence agencies, Pentagon, corporate media, Silicon Valley, Wall Street, and beyond.
Like an addict realizing the vicious power the drug holds over them, some among us have finally realized the vicious power being wielded against the West. We’ve been losing for a century, yes, but really, we’ve only begun to fight. Maybe 2022 will be different from all the rest, but not without a fight. You don’t beat the regime by voting on Election Day — you beat it by making hell each and every day.
Christopher Bedford is the executive editor of the upcoming Common Sense magazine, from the Common Sense Society. From December 2019 through October 2022, he was a senior editor at The Federalist. He is vice chairman of Young Americans for Freedom, a board member at The Daily Caller News Foundation and National Journalism Center, and the author of “The Art of the Donald.” His work has been featured in The American Mind, National Review, the New York Post and the Daily Caller, where he led the Daily Caller News Foundation and spent eight years. A frequent guest on Fox News and Fox Business, he was raised in Massachusetts and lives across the river from D.C. Follow him on Twitter.
Sarah Huckabee Sanders | MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images
Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the former White House spokesperson for President Donald Trump and the daughter of Mike Huckabee, a former governor, has become the first woman elected governor of Arkansas. With 93% of the vote in by Wednesday morning, Sanders defeated her Democrat opponent Chris Jones, getting 63.1% of the vote, while Jones received 35.1% and Libertarian candidate Ricky Harrington 1.8%.
Sanders’ father previously served as governor of Arkansas from 1996-2007, with Sanders joking in her acceptance speech that while she always considered him “the best governor Arkansas has ever had,” she hoped “to take that title away from him pretty soon.”
“More than 10,000 miles, 75 counties, here we are,” said Sanders. “It has been an absolutely amazing journey every step of the way.”
Sanders also told those gathered to celebrate her win that “at the end of the day, this campaign was never about me. It was about each of you.”
“This election is about taking Arkansas to the top,” she continued. “I know that Arkansas can be first, and I’m committed to being the leader that takes us there.”
For his part, Huckabee took to Twitter to celebrate his daughter’s election win, calling it a “pretty special night.” He also lauded the election of Republican Leslie Rutledge as Arkansas’ next lieutenant governor.
Throughout the gubernatorial race, Sanders had a strong edge both with name recognition and financial support, including having fundraised millions of dollars more than her two opponents.
In September, Sanders was diagnosed with thyroid cancer and underwent surgery to treat it, announcing after her operation that “by the grace of God, I am now cancer-free.” John R. Sims, Sanders’ surgeon, said in a statement at the time that he believed the “surgery went extremely well” and accurately predicted that she would recover quickly.
“This is a stage 1 papillary thyroid carcinoma which is the most common type of thyroid cancer and has an excellent prognosis. While she will need adjuvant treatment with radioactive iodine, as well as continued long-term follow-up, I think it’s fair to say she’s now cancer free, and I don’t anticipate any of this slowing her down,” Sims said.
There are so many holes in the reporting of the attack on Paul Pelosi it is mind boggling.
There are major discrepancies in the ‘official’ police report, the Federal charges and recent reporting from the liberal NBC.
There ARE video’s that are being concealed to the public which brings up the question –
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WHY?
Even ex-Fox News star Megyn Kelly seems to have a problem with the Paul Pelosi investigation being conducted by the San Francisco PD. (And the DEEP STATE)
DEEP STATE RABBIT HOLE
Anthony Smith – When a man is arrested in his underwear with Paul Pelosi and Nancy is not home, you can see how the questions start to arise.
Damn right! I mean what in the hell is going on here fellas?
What’s your man up to Nancy? A little bit of man on man hanky panky? 😂
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Something Doesn’t Smell Right
Kelly stated, “I know enough to smell a rat.
“I feel like at a minimum, the SFPD has egg on its face because even under the most generous story to Paul Pelosi and to the San Francisco police, they were in the house when this guy attacked Paul Pelosi with a hammer.
“I’m not sure how that happened.”
Good question!
“How do you have police officers on site and an 82-year-old gets attacked with a hammer in front of you when you have a gun as a police officer?”
She added, “It’s one of the many questions here.”
“As you point out, there are security cameras all over that house.”
“You can see them from the outside – were they turned on?”
“If not, why not? She’s the speaker of the House.”
She also commented on the bodycam footage not being publicly released yet, stating, “Let’s see it.
“Let’s see it all!”
“I don’t know what went on.”
“I know enough to smell a rat.
“There’s something going on here that they’re not telling us.”
“I just don’t know what it is.”
WATCH:
We recently reported that the US Capitol Police had cameras outside of Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s San Francisco home but they were not being monitored at the time David DePape entered the residence.
The public will never be able to see the footage because the San Francisco DA is withholding all police bodycam footage, 911 calls and video from security cameras.
San Francisco DA Brooke Jenkins said she will not be releasing any footage or calls to 911 dispatchers.
WATCH:
NBC's Kristen Welker: "Are you planning to release the 911 call or any body camera video [from the Paul Pelosi attack]?"
While inefficient Democrat states take eons to report election results, the corrupt corporate media and keyboard warriors everywhere are melting down over the possibility of losing total control of the government power they’ve squandered for the last two years. When word reached Americans that the GOP started off the midterms strong with a massive Senate and gubernatorial sweep in Florida, blue checkmarks on Twitter, Democrats, and the propaganda press predictably lost their minds.
After reading exit polling suggesting that skyrocketing inflation is voters’ top concern, CNN lamented that voters are more worried about the rising cost of groceries and gas than leftists’ “threat to democracy” lies. “You know what’s missing from this one, two, three, four, five, top five issues? Democracy. It’s not even here. That’s not to say it’s not an issue for people but it doesn’t even come close,” CNN’s Dana Bash whined during her network’s election night coverage.
I’m SHOCKED that voters’ #1 concern after freely taking part in the democratic process isn’t ✨democracy✨ https://t.co/4K0uV8fkhH
Around that same time, MSNBC’s Jason Johnson minimized the democratic process of voting by claiming that “we can’t say that whatever happens tonight is a fair and equitable election.”
“The level of voter suppression is beyond anything that we saw in 2018,” he asserted without evidence.
MSNBC's @DrJasonJohnson on Georgia: "The level of voter suppression is beyond anything that we saw in 2018 … we can’t say that whatever happens tonight is a fair and equitable election" pic.twitter.com/WxPGLH0lLA
MSNBC’s Joy Reid also resorted to lying to undermine GOP victories, specifically in Florida. Not only did she falsely claim Miami-Dade County “has been trending Republican for a really long time” but she also wondered when Florida will become “a normal political state and not just a far, far, far right state.”
After both Gov. Ron DeSantis and Sen. Marco Rubio were re-elected, @JoyAnnReid called Florida a "far, far, far right state."
Convicted thief and viral purveyor of misinformation Rex Chapman, who lost his spot with CNN after less than one month on air, offered his complaints about the state of “our democracy” under the leadership of Republican powerhouses like the recently reelected Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis via Twitter.
In addition to the propaganda press’s meltdown, plenty of media personalities and Americans invoked the classic but overdone promises to movefrom certain states once it was clear Republicans were winning.
“[W]here should i move” one Buzzfeed reporter asked.
Even before results poured in on election night, the corrupt corporate media were preparing for the worst with doomsday-style prepping lists designed to pander to emotional voters who need help coping with actual democratic processes.
“Elections and anxiety often go hand in hand,” The New York Times tweeted. “Here are some evidence-based strategies that can help you cope.”
The list featured suggestions such as “breathe like a baby” and “limit your scrolling” as a way to “soothe election stress.”
The graphic was thoroughly mocked by normal people who don’t require such audacious behaviors to cope.
One kind soul on Twitter took it upon himself to “fix” the graphic to reflect more appropriate actions such as downing “five shots of hard liquor” and enduring waterboarding disguised as a “cool 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.
Election results hadn’t even started rolling in yet when the Very Smart People covering election night for CNN began making fools of themselves with their go-to 2022 talking point: democracy on the ballot.
“The numbers in these [exit polls] do not line up with what we were seeing in the polling data going into this election about what people cared about and the order in which they ranked it,” announced the network’s Chief National Affairs Analyst Kasie Hunt, stating what was obvious to anyone who understands that polls aren’t primarily designed to reflect public opinion; they’re intended to shape it to benefit Democrats and rack up donor dollars.
If CNN’s out-of-touch poll analysis is a joke, then the punchline came from CNN’s Chief Political Correspondent Dana Bash: “And you know what’s missing from this — one, two, three, four, five — top-five issues? Democracy. It’s not even in here.”
It’s not shocking that “democracy” doesn’t crack the top list of issues on the minds of voters, who care far more about how much it cost them in gas money just to get to their polling place and what gender-bending nonsense their kids could be learning in math class at the very moment they were casting their ballots. What is shocking is that the media elites nestled inside the Acela Corridor and D.C. Beltway ever thought Americans were buying the “democracy under threat” propaganda they were selling. Of course, “democracy” is not a top issue for a voter who has just finished casting a ballot — the most fundamental way he participates in democracy.
I’m SHOCKED that voters’ #1 concern after freely taking part in the democratic process isn’t ✨democracy✨ https://t.co/4K0uV8fkhH
As President Joe Biden and his administrative state ran the country into the ground in the midterm lead-up, voters repeatedly voiced their concerns loud and clear. Americans suffering under unsustainable gas prices and grocery bills have consistently cited inflation as their No. 1 issue, followed by the economy and jobs generally, and then the humanitarian crisis at the southern border that’s been seeping into non-border states. Out-of-control crime and drugs are next on the list, with the left trying and failing to scare Americans into worrying above all else about a woman’s “right” to kill her preborn child and about “democracy.”
Add to those concerns Americans’ exasperation with the sexualization of their kids in schools funded by their own tax dollars, the continued dumping of beaucoup bucks into a foreign war and even more to satisfy climate alarmists, and nagging memories of the deadly Afghanistan withdrawal, Covid tyranny, and every time Democrats feigned “nothing to see here” for an incoherent Biden. Election Day motivations are no mystery.
As The Federalist’s Senior Legal Correspondent Margot Cleveland wrote this week, “It’s difficult to say whether the ‘democracy at risk’ pitch speaks more of desperation or of stupidity, but either way, the promotion of this buzz-phrase in the final days of the election season proves an implicit acknowledgment that it is Democrats who are at risk in Tuesday’s election. … A red wave will not be an end to our representative democracy. It will just be an end to the Democrat representatives.”
If the media really cared about democracy, they would be talking about Maricopa County in the battleground state of Arizona, where the Democrat in charge of running elections is on the ticket for governor and untold Election Day voters (which skew overwhelmingly Republican, as opposed to mostly blue early voters) may have been prevented from casting a ballot due to machine issues. If they were really worried about threats to democracy, they would stop “election denying” and concocting wild conspiracies whenever they lose. And they’d stop shattering voter confidence by pushing mass mail-in balloting and laughing about Election Day turning into election month.
Though the left fantasized otherwise, many things about the 2022 election were obvious from the start: Pollsters would be wrong, Roe would be overemphasized, Trump candidates would overperform, Beto O’Rourke was never going to happen — and democracy was never on the ballot. CNN is just catching up.
Kylee Griswold is the editorial director of The Federalist. She previously worked as the copy editor for the Washington Examiner magazine and as an editor and producer at National Geographic. She holds a B.S. in Communication Arts/Speech and an A.S. in Criminal Justice and writes on topics including feminism and gender issues, religion, and the media. Follow her on Twitter @kyleezempel.
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Conservative writer Marc Thiessen implored the Republican Party to engage in deep introspection after failing to deliver the promised “red wave.” In a political environment unfavorable to Democrats, how could Republicans not decisively win nationwide, especially when they are generally on the favorable side of important issues like the economy and crime?
The result, according to Thiessen, is a “searing indictment” of the Republican Party.
“We had the worst inflation in four decades, the worst collapse in real wages in 40 years, the worst crime wave since the 1990s, the worst border crisis in U.S. history. We have Joe Biden, who is the least popular president since Harry Truman — since presidential polling happened — and there wasn’t a red wave,” the Fox News contributor said late Tuesday.
“That is a searing indictment of the Republican Party,” he continued. “That is a searing indictment of the message that we have been sending to the voters. They’ve looked at all of that, and looked at Republican alternative, and said no thanks.”
Given the disappointing results, Thiessen said the GOP “needs to do a really deep introspection look in the mirror right now” to understand the “absolute disaster” of an election cycle.
GOP midterm results are an ‘absolute disaster’: Bush speechwriter www.youtube.com
Although he did not mention former President Donald Trump by name, Thiessen said the Republican Party needs to look to Republicans like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, and Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp as the future of the GOP.
Election Day seems to have proven Thiessen correct.
For instance, Kemp won reelection by 7.5%. But Republican Herschel Walker, whom Trump endorsed, trails incumbent Democrat Raphael Warnock by nearly 1%. In Ohio, DeWine won by more than 25%, but Trump-endorsed Republican J.D. Vance won by less than 7%.
This proves that many people — likely independent voters — supported proven Republican leaders but refused to support Trump-endorsed candidates.
Meanwhile, Florida has become a deep red state under DeSantis, who has proven yet again that he can win support from groups of voters Republicans have historically struggled with.
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 “Fox News”, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Donald Trump.
Michigan voters will decide Tuesday whether children in that state can obtain puberty blockers at Planned Parenthood facilities without parental consent. Proposal 3 would also give Michigan children a constitutional right to be castrated or surgically sterilized — again, without the consent of a parent.
Parental rights have become a fiercely contested battleground. Historically, your right to determine what’s in the best interest of your child has gone without question. It’s the oldest, most fundamental liberty we know, enshrined in legal doctrine since 1690.
But too often today, ideology determines whether your parental rights will actually stand in court. If a parent opposes her child’s desire to pretend to be the opposite sex, courts increasingly treat that parent’s rights as expendable.The sexual confusion of children overshadows parents’ rights to remain in their children’s lives as a potent force.
In a courtroom down the hall, however, the rights of neglectful or drug-abusing parents are treated with kid gloves, under the theme of family preservation. Activist courts stand ready to protect your parental rights, but only when your narrative matches their own.
‘I’m God in this Case’
Less than a year ago, Abigail Shrier shocked readers with her story of a California judge who stripped a father of his parental rights because he showed insufficient support for performing irreversible medical procedures on his sex-confused son. These cases are popping up all around the country. Sexual ideology is becoming the governing factor in a child’s placement, trumping the will and the voice of a parent.In a state whose governor was elected on a parental rights platform, Virginia Del. Elizabeth Guzman brazenly introduced a bill that would charge a parent who fails to affirm a child’s “sexual orientation or gender identity” with a felony. In California, Gov. Gavin Newsom recently signed legislation that makes his state a “refuge” for trans-identifying minors who seek irreversible medical procedures. Just make it to the Golden State … and there is nothing your objecting parents can do.
One case in the sleepy university town of Charlottesville, Virginia, provides some insight into how a parent can suddenly get framed as “the bad parent” in a custody battle, merely for questioning a child’s sexual confusion.
Sarah Schultz told me she spent more than a half-million dollars trying to retain joint custody of her 15-year-old daughter who first claimed she was bisexual and then began to question her sex. Schultz pled for a “wait and see” approach and for the right to have an influence in her daughter’s maturing adolescence. Despite Sarah’s ex-husband’s earlier fentanyl overdose, she says, a judge gave primary custody of the daughter to her dad, who permitted both bisexual and heterosexual sleepovers. In the past four years, Schultz has seen her daughter fewer than five times.
Schultz said the appointed guardian ad litem viewed her faith as a threat to her daughter’s emerging sexuality.“I’m God in this case,” Schultz recalled her daughter’s guardian ad litem saying. The court saw her daughter as a girl in an “authentic process to discover her identity,” Schultz explained, while the father was commendable because he was “allowing her sexuality to blossom.”
Courts often use the “safety of the child” as a guise to award custody to a parent who mirrors the left’s narrative. Note the irony here. How can you be a good parent unless you are willing to oppose something harmful your child thinks she wants at the time? A teenager sees hormones and irreversible surgeries as a mirage of liberation. A concerned parent sees what a disfigured body and the inability to have children will mean 10 years from now.
A Pernicious Double Standard
Treatment of parental rights in the world of foster care and adoption, meanwhile, is a vastly different story.
A mother can give birth to a baby who spends two months in the NICU, crying for endless hours as he detoxes from the heroin his mother ingested during pregnancy, and she or her mother can still take the baby home. Parental rights are treated as sacrosanct, even though most of the maltreatment of children actually occurs at the hands of parents or their paramours.
“Family preservation” is the holy grail courts and welfare agencies pursue, often at the expense of the actual safety of children. As Naomi Schaefer Riley explains in her book, “No Way To Treat A Child,” “child welfare workers and family-court judges … believe that foster care, to the extent that it should be used at all, is an endless holding pattern for a child while parents get their affairs in order.” Sadly, many never do.
In an effort to preserve parental rights, children languish in care for years. The common complaint in foster care is “the clock.” Though a child is legally eligible for adoption after roughly two years in care, drug-abusing parents can play out the clock, attend a few recovery meetings, fulfill a requirement or two on the reunification plan — and the clock starts over. Many children age out of the possibility of adoption because the court favors parental rights over children’s attachment needs.
The Use and Abuse of Parental Rights
Given the current capricious approach of many courts, the question to ask is: Just how safe are your parental rights? If the issues at hand are related to your child’s confusion about his sex, then your parental rights can be bargained away in court far too easily. But if the court frames those rights as a matter of “family preservation,” they are nearly carved in stone.
The contrast between how parental rights are viewed, depending on the left-wing bias of courts and state agencies, should disturb everyone. The right of conscientious parents to shape their child’s life is among the most cherished of all human freedoms. That right is increasingly threatened, as the militancy of transgender ideology invades the private realm of parent and child.
How safe are your parental rights then? Only as safe as the left wants them to be.
Paula Rinehart, LCSW, is a therapist in Raleigh, North Carolina, and the author of the book “Sex and the Soul of a Woman.” She writes about family and culture.
The 2022 election results aren’t that hard to predict. Republicans will win and they’ll win big. The only questions on that front are how large will GOP majorities be in the House and Senate, and how many governor’s mansions will the GOP control? Will the red wave be a tsunami or just a massive breaker?
Beyond the numbers game, the larger question looming over this midterm cycle is why, at a time when inflation and the economy are top concerns for the vast majority of Americans, did Democrats choose to run mostly on abortion extremism and hysterical fearmongering about “threats to democracy” — issues that appeal to a rather narrow, left-wing slice of the American electorate that already reliably votes Democratic?
Why didn’t Democrats at least pretend to care about ordinary things like the rising cost of groceries and gas, worsening crime in major cities, and a looming economic recession? It’s one thing for President Biden and Democratic Party leaders in Congress to refuse to address these things as a matter of policy. But it’s quite another thing to refuse even to acknowledge that these are real concerns for most Americans right now.
One would think that simply on the basis of crude self-interest — say, clinging to their razor-thin majority — they would muster the will to pretend to care and at least pledge to tackle these issues, even if they’re lying. But they could not even do that. Why?
The answer doesn’t bode well for the country. Yes, Republicans will carry the day, retire Nancy Pelosi, and shatter the career aspirations of an entire cohort of middle-aged Democrat politicians like Beto O’Rourke and Stacey Abrams. But that’s only half the story, and maybe not the most important half.
Democrats’ inability to moderate even a little bit, their unwillingness to snap awake to reality and respond to voters with some measure of empathy, however small, is of course a consequence of the party’s capture by its radical left-wing base. (Henry Olsen had a good line related to this in The Washington Post recently: “[T]oday’s Democratic Party increasingly looks like the Depression-era Republican Party, which consisted of powerful elites who lost touch with the working-class majority.”)
The danger comes when Democrats refuse to accept that they have no mandate from the people to remain in power, and inevitably seek some other justification for clinging to it. For all their talk of “threats to democracy” from Republican “election deniers” — one of the most asinine political epithets of our era, by the way — it’s Democrats who pose the real threat. This cycle has made it clear that they are not trying to forge a majority coalition. Their appeal is exclusive to left-leaning, college-educated voters and the woke institutions and corporations these people now control. That might be a minority coalition, but it’s such a powerful one that it opens new possibilities to scheming Democrats: that there are other ways than winning elections to gain and retain power.
The mumblings of President Biden about “ending coal” and fossil fuels, saving democracy from insurrectionist election deniers, affirming the radical agenda of the transgender lobby, and championing abortion extremism are no accident, however confused the president might otherwise be about where he is and what’s going on. They are, in effect, signals to the elite power base in American society, and they are meant to convey reassurance: we’ve got your back, ordinary Americans be damned.
In the face of a massive electoral loss, then, do you really think a political party that has aligned itself with elite interests and woke morality, that controls the White House and the administrative bureaucracy, that is supported by corporate media and Big Tech (with the recent exception of Elon Musk’s Twitter) is going to simply relinquish that power? Hand it over to the very people it has been decrying as the destroyers of our democracy? Allow someone like Donald Trump ever to get near the White House again?
No, of course not. What Democrats did in the six months leading up to the 2020 election — not just the rioting and looting, but the rigging or “fortifying” of the election through lawsuits and coordinated online censorship — should be understood as a dry run. The Democrats will use every executive branch agency, every tool of law enforcement, every malign demonstration of force at their disposal to remain in power, or at least to deprive real power from Republicans.
Even before Trump won the 2016 election, we know the FBI began crafting an “insurance policy,” the Russia collusion hoax, in case he won. Recall, too, how every major Democrat denounced Trump as “illegitimate” after he won, how left-wing street thugs rioted in major cities, how elected Democrats managed to hobble Trump’s presidency through endless investigations and a frivolous impeachment. And above all, we saw how they were determined not to let the same thing happen in 2020. And it didn’t.
Keep that in mind as the midterm results roll in this week (and next). There’s a reason Democrats and the corporate media have been pushing hard the message that we won’t know the results of key races for days, maybe weeks. It’s not just about counting absentee ballots, it’s about getting the rigging in place, either to claim victory or deny the legitimacy of the vote. Whatever Democrats say they fear Republican “election deniers” might do, they themselves are preparing to do the same or worse.
A political party that has convinced itself the country faces an existential crisis if its opponents win at the ballot box, and that doesn’t even pretend to serve anyone other than its base of college-educated leftists, is a toxic combination. Such a party is of course incapable of winning a majority, but it’s also incapable of relinquishing power, which makes it by far the greatest threat to democracy our country now faces.
John Daniel Davidson is a senior editor at The Federalist. His writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the Claremont Review of Books, The New York Post, and elsewhere. Follow him on Twitter, @johnddavidson.
A new report compiled by congressional Republicans suggests that the FBI is “rotted at its core,” citing the targeting of pro-life activists and parents concerned about their children’s education.
Republicans on the United States House of Representatives’ Judiciary Committee released a report Friday titled “FBI Whistleblowers: What Their Disclosures Indicate About the Politicization of the FBI and the Justice Department.” The report contains approximately 1,000 pages of correspondence between lawmakers and current and former agency employees and the executive branch seeking clarification and documents related to actions lawmakers view as concerning.
“Over the last year, a multitude of whistleblowers have approached Judiciary Committee Republicans with allegations of political bias by the FBI’s senior leadership and misuses of the agency’s federal law-enforcement powers,” the report states. “Whistleblowers describe the FBI’s Washington hierarchy as ‘rotted at its core,’ maintaining a ‘systemic culture of unaccountability,’ and full of ‘rampant corruption, manipulation, and abuse.’”
The report specifically outlined information obtained from whistleblower testimony and other sources revealing how “actions by FBI leadership show a political bias against conservatives.” It expressed particular concern about the FBI’s embrace of an “anti-life agenda” while allowing “attacks on pro-life facilities and churches to go unabated.”
For its part, the FBI is insisting that it continues to go about its business in a politically neutral way. In a statement shared with The Christian Post, the law enforcement agency asserted that “we follow the facts without regards to politics.”
“The FBI has testified to Congress and responded to letters from legislators on numerous occasions to provide an accurate accounting of how we do our work. The men and women of the FBI devote themselves to protecting the American people from terrorism, violent crime, cyber threats and other dangers,” the statement added. “While outside opinions and criticism often come with the job, we will continue to follow the facts wherever they lead, do things by the book, and speak through our work.”
The document identified the harassment and threats U.S. Supreme Court justices have found themselves subject to following the leak of the draft decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which concluded that the U.S. Constitution does not contain a right to abortion, as violations of federal law: “In the face of ongoing threats to the justices and their families, the DOJ has, without any public explanation, neglected to institute a single prosecution for those acting in apparent violation and even brazen defiance of the law.”
After classifying the attacks on pro-life pregnancy centers following the leak of the Dobbs decision as violations of the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, the report maintained that the DOJ was abiding by a double standard when it comes to enforcing the federal law. It lamented that “the administration has looked the other way on violence targeting pro-life groups and facilities” while acting “thuggish” in enforcing the provisions of the FACE Act preventing the assault of abortion clinic workers.
“On Sept. 23, an FBI SWAT team raided the home of Pennsylvania resident Mark Houck to arrest him on an indictment charging FACE Act violations punishable by up to 11 years in prison, based on simple shoving incidents. The warrant alleged that on Oct. 13, 2021, Houck shoved a Planned Parenthood volunteer escort outside a clinic. Houck’s wife, however, explained that Houck was provoked by the Planned Parenthood activist making ‘crude … inappropriate and disgusting’ comments to Houck’s 12-year-old son.”
The report added that the FBI deployed 15 vehicles and 25 agents to his home, where they pointed guns at Houck and his family, all because of a confrontation between the pro-life activist and the Planned Parenthood escort as he and his son prayed outside the abortion clinic. It added that while the FBI “claims that it is investigating ‘a series of attacks and threats targeting pregnancy resource centers, faith-based organizations, and reproductive health clinics,’” it hinted at a double standard because “the FBI has not executed any SWAT team ‘dawn’ raids to make arrests in these cases.”
The document contained additional examples of the DOJ’s FACE Act enforcement, which resulted in pro-life activists facing 11 years in prison.
In addition to suggestions of a political bias against pro-lifers, the report pointed to a similar derision toward “parents resisting a far-left educational curriculum.” It recounted the memorandum authored by U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland directing law enforcement agencies to address a “disturbing spike in harassment, intimidation, and threats of violence” toward school officials.
The document stressed that the memo came five days after the National School Boards Association likened the “malice, violence, and threats” directed at school officials to “a form of domestic terrorism and hate crimes” and suggested that the federal government use counterterrorism statutes to prosecute those engaged in such behavior. The DOJ memo and the NSBA letter prompted considerable backlash, leading to Garland testifying before Congress.
While Garland assured lawmakers that he did not view “parents getting angry at school boards” as an example of domestic terrorism, a May 20 report released by the NSBA indicated that the Biden administration collaborated with the organization to craft the Sept. 29, 2021, letter that predated the memo.
According to the NSBA report, “White House officials discussed the existence of the [NSBA] Letter, its requests, and the contents of the Letter with Department of Justice officials more than a week before the Letter was finalized and sent to President [Joe] Biden.”
Friday’s report added that “the FBI quickly operationalized Attorney General Garland’s directive,” with FBI officials creating a new threat tag titled “EDUOFFICIALS” that applied to all “investigations and assessments of threats specifically directed against school board administrators, board members, teachers, and staff.” The report cited “information from whistleblowers” revealing that “the FBI has opened investigations with the EDUOFFICIALS threat tag in almost every region of the country and relating to all types of educational settings.”
Examples of incidents that led to FBI investigations included a mother informing a school board “we are coming for you.” The complaint that led to the investigation presented the woman as a threat because of her membership in a so-called “right-wing mom’s group” titled “Moms for Liberty” and her status as a “gun owner.”
Another parent that became the target of an FBI investigation vocally expressed opposition to mask mandates, with the complaint against him implying that he “fit the profile of an insurrectionist” because “he rails against the government,” “believes all conspiracy theories” and “has a lot of guns and threatens to use them.”
The complainant admitted to the FBI that they had “no specific information or observations of … any crimes or threats” and submitted the complaint because the FBI had created a website “to submit tips to the FBI in regards to any concerning behavior directed toward school boards.”
Other findings in the report declared that “The FBI is artificially inflating and manipulating domestic violent extremism statistics for political purposes,” adding: “the FBI downplayed and sought to reduce the spread of the serious allegations of wrongdoing leveled against Hunter Biden,” “the FBI is abusing its foreign surveillance authorities” and “the FBI is purging employees who refuse to align themselves with the leadership’s political ideology.”
It also denounced the raid upon former President Donald Trump’s residence at Mar-a-Lago over the summer.
Democrats and left-leaning media are blaming the expected midterm red wave on “misinformation,” refusing to acknowledge that voters may be choosing not to support them based on accurate information about their performance.
Twitter under the leadership of Elon Musk and conservative media projects focused on winning over minority voters have been targets of Democrats’ blame, and the media has accused both of promoting “misinformation.”
“The narrative has been set by Democrats and their allies in the media that as soon as Elon Musk took over Twitter, misinformation would spread. It’s entirely predictable, and the leftist alliance simply wasn’t prepared for the course correction desperately needed on a platform that used to censor conservatives,” Mike Davis, president of the Internet Accountability Project, told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Democrats are blaming their projected midterm losses on “misinformation,” which they claim is responsible for their declining popularity. Democratic politicians and left-leaning media figures are preemptively blaming the expected red wave on Elon Musk’s Twitter buyout and ensuing changes in the platform’s censorship policies. They’re also blaming their declining popularity among minority voters on conservative media outreach projects aimed at those communities, which they have labeled “misinformation.”
“The narrative has been set by Democrats and their allies in the media that as soon as Elon Musk took over Twitter, misinformation would spread. It’s entirely predictable, and the leftist alliance simply wasn’t prepared for the course correction desperately needed on a platform that used to censor conservatives,” Mike Davis, president of the Internet Accountability Project, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “Free speech is vital to a free and fair system, and we should all welcome the fact that Twitter is no longer a communications arm of the far left.”
Musk’s purchase of Twitter was finalized Oct. 17, and he quickly fired several top executives including head of legal policy, trust and safety, Vijaya Gadde, who had been involved in content moderation policies such as the decision to ban then-President Donald Trump from the platform in 2021. Democrats have expressed fear that Musk’s takeover will result in more relaxed content moderation and a surge in misinformation on the site, which some of them claim is a threat to election integrity. (RELATED: Rogan: ‘Woke’ Left Wants Censorship Because The Right Got Good At Social Media)
Stacey Abrams explaining her poll numbers: “Unfortunately, this year, black men have been a very targeted population for misinformation. Not misinformation about what they want but about why they want what they deserve.”pic.twitter.com/HhPxK0vVgj
“Elon Musk goes out and buys an outfit that spews lies all across the world,” President Joe Biden said. “There’s no editors anymore in America.”
Twitter moderators create curated content pages for news stories and trending topics which include context about the story which is often slanted in favor of Democrats’ talking points, according to The Washington Post. Musk reportedly laid off the entire team behind those efforts Friday.
“Days before the midterms, Twitter lays off employees who fight misinformation,” an NBC News headline said of the development. Twitter leaders have disputed claims that the platform is weakening its election integrity efforts.
The controversy comes two years after Twitter suppressed and censored the New York Post’s story about emails on Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop regarding a meeting between then-Vice President Joe Biden and a Ukrainian gas executive.
“Ahead of what looks to be a resounding midterm defeat, Democrats and the media (pardon the redundancy) are engaging in their favorite form of election denialism: the “misinformation” trope,” Jorge Bonilla, director of Media Research Center Latino, told the DCNF. “By pushing these tropes in the face of defeat rather than engaging in retrospection over their lost power and influence, the left (and the media) prove that they’ve learned nothing.”
Democratic Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams said Georgia Democrats were seeing waning support among black men because they were targets of misinformation in a recent appearance on MSNBC’s “Velshi.”
“Unfortunately, this year, black men have been a very targeted population for misinformation. Not misinformation about what they want but about why they want what they deserve,” Abrams said.
What the hell does that mean, “Not misinformation about what they want but about why they want what they deserve,”?
White House adviser Keisha Lance Bottoms echoed Abrams’ point in a Sunday interview on CBS News’ “Face the Nation.”
“If the policies are so good, why is communicating them such a problem?” interviewer Margaret Brennan asked.
“Well it’s been a very difficult couple of years. We’ve been in the midst of a pandemic, there’s been a lot of misinformation flooding the airwaves,” Bottoms said. “We see it in ways not just on television but we’re seeing it through YouTube. We’re seeing it on other social media platforms. So it is more difficult to get the message out.”
Twitter and Musk did not respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s requests for comment.
Is Google attempting to change the outcome of the 2022 midterm elections with its biased algorithms? Robert Epstein believes the answer is “yes” and claims to have proof.
Epstein, a Ph.D. from Harvard University, has quite an accomplished resume. He formerly served as editor-in-chief of Psychology Today, has published 15 books and currently serves as senior research psychologist at the American Institute for Behavioral Research and Technology.
Leading up to the midterm elections, Epstein and a team of thousands have been monitoring political content being pushed by tech companies like Google and Twitter, and in a Sunday article for the Daily Caller, Epstein revealed those findings.
Epstein’s team has recorded 1.9 million “ephemeral experiences” pushed into users’ feeds by Google in order to convince users to vote a certain way — presumably Democrat given the company’s history of bias. Epstein expects to have recorded 2.5 million of these messages by election day.
Ephemeral content is described by Epstein as “short-lived content that impacts people and then disappears, leaving no trace.”
So, via its search engine, the Google-owned video platform YouTube and other means, Google is pushing messages meant to sway voters in a biased manner that later disappears without a trace. Or rather, it would have disappeared without a trace if Epstein had not mobilized a team of “field agents” — registered voters — to record these messages on over 2,500 computers.
There are many different types of “ephemeral experiences” meant to sway opinion — about a dozen — that Epstein has identified over the course of nearly a decade. This includes bias in search results, search suggestions, voting reminders and interactions with digital personal assistants.
For example, if you look up the candidate of one party, only favorable articles, videos and other results are pushed to the top. Additionally, what Epstein describes as “carefully crafted search suggestions” flash on Google’s search bar when a user begins to enter a term.
According to Epstein, these messages “can shift voting preferences of undecided voters by up to 80 percent in some demographic groups after a single search.”
Reminders to vote were sent more often to liberal voters than to conservatives, and question-and-answer interactions with digital personal assistants manage to “shift the voting preferences of undecided voters” by 40 percent or more, Epstein’s team found.
The psychologist’s team collected and recorded 1.5 million ephemeral experiences of this nature in the lead-up to the 2020 election. They believe these manipulations may have shifted as many as six million votes in favor of Joe Biden.
In 2022, his team found similar results.
“In swing states, and especially in Wisconsin, Arizona and Florida, we are finding a high level of liberal bias in Google search results, but not in search results on Bing (the same pattern we have found in every election since 2016),” Epstein wrote.
“In several swing states, 92 percent of the autoplay videos being fed to YouTube users are coming from liberal news sources (YouTube is owned by Google). Unless Google backs down, it will shift hundreds of thousands of votes on Election Day itself with those brazen targeted go-vote reminders — and we will catch them doing so.”
It shouldn’t come as a shock that Google would find itself ensconced in such controversy. Leaked emails leading up to prior elections have shown the company’s willingness to use biased algorithms to push the subjective values of Google employees and administrators. Leaked emails obtained by The Wall Street Journal in 2018 revealed that Google employees were discussing different methods they could use to “leverage” search functions in order to combat then-President Trump’s travel ban. At the time, Google claimed none of the ideas were implemented.
Epstein does believe there is hope on the horizon, however. According to him, just prior to the 2020 election, his company went public with their findings, prompting three U.S. senators — Ron Johnson, Mike Lee and Ted Cruz — to send Google CEO Sundar Pichai a letter threatening investigation. After the letter was sent, Epstein’s team found that Google manipulations in the Georgia Senate race dropped to zero. This is because, according to one Google whistleblower, the company can turn biased algorithms off and back on again “like flipping a light switch.”
Epstein hopes, going forward, his team can serve as an accountability shield, preventing Google and other tech companies from engaging in partisan antics.
“[T]his time, we will continue to expand the monitoring system, and we will be monitoring content going not just to voters but also to America’s children. By late 2023, we will have a digital shield in place — a panel of more than 20,000 field agents in all 50 states — and we will shame Big Tech into staying clear of our elections and our kids for many years to come,” he wrote.
Michael wrote for a number of entertainment news outlets before joining The Western Journal in 2020 as a staff reporter. He now manages the writing and reporting teams, overseeing the production of commentary, news and original reporting content.
A Democrat poll worker in Indiana has reportedly been fired after allegations surfaced that he had pressured voters into voting against Republican candidates and selected the “straight Democrat ticket” option when helping an individual fill out their ballot.
James Zheng, a poll worker in Carmel, Indiana, is allegedly being investigated by the Hamilton County Sheriff’s Office for incidents of “electioneering and election interference.”
On Thursday, as a group of pro-parental rights education activists stood outside the Carmel polling place, Zheng allegedly told two black voters that they should not vote for the pro-parent, Republican candidates because the activists outside were “racist.” After the voters submitted their ballots, they alerted the activists to what Zheng had told them. The activists then complained to election officials.
Later, a second incident was reported. According to Hamilton County election administrator Beth Sheller, when Zheng was assisting a voter with an electronic ballot, he pressed the straight Democrat ticket option when explaining to the voter how to use the voting machine. The voter was “then confused about how to change the selection” and asked another poll worker for help. That poll worker resolved the issue and alerted the polling location’s election inspector about the incident.
Zheng had been removed from his post as of Friday.
Hamilton County GOP chairman Mario Massillamany told Fox News that Zheng’s conduct raises questions as to how many voters had been confused after he had attempted a similar maneuver but did not alert election officials.
“This should serve as a cautionary reminder that those desperate to hold onto power or gain power will do anything – including breaking the law – to thwart the efforts of parents and taxpayers to replace our school boards with officials who more accurately reflect the values of our community,” he said.
The incidents come after Democrats and their allies in the corporate media launched a nonstop propaganda campaign claiming GOP poll workers represent an existential threat to democracy (despite the fact that actual threats of violence and intimidation are extremely rare). Yet when a Democrat poll worker engages in election interference, Democrats are silent.
As Republicans are expected to make massive gains on Tuesday, expect Democrats to pull out all stops including using their minions (like Zheng) to influence voters, buying votes, interfering in the administrative process, and questioning election results. (According to the corporate media narrative, after all, it’s only acceptable to question elections if they favor GOP candidates.)
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.
Several states are experiencing problems with voting machines as Americans continue to cast their ballots at polling centers across the country.
Voters in Pennslyvania’s Luzerne County are claiming that voting machines ran out of paper, meaning that some voters had to cast provisional ballots while a poll worker drove to get more paper, according to ABC News affiliate WNEP. Luzerne County election officials told WNEP that voters who were forced to cast a provisional ballot should not be worried about whether their vote will be counted.
Just hours after polls opened on Tuesday, tabulation machines began malfunctioning in Arizona’s Maricopa County and voting machines are experiencing issues in Mercer County, New Jersey, according to county officials. The Maricopa County Elections Department announced that there are problems with precinct-based tabulators that paper ballots are fed into and said that they are sending technicians to address the problem, according to a tweet.
“Technical staff are working to resolve an issue with tabulators and investigating the cause … people can still check in and then vote their ballot at the voting booth,” the Maricopa County Recorder’s Office said in a statement provided to the Daily Caller News Foundation. “Once complete, they can insert their ballot in the secure slot on the ballot box where it will be counted at the Tabulation and Election Center.”
Maricopa’s elections department also said that people can still cast their votes into secure ballot boxes if the tabulator at their voting site is not working. Roughly 20% of polling places were experiencing the issues, according to a reporter from 12 News in Phoenix.
In Maricopa County, about 10% of polling places are experiencing problems with tabulators. One machine became operative after it was cleaned. Voters can still place their ballots in a slot in a locked container; they will be counted at the downtown tabulation center tonight.
Advice for Voters: If a tabulator is not working at a site, you can still vote! You have the option to cast your ballot and place it into the secure ballot box. The poll workers on site at the voting location are best equipped to help you ensure your ballot cast. pic.twitter.com/iobrOHmy86
— Maricopa County Elections Department (@MaricopaVote) November 8, 2022
In addition, election officials in Mercer County, New Jersey, announced early Tuesday it was experiencing multiple issues with voting machines.
“The Board of Elections has advised the county of issues with voting machines. Poll workers will be on hand to walk voters through the process. The board is working with Dominion, the machine maker, to resolve the issue,” the county announced on Facebook.
A notice on the website of the West Windsor township said that voting machines in “each district across the county” were down.
“On behalf of our NJGOP legal counsel and election integrity team, I want to make crystal clear to the voters of Mercer County that in spite of reported problems with scanners on voting machines in Mercer County, this issue does not affect their voting experience at all,” New Jersey GOP Executive Director Tom Szymanski said in a statement. “Voters can be completely rest assured that NJGOP is ensuring voters’ rights are protected at all phases of the process and that their vote counts.”
The Mercer County Board of Elections, the Mercer County Democratic Party and the Luzerne County Bureau of Elections did not immediately respond to the DCNF’s request for comment.
This is a breaking news story and will be updated.
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 “Fox News”, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Donald Trump.
In late October, Carlson aired a segment about Cross that swiftly received criticism from the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). The Fox host told his audience that Cross was fomenting a “race war” against white people.
Carlson likened “The Cross Connection with Tiffany Cross” and MSNBC to the Rwandan media outlet Radio Television Libre des Mille Collines, which stoked the 1994 Rwandan genocide.“Do they know what’s happening on their channel? Are they OK with this?” Carlson asked of MSNBC’s corporate leadership.
Here’s the Carlson segment in question:
Tucker Carlson: MSNBC’s open race hate should worry you deeply youtu.be
Boboltz in her story said the “network did not immediately respond to HuffPost’s request for comment on Saturday.”
The HuffPost writer added that the ADL said Carlson had “again used his platform to stoke racial tensions, falsely and dangerously accusing a Black @MSNBC host of instigating a genocide against white people” and that the group tweeted: “His incitement and trivialization of the Rwandan genocide must be forcefully condemned.”
It seems there may be some disagreement — perhaps even at MSNBC — about the reason for Cross’ exit from the cable network. In fact, a source close to the situation told Fox News that Cross got canned for “repeated bad behavior on and off-air. Bad judgment.” The details concerning said “bad behavior” and “bad judgment” aren’t clear, but beyond Carlson’s scathing rebuke of Cross, she offered no shortage of nasty comments about conservatives during her time in front of the camera.
To wit: She once said there’s already a “civil war” raging in the United States, urged liberals to “pick up a weapon” in the fight for democracy, and called Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas “Justice Pubic Hair on My Coke Can,” Fox News said. Cross also ripped U.S. Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) as a “token” and suggested Harriet Tubman — who helped rescue slaves on the Underground Railroad — would have left Scott behind. She also has said she’d be willing to carry out the “the most radical” of solutions to fix what she sees as police brutality and racist criminal justice, which is to “burn it down.”
“HuffPost doesn’t see the racism they pretend to care about in Cross because it’s like looking into a mirror to them,” one commenter said.
“Ahhhh, so pointing out that she’s instigating racism herself is now considered ‘attacking’ her…” another commenter observed.
“Puffpost at its best,” another commenter quipped. “When did MSNBC ever do anything based upon a Tucker Carlson commentary?”
“I think Ms. Boboltz of HuffPost is going to have a very short journalistic career with a piece like this,” another commenter wrote. “Absolute nonsense. MSNBC thrives on Fox News hate; they certainly aren’t going to fire a host based on what a Fox News host has to say.”
January 2023 – when the new federal and state governments convene – is all that matters. Who winds up being president in January 2025 is meaningless if we don’t break the vicious cycle of conservative obsession with future elections and actually focus on governing effectively after the current election. This is something GOP voters and conservative influencers and commentators need to understand immediately. It is also something both Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis must understand. If they do so, it would largely make this nascent rift between them irrelevant, because it’s what happens now that matters a lot more than who wins the presidential nomination.
So, we wake up Wednesday morning and the GOP flips the House and Senate and expands its dominance in state governments. What’s next? The 2024 presidential election, right? Wrong! What’s next is to, for once, focus on the current mandate for governance, because we can’t afford to wait another two years for relief.
We can’t wait two more years to stop the FBI from rounding up political opponents and holding them indefinably pretrial.
We can’t wait through another two years of “died suddenly” with the bio-medical security state engaging in bioterrorism against our people.
We can’t suffer another two years of the education system turning an entire generation of youth into androgynous freaks through relentless grooming in the schools and culture.
We can’t languish another two years with hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens pouring over the border every month.
We can’t live another two years with violent repeat offenders roaming the streets attacking random victims.
We can’t wait another two years to address the locking up of our food and fuel sources in the states and the inflation that will make every middle-class family dependent on the state’s plan for scarcity.
In other words, we are no longer living in a time when the contours of debate were merely over the exact tax rates or spending levels of long-standing programs. We are fighting for our right to live and live freely – literally. Everything must be done, including extraordinary measures, with the power we will control to shut down these terrible policies. A soap opera GOP presidential fight for the next two years distracting from what must be done now is the worst thing for our cause.
This is where Trump and DeSantis come into play and can both work harmoniously toward this goal – whether they ultimately run for president or not. Here’s what I would love to see from the two of them the day after the election, and I suspect most of the party base who would support either of them for president over the establishment candidates would agree.
For DeSantis’ part, he would blow the ceiling off the limits of state sovereignty and take “Keep Florida Free” to the next level by declaring it a constitutional sanctuary from all unconstitutional and harmful federal policies. He would directly interpose against the federal surveillance of and persecution of political opponents, including using law enforcement to confront federal abuse of power. Together with the legislature, he would declare the federal education, health care, and energy mandates/policies null within the state and actively use state resources to go in the opposition direction.
But the problem is that we cannot continue with one man setting the bar when the party is so broken that nobody else cares to follow in his footsteps. This is where Trump comes into play. He can be that relentlessly focused outside advocate we so badly need. With the exception of Kari Lake, and possibly one or two others, the GOP governors are hopelessly in the tank for big business, will not do what it takes to neuter the federal tyranny, and, all too often, agree with it. Trump could relentlessly shame these governors into following in DeSantis’ footsteps (whether he wants to mention him directly or not). He could be that voice for the America First state legislators who are outgunned and outmanned by their respective leadership and governors in pushing legislation banning all transgenderism, prohibiting the state health departments from pushing the shots, and pushing interposition against the federal government.
Trump can be that great equalizer for all the MAGA legislators who need help advancing their ideas but have no money, media, star power, or platform to do so. He can hold rallies not just during election season, but during legislative season in support of good ideas. He can encourage governors to work together on more national issues like energy development and illegal immigration. For example, Gov. DeSantis has voiced support for a state-based “return to Mexico policy,” but he needs other governors to sign on. A name-and-shame campaign from Trump would go a long way toward accomplishing this on an issue that we cannot wait two years to address.
At the federal level, Trump can work on an immediate ouster of Mitch McConnell in the Senate and endorse the Freedom Caucus rules package in the House to empower the America First members to advance their ideas. He can be a voice for voting against the omnibus bill and ensuring that the GOP members use their budget leverage, which is perhaps the only purpose of winning back control of Congress under a Democrat president.
Most importantly, Trump can be a voice for the voiceless people – the vaccine-injured. If he were to demand compensation, hold rallies with the millions of people injured by the shots, demand an end to liability protection for pharma, and promise to completely overhaul the way our government promotes pharma’s products, he would go a long way in addressing some of the concerns the base has about his Operation Warped Speed and Fauci pushing lockdowns on Trump’s watch. Even more important than his or anyone else’s presidential ambitions, it would go a long way in saving lives now.
None of this means that one or both of them can’t or shouldn’t concurrently run for president. What it does mean, however, is that everyone must recognize that saving life and liberty now is more important than 2025, both of them have an important role to play in actualizing that outcome, and if they both do a great job of utilizing their platforms in furtherance of those goals, the 2024 presidential election itself would become less important. If they both compete in a way that maximizes their respective positions and influence to bring relief to our voters and change the party now, then we will all win. If one or both competes in a pissing match that distracts from the current policy fights in favor of a drama-laden political soap opera about the next election, we all lose. Under the more hopeful and favorable scenario, each one would have competed with each other to try to deliver the most to their supporters in the way it matters, at the time it matters – all the while swimming in the same direction. Our only remaining problem at that point will be whom to vote for in that election, which, frankly, is an excellent problem to have.
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In a video clip from nearly three decades ago, the legendary Rush Limbaugh was able to obliterate the concept of virtue-signaling, and did so in 45 seconds.
The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines virtue-signaling as: “The act or practice of conspicuously displaying one’s awareness of and attentiveness to political issues, matters of social and racial justice, etc., especially instead of taking effective action.”
According to an article in the Boston Globe, the word “virtue-signaling” first surfaced in online message boards in 2004. In 2015, The Spectator published an article titled: “The awful rise of virtue signaling.” Google Trends shows the term “virtue signaling” was not really used until the summer of 2017, and the term exploded in June 2020.
Rush Limbaugh categorically understood the concept of the virtue-signaling way back in 1993. He not only grasped the dangerous flaws of virtue-signaling, but he could effectively lampoon the concept before anyone had a name for it.
In the 1990s, there was no Facebook to put a filter on your profile photo or Twitter to put pronouns in your bio to show you support the “current thing.” So people would wear ribbons to flaunt their moral high ground on a myriad of different causes.
For instance, orange ribbons are associated with leukemia, yellow to raise awareness for missing children, lavender to stand against urban violence, and blue ribbons are often worn to protest bullying. In the 1990s, a red ribbon was worn to raise awareness for HIV/AIDS.
In 1993 near the height of the AIDS epidemic, some people felt pressured to show their support for those suffering from HIV and AIDS by wearing a red ribbon on their clothes.
The Hollywood actors wanted to show the world how much they care about AIDS by wearing red ribbons. In 1993, the New York Times described the 65th Academy Awards audience of actors as a “sea of red AIDS ribbons.”
The Los Angeles Times noted, “When Billy Crystal emceed the Academy Awards on Monday night, we were surprised to see that he wasn’t wearing the red ribbon that symbolizes AIDS awareness.”
“The next morning we heard several radio shows abuzz with the to-wear or not to-wear (an AIDS ribbon) controversy,” the Los Angeles Times remarked, and added, “Radio talk-show host Rush Limbaugh, for one, called Crystal ‘the bravest man in Hollywood’ for not feeling like he had to follow the herd.”
Limbaugh set out to use the ribbon controversy to expose how feckless and shallow virtue signaling is.
During an episode of his syndicated television show in 1993, “America’s Anchorman” obliterated woke virtue-signaling.
Limbaugh pinned six different-colored ribbons on his suit, and satirically boasted to the studio audience, “Because I’m wearing these ribbons, I care more than any of you about anything. And these ribbons say so.”
The iconic radio host instructed his viewers to look at their own lapels, and then asked, “When you look down, what do you see?”
He answered his own question, “You don’t see anything, because you’re not wearing any ribbons.”
El Rushbo then explained how not wearing the ribbon meant that you were not as virtuous as those who did.
“It means you’re a bigot, it means you’re a racist, it means you’re a sexist, it means you’re a homophobe,” Limbaugh rattled off. “It probably means you’re a white guy, it probably means you’re a European, and you and you alone are responsible for all the ills of America.”
He then triumphantly proclaimed, “But I’m not, because I’m wearing these ribbons. I care more than you.”
The audience erupts into laughter over the absurd premise.
The classic video clip of Limbaugh destroying liberals for virtue-signaling resurfaced on Sunday. The old clip from 1993 went viral and racked up more than 700,000 views on Twitter in less than two days.
Nearly 30 years later, Limbaugh’s lesson on virtue signaling still holds true.
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 “Fox News”, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Donald Trump.
NBC pulled an aired report from its website that said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband Paul opened the door to their house, walked away from police and “did not immediately declare an emergency” the morning he was attacked.
“Sources familiar with what unfolded within the Pelosi residence now revealing, when officers responded to the high-priority call, they were seemingly unaware they’d been called to the home of the Speaker of the House,” NBC News reporter Miguel Almaguer said in the Nov. 4 “Today” report. “After a knock and announce, the door was opened by Mr. Pelosi. The 82-year-old did not immediately declare an emergency or try to leave his home, but instead began walking several feet back into the foyer toward the assailant and away from police.”
BREAKING: Paul Pelosi opened the door for cops, did not flee or declare emergency, walked back to the attacker in the house, then was ATTACKED!? WHAT!? pic.twitter.com/9YfJiaJX9f
NBC removed the report from the show’s website the same day, stating, “The piece should not have aired because it did not meet NBC News reporting standards.”
David DePape allegedly broke into the home early on Oct. 28, said he wanted to speak with Nancy Pelosi, and eventually attacked her husband with a hammer, according to a federal affidavit. The Speaker and her protective detail were in Washington, D.C., when the incident occurred, U.S. Capitol Police said.
The report referenced a state-level court filing against DePape. He has pleaded not guilty to all state-level charges against him, CNN reported, including attempted murder, false imprisonment and threatening the life or serious bodily harm to a public official.
DePape is also federally charged with assaulting a U.S. official’s immediate family member with the intent to retaliate against the official on account of the performance of official duties and attempting to kidnap a U.S. official on account of the performance of official duties.
NBC did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Townhall.com, and WhatDidYouSay.org.
AP Photo/Matt Rourke
Next Tuesday, voters, please remember that Democrats will never run out of excuses for criminals. They drone on about “racism,” “root causes,” “poverty,” “drug addiction,” “his gun dropped,” “mental illness,” “learning disabilities,” “he made a mistake” and “prison doesn’t work”!
It’s not the government’s job to probe criminals’ psyches. These are predators, monsters, feral beasts attacking civilization, with no regard for your property, bodily integrity or life. The government’s only job is to keep them away from us, not to ensure that they have fulfilling lives.
At the New York gubernatorial debate last week, feisty Republican challenger Rep. Lee Zeldin hit Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, hard on the crime wave engulfing New York. Finally, he said, “We’re halfway through the debate, she still hasn’t talked about locking up anyone committing any crimes.”
In a city where citizens are afraid to leave their homes because of crime, Hochul’s blithe response made headlines. She said: “I don’t know why that’s so important to you.”
Her unfathomably out-of-touch reply was so infuriating, viewers might have missed the first part of her answer: “Anyone who commits a crime under our laws, especially with the change we made to bail, has consequences.”
“Has consequences.” Take note, New Yorkers! She did not say, “will go to jail” or “will be prosecuted” or “will be removed from the streets for the welfare of society.”
“Has consequences” is progressive code for “restorative justice.” In lieu of actual punishment, the criminal will be required to write a letter to the victim, hug it out or attend a family “mediation.” Thus, if a pack of teenagers beat the crap out of your kid at school, he will be forced to sit down with his attackers so they can tell him, Hey, sorry, man, we thought you dissed us.
One of the major drivers of New York’s unprecedented increase in crime is the “no bail” law — meaning “no jail.” The same predators are arrested over and over again but can never be put in jail, thanks to the Democrats.
Apart from their overriding objective of keeping “black bodies” out of jail — as opposed to, say, protecting the white and black bodies of their victims — the Democrats’ argument for never jailing arrestees is that bail “discriminates” against the poor, who can’t afford to pay. First, show me the rich person mugging New Yorkers or shoving commuters in front of subway trains.
Second, we’re lucky when we can even catch one of these monsters. And, if caught, the vast majority of guilty criminals will never spend a day in prison. Only about 30% of those arrested for a violent crime go to prison — and those were the statistics before Soros-backed district attorneys started releasing criminals all over the country. Those were the statistics before the racial reckoning.
Another fantastic Democratic idea for reducing crime is to deploy “violence interrupters,” i.e. otherwise difficult-to-employ ex-cons who get a nice social work job from the city. Or to fund endless “mental health” services, the sole purpose of which is to create more useless government jobs for Victim Studies majors from Bard College.
Look, if some idiot wants to counsel rapists and muggers in prison — fantastic! They can volunteer. But the counseling needs to take place behind prison walls, where their clients belong.
Though I think it’s kind of important to mention that there is no evidence that “mental health” counseling has ever worked. The New York Times admitted as much in an uncharacteristic burst of honesty in 1983: “Dozens of studies … have found that rehabilitation programs in prison have failed, that there is no reliable way of telling whether a prisoner has reformed and that many released early commit new crimes.”
No matter what they call it, liberals have been pushing their anything-but-prison plans forever.
Here are some Times headlines from as far back as the 1980s:
1982: “According to a recent Rand Corporation study, [putting fewer criminals in prison] could reduce both the prison population and the crime rate.”
1987: “After years of increased sentences, and an extraordinary drain on our state’s treasury, we need to acknowledge that longer sentences do not deter most crime.”
1991: “Alternative to Prison Mends Fences and Lives”
Note that it wasn’t until 1994, and the election of Rudolph Giuliani, that crime actually, for the first time, went down. (Giuliani did not follow the Times’ advice.)
And leaping ahead to the present, here is the Times in 2020: “Can Prosecutors Be Taught To Avoid Jail Sentences?”
(I couldn’t help but notice that every one of the writers above was a female. So the good news is, we have no shortage of prison volunteers!)
“Alternatives to prison” never have worked, never will work, and liberals don’t care that they don’t work. They just don’t want criminals in prison.
This is a parlor game of one-upmanship for Democrats:
I’m the most compassionate!
No, I am!
Look — the object of my compassion is way worse than yours! He’s a rapist and a murderer!
The purpose of the criminal justice system is to lock up bad guys, not to allow liberals to feel good about themselves. (Least of all is it to ensure that all ethnicities are incarcerated at the exact same percentages.)
In fact, now that I think about it, separating criminals from the law-abiding is the government’s most basic responsibility. It’s also the only government program where liberals suddenly become hard-nosed fiscal conservatives. In just this one case, we get detailed breakdowns of the cost of prison. How much do the public schools cost? How about the cost of subsidized housing for able-bodied (but nonworking) Americans? How about food stamps? How about the endless layers of “social workers”?
Democrats can’t change and won’t change — they can only be defeated at the polls. (Even that’s only a start.) If you ever want to leave your home again, without fear of your body or property being violated, vote Republican on Nov. 8.
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 “Fox News”, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Donald Trump.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — On Monday morning, I swept through the marbled halls of the Supreme Court of the United States, off First Street NE here in the nation’s capital, to enter the highest room of jurisprudence in the land. The sound of my footsteps muffled atop thick carpeting, the blinds on the massive windows mostly drawn and the room packed with rows upon rows of chairs, slowly filling.
A daughter of India who grew up in Morgantown, West Virginia, little could I know that over the next four-and-a-half-hours I would ride an emotional rollercoaster as three so-called “liberal” justices and four attorneys overlooked, erased, and tried to gaslight the truth of Asian Americans who face discrimination — or as the ideologues call it, “systemic racism” — in admissions to Harvard University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
If not for fierce questioning from the court’s six conservative justices and the arguments of two attorneys for the plaintiffs, Students for Fair Admissions, Asian Americans would have been erased in the courtroom that day — much as they have been nationwide by “equity warriors” for whom we are an inconvenient minority. Instead, this is my prediction for the rulings, expected next year: a 6-2 victory by Asian American families and students over Harvard and a 6-3 win over the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Born in India, I was on an emotional roller coaster today in the Supreme Court, listening to 3 justices + 4 lawyers try to gaslight America on the reality of anti-Asian racism. Fortunately, 4 justices argued fiercely. My bet: 6-2, Harvard loses. 6-3 UNC loses. America wins 💯 🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/IsQ1yK8Ny1
In 332 pages of court transcripts, “diversity” was referenced 202 times, most of the time by the universities’ lawyers and the three justices that supported them, with “Asian” mentioned only 81 times. The universities’ lawyers, the sympathetic U.S. solicitor general, and the three like-minded justices spoke many times about supporting “students of color,” “minorities” and “diversity” but most often excluded Asian Americans. Ironically, the three liberal justices waxed eloquently about “diversity” without once noting the obvious: There wasn’t an Asian American justice beside them.
In the most defining moment of the day, Harvard’s attorney, Seth Waxman, tried to downplay “race” as a “determinative factor” in admissions to Harvard, noting that it was just like, “you know,” being “an oboe player in a year in which the Harvard-Ratcliffe orchestra needs an oboe player will be the tip.”
Chief Justice John Roberts shot that comparison down immediately.
“Yeah. We did not fight a civil war about oboe players,” he said firmly.
“I—,” Waxman tried to interrupt.
Roberts continued, undeterred. “We did fight a Civil War to eliminate racial discrimination, and that’s why it’s a matter of — of considerable concern.”
Across the country, parents listening to the proceedings laughed and cheered. The day before, many of those parents, with names like Jack Ouyang, Wai Wah Chin, Eva Guo, Suparna Dutta, Yuyan Zhou, and Harry Jackson, stood on the steps of the Supreme Court at an “Equal Education Rights for All” rally with signs promoting simple ideas. “Stop Anti-Asian Discrimination.” “Diversity ≠ Skin Color.” Together, over the past years, we had become accidental activists in the war on merit and Asian American students.
Since late August, parents had been meeting at 9 p.m. on Thursday nights over Zoom to ready for the rally, trading messages through the week on WeChat, Telegram, and Signal. CNN and Fox News featured their voices in their coverage of the case. Chinese-language newspapers put news of the rally on their front pages. But inside the Supreme Court, to the lawyers for the universities and the three justices who supported them, it felt as if we were invisible.
‘Gas lighters’
I’d first visited the nation’s capital decades ago as an 18-year-old intern in the summer of 1983, but this was my first time in the Supreme Court hearing room. It is about the size of a soccer field. At 57, I had to be a witness for the approximately 22 million Asian Americans living in the United States, about one of every 15 people, most hailing from 19 countries and the fastest-growing racial group in the U.S., according to Pew Research Center.
In response to a K-12 education system that has largely failed black and Hispanic students, officials at Harvard and UNC-Chapel Hill have allegedly rigged their admissions processes with “race-conscious” standards that discriminate against Asian American students to boost the number of black, Hispanic, and other “underrepresented minorities,” known today as “URMs.”
I brought two books into the Supreme Court with me: the big red book, “Critical Race Theory: The Key Writings That Formed the Movement,” and the yearbook for the class of 2021 from my son’s alma mater, Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, in Alexandria, Virginia, a magnet school known as “TJ,” where about 70 percent of the students are Asian American.
The yearbook theme was simple, “We know exactly how you feel.” Unfortunately, activists for the tenets of critical race theory don’t even pretend to want to know how we feel, and I witnessed this tone-deaf callousness from the three activist justices: Associate Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson, Elena Kagan, and Sonia Sotomayor. In my notebook, I penned their three names under “Gas Lighters.”
These three justices infused their questions, comments, and analysis with the politics and worldview of critical race theory, the ideology that teaches that society’s injustices must be corrected through the lens of race. Kagan wondered whether “people who have been kicked in the teeth by our society for centuries” can get a “thumb on the scale” instead of “white men.” She spoke about “our color blindness, whatever that means, because our society is not color blind in its effects.” Sotomayor punctuated many a question with “correct?” For example, she said schools are working to examine the “whole” student as “equals” — “correct?”
Quickly, Kagan found a kindred spirit in the country’s solicitor general, Elizabeth Prelogar, who spoke so sing-song it took a careful ear to recognize the disturbing worldview of critical race theory in her words. To the plaintiff’s argument on the “color-blind interpretation of the Constitution,” she said, “There’s nothing in history to support that.”
Under “Fierce Against Racism,” I wrote four names: Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, and Brett Kavanaugh. Under “Sympathetic” to the plaintiffs, I penned two names: Associate Justices Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett.
Photo/Asra Nomani
Prophets of critical race theory, such as author Ibram X. Kendi, have spread a toxic, unbelievable, and illiberal idea: “The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination.” Asian American students have been their sacrificial lambs in their racial experiment, with K-12 schools like TJ in the crosshairs of their war on merit.
In December 2020, after the killing of George Floyd turned educrats into activists, the 12-0 Democratic school board in Fairfax County, Virginia, eliminated the merit-based admissions tests to the school and replaced them with a “holistic” process that would increase the number of black, Hispanic, and other “URM” students, assigning “bonus points” to racially engineer the student body. A group we started, Coalition for TJ, filed a lawsuit with attorneys from a public-interest nonprofit, Pacific Legal Foundation.
In early 2022, a federal judge ruled that the new admissions process is “blatantly unconstitutional,” but the “UnFairfax” school board, as we like to call it, is appealing the case, and it will likely end up in the U.S. Supreme Court as early as fall 2023.
‘Asian’ Does Not Appear
On Monday, to hear the three “Gas Lighters” and the university’s lawyers, you wouldn’t have even known they were weighing the effect of systemic racism against Asian Americans. In fact, at one point, Alito turned to David Hinojosa, an attorney representing current and former students at UNC-Chapel Hill supporting race in admissions and said: “I was struck by the fact that the word ‘Asian’ does not appear one time in your brief. Yet Asians have been subject to de jure segregation. They have been subjected to many forms of mistreatment and discrimination, including internment.”
Like a magician, Hinojosa said there was no mention of “Asian” in his brief because, voila, a “record” of discrimination against Asian Americans “actually doesn’t exist.” He instructed the court to take it up with Harvard.
When Alito pressed the Harvard attorney, Waxman, on why Asian American students received a lower “personal score” than other students on character traits, including “integrity, courage, kindness, and empathy,” the Harvard lawyer did a tap-dance, saying the “syllogism” of the question was “wrong,” then asserted that the personal score difference is a “slight numerical disparity” that doesn’t reveal any “evidence of discrimination in admissions outcomes against Asian Americans,” because it’s “simply a number” that “fades into the background.”
Simply a number.
“They think we’re that stupid.”
Alito pounced with the obvious question: “If it doesn’t matter, why do you do it?” Waxman dismissed the “personal score” as a “matter of triage” for overwhelmed admissions officers.
What about “affinity groups,” the controversial new tool for separating and segregating students in housing, discussion groups, and elsewhere in schools by race and other identity markers, asked Justice Amy Coney Barrett? Oh, they have “incredible benefits,” gushed Hinojosa.
Photo/Asra Nomani
In the 1920s, Harvard President Lawrence Lowell discriminated in admissions against another group: Jewish students, because he believed there was a “Jew problem” with the overrepresentation of Jewish students at the school. In gaslighting back then, Harvard officials said they weren’t discriminating against Jewish students but just putting in place a “holistic” admissions process.
Now, in his closing remarks, Cameron Norris, an attorney for Students for Fair Admissions, said, “Harvard thankfully does say it is ashamed of its history of Jewish discrimination. I hope someday it says the same about how it’s treating Asians.”
Asra Nomani is a senior contributor at The Federalist. A former Wall Street Journal reporter, Nomani writes a regular newsletter, Asra InvestigatesAsra Investigates, with breaking news and analysis on the frontlines of culture and politics. She is a senior fellow in the practice of journalism at the Independent Women’s Network and a cofounder of the Coalition for TJ, a grassroots parent group, and of the Pearl Project, an investigative reporting initiative. She can be reached at asra@asranomani.com and @AsraNomani.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom speaks during a bill signing ceremony at Nido’s Backyard Mexican Restaurant on Feb. 9, 2022 in San Francisco, California. | Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
Governor Newsom,
Proposition 1 will be detrimental to women in California who deserve not shame and discouragement, but support, empowerment and encouragement when facing an unplanned pregnancy. When an ad campaign, paid by California taxpayers, targets women and tells them they are not capable of carrying a child, being a mother, or even giving them the chance to consider an adoption.
A woman in Orange County, back in the late 1960s, was married, had four small boys, and found herself in an unplanned pregnancy after having a one-night stand with another man. She felt her only option was to drive to Mexico and abort the baby.
During that two-hour drive south, she had time to reflect on her options. By the time she reached the abortion clinic she had made the choice to choose adoption for her unwanted baby. She knew the baby would be wanted by someone.
I am that unwanted baby girl.
My life began in Santa Ana because my birth mother made the choice for life.
My adopted parents were hardworking immigrants. My adopted father was a plumber, a proud member of UA582 Union Pipe Trades for over 60 years. He passed away this last March at the age of 96, and I was blessed to be his daughter.
This unwanted baby girl, almost aborted, has made a difference in the state of California as a tax paying, law abiding citizen, a loyal friend to many, a mentor to young women and a foster/adoptive parent to at-risk children and teenagers. Today, I serve as CEO of the national nonprofit organization Save the Storks. Our mission is to create a story of hope and empowerment for every woman facing an unplanned pregnancy.
If Proposition 1 passes, it will be yet another setback for women. Why? Because millions of women who made the choice for abortion deal with depression, anxiety and addictions. Post-abortive women are 155% more likely to commit suicide.
Planned Parenthood and the abortion industry have hidden the truth about abortion. Pro-mom organizations who truly care about women, their physical, mental and emotional health, their futures and their families often go unrecognized for the life-affirming programs and services they provide.
California has incredible rescue missions, pregnancy clinics, wraparound services, foster family agencies and ministries that empower women when facing an unplanned pregnancy. When a woman doesn’t feel ready or capable of being a mother, these organizations step in to help her be a parent,or find parents who will adopt her child/children.
Please, consider sharing the choice for motherhood and the choice for adoption when you speak to women. And make sure you have all the facts and statistics. Women I personally know have reported that they were rushed into an abortion by workers at clinics. They regretted their decision after. This is not just my opinion or anecdotal, but a fact. According to Support After Abortion, 22 million people are currently hurting after their abortion experiences.
Women in California deserve better, and their preborn children deserve better.
Diane Ferraro is CEO of Save the Storks, a national prolife organization that exists to reach women facing unplanned pregnancies and save the lives of babies through compassion, education and holistic care. As a woman who has her own personal adoption story, Diane believes every human being, including the preborn baby, has intrinsic value. Learn more about the work of Save the Storks at savethestorks.com.
The Federal Reserve announced an interest rate hike of 0.75 percentage points, bumping the range of the federal interest rate to between 3.75% and 4% following a Wednesday meeting of Fed policymakers. The rate hike matches investor expectations and is the fifth consecutive hike since March and the fourth at this aggressive pace since June as the Federal Reserve attempts to cool the economy and blunt persistently high inflation, The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday. All eyes are now on the Fed’s December meeting, with investors debating whether the Fed will continue at its aggressive pace of 0.75 percentage point hikes or slow to 0.5 in a bid to ease the pressure on an economy an emerging consensus of analysts say is heading towards a recession. (RELATED: European Central Bank Takes Action As EU Teeters On Brink Of Recession)
Some investors were hoping the Fed would begin a “pivot” towards reduced rate hikes in December after various signs that the economy was beginning to slow, Reuters reported Tuesday. However, following a Bureau of Labor Statistics report Tuesday that showed an unexpectedly strong labor market, with job openings in September nearly recouping an August decline, some investors believe the Fed will likely see itself as having more work to do in prompting a slowdown.
“Despite other signs of economic deceleration,” Ronald Temple, head of U.S. equity at financial advisory firm Lazard Asset Management, told Reuters, “the job openings data taken together with nonfarm payroll growth indicate the Fed is far from the point where it can declare victory over inflation and lift its foot off the economic brake.”
The Fed is expected to raise interest rates again today by .75% in a poor attempt to curb inflation. Meanwhile oil companies have reported over $50 billion in third quarter profits exceeding expectations. Corporate greed is driving inflation.
So-called “core inflation,” which measures inflation less food and energy, ticked up to 5.1% year-on-year in September, according to the Fed’s preferred inflation metric, the Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) price index. The more well-known Consumer Price Index (CPI) has repeatedly come in hot, with its most recent reading also showing soaring core inflation, up 0.6% on a monthly basis in September and up 6.6% on an annual basis.
Heightened rates have pushed people away from buying houses at the fastest rates on record, as 30-year fixed mortgage rates hit their highest levels in 20 years. Elevated interest rates are also putting pressure on the federal government, with the cost of interest on the $31.1 trillion national debt set to surpass the $750 billion spent on defense this fiscal year by 2026, according to CNN.
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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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