Sonoma State University President Mike Lee has been suspended after sending out an email yielding to the demands of pro-Palestinian students and faculty. In a Wednesday statement, California State University Chancellor Mildred Garcia criticized Lee for “insubordination” and placed him on administrative leave. Lee had only been in the position for 20 months.
The action was taken soon after Lee’s Tuesday memo in which he announced four “points of agreement” with protesters encamped on the school’s Person Lawn. This included disclosure of university vendor contracts and pursuing “divestment strategies.” It further adopted an “Academic Boycott,” that will avoid formal collaborations that are “sponsored by, or represent, the Israeli state academic and research institutions.”
Sonoma State University is not the first to cave to protesters. In addition to schools like Columbia canceling their commencements, Northwestern (my alma mater) is the ultimate example of administrators picking the path of least resistance in the face of radicalized students. Recently, seven out of 11 members of the “President’s Advisory Committee on Preventing Antisemitism and Hate” resigned in protest.
Under the controversial agreement, the school will admit five Palestinian students each year, support two Palestinian faculty members annually, create special housing for Muslim students, and add students to Committees to review purchases from Israeli businesses.
Notably, at Columbia, the faculty overwhelmingly passed a vote of no confidence this week in President Nemat Shafik for her actions “to have our students arrested, and to impose a lockdown of our campus with continuing police presence.” These students occupied critical areas of campus, took over a building, trashed school property, and held workers briefly against their will.
On my own campus of George Washington, we are still not allowed access to our offices without prior approval and high fencing now blocks off much of the campus. With commencement this weekend, it may have the feel of graduating from the Gulag Archipelago for some of our students.
Below is my column on Fox.com on the approaching end of the Trump trial in Manhattan. With the dramatic implosion of Michael Cohen on the stand on Thursday with the exposure of another alleged lie told under oath, even hosts and commentators on CNN are now criticizing the prosecution and doubting the basis for any conviction. CNN anchor Anderson Cooper admitted that he would “absolutely” have doubts after Cohen’s testimony. CNN’s legal analyst Elie Honig declared “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a star cooperating witness get his knees chopped out quite as clearly and dramatically.” He previously stated that this case would never have been brought outside of a deep blue, anti-Trump district. Other legal experts, including on CNN and MSNBC, admitted that they did not get the legal theory of the prosecution or understand the still mysterious crime that was being concealed by the alleged book-keeping errors. The question is whether the jury itself is realizing that they are being played by the prosecution.
Here is the column:
In the movie “Quiz Show,” about the rigging of a 1950s television game show, the character Mark Van Doren warns his corrupted son that “if you look around the table and you can’t tell who the sucker is, it’s you.”
As the trial of former President Donald Trump careens toward its conclusion, one has to wonder if the jurors are wondering the same question.
For any discerning juror, the trial has been conspicuously lacking any clear statement from the prosecutors of what crime Trump was attempting to commit by allegedly mischaracterizing payments as “legal expenses.” Even liberal legal experts have continued to express doubt over what crime is being alleged as the government rests its case.
There is also the failure of the prosecutors to establish that Trump even knew of how payments were denoted or that these denotations were actually fraudulent in denoting payments to a lawyer as legal expenses.
The judge has allowed this dangerously undefined case to proceed without demanding greater clarity from the prosecution.
Jurors may also suspect that there is more to meet the eye about the players themselves. While the jurors are likely unaware of these facts, everyone “around the table” has controversial connections. Indeed, for many, the judge, prosecutors, and witnesses seem as random or coincidental as the cast from “Ocean’s Eleven.” Let’s look at three key things.
1. The Prosecutors
First, there are the prosecutors. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg originally (as did his predecessor) rejected this ridiculous legal theory and further stated that he could not imagine ever bringing a case where he would call former Trump personal attorney Michael Cohen, let alone make him the entirety of a prosecution.
Bragg’s suspension of the case led prosecutor Mark F. Pomerantz to resign. Pomerantz then wrote a book on the prosecution despite his colleagues objecting that he was undermining their work. Many of us viewed the book as unethical and unprofessional, but it worked. The pressure campaign forced Bragg to green-light the prosecution.
Pomerantz also met with Cohen in pushing the case.
Bragg then selected Matthew Colangelo to lead the case. Colangelo was third in command of the Justice Department and gave up that plum position to lead the case against Trump. Colangelo was also paid by the Democratic National Committee for “political consulting.” So a former high-ranking official in the Biden Justice Department and a past consultant to the DNC is leading the prosecution.
2. The Judge
Judge Juan Merchan has been criticized not only because he is a political donor to President Biden but his daughter is a high-ranking Democratic political operative who has raised millions in campaigns against Trump and the GOP. Merchan, however, was not randomly selected. He was specifically selected for the case due to his handling of an earlier Trump-related case.
3. The Star Witness
Michael Cohen’s checkered history as a convicted, disbarred serial perjurer is well known. Now, Rep. Dan Goldman, D-N.Y., is under fire after disclosing that “I have met with [Cohen] a number of times to prepare him.”
Goldman in turn paid Merchan’s daughter, Loren Merchan, more than $157,000 dollars for political consulting.
Outside the courtroom, there is little effort to avoid or hide such conflicts. While Democrats would be outraged if the situation were flipped in a prosecution of Biden, the cross-pollination between the DOJ, DNC, and Democratic operatives is dismissed as irrelevant by many in the media.
Moreover, there is little outrage in New York that, in a presidential campaign where the weaponization of the legal system is a major issue, Trump is not allowed to discuss Cohen, Colangelo, or these conflicts. A New York Supreme Court judge is literally controlling what Trump can say in a presidential campaign about the alleged lawfare being waged against him.
The most striking aspect of these controversial associations is how little was done to avoid even the appearance of conflicts of interests. There were many judges available who were not donors or have children with such prominent political interests in the case. Bragg could have selected someone who was not imported by the Biden administration or someone who had not been paid by the DNC.
There was no concern over the obvious appearance of a politically motivated and stacked criminal case. Whether or not these figures are conflicted or compromised, no effort was taken to assure citizens that any such controversies are avoided in the selection of the key players in this case.
What will be interesting is how the jury will react when, after casting its verdict, the members learn of these undisclosed associations. This entire production was constructed for their benefit to get them to convict Trump despite the absence of a clear crime or direct evidence.
They were the marks and, like any good grift, the prosecutors were hoping that their desire for a Trump conviction would blind them to the con.
Bragg, Colangelo and others may be wrong. Putting aside the chance that Judge Merchan could summon up the courage to end this case before it goes to the jury, the grift may have been a bit too obvious.
New Yorkers are a curious breed. Yes, they overwhelmingly hate Trump, but they also universally hate being treated like chumps. When they get this case, they just might look around the courtroom and decide that they are the suckers in a crooked game.
Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro professor of public interest law at George Washington University and a practicing criminal defense attorney. He is a Fox News contributor.
Below is my column on Fox.com on the approaching end of the Trump trial in Manhattan. With the dramatic implosion of Michael Cohen on the stand on Thursday with the exposure of another alleged lie told under oath, even hosts and commentators on CNN are now criticizing the prosecution and doubting the basis for any conviction. CNN anchor Anderson Cooper admitted that he would “absolutely” have doubts after Cohen’s testimony. CNN’s legal analyst Elie Honig declared“I don’t think I’ve ever seen a star cooperating witness get his knees chopped out quite as clearly and dramatically.” He previously stated that this case would never have been brought outside of a deep blue, anti-Trump district. Other legal experts, including on CNN and MSNBC, admitted that they did not get the legal theory of the prosecution or understand the still mysterious crime that was being concealed by the alleged book-keeping errors. The question is whether the jury itself is realizing that they are being played by the prosecution.
Here is the column:
In the movie “Quiz Show,” about the rigging of a 1950s television game show, the character Mark Van Doren warns his corrupted son that “if you look around the table and you can’t tell who the sucker is, it’s you.”
As the trial of former President Donald Trump careens toward its conclusion, one has to wonder if the jurors are wondering the same question. For any discerning juror, the trial has been conspicuously lacking any clear statement from the prosecutors of what crime Trump was attempting to commit by allegedly mischaracterizing payments as “legal expenses.” Even liberal legal experts have continued to express doubt over what crime is being alleged as the government rests its case.
There is also the failure of the prosecutors to establish that Trump even knew of how payments were denoted or that these denotations were actually fraudulent in denoting payments to a lawyer as legal expenses.
The judge has allowed this dangerously undefined case to proceed without demanding greater clarity from the prosecution.
Jurors may also suspect that there is more to meet the eye about the players themselves. While the jurors are likely unaware of these facts, everyone “around the table” has controversial connections. Indeed, for many, the judge, prosecutors, and witnesses seem as random or coincidental as the cast from “Ocean’s Eleven.” Let’s look at three key things.
1. The Prosecutors
First, there are the prosecutors. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg originally (as did his predecessor) rejected this ridiculous legal theory and further stated that he could not imagine ever bringing a case where he would call former Trump personal attorney Michael Cohen, let alone make him the entirety of a prosecution.
Bragg’s suspension of the case led prosecutor Mark F. Pomerantz to resign. Pomerantz then wrote a book on the prosecution despite his colleagues objecting that he was undermining their work. Many of us viewed the book as unethical and unprofessional, but it worked. The pressure campaign forced Bragg to green-light the prosecution.
Pomerantz also met with Cohen in pushing the case.
Bragg then selected Matthew Colangelo to lead the case. Colangelo was third in command of the Justice Department and gave up that plum position to lead the case against Trump. Colangelo was also paid by the Democratic National Committee for “political consulting.” So, a former high-ranking official in the Biden Justice Department and a past consultant to the DNC is leading the prosecution.
2. The Judge
Judge Juan Merchan has been criticized not only because he is a political donor to President Biden but his daughter is a high-ranking Democratic political operative who has raised millions in campaigns against Trump and the GOP. Merchan, however, was not randomly selected. He was specifically selected for the case due to his handling of an earlier Trump-related case.
3. The Star Witness
Michael Cohen’s checkered history as a convicted, disbarred serial perjurer is well known. Now, Rep. Dan Goldman, D-N.Y., is under fire after disclosing that “I have met with [Cohen] a number of times to prepare him.” Goldman in turn paid Merchan’s daughter, Loren Merchan, more than $157,000 dollars for political consulting.
Outside the courtroom, there is little effort to avoid or hide such conflicts. While Democrats would be outraged if the situation were flipped in a prosecution of Biden, the cross-pollination between the DOJ, DNC, and Democratic operatives is dismissed as irrelevant by many in the media.
Moreover, there is little outrage in New York that, in a presidential campaign where the weaponization of the legal system is a major issue, Trump is not allowed to discuss Cohen, Colangelo, or these conflicts. A New York Supreme Court judge is literally controlling what Trump can say in a presidential campaign about the alleged lawfare being waged against him.
The most striking aspect of these controversial associations is how little was done to avoid even the appearance of conflicts of interests. There were many judges available who were not donors or have children with such prominent political interests in the case. Bragg could have selected someone who was not imported by the Biden administration or someone who had not been paid by the DNC.
There was no concern over the obvious appearance of a politically motivated and stacked criminal case. Whether or not these figures are conflicted or compromised, no effort was taken to assure citizens that any such controversies are avoided in the selection of the key players in this case.
What will be interesting is how the jury will react when, after casting its verdict, the members learn of these undisclosed associations. This entire production was constructed for their benefit to get them to convict Trump despite the absence of a clear crime or direct evidence.
They were the marks and, like any good grift, the prosecutors were hoping that their desire for a Trump conviction would blind them to the con.
Bragg, Colangelo and others may be wrong. Putting aside the chance that Judge Merchan could summon up the courage to end this case before it goes to the jury, the grift may have been a bit too obvious.
New Yorkers are a curious breed. Yes, they overwhelmingly hate Trump, but they also universally hate being treated like chumps. When they get this case, they just might look around the courtroom and decide that they are the suckers in a crooked game.
Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro professor of public interest law at George Washington University and a practicing criminal defense attorney. He is a Fox News contributor.
A.F. Branco Cartoon: AG Garland says, “I will protect this building (DOJ) and its people,” but he says nothing about upholding the Constitution. That tells you everything you need to know about where his heart and mind are: Protecting Biden and the Deep State.
WATCH: A Visibly Rattled Merrick Garland Forced to Go on Defense For the First Time as House Republicans Vote to Hold Him in Contempt
By Cristina Laila – May 16, 2024
US Attorney General Merrick Garland on Thursday told reporters that the Justice Department does not need to comply with a congressional subpoena because the DOJ is “a fundamental institution of our democracy.” A visibly rattled Garland made the statements during a press conference to reporters after Joe Biden asserted executive privilege over the audio of his interview with Special Counsel Robert Hur. Merrick Garland was forced to go on defense for the first time as two GOP-led House Committees vote to hold him in contempt of Congress. READ MORE…
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country in various news outlets, including NewsMax, Fox News, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Rep. Devin Nunes, Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Chris Salcedo, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Trump.
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President Biden has made his “biggest blunder” yet by driving China and Russia into a closer strategic partnership through his faulty foreign policy, one expert warned, as Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin met in Beijing to strengthen bilateral ties.
Heritage Foundation senior fellow Michael Pillsbury argued on “Fox & Friends”that the “shocking” relationship the two nuclear world powers have fostered never would have happened under the Trump administration.
“Basically… we’re seeing what [former President] Trump was trying to do with China when he called himself ‘Tariff Man’ to get leverage over China to help us in various ways,” Pillsbury told co-host Brian Kilmeade on Thursday.
“That’s simply not happening with Biden and to draw, to push together two nuclear powers, Russia and China, it’s really a blunder of the highest order. … The Russians had a million army troops built up on the Chinese border for a while, so to see them come together like this to me is just shocking. It’s one of the biggest blunders we’ll see in my lifetime.”
Pillsbury’s comments come as Putin visited Xi in Beijing to strengthen bilateral relations and garner additional support for the war in Ukraine.
Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping shake hands during a meeting in Beijing on Oct. 18, 2023. (Sergei Guneyev/Pool/AFP via Getty Images)
Putin began his two-day state visit on Thursday, where both countries claimed to want an end to the war in Ukraine.
“This would never happen under Trump,” Pillsbury said. “This is a big blunder, I think, by the Biden people to drive Russia and China together. This was one of Trump’s goals never to allow this to happen.”
Meanwhile, China has vowed “resolute measures” against the U.S. in retaliation for Biden’s newly announced tariffs on $18 billion worth of Chinese imports. The new measures include an increase in the tariff rate on electric vehicles from 25% to 100% this year, along with hikes on tariffs in “strategic sectors” including steel, aluminum, semiconductors, batteries and solar cells, the White House said.
“China heavily subsidized all these products, pushing Chinese companies to produce far more than the rest of the world can absorb. And then dumping the excess products onto the market and unfairly low prices, driving other manufacturers around the world out of business,” President Biden said Tuesday in a speech at the White House.
Former Trump national security aide John Ullyot argued the summit between Putin and Xi was clearly a “show of force” against the U.S. as both countries face deepening tensions with the West.
“It’s a show of force in the sense that it is… a rebuke to the West, that has… put in these sanctions,” Ullyot said Thursday on “FOX & Friends First.” “But it also is a sign that there’s increasing access here between Russia and China, where… Russia has been shut off from exporting oil and natural gas to the Western Europe, and so now they’re having to look at other markets, and of course, the biggest market… that’s a border state of theirs, and in the region in Asia it is obviously China, so they want to strengthen that.”
“There’s a pipeline that is out now on hold that they want to get approval for the pipeline that goes through Mongolia from North Russia,” he continued. “But more than anything else… this is a show that there’s an axis that… Russia can exploit to work with China to go against the sanctions that are put on Russia, so also get financial and currency stability as well.”
The hikes come after Trump imposed tariffs on thousands of Chinese goods in 2018 and 2019 in response to an investigation that found China was violating U.S. intellectual property laws and coercing American companies into transferring sensitive technology to Chinese firms as a condition of gaining access to China’s market.
Fox News’ Greg Norman contributed to this report.
Bailee Hill is an associate editor with Fox News Digital. Story ideas can be sent to bailee.hill@fox.com
With some aliens tied to the Chinese Communist Party, the surge in Chinese illegal immigration is raising U.S. security concerns. Thousands are being released into the U.S. due to Biden’s open-border policies. Pictured: Chinese aliens attempting to cross into the U.S. from Mexico are detained by U.S. Customs and Border Protection at the border on Nov. 11, 2023, in Jacumba, California. (Photo: Nick Ut/Getty Images)
Simon Hankinson is a senior research fellow in the Border Security and Immigration Center at The Heritage Foundation.
Editor’s note: This week, we will be taking a brief break from Simon Hankinson’s originally scheduled Part 3 of his series on the three reasons President Joe Biden’s border chaos is intentional.
Instead, we bring you lightly edited excerpts from his breaking testimony Thursday before the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Oversight, Investigations, and Accountability at a hearing on “Security Risk: The Unprecedented Surge in Chinese Illegal Immigration.”
——————
I served as a Foreign Service officer in seven countries. I have adjudicated thousands of visa applications to facilitate lawful visits, commerce, and immigration to the United States while excluding aliens who were legally inadmissible. The visa process I worked with overseas stands in total contrast to what happens at the U.S. border today.
Over the past two years, I have visited the border in Arizona, California, New York, and Texas. On those visits, I saw nationals of many countries apprehended by the Border Patrol. In San Diego last March, I watched Border Patrol dropping off dozens of aliens, including Chinese, at a bus stop to release them into the country.
Mass release of people who entered the country illegally happens nearly every day, multiple times, at multiple locations. At best, this is a mockery of U.S. immigration law and sovereignty. At worst, it is a huge national security and community safety risk. In addition to many Chinese aliens with connections to the Chinese Communist Party, People’s Liberation Army, and other state entities, it is statistically probable that the Department of Homeland Security is releasing people with serious criminal records.
According to U.S. law, DHS is supposed to detain aliens who enter the country illegally. But the Biden administration has replaced border control with mass processing, parole, and release. DHS has also abused immigration parole at an unprecedented scale.
In January 2021, which included the first 11 days of the new Biden administration, the Border Patrol encountered 17 Chinese aliens between ports of entry. By January 2024, it was 3,700 in that one month alone. As of April 30, this year, DHS had already encountered 48,501 inadmissible Chinese aliens in fiscal year 2024 (which began Oct. 1, 2023); 27,583 of them between ports of entry.
Nearly all are being released into an asylum process that will take years to conclude. At the end of that process, those ordered removed are extremely unlikely to be deported, because the Chinese government does not cooperate in accepting their nationals back.
In fiscal year 2023, Immigration and Customs Enforcement removed only 288 Chinese aliens, leaving up to 100,000 still in the U.S., despite final orders of removal.
Most Chinese entering illegally are seeking employment. They use asylum claims to enter, remain, and work in the United States. Illegal immigration ebbs and flows corresponding to a risk-reward calculation. Today, Chinese are coming in great numbers simply because they can. Worldwide awareness of our open border, spread by social media, shows them how.
For example, Chinese citizens do not need a visa to fly to Ecuador, after which they can continue by land north to the U.S. And starting on May 17, Air China will begin direct flights from Beijing to Havana. If Chinese aliens are willing to take the dangerous trek by land from Ecuador to the U.S. via the Darien Gap, why wouldn’t they also be willing to traverse the 90 miles by water to Florida?
Overseas, an in-person interview by a U.S. consular officer is the first line of “vetting” for foreign visa applicants wanting to come to the United States. This is buttressed by consular staff who know local languages, customs, and news. Larger embassies host other federal agencies that can assist with vetting investigations.
The second line of vetting is through automatic checks of U.S. government databases. Applicants are frequently refused entry based on adverse information that would not have been discovered had the person arrived illegally with no identity documents at the border.
Meanwhile, at the border today, most “national security decisions” of who gets into our country are no longer made by American officers. Under President Joe Biden’s policies, what was once a privilege for aliens has become a right.
Despite what the Biden administration wishes the public to believe, there is no real “vetting” of those released at the border, nor of those allowed in under parole programs, much less of the “gotaways” who enter covertly between ports of entry without inspection. The official visa “front door” competes with a wide-open back door at the border, where there are no routine criminal background checks using records from the person’s home country. Unless a foreign national has a record held by U.S. agencies, DHS is flying blind.
Concerning China specifically, Customs and Border Protection agents have reportedly reduced the number of standard questions asked of inadmissible Chinese aliens at the border from 40 to five.
But, however many questions, the process relies on an alien telling the truth and agents taking them at their word. Even if Customs and Border Protection requests additional information on an individual, China routinely ignores U.S. requests for verification of nationality, and they reportedly hide records of criminal and corruption cases.
DHS releases most aliens caught at the border with a Notice to Appear in immigration court—at a date far into the future. Aliens are then free to go wherever they want, with no way for ICE to easily find them.
There are more than 6 million aliens on ICE’s Non-Detained Docket, of whom only about 184,000 are tracked using what’s called Alternatives to Detention, which uses passive methods to track them, such as having the alien check in with ICE by phone every day. Only 2% of aliens tracked using Alternatives to Detention have actual GPS monitors.
To close this dangerous loophole, the U.S. needs to re-implement agreements with Mexico and Northern Triangle countries of Central America so that inadmissible aliens are not released into the interior of the U.S. pending the decision in their asylum cases, but instead remain in those countries as they await their determinations (the vast majority of which will result in their asylum applications being rejected).
Given the population, economy, and politics of China, the U.S. can never meet the demand for those seeking to enter our country illegally. The U.S. will at some point have to remove those who are ineligible to enter or remain, or else abandon the rule of law that made this country so attractive for so many immigrants in the first place.
The BorderLine is a weekly Daily Signal feature examining everything from the unprecedented illegal immigration crisis at the border to immigration’s impact on cities and states throughout the land. We will also shed light on other critical border-related issues like human trafficking, drug smuggling, terrorism, and more.
Below is my column in USA Today on the effort to impeach President Joe Biden over his freezing of arms shipments to Israel. While one can strongly disagree with the policy or the motivation behind the action, it is not a high crime and misdemeanor in my view.
Here is the column:
After the two impeachments of former President Donald Trump, Congress seems to be on a hair-trigger for anything that can be plausibly, or even implausibly, defined as a high crime and misdemeanor. The latest example is the impeachment resolution introduced against President Joe Biden over his decision to withhold arms from Israel in an attempt to prevent an operation in Rafah to destroy Hamas’ remaining military units. While there is much to question about Biden’s motivations and his means to pressure Israel, it is not an impeachable offense.
The sponsor of the impeachment resolution, Florida Republican Rep. Cory Mills, maintains that “President Biden abused the powers of his office by soliciting a ‘quid pro quo’ with Israel while leveraging vital military aid for policy changes. This egregious action not only compromised the credibility of the United States but also undermined the interests of our longstanding ally.”
On the surface, there is an obvious appeal for Republicans to use these grounds to impeach Biden. After all, in 2019, Democrats impeached Trump on the basis of a phone call to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in which the president threatened to withhold military aid to that country. Democrats insisted that Trump used the threat to deny aid as a way to encourage Zelenskyy to investigate Biden for corruption in Ukraine.
Political analysts on the left and the right have acknowledged that Biden’s hardened stance toward Israel is due to his faltering poll numbers and the threat that he could lose Michigan and Minnesota in the upcoming election. A loss in Michigan, where the state’s large Muslim population has rejected Biden’s past support for Israel, would likely doom his chances for reelection.
Presidents often make decisions based on politics
Even assuming that Biden’s recent changes were motivated by politics in Michigan (which I believe is a fair assessment), it would not be a high crime and misdemeanor. Presidents routinely act out of political interests. Indeed, a democracy involves using one’s voting power to influence politicians like Biden to change policy. The more than 100,000 “uncommitted” votes in Michigan’s Democratic primary clearly spooked the Biden White House.
To impeach presidents for such discretionary conduct would make impeachment a type of “vote of no confidence” device used in countries like the United Kingdom. That is not the purpose of impeachment, which was meant to be a rarely-used measure to address the most egregious forms of presidential misconduct.
The recent resolution falls into a type of “just desserts” rationale for impeachment. I testified in the first Trump impeachment and opposed it on constitutional grounds. I warned Democrats that they would rue the day that they lowered the standard and short-circuited the process for impeachment.
At the time, I told the House Judiciary Committee: “President Trump will not be our last president and what we leave in the wake of this scandal will shape our democracy for generations to come. I am concerned about lowering impeachment standards to fit a paucity of evidence and an abundance of anger. If the House proceeds solely on the Ukrainian allegations, this impeachment would stand out among modern impeachments as the shortest proceeding, with the thinnest evidentiary record, and the narrowest grounds ever used to impeach a president. That does not bode well for future presidents who are working in a country often sharply and, at times, bitterly divided.”
Democrats were wrong then; Republicans are wrong now
After ignoring that warning, Democrats went a step further in the second impeachment in 2021 and used what I called a “snap impeachment” in an attempt to punish Trump for his role in the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
It would be an easy thing to say “well, turnabout is fair play, so a pox upon their house.” The problem is that this is the people’s house, and we all are harmed by the destruction of the impeachment process. Democrats were wrong in 2019 and 2021 to impeach Trump, but yielding to the same political motives now is no virtue.
Ironically, the new impeachment resolution does precisely what Biden is accused of doing: using constitutionally bestowed powers for raw political purposes.
The White House has insisted that this latest effort is “ridiculous.” Except that isn’t ridiculous given Democrats’ past actions. But it is equally wrong.
In 2023, I testified in the Biden impeachment hearing and said that I believed that there was sufficient basis − and potential impeachable conduct − to justify an inquiry into the Biden corruption scandal. Without prejudging the outcome of that investigation, it was clear that, if proven, some of the allegations would meet the demanding standard under Article II, Section 4 of the Constitution.
The new allegations would not. Even if Biden were shown to be hampering Israel’s war to help him win Michigan, it would not be sufficient. The line between politics and policy has always been imprecise, if not imperceptible. All presidents are first and foremost political creatures. They often use the most noble sentiments to hide the basest interests. There is a place to render a verdict on such cynical calculations, but it is not on the floor of the House. It is rather in thousands of polling places on Nov. 5.
Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University. Follow him on X, formerly Twitter: @JonathanTurley
Below is a slightly expanded version of my column in the New York Post on the first day of cross examination for Michael Cohen. He still has one day of cross examination ahead of him on Thursday. With the government resting after Cohen’s cross examination, I believe that an honest judge would have no alternative but to grant a motion for a directed verdict and end the case before it goes to the jury. Judge Juan Merchan will now have to give the full measure of his commitment to the rule of law. Given the failure to support the elements of any crime or even to establish the falsity of recording payments as legal expenses, this trial seemed to stumble through the motions of a trial. Michael Cohen was only the final proof of a raw political exercise. For critics, some of Cohen’s answers appear clearly false or misleading. Like their star witness, the prosecutors have shown that they simply do not take the law very seriously when there is an advantage to be taken. Cohen has truly found a home with the office of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.
Here is the column:
On Tuesday, the prosecution surprised many by suddenly announcing that it would rest its case against former president Donald Trump with the completion of testimony by Michael Cohen. It was surprising because the prosecution never clearly stated the crime that it was proving, the elements of that crime, or even why denoting payments related to Stormy Daniels were not properly recorded as legal expenses. Indeed, the only thing the prosecutors proved was that, in the pantheon of dishonesty, there are liars, pathological liars . . . and Michael Cohen.
Cohen spent the last two days insisting that he used to be a liar but lied to help former President Donald Trump. If that is the thrust of his testimony, it is just the latest lie told by Cohen under oath. Cohen has lied to Congress, courts, special counsels, the IRS, the banks, and virtually every creature that walks or crawls on the face of the Earth. Notably, his past conviction for business and tax fraud were not taken in the interests of Trump but himself.
When he admitted on the stand that he lied during his prior plea agreement, that was not to assist Trump who he had already denounced. It was to advance his own interests. There is every indication that Cohen is still lying.
Cohen repeatedly said that he could not remember even recent calls after recounting calls from eight years ago with crystal clarity. He said that he could not remember key exchanges and statements. However, these paled in comparison to other glaring moments. Take, for example, his testimony on his unethical decision to secretly record a Sept. 6, 2016 telephone call with Trump. It was a breathtaking betrayal that most lawyers would not contemplate, let alone carry out.
When asked by the prosecutors about that act, Cohen bizarrely claimed that he did so to guarantee that David Pecker, the former publisher of the National Enquirer, would “remain loyal to Mr. Trump.”
No one seriously believes that this is true. It does not even make sense. Pecker was speaking to Trump about the payments and even met with him at the White House. Playing for him a call with Trump would produce nothing but confusion rather than pressure for Pecker. Moreover, why would Cohen tape the call without letting Trump know? The obvious motive was to squirrel away material to use against Trump if he ever needed a little leverage.
Again, it was for Cohen.
Cohen’s testimony showed that he has consistently acted in his sole interest. After portraying his sudden cooperation with prosecutors as a type of Road to Damascus, jurors learned that all roads lead back to Cohen and his bank accounts. After telling the jury that he has dedicated his life to righting the wrongs of Trump and holding him accountable, he admitted that he repeatedly acted to undermine the prosecution in order to make a buck.
Told by prosecutors to stop doing public interviews, Cohen did not care. He did roughly two dozen television appearances and recorded hundreds of podcast episodes. He admitted that Trump is mentioned in virtually every episode, of which he did roughly four a week. He recounted how he raked in millions on books, including one titled “Revenge.” He admitted that he is selling items like a $32 shirt with a photo of Trump in a jumpsuit behind bars and a coffee mug with the phrase “send him to the big house, not the White House.” He is also peddling a reality show called “The Fixer,” in which he promises viewers, “I am your fixer.”
After just a few hours of cross examination, it was clear that Cohen is the same grifter saving himself — one Venmo at a time. Yet, Cohen continued to reframe reality in his own self-constructed image.
When asked about his TikTok antics, he portrayed his postings as a type of sleep deprivation therapy, explaining that “having a difficult time sleeping and [he] found an out.”
No sane prosecutor would rely on Cohen, let alone make him the entirety of their case.
The prosecutors did not even bother to show that Trump was responsible for or knew about how the payments were recorded on ledgers and business records. They also just shrugged away the need to show why denoting these payments as “legal expenses” was fraudulent — or what the correct description might be. Those details might be demanded in any other courtroom, but this is New York and the defendant is Donald Trump.
For Bragg and his team, it is all about what they can get out of this case despite the law. In that sense, they found a kindred spirit in their star witness, and Michael Cohen has finally found a place that values what he calls on his reality show promo his “particular set of skills.”
Jonathan Turley is an attorney and professor at George Washington University Law School.
A.F. Branco Cartoon – Biden continues his threat of withholding weapons to Israel in light of his recent poll numbers sinking. Israel seems resolute in its effort to rid Hamas since they slaughtered 1700 of their innocent civilians on October 7th. Biden stated that his support for Israel is unshakable, but the latest polls appear to have shaken that unshakable support.
Why is Biden throwing Israel under the bus?
By Kelly McCarthy – May 15, 2024
Despite the traditional support from American Jewish voters for his party, and despite the US’s long-standing friendly relationship with the only democracy in the Middle East, Joe Biden – or whomever is operating him – has reneged on the billion dollar promise to send assistance to Israel. READ MORE…
A.F. Branco Cartoon – The campus protesters are being organized by leftist organizations bent on destroying the Western way of life. Platforms like TikTok and college professors are a huge part of the brainwashing going on with our youth. Imagine being thought to hate the most free and prosperous country on earth while trying to change it into a tyrannical banana republic Sh*t-hole.
Radical Protest Leader Linked to the Anti-Israel Campus Demonstrations Traveled to Communist Cuba for “Resistance Training”
By Jim Hoft – May 15, 2024
We are witnessing the unification of the radical Islamic and Marxist movement in America. A recent investigation into the highly organized nationwide campus protests across America found that several leaders of the anti-Israel movement traveled to communist Cuba for “resistance training.” The anti-Israel protesters were associated with Black Lives Matter activists who allegedly provided training techniques to the Jew-hating mobs who set up camps on numerous American college campuses. Investigators say BLM leader Manolo De Los Santos is tied to the movement. Manolo De Los Santos hails Hamas’ terror attacks as “heroic,” and calls for the destruction of Israel. READ MORE…
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country in various news outlets, including NewsMax, Fox News, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Rep. Devin Nunes, Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Chris Salcedo, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Trump.
Top Stories • Pro-Life Advocate Lauren Handy Thrown in Prison for 57 Months for Protesting Abortion • Joe Biden’s Campaign Confirms He Supports Abortions Up to Birth • Senator Mike Lee Slams Joe Biden for “Unjustly” Persecuting Pro-Life Americans • Joe Biden Putting Peaceful Pro-Life Americans in Prison is a Horrible Travesty of Justice
More Pro-Life News • Attorneys General File Lawsuit Against New Biden Rule Forcing Employers to Fund Abortions • Catholic College Honors Justice Samuel Alito With Award for Upholding Justice • Arizona Supreme Court Rejects Planned Parenthood’s Request to Get Rid of Abortion Ban Early • New Study Shows Abortion Linked to More Mental Health Disorders for Women • Scroll Down for Several More Pro-Life News Stories
Looking for an inspiring and motivating speaker for your pro-life event? Don’t have much to spend on a high-priced speaker costing several thousand dollars? Contact news@lifenews.com about having LifeNews Editor Steven Ertelt speak at your event.
Comments or questions? Email us at news@lifenews.com. Copyright 2003-2024 LifeNews.com. All rights reserved. For information on advertising or reprinting news from LifeNews.com, email us.
LifeNews.com Pro-Life News Report Wednesday, May 15, 2024
Top Stories • Pro-Life Advocate Jonathan Darnel Thrown in Prison for 27 Months for Protesting Abortion • Pro-Life Advocate Herb Geraghty Thrown in Prison for 27 Months for Protesting Abortion • Lauren Handy Will Appeal Bogus 57 Month Prison Sentence for Protesting Abortion • Pro-Life Advocate Sentenced to Prison Slams Judge for Ignoring Babies Killed in Abortions: “How Can You Allow This?”
More Pro-Life News • Justice Samuel Alito Tells Students to Defend Freedom of Speech and Religious Liberty • Poll Shows Majority of Republicans Say Unborn Babies are Human Beings With Rights • Shame on Joe Biden for Putting Peaceful Pro-Life Americans in Prison • Birth Rates Will Drop Below Replacement Rate for First Time as Underpopulation Crisis Continues • Scroll Down for Several More Pro-Life News Stories
Looking for an inspiring and motivating speaker for your pro-life event? Don’t have much to spend on a high-priced speaker costing several thousand dollars? Contact news@lifenews.com about having LifeNews Editor Steven Ertelt speak at your event.
Comments or questions? Email us at news@lifenews.com. Copyright 2003-2024 LifeNews.com. All rights reserved. For information on advertising or reprinting news from LifeNews.com, email us.
Michael Cohen raised his right hand on Monday in the Manhattan trial of Donald Trump and swore to tell the truth. It was a meaningless gesture. Cohen has done it before and then proceeded to lie under oath. He went to prison for it after lying to courts, lying to banks, lying to Congress, and lying to the IRS. Yet, once again, Cohen insists that now he’s telling the truth. He wants jurors to believe him. This time.
Cohen presents a contradiction about truth and falsity. In philosophy and logic, it’s known as the “liar’s paradox,” and it bedevils juries whenever habitual liars take the witness stand and promise to tell the truth.
The paradox is this: if a liar indeed lied, then his admission of his lies is truthful. Unless, of course, he is lying about the lie and everything else. You can never really know. The search for truth becomes impossible. In a court of law where the central witness is a chronic fabulist, the “liar’s paradox” equals reasonable doubt.
It was on full display Monday when Trump’s one-time self-proclaimed “fixer” failed to connect the accused to any cognizable crime. But Cohen readily confessed that he often lied and bullied people. He also deceived his own client, Trump, by secretly recording him shortly before the 2016 election.
Without permission, Cohen then shared it with the publisher of the National Enquirer. It was a sleazy maneuver that would merit disbarment for breaching the attorney-client privilege. No matter. Cohen was long ago disbarred over his criminal convictions.
When the recording was played in court it seemed to help, not hurt, the defense. Cohen refers cryptically to payments made to kill a story, which is not a crime. Trump appears somewhat in the dark and is heard asking, “What financing?” Cohen assured him that he was taking care of everything. His boss didn’t need to know the details. “I’ve got it…I’m on it,” said Cohen.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg knows that he is teetering dangerously close to suborning perjury. But he is wholly committed to convicting Donald Trump for crimes not committed or fully revealed.
It is bewildering why the prosecution ventured there, except to smear Trump with the illusion of some amorphous wrongdoing. It was utterly irrelevant since the matter dealt with former Playboy model Karen McDougal who was never called as a prosecution witness and is unconnected to the charges. Trump refused to pay her money over a purported affair that he denies.
Cohen then moved on to his tangle with ex-porn star Stormy Daniels, who was intensifying her apparent extortion scheme as voters were soon heading to the polls. Cohen admitted that it was his idea to pay $130,000 for her silence accompanied by a lawful non-disclosure agreement. As Trump’s lawyer, Cohen handled the negotiated contract which was later booked as “legal expenses” because that is what they were.
In fact, Cohen confirmed the accuracy of the bookkeeping when he explained that the money he received was compensation for his work on the legal settlement with Daniels, reimbursed payments to him, plus a retainer for his legal services as Trump’s newly named personal attorney.
Michael Cohen is questioned by prosecutor Susan Hoffinger during former President Trump’s criminal trial in Manhattan state court in New York City, May 13, 2024, in this courtroom sketch. (Reuters/Jane Rosenberg )
So, where exactly is the original fraud that forms the basis for the 34 misdemeanor charges alleged by the prosecution? Nowhere.
Cohen later testified that Trump was concerned about how Daniel’s story might impact his 2016 electoral chances. Not surprisingly, that nugget is contradicted by other witnesses who informed the jury that the candidate’s main concern was his wife and family.
Either way, it doesn’t matter. Bragg’s argument is legally flawed because Trump used his own money, not campaign funds. The law imposes limits on the latter, but not on the former.
That is one of the principal reasons why the Federal Election Commission (FEC) determined there was no campaign finance violation. The Department of Justice agreed. No civil fine was levied or criminal charge rendered. Those two entities have exclusive authority over federal elections. Not a local prosecutor such as Alvin Bragg.
But that did not stop the Manhattan DA from usurping federal jurisdiction by bringing a campaign case that he has no power to enforce and for violations that don’t exist.
Under normal circumstances, the DOJ would have intervened to stop it. Instead, Attorney General Merrick Garland tossed a going away party for his deputy, Matthew Colangelo, who abandoned his prestigious job at the Department to become Bragg’s lead prosecutor.
Undeterred by the limits of the law, these ethically bankrupt prosecutors have cobbled together a lawless case by asserting that Trump falsified his own private business records with the felonious intent to conceal another crime that they still refused to identify. Presumably, it’s campaign finance. But it’s actually not.
Former FEC Chairman Bradley Smith put it this way in his column for The Wall Street Journal: “The ‘crime’ that Mr. Bragg claims is being covered up isn’t a crime at all.”
Even if the DA’s warped legal theory proceeds, he must still prove that Trump himself understood campaign finance laws and deliberately intended to violate them. There’s no evidence of that. Even experienced candidates struggle to comprehend the mind-numbing web of campaign regulations. That’s why they depend on lawyers.
Bragg wants to put Trump in prison for relying on the advice of his legal counsel. There’s a legal term for that. Nutty.
On cross-examination, Cohen will surely be confronted with his myriad of lies, which I’ve recounted in earlier columns. One in particular is worth remembering. In February of 2018, he told the New York Times, “The payment to Ms. Clifford was lawful and was not a campaign contribution or a campaign expenditure.”
Shortly thereafter, Cohen changed his tune. It’s changing still. When he retakes the witness stand on Tuesday he’ll regurgitate more lies and misinformation. None of it is worth a damn because Cohen represents the quintessential “liar’s paradox.” He’s told so many fibs that even his recantations are self-contradictory.
In the trial at hand, Cohen has a personal interest in lying —hatred and greed. When he isn’t trolling for dollars on TikTok by trashing Trump, he’s hawking a proposed reality show that he calls, “The Fixer.” Cohen needs to fix himself.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg knows that he is teetering dangerously close to suborning perjury. But he is wholly committed to convicting Donald Trump for crimes not committed or fully revealed. By calling Cohen as his star witness, the DA has forsaken his duty to seek the truth. He is aiding and abetting a convicted perjurer by enabling more lies.
This is the worst kind of government corruption. Unscrupulous, dishonest, and amoral. It is antithetical to justice and an embarrassment to our once respected legal system.
Gregg Jarrett is a Fox News legal analyst and commentator, and formerly worked as a defense attorney and adjunct law professor. His recent book, “The Trial of the Century,” about the famous “Scopes Monkey Trial” is available in bookstores nationwide or can be ordered online at the Simon & Schuster website. Jarrett’s latest book, “The Constitution of the United States and Other Patriotic Documents,” was published by Broadside Books, a division of HarperCollins on November 14, 2023. Gregg is the author of the No. 1 New York Times best-selling book “The Russia Hoax: The Illicit Scheme to Clear Hillary Clinton and Frame Donald Trump.” His follow-up book was also a New York Times bestseller, “Witch Hunt: The Story of the Greatest Mass Delusion in American Political History.”
Handy will spend 57 months in prison and is the first person sentenced for violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act, a 1994 law that supposedly protects both abortion clinics and pregnancy resource centers, but has been heavily enforced by President Joe Biden’s DOJ against pro-lifers since the June 2022 overturning of Roe v. Wade.
Those efforts are led by Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke, the head of the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, who just admitted following a report from The Daily Signal that she hid an arrest and its subsequent expungement from investigators when she was confirmed to her Justice Department post.
The president’s critics have accused Biden and the DOJ of weaponizing the FACE Act against pro-lifers while failing to charge pro-abortion criminals for the hundreds of attacks on pregnancy resource centers since the May 2022 leak of the draft Supreme Court opinion indicating Roe would soon be overturned.
Some, among them Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, and Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, have called for the repeal of the FACE Act.
“Today’s outrageous 57-month sentence for a progressive pro-life activist is a stark reminder: Biden’s DOJ is fully weaponized against pro-life American citizens, and they are using the FACE Act to do it,” said Roy in a statement following Handy’s sentence. “House Republicans should defund the DOJ weaponization, repeal the FACE Act, and stand up for the freedoms that we campaign on.”
U.S. District Court Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly told Handy, according to The Washington Post, that “the law does not protect violence or obstructive conduct—nor should it. That’s what you’re being punished for; not your views on abortion, nor your very American commitment to peaceful protest.”
Handy is being represented by lawyers with the Thomas More Society, which said Tuesday that it is preparing to proceed with an appeal seeking to overturn her conviction and challenge the constitutionality of the FACE Act.
A Washington, D.C., jury had convicted Handy on Aug. 29, 2023, on charges of violating both the FACE Act and “conspiracy against rights” brought by the Biden DOJ against her and a number of other pro-life activists related to a “rescue” they performed at a D.C. abortion clinic, the Washington Surgi-Clinic.
Thomas More Society lawyers had asked the court to show leniency towards Handy with a 12-month sentence, while the Biden DOJ had requested a sentence up to six-and-a-half years.
🚨 BREAKING: Today, peaceful pro-life advocate Lauren Handy was sentenced to 57 months in federal prison on FACE Act charges brought by the Biden DOJ. Read our reaction: https://t.co/UYC0OU0E1a
— Thomas More Society (@ThomasMoreSoc) May 14, 2024
“There was only one thing around which Ms. Handy and her co-defendants were unified, and that was nonviolence,” said Martin Cannon, Thomas More Society senior counsel, in a statement on Tuesday. “They conspired to be peaceful. Yet, today, the Court granted the Biden Department of Justice its wish by sentencing Ms. Handy to 57 months—nearly 5 years in prison.”
“For her efforts to peacefully protect the lives of innocent preborn human beings, Ms. Handy deserves thanks, not a gut-wrenching prison sentence,” he added. “We will vigorously pursue an appeal of Ms. Handy’s conviction and attack the root cause of this injustice; that is, the FACE Act—which we believe is unconstitutional and should never again be used to persecute peaceful pro-lifers.”
Steve Crampton, who is also senior counsel with the Thomas More Society, called Handy’s sentence a “miscarriage of justice, plain and simple.”
“As I’ve gotten to know Ms. Handy, I’ve seen up close her unwavering passion for pro-life advocacy and resolute dedication to nonviolence,” he said in a statement. “The caricature of Ms. Handy that the Biden Department of Justice fabricated flies in the face of reality. Ms. Handy should have been shown the same mercy that she has herself shown to countless many downtrodden throughout her young life.”
Handy is a member of the Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising, a pro-life group made up of activists with more unusual backgrounds than one might expect—including atheism, transgenderism, and more.
In March 2022, Handy and colleague Terrisa Bukovinac discovered the bodies of five preemie-sized aborted babies’ bodies in a box of fetal remains outside the Foggy Bottom-based abortion facility. That box also contained over a hundred pulverized remains of first-trimester babies, they said.
Pro-life activists believe the babies’ bodies are evidence that a D.C. abortionist was performing illegal abortions, but for two years now, D.C. authorities have stonewalled any questions about the babies’ deaths.
Handy has said that she was motivated to stop abortions from occurring inside Washington Surgi-Clinic after she viewed an undercover video published by the pro-life group Live Action that allegedly showed abortionist Cesare Santangelo discussing how he would allow babies to die if they were accidentally delivered during abortions.
The district does not have any laws that regulate how late during pregnancy a baby can be aborted. So, when the babies’ bodies were originally brought to light, D.C. police shrugged off the matter.
Ashan Benedict, the Metropolitan Police Department’s executive assistant chief of police, went so far as to tell reporters in April 2022 that the babies appeared to have been aborted “in accordance with D.C. law.”
Police have repeatedly told The Daily Signal since then that the case is still “under investigation.” Authorities will not share whether autopsies have been performed on the babies’ remains, though the D.C. Medical Examiner said in February that it would not immediately destroy the babies’ bodies after a slew of lawmakers demanded that they be preserved.
The mayor’s office has completely stonewalled questions about the babies. Even the office of the chief medical examiner for the District of Columbia directs queries to the mayor’s office—specifically, to Dora Taylor-Lowe, who refused to answer The Daily Signal’s requests for comment.
It remains unclear whether autopsies have been performed on the bodies of the five babies, whose bodies were photographed by Bukovinac. (Warning: These images are graphic and disturbing.)
And though D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser refused to address the possibility that Santangelo was criminally aborting late-term babies in the nation’s capital, she did accuse Handy of “tampering with fetal remains” in an April 2022 letter to Republican lawmakers highlighting that Handy herself faced FACE Act charges for blocking the entrance to a D.C. abortion clinic in October 2020.
Handy’s involvement in the discovery of the remains, as well as her participation in the October 2020 “blockade,” according to Bowser, are potentially “serious violations of federal law.”
Mary Margaret Olohan is a senior reporter for The Daily Signal and the author of “Detrans: True Stories of Escaping the Gender Ideology Cult.” She previously reported for both The Daily Caller and The Daily Wire. Email: marymargaret.olohan @dailysignal.com.
The news keeps getting worse for Democrats. And it’s a pattern they’d better get use to.
Trump mooned Democrats in New York City. It’s only a matter of time before he’s done with these kangaroo courts. But while Democrats attempt election interference, Trump gets stronger with each hit.
Each attempt to get Trump acts as a reminder of the good ol’ days of the Trump administration. The Dow gave back most of its profits over just a few days. This dramatic drop came on the heels of the latest inflation numbers. Apparently, inflation isn’t going down, but instead continues going up.
Just in time for the holiday season, huh?
Back in 2016, Trump explained the situation with illegals. And post-coup, Trump explained that immigration would metastasize, and that’s exactly what happened. Biden fathered an invasion.
Share of Americans who say they support mass deportations of undocumented immigrants
Survey of 6,251 adults taken March through April 2024
A purple bar chart showing the share of U.S. adults who support mass deportations of undocumented immigrants, by Race/ethnicity, political affiliation and generation. The data was collected from a survey of 6,251 U.S adults March through April 2024. It shows that 51% of the general public supports this policy. The highest support was Republicans at 68%, and the lowest was Black respondents at 40%. Notably, support decreases with younger generations, with 60% of Boomers or older in favor, compared to 48% of Millennials.
General public 51%
Race/ethnicity
White 56
Latino 45
Black 40
Political affiliation
Republican 68
Independent 46
Democrat 42
Generation
Boomer+ 60
Gen X 53
Millennial 48
Gen Z 35
Data: The Harris Poll; Chart: Axios Visuals
Half of Americans — including 42% of Democrats — say they’d support mass deportations of undocumented immigrants, according to a new Axios Vibes survey by The Harris Poll.
And 30% of Democrats — as well as 46% of Republicans — now say they’d end birthright citizenship, something guaranteed under the 14th Amendment of the Constitution.
These items are gaining steam due to Trump’s bold stance on immigration. And what balls it takes for him to announce that he would implement mass deportations.
Don’t be surprised to see all these numbers improve as the election nears. Then, when Trump gets back in office, he will no longer allow the propaganda to propagate.
Why it matters: Americans are open to former President Trump’s harshest immigration plans, spurred on by a record surge of illegal border crossings and a relentless messaging war waged by Republicans.
President Biden is keenly aware the crisis threatens his re-election. He’s sought to flip the script by accusing Trump of sabotaging Congress’ most conservative bipartisan immigration bill in decades.
But when it comes to blame, Biden so far has failed to shift the narrative: 32% of respondents say his administration is “most responsible” for the crisis, outranking any other political or structural factor.
Axios Vibe Check: Amid a record number of border crossings, nearly two-thirds of Americans said illegal immigration is a real crisis, not a politically driven media narrative.
What they’re saying: “I was surprised at the public support for large-scale deportations,” said Mark Penn, chairman of The Harris Poll and a former pollster for President Clinton.
“I think they’re just sending a message to politicians: ‘Get this under control,’ ” he said, calling it a warning to Biden that “efforts to shift responsibility for the issue to Trump are not going to work.”
Ouch. There simply is no way to spin this. And Trump doesn’t back down:
Zoom in: Trump has vowed to carry out the “largest domestic deportation operation in American history,” eyeing sweeping raids and detention camps in a plan that would target millions of undocumented immigrants.
Americans typically aren’t eager to deport immigrants who have put down roots in the U.S. But the poll of 6,251 U.S. adults suggests that the dynamic may be changing amid rising fears about crime and violence.
When asked to identify their greatest concern around illegal immigration, Americans most frequently cited:
Increased crime rates, drugs, and violence (21%).
The additional costs to taxpayers (18%).
Risk of terrorism and national security (17%).
The Left claims this data is wrong. However, these are the same people claiming that crime is dropping, while they omit data from the largest crime areas in the country.
Argentinian gang members beat up New York City cops and Democrats say ignore it. They released the guys almost immediately, too.
America is waking up, and Trump is the best alarm clock ever.
Joe Biden is getting his clock cleaned, not that all the gears will ever work right again. But still, in an homage to Donald Trump and a sign of a dead campaign, Joe Biden is making desperation moves.
Before I get to the latest Biden pivot to Trump, I should remind you that Team Biden hinted recently that he should return to Trump’s immigration policy or suffer the consequences.
CNN's Fareed Zakaria says that President Joe Biden needs to implement former President Donald Trump's asylum policies to deal with the illegal immigration crisis.
He says that Trump's policies are "correct" and "the right policy because the old asylum system is being gamed by… pic.twitter.com/b8VsPqf8T5
Zakaria nails Biden on the reality of illegal immigration. And he warned Democrats that Biden must pivot back to Trump’s border policies. Trump’s policies are “correct”, according to Zakaria. Further, he understands how illegals are gaming the current system: “the old asylum system is being gamed by millions of people.”
ZAKARIA: “The whole system is broken,” he said. “And Biden needs to confront that and say, you know, ‘We are going to have to reform the whole system.’ I would wish he’d do something much more extreme, like, say ‘the old asylum system is dead. No one is coming in through that process. You have to apply from your home country’.
MARGARET HOOVER: “Which was, which was a Trump policy.”
ZAKARIA: “Which was a Trump– and also Mexico, let– you know, you have to be in Mexico to apply. I think that’s all correct.”
HOOVER: “So strategically, you think [cross] if Biden would tack towards Trump policies he would have a better political chance?”
ZAKARIA: “Yeah. And by the way, it’s the right policy because the old asylum system is being gamed by millions of people.”
But it’s not just immigration that Trump got right. Check out this tweet from America’s Idiot in Chief on Trump’s tariffs on China, then and now:
Biden called for a quadrupling of tariffs on electric vehicles from China, along with higher duties on metals and other clean energy products — expanding on tariffs first instituted by Trump in 2018.
China Joe wants to appear tough on his and Hunter’s former business partners. Just in time for the 2024 Presidential Election.
But Biden isn’t finished copying Trump’s moves.
Trump recognizes how China has used other countries to thwart US trade laws. Thus, he wants to go much further. Trump proposes tariffs on electric vehicles coming from the U.S.’s largest trading partner — Mexico.
Fearing a coming flood of cheap Chinese cars produced south of the border, the former president and his advisers are planning to impose steep auto tariffs on Mexico if it does not agree to halt the shipment of Chinese-made EVs into the U.S., according to federal lawmakers and three former Trump administration officials with knowledge of his plans.
At his massive rally in New Jersey, Trump announced,
“I will put a 200 percent tax on every car that comes in from those plants”
The article continues,
Trump’s comments are more than just campaign bluster. Those close to Trump say he and informal policy advisers like his ex-trade chief Robert Lighthizer are actively planning to impose tariffs on cars from Mexico, if that country’s government — which will be in new hands after a June 2024 election — does not agree to stem the tide of cheap Chinese cars. Those tariffs could hit just Chinese-made vehicles from Mexico — coming from companies like BYD, which plans to build plants in the country — or be applied more broadly on all imports from south of the border, said the figures close to the former president, granted anonymity to discuss policy plans.
“I’ve talked to the former president himself about this,” said Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), one of Trump’s most steadfast allies in the Senate, who has proposed legislation for tariffs over 100 percent auto imports from Mexico. “I think his views are well known, and Bob Lighthizer — I think he’s a real leader on this, and he and I talk frequently.”
What Americans like about Trump is that he says what he means and means what he says.
And Team Biden is taking notes.
Some Democrats are already pushing Biden to take a similar stand on auto imports from Mexico. They are concerned — like the Trump advisers — that Chinese companies will ship cars through Mexico to avoid the tariffs on EVs from China first imposed by Trump, which Biden will quadruple today.
Trump understands the global economy. And he understands competition. He doesn’t fault China for wanting a better deal. Trump believes America can negotiate the best deals, and then make sure our “competition” lives up to the agreements.
Below is my column in the New York Post on the first day of the examination of Michael Cohen. He is expected to start his cross examination today. How bad will it be? After lying to Congress, courts, banks, and most everyone else, it will be bad. Years ago, Cohen threatened a journalist and told him “What I’m going to do to you is going to be f—ing disgusting.” Well, that bad. On cross examination, Cohen faces a reckoning of biblical proportions.
Just before he took the stand, the New York Post revealed that Cohen has been peddling a reality show called “The Fixer,” including working with Colin Whelan, who helped create “Joe Exotic: Tigers, Lies and Cover-Up.” Whelan appears interested to stay within that genre.
The Cohen pitch came with a cheesy promo video where he promised viewers, “I am your fixer.”
His first post-Trump client, Bragg, may have to disagree.
Cohen had only one advantage for Bragg: His notoriously flexible morals and ethics, which allows him to say most anything to support his sponsors.
With the prosecution’s case almost over, Bragg needed Cohen to clearly state that Trump intentionally committed fraud to conceal some still poorly defined crime. The problem is that Cohen only confirmed that Trump knew he was going to pay for the nondisclosure agreement and that it would be buried before the election. None of that is unlawful.
On his reality show promo, Cohen tells viewers that he is now there to fix their problems because “the little guy doesn’t usually have access to people with my particular set of skills.” Those skills seem to have escaped all of the witnesses who were compelled to work with him.
Witnesses detailed how Cohen was ridiculed as someone “prone to exaggeration” and unprofessional. Former Trump associate Hope Hicks said that Cohen was constantly trying to insinuate himself into the campaign and that he “used to like to call himself Mister Fix It, but it was only because he first broke it.”
Cohen only succeeded in confirming that he put together this payment and advised Trump to go forward with it. He assured him that it would effectively kill the story before the election. None of that is illegal. The “Fix it man” assured Trump that he fixed it and now wants Trump to go to jail for following that advice.
This is the man who, according to Stormy Daniels’ attorney, Keith Davidson, expected to be Trump’s Attorney General. Davidson said that Cohen was “depressed and despondent” and “I thought he was going to kill himself” when he realized that he would not be made a cabinet member.
Cohen contradicted Davidson and insisted that he only wanted to be Trump’s personal lawyer.
He also admitted that he was unaware that the publisher of National Enquirer, David Pecker, had long killed negative stories about Trump and other celebrities for decades.
Cohen has yet to fix the problem for Bragg.
More importantly, he has added to the problem for Judge Juan Merchan. Many of us have ridiculed this case as devoid of any criminal act.
Indeed, Merchan has allowed the prosecutors to proceed without clearly stating what crime was being concealed.
It is not even clear why paying one’s lawyer a lump sum for his services and costs (including the NDA payment) was not a “legal expense” or how it was supposed to be entered on a business ledger.
Absent a sudden epiphany in his final testimony on Tuesday, Merchan should rule in favor of a directed verdict — that is, throwing the case out before it goes to a jury. If he instead sends this farcical case to the jury, it is Merchan, not Cohen, who may have a better claim to a reality show as the ultimate “Fixer.”
Jonathan Turley is an attorney and professor at George Washington University Law School.
Gag orders are there to protect the defendant in a criminal trial, but the defendant, Trump, is the only one with a gag order? Not Stormy Daniels, Not Michael Cohen, or the prosecution. This is a textbook example of a corrupt kangaroo court.
Bill Maher Destroys Alvin Bragg’s Sham Trump Lawsuit Following Release of Porn Star Stormy Daniels’ 2018 Interview (VIDEO)
By Jim Hoft – May 12, 2024
In a recent episode of HBO’s “Real Time,” host Bill Maher criticized Stormy Daniels’ credibility in the ongoing hush money trial involving former President Donald Trump, orchestrated by Soros-backed New York prosecutor Alvin Bragg. Trump was accused of paying porn star Stormy Daniels, AKA, Stephanie Clifford, ‘hush payments’ through his then-attorney Michael Cohen in a scheme to silence her and stop the story about their alleged affair from being published in the National Enquirer. The payments made to Stormy Daniels did NOT come from Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. READ MORE…
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country in various news outlets, including NewsMax, Fox News, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Rep. Devin Nunes, Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Chris Salcedo, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Trump.
Top Stories • Harrison Butker Slams Joe Biden for Supporting the “Murder of Innocent Babies” in Abortions • Biden Wants to Put 9 Pro-Life Advocates in Prison for 11 Years for Protesting Abortion • Woman Who Biden Put in Prison for Protesting Abortion Denied Heart Medication After Stroke • Democrat Group Will Spend $25 Million Attacking Trump for Naming Judges Who Overturned Roe
More Pro-Life News • Biden Promotes Abortion During National Women’s Health Week, But Abortion is Not Health Care • Robert F Kennedy Jr. Says It’s Okay to Kill Babies in Abortions Up to Birth if They’re Disabled • Multiple Pro-Life Groups Join Forces to Stop Florida Amendment 4 and Abortions Up to Birth • Democrat AGs Form Group to Promote Abortion, Shut Down Pro-Life Pregnancy Centers • Scroll Down for Several More Pro-Life News Stories
Looking for an inspiring and motivating speaker for your pro-life event? Don’t have much to spend on a high-priced speaker costing several thousand dollars? Contact news@lifenews.com about having LifeNews Editor Steven Ertelt speak at your event.
Comments or questions? Email us at news@lifenews.com. Copyright 2003-2024 LifeNews.com. All rights reserved. For information on advertising or reprinting news from LifeNews.com, email us.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s paralegal testified on Friday that his office deleted from their evidence three pages of phone records between convicted liar Michael Cohen and Stormy Daniels’ lawyer Keith Davidson without notifying former President Donald Trump’s legal team, according to reports.
Trump attorney Emil Bove questioned paralegal Jaden Jarmel-Schneider on Friday about three pages of 2018 phone records between Davidson and Cohen that Bragg’s office had deleted, according to CNN. Additional phone records between Daniels manager Gina Rodriguez and then-National Enquirer editor Dylan Howard regarding Daniels’ claim about her alleged affair were also deleted, according to The Epoch Times.
The altered call records were submitted into evidence, but Bragg’s office did not tell Trump’s team that three pages were missing, The Epoch Times reported. Tampering with evidence is a class E felony in the Empire State under New York Consolidation Laws, Penal Law § 215.40, which states in part:
A person is guilty of tampering with physical evidence when: Believing that certain physical evidence is about to be produced or used in an official proceeding or a prospective official proceeding, and intending to prevent such production or use, he suppresses it by any act of concealment, alteration or destruction, or by employing force, intimidation or deception against any person.
Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., took to X on Friday calling the developments “insanity.”
“How on earth is this not a felony committed by Bragg and his minions? It sure would be if team Trump did it,” Trump Jr. posted to X.
Insanity! How on earth is this not a felony committed by Bragg and his minions? It sure would be if team Trump did it.
I’d love if we had actual journalists that would report on this ongoing travesty.
Sadly, proper journalism is dead. They’re just scribes for the regime. https://t.co/vQkLDk3t1T
Bragg — who campaigned for office on targeting Trump — indicted the former president in April 2023 on 34 felony charges for allegedly falsifying business records. Bragg alleges Trump’s lawyer at the time, Cohen, paid Daniels before the 2016 election to stay quiet about an alleged affair that the former president denies. Bragg alleges Trump made this payment to help winthe 2016 election so the expenditure should have been classified as a campaign expense rather than a legal expense.
Trump’s defense also made a motion for a mistrial, which Judge Juan Merchan denied. Merchan also kneecapped Trump’s team from defending the former president by limiting what former Federal Election Commission Chairman Bradley Smith could say when testifying about campaign finance-related issues, noted Steve Roberts and Oliver Roberts in The Federalist Friday.
Smith was expected to testify, as Roberts and Roberts note, that “almost anything a candidate does can be interpreted as intended to ‘influence an election’” though “not every expense that might benefit a candidate is an obligation that exists solely because the person is a candidate.”
Merchan ruled Smith can now only testify to the “general background as to what the Federal [Election] Commission is, background as to who makes up the FEC, what the FEC’s function is, what laws, if any, the FEC is responsible for enforcing, and general definitions and terms that relate directly to his case, such as for example ‘campaign contribution.’”
Brianna Lyman is an elections correspondent at The Federalist.
Congressional Democrats insist that the SAVE Act — which requires proof of citizenship to establish eligibility to vote in federal elections — is unnecessary because federal law (18 USC § 611) already prohibits noncitizens from voting in federal elections. Those making this argument ignore a glaring problem: the government officials who register voters and conduct federal elections aren’t allowed to require proof of citizenship.
The Demands From Illegal Immigrants In Denver Colorado Get More & More Insane
People who have broke our laws and are already being supported by American Tax Payers need even more. Here are their demands:
It’s therefore shockingly easy for noncitizens to vote in federal elections, leaving our elections dangerously vulnerable to foreign interference. Anyone — even an illegal alien or other noncitizen — can register to vote in federal elections, just by checking a box and signing a form. This is all on the honor system. No proof of citizenship is required.
It’s not just that state officials — who are responsible for federal voter registration and elections in our country — don’t verify citizenship in this context; it’s that the Supreme Court has told them that they’re not allowed to do so. In Arizona v. Inter Tribal Council of Arizona, Inc., 570 U.S. 1 (2013), the Court held that the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA, also known as the “Motor Voter” law) prohibits states from requiring proof of citizenship when processing federal voter registration forms.
You need to watch. This is how the Democrats are planning to steal the election.
The SAVE Act would fix this gaping loophole by requiring anyone registering to vote in federal elections to provide proof of citizenship. It would also require states to review existing federal voter registration files and remove all noncitizens.
Remember: every state issues driver’s licenses to noncitizens, and 19 states issue them to illegal aliens. This, coupled with the Motor Voter law and the Supreme Court’s ruling, makes it shockingly easy for aliens — legal and illegal — to vote in federal elections, even though they’re prohibited from doing so. Considering that there are now nearly 30 million noncitizens in the U.S., including about 12 million who have entered illegally since the last presidential election, we desperately need the SAVE Act.
While Democrats are already mocking the SAVE Act, they don’t dispute that noncitizens shouldn’t vote in federal elections. Rather, they insist that there’s no need for the bill because noncitizens — being prohibited by law from voting in federal elections — categorically do not vote in such elections. That argument fails for one simple reason: it implausibly assumes universal compliance with a law that has become breathtakingly easy (and correspondingly tempting) to violate.
Some say that noncitizens wouldn’t dare register to vote in federal elections, as doing so is illegal and could adversely affect their present or future immigration status. Even if this assumption were correct with regard to many (or even most) noncitizens in the U.S., that still wouldn’t disprove the need for the SAVE Act.
If even a tiny percentage of America’s 30 million noncitizens were to vote, they could change the outcome of a close federal election. And, as noted by the Immigration Accountability Project, it’s odd for the left to insist so vehemently that illegal aliens don’t vote, given that congressional Democrats have inserted language “to waive inadmissibility for illegal voting in all [their] amnesty bills.”
Democrats can’t have it both ways; they can’t (1) credibly say that illegal aliens don’t vote in federal elections, and then (2) expect us to forget their own proposals, which assume the opposite is true. In any event, and regardless of how many (or few) noncitizens may have voted in the past, why not take steps to prevent it from happening in the future?
The sanctity of your vote is at stake. Now more than ever, we need to make sure that our elections are fair, lawfully conducted, and free of foreign influence. To do that, it’s imperative that Congress pass the SAVE Act.
All of the democrats’ arguments are just as ridiculous. This guy has something to say about them.
Republican West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey is trying to find out why a former high-ranking Department of Justice employee is being used in the criminal prosecution of former President Donald Trump in New York.
Morrisey on Monday filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the DOJ regarding documents that could indicate whether the Biden administration colluded with New York prosecutors in Trump’s trial in which he is charged with falsifying business records to cover a payment of $130,000 before the 2016 election to porn star Stormy Daniels.
Matthew Colangelo was acting assistant attorney general — the No. 3 spot in the DOJ — in the Biden administration from January 2021 until he was hired by Democrat Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg in December 2022 and assigned as the lead prosecutor in Trump’s case. Colangelo, who had several roles in the Obama administration, reportedly was a paid consultant for the Democratic National Committee in 2018.
“We need to get to the bottom of this political prosecution of a former president who is on track to defeat the incumbent in November,” Morrisey said in a statement to the Washington Examiner, referring to the other criminal indictments Trump faces in Georgia, Florida, and Washington, D.C., as he seeks another term as president.
In a letter Monday to Attorney General Merrick Garland, Morrisey pointed out that Colangelo was hired by Bragg, and Colangelo worked as a consultant with the DNC — both evidence of collusion.
“Coordinating to advance election-influencing prosecutions directly violates the [DOJ’s] own guidelines, which says the Department cannot take ‘any action … for the purpose of affecting any election, or for the purpose of giving an advantage or disadvantage to any candidate or political party.’ ” Morrisey wrote. “So unlawful coordination must stop immediately.”
Morrisey wrote Americans have a right to know whether the DOJ is using taxpayer money as a “coercive lever” to “manipulate elections.”
“This strategy against a former President and current political candidate seems to be an unprecedented weaponization of the prosecutorial system for political ends,” he wrote.
In addition to Colangelo, Morrisey mentioned Trump’s prosecution for 2020 election interference in Georgia by Democrat Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, where public records revealed Fulton County prosecutors were in contact with the White House.
“In short, the public facts confirm that DOJ is tied up with Democratic prosecutors’ intent on doing exactly the kind of politically motivated work that Department policy says is forbidden,” Morrisey wrote.
In his FOIA request with Garland, Morrisey is seeking documents involving Colangelo’s transition from the DOJ to Bragg’s office, plus documents concerning meetings attended or contact by a DOJ employee with special counsel Jack Smith, Democrat New York Attorney General Letitia James, Bragg, Willis, or anyone who reports directly or indirectly to them.
For those of us who have criticized the cancel culture in higher education for years, the attacks and shunning have been unrelenting. The media has played a role in that culture and none more prominently than the New York Times. Recently, however, the mob came for liberal professors and media who have remained silent for years as conservatives and others were targeted on campus. Suddenly, there is a new interest in free speech and academic freedom, including by the Times editors who blamed cancel culture for the recent demonstrations and disruptions on campus.
Until good liberals were targeted on campus, cancel culture was treated as free speech. It did not matter that preventing others from speaking or being heard is the very antithesis of free speech.
The New York Times reached true infamy in the controversy over publishing Sen. Tom Cotton’s (R., Ark.) op-ed where he argued for the possible use of national guard to quell violent riots around the White House. It was one of the lowest points in the history of modern American journalism. Cotton was calling for the use of the troops to restore order in Washington after days of rioting around the White House. While Congress would “call in the troops” six months later to quell the rioting at the Capitol on January 6th, New York Times reporters and columnists called the column historically inaccurate and politically inciteful.
Reporters insisted that Cotton was even endangering them by suggesting the use of troops and insisted that the newspaper cannot feature people who advocate political violence. One year later, the New York Times published a column by an academicwho had previously declared that there is nothing wrong with murdering conservatives and Republicans.
Now, however, liberal professors and writers are being targeted. After years of turning a blind eye to conservative and libertarian figures being purged from faculties or canceled in events, the Times is alarmed that …students and other demonstrators disrupting college campuses this spring are being taught the wrong lesson — for as admirable as it can be to stand up for your beliefs, there are no guarantees that doing so will be without consequence.
What is most striking is how the editors chastise administrators for lacking the courage that they have not shown for years in standing up to their cultural warriors:
For several years, many university leaders have failed to act as their students and faculty have shown ever greater readiness to block an expanding range of views that they deem wrong or beyond the pale. Some scholars report that this has had a chilling effect on their work, making them less willing to participate in the academy or in the wider world of public discourse. The price of pushing boundaries, particularly with more conservative ideas, has become higher and higher…
It has not gone unnoticed — on campuses but also by members of Congress and by the public writ large — that many of those who are now demanding the right to protest have previously sought to curtail the speech of those whom they declared hateful.
It is certainly good to see the “Old Gray Lady” have second thoughts about cancel culture. However, she might want to look inwardly before casting more cultural stones.
Below is my column on the completion of the testimony of Stormy Daniels and the start of the testimony of Michael Cohen. With a dubious legal theory, the testimony has only magnified the criticism of the prosecution as parading sensational rather than material evidence before the jury and the public. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is losing even CNN hosts and legal analysts. Fareed Zakaria noted “I doubt the New York indictment would have been brought against a defendant whose name was not Donald Trump” Elie Honig has observed that, if brought in a less Democratic district, “I would say there’s no chance of a conviction.” The Bragg case was never “normal” but last week it seemed to go paranormal.
Here is the column:
“I see dead people.” Before this week, that claim was most associated with the nine-year-old character Cole Sear from the 1999 film “The Sixth Sense.” But now it is one of the talents claimed by former adult film actress Stormy Daniels in her bizarre testimony in Manhattan during former President Donald Trump’s trial.
It turns out that speaking to the dead was one of the few relevant things Daniels had to offer in the case, which is now on a collision course with a motion for acquittal before the case even goes to the jury.
The Daniels testimony will live in infamy in the annals of criminal justice. For two days, she offered lurid and completely irrelevant details whose only possible purpose was to humiliate Trump. Admitting that she was coached by the prosecution in her testimony, it was clear that she was there not to win a case but to win an election. Judge Juan Merchan allowed this legal burlesque to unfold in his courtroom, later blaming defense counsel who had vociferously objected to her appearance and the scope of the examination.
The cross examination was devastating. It shattered her laughable claim that she had not really been seeking money in shaking Trump down for a non-disclosure agreement, a claim contradicted by her own former lawyer. Daniels also revealed that she had spoken with the dead, and that a ghost had once held her boyfriend under water in a bathtub. She also said that she lived in a haunted house, only to discover later that the spirit haunting it was actually a large possum.
In a case based on a dead misdemeanor and a rapidly falling heart rate on the manufactured felony, one can understand the appeal of witnesses who can speak for the dead. Indeed, Daniels’s graphic testimony may prove the moral high point of this trial, since serial perjurer and disbarred attorney Michael Cohen is scheduled to testify Monday.
Cohen recently broke his pledge, midway through the trial, to stop attacking and taunting Trump. Cohen has insisted that he deserves the protection of the gag order by Judge Merchan as a witness, despite serious constitutional concerns. Merchan continues to threaten Trump with jail if he responds to Cohen’s unrelenting attacks. Merchan waited for the weekend before his testimony to suggest that the prosecutors tell Cohen to stop the public antics.
But it remains unclear what the order is protecting Cohen from. Not only is he trolling for money on social media with reference to the trial, but he is also widely being attacked by others. It is only Trump who cannot address his attacks, including political opposition to his campaign.
Cohen’s testimony will be the culmination of this travesty of a trial. But Bragg already jumped the shark with Daniels. After three weeks, legal experts are still debating what the crime was that Trump was seeking to conceal by recording payments for a standard non-disclosure agreement as a legal expense. (That is the same characterization used by Hillary Clinton’s campaign for its funding for the infamous Steele dossier.)
It is still unclear that Trump even knew how the payments were characterized, and the alleged false record was not even created until after the election was over. Yet he stands accused of using the “false business records” to somehow steal or rig an election that was already over.
After this circus with Cohen is complete, Trump will be allowed to testify. He would be insane to do so. Merchan has already said that he will allow a broad scope to cross-examination, making any appearance unlikely.
That is when Merchan will face a key test of judicial ethics. He has failed to protect the rights of the defendant from a baseless, politically motivated prosecution. He could insist that he simply felt Bragg had a right to present his case. He will soon be done and, as expected, it is entirely based on Cohen, a disbarred perjurer who will ask for his former client to be sent to prison for following his own legal advice.
After Bragg closes the prosecution’s case, the defense will make a standard motion for dismissal. Merchan should grant that motion. There has been no showing of an actual crime, let alone a clear record tying Trump to key decisions or actions.
Merchan will then have to decide whether he has the courage that Bragg lacked. Bragg knew that this case was ridiculous. The Justice Department had declined any prosecution for a federal campaign finance violation, the theory referenced in the case. Indeed, it did not even seek a civil fine over the payments. Bragg’s predecessor had also rejected the prosecution.
When Bragg took over, he similarly balked and stopped the move toward an indictment. But two prosecutors in his office, Carey R. Dunne and Mark F. Pomerantz, then resigned and started a public pressure campaign to get New Yorkers to demand prosecution.
Pomerantz went even further and took an action that some of us viewed as deeply unethical and unprofessional. Over the objections of his own former office and colleagues, he published a book on the case against Trump — then still under investigation and not charged, let alone convicted. It was a pressure campaign directed at Bragg. In New York, Bragg knew that he would either have to indict Trump or forget about reelection.
Merchan will now have to make the same choice in yielding to politics or principle…or to the paranormal. He has already allowed every effort to bring this dead misdemeanor back to life. But even Stormy Daniels may not be able to serve as Merchan’s medium in reaching back eight years.
Jonathan Turley is the J.B. and Maurice C. Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at the George Washington University Law School.
Below is an expanded version of my New York Post column on the appearance of Michael Cohen Monday in the Manhattan prosecution of former President Donald Trump. His testimony will not be for the intestinally weak or ethically strong viewers. It has all the draw of a Nascar race on a rainy day.
Here is the column:
Michael Cohen is to criminal justice what car crashes are to Nascar: few want to admit it, but he is the perverse draw for the wreck-obsessed. The difference is that Cohen was already a rolling smoking wreck when he pulled up to the track.
Even for those of us who have long been critics of this case and its dubious legal theory, it has been surprising to see that the prosecutors had no more evidence than what we previously knew about. The assumption was that no rational prosecutor would base a major criminal case virtually entirely on the testimony of Michael Cohen who was just recently denounced by a judge as a serial perjurer peddling “perverse” theories in court.
The calculus of Alvin Bragg is now obvious. He is counting on the jury convicting Trump regardless of the evidence. He believes that all he needs is to check the boxes on the elements of the crime, no matter how unbelievable the vehicle.
The reason is that Bragg likely fears a directed verdict more than a jury verdict. After the government closes its evidence, the defense will move for a directed verdict on the basis that the evidence is insufficient to sustain a conviction.
In other words, when the prosecution rests this week, Trump’s counsel will stand and ask Merchan to end the case before it is even given to the jury. Many of us agree with that assessment. After three weeks of testimony, there is still confusion on what crime Trump was allegedly seeking to cover up.
Bragg has vaguely referred to using the denotation of payments to Daniels as “legal expenses” as a fraud committed to steal the election. However, the election was over when those denotations were made. Moreover, many believe that such a characterization for payments related to a nondisclosure agreement was accurate. (Hillary Clinton’s campaign claimed in the same election that hiding the funding for the Steele dossier as legal expenses was perfectly accurate).
Judge Juan Merchan, in my view, has failed repeatedly to protect the rights of the accused in this case. However, he can claim that there was enough alleged to give Bragg the chance to make his case. Thus far he has not done so and, if he is truly neutral, Merchan should grant the motion.
Bragg is counting on not only a motivated jury but a motivated judge to keep this anemic case alive. All he hopes that he needs to do is get this to a Trump-loathing jury to set aside any reasonable doubt. To do that, he found the ultimate motivated witness with a record of saying whatever serves his interests and those of his sponsors.
Even with a New York jury, however, you cannot assume that every juror will jettison doubt when it comes to the unpopular defendant. Yet, Bragg first has to show Merchan that someone claimed to have evidence directly tying Trump to an intentional fraudulent scheme to conceal a crime.
Thus far, Bragg is not even close. Indeed, many of his witnesses helped Trump more than they hurt him on the actual charges.
Bragg started with testimony on the killing of a story by David Pecker, former publisher of the National Enquirer tabloid, on an uncharged transaction to kill a story of a Trump affair with a different woman, Karen McDougal, a former Playboy model.
The relevancy was marginal but the testimony backfired in that Pecker admitted that Trump told him that he knew nothing about any reimbursement to Cohen for any hush money. He further said that he had killed or raised such stories with Trump for decades before he ever announced for president. He also said that he had killed stories for other celebrities and politicians, including Arnold Schwarzenegger, Tiger Woods, Rahm Emanuel and Mark Wahlberg.
For good measure, Pecker noted that Cohen often exaggerates and became loud and argumentative.
Witnesses said that Trump likely had a mix of motivations including sparing his family from embarrassment. Daniels’ own counsel contradicted the prosecution’s reference to the payment as “hush money.”
Prosecutors now need Cohen to check virtually every box on his own. It is not enough to say that Trump wanted to hush up the alleged affair. That is no crime and NDAs are common and legal.
Cohen has to say that Trump specifically knew and approved of the characterization of the payments as “legal expenses.” He further has to establish that Trump intended the denotation to conceal the payments for the purposes of election violations or fraud.
That could make this a “he said, he said” case, but only if Trump were to actually testify. However, Merchan’s earlier rulings make such testimony highly unlikely. The court approved a sweeping scope for cross examination if Trump dares to take the stand. No competent lawyer would advise him to do so after Merchan’s rulings.
That is exactly where Bragg wants to be: with a “he said” not a “he said, he said” case. With Trump effectively silenced, Bragg will argue that that is enough to get this to the jury and he can then allow the New York jury to jettison any notion of reasonable doubt when it comes to Donald Trump.
For most people, this cynical calculation will be immaterial when Cohen is called. Calling a convicted, disbarred, serial perjurer to any court is a spectacle in itself. Cohen seems like he has never met an oath that he does not want to break.
Indeed, he appears eager to expand his collection by announcing in the midst of the trial coverage that he is running for Congress. Given the blind rage of many New Yorkers, he could well succeed with single-issue, anti-Trump voters. If so, we will all be back just to see if a vortex to the netherworld opens up when Cohen stands on the House floor and swears that he is taking the oath “without . . . purpose of evasion.”
But before he becomes Rep. Michael Cohen, he will have to appear for his Nascar moment, though he will be the first wreck in search of a race.
A.F. Branco Cartoon – A controversial “Equal Rights Amendment” bill is headed to a floor vote in the Minnesota House of Representatives on Monday.
Equal Rights Amendment’ headed to House floor Monday
By Hank Long – May 10, 2024
A controversial “Equal Rights Amendment” bill is headed to a floor vote in the Minnesota House of Representatives on Monday. DFL legislative leaders in the House Rules Committee on Thursday voted to place SF37 on the May 13 Calendar for the Day, the last procedural step before bills receive a vote before the full chamber. That came despite protest from Republicans who said the proposal needs at least one more full committee hearing before it should be sent to the floor. READ MORE…
A.F. Branco Cartoon—Democrats say the GOP and Trump are a threat to Democracy when what they really mean is a threat to their power. A full Democracy is two wolves and a sheep deciding what’s for dinner, and it would destroy our Democratic Constitutional Representative Republic, which protects our individual rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The only thing the Democrats want to protect is their power at the expense of our personal freedoms. They actually could care less about the will of the people.
Tucker Carlson: For the Third Time in Three Consecutive Cycles, Secretive Federal Agencies are Trying to Rig Our Presidential Election – This Is What They Call ‘Democracy’ (VIDEO)
Jim Hoft – April 11, 2024
Tucker Carlson weighed in on the end of democracy in America today. For the third straight election cycle secretive federal agencies are trying to rig our presidential election. In fact, did the secretive federal agencies ever stop their attacks on Trump and his supporters since 2016? We know of several pro-Trump groups and individuals who were ruined or who are currently being destroyed by the radical Democrats and their allies in the federal government.
Now they are trying to ruin pro-Trump groups and supporters financially and they have the legacy media to cover for them. READ MORE…
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country in various news outlets, including NewsMax, Fox News, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Rep. Devin Nunes, Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Chris Salcedo, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Trump.
Top Stories • Kamala Harris Says Killing Babies is a “Fundamental Freedom” in America • Catholic Bishop Slams Biden for Making Sign of Cross at Abortion Rally • Robert F Kennedy Called “Absolutely Evil” for Endorsing Abortions Up to Birth • We Need a Federal Law Protecting Babies From Abortions Because Many Blue States Have Abortions Up to Birth
More Pro-Life News • Liberals are Getting Themselves Sterilized to Protest Abortion Bans • Prayer Needed for Pro-Life Advocate Who Suffered Stroke After Biden Jailed Her • Catholic College Will Host Abortion Advocate as Commencement Speaker • Here’s Three Reasons Why I’m Pro-Life on Abortion • Scroll Down for Several More Pro-Life News Stories
Looking for an inspiring and motivating speaker for your pro-life event? Don’t have much to spend on a high-priced speaker costing several thousand dollars? Contact news@lifenews.com about having LifeNews Editor Steven Ertelt speak at your event.
Comments or questions? Email us at news@lifenews.com. Copyright 2003-2024 LifeNews.com. All rights reserved. For information on advertising or reprinting news from LifeNews.com, email us.
Chris Worthington, a Gen Z filmmaker and founder of Every Nation Will Bow, has unveiled his latest documentary, “Multiplied,” offering a stirring glimpse into what he describes as a “modern-day Jesus Revolution.”
The film, in theaters through Fathom Events on May 20-21, follows the 24-year-old filmmaker as he travels across Brazil, Ghana and Nigeria, documenting the vibrant, multifaceted expressions of Christianity around the globe.
This groundbreaking film brings viewers behind the scenes to witness the spiritual fervor of evangelistic events worldwide, led by renowned evangelist Daniel Kolenda.
From a 140,000-strong Gen Z gathering in Brazil to a 400,000-person Gospel event in Nigeria, “Multiplied” captures Kolenda’s mission to reach every corner of the globe, dispelling misconceptions about waning interest in faith while offering an inspiring message of hope.
“Christianity is exploding, especially in Africa,” Worthington told The Christian Post. “I saw it for myself and got it all on camera. It’s about showing the reality that it’s not just about a few famous evangelists anymore but about an entire generation preaching the Gospel. It’s about you and me; it’s about the normal person. I think that’s how Jesus wanted it from the beginning.”
Watch a sneak peek of “Multiplied” below:
Kolenda is the successor to Reinhard Bonnke, the legendary preacher known for drawing vast crowds during his ministry’s campaigns. Kolenda, as head of Christ for All Nations (CfaN), continues Bonnke’s legacy, presiding over some of the world’s largest evangelistic events and cultivating a global movement that “Multiplied” seeks to document.
Filming the events didn’t come without challenges. Worthington shared how while Christianity is popular in Brazil — “everybody wants to be on a massive stage and preach to 80,000 people” — his experience in Nigeria was much different.
“In Nigeria, it’s the exact opposite … we went from flying on private jets to actually getting shot at in Nigeria. My life flashed before my eyes. I didn’t realize [there was] persecution over there. It was insane,” he said.
“One week before we got to Nigeria, we were informed that a terrorist organization had killed a pastor and his entire family, and we were doing a 500,000-person Gospel event right there,” he said. “On the way, we got trapped in a dust storm, so we couldn’t fly and had to go on a really dangerous highway. We met a guy … who pulled out a silver Glock. I’ll never forget it. He knew who we were; he pointed straight at us, right at my head. I saw the evil in his eyes, and at that moment, I thought, ‘I guess this is where it ends.”
Despite the dangers and challenges faced during filming, Worthington said he and his team were driven by a deeper purpose.
“The more you get attacked, the more things that try to go wrong, things that are obviously spiritual warfare, the better you’re doing. So just keep pushing through it, because you’re going to change the world that way,” he said.
The film also includes exclusive musical performances from Kim Walker-Smith and Alexander Pappas of Hillsong, as well as candid testimonials by Korn guitarist Brian “Head” Welch and social media influencer Scott McNamara.
Worthington, best known for “This Is Living,” had his own spiritual awakening in 2013 at a worship concert in Tampa, Florida, which he told CP sent him on a mission to document faith in its rawest form. “Multiplied,” he said, emerges as the culmination of this vision.
“All of these films that I make, it’s just an endeavor to point people to Jesus Christ. If it’s not doing that, it’s all in vain,” he said.
“It has no meaning if it’s not pointing people to Christ, if it’s not for that, it’ll be burned with the chaff, because the fire comes to everything, to every ministry,” he said. “The fire is going to come, and it’s either going to just be burned or it’s going to withstand the fire. And the ministries that are going to withstand the fire are the ones who have pure motives that are actually doing it to point people not to themselves, but to Jesus Christ. And that’s why any film that I make, I make it to point people to Jesus Christ.”
Amid reports of faith’s declining influence, Worthington said he hopes “Multiplied“ offers an eye-opening perspective that reveals the profound impact of evangelistic work.
“Film is a huge tool for evangelism. The new crusade field is the living room,” Worthington said, citing the success of films and shows like “The Chosen” and “Jesus Revolution” in reaching hearts and minds across America.
“I think that a Christian film Renaissance is happening right now, and I think that’s how God wants to reach America because you are going to reach America with your phone, with your Smart TV.”
As the lawfare crusade continues, former President Donald Trump is racking up significant victories in court. Down in Florida, President Trump secured an indefinite delay in his criminal case involving alleged mishandling of classified documents. This delay was ordered following revelations that Special Counsel Jack Smith and prosecutors mishandled and misrepresented evidence, which is uniquely ironic given the subject matter of the underlying case.
In Georgia, where another criminal case is pending, the Georgia Court of Appeals agreed to hear President Trump’s attempt to remove Democrat District Attorney Fani Willis from the case. The Georgia Court of Appeals is set to consider and decide this issue in the coming weeks.
It is becoming increasingly likely that the ongoing Manhattan criminal case is the only trial that President Trump will face before the November election.
Here’s the latest information you need to know about each case.
Manhattan, New York: Prosecution by DA Alvin Bragg for NDA Payment
How we got here: In this New York state criminal case, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg — who The New York Times acknowledged had “campaigned as the best candidate to go after the former president” — charged former President Donald Trump in April 2023 with 34 felony charges for alleged falsification of business records.
Trump’s former attorney Michael Cohen paid pornographic film actress Stormy Daniels shortly before the 2016 presidential election as part of a nondisclosure agreement in which she agreed not to publicize her claims that she had an affair with Trump (who denies the allegations). Nondisclosure agreements are not illegal, but Bragg claims Trump concealed the payment to help his 2016 election chances and in doing so was concealing a “crime.”
The trial began on April 15, and jury selection was completed on April 19. Judge Merchan, a donor to Biden’s campaign and an anti-Trump cause in 2020, has issued a gag order on President Trump generally prohibiting him from publicly speaking on possible jurors, witnesses, and other personnel in this case.
Latest developments: This week, the jury heard testimony from porn performer Stormy Daniels, also known as Stephanie Clifford. Daniels and Playboy model Karen McDougal are central to this case because prosecutors allege that former President Trump paid them off and then falsified business records, to prevent negative media stories during his 2016 presidential campaign. Daniels alleges that she had a sexual encounter with President Trump in 2006, but President Trump denies the affair.
On May 8, President Trump’s attorneys cross-examined and discredited Stormy Daniels, highlighting her history of being a pornographer, her strip club tour, and her history of profiting off allegations against Trump. That same day, Judge Merchan denied a second attempt by President Trump to dismiss this case for a mistrial. President Trump’s attorneys argued that Stormy Daniels’s testimony was unfairly prejudicial against Trump due to its inconsistencies and unnecessary detail, which could improperly influence the jury.
The jury is soon expected to hear from President Trump’s former personal attorney Michael Cohen, who is the prosecutor’s star witness. Another key witness, Karen McDougal, is not expected to testify.
Judge Merchan handed the prosecution another win by ruling that former Federal Election Commission Chairman Bradley Smith, an expert on campaign finance-related issues, is limited as to what he can say in his testimony in the case. One of the defenses raised by the president’s legal team is that even if such payments were made, they were not necessarily to influence an election but rather to protect Donald Trump’s name, his brand, and his family. Chairman Smith was expected to testify in support of this theory, as he has long asserted that “almost anything a candidate does can be interpreted as intended to ‘influence an election’” but “not every expense that might benefit a candidate is an obligation that exists solely because the person is a candidate.” But after Judge Merchan’s ruling, Smith can now only testify as to the “general background as to what the Federal [Election] Commission is, background as to who makes up the FEC, what the FEC’s function is, what laws, if any, the FEC is responsible for enforcing, and general definitions and terms that relate directly to this case, such as for example ‘campaign contribution.’”
Fulton County, Georgia: Prosecution by DA Fani Willis for Questioning Election Results
How we got here: The Georgia state criminal case is helmed by District Attorney Fani Willis and her team of prosecutors — which until recently included Nathan Wade, with whom Willis had an improper romantic relationship. Willis charged Trump in August 2023 with 13 felony counts, including racketeering charges, related to his alleged attempt to challenge the 2020 election results in Georgia. President Trump is joined by 18 co-defendants, including Rudy Giuliani, Mark Meadows, Sidney Powell, and others. Some of President Trump’s co-defendants have reached plea deals; others have petitioned to have the case removed to federal court, each attempt of which has been denied. A trial date has not yet been set, though prosecutors have asked for a trial to begin on Aug. 5, just a few short weeks after the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee.
Latest developments: On May 8, the Georgia Court of Appeals agreed to hear former President Trump’s attempt to disqualify Democrat District Attorney Fani Willis from the pending criminal case in Georgia. Trial court judge Scott McAfee previously denied President Trump’s attempt to remove Willis from the case, but the Georgia Court of Appeals will now determine whether that denial was permissible.
Southern District of Florida: Prosecution by Biden DOJ for Handling of Classified Documents
How we got here: In this federal criminal case, special counsel Jack Smith and federal prosecutors with Biden’s Justice Department charged former President Trump in June 2023 with 40 federal charges related to his alleged mishandling of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago residence. The trial was set to begin on May 20, 2024, but this date has now been postponed indefinitely. Additionally, venue matters: The trial is currently set to take place in Fort Pierce, Florida, in a locality that heavily backed President Trump in the 2020 election. If that remains unchanged, the demographics of the jury pool may result in a pro-Trump courtroom.
Latest developments: On May 7, Judge Aileen Cannon postponed the trial date indefinitely in this case. In an order, Judge Cannon stated “that finalization of a trial date at this juncture … would be imprudent and inconsistent with the Court’s duty to fully and fairly consider the various pending pre-trial motions before the Court.” This delay comes after Special Counsel Jack Smith and other prosecutors admitted to tampering with evidence, stating “there are some boxes [of documents seized from Mar-a-Lago] where the order of items within that box is not the same as in the associated scans.” Prosecutors previously represented to the court that the documents were “in their original, intact form as seized.” Judge Cannon also recently unredacted documents showing the Biden administration’s involvement in this case.
As a result of this indefinite delay, it is unlikely that a trial will occur before the November election.
Washington, D.C.: Prosecution by Biden DOJ for Jan. 6 Speech
How we got here: In this federal criminal case, special counsel Jack Smith and federal prosecutors charged former President Trump in August 2023 with four counts of conspiracy and obstruction related to his actions on Jan. 6, 2021. President Trump’s lawyers have argued that immunity extends to actions taken by a president while acting in his official capacity and that, in any event, the First Amendment protects his right to raise legitimate questions about a questionable election process.
Latest developments: This case is currently stalled while awaiting a ruling from the Supreme Court on former President Trump’s immunity claim.
New York: Lawsuit by A.G. Letitia James for Inflating Net Worth
How we got here: In this New York civil fraud case, Democrat Attorney General Letitia James — who campaigned on going after Trump — sued former President Trump in September 2022 under a civil fraud statute alleging that he misled banks, insurers, and others about his net worth to obtain loans, although the loans have been paid back and none of the parties involved claimed to have been injured by the deals.
Following a no-jury trial, Judge Arthur Engoron — whom Trump’s lawyers have accused of “astonishing departures from ordinary standards of impartiality” — issued a decision on Feb. 16, 2024 ordering Trump to pay a $454 million penalty. Trump has appealed this decision and posted a required $175 million appeal bond. The appeals court plans to hold hearings on the merits of the full case in September 2024.
Latest developments: This case mostly remains on hold.
Steve Roberts is a partner and Oliver Roberts is an associate with Holtzman Vogel Baran Torchinksy & Josefiak PLLC. They can be reached at sroberts@holtzmanvogel.com and oroberts@holtzmanvogel.com.
Donald Trump’s legal battles are being prosecuted by his political opposition and sabotaging his presidential campaign, raising concerns about the precedent being set in American politics. Pictured: Trump walks to the courtroom following a break in his alleged “hush money” trial at Manhattan Criminal Court in New York City on May 9. (Photo: ANGELA WEISS, POOL, AFP/Getty Images)
Josh Hammer, a syndicated columnist, is senior editor-at-large at Newsweek and a research fellow with the Edmund Burke Foundation. He also is counsel and policy adviser for the Internet Accountability Project and contributing editor for Anchoring Truths.
It is a presidential election year, and a leading candidate for president of the United States, who also happens to be a former president of the United States, is currently a criminal defendant chained to a dingy courtroom four days of the week—time that he should be spending interacting with voters out on the campaign trail. That’s terrible. But it’s only the beginning.
The daughter of the presiding judge is a professional political operative for the presidential candidate’s opposition party, and the candidate himself is subject to an over-inclusive and unconstitutional gag order.
The George Soros-funded district attorney, who campaigned on a platform of prosecuting that candidate, only pressed charges after his own left-wing predecessor opted not to do so due to the frivolous nature of the charges. One of the Soros-funded district attorney’s subordinates curiously joined his team—just in time to prosecute the candidate—from a high-ranking perch in the Department of Justice that is headed by the candidate’s chief political rival.
And this week, the candidate was subjected to tawdry and salacious testimony from a discredited former porn star, who spoke openly in court about how she “blacked out” during their alleged 2006 sexual encounter. Due to the sprawling gag order, the candidate was not—and is not—legally permitted to defend his honor and contest her lurid, legally irrelevant claims.
Welcome to our American banana republic.
America has many real, glaring problems on its hands. Inflation remains stubborn, and Americans widely report feeling pessimistic about the economy, despite nominal low unemployment metrics. Our wide-open southern border is disastrous, leading to artificially suppressed working-class wages and the most rampant illegal alien crime in the nation’s history. Violent and property crime rates remain too high, especially in large urban corridors. Energy prices should be considerably lower, and they would be if our moronic leaders allowed producers to tap into America’s great natural wellspring of hydrocarbons.
Around the world, hostile regimes act against our interests in unrestrained and revanchist fashion. At home, childlessness, godlessness, anxiety, and depression are all rising, symptomatic of a broader civilizational rot and a society that has lost confidence in what it claims to stand for.
Amidst all this, it would be ideal to have a normal, competitive presidential race in which the flailing incumbent is directly confronted, and his record is challenged for all to see. But Americans are now being deprived of anything remotely resembling a normal presidential race. Donald Trump is physically chained down to Judge Juan Merchan’s New York courtroom, unable to get out on the campaign trail and deliver his signature rallies to adoring fans across the heartland.
These often-forgotten Americans are, in a quite literal sense, denied the opportunity to hear the full argument against the Biden Regime due to these insidious workings of the Democrat-lawfare complex.
Instead of permitting the Regime’s challenger, Trump, to campaign for votes in Wisconsin, he is forced to silently endure the unhinged courtroom musings of a literal porn star and a convicted felon (Michael Cohen)—all in furtherance of a case that suffers from insuperable statute of limitations problems in addition to the structural absurdity of a local district attorney (the Soros-funded Alvin Bragg) prosecuting and attempting to prove a federal crime (a campaign finance violation).
Oh, and if Trump doesn’t shut up and keep quiet, Merchan might throw him in jail—as he has repeatedly threatened to do, if Trump keeps violating his unconstitutional gag order.
What a sick, cruel joke it all is.
Democrats seem not to have given any thought to what happens if they lose. If Trump wins, do Democrats seriously not expect him to respond in kind? Now that the Rubicon has been crossed and we have entered a world in which politicians attempt to not merely defeat their opposition at the ballot box but also prosecute and incarcerate them, there is no going back.
Just as Senate Democrats’ November 2013 invocation of the “nuclear option” to end the filibuster for lower-court nominees directly led to Republicans doing the same for Supreme Court nominees just a few years later, so, too, is it impossible to know what may ultimately come from the lawfare precedent Democrats are setting today.
The new rules have been established. Many of us didn’t want these rules, but here we are anyway. So, game on.
Anti-Israel protesters routinely spout untruths about Hamas’ Oct. 7 massacre and its aftermath. Here are 10 of the most common. Pictured: An Israeli soldier prays Tuesday next to an army vehicle near Israel’s border with the southern Gaza Strip, where Israel Defense Forces seek to root out Hamas terrorists. (Photo: Amir Levy/Getty Images)
Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, and author of the book “The Second World Wars: How the First Global Conflict Was Fought and Won.” You can reach him by e-mailing authorvdh@gmail.com.
Scan news accounts of anti-Israel campus and street protesters. Read their demands and manifestos. Collate the confusion from the Biden administration after Hamas’ Oct. 7 terrorism in Israel.
Here are 10 of their most common untruths about Oct. 7 and the Israel-Hamas war that followed.
‘Progressive Hamas’
Gay and transgender student protesters in America would be in mortal danger in Gaza under a fascistic Hamas, a terrorist organization that has banned homosexual acts and lifestyles. Anyone protesting publicly against Hamas or its allies would be arrested and severely punished.
Women are segregated in most Hamas-run educational institutions. Under the Hamas charter, women are valued mostly as child-bearers. By design, there are almost no women in high positions in business or in government under Hamas.
‘Colonists and settlers’
Students scream that Israelis are “settlers” and “colonists” and sometimes yell at Jewish students to “go back to Poland.”
But the Jewish presence in present-day Israel is deeply rooted in ancient tradition. Dating back at least three millennia, the concept of “Israel” as a distinct Jewish state, situated roughly in its current location, is ingrained in history.
By contrast, the much later Arab invasions of the Byzantine-controlled Levant and their arrival in Palestine occurred about 1,800 years after the establishment of a Jewish Israel.
‘Two-state solution’
When student protesters scream “From the river to the sea,” that is not advocacy for a two-state solution.
It is a call to eliminate the state of Israel—lying between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea—and its 10 million Jewish and Arab citizens. The Hamas charter is a one-state/no-Israel agenda, which we saw attempted on Oct. 7.
‘Occupied Gaza’
The Gaza Strip, adjacent Israel, was autonomous. The Israeli border is closed, but so is the Egyptian border. There have not been any Jews in Gaza for nearly two decades.
So on Oct. 7, Gaza was not occupied by Israel. It was under the control of Hamas, designated by the U.S. government as a terrorist organization.
After being elected to power in 2006, Hamas canceled all subsequent elections and ruled as a dictatorship. Gaza forbids Jews from entering Gaza and has driven out most Christians.
Israel hosts 2 million Arabs, both as Israeli citizens and residents.
‘Netanyahu is the problem’
The U.S. and Europe claim that the conservative government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is alone behind Israel’s tough response in Gaza to the Oct. 7 attacks. Thus, both the E.U. and the U.S. are doing their best to undermine or even overthrow the elected Netanyahu administration.
Yet, most Israelis support Netanyahu’s coalition government’s agenda of destroying Hamas in Gaza.
There is no evidence that any other alternative Israeli government would do anything differently from the present policies toward Hamas.
‘Targeting civilians’
After murdering nearly 1,200 Israelis on Oct. 7, Hamas scurried back to Gaza and hid in tunnels and bases beneath hospitals, schools, and mosques.
Its preplanned strategy was to survive by ensuring Gaza civilians would be killed. Hamas has indiscriminately launched more than 7,000 rockets at Israel, all designed to kill Jewish civilians.
Outside assessors have concluded that Israel has not inadvertently killed a greater ratio of civilians to terrorists compared to most other urban fighting conflicts elsewhere, and perhaps even fewer than American engagements in Mosul and Fallujah.
‘Protesters are pro-Palestine’
Increasingly, protesters make no distinction between supporting “Palestine” and Hamas.
Their chants often echo the original Hamas eliminationist charter and recent genocidal ravings of its leadership.
Some protesters wear Hamas logos and wave the terrorist organization’s flag. Many cheered the Hamas massacre of Oct. 7.
‘Anti-Israel is not antisemitic’
When protesters scream to Jewish students to “go back to Poland” or call for the “Final Solution,” or assault them or bar them from campus facilities, they do not ask the Jewish students whether they are pro-Israel.
For protesters, anyone identifiable as Jewish becomes a target of their antisemitic invective and violence.
‘Genocide’
Israel has not tried to wipe out the Palestinian people in the fashion of Hamas’ one-state solution plan for Jews.
Before Oct. 7, some 20,000 Gazans a day requested to work in Israel—on the correct expectation of much higher wages and humane treatment.
If Hamas had come out of its tunnels, separated from its impressed civilian shields, released its surviving Israeli hostages, and either openly fought the Israel Defense Forces or surrendered the organizers of the Oct. 7 massacre, no Gaza civilians would have died.
According to Hamas’ questionable “genocide” figures, roughly 4% of the Gazan population died during the Israeli military response to Oct. 7. At least a third to almost half of those deaths, according to various international observers, were Hamas terrorists.
‘Disproportionate response’
Iran tried to send 320 missiles and rockets into Israel. Israel replied with three.
Hamas launched 7,000 rockets into Israel and slaughtered 1,200 Israelis before the Israel Defense Forces responded in Gaza, often dropping leaflets and sending texts to forewarn citizens.
Israel has been disproportionate only in the effectiveness of its response. Hamas and its Iranian benefactor intended disproportionately to hurt Israel, but utterly failed.
So, Israel proved to be competent and Hamas incompetent in their similar efforts to use disproportionate force.
“I gave up shame years ago.” Those words from actor John Lithgow appear to have been taken to heart by Hillary Clinton who has severed any sense of self-awareness or shame in her public comments. Lithgow, who played Bill Clinton in Broadway production of Hillary and Clinton, appears to have inspired the subject of his play. In a recent interview, Hillary Clinton heralded the prosecution of former president Donald Trump in Manhattan as “election interference” by keeping “relevant information” from voters before an election. For those of us who criticized Clinton for the funding of the infamous Steele dossier, it was a perfectly otherworldly moment.
In the interview, Clinton went after the Supreme Court for delaying a trial of Trump despite the push by Special Counsel Jack Smith for a verdict before the election. She then left many in disbelief with the following statement:
“And the one going on now currently in New York is really about election interference. It is about trying to prevent the people of our country from having relevant information that may have influenced how they could have voted in 2016 or whether they would have voted.”
In the same election, it was Hillary Clinton’s campaign that lied about funding the Steele dossier and then hiding the funding as a legal expense through then Clinton General Counsel Marc Elias.
The Clinton campaign staff has never been known for transparency. Buried in the detailed account is a footnote stating that Elias “declined to be voluntarily interviewed by the Office.” Likewise, John Durham noted that “no one at Fusion GPS … would agree to voluntarily speak with the Office” while both the DNC and Clinton campaign invoked privileges to refuse to answer certain questions.
Elias, his former partner Michael Sussmann, and the campaign were later found involved in not just spreading the false claims from the Steele dossier but other false stories like the Alfa Bank conspiracy claim.
It was Elias who managed the legal budget for the campaign. We now know that the campaign hid the funding of the Steele dossier as a legal expense.
New York Times reporter Ken Vogel said that Elias denied involvement in the anti-Trump dossier. When Vogel tried to report the story, he said, Elias “pushed back vigorously, saying ‘You (or your sources) are wrong.’” Times reporter Maggie Haberman declared, “Folks involved in funding this lied about it, and with sanctimony, for a year.”
Elias was also seated next to John Podesta, Clinton’s campaign chairman, when he was asked about the role of the campaign, he denied categorically any contractual agreement with Fusion GPS. Even assuming that Podesta was kept in the dark, the Durham Report clearly shows that Elias knew and played an active role in pushing this effort.
Elias is now ironically advising Democratic campaigns on election ethics and running a group to “defend democracy.” He is still counsel to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) headed by Rep. Suzan Kay DelBene, D-Wash. Elias was later severed by the Democratic National Committee from further representation and has been previously sanctioned in federal court in other litigation.
Notably, the Federal Election Commission sanctioned the Clinton campaign for hiding the funding as a legal expense. The Clinton campaign litigated the issue and insisted that the term is broadly used to cover a wide array of payments through counsel. That is precisely what the Trump team is arguing in the Manhattan case.
Lying to the media and hiding the funding was a conscious effort to hide “relevant information that may have influenced” voters. With the help of the media, these false stories were spread throughout the country and later were used to start the Russian collusion investigation.
Famous philosopher and mathematician Blaise Pascal once declared that “the only shame is to have none.” Hillary has finally achieved that ignoble status. She appears now to have lost even the capacity for shame.
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This week CNN published information from what it says is a secret recording to frame Pennsylvania Republican Rep. Scott Perry as — what else? — a racist conspiracy theorist. On Wednesday, the network published quotes from what it says was an audio recording of a closed-door meeting on antisemitism wherein Perry notes the Ku Klux Klan was “the military wing of the Democratic Party.”
“The KKK in modern times, a lot of young people think somehow it’s a right-wing organization when it is the military wing of the Democratic Party. Decidedly, unabashedly, racist and antisemitic,” Perry said.
“The KKK is not affiliated in any way with the modern Democratic Party,” CNN added in its “news” article. Perhaps CNN was so eager to absolve the Democrat Party of any relationship to the KKK, which was founded by Democrats, that the network refused to even consider the legitimacy of Perry’s comments.
The hit, based on a supposedly off-the-record meeting between staff and lawmakers, generated hostile coverage against the Republican lawmaker from the New Republic, the Daily Beast, and the Philadelphia Inquirer.
If the racist agitators from the 2017 Charlottesville protests had set up antisemitic encampments on college campuses across the country after months of preparations paid for by dark money groups on the far right, the corporate press would be publishing an avalanche of screeds indicting the Republican Party as an infiltrated vehicle of the KKK. While the media will often point to former Klan leader David Duke’s support for Donald Trump as evidence of supposed GOP racism, Richard Spencer, who organized the Charlottesville race riots, endorsed President Joe Biden in 2020.
The Democratic Party includes an increasing number of supporters of antisemitism, which the Klan also promoted more than 150 years ago. The antisemitic protests that broke out after the Oct. 7 Israeli massacre by Palestinian terrorists have featured swastika symbols, which the KKK also embraced. The pro-Palestinian demonstrators are acting like the KKK while using some of the same symbols to terrorize Jewish students and shut down college campuses.
“The KKK was founded by Democrats, but not the party,” USA Today concluded. “We rate the claim that the Democratic Party started the Civil War to preserve slavery and founded the KKK as FALSE because it is not supported by our research.”
“They came up with all these various caveats – ‘Well, you know, it wasn’t all Democrats; it was only most Democrats in the South,’” Stepman told The Federalist. “I’m thinking, if this was literally any other institution, if this was the name of a street, or if this was a statue, it would have been immediately canceled. It might have even been ripe for being torn down by a mob.”
The House Oversight hearing about Washington D.C.’s response to the current antisemitic demonstrations was canceled Wednesday morning after police cleared a protester encampment at George Washington University. More than 30 people were arrested, according to the Associated Press. More than 2,800 demonstrators have been arrested on college campuses nationwide.
Tristan Justice is the western correspondent for The Federalist and the author of Social Justice Redux, a conservative newsletter on culture, health, and wellness. He has also written for The Washington Examiner and The Daily Signal. His work has also been featured in Real Clear Politics and Fox News. Tristan graduated from George Washington University where he majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow him on Twitter at @JusticeTristan or contact him at Tristan@thefederalist.com. Sign up for Tristan’s email newsletter here.
The “consequences will be grave” if President Joe Biden can’t find the “political courage to stand up to radicals on his left flank” and support Israel, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell warned in a speech on the Senate floor Thursday.
“Other allies who rely on ‘ironclad’ guarantees from America will question our commitment,” the Kentucky Republican said while speaking out against Biden’s warnings that U.S. weapons will not be used in an Israeli attack on Rafah out of concerns for civilian casualties.
McConnell said that Biden’s refusal to back an ally at war will backfire.
“Nations on the fence, in the middle of a major power competition for influence, will look elsewhere for their own security, and our enemies will be emboldened,” the senator said.
McConnell acknowledged that “war is hell” and “innocent noncombatants suffer,” but still, “civilized nations hold themselves to the highest standards and take deliberate care to minimize harm to civilians.”
Israel, he added, goes to “great lengths” to avoid civilian casualties, including accepting “great risk” to its soldiers to avoid endangering innocent civilians.
“But the forces sworn to erase Israel from the earth follow a different code,” he said. “[To] Hamas, civilian casualties are not tragedies; they’re tools of the trade.”
“To these savages, kidnapping, torture, rape, and murder aren’t crimes; they’re tactics,” McConnell said. “For terrorists around the world, human suffering is the weapon of choice. And Hamas seeks to magnify it.”
He added that Israel tried to avoid the war, including negotiating a cease-fire, but Hamas “used this cease-fire to plan and prepare for war” and launched its attacks on Oct. 7.
Hamas also chose to put fighting positions in hospitals, schools, and the United Nations, while directly attacking humanitarian aid crossings to exploit human suffering “because it works.”
“They know the media will cover it — ‘if it bleeds, it leads’ — because they know it creates an international rush to blame Israel,” said McConnell.
This has led to “leftist fifth columns and useful idiots on university campuses” to express solidarity with the terrorists and forcing Biden to choose between a “supposedly ‘ironclad’ commitment to an ally under attack and the will of his leftist political base.”
And, McConnell said, “Hamas bet correctly.”
McConnell further warned that Biden is old enough to remember the 1968 protests at the Democratic National Convention, but he doesn’t choose to heed what happened.
“Caving to the college radicals will only whet their appetite to spend the summer demanding further anti-Israel concessions at his party’s convention,” said McConnell.
Columbia University professors demonstrate outside the university campus demanding the release of students in New York City on May 1, 2024. Hundreds of people were arrested at pro-Palestinian protests on U.S. campuses as police on May 1 extended a crackdown that included clearing out demonstrators occupying a building at Columbia University. (Photo: Charly Triballeau/AFP/Getty Images)
Armstrong Williams is a columnist for The Daily Signal and host of “The Armstrong Williams Show,” a nationally syndicated TV program.
American college campuses are permeated with corrupted professors who themselves corrupt students. Without a doubt, college professors are the most dangerous people in America.
They’re not dangerous because they challenge the status quo or encourage their students to think critically. On the contrary, they are dangerous because they encourage impressionable young college students to adhere to the doctrines of the professors they choose without giving them the chance to meaningfully challenge those doctrines.
During the recent pro-Palestinian and pro-Hamas protests on elite college campuses, thousands of students put up tents on private property, commandeered university-owned buildings, defaced private property, and chanted disturbing, antisemitic rhetoric. But while we constantly talk about the actions of the students, we fail to recognize that these students aren’t alone but instead are educated and cheered on by their college professors.
At Columbia University, many of the university’s professors joined the protests, donning orange reflective vests and standing alongside students in protest of Israel and—apparently—in support of the students’ right to free speech. Of course, these professors, like their students, are not constitutional scholars, yet they teach their students that what they’re doing is protected.
The First Amendment does not protect the right to vandalize or trespass on private property, which is what these students were doing, or even make terroristic threats or aid a terrorist organization, which arguably many of these students did. The very idea that there were professors aiding the students in their illegal takeover of the university should sound alarm bells.
Even in the face of the professors’ statements and actions, which were to the effect of “we support our students’ right to protest,” no rights were being violated. But you can be absolutely sure the impressionable college students seeing their actions and reading their statements feel more emboldened than ever and as though they were the ones wronged, not the scores of Jewish students who were barred from campus nor the many impoverished students unable to access the now-closed dining halls.
There can be no doubt left now that students who witnessed their professors, people of great authority and respect to them, supporting a protest that resulted in the unprovoked stabbing of a Jewish woman in the eye with a Palestinian flag, chants of “death to America” and “globalize the intifada” (a violent uprising in which more than a thousand Israelis were murdered in the early 2000s), students claiming “we are Hamas,” and a significant number of students donning Hamas militant headbands will think any violence or violent rhetoric on their part is somehow justified.
Look no further than the case of Russell Rickford, an associate history professor at Cornell University, who took a leave of absence after openly stating that the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attacks were “exhilarating” and “energizing.” He was seen back on campus, protesting in solidarity with the students and speaking in support of the students and Palestine.
Why should a student feel afraid of being suspended—or even expelled—when a professor of the institution who met a similar fate is back on campus voicing his support of Palestine?
One thing any college student—particularly one who challenges authority—will learn is that when that authority (the professor, the administration, or even the student body) is overwhelmingly liberal, questioning dogma is a recipe for failure and being labeled an outcast.
For a college student, a bad grade can make or break their college career, which, to college students, is the most immediately important thing in their life. Giving a college professor the ability to judge a student more harshly because they disagree or even simply question the professors’ beliefs is the perfect recipe for indoctrination.
Let’s be clear, college professors should not be feared; they should be respected when they earn that respect, same as anyone else. The only power they wield is the title they were given by their institution—a title that can be quickly stripped away from them. To college students, these professors are the most academically accomplished people they know, so they follow them mindlessly; that’s why they are dangerous.
Well-educated people are often the least intelligent. They are so confident in their ability to think critically that they have successfully convinced themselves that they can do no wrong. It is only when students have an honest professor who understands their fallibility that they can truly learn.
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The Daily Signal publishes a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Heritage Foundation.
Despite high per-pupil spending, New York, New Jersey, Vermont, and other states see low test scores in math and reading, as does D.C. Catholic schools, however, outperform. (Photo illustration: Comstock Images/Getty Images)
Terence P. Jeffrey is investigative editor for the Daily Caller News Foundation.
The public schools in the state of New York doled out $29,284 per pupil in “current expenditures” in fiscal year 2022, according to a report published this week by the Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics.
“Current expenditures comprise expenditures for the day-to-day operation of schools and school districts for public elementary and secondary education, including expenditures for staff salaries and benefits, supplies, and purchased services,” the National Center for Education Statistics says.
“General administration expenditures and school administration expenditures are also included in current expenditures,” it says.
The $29,284 that New York spent per pupil on these items was more than any other state. So, what did taxpayers get in return for this investment?
Not much.
In the mathematics test of the 2022 National Assessment of Educational Progress, only 28% of eighth graders in New York state public schools scored proficient or better. Only 32% scored proficient or better in reading.
In our capital city of Washington, D.C., which the NCES lists with the states, the public schools had $28,128 in “current expenditures” per pupil. That was more than any state except New York. So, how did the students do in D.C. public schools? Only 16% of eight graders in the D.C. school system scored proficient or better in math. Only 22% scored proficient or better in reading.
New Jersey had the next-highest level of per-pupil spending in its public schools in fiscal year 2022. In that state, it was $25,550. The students there scored a little better in reading and math than those in New York or the District of Columbia. But they did not do great. Only 33% of New Jersey eighth graders were proficient or better in math, while 42% were proficient or better in reading.
Vermont, the state represented by Sen. Bernie Sanders, an independent, finished slightly behind New Jersey in per-pupil spending in its public schools. It spent $25,073. Vermont also finished behind New Jersey in its NAEP test scores. Only 27% of eighth graders in Vermont public schools scored proficient or better in math, and only 34% scored proficient or better in reading.
Connecticut, another New England state, came in fifth—behind New York, the District of Columbia, New Jersey, and Vermont—in per-pupil sending. It spent $23,868 per student. Only 30% of its eighth graders scored proficient or better in math, and only 35% scored proficient in reading.
Connecticut was followed by three other New England states when the 50 states are ranked by per-pupil spending. Massachusetts spent $22,778; Rhode Island spent $20,498; and New Hampshire spent $20,424.
Yet only 35% of eighth graders in Massachusetts public schools scored proficient or better in math; only 40% scored proficient or better in reading. In Rhode Island, only 24% of eighth graders scored proficient or better in math; only 31% scored proficient or better in reading. In New Hampshire, only 29% scored proficient or better in math; only 33% scored proficient or better in reading.
Did the results significantly improve if a state spent less money per pupil in its public schools? No.
Utah spent $9,496 per pupil in its public schools in fiscal year 2022. That was less than any other state. Only 35% of eighth graders scored proficient or better in math, and only 36% scored proficient or better in reading.
Similarly, Idaho finished next to last in per-pupil spending in its public schools, putting up $9,662. Only 32% of eighth graders scored proficient or better in math, and 32% scored proficient or better in reading.
As this column has noted before, students at Catholic schools score better on these NAEP tests than students at public schools. In 2022, eighth graders in Catholic schools had an average score of 288 on the math test, while eighth graders in public schools had an average score of 273. Similarly, eighth graders in Catholic schools had an average score of 279 on the reading test, while public-school eighth graders had an average score of 259. The average tuition at Catholic elementary schools in 2023, according to U.S. News and World Report, was $4,840. The average tuition at Catholic high schools was $11,240.
In the upcoming school year, DeMatha Catholic High School—in Hyattsville, Maryland, just outside Washington, D.C.—will have a tuition of $22,700, according to its website. That is $5,428 less than the $28,128 that D.C. public schools spent per pupil in 2022.
Parents in the District of Columbia and every other community in this country should not be forced to send their children to government-run schools. All parents should be given a voucher equal to the per-pupil expenditures in the local public schools and they should be free to redeem that voucher at any school—public or private, religious or secular—that they choose.
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The Daily Signal publishes a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Heritage Foundation.
Fox is reporting that Michael Cohen was back on TikTok last night using the Trump trial to troll for dollars. Cohen reportedly appeared in a teeshirt showing Trump in an orange jumpsuit and asked for more followers. He also reportedly announced his candidacy for Congress, which would allow him to take one of the seemingly few oaths that the serial perjurer has not violated.
Who would have thought that District Attorney Alvin Bragg calling a porn star to the stand would be the moral high ground for key witnesses? Next could be a disbarred, convicted perjurer who is still seeking to make money off the case.
Cohen previously pledged not to discuss the trial after many of us objected to Judge Juan Merchan’s gag order as unconstitutional, particularly as to Cohen who has continued to attack Trump on the air while defending the gag order for his own protection.
Cohen’s prior promise lasted a record of a couple days before he broke it on TikTok. Now he is appearing with a tee-shirt mocking Trump and using the moment to pursue a congressional seat.
For Judge Merchan, this is precisely what he was warned about. He has stubbornly enforced his poorly written and excessively broad order. After admitting that this was a “case of first impression” on the extension of gag orders to such things as repostings on social media, Merchan clarified his meaning not with a new order but by imposing sanctions on Trump.
Trump is now appealing the gag order and Cohen is doing his best to undermine not just his residual credibility but that of the court. Between the lurid testimony of Daniels and the continued antics of Cohen, Merchan looks completely feckless, if not farcical, in his own courtroom.
For Merchan and the prosecutors, none of this can come as a surprise.
There is an old fable of a scorpion who wants to cross a river and convinced a hesitant frog to carry him on its back. After all, if he stung the frog in the river, they both would die. That seemed logical so the frog agreed to do so only to have the scorpion deliver a lethal sting halfway across. When the frog asked why the scorpion would doom them both, the scorpion replies: “I am sorry, but I couldn’t resist the urge. It’s in my nature.”
Cohen has always been open as a grifter.
The problem is not Cohen. He continues to act to his nature. The problem is a political and legal system that enables him as a serial liar. It is a system that continues to call Cohen to the stand and ask him to swear to God to offer the “truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth” without a signature joke drum roll before his punchline.
Yet, Cohen now wants to take an oath of office in the legislative branch. He seems to collect oaths the way some collect animal heads for a trophy wall. The question is whether other members could suppress laughter when he swears that he is taking the oath of office “without… purpose of evasion.”
While pundits, politicians and the press have long expressed outrage over attacks on judges by former President Donald Trump, many are now attacking any judge who delays any trial of Trump before the election. Democrats have accused Judge Aileen Cannon of being politically compromised, if not conspiratorial, in her delay of the Florida trial over the mishandling of classified documents. Yet, there is ample reason for the delay that many of us anticipated in this type of case when it was filed.
For months, many of us have said that we doubt that this type of trial could be held on the rapid schedule demanded by Special Counsel Jake Smith. Smith has repeatedly sought to curtail trial review and even appellate rights of Trump to advance his schedule.
His office has made convicting Trump before the election the overriding objective of its motion — a sharp departure from past Justice Department efforts to avoid trials to influence elections.
As a criminal defense counsel, I have handled classified material cases, and they are notoriously slow. Smith could have prosecuted this case in the shorter time frame if he simply charged obstruction. That would have also eliminated the glaring contrast with the handling of the Biden investigation into the current president’s retention and mishandling of classified material.
Smith decided to charge an array of document charges related to classified material. The defense must have access, review, and can appeal issues related to the classified procedures. Yet, Smith wanted both the array of document charges and a fast track to trial. The Supreme Court has agreed with Cannon that Smith’s desire to secure a conviction before the election is not the overriding consideration.
Judge Cannon is faced with recent admissions that the government mixed up files in the boxes and staged the famous photos of documents strewn over a floor with classified jackets. Most importantly, disputes over the relevant documents continues as expected in the case. Nevertheless, leading democrats are denouncing Cannon as a partisan hack.
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s subcommittee on federal courts and oversight, accused Cannon of “deliberately slow-walking the case.” Ignoring the fact that similar cases have taken much longer to go to trial, Whitehouse simply declared “it is hard for me not to reach the conclusion that this [judge] is deliberately slow-walking the case to put it into a position where should [Trump] be elected, he can order that the investigation and prosecution be terminated.”
His colleague Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) insisted that Cannon was “managing this case in a way that is making it highly unlikely that it will be resolved in a timely fashion.”
Coons added “Justice deferred is often justice denied.” It is a bizarre statement. Classified documents cases routinely take longer to go to trial. The alternative is to cut off the ability of the defense to fully review the documents and review objections for resolution before trial. Yet, because the defendant is Trump and these Democrats want the trial to influence the election, such defense protections are now evidence of judicial bias. They, of course, ignore that Cannon has ruled repeatedly against major Trump motions in the case.
Sen. Peter Welch (D-Vt.), a member of the Judiciary Committee, said Cannon’s “at it again, doing everything she can to delay.”
Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), offered the most telling line. He said, “I question whether this judge understands the magnitude or the legal import of this trial.”
Indeed, it is the timing as much as the charges that makes this so important to the Justice Department and the Democrats. Smith has crafted this case to impact the election and the failure of the court to support that effort is apparently grounds for recusal.
Blumenthal called for such a motion before the window is lost before the election: “It’s a classic dilemma for justice that a particular judicial officer may be conducting a trial that could be better done by somebody else.”
Despite the statement of his colleague Coons, this is a case where justice delayed is justice.
A.F. Branco Cartoon – Biden’s Title IX (9) is destroying women’s sports. Many women are at risk of bodily injury and loss of scholarships across the nation due to biological males pretending to be women invading their sports.
Oklahoma Challenges Joe Biden’s Title IX Revisions: “One of the Most Radical and Illegal Moves We’ve Ever Seen from the Federal Government”
By Jim Hoft – April 27, 2024
Oklahoma State Superintendent of Public Instruction Ryan Walters condemned President Joe Biden’s recent rewrite of Title IX, labeling it as “radical and illegal” and a direct assault on the rights of states, families, and specifically young women and girls. The Biden regime proudly announced that women will be forced to allow men in their locker rooms and bathrooms with a new 1577-page Title IX ruling. Women will be forced to compete against men and women will be forced to accept men on their sports teams.
And, as May Mailman, Director of Independent Women’s Law Center, notes, Title IX is not a college law. This will impact girls as young as those in the Headstart program, geared to children from three to five-years old, those in daycare, and those in Kindergarten through 12th grade. READ MORE…
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country in various news outlets, including NewsMax, Fox News, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Rep. Devin Nunes, Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Chris Salcedo, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Trump.
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House Speaker Mike Johnson, accompanied by Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, and Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, on Wednesday introduced legislation that they said will ensure that only U.S. citizens are voting in U.S. elections by requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote.
“Some have noted that it’s already a crime for noncitizens to vote in a federal election, and that is true,” Johnson said during an event at the Capitol announcing the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act. However, he said, there is “no mechanism to ensure” that only citizens are registering or voting.”
“It is true that [President Joe] Biden has welcomed millions and millions of illegal aliens, including sophisticated criminal syndicates and agents of adversarial governments, into our borders and even on humanitarian parole,” Johnson, R-La., said. “It is true that a growing number of localities are blurring the lines for noncitizens by allowing them to vote in municipal elections [and] it is true that Democrats have expressed a desire to turn non-citizens into voters.”
Johnson said that in his travels to cities nationwide, the first or second question he’s asked in every forum is about election security.
“Americans are deeply concerned about this and it doesn’t matter where you live or whether you’re in a blue state or a red state,” Johnson said. “Due to the wide-open border that the Biden administration has refused to close — in fact that they engineered to open — we now have so many noncitizens in the country that if only one out of 100 of those voted, they would cast hundreds of thousands of votes.”
Johnson called that a “dangerously high number” that could change the outcome of the nation’s elections.
Johnson added that nearly 16 million immigrants have entered the country since Biden entered office, including on humanitarian parole, “and that means the millions that had been paroled can simply go to their local welfare office or the DMV and register to vote there.”
The speaker also pointed out that there has been a growing number of people in the United States on student visas who have staged protests at the nation’s colleges, threatening law-abiding students.
“If they’re willing to take over buildings and physically terrorize their fellow students, why would they not be willing to lie on a voter registration form?” Johnson said.
The speaker was accompanied by several advocates for the legislation, including Cleta Mitchell (FAIR Elections Fund and Election Integrity Network), Jenny Beth Martin (Tea Party Patriots Action), Stephen Miller (America First Legal), Ken Cuccinelli (Election Transparency Initiative), Rosemary Jenks (Immigration Accountability Project), Andy Roth (State Freedom Caucus Network), and Hogan Gidley (America First Policy Institute).
Members of Jewish Voice for Peace and others gather at Rockefeller Center to protest a visit by President Joe Biden on Feb. 26, 2024, in New York City. (Photo: David Delgado/Getty Images)
I doubt that there is any national or religious group that produces the percentage of people who aid those who wish to hurt, let alone kill, that group as do Jews. empty alt attribute
When one observes Jews who defend those whose raison d’etre is the annihilation of the one Jewish country on Earth, you have to ask: Why are there no others like them? Were there blacks who defended slavery? Were there Armenians who defended the Turkish mass murder of fellow Armenians during World War I?
It is true that every nation has produced people who work against their nation—particularly during time of war. Vidkun Quisling, the Norwegian leader who collaborated with the Nazi occupiers of Norway, is perhaps the best known: The very name “Quisling” is widely used as a synonym for traitor. But even Quisling identified more with fellow Norwegians than Israel-hating Jews identify with fellow Jews.
It turns out that the Jews who side with those who wish to eradicate the one Jewish state and slaughter as many Jews as possible are truly unique.
It is this uniqueness that makes these Jews difficult to explain. Nevertheless, it is important to at least attempt to do so.
Here are two explanations.
1. Psychological Explanations
As a result of the Holocaust, virtually every Jew—whether or not they had family members who were murdered by the Nazis and their non-German collaborators—suffers from a form of PTSD. Few non-Jews know this, and even fewer can identify with this condition. So, let me explain.
Between 1941 and 1945, one of the most civilized nations in the world—the nation that gave the world the greatest music ever written; the greatest single national source of great scientists; the nation that produced Protestant Christianity, the mother of modern liberal democracies, the primary source (along with the Hebrew Bible) of the American experiment in freedom and of the anti-slavery movement—murdered two out of every three Jews in Europe.
Jewish women, babies, and elderly Jews were slated for death just as much as were young men. Jews were not merely persecuted or enslaved; they were targeted for death in the largest and most systematic genocide in recorded history.
And with very few exceptions, the world’s nations did nothing to help the Jews of Europe. Even those who managed to flee were, in too many cases, denied safe harbor in other countries, a fact that continues to underlie the need for one Jewish state in the world.
Inevitably, this has had a profound impact on the Jewish psyche. Virtually every Jew since 1945 has, consciously or subconsciously, feared another Holocaust. In fact, long before the Holocaust, at the Passover Seder Jews recited (and still do): “In every generation they arise to annihilate us.” Note that the words are not “to persecute us” or “to enslave us” but “to annihilate us.” Jew-hatred has always been unique in that it is an annihilationist hatred.
Given this reality, some Jews have always sought to assimilate wherever and whenever possible. Some changed their names, some baptized their children (as Karl Marx’s Jewish parents did), and some simply chose not to raise their children as Jews.
Today, there are Jews who choose to identify with the Jews’ enemies. More than a few young Jews on college campuses, for example, undoubtedly believe—consciously or not—that they will be more secure if they align themselves with the Jews’ enemies.
To those who seek to annihilate Israel and its Jews, there is no one as valuable as a Jew who sides with them—and many young Jews know, or at least sense, this. By aligning themselves with today’s Nazis—and lest you think that is too strong a term, vis-a-vis the Jews there is no difference between the Nazis and the Iranian regime, Hezbollah, and Hamas—they go from being hated by Israel-haters to being loved by them (for now).
2. Ideological Explanations
Not all Jews side with the would-be exterminators of the Jewish people for psychological reasons. Many Jews who are in the pro-Palestinian, Israel-hating camp are there for ideological reasons: They are leftists (not liberals, who generally remain what they have always been: pro-Israel). And leftism is one of the two primary sources of Israel-hatred and Jew-hatred today. The other is fundamentalist Islam.
This is true around the world. The most anti-Israel leaders outside of the Muslim world are leftists. The president of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, described by The New York Times as “Colombia’s first leftist president,” has severed his country’s relations with Israel and not only used the “genocide” libel against Israel but accused Israel of engaging in “the extermination of an entire people.”
(As I have noted for decades, truth is a liberal and conservative value; but it is not, and has never been, a left-wing value.)
The leftist president of Bolivia, Luis Arce, severed his country’s relations with Israel less than three weeks after Oct. 7. Bolivia perfectly illustrates the universal left-wing hatred of Israel: Bolivia’s previous left-wing president, Evo Morales, severed Bolivia’s relations with Israel in 2009; and Morales’ conservative successor, Jeanine Anez, restored relations with Israel in 2020.
Meanwhile, the most pro-Israel leader in the world today is the conservative president of Argentina, Javier Milei.
Most American Jews are liberal, but many are leftist, and they embrace the anti-Israel/pro-Palestinian/pro-Hamas line. (At this time, “pro-Palestinian” means “pro-Hamas” just as, during World War II, “pro-German” meant “pro-Nazi.”)
For many Jews who abandon belief in the Torah, leftism fills the religious hole created by that abandonment. This is equally true for many non-Jews, but there is a major difference: Christians who abandon Christian faith do not still call themselves Christian, nor does anyone else; but Jews who abandon Jewish faith often continue to call themselves Jews (especially when attacking Israel), and so do others.
Psychopathology and left-wing ideology are the two primary explanations for why Jews such as those in groups like “Jewish Voice for Peace” and “IfNotNow” willingly serve as useful idiots for those who wish to exterminate the Jewish state and the Jewish people. Including them.
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The Daily Signal publishes a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Heritage Foundation.
The University of Washington became the latest scene of Antifa violence this week with an attack on a conservative reporter and several other people. Antifa often attacks reporters who are critical of their actions and the videotape shows at least one person bleeding after the attack on reporter, Jonathan Choe, and his team. The attack came before an event Tuesday at the University of Washington featuring Charlie Kirk, founder of Turning Point USA, which released the video.
BREAKING: FRONTLINES reporter @choeshow and his security were attacked by members of ANTIFA near the anti-Israel encampment at the University of Washington.
Cops were called to the scene and are now investigating.
The University of Washington issued a statement that campus police “are busy keeping the Turning Point USA event and other areas of campus as safe as possible. We take any assault seriously, and UWPD will be investigating these incidents, gathering statements and video footage that may be available.”
As I have written, it has long been the “Keyser Söze” of the anti-free speech movement, a loosely aligned group that employs measures to avoid easy detection or association. Yet, FBI Director Chris Wray has repeatedly pushed back on the denials of Antifa’s work or violence. In one hearing, Wray stated “And we have quite a number” — and “Antifa is a real thing. It’s not a fiction.”
We have continued to follow the attacks and arrests of Antifa followers across the country.
Some Democrats have played a dangerous game in supporting or excusing the work of Antifa. Former Democratic National Committee deputy chair Keith Ellison, now the Minnesota attorney general, once said Antifa would “strike fear in the heart” of Trump. This was after Antifa had been involved in numerous acts of violence and its website was banned in Germany. His own son, Minneapolis City Council member Jeremiah Ellison, declared his allegiance to Antifa in the heat of the protests this summer. During a prior hearing, Democratic senators refused to clearly denounce Antifa and falsely suggested that the far right was the primary cause of recent violence. Likewise, Joe Biden has dismissed objections to Antifa as just “an idea.”
It is at its base a movement at war with free speech, defining the right itself as a tool of oppression. That purpose is evident in what is called the “bible” of the Antifa movement: Rutgers Professor Mark Bray’s Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook.
Bray emphasizes the struggle of the movement against free speech: “At the heart of the anti-fascist outlook is a rejection of the classical liberal phrase that says, ‘I disapprove of what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it.’”
Bray admits that “most Americans in Antifa have been anarchists or antiauthoritarian communists… From that standpoint, ‘free speech’ as such is merely a bourgeois fantasy unworthy of consideration.” It is an illusion designed to promote what Antifa is resisting “white supremacy, hetero-patriarchy, ultra-nationalism, authoritarianism, and genocide.” Thus, all of these opposing figures are deemed fascistic and thus unworthy of being heard.
Bray quotes one Antifa member as summing up their approach to free speech as a “nonargument . . . you have the right to speak but you also have the right to be shut up.”
We previously discussed the case involving another Antifa member who was convicted after taking an ax to the door of Sen. John Hoeven’s office in Fargo. He was given no jail time, and the FBI even returned his ax. He later mocked the government by posting on social media “Look what the FBI were kind enough to give back to me!”
For those who have sought to deny the existence of Antifa, this is Antifa.
Below is my New York Post column on the unseemly scene in the courtroom of Judge Juan Merchan as prosecutors used porn star Stormy Daniels to present lurid details on her alleged tryst with former president Donald Trump. It was a dumpster fire that Judge Merchan watched burn for a full day and then said the jury may have to disregard much of what they saw and heard.
Here is the column:
Before the start of the Manhattan prosecution of former president Donald Trump, I characterized the case of District Attorney Alvin Bragg as based on a type of obscenity standard.
In a 1984 pornography case, Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart wrote “I shall not today attempt further to define [obscenity]. . . . But I know it when I see it.”
Bragg has refused to clearly define the crime that Trump was seeking to conceal when payments for a non-disclosure agreement were listed as a legal expense. We would just know it when we saw it at trial. We are still waiting, but this week, Bragg seems to be prosecuting an actual obscenity case.
The prosecution fought with Trump’s defense counsel to not only call porn star Stormy Daniels to the stand, but to ask her for lurid details on her alleged tryst with Trump. The only assurance that they would make to Judge Juan Merchan was that they would “not go into details of genitalia.” For Merchan, who has largely ruled against Trump on such motions, that was enough. He allowed the prosecutors to get into the details of the affair despite the immateriality of the evidence to any criminal theory.
Neither the NDA nor the payment to Daniels is being contested. It is also uncontested that Trump wanted to pay to get the story (and other stories, including untrue allegations) from being published.
The value of the testimony was entirely sensational and gratuitous, yet Merchan was fine with humiliating Trump. Daniels’ testimony was a dumpster fire in the courtroom.
The most maddening moment for the defense came at the lunch break when Merchan stated, “I agree that it would have been better if some of these things had been left unsaid.” He then denied a motion for a mistrial based on the testimony and blamed the defense for not objecting more. That, of course, ignores the standing objection of the defense to Daniels even appearing, and specific objections to the broad scope allowed by the court.
This is precisely what the defense said would happen when the prosecutors only agreed to avoid “genitalia.” There was no reason for Daniels to appear at all in the trial. Even if he was adamant in allowing her, Merchan could have imposed a much more limited scope for her testimony. He could also have enforced the limits that he did place on the testimony when it was being ignored by both the prosecutors and the witness.
Merchan said that he is considering a limiting instruction for the jury to ignore aspects of the testimony. But that is little comfort for the defendant.
The court was told that this would happen, it happened, and now the court wants to ask the jury to pretend that it did not happen. Merchan knows that there is no way for the jury to unhear the testimony. More importantly, the prosecution knew that from the outset.
Daniels appeared eager to share the stories for the same reason that she was eager to sell her story. While she said that she “hates” Trump and wants him “held accountable,” Daniels is no victim. She had an alleged tryst with Trump and then sought to cash in on the story.
It is a standard form of extortion of celebrities. She later sought to cash in on the notoriety by appearing in strip clubs as part of a “Make America Horny Again” tour. She is in her element in Merchan’s courtroom.
In New York, the relevance or credibility of witnesses like Daniels is largely immaterial.
New Yorkers elected a state attorney general, Letitia James, who ran on the pledge to bag Trump on something — without specifying any crime.
Bragg then indicted Trump without clearly defining any crime — a debate that continues among legal experts after two weeks of testimony.
This is entertainment for many in New York — as is the thrill of the possibility of his going to jail under Merchan’s poorly written and arguably unconstitutional gag order.
When it comes to a thrill kill trial, who better to call than Daniels?
After all, she has been treated as a heroine by many, even being given the key to the city of West Hollywood, California, on “Stormy Daniels Day.”
Well, it was Stormy Daniels Day in Judge Merchan’s courtroom this week, and it is a bit late for the court to express shock over her testimony.
It is not the witness, but the case that seems increasingly obscene.
You have a judge who should have recused himself given his daughter’s major role as a Democratic activist and fundraiser.
You have a gag order that is allowing a New York Supreme Court justice to regulate what the leading candidate for the presidency may say in an election on the weaponization of the legal system.
A.F. Branco Cartoon—Speaker Johnson has turned out to be weaker than expected, unwilling to fight for the values the conservative base elected him to promote. Many say he has become the lapdog of Rep. Jeffries and the Democrats and, out of weakness or naivete, has yielded to the Deep State, such as the warrantless FISA bill.
BREAKING | Rep. MTG Announces Motion To Vacate For Speaker Johnson Next Week: “Americans Are “Unable To Trust Mike Johnson” (VIDEO)
By Jim Hoft – May 1, 2024 Rep. Marjorie Taylor-Greene (R-GA) joined Steve Bannon on The War Room on Wednesday to discuss her plan to call for a motion to vacate the speakership next week.
Rep. Mike Johnson (R-LA), the Uniparty, RINOs and Democrats passed another massive spending bill last week to fund the war in Ukraine, fund Israel, fund Taiwan, and nothing for secure America’s southern border. This is national suicide. READ MORE…
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country in various news outlets, including NewsMax, Fox News, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Rep. Devin Nunes, Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Chris Salcedo, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Trump.
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As South Carolina law enforcement investigates allegations a state agency is handing out voter registration forms to foreign nationals, an agency official tells The Federalist that federal law has tied the state’s hands.
Section 7 requires each state to designate voter registration agencies, including all state offices providing public assistance, unemployment compensation, or disability services; state or local government offices; federal and nongovernmental offices; and armed forces recruitment offices.
“SCDHHS does not believe the state Medicaid agency should have a role in voter registration. However, absent the legal authority to make this change, SCDHHS remains required by federal law to provide voter registration application forms with each Medicaid application,” Leieritz said in a statement Monday to The Federalist.
‘That’s Insane’
South Carolina state Rep. Adam Morgan has been pushing for answers after a refugee reported receiving a packet of information, including voter registration forms, at the Health and Human Services office. Morgan did not return The Federalist’s requests for comment, but he did speak about the issue last week on FrankSpeech.
“The refugee was actually confused. They were like, ‘Am I supposed to fill this out?’ They asked a relative, and the relative is a citizen who said, ‘No, you can’t fill this out. You’re not a citizen.’ [The refugee] said, ‘Why are they giving this out to noncitizens?’ And we were, like, “Exactly! That’s insane,” Morgan told The Absolute Truth with Emerald Robinson.
Why is the SC Medicaid office insisting on giving voter registration forms to non-citizens?
Listen to what SC Freedom Caucus Chairman @RepAdamMorgan found out is going on even in his Republican-lead state.
— The Absolute Truth with @EmeraldRobinson (@AbsoluteWithE) April 30, 2024
Morgan said the refugee mailed the forms back to the Medicaid office advising that the government agency shouldn’t be giving voter registration information to people who are not eligible to vote. The office sent the refugee even more information in response, Morgan claims.
“It’s just infuriating that the government is actually sending these forms out and literally confusing people who may not be trying to do wrong, or opening the door wide open for somebody to do wrong and get people who are not citizens to vote in the election,” said the president of the South Carolina Freedom Caucus and a Republican candidate for a U.S. House seat.
On, Wednesday, the Freedom Caucus sent Gov. Henry McMaster a letter expressing its “grave concern with this breach of election integrity.” They asked that the state inspector general’s office launch an immediate investigation and that the governor order state agencies to “cease and desist distributing voter registration and voter declination forms to non-citizens.”
McMaster, a Republican, quickly responded, saying he has asked the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division to immediately contact Morgan to “provide SLED with any and all evidence, documents and information that you possess in order to evaluate the authenticity of your allegation of illegalities.”
“SLED has received the Governor’s letter to Representative Adam Morgan and will review the allegations provided,” the Law Enforcement Division told The Federalist in an email Monday.
‘Overreaching Federal Requirements’
Leieritz, the spokesman for the state health department, said the agency is aware of reports circulating on social media about the refugee receiving voter registration forms. He said the department does not process or submit voter registration forms for Medicaid applicants or members. That is the domain of the South Carolina Election Commission.
“SCDHHS is investigating what has been reported on social media,” the spokesman said, adding that the agency believes the 30-year-old National Voter Registration Act needs to be amended “to repeal these overreaching federal requirements.”
“South Carolina’s citizens would be better served by a state Medicaid agency that is able to focus singularly on efficiently operating the state’s Healthy Connections Medicaid program,” Leieritz said.
Morgan and the Freedom Caucus are proposing adding a provision in the state budget prohibiting state money from funding the distribution of voter registration information to foreign nationals at South Carolina agencies.
“But isn’t it insane that we have to do that,” the lawmaker told Robinson. “It’s crazy to me that we are at a place in America where we have government employees and government agencies who are willing to actively give out voter registration forms to noncitizens. And if it’s happening in South Carolina, you’d better believe it’s happening all over especially the swing states.”
It is, via federal executive fiat.
‘Bidenbucks’
Beyond the NVRA, President Joe Biden’s Executive Order 14019 commands federal agencies to do what some legal experts say the executive branch does not have the legal authority to do: expand voter registration and turnout — using White House “approved” third-party organizations connected to Democrats. The sweeping initiative has been billed “Bidenbucks,” since it uses federal dollars. Think of Executive Order 14019 as Zuckbucks on steroids, using your money.
On the swing state front, the Michigan Department of State earlier this year signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the U.S. Small Business Administration “to promote civic engagement and voter registration in Michigan.” The agreement, according to Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson and SBA Administrator Isabel Casillas Guzman, is a “first-of-its-kind collaboration” for the federal agency. It is expected to run through Jan. 1, 2036. Such constitutionally suspect “agreements” between the Biden administration and left-led state executive branches are part of Biden’s unprecedented executive order.
‘Non-issues’ Becoming ‘Major Issues’
The South Carolina State Election Commission (SEC) last week said it had received several questions and concerns about foreign nationals registering to vote in defiance of basic election integrity protections.
“The SEC is actively auditing voter data through the Department of Homeland Security’s Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) Program database to ensure that only U.S. citizens are included on the active list of registered voters. Regardless of the method of registration, no voter may be registered in South Carolina without signing an oath swearing that they are a citizen of the United States,” the agency states on its website. “The auditing process ensures that any bad actors are removed from voter rolls and held accountable through state and federal election law statutes.”
The elections regulator said it has not received any “specific information that non-U.S. citizens are fraudulently being registered to vote” in South Carolina.
“The SEC will not allow fraudulent voter registration to happen on our watch,” said Howie Knapp, executive director of the SEC. “Should we receive or discover information that non-U.S. citizens are being registered to vote in our state, we will immediately report to our law enforcement partners for investigation and prosecution to the fullest extent of the law.”
South Carolina is looking to join a growing list of states passing resolutions for constitutional amendments barring foreign nationals, including illegal immigrants, from voting in local elections.
“Many said this was a non-issue. Then we discovered state agencies sending voter registration forms to non-citizens. These ‘non-issues’ keep turning out to be major issues,” Morgan recently tweeted on his X account.
🚨Constitutional Amendment passes prohibiting non-citizens from voting in elections at any level in SC.
Many said this was a non-issue. Then we discovered state agencies sending voter registration forms to non-citizens.
Matt Kittle is a senior elections correspondent for The Federalist. An award-winning investigative reporter and 30-year veteran of print, broadcast, and online journalism, Kittle previously served as the executive director of Empower Wisconsin.
In remarks regarding the growing unrest on college campuses nationwide last Thursday, President Biden denounced the violent acts associated with many of the demonstrations and the growing wave of antisemitism on college campuses.
But, as the saying goes, talk is cheap. There’s one simple way to give his position teeth: Congress should enact legislation prohibiting the Department of Education from making taxpayers assume or otherwise modifying student loans for any student found responsible by his university or a court of law for acts of antisemitism, trespassing, property damage, intimidation, or violence.
Loan Giveaways Encourage Campus Chaos
Biden might be loath to admit it, but in many ways the campaign for mass student loan forgiveness has helped cause the current campus debacle. This year’s seniors entered college during the 2020 election campaign, meaning that most students currently on campus spent their college career hearing promises that much if not all of their debt would be forgiven.
This leftist movement to make American taxpayers pay off other people’s college debt has further weakened the already-tenuous link between a degree and its earning potential. If they believe the government will ultimately forgive the cost of their education, students have no reason not to major in Grievance Studies, or some similar Marxist-adjacent course of study. Assuming their loan debts will get nationalized also makes students less concerned about potential employers refusing to hire them due to their participation in on-campus riots.
With less incentive for students to choose practical degrees, and officials prioritizing woke nostrums over intellectual rigor, colleges have given up all pretense of ideological balance. As a result, some institutions have become less like universities and more like madrassas, places that inculcate and radicalize youths rather than educate them.
The way Biden has continued to pursue loan forgiveness, despite a rebuke of his unconstitutional plan by the Supreme Court, set an example that demonstrators have replicated. The president may now deprecate the mob’s actions, and call for respect for the rule of law, but when he publicly brags that the nation’s highest court “didn’t stop me” from pursuing his objectives, can anyone blame the would-be jihadis on campus for thinking themselves entitled to take the law into their own hands?
Restore Sanity to Campuses
Congress can and should take a stand, by cutting off the financial spigot for participants in the bedlam. If Biden opposes the chaos on campus so strongly, he should be willing to take a break from buying votes via taxpayer loan payoffs to cut off access for those creating mayhem. And if Democrats on the left like Rep. Ilhan Omar wish to exclude from loan payoffs any participants in Islamophobic or other offensive acts, few Republicans — who oppose Biden’s forgiveness proposals outright — will object.
Some might fear this proposal would encourage already-timid university administrators to take a weaker line against the demonstrators because individuals held responsible could face significant financial repercussions. But in some cases, civil authorities may be able to act irrespective of whether the higher education institutions in question do. More importantly, this measure should deter students as much as university officials, if not more so.
Another potential concern, that Congress prohibiting loan bailouts for a narrow sliver of the population might be viewed as lawmakers permitting Biden’s power grab for other students, doesn’t appear to pass muster, either. The House passed a bill last spring disapproving Biden’s original student loan payoff plan, but the fact that the measure didn’t get enacted into law didn’t stop the Supreme Court from striking the plan down as an unconstitutional power grab.
Finally, this proposal focuses solely on actions, not speech. Like all other Americans, students can and should have the right to protest, and to express their views, however offensive others may find them. But when speech crosses into intimidation, or encampments that create safety and health concerns, let alone breaking into buildings, those actions should bring consequences — in this case, financial ones.
A Practical Solution
Prohibiting student loan payoffs is less expensive and more practical than the other alternative: giving demonstrators a one-way ticket to the Gaza Strip. It would also send a message in clear and uncertain terms about what the American people, through their elected representatives, think of the mayhem that has unfolded in recent weeks.
In the longer term, the recent campus chaos should prompt Congress to consider repealing the student loan program entirely, a reform that would incentivize students and universities to prioritize college affordability, while saving taxpayers at least $300 billion over the coming decade. But at minimum, lawmakers should act now to ensure that hard-working taxpayers are not subsidizing participants in violent demonstrations on campuses nationwide.
There are a hundred different definitions, and indeed an entire PBS series devoted to that question. “Civilization: The West and the Rest with Niall Feruguson” debuted in 2012, and the accomplished historian issued a companion book at the same time and with the same title.
“In ‘Civilization: The West and the Rest,’” the summary of the book relays, “bestselling author Niall Ferguson argues that, beginning in the fifteenth century, the West developed six powerful new concepts that the Rest lacked: competition, science, the rule of law, consumerism, modern medicine, and the work ethic.”
Those characteristics are fine and easily applied to exclude from “The West” tyrannies such as the People’s Republic of China, Russia and Iran and all of their puppet states or proxies. But it does not include the essential ingredient: freedom. “The West” is defined by this essential, must-have feature: Some significant measure of individual liberty. That liberty must include the rule of law and not the rule of despots or oligarchs. There is no rule of law where the law can be easily manipulated or avoided. There cannot be in any member nation of “The West” a secret police that operates without restraint and oversight but solely on the direction of unaccountable despot(s).
The members of “The West” have free elections at regular intervals and guarantee freedom of conscience, speech and almost always movement within their boundaries to their citizens. Constitutions of member states may be written as in the United States, or unwritten as in the United Kingdom.
Nations in “The West” may be large or small, rich or poor, and since the end of World War Two at least, can be found on every continent. Countries can be part of “The West” and then lose that status as has happened to Venezuela, or it can aspire and eventually join or re-join “The West” as has happened with many former members of the now defunct “Warsaw Pact.” Poland is one such country, as are many others surrounding Ukraine. Ukraine aspires to be part of “The West” and is fighting and its people suffering and many thousands dying to keep that dream alive. Japan was a tyranny and an empire but, defeated by the Allies in 1945, it is now among the West’s leaders.
Even as the definition becomes clearer, the first question becomes more and more difficult to answer: “Which nation leads the West?”
Until December 7, 1941, the leader of “The West” was the United Kingdom, standing alone after the defeat of France by Hitler’s Germany in 1940. After Pearl Harbor, the United States was thrust into that role and has remained there without question until this decade. Until very recently in fact.
Now, there are reasons to doubt that leadership, for the United States has failed to fulfill that role since 10/7, slipping again and again into a catastrophic ambiguity about the nature of the alliance of “The West,” and at times throwing into considerable doubt whether we can be relied upon as an ally and as an enemy of tyrants and maniacs. A similar palsy overtook us in the aftermath of our loss of the Vietnam War, during the presidency of Jimmy Carter. President Ronald Reagan cured and restored us. That palsy that marked the late 1970s in the United States has returned.
The U.S. remains by far the wealthiest and strongest nation in the world, but it is at present divided at home and deeply confused about good and evil, friend and enemy. President Biden, already infirm and increasingly incoherent, seems to be headed towards incapacity, but he is, by operation of the Constitution, the commander-in-chief of our supremely strong military. We cannot know what he is like in private and many Americans suspect he is not in full control of the Executive Branch. Certainly, many suspect that some among our allies are concerned about his “leadership.”
President Biden’s infirmity and growing incoherence has indeed caused the whole world to wonder if anyone at all is in charge of the country. Of course, few will say this out loud. America’s power to punish is still robust even if its president isn’t. So, our allies pretend that all is fine, while our enemies plot and plan. But since the collapse in Afghanistan signaled to the world that the United States was run by a band of weak bumblers headed in title if not in fact by a very old man of limited ability, it is hard to argue that the United States is “leading” ’anything at all these days.
If “The West” as understood as the family of nations committed to everything laid out above has any leader at all right now, it seems like Israel is the only candidate qualified to step up into the vacuum left by the U.S. paralyzed by the weakness of its leadership. But Israel is also under siege on the world stage and at war with ruthless enemies, and the United States is of a divided mind about Israel, with the left wing of the Democratic Party apparently afraid that Israel might actually win and destroy the military capabilities of Hamas and perhaps after that Hezbollah.
If the United States cannot proudly stand with Israel on the side of victory by Israel over an evil terrorist puppet of an evil theocracy, then we have to, at least for a season, given up title to leadership of “The West.” Israel is the unlikeliest of all nations to become the most courageous defender of the West’s highest and best traditions, but there it is: Alone and besieged, with weak-kneed allies and an absurd world media elite that has lost any idea of why a free press matters, this nation reborn in 1948 is still very young, but it is very much a nation of warriors and however rancorous its internal politics, it has not lost sight of its purpose.
An American and Israeli flag wave in the breeze on either side of signs that discuss IDF soldiers and people kidnapped by Hamas. (Nikolas Lanum/Fox News Digital)
In his introduction to a book of essays, “The City and Man,” the most significant political theorist of the last century, Leo Strauss, wrote this:
“However much the power of the West may have declined, however great the dangers to the West may be, that decline, that danger, nay, the defeat, even the destruction of the West would not necessarily prove that the West is in a crisis: the West could go down in honor, certain of its purpose. The crisis of the West consists in the West’s having become uncertain of its purpose.”
Israel is not uncertain of its purpose. America or at least its present Executive Branch quite obviously is. If there are any other nominees for the job of leading The West, by all means nominate them, or work to restore America to its former position. Until that happens, every citizen of the West looking for a nation committed to the freedom of its citizens and willing to defend that freedom at the cost of extraordinary losses of life and treasure, will need to study the example of Israel, and be willing to develop the weapons it will need to deter the enemies of freedom who have quite openly organized against “The West.”
Hugh Hewitt is host of “The Hugh Hewitt show,” heard weekday mornings 6am to 9am ET on the Salem Radio Network and simulcast on Salem News Channel. Hugh wakes up America on over 400 affiliates nationwide, and on all the streaming platforms where SNC can be seen. He is a frequent guest on the Fox News Channel’s news roundtable hosted by Brett Baier weekdays at 6pm ET. A son of Ohio and a graduate of Harvard College and the University of Michigan Law School, Hewitt has been a Professor of Law at Chapman University’s Fowler School of Law since 1996 where he teaches Constitutional Law. Hewitt launched his eponymous radio show from Los Angeles in 1990. Hewitt has frequently appeared on every major national news television network, hosted television shows for PBS and MSNBC, written for every major American paper, has authored a dozen books and moderated a score of Republican candidate debates, most recently the November 2023 Republican presidential debate in Miami and four Republican presidential debates in the 2015-16 cycle. Hewitt focuses his radio show and his column on the Constitution, national security, American politics and the Cleveland Browns and Guardians. Hewitt has interviewed tens of thousands of guests from Democrats Hillary Clinton and John Kerry to Republican Presidents George W. Bush and Donald Trump over his 40 years in broadcasting, and this column previews the lead story that will drive his radio/TV show today.
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