Watch this video. Elon Musk, in his first interview with mainstream media since his antisemitic post on X earlier this month, apologized for what he called his “dumbest” ever social media post. During the New York Times DealBook Summit interview with MSNBC’s Aaron Ross Sorkin, Musk said repeatedly he was sorry for publishing a tweet on Nov. 15 that agreed with an anti-Jewish post which claimed Jewish people were stoking hatred against white people. Musk in his post said the user, who referenced the “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory, was speaking “the actual truth.”
In the interview Musk said he had “handed a loaded gun” to both detractors and antisemitic people, describing his post as possibly the worst he had made during a history of messages that included many “foolish” ones. Reuters
But he lashed out at advertisers leaving his platform because of rising antisemitism on X.
“I don’t want them to advertise,” he said. “If someone is going to blackmail me with advertising or money go f**k yourself. Go. F**k. Yourself,” he said. “Is that clear? Hey Bob, if you’re in the audience, that’s how I feel”.
The “Hi Bob” was targeted at Disney CEO Bob Iger who is in the audience and has paused advertising on X.
This image of Elon Musk telling the CEO of Disney to "f*ck himself" is one for the ages: pic.twitter.com/P72EzsPrgP
X users were quick to rush to support Elon. Like Disney’s Star Wars’ Obi Wan Kenobi, he is our only hope for free speech. And when free speech is encouraged mistakes can be made.
Elon Musk is my favorite African American! He just told the all the woke advertisers to go F** Themselves!
Elon Musk is really incompetent at bring antisemitic.
He is sitting here next to prime minister of Israel 🇮🇱, watching Hamas' atrocities, expressing unequivocal support for Israel and calling for annihilation of Hamas.@elonmusk, this is not the way antisemitism is done! 🤡 pic.twitter.com/xN2WsWaS5o
Incidentally, Musk visited with the relatives of captured Israelis after his gaffe and later in this interview showed a symbolic dog-tag given him by the father of an Israeli taken captive by Hamas in Gaza which he has promised to wear until all the hostages were free.
“Our hearts are hostage in Gaza,” reads the metal tag he received from Malki Shem-Tov, the father of hostage Omer Shem-Tov.
A.F. Branco Cartoon – In response to Disney pulling ads on X-Twitter, Elon Musk told them, “Go F*** Yourself. I won’t be blackmailed with money over free speech.” See Video Clips here
The owner of X, Elon Musk, had some choice words for advertisers trying to blackmail him.
Musk, while speaking at the 2023 DealBook Summit in New York, shared, “If somebody’s gonna try to blackmail me with advertising? Blackmail me with money? Go f—yourself.”
Musk continued, “Don’t advertise.”
The founder of Tesla concluded his statement by saying, “Hi, Bob,” which was a shot at the CEO of Disney, Bob Iger.
Disney previously decided to pull ads off X after hit pieces written by Media Matters, CNN, and CNBC falsely painted Musk as antisemitic.
Speaking at the 2023 DealBook Summit in New York on Wednesday, Elon Musk, the owner of social media site X (formerly Twitter), scoffed at advertisers boycotting the platform because of antisemitic posts he amplified there… REED 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.
The FBI interviewed a priest and choir director affiliated with a Catholic church in Richmond as part of an agency probe of “radical-traditional Catholics” as “potential domestic terrorists,” according to a new congressional report out Monday.
The interim staff report from the House Judiciary Committee’s Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government revealed the FBI under President Joe Biden “abused its counterterrorism tools to target Catholic Americans” and “relied on at least one undercover agent to develop its assessment.”
“The FBI even proposed developing sources among the Catholic clergy and church leadership,” House investigators wrote.
The violent rise in antisemitism from supporters of Hamas terrorists’ fight against Israel, meanwhile, has escaped the same “domestic terrorism” treatment that President Joe Biden’s administration applied to traditional Catholics, as well as to parents who protested Covid lockdowns and inappropriate content in their kids’ schools. (A separate interim staff report from the Weaponization Committee in March found the Biden administration had “no legitimate basis” for investigating parents as terrorists.)
The White House was asked in October if the administration that directed counterterrorism resources toward concerned parents at school board meetings would apply the same “domestic terrorist” label to terrorist sympathizers who cheer violence against Jews.
“The people in this country making violent antisemitic threats. Are they domestic terrorists?” inquired Fox News’ Peter Doocy at a White House press briefing.
“I don’t know that we’re classifying people as domestic terrorists for that,” said National Security Council spokesman John Kirby. “I mean, that’s really a question better left to law enforcement. I’m not aware that there’s been such a characterization of that.”
Since the Oct. 7 terrorist attack on Israel that killed upwards of 1,200 civilians, violent and explicitly antisemitic demonstrators showing solidarity with Hamas have terrorized Jewish Americans. In late October, Jewish students at a Manhattan science and art school were compelled to take shelter at a campus library as anti-Israel protesters stormed the building. Demonstrators in Times Square even presented Swastikas at a rally celebrating the massacre of Jews.
Jewish students at Cooper Union College have been locked inside the library for their own safety as a mob of anti Israeli protesters block the doors.
Anyone could easily predict what the FBI protocol would be had recent anti-Israel demonstrations been full of right-wingers waving Confederate flags. The federal intelligence agency kicked into high gear six years ago to prosecute those involved in Charlottesville’s “Unite the Right” rally in 2017, even raiding an organizer’s Discord chats.
After carrying a Confederate flag through the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, a 53-year-old man was sentenced to three years in prison. The presence of a few Confederate banners at the rally that day earned endless headlines in nearly every major publication.
And eight years after the Confederate banner was taken down at the South Carolina state house, the Palestinian flag is now being raised over one town in Massachusetts.
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.
In the aftermath of Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel, there has been an uptick in antisemitic activity on college campuses. Across the country, students, faculty, and administrators have expressed their support for the Islamist slaughter of civilians, participated in pro-genocide marches, and physically accosted Jewish students. Campus antisemitism has gotten so severe — with more than 800 reported incidents as of Nov. 20 — that the Department of Education has opened up a series of investigations.
During the first third of November’s Republican presidential debate, candidates discussed how, if elected, their administrations would handle the ongoing eruption in antisemitism both on and off campus. Each condemned anti-Jewish bigotry, while some — notably former Ambassador Nikki Haley, Gov. Ron DeSantis, and Sen. Tim Scott — offered more nuanced insights as to how they would directly combat the issue. Possible solutions included threatening to freeze federal funding for universities allowing for antisemitism and collaboration with terrorists to go unpunished, deporting foreign students who openly support terrorism, and disbanding student organizations providing material support for Islamic terrorist groups.
All of these would be fantastic solutions. Not a single cent of taxpayer money should be sent to a university that tolerates racial bigotry or allows its membership to collaborate with foreign enemies. No foreign individual hostile to the American nation ought to be granted access to its institutions or resources, let alone allowed entry. And no one should be permitted to provide material support to terrorist organizations, Mohammedan or otherwise.
This is pretty basic stuff.
It appears there is a unified Republican front in opposing campus antisemitism, and this is good. But why can’t Republicans similarly coalesce around the systemic anti-white bigotry that is all too present in higher education?
Since the mid-20th century, leftist academics worked to proliferate and mainstream Marxist theories of social revolution and cultural subversion. Race was often the subject of their studies. In these instances, their goal was to exacerbate already existing resentments while inculcating new ones to overcome sociological and anthropological divides. European Marxists animated the masses by agitating socioeconomic frustrations. In the old world, the social order was rigid and limited economic mobility, but intranational ethnic conflict was generally less of an issue. In the U.S., social mobility was economically achievable while race remained a sore topic into the 20th century, so these academics opted to exploit it, seeing it as their best chance to immanentize the eschaton and bring about revolution.
These leftist ideologues viewed less-affluent black people as an exploitable lumpenproletariat with whom they could form a revolutionary vanguard alongside middle-class liberals. The demographic disparities in social and political outcomes this coalition sought to overturn were said to be the fault of bigoted institutional power differentials. Thus, the coalition pushed for radical change in America’s institutions through protest, subversion, infiltration, and, of course, violence.
Outcomes were not equivalent for people of different races. This was attributed to our no-good-very-bad racist progenitors’ fundamental flaws, so these intellectuals created a framework for revolutionary reconstruction.
It is here we find the genesis of critical race theory, DEI, and cultural Marxism. These ideologies are now thoroughly embedded in every major American institution but have made their home in higher education. For instance, for every 100 tenured faculty members on a college campus, DEI staff hold an average of 3.4 positions.
Universities teach people to think in terms of an “oppressed-oppressor” dialectic. World events and their inherent contradictions and resolutions are increasingly viewed exclusively through this lens. The oppressed are the revolutionary class with whom the intersectional coalition aligns itself, and the oppressors are whichever entity most closely resembles Western civilization and its “colonial” tendencies. In this framework, Western civilization and “colonialism” are further wrongly conflated and used interchangeably with “whiteness” to conveniently lump all the left’s enemies into one category.
In the Israel-Palestine conflict, adherents of this view identify Israel as the oppressor and Jews as its avatar. People opting to justify Hamas’ actions in the name of global revolution subsequently target them.
And this is why Republicans at the national level — and those who seek the highest office in the land — are sounding the alarm. This worldview leads to some pretty dark conclusions. Taken to its natural end, this worldview culminates in people getting killed. Its proponents are explicit about this. They applauded Hamas for slaughtering civilians, and they cheered on the rioters and looters who pillaged the country three summers ago. “Decolonization” is the focus of the intellectual movements justifying both events.
Just look at South Africa where, in August, Julius Malema, leader of the Marxist Economic Freedom Fighters Party, led thousands of his followers in chanting “Kill the Boer” amid skyrocketing Boer-murder rates. The corporate press merely brushed off his rhetoric as anti-colonial sentiment. After all, the Boers are the descendants of Dutch settlers in South Africa. Therefore, a prominent political figure calling for their slaughter, while they’re already being murdered, is simply a sign of the oppressed sticking it to the oppressor. An ethnically European population that had no active participation in the colonial era is nevertheless wrapped up in a dialectical power struggle. Their existence is associated with “whiteness,” which is associated with “colonialism,” which is associated with Western Civilization, so calling for their annihilation is morally justified within this framework.
While campaigning for the Democratic Party’s 1988 presidential nomination, Rev. Jesse Jackson led members of Stanford’s Black Student Union in chanting, “Hey-hey, ho-ho, Western Civ has got to go.” Since then, millions of people — students, faculty, and staff — have been subjected to virulent curricula and trainings where Western civilization is denigrated as an oppressive and parasitic colonial force, “whiteness” is treated as a malevolent sociological scourge, the history that ought to unite us is dishonestly rewritten to incite racial animus, and students who deviate from this toxic identitarianism are disenfranchised while others are encouraged to shame white students for the sin of their birth.
Leftist student organizations routinely engage in this activism by inviting speakers to peddle hateful anti-white rhetoric, and left-wing luminaries like Ibram X. Kendi use campus facilities while raking in tens of millions of dollars for “antiracist” research to try to “solve seemingly intractable problems of racial inequity and injustice.”
Frankly, there are innumerable examples of anti-white racism on college campuses. An exhaustive list would hardly be worth anyone’s time. We all know it exists, is systemic, and is supported with our tax dollars.
To add to this discussion, check out the following posting.
Blind tribal resentment will always exist to some extent; some people will always hate others merely for the crime of existing — that’s an unfortunate aspect of human nature. But the systemic anti-white racism and the outpouring of antisemitism in higher education are largely outgrowths of the same schools of thought.
It is good that Republicans are willing to take action against antisemitism, but that’s only one part of this problem. Bigotry should be condemned across the board, and universities should suffer for their role in it. But if the GOP is truly serious about tackling campus discrimination, it needs to rip it out at the roots and address anti-white racism as well.
Leftists will play semantic games, they’ll disingenuously moan about freedom of speech, but enough is enough. A smattering of red-state governments have shown how to root out “divisive topics” that install this worldview through public school K-12 curricula, but they must follow up at the college level. This can be done by reorganizing universities with trusted, ideologically aligned allies. And should a Republican win the White House in 2024, the president should direct the Department of Education to withhold federal funds from academic institutions that disseminate this worldview.
It may be impossible to eliminate bigotry from the hearts of man, but Republicans have the power to stop it from being rammed down our throats at taxpayer expense.
Samuel Mangold-Lenett is a staff editor at The Federalist. His writing has been featured in the Daily Wire, Townhall, The American Spectator, and other outlets. He is a 2022 Claremont Institute Publius Fellow. Follow him on Twitter @smlenett.
During a 2020 campaign event, then-presidential hopeful Joe Biden was asked by an Iowa man if the former’s son Hunter Biden had ever had “access to the Obama administration.” The future president, who had vowed to bring decorum and decency back to the White House, called the man a “damn liar” and “fat” and told him he was “too old” before insulting his IQ. This act of projection from Biden should have been a warning. It was modus operandi for Joe, whose preternatural dishonesty was impressive even for a politician, to question the mental fitness of those who caught him in a lie. Biden had done much the same to a reporter during his 1987 failed presidential run.
Biden would go on to contend on numerous occasions that he never once even spoke to his son Hunter about the family’s influence-peddling business. Joe claimed never to have “discussed with my son anything having to do with what was going on in Ukraine. That’s a fact.”
As a Chicago ABC affiliate and the AP reported in an October 2019 story — helpfully headlined, “Joe Biden defends himself, son Hunter on Ukraine during Democratic debate following Trump accusations” — the former veep said he “never discussed a single thing with my son about anything having to do with Ukraine. No one has indicated I have. We’ve always kept everything separate.”
Not a single thing.
When the New York Post broke the Hunter Biden laptop story, indicating that Joe had lied, virtually the entire left-wing media regurgitated the claims of former intelligence officials — including known liars like James Clapper and John Brennan — that the story smacked of Russian “disinformation.” The story, allegedly discredited, was then censored by Big Tech and big media companies. Even Joe noted that the “vast majority of the intelligent people have come out and said there’s no basis at all.”
Well, we soon found out there was plenty of basis to the story. Hunter had hosted a dinner in a private room at Café Milano in D.C. with his dad and an executive from Burisma, the company that had enriched the Biden business. And in an email dated the next day, the Ukrainian exec thanked Hunter for the meeting with his dad.
In scores of other emails and texts, Hunter talks about his dad helping him secure payments and taking a cut. One of Hunter’s former business partners contends Joe was involved in the family business, as does Hunter’s former close friend, who testified under oath that Joe was on upwards of 20 calls with business associates.
At this point, there was overwhelming direct evidence that Joe was a willing participant, at the very least, in creating the impression that influence trading was happening and plenty of circumstantial evidence that the elder Biden was getting a 10 percent cut for the troubles.
As evidence of the president’s lies about his family’s influence-peddling business mounted, “fact-checkers” and the media began struggling to calibrate their defenses to correspond with the fresh information. While at first there had been “no evidence” that Biden knew anything — to say differently, was to peddle misinformation — suddenly there was “no evidence” that Biden had personally benefited from Hunter’s scheming (as if enriching your entire family wasn’t personal).
And this is when the partisan defenses of Joe began to see a dramatic decline in quality. One of my favorites was The Washington Post’s Eugene Robinson, who was not alone, arguing: “We know how important family is to the president. So, do you hang up on your son?”
It was probably familial love that induced James Biden to write brother Joe a personal check for $200,000, that — by complete happenstance – was the exact amount James had received from the failed Americore family venture on that very same day. Talk about crazy coincidences.
It was around this time, as well, that White House language began subtly shifting from blanket denials to finely tuned Clintonesque turns of phrase about Joe never being “in business with his son.”
This week, the House Oversight Committee released financial documents illustrating that Hunter signed off on monthly transfers to Joe through Owasco PC, a Biden shell company that pulled at least $5 million from the Chicom energy concerns in 2017 and 2018. The Daily Mail reports there were at least three payments, from September to November 2018, or a few months before Biden announced he was running for president.
Listen, the Biden family operated through at least 20 shell companies — as one does when running a completely above-board legit business venture. It’s not easy to keep up. Or, as Jon Hamm’s character quipped in “The Town,” you need a Venn diagram for these people.
You might recall that in 2020, Biden had claimedHunter never “made money in terms of this thing about — what are you talking about — China.” But Hunter had not only tagged along on an Air Force Two trip to China in 2013, he’d introduced his dad to the Chinese banker he was teaming up with for a private equity fund.
So, I eagerly look forward to fact-checkers, media, and the White House clarifying why this is all just fine. It’s been a wild ride so far, so I bet the explanation is going to be amazing.
A new set of anti-Trump talking points has been cropping up in the corporate press recently, warning of the horrors that will come to pass if Trump wins the election. Most of it is shameless fearmongering, but there’s something else going on too.
Democrats are afraid that if Trump is elected he’ll do to them precisely what they’re currently doing to him. When Trump fearmongers in the media cry out with one voice that Trump will weaponize the Justice Department and the courts, rig our elections, and shred the Constitution, it’s pure projection. Because that’s exactly what they’re doingright now in a desperate bid to prevent Trump from winning office again.
It should go without saying that this suddenly ubiquitous media genre is extremely dangerous. As my colleague Mollie Hemingway aptly put it in response to a hysterical Trump-as-dictator piece by Robert Kagan in The Washington Post, you might as well call it “assassination prep.”
That’s according to their own logic. After all, these people claim the republic itself is at stake and that we’re about to descend into autocracy. Liz Cheney went on NBC News over the weekend to flog her new book and warn in dire tones that in a second Trump term there’ll be “no guardrails that can stop him.” She says if Trump wins, he’ll become a fascist dictator, never leave office, and plunge the United States into tyranny.
She’s not alone in this absurd belief. The prospect of dictator Trump is more or less the entire theme of a new special edition of The Atlantic, ominously titled “If Trump Wins,” for which the magazine’s writers dutifully churned out two dozen essays fantasizing about the hellscape America will become if Trump is ever allowed back into the Oval Office. Nearly every facet of our national life would be left in ruins, they say, and America will be changed forever.
CNN’s Jake Tapper was apparently so scared out of his wits by these essays, he brought some of the writers and editors onto his show to talk about their prognostications of doom for the republic under Trump — including, Tapper said with a straight face, “how women could be targeted” under a Trump “retribution presidency.”
Atlantic Editor-in-Chief Jeffrey Goldberg replied to Tapper that a second-term Trump would be “bent on revenge,” because he “knows how he was thwarted” the first time. Well, yes — but not necessarily in the way Goldberg means it.
Trump was certainly thwarted the first time around — not thwarted in some dictatorial scheme but in the normal exercise of his office. A deeply corrupt media establishment — including the likes of Tapper and Goldberg — worked hand-in-glove with anti-Trump elements in the federal bureaucracy to peddle the Russia-collusion hoax in an unprecedented attempt to oust him from office or, failing that, undermine his presidency. During the 2020 election, many of these same elements succeeded in suppressing the Hunter Biden laptop story. And after Jan. 6, 2021, they have cheered on the blatant weaponization of the justice system unleashed by Biden and the Democrats.
You almost have to admire the audacity of Democrats actively doing to Trump everything they say Trump will do to them if he regains the White House. You can’t get more on-the-nose in this regard than a triple-bylined piece that ran in The New York Times on Monday warning, “Mr. Trump’s vow to use the Justice Department to wreak vengeance against his adversaries is a naked challenge to democratic values. Building on how he tried to get prosecutors to go after his enemies while in office, it would end the post-Watergate norm of investigative independence from White House political control.”
It’s almost like the Times is trolling its readers with this. Surely the reporters and editors behind this laughable piece of agitprop know that this is exactly what the Biden Justice Department and powerful Democrats nationwide are now doing to Trump. The idea that Merrick Garland is some sort of straight-shooting attorney general is a joke. Not one person in America really believes it.
So, what do Democrats and their media courtesans do? They lean into the gaslighting, claiming over and over in the most outlandish terms that a second Trump term will bring about everything that’s happening now under President Biden. Why? Because they’re desperate. They know that owing to the weakness and corruption and unpopularity of the current president, there’s a chance Trump just might win next year. That’s why Democrat attorneys general and federal prosecutors want so desperately to convict him of a crime, any crime, and why editors and writers at the Times and The Atlantic will say almost anything to scare voters with horror stories about what will happen if Trump wins.
They also crave power. For people like Cheney and Kagan and Goldberg and every other establishment player, Trump’s great crime wasn’t anything he did or said on Jan. 6, it was that he won the election in November 2016. That wasn’t supposed to happen. Democrats and the permanent regime in Washington were supposed to remain in power forever. Trump had the audacity to win, and they can’t let it happen again.
In that effort, they’re willing to do and say almost anything. Throughout Trump’s stint in office, Democrats, establishment Republicans like Cheney, and nearly every major media outlet worked overtime to trample norms, bend the rules, break various laws, and undermine a duly elected president simply because they were incensed that they weren’t in power.
Remember that when they say what Trump will do in a second term. They’re doing it right now.
John Daniel Davidson is a senior editor at The Federalist. His writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the Claremont Review of Books, The New York Post, and elsewhere. He is the author of the forthcoming book, Pagan America: the Decline of Christianity and the Dark Age to Come, to be published in March 2024. Follow him on Twitter, @johnddavidson.
By Chris PandolfoFox News | Published December 5, 2023 11:01am EST | Updated December 5, 2023 12:32pm EST
FBI Director Christopher Wray testified Tuesday that the terror threat facing the United States has reached unprecedented levels since the Oct. 7 attack on Israel. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., asked Wray to describe the current “threat matrix” facing the United States at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing.
“What I would say that is unique about the environment that we’re in right now in my career is that while there may have been times over the years where individual threats could have been higher here or there than where they may be right now, I’ve never seen a time where all the threats or so many of the threats are all elevated, all at exactly the same time,” the FBI director replied.
“So, blinking red lights analogy about 9/11 — all the lights were blinking red before 9/11, apparently,” Graham continued. “Obviously, all of us missed it. Would you say there’s multiple blinking red lights out there?” he asked.
Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Christopher Wray testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee in the Hart Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill on December 05, 2023 in Washington, DC. Wray used the oversight hearing to call for a renewal the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act’s Section 702 authorities, which allow the FBI and other intelligence agencies to spy on foreigners. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
“I see blinking red lights everywhere,” Wray answered.
He later told Graham that since the Oct. 7 massacre in Israel, when Hamas terrorists brutally murdered at least 1,200 Israelis, a “veritable rogue’s gallery of foreign terrorists” has called for attacks against the U.S.
“The threat level has gone to a whole nother level since Oct. 7,” Wray emphasized.
U.S. Navy destroyer USS Carney. The Pentagon has confirmed 74 attacks by Iranian-backed proxy groups on U.S. troops stationed in the Middle East in Iraq and Syria since Oct. 17. (U.S. Navy via Associated Press/File)
The director’s comments on Tuesday echo what he said in October, when he warned Senate lawmakers, “The actions of Hamas and its allies will serve as an inspiration the likes of which we haven’t seen since ISIS launched its so-called caliphate several years ago.
Attorney General Merrick Garland said in October that reported threats against Jewish, Muslim and Arab communities in the United States spiked in the days and weeks after the start of the Israel-Hamas war.
The number of attacks on U.S. military bases overseas by Iran-backed proxy groups rose in November as well, with the Pentagon confirming at least 74 attacks on U.S. troops stationed in the Middle East since Oct. 17.
The 74 attacks on U.S. troops have taken place in Iraq and Syria and began on Oct. 17 by Iraqi militia groups. The attacks are reportedly linked to the U.S.’s support for Israel in its retaliation against the Palestinian militant group Hamas, following its attack on Oct. 7.
The attacks do not include ballistic missiles being shot in the direction of U.S. military vessels, which commanding officers on those ships have ordered to be shot down.
At home, the FBI and Las Vegas police this week foiled an alleged “lone wolf” terror plot by a teenager who pledged support to ISIS.
On Friday, a 16-year-old suspect was arrested, and federal agents found components to build an explosive device and terrorist propaganda, officials said. The arrest was made after the suspect allegedly made special media posts announcing his plan for “lone wolf operations in Las Vegas against the enemies of Allah.”
Fox News Digital’s Greg Wehner, Liz Friden and Chris Eberhart contributed to this report.
Chris Pandolfo is a writer for Fox News Digital. Send tips to chris.pandolfo@fox.com and follow him on Twitter @ChrisCPandolfo. j
Ignited by Hamas’ terrorist attack against Israel, divisive domestic conversations about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict have driven a new wave of campus censorship. But the problem of stifled speech on campus for both students and faculty has been around long before Oct. 7.
According to a forthcoming survey developed by our organization, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, about 1 in 10 college students say they have been threatened with disciplinary action – or worse, actually disciplined – for their speech.
Our 2022 survey of college faculty yields similarly depressing results. About one in six professors report that they have either been threatened with punishment or actually investigated for their academic freedom or free speech.
Students demonstrate in support of Palestinians and for free speech outside of the Columbia University campus on Nov. 15, 2023, in New York City. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
The common, but rarely discussed, thread linking this oppressive atmosphere on campus is college and university administrations. And as long as censorial administrators have disproportionate power over higher education, this problem will continue.
In the student survey, which was conducted by College Pulse between Sept. 5 and Oct. 20, students answered questions about their experiences with speech and the disciplinary process. Three percent said they had been punished for their speech, and 6% said they had been threatened with punishment.
Consider the scope of that number extended out to the larger student population. Given the total undergraduate population of the country, that’s well over a million students being threatened (or worse) by campus bureaucrats for their speech. It means a student is roughly as likely to face disciplinary censorship as they are likely to be left-handed.
And what kind of speech can get you investigated according to the study? For a New York University student, it was participation in a pro-Palestinian group. For a University of Pennsylvania student, it was expressing the opinion that the U.S. was right to have invaded Iraq. And for a Drake University student, it was simply being overheard by fellow students telling a professor about her mental health.
The survey also revealed that students should watch what they say in their most private of spaces. Of those who were threatened or disciplined, a quarter faced punishment for speech in their dorm room. That disturbing focus on living spaces isn’t unusual. For all of FIRE’s 24-year existence, “residential life” administrators who run the dorms have been major enforcers of university speech codes.
While the situation is clearly very bad for students, for professors it’s even worse. Given that faculty political diversity has never been lower, with some departments having left-leaning supermajorities and others having no conservative faculty at all, one would think that professors would not be targeted as often. And one would be wrong.
Since 2014, as Lukianoff and Rikki Schlott explain in their new book “The Canceling of the American Mind,” we know of over 1,000 attempts to get professors sanctioned for their speech or research.
About two-thirds of those attempts were successful, resulting in some form of punishment and almost 200 fired professors. This number dwarfs any period in U.S. higher education history since the early 1970s, when the Supreme Court cemented freedom of speech as a right on college campuses and academic freedom as a special concern within that right.
Facing a cancel culture that targets both students and faculty, how did administrators respond? With transparent political litmus tests that enable and encourage the purge.
More than half of the large universities in the country require “diversity, equity, and inclusion” statements, which are often vague and nebulously defined political litmus tests pressuring professors to adhere to the dominant ideology on campus. Wherever they appear, from student admission to faculty post-tenure review, these requirements reinforce the ideological status quo, suppress viewpoint diversity, and increase the risk that what passes for curriculum today will be dogma tomorrow.
One place those litmus tests appear is in the hiring of more administrators, and make no mistake: At most schools, administrators, not faculty, decide what happens, when it happens, and how much to spend in doing it.
Yale has a one-to-one ratio of administrators to students, with Harvard not far behind. At the U.S. News & World Report’s top 50 schools in the country, there are three times as many administrators and non-instructional staff as there are faculty, according to a recent report from the Progressive Policy Institute.
Once again, one might well think that hiring would slow down, giving the looming “enrollment cliff” – the demographic shift where the college-age population shrinks due to lower birth rates. But that’s never stopped colleges before. From 2015 to 2018, when enrollment and instructional employees declined, administrative staff grew over 6%. The surge in non-teaching positions is one of the primary reasons why the cost of educating a single student has gone up so dramatically over the past several decades.
Making matters worse, many of the new administrators consider policing the speech of students and faculty part of their job. Indeed, DEI administrators have been involved in some of the highest-profile cancellations, including federal Judge Kyle Duncan at Stanford this year, Harvard professor Carole Hooven last year, and University of Central Florida professor Charles Negy in 2021.
And if administrators are part of the Bias Related Incident team at a particular college, part of their job is to police speech on campus, often investigating anonymous reports of students or professors engaging in allegedly offensive speech. A study released this year by North Dakota State University found that nearly two-thirds of students favored reporting professors who engaged in “offensive speech,” made up of statements of opinion – or even fact – the students didn’t like.
The situation for free speech on campus has gone from bad to grim over the last decade. It will be no easy task to fix it. But one of the first steps to both a freer and less expensive college experience is to dramatically decrease the campus bureaucracy, eliminate positions that exist to police speech, and make sure every university employee is informed that their job is to protect free speech and academic freedom, not to squelch it.
BBC/Nik Millard “We see women of all ages… We see the bruises, we learn about the cuts and tears, and we know they have been sexually abused,” Captain Maayan told the BBC
The BBC has seen and heard evidence of rape, sexual violence and mutilation of women during the 7 October Hamas attacks.
WARNING: CONTAINS EXTREMELY GRAPHIC DESCRIPTIONS OF SEXUAL VIOLENCE AND RAPE
Several people involved in collecting and identifying the bodies of those killed in the attack told us they had seen multiple signs of sexual assault, including broken pelvises, bruises, cuts and tears, and that the victims ranged from children and teenagers to pensioners.
Video testimony of an eyewitness at the Nova music festival, shown to journalists by Israeli police, detailed the gang rape, mutilation and execution of one victim.
Videos of naked and bloodied women filmed by Hamas on the day of the attack, and photographs of bodies taken at the sites afterwards, suggest that women were sexually targeted by their attackers.
Few victims are thought to have survived to tell their own stories.
Their last moments are being pieced together from survivors, body-collectors, morgue staff and footage from the attack sites.
Police have privately shown journalists a single horrific testimony that they filmed of a woman who was at the Nova festival site during the attack.
She describes seeing Hamas fighters gang rape a woman and mutilate her, before the last of her attackers shot her in the head as he continued to rape her.
BBC/Nik Millard Hamas fighters stormed the Nova festival on 7 October and killed hundreds
In the video, the woman known as Witness S mimes the attackers picking up and passing the victim from one to another.
“She was alive,” the witness says. “She was bleeding from her back.”
She goes on to detail how the men cut off parts of the victim’s body during the assault.
“They sliced her breast and threw it on the street,” she says. “They were playing with it.”
The victim was passed to another man in uniform, she continues.
“He penetrated her, and shot her in the head before he finished. He didn’t even pick up his pants; he shoots and ejaculates.”
One man we spoke to from the festival site said he heard the “noises and screams of people being murdered, raped, decapitated”.
To our question about how he could be sure – without seeing it – that the screams he heard indicated sexual assault rather than other kinds of violence, he said he believed while listening at the time that it could only have been rape.
A statement he made through a support organisation describes it as “inhuman”.
“Some women were raped before they were dead, some raped while injured, and some were already dead when the terrorists raped their lifeless bodies,” his statement says. “I desperately wanted to help, but there was nothing I could do.”
BBC/Dave Bull Israelis are still grappling with the Hamas attack in October
Police say they have “multiple” eye-witness accounts of sexual assault, but wouldn’t give any more clarification on how many. When we spoke to them, they hadn’t yet interviewed any surviving victims.
Israel’s Women’s Empowerment Minister, May Golan, told the BBC that a few victims of rape or sexual assault had survived the attacks, and that they were all currently receiving psychiatric treatment.
“But very, very few. The majority were brutally murdered,” she said. “They aren’t able to talk – not with me, and not to anyone from the government [or] from the media.”
Videos filmed by Hamas include footage of one woman, handcuffed and taken hostage with cuts to her arms and a large patch of blood staining the seat of her trousers.
In others, women carried away by the fighters appear to be naked or semi-clothed.
Multiple photographs from the sites after the attack show the bodies of women naked from the waist down, or with their underwear ripped to one side, legs splayed, with signs of trauma to their genitals and legs.
“It really feels like Hamas learned how to weaponise women’s bodies from ISIS [the Islamic State group] in Iraq, from cases in Bosnia,” said Dr Cochav Elkayam-Levy, a legal expert at the Davis Institute of International Relations at Hebrew University.
“It brings me chills just to know the details that they knew about what to do to women: cut their organs, mutilate their genitals, rape. It’s horrifying to know this.”
BBC/Dave Bull” It really feels like Hamas learned how to weaponize women’s bodies from ISIS in Iraq, from cases in Bosnia,” said Cochav Elkayam-Levy
“I spoke with at least three girls who are now hospitalised for a very hard psychiatric situation because of the rapes they watched,” Minister May Golan told me. “They pretended to be dead and they watched it, and heard everything. And they can’t deal with it.”
Israel’s police chief Yaacov Shabtai said that many survivors of the attacks were finding it difficult to talk and that he thought some of them would never testify about what they saw or experienced.
“18 young men and women have been hospitalised in mental health hospitals because they could no longer function,” he said.
Others are reportedly suicidal. One of those working with the teams around survivors told the BBC that some had already killed themselves.
Much of the evidence has come from the volunteer body-collectors deployed after the attacks, and those who handled the bodies once they arrived at the Shura army base for identification.
One of the body-collectors volunteering with the religious organisation Zaka described to me signs of torture and mutilation which included, he said, a pregnant woman whose womb had been ripped open before she was killed, and her foetus stabbed while it was inside her.
The BBC has not been able to independently verify this account, and Israeli media reports have questioned some testimony from volunteers working in the traumatic aftermath of the Hamas attacks.
Another, Nachman Dyksztejna, provided written testimony of seeing the bodies of two women in kibbutz Be’eri with their hands and legs tied to a bed.
“One was sexually terrorised with a knife stuck in her vagina and all her internal organs removed,” his statement says.
At the festival site, he says small shelters were “filled with piles of women. Their clothing was torn on the upper part, but their bottoms were completely naked. Piles and piles of women. […] When you took a closer look at their heads, you saw a single shot straight to the brain of each.”
Hundreds of bodies were collected from the attack sites by volunteers.
BBC/Dave Bull May Golan: “For the first five days, we still had terrorists on the ground in Israel. And there were hundreds, hundreds of bodies everywhere.”
Investigators admit that in those first chaotic days after the attacks, with some areas still active combat zones, opportunities to carefully document the crime scenes, or take forensic evidence, were limited or missed.
“For the first five days, we still had terrorists on the ground in Israel,” May Golan said. “And there were hundreds, hundreds of bodies everywhere. They were burned, they were without organs, they were butchered completely.”
“This was a mass casualty event,” police spokesman Dean Elsdunne told journalists at a briefing.
“The first thing was to work on identifying the victims, not necessarily on crime scene investigation. People were waiting to hear what happened to their loved ones.”
It was staff at the army’s Shura base, where bodies arrived for identification, who have provided investigators with some of the most crucial evidence.
This evidence emerged from a makeshift hub of tents and refrigerated shipping containers set up at the base to identify the bodies.
When we visited, hospital trolleys, their iron skeletons topped with khaki stretchers, stood neatly lined up in front of the containers that housed the dead; the white plastic overalls of those on shift translucent under the floodlights.
Fighter jets roared overhead, drowning out the cicadas, as Israel’s bombardment of Gaza continued.
Teams here told us they’d seen clear evidence of rape and sexual violence on the bodies coming in, including broken pelvises from sustained violent abuse.
“We see women of all ages,” one of the reservists on the forensic team, Captain Maayan, told the BBC. “We see rape victims. We see women who have been through violation. We have pathologists and we see the bruises, we learn about the cuts and tears, and we know they have been sexually abused.”
I ask her what proportion of the bodies she’s handled show signs of this.
“Abundant,” she said. “Abundant amount of women and girls of all ages.”
BBC/Dave Bull Debris litters the ground at the Nova festival site
The number of victims is hard to define, partly because of the state of the bodies.
“It’s definitely multiple,” said another serving soldier who asked us to use only her first name, Avigayil. “It’s hard to tell. I’ve dealt with more than a few burned bodies and I have no idea what they went through beforehand. And bodies that are missing the bottom half – I also don’t know if they were raped. But women that were clearly raped? There are enough. More than enough.”
“Sometimes we are left only with a very small part of the body,” Dr Elkayam-Levy tells me. “Maybe it’s a finger, a foot or a hand that they’re trying to identify. People were burned to ashes. Nothing was left. […] I want to say that we’ll never know how many cases there were.”
Privately some of those working on this talk in terms of “dozens” of victims but quickly caution that evidence is still being gathered and pieced together.
The civil commission headed by Dr Elkayam-Levy, to collect testimony on sexual crimes, is calling for international recognition that what happened on 7 October was systematic abuse, constituting Crimes Against Humanity.
“We see definite patterns,” she told me. “So it wasn’t incidental, it wasn’t random. They came with a clear order. It was […] rape as genocide.”
Avigayil agrees there were similarities in the violence visited on the bodies that arrived at the Shura base.
“There are patterns in that groups of women from the same place were treated in a similar manner,” she said.
“There might be a set of women who were raped in one way, and we’re seeing similarities in the bodies; and then a different set that were not raped but shot multiple times in the exact same pattern. So it seems that different groups of terrorists had different forms of cruelty.”
“This was a premeditative, systematic event,” police chief Yaacov Shabtai told journalists.
BBC/Dave Bull” Israel on 7 October is not the same country that woke up the following morning”: police chief Yaacov Shabtai
David Katz from Israel’s cyber crime unit which is involved in the investigation, told journalists that it was too early to prove that sexual violence was planned as part of the attack, but that data extracted from the phones of the Hamas attackers suggested that “everything was systematic”.
“It would be reckless to say we can already prove it […] but everything that was one there was done systematically,” he said. “Nothing happened by coincidence. Rape was systematic.”
Israel’s government points to documents it says were found on Hamas fighters that appear to support the idea that sexual violence was planned. It’s released clips of interrogations with some captured fighters in which they appear to say that women were targeted for this purpose.
Last week, UN Women put out a statement saying it “unequivocally condemn[ed] the brutal attacks by Hamas” and was “alarmed by the numerous accounts of gender-based atrocities and sexual violence during those attacks”.
Dr Elkayam-Levy said before the statement that international women’s rights organisations had taken far too long to respond to her call for support.
“This is the most documented atrocity humanity has known,” she told me.
“Israel on 7 October is not the same country that woke up the following morning,” said police chief Yaacov Shabtai.
Amid the horror of what happened to women here, Captain Maayan from the Shura identification unit says the hardest moments are when she sees “the mascara on their eyelashes, or the earrings they put on that morning”.
Israel is considering a plan to pump seawater into Hamas’ tunnel system underneath the Gaza Strip, The Wall Street Journal reported on Monday, citing U.S. officials. The Israel Defense Forces has assembled five large seawater pumps capable of transferring thousands of cubic meters of water per hour from the Mediterranean Sea into the tunnels, according to the report. Work was reportedly completed on the pumps around the middle of November. They are located roughly one mile north of the Al-Shati Camp along northern Gaza’s coastline.
Israel first informed the Biden administration of the plans in early November, the officials said, with discussions on the effectiveness of such an operation and the potential environmental impact, including on the Strip’s water supply. The officials said the reaction in Washington was mixed, with some supporting it and others privately expressing concerns, although “there wasn’t necessarily any U.S. opposition to the plan.”U.S. officials said that they didn’t know how close Israel was to carrying out the plans, with a final decision on whether to proceed still pending.
Israel has discovered around 800 tunnels so far during the Gaza ground operation that began on Oct. 27, with 500 of them destroyed or sealed. The IDF has also destroyed hundreds of miles of tunnels in addition to the shafts.
Hamas kidnapped over 200 people during the Oct. 7 massacre, with 137 still being held hostage.
A source familiar with the plan said that a flooding process over weeks would allow for Hamas terrorists and potentially hostages to move out.
“We are not sure how successful pumping will be since nobody knows the details of the tunnels and the ground around them,” the source said. “It’s impossible to know if that will be effective because we don’t know how seawater will drain in tunnels no one has been in before.”
The WSJ reached out to an IDF official, who declined to comment on the report, saying only that “The IDF is operating to dismantle Hamas’ terror capabilities in various ways, using different military and technological tools. “Republished with permission from Jewish News Syndicate.
Sen Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., on Tuesday said he no longer will block military promotions three-stars and below. Tuberville since February has refused to allow the Senate confirmations of hundreds of U.S. military service members to protest the Defense Department’s abortion policy. He said he would continue to block four-star general nominees, multiple media outlets reported.
Tuberville told Politico that he had “no control over anybody else putting a hold on somebody. But for myself, they are released as we speak.”
“We fought hard,” Tuberville said, the Washington Examiner reported. “We did the right thing for the unborn and for our military, fighting back against executive overreach and an abortion policy.”
The senator had been pressured for months to end his hold, and even frustrated some Republican colleagues.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., threatened to force a vote on a resolution that would allow military nominations to be confirmed en masse, but it wasn’t clear whether he had the votes to pass it, NBC News reported. Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., told reporters Tuesday morning that he “hopeful” Tuberville would end his hold on military promotions.
“I was involved in a lot of conversations over the weekend on this subject, and I think that I’m hopeful,” Thune told reporters, NBC News reported. “I’m hopeful that today, we’re going to–keep your fingers crossed, we’ll see, I hope we have a breakthrough but time will tell.”
The Examiner reported that Tuberville’s office had announced a hastily called press conference for Tuesday afternoon. However, the presser was canceled because Tuberville wanted to tell his GOP colleagues in person over lunch before a public announcement. Earlier in the day, Tea Party Patriots Action Chair Jenny Beth Martin released a statement in support of Tuberville.
“Sen. Tuberville deserves our full support, full stop,” Martin wrote. “If his Senate Republican colleagues go behind his back and make a deal with Democrats, they will be making a fateful error.”
FBI Director Chris Wray admitted Tuesday that he has not fired anyone over the anti-Catholic memo. Pictured: Wray testifies during the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee hearing on Nov. 17, 2022. (Photo: Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc/Getty Images)
FBI Director Chris Wray admitted to Sen. Josh Hawley that he has not fired anyone at the FBI’s Richmond office over the memo urging the FBI to investigate “radical traditional Catholics.”
“You haven’t fired anybody,” Hawley, a Missouri Republican, said to Wray in a Senate hearing Tuesday.
He pressed Wray on the FBI Richmond office’s Jan. 23 memo citing the Southern Poverty Law Center in urging an investigation of “radical, traditional Catholic hate groups.” After a whistleblower published it in February, the FBI rescinded that memo, saying it did not reach the bureau’s standards. Hawley cited a report that the House Judiciary Committee and the House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government released on the Catholic memo Monday.
“In fact, what the House found is what is it, you admonished them,” Hawley said. Mockingly, he added, “Oh I feel much better. They’ve been sent to bed without food.”
“Good heavens, director! This is one of the most outrageous targetings,” the senator added. “You have mobilized your division, the most powerful law enforcement division in the world, against traditionalist Catholics—whatever the heck that means—and you have just told us you have not fired a single person.”
He went on to cite the House report, which found that key staff at the Richmond office did not see a problem with the report.
“What are you going to do about this? Are you going to fire these people or not?” the senator pressed.
“Those individuals have all been admonished and it is all going into their… annual performance reviews, which has direct impact on their compensation, among other things,” Wray responded.
BREAKING: @HawleyMO slams Wray: "This is one of the most outrageous targetings. You have mobilized your division against traditionalist Catholics—whatever the heck that means—and you have just told us you have not fired a single person" responsible. pic.twitter.com/JA1PPrpscv
The FBI memo urged agents to probe the supposed nexus between “racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists” and “radical-traditional Catholics,” citing the Southern Poverty Law Center and including a list of SPLC-designated “hate groups” for agents to target.
The FBI told The Daily Signal that it was rescinding the memo after FBI whistleblower Kyle Seraphin published it on UncoverDC.com on Feb. 8. The national FBI office claimed that the memo “does not meet the exacting standards of the FBI” and promised to remove the document from its systems and “conduct a review of the basis for the document,” but it refused to answer further questions about the move.
As I explain in my book “Making Hate Pay: The Corruption of the Southern Poverty Law Center,” the SPLC took the program it has used to bankrupt organizations associated with the Ku Klux Klan and weaponized it against conservative groups, partially to scare donors into ponying up cash and partially to silence ideological opponents. The SPLC places conservative groups on a “hate map” with KKK chapters.
After the SPLC fired its co-founder amid a racial discrimination and sexual harassment scandal in 2019, a former staffer claimed that the SPLC’s accusations of “hate” are a “cynical fundraising scam” aimed at “bilking northern liberals.” Critics across the political spectrum have voiced opposition and alarm at the organization’s hate group smears. A terrorist even targeted an SPLC-designated “hate group” in Washington, D.C., in 2012, and he told the FBI he used the “hate map” to find his target. The SPLC condemned that act of terror, but kept the target on the list and the map.
The SPLC has also suggested that the Catholic Church itself holds a position on human sexuality that would qualify it as a “hate group.”
China has used everything from warships and cutters to fishing boats to harass and intimidate the Philippines and other regional actors. Pictured: The Philippines’ coast guard takes part in a maritime exercise June 6 with the U.S. and Japan in waters facing the South China Sea. (Photo: Jes Aznar/Getty Images)
James Di Pane is a policy analyst focusing on defense policy in the Davis Institute for National Security and Foreign Policy at The Heritage Foundation.
Erin Leone is a member of the Young Leaders Program at The Heritage Foundation.
Chinese leader Xi Jinpinglast week told the communist regime’s coast guard simply to enforce maritime law, but we all know what that really means—and it has nothing to do with upholding the rule of law on the high seas.
Chinese vessels collided last month with a Philippine resupply boat and a Philippine coast guard ship within the span of a few hours. These confrontations were the latest of many between the two countries over competing territorial claims to a submerged reef called the Second Thomas Shoal, a military outpost in the Spratly Islands some 120 miles from the Philippines.
This situation underscores the need for America to adopt a robust response in the region and defend its treaty allies from Chinese bullying—before the situation escalates into the next major international conflict.
The Second Thomas Shoal is the site of a critical yet unorthodox Philippine military outpost in the form of a World War II warship run aground on the Spratly Islands, equipped with relatively few marines. The ship’s presence maintains Philippine sovereignty over the shoal, but the vessel remains a liability; its dilapidated state requires frequent resupply missions. In fact, international scrutiny has grown with the belief that the grounded ship may fall off the reef and sink, allowing China to seize the shoal.
Philippine resupply missions are fodder for increasingly aggressive Chinese vessels that attempt to isolate the post, including the two collisions last month.
It’s not new that Chinese ships operate within the Second Thomas Shoal, the Spratly Islands, and the Philippine Exclusive Economic Zone. China increasingly has used its “maritime militia” to conduct illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing as well as coercive activities against others who claim the South China Sea.
To date, China has used everything from warships and cutters to fishing boats to harass and intimidate the Philippines and other regional actors.
In October, for example, a Chinese naval vessel followed and attempted to cross in front of a Philippine resupply ship near the Spratly Islands.
In September, the Philippines accused China’s maritime militia of damaging coral reefs in the Spratly Islands.
In August, a Philippine military supply boat en route to the shoal reportedly was blocked by Chinese coast guard vessels using water cannons.
In July, the Philippines noted almost 50 Chinese fishing ships “swarming” around a reef in the Philippines’ Exclusive Economic Zone.
And in April, a Chinese coast guard ship came alarmingly close to colliding with a Philippine patrol vessel heading toward Second Thomas Shoal.
China’s escalation from using fishing boats to deploying naval and coast guard ships and increasing the frequency of these dangerous encounters is a clear warning signal that Xi is taking off the gloves. Now that China has succeeded in physically preventing supplies from reaching the shoal, what will its next moves be?
Although the Second Thomas Shoal is over 8,000 miles from the U.S. mainland, China’s belligerent actions there have major implications for America. The Philippines, with a shared wartime experience, is a longstanding treaty ally with which we have enjoyed strong relations for over 75 years.
During Oct. 22 discussions, Manila and Washington explored the possibility of conducting joint maritime patrols in the South China Sea. The U.S. government has reiterated that any action against Philippine territory in the South China Sea, including islands and shoals claimed by China, would be covered by the U.S.-Philippines mutual defense treaty. Consistent with this, the U.S. could consider joint resupply missions and engage in a persistent, robust naval presence surrounding the shoal.
A lacking response to China’s prior provocations enabled and empowered Xi to pursue the escalations seen today. China’s illegal fishing and maritime bullying activities in neighbors’ waters are a litmus test to gauge the willingness of the United States and the international community to uphold and enforce maritime law. America must do a better job of matching Chinese aggression with steadfast deterrence while highlighting China’s blatant violations of international law.
As The Heritage Foundation has pointed out, the U.S. is in a new Cold War with China. The U.S. should help the Philippines develop better airlift capabilities for resupplying and also shadow Philippine ships to deter China from interfering during resupply missions.
What’s happening at the Second Thomas Shoal is a harbinger of events to come if the U.S. permits this multipronged Chinese pressure campaign to destabilize Indo-Pacific security and international law to go unchecked.
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Hell hath no fury like a leftist woman’s scorn if you’re Donald Trump, but Hamas raping and murdering innocent Israeli women on October 7th, 2023? No outrage and lame justifications.
In the current Through-the-Looking-Glass world, absurdity has become the norm. Israel has been accused of the unspeakable crimes of . . . protecting LGBTQ rights (you can’t do that – that’s #pinkwashing!), substantial participation by Arab citizens in all walks of civil life (you can’t do that – that’s #democracy), and protecting the environment by being a leader in environmental sustainability (you can’t do that – that’s #greenwashing!), all to cover up its alleged crimes perpetrated against the Palestinians.
The absurdity has reached peak levels since October 7 with the timely re-emergence of the Queers for Palestine bloc, marching alongside Hamas supporters who justify terrorist atrocities as a response to the “occupation.” Putting aside the fact that Gaza has been Judenfrei with Israel’s withdrawal in 2005, the lack of self-awareness is staggering.
It is, of course, a well-known fact that Arab countries, and the Hamas-run Gaza Strip in particular, are Edenic paradises to LGBTQ-identifying individuals and other minorities…
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.
Nayab Gill and her family | Global Christian Relief
Nayab Gill was just 13 years old when she was taken from her home in Gujranwala, Pakistan, by her Muslim employer. She was forced to convert to Islam and made to marry her abductor at gunpoint, a fate faced by dozens of minor Christian girls in Pakistan each year. Two years after her kidnapping, Nayab made a daring escape and is now sharing her story.
On May 20, 2021, Nayab Gill’s employer, Saddam Hayat, a 30-year-old married father of four children, reportedly arrived at her home to “take her to work” in his vehicle.
“Saddam was a frequent visitor to our house,” said Nayab. “He owned some shops in our area, one of which was rented by my father. Saddam promised to pay me a salary of 10,000 Pakistani Rupees ($34) and said the money would help my poor family to supplement its income. My father reluctantly agreed to his proposal because Saddam told him that I was like his own daughter.”
Nayab recalls that Saddam at least twice tried to make advances on her at work, compelling her to keep a safe distance.
“I was afraid that if I told my family about Saddam’s advances, my father would stop me from going to work, and my family would lose the money that we needed so desperately,” she said.
On the day of the kidnapping, instead of taking her to the salon where she worked selling facial products, Saddam took her to a deserted house, where he forced her to renounce her Christian faith and sign a blank paper. Nayab says that soon after being held hostage, Saddam threatened her at gunpoint that if she did not succumb to his will, he would kill her and her father.
“I screamed and cried, but no one heard me. After getting the paper forcibly signed, Saddam locked me up in a room and left,” she said. “I was kept there for two days, during which I was given food only once in 24 hours.”
“On the third day, Saddam came and told me that my father had registered a case of abduction against him. He told me that I would be presented before a judge, and if I did not testify that I had converted to Islam and married him of my free will, my family and I would be killed on the court’s premises.”
Nayab recorded a statement in court in her abductor’s favor. He was given custody of Nayab as his lawful wife in front of her helpless parents, who shed tears for their young daughter.
Nayab’s ordeal worsened after the court gave custody to her abductor.
“Saddam then took me to his own house and locked me up in a room on the second floor,” she said. “During my two-year captivity, he repeatedly assaulted me against my will and treated me like a slave. But I did not lose hope and my faith in Christ!”
“I prayed every night, saying, ‘God, please help me.’ I would also pray for my family’s safety. They refused to give up and kept moving through the court system for my recovery. But I was too scared to reveal the truth. Each time I was summoned in court, I would say that I was an adult and had married Saddam with my free will.”
“Saddam’s family treated me like an outcast. They often humiliated me for being born to a Christian family. There were times when I thought I should end my life, but I think it was my faith in God that gave me the strength to face that situation.”
In April 2023, Nayab found a chance to escape.
“It was the last week of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan when Saddam’s former wife registered a case against him for threatening her,” she said. “Fearing arrest, Saddam and his brothers fled the house, but in the rush of things, they forgot to lock me up.
“It seemed God had answered my prayers for freedom. I discreetly left the house and started running, not even knowing where the road would lead me.”
“I stopped at a market to catch my breath when a Muslim woman approached me. She must have sensed that something was not right. She asked me if I needed help. I told her that I did not have any money or a phone to contact my father. She took me to her house, where I was able to get in touch with my family.”
Nayab was soon reunited with her parents.
“I don’t have words to express the joy I felt when I saw my father,” she said. “Tears rolled down our eyes as he hugged me and kissed my forehead, promising to keep me safe forever.”
Nayab’s father filed a second petition with the Supreme Court in July 2021 after the High Court rejected his first petition and sent the girl with her abductor. The Supreme Court set a hearing for the newest petition a full two years in the future, dampening the family’s hopes of recovering their child. Once the court finally heard the case in September 2023, it dismissed the petition as being “infructuous,” or pointless, because the girl had been reunited with her family.
The Supreme Court’s decision has left the door open for more sexual exploitation of underage Christian girls in Pakistan in the guise of religious conversion.
“I was expecting that the Supreme Court would hear my story, but it seems it wasn’t interested. I now want to resume my education and make friends. I don’t have friends anymore. I even asked my mother to let me cut my hair because I want to be like a boy. It’s not safe to be a girl in Pakistan.”
Global Christian Relief (GCR) is America’s leading watchdog organization focused on the plight of persecuted Christians worldwide. In addition to equipping the Western church to advocate and pray for the persecuted, GCR works in the most restrictive countries to protect and encourage Christians threatened by faith-based discrimination and violence.
Career Democrat and ABC host George Stephanopoulos completely emasculated Sen. James Lankford of Oklahoma this weekend on his Sunday show. Right at the beginning of the interview, Stephanopoulos advanced a flurry of disinformation and lies, to which Lankford, who purports to be a conservative senator of the burgundy-red state of Oklahoma, bowed down in complete supplication:
Stephanopoulos: Your party’s leading candidate for president was on the stump yesterday repeating lies about the 2020 election. He’s called those convicted in the Jan. 6 insurrection hostages. He faces 91 separate felony counts himself. He’s raised the prospect of executing the former chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and terminating parts of the Constitution. In the face of all that and more, are you prepared to support Donald Trump if he’s your party’s nominee?
Oh, for crying out loud. What an absolutely preposterous line of questioning. Any Republican elected official with a room-temperature IQ and even a modicum of self-respect would be livid at the propaganda and lies and immediately push back. But not Lankford. Here’s how he responded:
Lankford: Yes, we haven’t had a single vote yet, George. This is still weeks and weeks away from our first votes that are happening actually in Iowa, then New Hampshire and South Carolina. And there are a lot of people that are going to make that decision. That’s not going to be me making that decision, that’s going to be the American people that actually make that decision.
Stephanopoulos pressed him, and Lankford remained impotent in the face of the questioning. In fact, he was so bad throughout the interview, he even quoted Alejandro Mayorkas, Biden’s controversial homeland security secretary, as a role model on immigration enforcement. The entire state of Oklahoma looked worse as it went on.
Now, Lankford is more than welcome to stay out of the Republican primary or endorse whomever he thinks is the best candidate, but what he should not feel free to do is allow the corrupt media and other Democrats to destroy the country through propaganda and lies. Americans are absolutely desperate for even the tiniest bit of Republican backbone and leadership, not mealy-mouthed kowtowing to the press.
When you claim to be a conservative senator of a state so Republican that two out of every three voters in 2020 voted for Trump, and a lifelong Democrat operative in the media asks you a completely loaded agitprop question, you should hit it out of the park. Like so:
“First off, George, your audience should know that you just regurgitated back a diatribe of lies, mistruths, and Democrat propaganda. I’m not surprised, given your professional background and track record of maliciously pushing the false and dangerous Russia-collusion scam for so many years during and after the 2016 election, but I can’t allow your lies to go uncorrected.
“Second, the public is also wising up to the fact that what the corporate media have spun to them about Jan. 6 hasn’t exactly been the complete truth. Yes, we know your line that this was the worst moment in the history of the world, requiring our FBI to do nothing other than arrest people who were anywhere near the event. Well, that, and arrest pro-lifers who are praying and parents who are attending school board meetings.
“But most Americans know that we have not gotten good answers about why Nancy Pelosi turned down security provisions ahead of what intelligence suggested would be a very contentious day, or what exactly was being done by the federal informants and federal agents who were present for the day’s events. They’re extremely worried about how left-wing rioters and criminals seem to be able to do whatever they want with very few repercussions, even when they’re attacking the Supreme Court, federal courthouses, the White House, churches, homes, and police precincts. And now with the release of some of the videotapes from that day, we see that most of the activity that day was not in any way what was hyped up and presented by the Democrats’ Jan. 6 show trial.
“Finally, the Biden administration is at this moment doing everything in its power to put their leading political opponent in prison. They raided Mar-a-Lago, George. When other countries do things like this, when Putin does stuff like this, we say that means they don’t have free and fair elections. It seems the Democrats’ main strategy this election cycle is to attempt to put effective Republicans in prison, to bankrupt them, and to prevent them from speaking out about what is being done to destroy this country. I’ll note this isn’t working with the American people, as Trump now leads widely in almost all polls against Biden, a strong renunciation of what’s going on.
“So I ask you, George, are you prepared to start focusing on the major policy issues facing the country, or will you continue to push lies and propaganda to help put your political opponents in prison?”
You know, something like that.
To state the obvious here, using small words so that even the absolutely feckless and embarrassingly lame Senate Republicans can understand, praising Mayorkas, failing to correct lies about Republicans, and mumbling about how you’ll vote Republican if you are forced to is not a way to win elections. Yes, I’m sure it’s what Mitch McConnell told Lankford to go out and do, but it yields nothing but failure. The people of Oklahoma deserve an actual man to represent them, not whatever it is they’re getting in Lankford.
You win elections by saying truthful things, not being sad and scared like Lankford and most other Republican senators are. He should be lambasting Stephanopoulos for not covering the major issues facing the country in an even remotely evenhanded or honest way.
That’s how you go from being a party full of absolute losers who are on their back heels constantly to one that makes people want to vote for you.
I have been hearing all weekend about the rapping Hamas has been doing. As I heard each report, my first reaction was grief for the victims, and anger at the coverage on all the news outlets, and internet.
Going back to the days of September 11, 2001, then the rise of ISIS, I have been reporting on the practices of radical Islam. I’ve published report after report on the common conduct of these so-called Islamic fighters (regardless of the banner they are operating under). The child to adult male marriages, the common belief that they have an approved expectation to rape every female captive, whether or not they intend to make them wives, or concubines (sex slaves). Mohammed had a 6-year-old bride. They are quick to say that he waited to consummate their marriage until she was 8.
Here is a lecture by an Islamic woman explaining the practice to listeners.
This video was taken by a Hamas animal on October 7. I have three daughts and a granddaughter. I can’t imagine my horror if one of them were on the bike, knowing what was about to be done to her.
Watch this video carefully. All those involved are civilians 👇
Some of the most horrendous crimes on October 7th were committed by civilians. https://t.co/i902xLaeq1
Here is a picture of the girl gang raped and killed described above.
Yoni Saadon, one of the witnesses, recounts in the Times:“I saw this beautiful woman with the face of an angel and eight or ten of the fighters beating and raping her. She was screaming, ‘Stop it — already I’m going to die anyway from what you are doing, just kill me!’ When they… pic.twitter.com/uEXCFpz7Pk
This is a dramatic display of Islamic fighters taking captive of a girl, savaging them, and then walking them around like a trophy. This was shot in Beverly Hills, California.
Woman walks around Beverly Hills dressed as one of the victims of Hamas to raise awareness of the October 7th attack.
The woman she is dressed as was seen in a viral video on Oct 7th with bloodied track pants after being violently raped.
Gustavo Torres, the executive director of CASA De Maryland—seen here rallying with open-borders activists outside the White House on Dec. 30, 2015—is effusive in his apologies for voicing support for Hamas, but only because CASA’s state funding has been jeopardized by it. (Photo: Marvin Joseph/The Washington Post/Getty Images)
Mike Gonzalez, a senior fellow at The Heritage Foundation, is a widely experienced international correspondent, commentator, and editor who has reported from Asia, Europe, and Latin America. He served in the George W. Bush administration, first at the Securities and Exchange Commission and then at the State Department, and is the author of the book “BLM: The Making of a New Marxist Revolution.” Read his research.
Trouble is brewing in the deep-blue state of Maryland, where Democratic state senators are discovering that—gasp!—an “immigrant advocacy” group they have coddled for decades is really full of Hamas supporters who compare Palestinian terrorists to the experience of Hispanics in the Old Line State.
The group is CASA de Maryland. State lawmakers have been forcing weary taxpayers to underwrite this far-left group since it was first incorporated in Maryland’s radical chic neighborhood of Takoma Park in 1985. The Washington Post reported as far back as 2011 that “nearly half of CASA’s $6 million budget comes from local, state, and federal appropriations.” A reason for that is, as The Post put it, it successfully sells itself as an “immigrants’ rights” lobbying group.
That the people CASA de Maryland represents are mostly not immigrants at all, but illegal aliens who have willfully broken the law didn’t bother reliably lefty voters in tony Montgomery County, where many of the denizens of the federal permanent bureaucracy and the nation’s media and academic elite sleep, play, and more importantly, vote.
But just as CASA has moved out of its original modest Takoma Park church basement and is now headquartered in multimillion-dollar Langley Mansion, a former plantation restored to the tune of $13.8 million in nearby Langley Park (a rehab that The Post reported was partly footed by taxpayers), the organization’s political reach has expanded.
It is now, according to its website, a nationwide community organizing giant. “With over 155,000 lifetime members across 46 U.S. states, CASA is a national powerhouse organization building power and improving the quality of life in working-class: Black, Latino/a/e, Afro-descendent, Indigenous, and Immigrant communities.”
Things were going swimmingly well until this comfy status quo was shattered, as many things have been in America, by Hamas’ massacre of Israeli civilians and the gang-rape of Jewish women on Oct. 7. The fascination that the “woke” Left has shown for the terrorists (a Cornell professor said he was “exhilarated” by the killing spree) has shocked old-fashioned liberals. They are now suddenly finding it hard to overlook some tough realities.
Enter CASA, which chose to make clear on which side it belongs when its longtime executive director, Gustavo Torres, stated in a since-deleted post on X that “CASA stands in resolute and steadfast solidarity with the people of Palestine in their relentless fight for freedom. We stand shoulder to shoulder with countless Black and brown freedom activists from around the world. We specifically condemn the utilization of U.S. tax dollars to promote the ongoing violence.”
“We deeply acknowledge the interconnectedness of the struggle for the liberation of the Palestinian people and Black and brown communities in the United States,” Torres added.
That set off all nine state senators from Montgomery County, who issued a letter that did not mince words. The statements by CASA and Torres, the senators’ letter said, “are hurtful, divisive, and antisemitic. It reflects a complete lack of understanding of the complex geopolitics of the Middle East, the indigenous roots of the Jewish people, and the long and painful history of antisemitism in its myriad forms.”
More to the point, the senators reminded Torres, “We have provided CASA with millions of taxpayer dollars intended to support our new Americans and help provide them with necessities and shelter.”
Then came the kicker: “We cannot and will not allow taxpayer money to subsidize hate speech. In light of CASA’s recent postings and statements, this might be an appropriate time to reevaluate the state’s mechanism for providing financial aid and support to our immigrant community.”
Clearly terrified that Maryland may withdraw its taxpayer teat, Torres has tried to backpedal as fast as he can, dignity be damned. “I want to profoundly apologize to the Jewish community in Montgomery County and beyond,” Torres told MoCo360. “We were not experts on this [crisis], and members of the Jewish community have been educating me.”
On X, CASA said, “We write to acknowledge that our words have caused hurt.” CASA, it said, is working to “refine our message and clarify our values.” Torres pleaded further, “We will do whatever is necessary to repair these relationships. We want to apologize not only with words, but actions.”
On our latest statement: We write to acknowledge that our words have caused hurt. We have received feedback from our dear and trusted partners, who have expressed their concerns about the impact of our language.
Boy, what the threatened withdrawal of millions will do. But apparently, the unseemly retreat is to no avail. Democratic state Sen. Cheryl Kagan said, “It’s unforgivable, and I choose my words carefully. It doesn’t matter if [Torres] says ‘I’m sorry’ 10 times. I cannot forgive statements that essentially say he wants to murder my people. It’s not OK.”
Torres’ words of regret do indeed beggar belief. He and CASA are hardly new to revolutionary struggle.
“Casa” is Spanish for home, but CASA is an acronym for the Central America Solidarity Association. The group has since registered under “CASA” to, as former Reagan official James Simpson put it in 2012, obscure any links with other “solidarity committees” set up in the 1980s to lobby for the Marxist guerrillas in El Salvador, which were funded and guided by the Soviets and the Cubans.
The Colombian-born Torres earned his chops in Marxist Nicaragua, where he worked for a newspaper that was a mouthpiece for the Sandinista regime, according to the always reliable Influence Watch. Later, Torres popped up in Venezuela, where, according to the Militant,he spoke at a 2007 panel titled “United States: A Possible Revolution.” His co-panelist, Antonio Gonzalez, said, “What does a revolutionary do in the U.S. today? Take power wherever you can by electing Latinos to city, state, and federal offices.” Later, Citgo Petroleum, which Venezuela’s Marxist government uses as its piggy bank, gave CASA $1.5 million.
Many in the audience said that wouldn’t work, chiding Hispanics for buying into the “American dream” and not pursuing social and political change. But one of CASA’s beliefs under Torres is that Central Americans immigrate because the U.S. destabilizes its region and that their mass immigration, in return, will change the U.S.
This is at least the third example of a direct payment to Joe Biden that stems from a family-owned business entity. The difference is that these monthly payments came directly from a Biden company. Pictured: Biden departs Ireland’s Dublin Airport on Air Force One on Aoril 14 with his sister Valerie and son Hunter. (Photo: Julien Behal/Irish Government/Getty Images)
A Hunter Biden business entity tied to China made direct monthly payments to Joe Biden in the months leading up to the former vice president’s announcement that he would run for president in 2020, according to newly released subpoenaed bank records from the House Oversight and Accountability Committee. The monthly payments came from Owasco PC, which Hunter Biden set up as a business entity.
Biden, the president’s 53-year-old son, is under federal investigation for using Owasco PC’s corporate account to commit alleged tax crimes. Owasco PC has links to Chinese energy company CEFC, where the younger Biden was a partner. This is at least the third example of a direct payment to Joe Biden that stems from a family-owned business entity. What appears to be different here is that the payments came directly from a Biden company. Two previous payments appeared to filter indirectly through the president’s younger brother, James Biden.
House Oversight and Accountability Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., noted in a video statement that the president previously claimed there was an “absolute wall” between his official government duties and his family’s business; claimed his family didn’t receive money from China; and claimed he didn’t talk to his son about his business dealings.
On each, Comer said, “This was a lie.”
🚨BREAKING🚨
Hunter Biden’s business entity, Owasco PC, made direct monthly payments to Joe Biden. The bank records don't lie.
Owasco PC received payments from Chinese-state linked companies & other shady entities. Joe Biden knew & benefitted from his family's business schemes. pic.twitter.com/MfvtA4yEZU
“Now, Hunter Biden’s legal team and the White House’s media allies claim Hunter’s corporate entities never made payments directly to Joe Biden,” Comer said. “We can officially add this latest talking point to the list of lies.”
“Today, the House Oversight Committee is releasing subpoenaed bank records that show Hunter Biden’s business entity, Owasco PC, made direct monthly payments to Joe Biden,” the Kentucky Republican said.
“This wasn’t a payment from Hunter Biden’s personal account but an account for his corporation that received payments from China and other shady corners of the world,” Comer added.
The oversight panel is one of three House committees leading an impeachment inquiry into the senior Biden’s activities for evidence of influence peddling. The committee subpoenaed the financial records of Hunter Biden and of James Biden in September.
The House-obtained records show that Hunter Biden’s business account, Owasco PC, received payments from companies linked to Communist China and from other foreign nationals and companies.
Records released by the committee show one monthly payment in September 2018 for $1,380. Also that year, James Biden wrote two separate checks to Joe Biden for $200,000 and $40,000, respectively. The checks were marked as “loan repayments,” but Comer’s committee has tied the payments directly to Biden family business transactions.
An FBI confidential informant said in a formal document that executives from the Ukrainian energy company Burisma paid a $5 million bribe to Joe Biden and another $5 million to Hunter Biden in 2016 when Biden was still Barack Obama’s vice president.
While he was vice president, Biden met with or communicated with several of his son’s business partners, records show.
State Office Building renovation, called ‘fiscal insanity,’ to begin next month.
House Republicans and DFLers have argued over the scope of the project and price tag, which could approach $729 million after interest accrues.
Despite repeated complaints from several Republican legislators over the last year on the size and scope of what will turn out to be the costliest Minnesota Capitol renovation in state history, work on the State Office Building project is expected to begin in just a matter of weeks. While the project is expected to have an impact on the daily tasks of those engaged in legislative activities for the next three sessions, some lawmakers want to make sure the cost to taxpayers doesn’t go unnoticed. READ MORE…
Here are the 105 RINOs who Voted to Remove Fellow Republican George Santos from Congress – BUT NOT ANY DEMOCRAT! – PRIMARY THEM ALL OUT OF OFFICE!
The US House of Representatives voted Friday morning on Resolution 878 – the expulsion of House member Representative George Santos. They voted him out.
RINOs and Democrats have been gunning for this day since Santos entered Congress.
This is the third time the US House has voted to expel George Santos.
George Santos has not been CONVICTED of a crime. He was indicted by the House Ethics Committee led by Republicans.
Meanwhile, Democrat Representatives Jamaal Bowman, Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar, Cori Bush, Mad Maxine Waters and others accused of much more serious crimes will never face such a vote.
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 • Funeral Held for “Beautiful Warrior” Indi Gregory, Father Rejoices That She’s in Heaven • Gavin Newsom Lied About Late-Term Abortions, Falsely Claims They’re Done for Emergency Reasons • Pro-Abortion Former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor Passes Away • Ron DeSantis Shares Incredible Story of Woman Who Survived Abortion
More Pro-Life News • Gavin Newsom Refuses to Support Any Limits on Killing Babies in Abortions • FBI Dragged Catholic Family From Home at Gunpoint Over 15-Year-Old Son’s Memes • House Republicans Fight to Stop Joe Biden From Funding Abortion Tourism • Don’t Kill Babies in Abortions Just Because They Might be Disabled • 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.
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.
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Steve Bannon (R) speaks with Tucker Carlson (L) in an interviewed aired on Nov. 27, 2023. | YouTube/Tucker Carlson
“War Room” host Steve Bannon warned Tucker Carlson on Monday that the critical tensions afflicting Ireland over unrestrained illegal immigration and other issues are also simmering in the United States and could lead to political upheaval.
Bannon spoke to Carlson on the recent episode of the former Fox News host’s show on X to discuss the unrest in Dublin, where riots erupted last week after an Algerian immigrant stabbed three children and one adult care worker outside a Catholic primary school.
A 5-year-old girl remains in a serious but stable condition as of Tuesday, according to the BBC.
The suspect in the stabbing, whom Irish police have yet to identify, is a man of French Algerian origin in his 50s who has lived in Ireland for 23 years and was previously arrested in 2003, according to the Sunday Times. He reportedly became a naturalized Irish citizen in 2008 after his deportation order was revoked following a review by Ireland’s High Court.
Carlson opened his interview with Bannon by noting that The Washington Post suggested the Algerian man was not an immigrant because he had lived in Ireland for over 20 years. The outlet also quoted police who blamed the riots that flared after the attack on a “lunatic faction driven by a far-right ideology.”
The host said that the suspect has been living in Ireland for 23 years “at public expense.”
“He has never had a job, and then last week, he stabbed children,” Carlson said.
Carlson also claimed that Irish authorities are using hate crime legislation to crack down on anyone “who questions government policy.” MMA fighter Conor McGregor and a “large number” of other people are being investigated for allegedly inciting people to hatred by their speech, according to The Irish Independent.
Carlson and Bannon agreed that profound resentment among native citizens toward the effects of mass illegal immigration is seething not just Ireland, which Bannon described as a “powder keg,” but throughout the Western world, including the U.S.
Bannon, who served as an adviser to former President Donald Trump, predicted that the U.S. is also headed toward “political revolution” in the coming years as younger Americans realize they are “Russian serfs” who effectively own nothing and never will because of the nation’s ruinous financial situation.
“We are beyond broke,” Bannon said. “We are technically at bankruptcy right now.”
Citing Center for Immigration Studies statistics that suggest an additional 6 million illegal immigrants are slated to cross the border before the next presidential election, Bannon predicted that the country’s political situation is “only going to get worse in the confrontation with the invasion of this nation by illegal aliens, exacerbated by radicals and globalists.”
Carlson questioned how the average American could not be radicalized as elites encourage things that drive people to despair and give up on reproducing while simultaneously pushing for millions of immigrants to pour in.
Bannon replied that “every Maoist, every Marxist revolution [focuses] on breaking down the nuclear family” and that the corporate class wants unrestrained immigration “because they want to drive down wages at the lowest possible level and, quite frankly, they want bigger markets. They want more consumers.”
“And so, this situation is going to cause a political revolution in this country,” Bannon predicted, claiming that the financial and immigration situations are “five times worse” than when Trump ran in 2016.
The two also discussed the potential crackdown against dissenting opinion amid political unrest.
“If you have a different opinion from the state, they’re trying to criminalize that,” Bannon said. “They’re trying to do that every day here in the United States. If they can’t criminalize it to actually use the courts and the police state like the FBI to come after, they’ll basically partner with Big Tech, either deplatform you or to ‘other’ you. We’re seeing this here in the United States.”
Bannon concluded by reflecting on how the “complexity” and “viciousness” of the political problems afflicting the U.S. have increased in recent years.
“People have to understand this is like Damocles’ sword over the head of this nation,” he said. “It is going to take at least a decade of tough decisions, tough people — tough, but fair people — to sort this out.”
Thursday night’s debate between Florida GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis and California Democrat Gov. Gavin Newsom was a total crapshow for Newsom — literally.
When the Democrat darling wasn’t getting lambasted for violating his own Covid restrictions and allowing homelessness and human feces to plague California’s major cities, Newsom was justifying the presence of pornographic materials in school libraries and defending the surgical mutilation of minors, even without parents’ knowledge. Meanwhile, DeSantis stuck to the facts and tackled major culture war issues most Republicans are often too afraid to mention.
Things got so bad for Newsom that his wife reportedlystepped in to prevent the debate from continuing beyond the original 90-minute discussion agreed upon by the governors.
But Thursday’s back-and-forth wasn’t just a heated discussion between two high-profile politicians. It was a symbolic display of the stark spiritual divide encapsulating the country. While DeSantis represented positions of truth, logic, and common sense — like protecting kids from disfiguring transgender surgeries, for example — Newsom embodied the lies, deception, and propaganda of his fellow leftists.
Even when confronted with facts — some of which were displayed in front of him — Newsom simply lied or pivoted to launching ad hominem attacks against conservatives. Such is the way of the modern left.
In a sane world, DeSantis’ beatdown of Newsom and the Democrat Party’s extremist agenda would end the California governor’s prospects for higher office. But America doesn’t exist inside a sane world anymore, and the sad reality is that many of the leftists who watched Thursday’s debate probably came away believing Newsom’s falsehoods — or worse, knew he was lying but simply didn’t care.
If Newsom were to run for another statewide office in California today, there’s no reason to believe the vast majority of Democrats in the state wouldn’t vote for him. Even if it means having to pay higher taxes, subsidize illegal immigrants, and dodge human feces, used needles, criminals, and homeless encampments on the streets, Democrat voters will not abandon their dystopian belief that the state is almighty.
For the left, politics is religion. It’s what drives them, shapes their nonsensical worldview, and permits them to justify the most demonic policies imaginable, such as murdering innocent unborn babies and conducting irreversible surgeries on minors without parental knowledge. There is no belief in objective morality or truth on the left because Democrats’ view is that morality and truth are whatever they want them to be, facts and logic be damned.
Leftism is a heck of a drug, and no matter how much pain and suffering it causes, Democrats won’t stop taking it.
Shawn Fleetwood is a staff writer for The Federalist and a graduate of the University of Mary Washington. He previously served as a state content writer for Convention of States Action and his work has been featured in numerous outlets, including RealClearPolitics, RealClearHealth, and Conservative Review. Follow him on Twitter @ShawnFleetwood
During his debate with California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Thursday night, Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis was at his strongest on contentious culture-war issues, such as the merits of transgender medical interventions for kids and parental rights.
The governors from two of the nation’s most populous states offered Americans a preview of a 2028 White House showdown on Fox News, debating red and blue state governance. Both are popular two-term governors presiding over colossal coastal states with overwhelming control of their respective state legislatures, and both are also relatively young (Newsom is 56, DeSantis is 45) and well-funded, with presumably long careers ahead. So, while only one of the men on stage Thursday night is officially running for higher office, both eagerly capitalized on the opportunity to frame up a presidential race that’s still five years out. DeSantis was at his best when topics landed on hot-button cultural issues, from parents’ rights in education to California’s endless sexualizing of children.
Fox moderator Sean Hannity brought up Florida’s parental rights bill — which Democrats dishonestly branded as “Don’t Say Gay” — that DeSantis signed last year. The new law bans teachers from bringing mature sexual topics and transgender propaganda into kindergarten through third-grade classrooms.
“Should schools be focused on reading, writing, math, science, history, computers — and maybe leaving values, considering parents might have different values than teachers at school?” Hannity asked. “What is the role?”
“The role of the school is to educate kids, not indoctrinate kids,” DeSantis said. “It’s not to impose an agenda, it’s to do the basics.”
“What we’ve said in Florida is it’s inappropriate to tell a kindergartner that their gender is a choice, it’s inappropriate to tell a second grader that they may have been born in the wrong body,” DeSantis added. “California has that. They want to have that injected into the elementary school.”
DeSantis went on to highlight a book used to teach kids about gay sex called Gender Queer.
“Some of its blocked out,” DeSantis said with an image held up of a graphic illustrated porn scene. “You would not probably be able to put this on air.”
Gov. DeSantis (R-FL) and Gov. Newsom (D-CA) debate parental rights and book bans.
DeSantis: "This is a book that's in some of the schools in California … This is pornography, it's cartoons"
Newsom: "I don't like the way you demean and humiliate people you disagree with, Ron." pic.twitter.com/Vw63cD0OFq
Newsom sought to justify the salacious content in K-12 classrooms, calling DeSantis’ efforts to sanitize leftist activists’ curricula a “banning binge.” The West Coast governor went on to list a series of authors Democrats falsely claim are prohibited in Florida.
A moment later, DeSantis called out California’s radical efforts to become a refuge for trans-identified kids. Last year, Newsom signed a bill allowing gender-confused teens to seek irreversible medical interventions in the Golden State without parental consent.
“How in the heck is that honoring parents’ rights when you’re bringing people in from out of state to go around their parents’ backs and getting life-altering surgeries?” DeSantis asked. “It’s not for you to decide. It’s for the parents to decide.”
Ron DeSantis SKEWERS Gavin Newsom over his "radical" and "extreme" policy overriding parental rights in the name of "gender-affirming care." His bill prioritizes sterilizing drugs that will medicalize kids for the rest of their lives. #Debatehttps://t.co/PGdw9oRDSLpic.twitter.com/spEvUuGaQe
Newsom turned to emotional blackmail, citing the debunked left-wing talking point that transgender-identifying children are more prone to suicide. The data points to the contrary, however, with individuals more likely to suffer mental anguish when given easier access to transgender medical interventions.
Transgenderism and parental rights in education are winning issues for Republicans. The twin topics let the party go on offense just as the Virginia GOP did in 2021 with statewide triumphs in what had become a blue state.
Recent polls suggest more and more Americans are with Republicans on transgenderism and parental rights. A March survey from Parents Defending Education found, “75% of registered voters support legislation requiring schools to get parental consent before helping a student change their gender identity at school, while only 18% oppose this policy” (emphasis theirs).
A Gallup poll in June found that 55 percent of Americans believe it is “morally wrong” to attempt to “change” one’s sex, up from 51 percent two years ago. An overwhelming majority opposed bending sex requirements for athletic competitions.
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 biggest loser of Thursday night’s debate between Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and California Gov. Gavin Newsom was us, the voters. For far too long party officials have had a stranglehold on how candidates are vetted, presented, and nominated. If the “Red vs. Blue State” debate was successful, it could have been the jumping-off point for other networks, third-party candidates, or donors to sponsor and create better opportunities for voters to see candidates in more diverse settings and formats. Sadly, it was unsuccessful for everyone involved.
Kudos to Sean Hannity for making it happen and kudos to Newsom for showing up to a forum he knew would be tilted toward DeSantis. Despite his actual performance, Newsom is the only person in his party that would have agreed to debate in that environment in the first place. Could you even imagine Vice President Kamala Harris in place of Newsom last night? It might have ended her political career. The reality is we know the White House would have never, ever allowed her to appear.
It’s hard to be critical of Hannity’s handling of the debate chaos because, short of cutting their mics off, there wasn’t much he could do besides appeal to both men several times to stop behaving like toddlers. It is unbecoming of governors, let alone presidential candidates, to talk over one another, and keep repeating the same statistic or practiced line. Still, Hannity deserves credit for pulling it off despite the fact that Trump and those around him aren’t thrilled he gave DeSantis the prime-time opportunity. Hannity has spoken openly about his personal relationship with Trump and his family, but he gave DeSantis airtime and a unique venue anyway.
Wearing the Hat vs. the Jersey
If you watch sports or attend games in person, you know the difference between a fan who is wearing a hat and the one who is wearing a jersey. A hat doesn’t have your favorite player’s name on it, just the team. A jersey has a specific player’s number and (with few exceptions) their last name. Fight in the stands? Most likely between fans who have jerseys on, not hats. In primary season, political pundits, donors, and early supporters have jerseys on, but regular voters who are living their lives mostly have hats on, or are willing to switch jerseys when the primary dust settles. How you think this debate went for DeSantis largely depends on whether you are wearing a DeSantis jersey or a GOP hat.
If you are wearing the DeSantis jersey, you think he crushed Newsom and embarrassed him with several references to the French Laundry incident and Newsom’s kids going to in-person private school while the rest of his state’s children were at home. You thought it was a nice touch when he talked about San Francisco police officers approaching him and thanking him for his support of law enforcement because they don’t get that in California. You were giddy when he pulled out both his paper props from his suit jacket to shame Newsom over the graphic nature of a book and a print-out of a San Francisco human feces map. If you have a DeSantis jersey on, it was a good event, even if all he got was major screen time without Nikki Haley zinging bad one-liners at him all night.
If you are wearing the GOP hat, maybe you didn’t see it the same way. You saw a presidential candidate that had some shades of Marco Rubio circa 2016 getting wrecked by Chris Christie. The repetitive talking points and stats in the face of a full-on frontal assault by Newsom is troublesome. You saw a guy who practiced all the stories he was going to tell last night (father-in-law, French Laundry, Newsom kids in person at private school) and still couldn’t tell them well.
You were thinking: if Trump told these exact same stories they would have landed with such force that Gavin’s White House dreams might have died on that stage last night. You also might be thinking that if Nikki Haley told those same stories she would have raised millions more dollars for her campaign. You saw a guy with a friendly moderator not be able to shift on the fly and bury Newsom when everything (data, history, and truth) was on his side. You also know that Donald Trump wouldn’t need to pull out crumpled paper to embarrass Newsom. He could have told those exact two stories without the props just as effectively.
A friend of mine who wears a GOP hat, not a jersey, texted me, “I don’t think he is good on his feet” during the debate, and he isn’t alone in that assessment. GOP hat-wearers are very perceptive and watched DeSantis Thursday night wondering if he has the stand-up skills to go to metaphorical war with whomever is occupying the other podium.
I am not sure last night moved the needle for DeSantis but how it’s perceived is very different by those wearing DeSantis jerseys versus those wearing GOP hats. It was a wasted opportunity for some much-needed change of the political process and for both participants.
Aaron DeCorte has worked in sales and marketing for more than 25 years. His wife is a 9-1-1 operator for their local police department.
Rep. George Santos, or, now-former Rep. George Santos, has denied allegations that he moonlighted as a drag queen named “Kitara Ravache.” But maybe he would have been smart to embrace it — no Democrat could have voted to expel a drag queen from the lower chamber!
On Friday, House Democrats voted nearly unanimously along with 105 Republicans to expel the freshman representative from New York. It’s worth noting that Michigan Democrat Rashida Tlaib, meanwhile, received a mere censure over her antisemitic activism and solidarity with Hamas terrorists.
Santos became the third member removed from the House since the Civil War. Rep. James Traficant of Ohio was removed by the lower chamber in 2002 after a conviction of 10 felonies and Rep. Michael Myers was kicked out in 1980 following a bribery conviction. The New York lawmaker was ostensibly removed over a potential scandal involving fraudulent campaign activity that was detailed in a report from the House Ethics Committee last month. Investigators found substantial evidence that Santos committed federal crimes, and the freshman lawmaker was handed a 23-count indictment in October. To date, however, Santos has yet to be convicted of a single crime after voters elected the Republican to replace his Democrat predecessor.
Tlaib, on the other hand, openly called for the destruction of Israel and spread lies about an explosion near a Palestinian hospital, blaming the Israeli military. The rocket that terrorist officials claimed killed hundreds of civilians at the hospital was actually a Palestinian device that misfired and landed in a nearby parking lot, killing dozens, not hundreds.
“Israel just bombed the Baptist Hospital killing 500 Palestinians (doctors, children, patients) just like that,” Tlaib wrote on X. “POTUS this is what happens when you refuse to facilitate a ceasefire & help de-escalate.”
In November, the Michigan congresswoman defended her use of the terrorist slogan “from the river to the sea” demanding the creation of a Palestinian state on Israeli land.
“From the river to the sea,” Tlaib claimed on X, “is an aspirational call for freedom, human rights, and peaceful coexistence.”
“‘From the river to the sea’ is the least ambiguous phrase imaginable,” explained Federalist Senior Editor David Harsanyi last month. “It quite literally and geographically lays out the genocidal aims of its chanters — from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, including all of the Jewish state, not just ‘occupied’ territory.”
That 105 Republicans joined Democrats to expel Santos, in an effort actually led by Republicans, is bad enough. But two of the Republicans who voted to expel Santos simultaneously voted against censuring Tlaib three weeks ago. Retiring Colorado Rep. Ken Buck, who is gunning for a gig at CNN, and freshman California Rep. John Duarte, apparently didn’t think their antisemitic colleague from Michigan deserved censure but voted to boot Santos from Congress despite his reliably red voting record.
Voters: please, Republicans, help the country Republican House: best we can offer is a continuing resolution Democrats love, tons more Ukraine funding, and ousting this liar because corporate media demanded it https://t.co/BZeUTjrRb9
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.
House Administration Committee Chairman Rep. Bryan Steil, R-Wis., speaks at a news conference about the American Confidence in Elections Act at the Capitol on July 12. (Photo: Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
House Republicans have advanced measures to prevent noncitizen voting and curb foreign influence in American elections, with some even gaining bipartisan backing. The House Administration Committee on Thursday sent eight election-related bills to the full House for consideration, most of which still face an uncertain future.
House Administration Committee Chairman Rep. Bryan Steil, R-Wis., said the bills bring the United States “one step closer to blocking election insecurities.”
“From preventing federal funds from going to states that allow noncitizens to vote, to blocking the Biden administration’s attempts to weaponize our federal agencies,” Steil said in a public statement after the committee meeting. “Each measure we passed today will increase voters’ confidence and ultimately lead to greater participation at the ballot box.”
The No Vote for Non-Citizens Act was reported out of committee on a bipartisan vote of 8-2. The bill would amend the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, better known as “the Motor Voter law,” and the Help America Vote Act of 2002 to ensure that only eligible American citizens may participate in federal elections.
This measure, sponsored by Rep. Morgan Griffith, R-Va., requires localities that allow noncitizens to vote in local elections to print separate voter lists and separate ballots from any federal elections.
Another bill repeals the recently passed District of Columbia law to allow noncitizens to vote in D.C. elections. While Washington, D.C., has limited home rule, it is still subject to Congress as nation’s capital. The committee approved the bill by Rep. Mike Bost, R-Ill., on a partisan 6-3 vote. The D.C. law gives noncitizens who are at least 18 years old and have resided in the District for 30 days or more the right to vote in any D.C. elections for mayor, city council and other local offices.
“Allowing noncitizens, like [foreign] embassy staff, to vote in D.C. elections is inappropriate and contrary to our system of democracy,” Rep. Laurel Lee, R-Fla., said during the committee meeting.
However, Democrats defended the D.C. law.
“The comments are so insulting here about D.C.’s ability to elect their own elected officials with their own voters,” Rep. Norma Tores, D-Calif. “It’s so outrageous and offensive. It’s bullies bullying the D.C. residents.”
The Citizen Ballot Protection Act, which cleared the committee on a 4-3 party-line vote, allows a state to include as part of the federal voter-registration form a requirement that applicants provide proof of citizenship. The bill was sponsored by Rep. Gary Palmer, R-Ala.
Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, sponsored the Protecting American Voters Act, which cleared the committee on a 6-3party-line vote. The bill requires the Homeland Security Department and the Social Security Administration to provide upon request information to states to verify the citizenship status of individuals registered to vote.
Committee Democrats opposed allowing local election officials to check the citizenship information with the federal agencies.
“This bill is another attack on elligible voters of color disguised as fraud prevention, for which this committee has shown no evidence exists,” Rep. Joe Morelle, D-N.Y., the committee’s ranking member.
Rep. Greg Murphy, R-N.C., defended the measure.
“It is paramount that we enforce that American citizens are the ones who vote, not individuals who came into this country illegally,” Murphy said during the committee meeting.
Less controversial was the Stop Foreign Funds in Elections Act, which passed by a unanimous voice vote. Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, R-Pa., sponsored the bill, which would prohibit contributions by foreign nationals in elections or in connection with ballot initiatives or referendums. Existing federal laws prohibit direct contributions from foreign nationals to political candidates, parties or political action committees, noted Rep. Anthony D’Esposito, R-N.Y.
“However, federal law does not prohibit foreign nationals from making contributions or donations in connection with state of local ballot initiatives or referenda,” D’Esposito said of the bill during the committee meeting. “This legislation rectifies that problem. American elections are for the benefit of American citizens and not foreign nationals.”
The popular measure was a unanimous recommendation of the three Republicans and three Democrats on the Federal Election Commission-recommended bill and likely could have enough bipartisan backing to pass the House and Senate and be sent to President Joe Biden’s desk for signature into law.
Three other measures did not pertain to noncitizens or foreign influence, but were about election security.
The committee voted unanimously to advance the Confirmation of Congressional Observer Access Act. The proposal just codifies the long-running Congressional Observer Program, which, under constitutional authority, deploys designated congressional election observers to observe federal election administration procedures. The bill was sponsored by Rep. Mike Carey, R-Ohio.
The committee reported the Federal Election Audit Act out on a party-line vote of 8-4. That bill, sponsored by Rep. Gregory Murphy, R-N.C., allows federal election assistance dollars to fund postelection audits for federal offices in a state.
The committee also voted 5-4 along party lines to repeal President Joe Biden’s Executive Order 14019, which requires federal agencies to engage in get-out-the-vote activities, and working with independent nonprofit organizations to turnout voters. Sponsored by Rep. Harriet Hageman, R-Wyo., the Safeguarding Electoral Integrity Act not only repeals the Biden order, but also requires every plan made under it to be submitted to Congress for review.
Why are millions of people around the world supporting Hamas, the reincarnation of the Nazi SS? Hamas targets civilians for murder and rape; uses its own civilians as human shields; and hides beneath hospitals, schools, and churches. Pictured: Members of the Palestinian Youth Movement gather outside of the President’s Park to stage a pro-Palestinian demonstration and demand a ceasefire in Gaza during the National Christmas tree lighting in Washington D.C., on Nov. 30. (Photo: Celal Gunes, Anadolu/Getty Images)
Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, and author of the book “The Second World Wars: How the First Global Conflict Was Fought and Won.” You can reach him by e-mailing authorvdh@gmail.com.
Oct. 7 should have been an open-and-shut case of moral condemnation. During peace and holiday, invading Hamas gunmen murdered, tortured, mass-raped, decapitated, and mutilated some 1,200 Israelis. The vast majority were unarmed women, children, infants, and the elderly. The cowardly murderers proudly filmed their atrocities and then fled back to Gaza—to cheers from the Gaza street.
Before Israel even retaliated, the mass murdering of Jews earned praise from the Middle East, the international hard Left, and especially the faculty and students of elite Western campuses.
When the Israel Defense Forces struck back, the killers dispersed to the safety of their multibillion-dollar subterranean cities. The cowardly elite architects of the mass murder fled to Arab sanctuaries in Lebanon and Qatar. From its headquarters burrowed below hospitals, mosques, and schools, Hamas bartered hostages for a reprieve from the Israel Defense Forces and the release of its own convicted terrorists in Israeli jails. Hamas shot any of its own supporters who refused to shield Hamas gunmen. It continued launching rockets at Israeli civilian centers. It serially lied about its casualties, expropriating intended relief food and fuel for its underground tunnel city of killers.
Abroad, Hamas supporters also emulated the methods of the pro-Nazi demonstrators in Western cities of the 1930s. Unlike their pro-Israel critics, the pro-Hamas demonstrators in the U.S. and Europe turned violent. They took over and defaced private and public property. They chanted genocidal antisemitic slogans calling for erasure of the nation of Israel. They interrupted shoppers, blocked highways, attacked businesses, and swarmed bridges. They assaulted police. The majority wore masks to hide their identities in the fashion of antisemitic Klansmen.
Why did the doctrinaire Left, the youth of the Democratic Party, and the campuses outdo each other in their antisemitic venom toward Israel? For the first time in their lives, many of the ignorant protesters suddenly professed concern about refugees, colonialism, disproportionality, innocent civilians, and the rules of war. But none could explain why the Palestinians who fled Israel in 1947-48 still self-identify as victimized “refugees” when 900,000 Jews ethnically cleansed from Middle East Arab cities about the same time do not.
The 200,000 Greek Cypriots driven out from northern Cyprus by Turkey apparently do not warrant “refugee” status either.
Few protesters knew that Jews have lived in present-day Israel for over three millennia. The longest colonialist presence there was Muslim Turks who brutally ran the Holy Land for 300 years until they lost in World War I and were expelled.
How exactly did it happen that the eighth-century A.D. Al-Aqsa Mosque was built within King Herod’s earlier Second Temple enclosure?
The pro-Hamas crowd has little appreciation that colonizing Arab Muslims have one of history’s longest records of “settling” other countries far from their historic birthland.
They “settled” and “colonized” the Hellenistic, Roman, and Byzantine Middle East, Berber North Africa, and southern Spain. Millions of Middle Easterners migrated to—“settled?”—supposedly infidel European cities, where they often self-segregate and do not assimilate fully with their magnanimous hosts.
As far as “disproportionality”—it is the goal of every power at war, Hamas included.
What protesters are furious about is that Israel is more effective at being disproportionate in retaliation than Hamas and its Iranian supporters were in their preemptive mass murdering.
Targeting innocent civilians? Hamas is among the current greatest offenders in the world. It rockets Israeli cities without warning. It mass murders Jews in their beds during peace. It exposes Gazans to mortal danger by impressing them as human shields. Hamas shoots those who refuse.
The “rules of war” are violated by Hamas daily. Such protocols require combatants to wear uniforms so as not to blend in with civilians, not to use them as shields, not to murder noncombatants, not to rape them, not to mutilate them, and not to execute civilians without trial.
Why then would millions ally themselves with this odious reincarnation of the SS?
Are they ignorant of the history of the Middle East?
Are they arrogant since few challenge their hate and threats?
Are they opportunists who feel mouthing anti-Western shibboleths gains them career traction in leftist-run media, academia, and popular culture?
Are they bullies who count on the Western silent majority remaining quiet as they disrupt lives, trash Western tolerant culture, and commit violence?
Like Hamas that they support, do they despise Jews? Why else do they express an existential hatred toward Israelis that they never display to any other group?
Those now on the street utter not a peep about the Sudanese Arab mass killers in Darfur; Chinese oppressors of the Muslim Uyghurs; Russians targeting civilians in Ukraine; or ISIS, Syrian, and Yemeni murderers of fellow Muslims. Yet all of these terrorist killers are guilty of the very charges the protesters falsely attribute to Israel. But they are all not Jewish—and that explains the pass given them by our antisemitic, pro-Hamas street.
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Millions of Twitter accounts that interacted with former President Donald Trump’s online profile appear to be under the purview of special counsel Jack Smith’s search warrant from January of this year, according to a government transparency suit.
The court-authorized warrant on Twitter, which the tech company fought and even attempted to warn Trump about, sought “all information from … the [Trump] account, including all lists of Twitter users who have favorited or retweeted tweets posted by the account, as well as all tweets that include the username associated with the account (i.e. ‘mentions’ or ‘replies’).” The highly specific request potentially implicates millions of users on the platform, now known as X, just because they liked or retweeted a Trump post.
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.
According to the corporate media, hundreds of high schoolers are taking it upon themselves to walk out of school to protest Israel’s right to defend itself. In New York, San Francisco, Philadelphia, and more, the nation’s budding humanitarians are banding together with the hope of ushering in a new era of peace, the stories say. As is the case with so many stories surrounding Palestinian terrorism and Israel’s response, the prevailing narrative is wrong.
These walkouts are not the result of well-meaning teenagers choosing to take a stand. These protests are being conceived of and then planned and executed by radical left-wing groups using children as political props.
The largest of these was the “#schools4Palestine” walkout, which disrupted learning in an estimated 100 New York City public schools on Nov. 9. A coalition of far-left groups, including New York Collective of Radical Educators, NYC Educators for Palestine, Palestinian Youth Movement, and Teachers Unite, authored a “toolkit” — a handbook aimed mainly at adults to show them how to turn students into pro-Hamas activists. The document purports to be for “students, teachers, and parents,” but its content is less relevant for students than for teachers who seek to influence them. Another far-left group in the San Francisco Bay Area created a toolkit of its own, full of the same hateful lies about Israel.
Though the New York City toolkit’s writers claimed, “High school students are organizing walkouts,” they don’t seem to believe their own words. The document, created by left-wing adults, provides a ready-made plan for students, with poster templates, instructions for identifying chant leaders, and even a sample schedule. The students are being organized by adults.
NYC high school students walking out from across the city in the hundreds today to demand a #CeasefireNow in Gaza!
They were showing up, at the behest of their teachers, to support a cause probably very few of them understand. The toolkit contained a sample script for teachers to encourage their students to participate, and it notes that teachers may “show support for their students … canceling tests or major paper deadlines or making the lesson more flexible to accommodate students who walk out.” Teachers who followed this advice placed their own radical politics ahead of learning and committed a major violation of professional ethics. They abused their positions of responsibility for the sake of their own agenda.
The toolkit put words in the mouths of children with a recommended chants list, including “Say it loud, say it clear, we don’t want Zionists here.” When they took to the streets, some of the students chanted, “F-ck the Jews,” thus flaunting their hatred and abandoning the façade that this protest was ever about peace.
Students Aren’t Being Taught the Truth
Students are being taught that it is good and noble to walk out in support of Hamas. What they are not being taught is that there was a ceasefire in place on Oct. 6, and it did not stop Hamas from slaughtering Israelis and taking hostages. They’re not teaching students that so many Palestinians live in poverty, not because of Israel, but because Hamas would rather spend money on rockets and tunnels and their own plush hideaways in Qatar than on basic infrastructure. They’re not teaching that supporting the Palestinian people means opposing Hamas, an enemy of peace and prosperity and the reason that Gazans are suffering today.
Some meager accountability for this indoctrination has come from parents who are angered about what their children are being taught. A principal in Montgomery County, Maryland, emailed the entire school community to “make them aware” of a walkout, noting that all absences due to the protest would be excused. Backlash was so swift and severe that the principal has since resigned.
These protests do not happen in a vacuum. In many schools, Jewish students are seeing their peers cheerlead for terrorism with their teachers’ encouragement. No student should be forced to face this kind of hostility and harassment. No parent should be forced to send his or her child to a school where this sort of teacher-sponsored bullying is allowed or encouraged.
As Hamas tightens its death grip on Gaza, pro-Hamas protesters will desperately attempt to appear thoughtful and mainstream. But not unlike the group these protesters are supporting, they’re experts at using children as pawns.
Angela Morabito is the spokesperson at the Defense of Freedom Institute and a former U.S. Department of Education press secretary.
Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger died at his home in Connecticut on Wednesday. He was 100.
The German-born American served as a diplomat, academic and presidential adviser, and continued to impact American politics in the private sector after leaving office. His stamp on U.S. foreign policy spanned decades and he was responsible – for better or worse – for systematically changing the standing of the U.S., China, Russia and others.
After the news of his death broke, dignitaries from around the world commented on his life and legacy, including current and former secretaries of states, presidents and foreign diplomats.
Henry Kissinger holds the Bavarian Order of Maximilian during celebrations marking his 100th birthday. The highest honor in the Free State was presented to him earlier by Bavaria’s Minister President Söder. Fürth. Kissinger’s birthplace held the celebration to mark the 100th birthday of its honorary citizen. (Daniel Vogl/picture alliance via Getty Images)
Secretary of State Antony Blinken, the man currently in the position that Kissinger held across two presidencies, said Kissinger “set the standard” for being the senior U.S. diplomat.
“Secretary Kissinger really set the standard for everyone involved in this job,” Blinken said in Israel, during a meeting with Israel President Isaac Herzog. “I was very privileged to get his counsel many times, including as recently as about a month ago. He was extraordinarily generous with his wisdom, with his advice. Few people were better students of history. Even fewer people did more to shape history than Henry Kissinger.”
Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo similarly said Kissinger “left an incredible mark on America’s history and the world.”
“Henry Kissinger was a model of service and a great American,” Pompeo said. “From the day he came to the United States as a teenager fleeing Nazi Germany, Dr. Kissinger dedicated his life to serving this great country and keeping America safe.”
He added: “He left an indelible mark on America’s history and the world. I will always be grateful for his gracious advice and help during my own time as Secretary. Always supportive and always informed, his wisdom made me better and more prepared after every one of our conversations.”
Henry Kissinger was a model of service and a great American.
From the day he came to the United States as a teenager fleeing Nazi Germany, Dr. Kissinger dedicated his life to serving this great country and keeping America safe.
Former President George W. Bush also commented on Kissinger: “America has lost one of the most dependable and distinctive voices of Henry Kissinger. He worked in the Administrations of two Presidents and counseled many more.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu released a statement after the death of Kissinger, who he called “a great statesman, scholar, and friend.”
“Dr. Kissinger’s departure marks the end of an era, one in which his formidable intellect and diplomatic prowess shaped not only the course of American foreign policy but also had a profound impact on the global stage,” Netanyahu wrote.
It is with a heavy heart that I mourn the passing of a great statesman, scholar, and friend, Dr. Henry Kissinger, who left us at the age of 100.
Dr. Kissinger's departure marks the end of an era, one in which his formidable intellect and diplomatic prowess shaped not only the… pic.twitter.com/JdUEoHbA6e
The Israeli leader also described meeting with Kissinger just months ago in New York.
“I had the privilege of meeting Dr. Kissinger on numerous occasions, the most recent being just two months ago in New York. Each meeting with him was not just a lesson in diplomacy but also a masterclass in statesmanship,” Netanyahu said. “His understanding of the complexities of international relations and his unique insights into the challenges facing our world were unparalleled.”
He continued: “Henry Kissinger was not just a diplomat; he was a thinker who believed in the power of ideas and the importance of intellectual capital in public life. His contributions to the field of international relations and his efforts in navigating some of the most challenging diplomatic terrains are a testament to his extraordinary capabilities.”
“His legacy will continue to inspire and guide future generations of leaders and diplomats,” Netanyahu concluded.
Chinese President Xi Jinping meets former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger at the Great Hall of the People, Nov. 8, 2018 in Beijing. (Thomas Peter – Pool/Getty Images)
Chinese President Xi Jinping and senior Chinese officials commented on Kissinger’s death and sent messages of condolence to President Biden and others after his passing, the Chinese foreign ministry said on Thursday, Reuters reported.
Kissinger visited China more than 100 times, most recently meeting with Xi during a surprise trip to Beijing in July.
“During his lifetime, Dr. Kissinger attached great importance to Sino-US relations and believed that Sino-US relations were crucial to the peace and prosperity of China, the United States and the world,” said Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin. “China and the United States must inherit and carry forward Dr. Kissinger’s strategic vision, political courage, and diplomatic wisdom, adhere to the important consensus reached by the Chinese and American presidents at their meeting in San Francisco, adhere to mutual respect, peaceful coexistence, and win-win cooperation, and promote the sound, stable and sustainable development of China-U.S. relations.”
During a news conference, the spokesperson said Kissinger made “historic” contributions to the legacy of early China-U.S. relations. He said China would remember him for his “sincere devotion and important contribution.”
Former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger at the Great Hall of the People, Nov. 8, 2018, in Beijing, China. (Thomas Peter – Pool/Getty Images)
Kissinger’s impact across the globe is evident decades after he left office and his foreign policies continue to shape global relations.
Hungarian President Katalin Novák described Kissinger, after his death, as “one of those who shaped international politics and so, history, in the second half of the 20th century.”
She added: “A great life, a great legacy. His call to end the war in Ukraine through a peace deal crafted in negotiations remains pertinent even today. Rest in peace.”
CEO Elon Musk unveiled the long-awaited Tesla Cybertruck at a live event at its Gigafactory in Austin, Texas. The futuristic-looking Cybertruck is the first electric vehicle Tesla offers that isn’t a sedan marks the company’s entry into the growing EV pickup market, joining rivals like Ford and Rivian. One advantage Elon Musk promises the Cybertruck has over the competition? It is bullet proof.
Tesla shareholders of record were invited to apply to attend and then were selected via a drawing. Prices were revealed and are much higher than original estimates.
Cybertruck Pricing
Rear-wheel drive variant: $66,990
All-wheel drive variant: $76,990
Cyberbeast variant: $99,990
Pricing range from $60,990 to $99,900, higher than the rumored $50,000 range predicted by industry and Wall Street analysts. Potential Cybertruck buyers were initially able to place a reservation for a refundable $100 deposit.
For comparison, the starting price for the Ford F-150 Lightning currently starts at $52,000 while Rivian raised prices for its quad-motor R1T pickup last year from $67,500 to $79,500.
Two days ago Musk said the highest end one would have a range of 500 miles and it’s actually 320.
Tesla completed its first production candidate Cybertruck in July, roughly four years after it was first announced and two years after production was initially planned to begin. Last year, Musk cited supply chain shortages affecting the sourcing of components as a factor in pushing back Cybertruck production to 2023.
At the Cybertruck’s unveiling in 2019, Tesla CEO Elon Musk said it would cost roughly $40,000 – though the company hasn’t indicated its price ahead of Thursday’s launch. (Frederic J. Brown/AFP via / Getty Images)
Tesla had previously touted the stainless steel exterior as being resistant to dents and corrosion, while Musk said the Cybertruck is bulletproof. It also has “armor glass” that was famously broken on a prototype Cybertruck at its November 2019 announcement event during a demonstration gone awry.
Musk has said Tesla aims to make 200,000 units of its Cybertruck per year. He had previously said it has the capacity to make over 125,000 Cybertrucks annually and that there is the potential to lift that total to 250,000 in 2025. It’s unclear how many Cybertrucks will be part of the first batch delivered or subsequent deliveries into early 2024.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk verbally reacts as the demonstration of Cybertruck’s armor glass went awry at its 2019 unveiling. (Frederic J. Brown/AFP via / Getty Images)
During a Tesla earnings call in October, Musk said he wants to “temper expectations” around the Cybertruck even as he thinks it’s “our best product ever.”
“I do want to emphasize that there will be enormous challenges in reaching volume production with the Cybertruck and then in making a Cybertruck cash flow positive,” Musk said. “This is simply normal when you’ve got a product with a lot of new technology, or for any new vehicle program but especially for one that is as different and advanced as the Cybertruck, you will have problems proportionate to how many new things you’re trying to solve at scale.”
“It’s a great product, but financially it will take – I don’t know – a year to 18 months before it is a significant positive cash flow contributor. I wish there was some way for that to be different, but that’s my best guess,” he explained. “The demand is off the charts, we have over a million people who have reserved the car. So it’s not a demand issue, but we have to make it, and we need to make it at a price people can afford. Insanely difficult things.”
A formal vote by the full House to authorize an impeachment inquiry will make “for a stronger case” against President Joe Biden for peddling influence through his family’s foreign business dealings, Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, told Newsmax on Thursday. Jordan chairs the House Judiciary Committee, which is helping the Oversight and Accountability Committee probe the Bidens’ business dealings.
It was reported Wednesday that House Republicans are considering holding a formal vote next month to authorize the impeachment inquiry as the party looks to legitimize its investigation into wrongdoing.
“We would like to go to a formal vote for an impeachment inquiry. You don’t have to do that. We’re in an impeachment inquiry,” Jordan told “Wake Up America” co-host Rob Finnerty. “
“The speaker of the House said that there’s no requirement, but it’s a stronger case if you have to go to court to fight these things.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson has expressed some caution about the impeachment push, warning against a rush to judgment. But he says the evidence already uncovered by Republican chairmen is “alarming.”
Jordan told Finnerty that work remained before the House could consider an impeachment vote.
“We learned so much when we actually had Devon Archer, one of his [Hunter Biden’s] business partners, under oath in a deposition earlier this year … there’s a handful of key people that I think we do need to talk to, and then we make a decision based on all the facts, and what we may learn from those individuals, and how that squares with other testimony we’ve received and the documents.”
Jordan stressed that getting to a vote on impeachment “depends on the facts” and must be done properly.
“I do think this impeachment inquiry vote that we want to take in the House, and I think we’re gonna have the votes for it,” he said, “I think will be helpful when we inevitably have to go to court to get documents and to get these depositions done in the sequence that they need to be done,” the chair said.
Before his appearance concluded, Jordan was asked whether embattled Rep. George Santos, R-N.Y., should be expelled from the House. The chamber is expected to vote Friday on whether to expel Santos, who faces criminal corruption charges and new accusations that he misspent campaign money.
“I’m against it,” Jordan said. “I think that’s always a decision between the person in office and the voters back in his or her district. That’s how our system works, and we have due process. I’m against it.”
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A temporary cease-fire in the Israel-Hamas war has been extended another day, according to mediator Qatar. The announcement Thursday morning came minutes before the cease-fire was set to expire. Hamas released two Israeli women from captivity several hours later, Israel’s military said.
Israel had agreed to extend the truce by one day for every 10 militant-held hostages who are freed. The cease-fire, which began Nov. 24 and was originally set to expire on Monday, has paused the deadliest fighting between Israel and Palestinians in decades.
Israel has vowed to resume the war in an effort to end Hamas’ 16-year rule of Gaza, but it’s facing mounting international pressure to spare southern Gaza a devastating ground offensive like the one that has demolished much of the north.
Roughly 240 hostages were captured by Hamas in its Oct. 7 attack in southern Israel that ignited the war. More than 13,300 Palestinians have been killed since the war began, according to the Hamas-controlled Health Ministry in Gaza, which doesn’t differentiate between civilians and combatants. About 1,200 people have been killed in Israel, mostly during the initial incursion by Hamas.
— Truce in Israel-Hamas war is extended by a day, minutes before it was set to expire.
— Jake Sullivan says the White House is not seeking conditions on military aid to Israel, despite Biden’s comment.
— Israel compares Hamas to the Islamic State group. But the comparison misses the mark in key ways.
— U.S. Senate Majority Leader Schumer warns that antisemitism is on the rise as he pushes for Israel aid.
— A friendship forged over 7 weeks of captivity lives on.
Here’s what’s happening in the war:
The Israeli military said Thursday that two Israeli hostages were released from captivity in the Gaza Strip. In a statement, the army said the Red Cross had transferred the two women to Israeli forces. They were to be taken to an Israeli military base. The two hostages are among a larger group of Israelis expected to be released Thursday as part of the latest extension of a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas. Israel was to free some 30 Palestinian prisoners later Thursday.
TEL AVIV, Israel — U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is reminding Israeli leaders of the need for Israel to comply with international law as it prosecutes its war against Hamas in Gaza. Blinken also said it is imperative that Israel take great care to avoid civilian casualties if it starts major military operations in southern Gaza, where hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have sought shelter after fleeing their homes in the northern part of the territory. He said the U.S. places great importance on the resumption of a peace process that would eventually lead to the creation of a Palestinian state, something that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu opposes.
Speaking Thursday just hours after Israel and Hamas agreed at the last minute to a third extension of their cease-fire agreement, Blinken told Netanyahu that the U.S. will continue “support for Israel’s right to protect itself from terrorist violence in compliance with international humanitarian law and urged Israel to take every possible measure to avoid civilian harm,” the State Department said.
The message aligned with the Biden administration’s shifting rhetoric on the war, which began as a full-throated embrace of Israel’s response to the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks but gradually tempered as the number of Palestinian civilian casualties began to rise, prompting widespread international criticism. To prevent a further exponential increase in civilian casualties, Blinken “stressed the imperative of accounting for humanitarian and civilian protection needs in southern Gaza before any military operations there and urged immediate steps to hold settler extremists accountable for violence against Palestinians in the West Bank,” the State Department said Blinken told Netanyahu.
Blinken met with Netanyahu and his war Cabinet in Jerusalem before traveling to the occupied West Bank for talks with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.
The Israeli army has confirmed that Ofir Tzarfati, an Israeli believed to be held hostage in Gaza, is dead. Tzarfati was thought to be among the approximately 240 people taken hostage by Hamas on October 7. He had been celebrating his 27th birthday at a music festival with his girlfriend when Hamas militants stormed into Israel and killed at least 364 people at the festival and kidnapped many others. Tzarfati’s family was originally unclear what happened to him, but a few weeks later, the army notified the family that they believed that Tzarfati was being held in Gaza, according to media reports.
The army did not specify where Tzarfati’s body was identified
TEL AVIV, Israel — Two gunman opened fire on a crowded bus station at the entrance of Jerusalem, killing at least three people and wounding several others, according to Jerusalem police.
Another blatant violation of the ceasefire. A terrorist attack, murdering people waiting for the bus. https://t.co/0Vtbse4CMB
“The bus station was very crowded, which is why so many people were wounded,” said Magen David Adom spokesperson Zaki Heller told Army Radio. According to police, the two gunmen drove toward the bus stop armed with a handgun and an M16 rifle and opened fire. Both were killed at the scene by two soldiers who were near the bus stop.
Jerusalem police chief Doron Turgeman said police believe both attackers were from east Jerusalem. It was unclear if the attack was carried out by a Palestinian militant group or individuals acting on their own, or if it would have any impact on the truce in Gaza.
One 24-year-old woman was pronounced dead at the scene and another man died later at the hospital.
A year ago, a bomb exploded at the same bus stop, killing a 16-year-old boy and wounding 18.
JERUSALEM — Israel and Hamas agreed to extend a temporary truce by another day just minutes before it was set to expire, said Qatar, which has been mediating between the two sides. The truce was set to expire Thursday morning. Negotiations on extending it came down to the wire, with last-minute disagreements over the hostages to be freed by Hamas in exchange for another day of a halt in fighting.
The Qatari Foreign Ministry said the truce was being extended under the same terms as in the past, under which Hamas has released 10 Israeli hostages per day in exchange for 30 Palestinian prisoners.
Israel released another group of Palestinian prisoners early Thursday in exchange for 16 hostages freed hours earlier by the Islamic militant group Hamas in Gaza. A bus carrying some of the Palestinian detainees arrived in the West Bank city of Ramallah before dawn. The releases came on the sixth day of a temporary truce in the Israel-Hamas war.
Most prominent among those freed was 22-year-old Ahed Tamimi, an activist who gained worldwide fame in 2017 after a video of her slapping an Israeli soldier went viral on social media. Israeli troops arrested her at her West Bank home on Nov. 6 for “inciting to terrorism” on her Instagram account. Her mother said Tamimi’s account had been hacked.
Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
“We’re talking about the Seventh Amendment and the right to a jury trial, and that—that is an important and ancient right, too,” Justice Neil Gorsuch said Wednesday during oral arguments in Securities and Exchange Commission v. Jarkesy. (Photo: Rich Legg/E+/Getty Images)
Jack Fitzhenry is a senior legal policy analyst in the Meese Center for Legal and Judicial Studies of The Heritage Foundation.
Will ill-advised precedent or fundamental constitutional principles prevail when the right to a jury trial is at stake?
After two hours of oral argument Wednesday morning in Securities and Exchange Commission v. Jarkesy, that was the important issue confronting the Supreme Court. That, and whether the modern desire to empower the administrative state overcomes yet another constitutional check on the growth of an invasive central government. That’s because, as Alexis de Tocqueville aptly said, “The institution of the jury … places the real direction of society in the hands of the governed … and not in that of the government.”
The case arises from the SEC’s efforts to prosecute hedge fund manager George Jarkesy. The SEC alleges that he overestimated the value of his assets and made false claims to investors.
Tort of Fraud Under Common Law
The wrongs Jarkesy allegedly committed are strikingly similar to the centuries-old tort of fraud under common law. Had the commission or anyone else sued Jarkesy for his misrepresentations in court, the Seventh Amendment would have guaranteed Jarkesy the right to have a jury decide his case. Yet, the SEC chose not to go to court. Instead, it pursued its enforcement action under federal law through an in-house proceeding, in which an administrative law judge appointed by the commission would decide all questions, including whether Jarkesy was guilty of securities fraud.
To no one’s surprise, the commission enjoys a decidedly better win rate when one of its own is deciding the dispute.
Jarkesy challenged the commission’s decisions in court, and the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in his favor on three grounds: First, the agency proceeding violated Jarkesy’s Seventh Amendment right to a jury trial; second, Congress had impermissibly delegated lawmaking authority to the commission; and third, the SEC’s administrative law judges were unconstitutionally protected from removal by the president.
The government appealed all three rulings to the Supreme Court, but it was the jury question that dominated nearly the entire oral argument.
‘Public Right’
Deputy Solicitor General Brian Fletcher of the U.S. Department of Justice, representing the commission, maintained that the Seventh Amendment imposes no restriction on the executive branch’s ability to enforce federal law through administrative tribunals so long as the executive is enforcing a “public right,” one created by Congress and integrated within a federal regulatory scheme.
Here, Fletcher argued, federal law doesn’t protect the right of an individual to recover for losses caused by fraud, but rather, the public’s right to securities markets free from deception.
If the distinction sounds too fine, Fletcher at least had solid support in the Supreme Court’s past decisions; specifically, the 1977 decision in Atlas Roofing v. Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission.
There, the justices blessed both Congress’ creation of statutory rights closely related to the common law tort of negligence and the decision to have these new federal rights adjudicated in juryless administrative courts.
Yet the availability of that precedent did little to assuage the justices’ concerns. Chief Justice John Roberts posed hypotheticals searching for some limit on the government’s ability to create public rights and thereby avoid the Seventh Amendment’s jury right.
What About Car Crashes, Medical Malpractice?
Would the government’s interest in the interstate highway system allow it to implement legislation requiring all cases arising from vehicle accidents to be adjudicated in an administrative court? Would the government’s interest in regulating health care permit Congress to send all medical malpractice cases to a juryless tribunal?
Fletcher conceded that under Atlas Roofing, those scenarios were constitutionally permissible if Congress decided that the traditional tort claims covering accidents and medical injuries did not adequately protect the public.
Justice Neil Gorsuch took the theme further. In his hypothetical, the government had revived the long-reviled Sedition Act, a 1798 statute that criminalized criticism of the government and was enacted by the Federalist-controlled Congress to target members of the opposing Democratic-Republican Party.
The hypothetical Congress had assigned all defamation claims under the new Sedition Act to an administrative judge, who would decide them without a jury. Gorsuch asked Fletcher whether the lack of a jury for persons accused of defaming the government raised a constitutional problem.
Answering by Evasion
Palpably uncomfortable with the question, Fletcher sought to evade it by insisting that the First Amendment would prevent the hypothetical. But an audibly frustrated Gorsuch would not permit that evasion: “Forget about the First Amendment … too easy. We’re talking about the Seventh Amendment and the right to a jury trial, and that—that is an important and ancient right, too.”
Lacking further avenues for retreat, Fletcher fell back on Atlas Roofing and insisted that the Sedition Act scenario raised no Seventh Amendment problems because the jury right applies only in courts, not in administrative tribunals.
In answering one question, Fletcher raised another, however.
Justice Samuel Alito asked:
Doesn’t that seem like a pretty patent evasion of the Seventh Amendment to say this protection, which was regarded at the time of the adoption of the Bill of Rights as sufficiently important to merit inclusion in the Constitution, can be nullified simply by changing the label that is attached to a tribunal?
Fletcher resisted Alito’s concern, noting that Article III of the Constitution as well as the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment set some (indeterminate) limit on Congress’ ability to consign claims to juryless forums.
But Alito commented that whatever protections Article III and the Due Process Clause provide, the Constitution’s ratifiers found them inadequate because they insisted on adding the Seventh Amendment’s jury requirement.
Arguments Unmade Are Forfeited
The questions Fletcher fielded from the bench indicated a broad skepticism about the correctness of Atlas Roofing, but Jarkesy had not asked the court to overrule that case.
Arguments not made in the lower courts are typically forfeited. Constrained by that omission, Michael McColloch, counsel for Jarkesy, had to argue that Jarkesy could win even under Atlas Roofing.
McColloch maintained that Atlas Roofing permitted juryless decisions of new federal rights, whereas in this case, Congress simply codified a right closely analogous to common law fraud.
He argued further that the court had undermined Atlas Roofing in subsequent decisions, leaving Congress less leeway to avoid jury trials by creating public rights.
Two possible answers arose from McColloch’s colloquy with the court.
The first is that securities law allows the federal government to pursue conduct that would not meet the definition of fraud, but the specific conduct for which it pursued Jarkesy was quintessential fraud. Therefore, the commission could pursue non-fraudulent misrepresentations internally, but it must bring traditional fraud claims in courts, where jury rights attach.
The second possibility was posited by Alito, who mused that the elements of the federal cause of action may be a logical subset of the common law claim. If so, the logical connection between the federal right and the common law would be close enough to require the protection of the Seventh Amendment.
Questions Not Always Indicative of Votes
The court is still months away from a decision in this case, and the tenor of questions are not always reliable indicators of a justice’s vote. Roberts and Alito, as well as Gorsuch and Justice Clarence Thomas, sounded consistently skeptical of the government’s arguments. Jarkesy’s failure to ask for the overruling of Atlas Roofing, however, may leave them without an avenue for channeling those frustrations into doctrinal change.
Meanwhile, questions from Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson indicated an inclination to hold that Atlas Roofing resolves Jarkesy’s case in the commission’s favor.
Several justices, including Kagan, were concerned by the apparent ease with which the federal government can avoid the right to a jury trial. Still, it’s uncertain that Jarkesy has distinguished his case from Atlas Roofing, and it is unlikely the court will risk overruling that case when it was not asked to do so.
But counterbalancing the regard for precedent is the regard for the judiciary’s traditional role as defender of the guarantees integral to American liberty. The founding generation placed the utmost importance on the guarantee of jury rights even in civil cases. That the federal government can so easily render that right nugatory would surely have dismayed them.
Perhaps the current court, sharing that dismay, will reconsider its approach in Atlas Roofing and ensure that the Seventh Amendment cannot be so easily evaded.
Supermodel Gigi Hadid—seen here in New York City on Oct. 25, 2022, at the WWD Honors—posted false information about Israel, but later apologized. (Photo: Arturo Holmes/Getty Images)
Gigi Hadid, an American fashion model of Palestinian descent, has apologized for sparking outrage last week for making numerous false claims against Israel amid its war with Hamas, claiming Israel abducts, rapes and tortures children.
“Israel is the only country in the world that keeps children as prisoners of war. Abduction, rape, humiliation, torture, murder of Palestinians years and years and years before Oct. 7, 2023,” Hadid claimed in a since-deleted Instagram story to her 79 million followers.
The post included a picture of Ahmad Manasra, a Palestinian who stabbed two Israelis with his cousin in 2015 when he was 13 years old and was sentenced to 12 years in prison, falsely portraying Manasra as a “child prisoner of war.”
But on Tuesday, Hadid posted on Instagram apologizing for this mistake. “I used the wrong example to make that point, and I regret that,” she wrote.
Hadid, 28, faced backlash across the internet, with many claiming her post was spreading false information and was antisemitic.
“Gigi Hadid isn’t shy about spreading lies to the world! … And she writes this while Hamas still holds … children that they kidnapped, including a baby only 10 months [old]!! The Hadid family is a family of liars that instigate hatred!” Israeli activist Yoseph Haddad wrote on X, formerly Twitter.
Hadid’s anti-Israel posts came amid a deal between Israel and Hamas to release 50 Israeli hostages in exchange for 150 Palestinians detained in Israeli jails and prisons. Israel said there would be one additional day of cease-fire for every 10 additional hostages Hamas released. Hamas has released about 100 hostages as of this writing.
Hadid’s father, Mohamed Hadid, was born into a Palestinian Muslim family in Nazareth, Israel. However, Gigi Hadid was born in Los Angeles. Her sister, Bella Hadid, also a fashion model, likewise supports the Palestinians.
The state of Israel has previously responded to Hadid’s allegations against the country by writing in an infographic, “There is nothing valiant about Hamas’ massacre of Israelis. Condemning Hamas for what it is (ISIS) is not anti-Palestine, and supporting Israelis in their right against barbaric terrorists is the right thing to do.”
Hadid also reposted an Instagram Reel about Israel supposedly harvesting Palestinians’ organs on Sunday. The video was originally published by a user named Umme Murtaza, on which Murtaza said, “Watch this disturbing video, where health officials admitted that Israeli authorities had harvested the organs of dead Palestinians for years without their consent.” Hadid did not apologize for sharing that Reel.
“Gigi Hadid is the only major supermodel that keeps spreading blood libels about Jews harvesting organs,” Tamar Schwarzbard, the head of digital operations at the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, wrote on X.
Bidenomics is a colossal disaster, yet the Democrats continue to try and pull the wool over Americans’ eyes, but it’s hard to hide the high cost of living. The average family has to come up with an additional $11,400 a year to have the same standard of living they had in January 2021. Biden brags about job growth but fails to reveal that many folks have to work 2 to 3 jobs to keep up in his economy.
Like in this cartoon, Biden’s Christmas tree falling over is symbolic of his entire presidency.
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 • 49 Abortion Centers Closed This Year, Now 14 States are Abortion-Free • Joe Biden is Trying to Push Christian Groups Out of Foster Care • Catholic Cardinal Raymond Burke Said Joe Biden Shouldn’t Receive Communion Because He’s Pro-Abortion • Unmarried Women Have 87% of Abortions, 10X Higher Abortion Rate Than Married Women
More Pro-Life News • New Argentina Vice President Wants to Pass Law Protecting Babies From Abortion • Births Have Increased 2.3% in Pro-Life States as Abortion Bans Save Babies • They Want to Legalize Abortions Up to Birth Nationwide, We Must Stand Up and Fight for the Babies • Radical Abortion Activists Firebomb Pro-Life Office in Rome • Scroll Down for Several More Pro-Life News Stories
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Not a week goes by in which America’s ethically bankrupt media aren’t pushing lies about the state of the country’s elections, and their latest attack on Republican voters is no different.
On Wednesday, Stateline joined its fellow leftist “news” outlets in fomenting a Democrat-manufactured conspiracy theory that U.S. election workers everywhere are facing constant harassment from constituents. The insinuation, of course, is that these threats are coming from conservative voters who dared to raise questions about the conduct of the 2020 election.
At the center of Stateline’s hit piece is the recent spate of letters filled with fentanyl and other substances sent to local election offices in states such as Washington, Nevada, and Oregon. Instead of disclosing to its readers the evidence indicating the letters were potentially sent by far-left radicals tied to Antifa, Stateline immediately pivoted from reporting on the issue to advancing the left’s “election workers are under attack” narrative and pinning the blame on former President Donald Trump and his supporters.
“Since the 2020 presidential election, state and local election officials nationwide have been bombarded with threats, as lies perpetuated by former President Donald Trump and his allies around ‘rigged’ elections have fueled conspiracy theories and inspired violent reactions to the bureaucrats and temporary workers who run the United States’ democratic process,” the outlet claimed in hyperbolic fashion.
JUST IN: Video emerges of woman testifying that multiple absentee ballots we’re being received in sequential order with the date of November 0, 2020..
As I previously wrote in these pages, Democrat claims that election workers have experienced a spike in threats since the 2020 election are primarily based on “surveys” issued by leftist organizations and unsubstantiated statements from Democrat election officials. In November 2022, for example, The Washington Post published an article containing assertions by Colorado Democrat Secretary of State Jena Griswold’s office that it had “identified hundreds more threats against her since 2020.” Unsurprisingly, the Post gave no indication that it bothered to fact-check these claims.
Just like the Post, however, Stateline was forced to include data from President Biden’s own Department of Justice showing that Democrats’ sky-is-falling elections narrative is total bunk.
In its article, the outlet discloses that, “As of late August, the U.S. Justice Department’s Election Threats Task Force had charged 14 people with making threats to election workers and political candidates since the task force was created in 2021, so far leading to nine convictions that came with yearslong criminal sentences.” August 2022 testimony from a DOJ official and a subsequent agency press release further revealed that out of roughly 1,000 communications directed toward election officials that were deemed “threatening and harassing” by the Election Threats Task Force since the force’s inception, only about 11 percent of those contacts “met the threshold for a federal criminal investigation.”
Got that? In a country with a population of more than 335 million people, only about 100 individuals have been investigated by the DOJ for supposedly threatening election workers, and only 14 of them have been officially charged. That doesn’t exactly sound like a widespread crisis.
For a corporate press that loves to toss around the term “conspiracy theory” whenever reporting on legitimate Republican concerns about the integrity of U.S. elections, leftist media outlets such as the Post and Stateline are perfectly fine with fomenting their own conspiracy theories to dishonestly smear their political opponents. In reality, Democrats couldn’t care less about the “security” of American elections. All they care about is acquiring and maintaining power.
The media-wide effort to cast Republicans as threats to “democracy” isn’t just designed to scare away independents and moderate voters from the GOP. It’s to disincentivize conservatives from partaking in legitimate forms of election oversight, such as poll watching.
From elections to lawfare, Democrats have no interest in playing by the same rules as everyone else. And if that means they have to recruit their media allies to push debunked propaganda about Republicans, then that’s exactly what they’ll do.
Shawn Fleetwood is a staff writer for The Federalist and a graduate of the University of Mary Washington. He previously served as a state content writer for Convention of States Action and his work has been featured in numerous outlets, including RealClearPolitics, RealClearHealth, and Conservative Review. Follow him on Twitter @ShawnFleetwood
Special Counsel Jack Smith hunted information on X users who liked or retweeted posts published by former President Donald Trump, according to redacted search warrants and other documents released Monday.
According to the heavily redacted document issued to then-Twitter in January, the court ordered the social media giant to forfeit a bevy of information regarding Trump’s account, including “advertising information, including advertising IDs, ad activity, and ad topic preferences,” as well as IP addresses “used to create, login, and use the account” and privacy and account settings.
The warrant also demanded information such as Trump’s search history, direct messages, and “content of all tweets created, drafted, favorited/liked, or retweeted” by his account from October 2020 to January 2021.
Though the warrant was first covered in August, it was again released as part of a court order after numerous media organizations filed to obtain the document to shed light on the Smith-led special counsel’s “investigation into Trump’s actions leading up to the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the US Capitol,” according to the New York Post. Smith previously indicted Trump in August on several bogus charges related to the former president’s challenging of the 2020 election results in the lead-up to Jan. 6, 2021.
But it wasn’t just Trump’s Twitter account that Smith and his cronies were targeting. The special counsel’s warrant also sought data on Twitter users who interacted with the former president’s account. Among the information Smith sought was a list of every user Trump “followed, unfollowed, muted, unmuted, blocked, or unblocked” during the aforementioned timeframe. Smith similarly demanded that Twitter, which has since rebranded as X, fork over a list of users who took any of the same actions with Trump’s account.
Smith and his team went even further, seeking to acquire data on Twitter users who engaged with Trump’s tweets in the months leading up to Jan. 6, 2021. This included “all lists of Twitter users who have favorited or retweeted tweets posted by [Trump], as well as all tweets that include the username associated with [Trump’s account] (i.e. ‘mentions’ or ‘replies’).”
According to the Post, Smith’s warrant was issued to then-Twitter “along with a nondisclosure order, instructing the company not to notify Trump about the search.” Twitter initially bucked Smith’s demand, arguing that to forfeit such information to the government constituted a violation of the First Amendment. The social media giant ultimately complied with the warrant but was fined $350,000 for failing to meet the special counsel’s demands by deadline.
In the heavily redacted court filing opposing Twitter’s legal attempts to notify Trump of the search, Smith baselessly claimed that telling the former president about the unprecedented seizure “would result in a statutorily cognizable harm,” as Trump is “a sophisticated actor with an expansive platform.”
“The [Non-Disclosure Order] was granted based on facts showing that notifying the former president would result in destruction of or tampering with evidence, intimidation of potential witnesses, or other serious jeopardy to an investigation or delaying of trial,” said the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. Nearly every other word listed under “The Non-Disclosure Order” section of the filing is redacted.
Smith’s seizure of Trump’s personal social media information and those who engaged with the then-president’s posts isn’t all that surprising given the special counsel’s weaponization of the government against Trump thus far. In addition to indicting Trump, Smith filed a motion in September to institute a gag order on the 45th president, effectively stifling his First Amendment right to criticize the very government attempting to silence him. That gag order was ultimately approved by D.C. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, a left-wing Obama appointee with a track record of highly partisan court rulings.
Trump’s legal team has since appealed the order to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals and has threatened to take the matter to the U.S. Supreme Court given the “unconstitutional” nature of the mandate.
Shawn Fleetwood is a staff writer for The Federalist and a graduate of the University of Mary Washington. He previously served as a state content writer for Convention of States Action and his work has been featured in numerous outlets, including RealClearPolitics, RealClearHealth, and Conservative Review. Follow him on Twitter @ShawnFleetwood
A Chicago-area school district is attempting to boost academic achievement among black and Latino students by offering blacks-only and Latino-only classes. (Photo Illustration: Paul Bradbury/Getty Images)
Joshua Arnold is a staff writer at The Washington Stand, contributing both news and commentary from a biblical worldview.
Diversity, equity, and inclusion policies have grown so diverse that they now include policies reminiscent of the Jim Crow era. A Chicago-area school district is attempting to boost academic achievement among black and Latino students by offering blacks-only and Latino-only classes. The segregated classes are called “affinity” classes, and they aim to reduce the so-called academic achievement gap by making black and Latino students feel more comfortable in class.
As Evanston, Illinois, School Board Vice President Monique Parsons described the problem this month, “Our black students are, for lack of a better word … at the bottom, consistently still. And they are being outperformed consistently.”
Evanston could have offered extra tutoring, parent engagement programs, or similar interventions. Instead, it offered special black-only classes taught by black teachers, on the theory that black students would learn better without white peers around.
Evanston is not the only community to offer race-segregated classrooms. Woke strongholds such as Minneapolis, Seattle, San Francisco, and Oakland have been offering race-specific high school electives focusing on subjects like African-American history since at least 2015. Evanston’s innovation was to expand the concept of race-segregated classrooms to math and English classes, such as Algebra 2 and AP Calculus.
Of course, federal nondiscrimination laws forbid school districts from separating students on the basis of race, but the Evanston school district attempts to sidestep these laws by making the classes voluntary. Is that acceptable? To answer that question, consider what would have happened if Arkansas high schools in the 1950s had offered voluntary, whites-only classes to make white students feel more comfortable.
“In this example, the school system is failing to educate a portion of students. Rather than blame themselves for failing to prepare students to advance academically, this school system asks students to segregate themselves based on race,” Meg Kilgannon, Family Research Council’s senior fellow for education studies, told The Washington Stand. “The students must do it themselves so the school doesn’t violate civil rights laws that protect them from racial segregation.”
Fortunately, Evanston’s racial segregation scheme has not encountered universal participation. Approximately 200 of the high school’s 3,600 students (a little more than 5%) are attending race-segregated classes. About 25% of the student population is black, and about 20% is Latino, which comes out to about 1 in 9 black students and 1 in 7 Latino students attending the segregated classes. While not universal, these numbers still represent a sizable percentage of the school’s minority populations.
Regardless, the problem lies in the principle, not the implementation.
“We would all agree that it would be wrong if white people were looking to create spaces where everyone was white, but somehow the calculation is supposed to be different if black or brown people want to create spaces where no one is white,” Joseph Backholm, Family Research Council’s senior fellow for biblical worldview and strategic engagement, told The Washington Stand.
In August 2023, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights (informed educators in a “Dear Colleague” letter, “OCR generally will open an investigation under Title VI [a civil rights nondiscrimination law] where there are allegations that the use of a curriculum or program separates students or otherwise treats them differently based on their race” (emphasis added). That is precisely what Evanston’s program does, even if it is voluntary.
“This is a great example of how wokeness changes our moral evaluations,” Backholm explained. “In wokelandia, a person labeled an oppressor can do exactly the same thing as one of the oppressed, but it is wrong for one and right for the other. It’s very bad moral reasoning.”
Evanston has distinguished itself in recent years for its zeal to address past discrimination through present discrimination. The city became the first in America to approve reparations payments for black Americans in 2021. In 2019, the City Council passed a resolution declaring Evanston “an anti-racist city” and “acknowledg[ing] that the trauma inflicted on people of color by persistent white supremacist ideology results in psychological harm affecting educational, economic, and social outcomes; and conjures painful memories of our City’s past … ”
Such self-abasement might be understandable if the city had been the site of some notorious lynching or a KKK hotbed. Instead, Evanston was founded by Methodists—the backbone of the abolition movement—and incorporated in 1863, the year of the Emancipation Proclamation. The city’s zeal to apologize for racism seems to outpace its actual record of racial discrimination.
Countering racism infuses Evanston’s current policy of racially-segregated classes, too. “Equity guides many of the district’s decisions,” reported The Wall Street Journal, “embodied in a stated board goal: ‘Recognizing that racism is the most devastating factor contributing to the diminished achievement of students, ETHS will strive to eliminate the predictability of academic achievement based upon race.’”
Kilgannon said this “deeply troubling” goal “summarizes quite precisely the problem with ‘equity’ as a worldview-guiding policy.” She explained, “Student achievement has many factors. ‘Centering’ racism as the most devastating factor will not produce better academic outcomes and is likely to produce an even more toxic environment for children of every race.”
Indeed, students who choose to participate in the racially-segregated classes may have already bought into that woke indoctrination. By segregating themselves, they will miss out on the opportunity to learn and grow from interacting with people who are different from them. They will encounter expectations that don’t prepare them for the real world. They will accept the false premise that their skin color arbitrarily limits their potential academic success. Meanwhile, the students—white, black, and Latino—who stay behind in the mixed classes also miss out on interactions with their peers.
“In athletics, all play together. They don’t have a white team, a black team, and a Latino team,” argued Jay Sabatino, a former high school teacher, principal, and superintendent in Illinois public schools, who retired after 30 years in education. “They have one Evanston team. All contribute, and all make mistakes. If a student in class or on the basketball court feels unsafe because he made a mistake, the teacher should address that. A safe environment (physically and emotionally) is the result of an excellent school.”
“What I fear is happening is that these students are being given the impression that their skin color is the most important thing about them,” Backholm agreed, “and that they need protection from people who don’t look like them. If that’s the case, these segregated classrooms will end up giving them a much greater handicap in life than whatever math deficiencies they may have.”
“As long as the program is voluntary, I can accept it more than if it is ‘the way we do things,’” Sabatino told The Washington Stand. But he expressed concerns about the process, based upon The Wall Street Journal’s reporting that the school district was dodging media inquiries and had not published data on the program’s success over the past four years.
“Transparency in these decisions (at a district or school level) should be paramount. That Evanston would not respond to questions should throw up a red flag to the community.” Additionally, “Any district that does not look at the data critically and report out on them is not operating optimally. This isn’t an administrator’s school; it’s the community’s.”
“This example is one of the many reasons we encourage Christians to run for school board, and why we support in prayer Christians serving in schools as teachers and staff,” said Kilgannon. “Only a system devoid of God can produce this kind of situation. Christians are needed now more than ever in education of every kind.”
America’s educational establishment—such as national teachers unions and education training programs—is pushing schools to embed godless, toxic ideologies based on Marxism into curriculums, instruction, and every aspect of school life. It instructs students to classify everyone as either oppressor or oppressed, based not upon their individual behavior but upon their belonging to groups. Many of these groups, which determine someone’s moral standing according to woke ideology, are based upon unchangeable physical characteristics, such as a person’s skin color or ethnicity.
Creating special classes for certain “oppressed” groups (blacks and Latinos) to escape from the supposed “oppressors” (whites), as Evanston school district has done, is just another method for subtly advancing this radical indoctrination agenda. But will it actually help students learn better in AP calculus class? The case to make for it is not very persuasive.
Instead of imbibing untested racial ideology, there are time-tested methods for academic improvement which Evanston could try. Based on his 30 years of experience, Sabatino said, “I’ll always endorse this: Hard work and perseverance lead to success.”
This article is part one of Crisis in New York, a series examining the effects public policies have on the city’s already strained housing, law enforcement and drug services.
NEW YORK CITY — Frank Tammaro, a 94-year-old Army veteran, loved the senior center he’d called home for five years until he was told to find somewhere new to live.
“I felt horrible,” Tammaro told Fox News. “It’s no joke getting thrown out of a house.”
Months later, after two moves and an injury that put him in the hospital, the senior was living with his daughter when he learned migrants were moving into his old residence, free of charge.
A lifelong New Yorker, Tammaro says he grew up in the “slums” of the Lower East Side during the ‘30s and ’40s. “I do get upset when I see them handing out all this money and all these things, and I’m paying taxes and getting kicked out,” he said. “I’ve never got anything from the city. Or the state.”
Tammaro planned to live out his years at the Island Shores Senior Residence when notices went up in September 2022 informing residents the facility was shutting down and they needed to pack up and leave by March. Many of the 53 seniors living there, including Tammaro, ignored the letters for months until it was brought to their attention that they only had weeks to find somewhere else to live.
“It was scary,” Tammaro recalled. “Very scary. Especially when I don’t get around like I used to. I didn’t know where I was going.”
The facility’s owner, a New York City nonprofit called Homes for the Homeless, said in a statement that it intended to sell Island Shores “to focus on its core mission of serving homeless families” and the preferred buyer “would be another senior operator.”
Staff assured the upset seniors that Island Shores would likely be sold and reopened. However, Tammaro’s daughter, Barbara Annunziata, was skeptical of the claim and reached out to the building’s management for answers.
Frank Tammaro lived in Island Shores Senior Residence for five years before he was told he and all the other residents needed to move out by March 1. (Fox News/Megan Myers)
“We knew something was going to go in there,” Annunziata said. “They kept saying, ‘oh, they’re going to sell it. They’re going to sell it.’ That’s what they kept telling me.”
During the Korean War, Tammaro served stateside for two years in the U.S. Army Signal Corps fixing telephone lines and improving communication between military camps. He was one of eight veterans who lived in Island Shores before it shut down.
“I was not in combat,” Tammaro said. “But these boys that went over and went into combat — and now they’re all settled in there with their lives and everything else — and they’re all disrupted, it isn’t fair.”
When he was evicted from Island Shores, the 94-year-old had difficulty finding a new assisted living facility that suited his needs.
“I was pretty slow getting out,” Tammaro said. “I figured they were gonna have my luggage on the curb.”
The 94-year-old veteran was living with his daughter just a few minutes from Island Shores when he learned the senior center was being converted into a temporary shelter for migrants. (Fox News/Teny Sahakian/Megan Myers )
Shortly after moving to another senior residence, Tammaro had a fall that landed him in the hospital. He told his daughter he didn’t want to return to the new facility.
“He hated it there,” Annunziata said. “And for somebody his age, why should he live the rest of his life someplace he didn’t like?”
In the end, Annunziata moved her father into her home in Midland Beach, New York, where she cares for him around the clock.
“I can’t leave him home alone. … I raised my kids already. They’re all grown up,” she said. “I mean, he’s a piece of cake, but still he’s 94 years old.”
In August, Tammaro found out along with the rest of the community that Homes for the Homeless had made an arrangement with city hall to move migrants into Island Shores.
The facility was one of 200 buildings converted into emergency shelters to house some of the 130,000 migrants that landed in New York City after crossing the southern border since October 2022. The influx of asylum seekers has stretched the city’s budget and many of its services to their limits, with Mayor Eric Adams saying they are in “a desperate environment” during his trip to Mexico in October. And with 10,000 new refugees entering the city each month, he said there is “no end” in sight.
In September, 15 asylum-seeking families moved into the Island Shores. As the news spread, hundreds of protesters gathered outside the facility, and 10 people were arrested for trying to block a bus with migrants from reaching the building, according to law enforcement.
Tammaro’s daughter, Barbara Annunziata, is still angry that her father was kicked out of his home and said the situation is “not fair to anybody.” (Fox News/Teny Sahakian/Megan Myers)
“I don’t understand it at all. It’s not fair to anybody,” Annunziata said. “These migrants, they’re getting everything. They’re getting everything and I can’t get nothing for [Tammaro]. It angers me.”
She said she’s struggled to get help for her father. His insurance rejected any long-term request for care.
“I can’t even get him an aide. I only could get him an aide for 30 days and then they cancel it,” Annunziata told Fox News. “So what, he has to pay for it then?”
“Meanwhile, [migrants] get everything. And he’s not entitled to anything,” she added
After the “horrible experience,” Tammaro has settled in with his daughter, only a few minutes away from his old home, which is now called the Midland Beach Migrant Center.
“I felt bitter at the beginning,” Tammaro told Fox News. “But I’m satisfied where I am now.”
“I was satisfied where I was until they threw me out,” he added. “But making the best of a bad situation, that’s what we’re doing.”
Annunziata remains angry about how her father was treated.
“They’re worried about the migrants more than they’re worried about the U.S. citizens,” she said.
Homes for the Homeless declined to comment.
Megan Myers is an associate producer/writer with Fox News Digital Originals.
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Democrats and Biden are in a bit of a panic as more Black votes are shifting to Trump, according to the latest polls. Some, because of Biden’s mental deterioration and his age, but also because of how badly Biden has handled his job with the economy, crime, foreign affairs, and the border. One mantra expressed by some in the black community is “the more they Indict, the more we unite,” which could also explain their shift toward Trump.
The Left labeled Larry Elder “the Black face of white supremacy. but how will they label whole communities, that have left the Democrat party?
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.
Even as social media addiction accelerated under Covid lockdowns, Meta jettisoned internal alarms about mental health dangers. Following Frances Haugen’s 2021 whistleblower testimony, attorneys general from 42 states filed consumer protection lawsuits against Meta.
The “Facebook Files,” a Wall Street Journal investigation based on Meta’s internal documents, showed that the social media company “ignored their own studies revealing Instagram’s photo-sharing and editing app harms girls.” Capitalizing on the need to connect during lockdown, Meta helped propel young women into gender facilities.
When you set up a social media profile, you begin a process of virtualized identity that makes you a target for ad campaigns. Bots track people exploring “gender issues.” As Michelle Santiago Cortés’ observed, “Our algorithmically orchestrated encounters with people … on social media start to feel preordained, as if the fact that the algorithm put something on our path Means Something™.” Meta hid the many adverse effects — including anxiety and body-image dysmorphia — tied to compulsive online behavior such as infinite scrolling.
The “Facebook Files” disclosed built-in Instagram features that made it more harmful than similar youth-targeting apps. In particular, according to internal documents, “Social comparison is worse on Instagram.” Social comparisons on visual platforms, such as Instagram, resemble past research on body image. That research showed that young girls’ body image worsened when they compared themselves to images of cover girls.
The Self as an Object to Edit
What’s worse now is that, according to JAMA Plastic Facial Surgery, selfies and photo editing detach users from their own bodies, “making us lose touch with reality.” A dangerous object orientation toward the body occurs.
Creativity and intelligence cannot withstand making comparisons and spiraling into envy. Even a sophisticated awareness of the objectifying effect of social media will not protect young people from it. A study of youth reactions to their own untouched versus filtered photos showed that their resulting critical awareness is insufficient to avoid social comparisons: “Although the majority of the teens said they actually preferred their original, unretouched photos, every single one chose to digitally alter their image for social media.”
Cell phone users occasionally walk into traffic. Why wouldn’t preoccupation with an unfolding digital presentation lend to disembodied living in your head and ensuing self-estrangement?
The face app visually re-aligns the facial contour, such as the jawline, to achieve a more masculine appearance. While the initial experience is euphoric, the emotional high is not lasting. One Reddit thread makes this clear: “So I just got face app to see what the hype was all about. And let me just say its [sic] pretty awesome, but as soon as I finished one picture I was washed over with so much dysphoria and just felt sad that that wasn’t me.”
Depersonalization Through Photo Editing
Meta relies on AI to filter content. This includes machine learning and rule-based character pattern-matching algorithms, including liking and contextual cues to identify and capitalize on curiosity about gender issues. The best AI in the world cannot filter out image comparisons that undermine an individual’s mood and self-esteem. This is especially true with face apps, which invite the user to dwell in a detached way on her own physical appearance. Moreover, these apps allow users to swap in a dramatically altered appearance of themselves as the opposite sex.
It’s easy to recognize the excessive focus on body image in those who begin to experience appearance incongruence — the feeling that one’s actual appearance does not match one’s true appearance. If it overshadows real life, the “trans alter,” as Eliza Mondegreen calls the virtual performance of self, becomes discordant with embodied existence. In this context, photo editing can take on outsized significance. Psychologists note that “photo-editing may exacerbate disordered body image in vulnerable individuals.” According to its own science, Meta knew its Instagram photo-sharing app “was addictive and worsened body image issues for some teen girls.”
The use of social media, especially Instagram, is as addictive as drug use. Instagram incorporates short, exciting videos to trigger infinite scrolling. “Meta did not disclose that its algorithms were designed to capitalize on young users’ dopamine responses and create an addictive cycle of engagement,” according to a report. The more preoccupied a person becomes, the more likely she is to experience mental health issues such as dissociation.
Transgenderism, the New Aspiration
Even a brief amount of time spent filtering photos leads to an increase in girls’ anxiety, according to researchers. This is because Instagram and other platforms introduce an emotional feedback loop, in which waves of dysphoria are punctuated by spikes of euphoria. In the online world, where bots are ubiquitous, every female who doesn’t accept her sex has access to a virtual trans surgeon. Social media feeds a dynamic of nonstop clicking for more hits of dopamine.
Although they are aware of digital distortion online, teens looking at face apps see plastic surgery results and aspire to physically embody their own retouched images. Dr. Helen Egger, a child psychiatrist, notes that “it’s a dopamine hit, it’s like ‘woah I’m popular, I like this feeling, I want to do it again,’ it can feed on itself.” Social affirmation of face swaps, within a cycle of addictive feedback loops, validates the urgent demand for medical intervention.
The trouble for social media users involves its capacity not only to reflect reality but to project a desired or imagined reality. Sociologist Charles Cooley coined a theory of the looking-glass self to explain how we develop our self-concept through interaction, especially when noticing how we’re perceived by others. In this way, social media is particularly addictive in promising to show us to ourselves in more complete ways than even a mirror can.
At the same time, social media is not a mirror held up to reality at all. It’s an unreal screen for public consumption that spreads acceptance of transgender surgeries. Social media in this sense is not the playful leisure activity it appears to be. Staring into the mirror-like cell phone screen can deepen an out-of-body experience and a preoccupation with one’s sex.
A Trans ‘Rite of Passage’
For girls who deny their sex, Instagram’s face-swapping filters have been attributed to “finally ‘cracking their egg’ — a rite of passage” when a trans identity is apparently firmly established in the mind as a visually concrete identity: “The Snapchat girl filter was the final straw in dropping a decade’s worth of repression,” said Josie, an early-30s man from Cincinnati who claims to be a woman. “[I] saw something that looked more ‘me’ than anything in a mirror, and I couldn’t go back.”
In the past, the young were tricked into altering their aspirational goals by mimicking airbrushed models. Today, teens fixate on their own filtered image and dream about cosmetic surgery.
In May, an advisory from the U.S. surgeon general warned of social media’s negative effect on anxiety and body-image disorders. In this Meta face-changing ecology, every confused girl on Instagram can instantly see a tougher image of herself, able to withstand the worries that assail her. Something, she feels, has suddenly jelled.
Dr. Faith Kuzma is a retired Assistant Professor of English. Kuzma has written for Salvo, The Canadian Patriot, American Spectator, Psych Reg, and Mercator Net, among others.
Terrorist sympathizers are out in full force spreading fake news about Israel’s treatment of its prisoners, as the country executes a swap with Hamas for hostages taken by the terrorist group on Oct. 7. Here are four of the most outrageous lies circulating on social media.
1. Israel Is ‘Only Country That Keeps Children As Prisoners’
This week, American supermodel Gigi Hadid shared a post to her more than 79 million Instagram followers condemning Israel as “the only country in the world that keeps children as prisoners of war.” The post, which has been deleted, claimed Palestinian terrorist Ahmed Mansara was “abducted” by Israeli officials at 12 years old and “has endured solitary confinement despite his severe health condition.”
According to the New York Post, Mansara went on a “stabbing rampage” in East Jerusalem with his 15-year-old cousin in 2015 that left a 20-year-old security guard and a 13-year-old boy with critical injuries. Mansara was convicted of two counts of attempted murder after his cousin was killed in the attack by a police officer.
“He initially received a sentence of 12 years in prison, which was later reduced” to nine and a half years, the Post reported. “During his incarceration, Mansara has repeatedly attempted to harm himself and others. He has been in and out of solitary confinement, drawing the ire of Amnesty International, a nongovernmental human rights advocacy group.”
Terrorist sympathizing aside, Hadid’s post claiming Israel is “the only country in the world that keeps children as prisoners of war” is fake news on its face. Roughly 30 children — some of whom still remain in captivity nearly two months later — were taken hostage by Hamas, after the terrorist group slaughtered Israeli women and children in the Oct. 7 massacre which killed at least 1,200.
Unsurprisingly, child hostages held by Hamas have been subject to physical and emotional abuse. A 12-year-old was even reportedly placed in solitary confinement for more than two weeks.
🚨 Hamas forced hostages to watch videos of the 7/10 atrocities.
This is Eitan (13), He spent 51 as a hostage of Hamas. terrorists killed his father in front of him and took him to Gaza.
While held hostage, Hamas forced him to view videos of the 7/10 Atrocities.
2. Israel at Fault for Injuries Sustained by Suicide Bomb
In another episode of terrorist-sympathizing disinformation, anti-Israel pundits spread false narratives online about Israa Jaabis, who was released from Israeli custody in a prisoner swap on Monday. They claimed Jaabis’s disfigured condition was a result of Israeli brutality after nearly a decade of incarceration.
“For those of you who don’t know who Israa is, this is a photo before and after what the [Israel Defense Forces] has done to her,”wrote one user on X. The side-by-side images show Jaabis with a permanently scarred face from severe burns. But the IDF didn’t do that to her; she did it to herself in 2015 when she attempted to kill scores of civilians by detonating a suicide bomb.
3. Hamas Held Hostages in ‘Reasonable Conditions’
Dominic Waghorn, the international affairs editor for Sky News, wrote on X that hostages held by Hamas were “held in reasonable conditions.”
“Hamas leader Yehya Sinwar met with the Israeli hostages a day after they were taken in tunnels under Gaza and told them they would not be harmed and would be returned as part of a hostage deal,” Waghorn wrote. “Undermines the Israeli Hamas = ISIS storyline.”
Testimony from released prisoners, however, has revealed “horrors” endured by those held captive. Hostages were reportedly forced to use plastic chairs for beds and were given irregular meals. One 84-year-old hostage was even hospitalized in critical condition upon being released.
4. Israeli Hostage Looks ‘Thankful’ For Captivity
Maree Campbell, who claims in her bio on X to be an international relations analyst and “journalist,” contended that a released Israeli hostage looked appreciative to her captors.
“I’m not a facial expression expert,” Campbell professed on X, “but judging by the look in her eyes and the expression on her face, I’d say that is a look of appreciation and thanks.”
“Might it be that she is saying thanks for being treated unexpectedly well whilst in captivity?” Campbell asked.
A community note on the platform clarifies that the hostage in the photo, Mia Regev, was shot by Palestinian terrorists before her abduction.
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.
Israel confirms release of 5th hostage group by Hamas as final day of cease-fire nears
Israel confirmed a list of 50 female Palestinian prisoners it is willing to release in exchange for 20 hostages held by Hamas in Gaza over the next two days. Israel and Hamas agreed to a two-day extension to their cease-fire. Meanwhile, Secretary of State Tony Blinken is set to return to the Middle East to negotiate the flow of aid into Gaza.
Israel and Hamas entered the first day of a two-day extension to their cease-fire agreement on Tuesday as Israel continues to stay its hand in exchange for hostages.
Israel secured the release of at least 69 hostages since the cease-fire began on Friday, exchanging them for 150 Palestinian criminals held in Israeli prisons
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Israel-Hamas war: IDF announces custody of 12 newly-released hostages
Members of the Red Cross prepare to transport hostages released by Hamas in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip on November 28, 2023. (Photo by AFP via Getty Images)
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) announced on Tuesday night that the 12 newly-released hostages are currently inside Israeli territory.
In a statement, the IDF said that their special forces division is “currently with the 12 released hostages.”
“After an initial medical assessment, the released hostages will continue to be accompanied by IDF soldiers as they make their way to Israeli hospitals, where they will be reunited with their families,” the press release added. “The Israel Defense Forces salutes and embraces the released hostages upon their return home.”
The Israeli military said that they remain determined to bring home all of the hostages that were kidnapped by Hamas from Israel.
“The IDF, together with the entire Israeli security establishment, will continue to operate to bring home all the hostages,” the press release continued. “The IDF Spokesperson reiterates the importance of demonstrating patience and sensitivity during this time out of respect for the released hostages and their families.”
Israel-Hamas war: Mother of hostage says she is concerned for son but ‘thrilled’ at captive releases
The mother of a hostage who was taken captive by Hamas terrorists says that she is overjoyed to see hostages being released during the Israel-Hamas cease-fire.
Rachel Goldberg, whose son Hersh Goldberg-Polin was kidnapped on October 7, appeared on “America Reports” Tuesday to talk about the latest developments with the cease-fire between Israel and Hamas.
“I am actually thrilled with the how the progression of these hostages being returned…I just saw that a dear friend of ours, wife and daughter, were released tonight,” Goldberg explained. “I can’t describe how happy these last few nights of seeing these children going back to their families [make me].”
The mother said that while she feels hopeful, she also remains concerned for her son. Goldberg-Polin was reportedly injured by terrorists and lost a limb.
“I worry about my son, who I know was in critical condition…and will now permanently live the rest of his life without a limb,” she explained. “I’m concerned for his health. I don’t know if he’s getting the antibiotics that he needs. I’m hoping that he got the surgery that he needed.”
“But I am thrilled with the releases of all of these hostages,” Goldberg added.
Israel-Hamas war: Iranian drone flies close to USS Eisenhower in Persian Gulf
U.S. maritime posture in Middle East as of November 28, 2023.
A U.S. official told Fox News that an Iranian drone flew near a U.S. aircraft carrier in the Middle East on Tuesday.
The drone allegedly flew near the USS Eisenhower in the Persian Gulf. The ship was in international waters at the time.
The Iranian drone reportedly ignored multiple warnings, according to the U.S. official. The U.S. military is considering the incident unsafe and unprofessional on Iran’s part.
Fox News Digital’s Liz Friden contributed to this report.
Jewish students at Indiana University denounce antisemitism on campus
Entrance sign into campus at Indiana University in Bloomington Indiana. (Photo by: Don & Melinda Crawford/Education Images/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
Jewish student organizations at Indiana University (IU) issued a statement Tuesday denouncing antisemitism on their campus amid the Israel-Hamas war
IU student Ethan Fine posted the statement on X, in response to allegedly antisemitic remarks made by IU’s student government president.
“The Jewish groups who signed onto the letter represent the vast majority of the estimated 4,500 Jewish students at IU,” Fine wrote on X. “After a meeting with the student body president, it was clear to us that she is no longer fit to serve.”
“We are calling on [the student body president] to resign and for the members of her executive branch to be replaced,” Fine added. “We stand together. We stand united against antisemitism.”
Israel-Hamas war: Senator Chuck Schumer to give speech about antisemitism tomorrow
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) speaks during a news conference following a closed-door lunch meeting with Senate Democrats at the U.S. Capitol November 28, 2023 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
Senator Chuck Schumer announced on Tuesday that he will be making a “major address” about antisemitism on Wednesday, as the Israel-Hamas war continues.
Schumer, who serves as the Majority Leader of the U.S. Senator, called hatred against Jews “a crisis” in the United States.
“Antisemitism is a crisis in the country,” Schumer wrote on X. “As the highest-ranking Jewish elected official, I feel compelled to speak out about it.”
“I’ll be giving a major address on it tomorrow,” the senator added.
The U.S. military on Tuesday delivered its first of three rounds of humanitarian aid intended for the people of Gaza, according to the Pentagon.
Pentagon press secretary Brig. Gen. Ryder told reporters that the U.S. airlifted 24.5 metric tons of U.N. humanitarian supplies to provide “vitally needed medical supplies, warm clothing, and food and nutrition assistance to the people of Gaza.”
USAID requested that the supplies be transported via a US Air Force C-17 cargo plane, Ryder said. The aircraft arrived earlier Tuesday in Egypt where it was to be transported into Gaza and distributed by U.N. agencies.
Israel-Hamas war: Senator Thom Tillis recalls watching ‘horrific’ video of Hamas attack
Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) arrives to the U.S. Capitol Building on September 26, 2023 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC) announced on X that he and other Senators watched graphic footage related to Hamas’ terrorist attacks on Tuesday.
“Today, my Senate colleagues and I watched footage of the devastation caused by Hamas’ horrific terrorist attack against Israel,” Tillis wrote on X. “What we saw was not for the not for the faint-hearted. “
The North Carolina Republican then said that Hamas was “pure evil and must be destroyed.”
“Hamas has made it clear that they will stop at nothing to eliminate Israel and its people,” the senator added. “As Israel’s longtime ally and friend, we must do everything we can to support its efforts to defend itself and destroy Hamas.”
DOD says US Navy, Israeli-owned ship not intended target of Houthi missiles
In an undated photo released by Zodiac Maritime, the tanker Central Park is seen. Attackers seized the tanker linked to Israel off the coast of Aden, Yemen, on Sunday, Nov. 26, 2023, authorities said. (Zodiac Maritime via AP)
The Pentagon said Tuesday that the USS Mason and Central Park, an Israeli-owned tanker, were not the intended target of Houthi missiles that fired from Yemen over the weekend.
The missiles came after five armed assailants attempted to seize the MV Central Park, an Israeli-owned tanker operated by Zodiac Maritime, in the Gulf of Aden on Sunday. The vessel sent out a distress call and forces from the USS Mason, an American destroyer, responded.
The five assailants attempted to flee in their small boats, but the U.S. forces pursued them and fired warning shots, resulting in their eventual surrender, according to Pentagon press secretary Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder.
Israel-Hamas war: 4-year-old hostage Avigail Idan discharged from hospital
Avigail Idan was held in captivity by Hamas.
Avigail Idan, the 4-year-old girl who was released by Hamas captors on Sunday evening, was discharged from Schneider Children’s Medical Center on Tuesday.
“Avigail aged 4, was discharged from hospital earlier today,” Schneider Children’s Medical Center announced in a statement. “The staff at Schneider Children’s Medical Center were excited alongside her at this achievement.”
“Avigail was discharged today following treatment from the moment of her return to Israel on Sunday, November 26, 2023, in the specially assigned department at Schneider Children’s Medical Center,” the statement continued.
The hospital said that Idan was treated by “psychosocial” providers after being held in captivity for nearly two months. Her parents were killed by Hamas terrorists on October 7 before she was kidnapped.
“Since her arrival, the medical and psychosocial team at Schneider accorded her all-embracing medical and emotional care,” the press release added.
US Dept of Education opens investigation of Harvard over antisemitism on campus
Supporters of Palestine gather at Harvard University at a rally in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on Oct. 14, 2023. (JOSEPH PREZIOSO/AFP via Getty Images)
The U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) is opening an investigation into Harvard University following antisemitism on campus in the wake of the Israel-Hamas war, Fox News has learned.
In a letter obtained by Fox News Digital dated Tuesday, Kristi R. Harris, Chief Attorney for the OCR Boston Office said that the OCR will be opening an investigation into whether Harvard “failed to respond to alleged harassment of students based on their national origin (shared Jewish ancestry and/or Israeli) in a manner consistent with the requirements of Title VI.”
“Please note that opening the complaint for investigation in no way implies that OCR has made a determination on the merits of the complaint. During the investigation, OCR is a neutral factfinder, collecting and analyzing relevant evidence from you, the University, and other sources, as appropriate,” the letter says.
Israeli doctor gives update on 84-year-old hostage Elma Avraham’s condition: ‘She is conscious’
A Red Cross vehicle carrying newly released hostages drives towards the Rafah border point with Egypt, in the southern Gaza Strip on November 28, 2023. (Photo by MOHAMMED ABED/AFP via Getty Images)
An Israeli doctor says that 84-year-old hostage Elma Avraham is in better condition after she was rushed to a hospital upon being released from Hamas.
Avraham “suffered from many underlying illnesses and received medication essential to her life on a regular basis before she was kidnapped,” according to Soroka Medical Center director Moti Klein.
“Elma was evacuated in a very difficult condition when all vitals, all her vital signs, level of consciousness, pulse, blood pressure, blood, body temperature and blood sugar were extremely, extremely low,” Klein explained. “This is the reason for the definition of immediate danger to her life.”
Klein added that her condition was “most likely caused by not receiving those essential medications.” He reported that upon arrival, she was “unconscious in a very difficult situation while she was breathing and receiving support for her collapsed buddy system.”
“I am happy to inform that in the last few hours there has been improvement in her condition,” the doctor continued. “She is conscious, she is breathing on her own and does not need the same level of support she needed upon arrival. She was responding well to the treatment given to her and is receiving and still receiving.”
Hamas’ youngest hostage, 10-month-old Kfir Bibas, has been handed over to another terrorist group in Gaza along with his family, according to the IDF, and the news is leaving a distraught relative to plead for her loved ones’ safe return.
“I can’t say we are surprised about the level of cruelty and inhumane behavior from Hamas in this deal, in this cease-fire,” Yifat Zailer, cousin of Kfir’s mother Shiri, told “FOX & Friends” on Tuesday.
“They signed an agreement to release all women and children. Tomorrow is the last day supposedly of this cease-fire, of this agreement as it was signed. And there is still no news about my family, if they’ll be returned or not.”
10 Israelis, 2 others held by Hamas are freed, IDF says
10 Israelis, 2 others held by Hamas are freed, IDF says
The International Red Cross has taken custody of 12 hostages released by Hamas on Tuesday, Israel says.
Israeli Defense Forces say 10 of the hostages are Israeli citizens and two more are foreigners. It did not clarify the nationality of the non-israelis, however.
The announcement marks the 5th group of hostages to be released by Hamas since Israel agreed to a cease-fire with the terrorist group on Friday. The cease-fire is expected to continue through Wednesday.
“A short while ago, Red Cross representatives transferred the 12 hostages to Egypt,” the IDF said in a statement. “The released hostages’ convoy is currently making its way through Egypt to the meeting point with our soldiers at Kerem Shalom. Security representatives will verify the identity of the released hostages at the meeting point. The families of the hostages are being updated by IDF representatives with the latest available information.”
The Israeli hostages released Tuesday have been identified as Ditza Heiman, 84; Tamar Metzger, 78; Ada Sagi, 75; Merav Tal, 53; Rimon Kirsht, 36; Ofelia Roitman, 77; Gabriela Leimberg, 59; Mia Leimberg 17;.Noralin Agojo Babadilla, 60 and Clara Marman, 62.
Jewish groups sue University of California over ‘unchecked spread’ of antisemitism
The Sather Tower on the University of California, Berkeley campus in Berkeley, California, U.S., on Friday, June 4, 2021. (David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
A coalition of Jewish groups filed a lawsuit agains the University of California on Tuesday, alleging the institution is allowing the “unchecked spread” of antismeitism across its campuses.
The Brandeis Center and Jewish Americans for Fairness in Education, filed the lawsuit in California early Tuesday. The lawsuit comes as antisemitic incidents have skyrocketed across the country and the globe, especially on college campuses.
The lawsuit points to 23 student groups at UC Berkeley Law School that require new members of guest speakers to disavow Israel, according to Politico.
“Conditioning a Jew’s ability to participate in a student group on his or her renunciation of a core component of Jewish identity is no less pernicious than demanding the renunciation of some other core element of a student’s identity — whether based on race, ethnicity, gender, or sexual identity,” the lawsuit says. “No such imposition is required — or would be remotely tolerated — of other students.”
Lawmakers on Capitol Hill are facing a closing window to approve new funding for Israel and Ukaine as the two countries continue their war efforts.
President Biden’s administration has called on Congress to fund both Israel and Ukraine in a single bill, but many Republicans oppose such an idea. While Republicans overwhelmingly support funding for Israel’s war agaisnt Hamas, the party’s opposition to funding for Ukraine’s military has slowly grown since Russia’s invasion.
UN ‘downplayed’ Hamas violence to perpetuate image of Israel as ‘the aggressor’: Israeli professor
UN ‘downplayed’ Hamas violence to perpetuate image of Israel as ‘the aggressor’: Israeli professor
Israel is attempting to get the United Nations to recognize and condemn Hamas’ sexual crimes against Israeli women and girls, allegedly perpetrated during the Hamas-led terror attack on Oct. 7.
During a meeting at the U.N. in Geneva on Monday, Israeli officials attempted to raise awareness of the alleged sexual violence against women and urged the international body – which often condemns global injustices and human rights violations – not to keep quiet about the issue.
Ruth Halperin-Kaddari, an associate professor at the Bar-Ilan University, who spoke at the event, told Reuters that the U.N. rights bodies have “downplayed” and “minimized” sexual violence to perpetuate Israel as “the aggressor” in the current conflict.
“Among the war crimes and the crimes against humanity that Hamas committed on October 7th were also sexual crimes, sexual assaults, rapes, that were part, that were a systematic part of their attack, of the massacre and we are expecting a strong condemnation,” she said. “We expected recognition of that. We expected a clear and loud statement that says that there is no justification for using the bodies of women as a weapon of war. None of this came until now.”
The professor said she was “deeply concerned, because of the complete lack of acknowledgment, of recognition by United Nations bodies and entities and by the international human rights world, lack of recognition that indeed Hamas committed horrific sexual crimes against women, against women and girls, on October 7th in Israel.”
Israeli hostage briefly escaped Hamas before locals handed him to terrorists
Israeli hostage briefly escaped Hamas before locals handed him to terrorists
One of the recently released Hamas hostages had previously escaped imprisonment and survived for days in the rubble of Gaza before locals recaptured him, according to a report.
“He tried getting to the border. But he didn’t have the capacity to understand where he was or where he needed to go, so he couldn’t navigate through the open field,” Ron Krivoi’s aunt, who spoke about his struggle during an appearance on KAN’s Reshet Bet radio on Monday morning.
Russian-Israeli Krivoi departed Gaza as part of the third group released as part of a cease-fire agreement between Israel and Hamas brokered through Qatar. Both parties agreed Tuesday to extend the cease-fire by two days, conditional on the release of more hostages.
The 25-year-old was working at the Supernova festival on Oct. 7 as a sound technician when Hamas terrorists attacked, according to The Times of Israel. Russian President Vladimir Putin had personally requested Hamas include Krivoi in the second wave of released hostages as part of a separate deal.
Krivoi’s aunt claimed that he had not remained imprisoned the entire time, having briefly escaped and survived for four days in the ruins of the Gaza Strip, The Jerusalem Post reported.
She explained that Hamas had kept him in a residential building during his imprisonment, but then the Israel Defense Force’s bombing had collapsed part of the building and allowed him to escape.
The exchange comes following a tumultuous morning in which both Israel and Hamas accused one another of breaching the cease-fire agreement. Multiple Israeli soldiers were lightly injured when three separate explosions went off in northern Gaza.
Israel and Hamas agreed to extend the cease-fire through Wednesday.
Fox News foreign correspondent Trey Yingst explained Israel’s claim that Hamas violated the temporary cease-fire agreement with three explosions in Northern Gaza that injured a number of IDF troops on Tuesday.
Both Israel and Hamas accused one another of breaching the cease-fire, which has so far held for five days. Israel says the three explosions occurred in close proximitty to IDF soldiers, lightly injuring a number of them.
Both parties say the other instigated a fire-fight that took place at the site of one of the detonations. Neither party has indicated plans to call off the cease-fire, however.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., accused the Biden administration of enabling “gross human rights violations” in Gaza by sending military aid to Israel as it seeks to eradicate Hamas.
The progressive lawmaker held a tele-town hall on Monday evening where she fielded multiple questions on the Middle Eastern conflict, including a constituent who said the U.S. should “just defund Israel and send funding and aid to Gaza.”
She also encouraged pro-Palestinian activists to keep putting pressure on Democratic lawmakers to support a cease-fire, even as heightened tensions around the issue have led to instances of vandalism and threatening behavior.
“Forces that are recipients of U.S. military aid cannot be engaging in gross human rights violations,” Ocasio-Cortez said, citing a set of statutes known as the Leahy law. “And if they are engaged in gross human rights violations, then that aid must be either pulled, reconsidered, conditioned, etc.”
The Leahy law stops the government “from using funds for assistance to units of foreign security forces where there is credible information implicating that unit in the commission of gross violations of human rights,” according to the State Department.
“What we are witnessing is the gross violation of human rights in Gaza, and that is being done with U.S. military assistance,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “I don’t think that the American people want to see our public resources going to finance gross human rights violations.”
Israel urges UN to highlight Hamas’ sexual crimes against women on Oct. 7
Israeli diplomats held a meeting at the United Nations in Geneva calling attention to the sexual violence committeed by Hamas during its Oct. 7 massacre in Israel on Tuesday.
Israel has widely documented rape, murder, and other crimes against women committed by Hamas during the attack. While the U.N. has already condmened the Oct. 7 massacre, experts who spoke at Israel’s Tuesday event say U.N. rights bodies “downplayed” and “minimised” the sexual violence.
“We expected a clear and loud statement that says that there is no justification for using the bodies of women as a weapon of war. None of this came up until now,” said Ruth Halperin-Kaddari, an Associate Professor at the Bar-Ilan University. “It turns around the conventional framing of viewing Israel as the aggressor, and Palestinians as the ultimate victim.”
Meanwhile, the U.N. Human rights office says it has not been granted access to visit Israel to investigate the crimes committed on Oct. 7.
“The Office is attempting to carry out remote monitoring of these and other human rights violations reported in Israel and the OPT (Occupied Palestinian Territories). Lack of direct access to Israel and the OPT has hampered the work,” U.N. spokeswoman Ravina Shamdasani told Reuters. “We have repeatedly stressed the need for rigorous investigations and accountability for all serious breaches of international human rights and humanitarian law, irrespective of the identity of the alleged perpetrators,” she added.
Top Israeli commander says IDF is ‘prepared’ to continue war on Hamas after cease-fire
Top Israeli commander says IDF is ‘prepared’ to continue war on Hamas after cease-fire
A top Israeli military official delivered an update on the conflict with Hamas and the progress in rescuing hostages in Gaza on Tuesday.
Chief of the General Staff, LTG Herzi Halevi says Hamas has so far released 76 hostages. Herzi said Israel will not be satisfied untill every hostage has returned home, however.
“Each one who is released brings great relief, but there is no ounce of relief in the fact that more remain. We will operate to bring them all back,” Herzi said.
“The IDF is prepared to continue fighting. We are using the days of the pause as part of the framework to learn, strengthen our readiness and approve future operational plans,” he added.
Israel’s cease-fire agreement with Hamas began Friday, and the groups agreed on a two-day extension on Monday. It is unclear whether Israel will agree to further extensions later this week.
Herzi went on to assure Israeli citizens that there will be thorough investigations into how the IDF and Israel’s intelligence community failed to prevent Hamas’ Oct. 7 massacre.
NYC chancellor denies students who stormed halls demanding Jewish teacher’s ouster are ‘radical’
NYC chancellor denies students who stormed halls demanding Jewish teacher’s ouster are ‘radical’
New York City Schools Chancellor David Banks on Monday staunchly denied allegations that the approximately 400 students who swarmed the halls of Hillcrest High School last week demanding the ouster of a Jewish teacher who supports Israel had been in any way “radicalized.”
“This is a really good school with wonderful young people. And I’m so taken aback by this notion that these kids are terrorists … or radicalized. Even that kind of language is just terrible, and it’s irresponsible,” Banks said at a press conference, confirming that some students had been suspended or faced disciplinary action after the incident. Viral video showed students acting out after the teacher’s social media profile showed she attended an off-campus rally in support of Israel.
Citing privacy and confidentiality laws, Banks declined to say how many students were disciplined or provide more details but said he did not suspend all the hundreds in the hallway.
On November 20, a teacher at Hillcrest High School “was targeted based on her support for Israel expressed in a permissible way outside of school hours and her Jewish identity,” Banks said, outlining how the “safety of multiple of our staff and students were put at risk after approximately 400 students acted disruptively during class changing time, roving the school and calling for the removal of a Jewish educator.” Officials said the Jewish teacher was on a different floor at the time the crowd of students stormed the halls.
Israel has identified 300 Palestinian prisoners who it says are elligible to be released under the current cease-fire exchange agreement with Hamas. Roughly 80% of those prisoners are listed only as “detained,” meaning they have not faced formal charges, according to a report from CNN.
So far, Hamas has released 69 hostages from Gaza and Israel has in turn released 150 Palestinian prisoners. Of those prisoners, 98 were being detained without charges, according to CNN.
Israel says cease-fire terms violated by 3 detonations, gunfire; IDF soldiers injured
Israel accuses Hamas of breaching cease-fire following after explosions, gunfire in northern Gaza
Israeli Defense Forces accused Hamas violating the cease-fire agreement after a trio of explosions and an exchange of gunfire in northern Gaza on Tuesday.
The IDF says the three explosives were detonated in close proximity to Israeli troops, causing some light injuries. While Israel stated that the explosives violated the cease-fire, it did not indicate plans to withdraw from the deal as of early Tuesday morning.
“Over the last hour, three explosive devices were detonated adjacent to IDF troops in two different locations in the northern Gaza Strip, violating the framework of the operational pause. In one of the locations, terrorists also opened fire at the troops, who responded with fire,” the IDF said in a statement.
“A number of soldiers were lightly injured during the incidents,” the statement continued. “In both incidents, the troops were located in positions as per the framework of the operational pause.”
Hamas released a statement saying it remains committed to the terms of the cease-fire, and it in turn accused Israel of violations.
“As a result of a clear violation by the enemy of the truce agreement in the northern Gaza Strip today, field friction occurred and our mujahideen dealt with this violation. We are committed to the truce as long as the enemy has committed to it, and we call on the mediators to pressure the occupation to adhere to all the terms of the truce on the ground and in the air,” Hamas’ Al-Qassam Brigades wrote in a statement.
Large plumes of smoke could be seen rising over the Gaza skyline on Tuesday, but Israel says they are not the result of airstrikes or any other offensive action.
IDF spokesman Peter Lerner joined Fox News on Tuesday to discuss the issue. He said ISrael has yet to determine a cause for the pillars of smoke. Israel and Hamas are in the first day of their newly-extended cease-fire, with Hamas expected to release 10 additional Israeli hostages later in the day.
Hamas officials accused Israel of a “clear violation” of the cease-fire agreement, claiming an Israeli aristrike occurred.
Mother of Vermont shooting victim says son ‘may have to be in a wheelchair’
The mother of one of the three Palestinian students shot in Vermont over the weekend says her son has a bullet lodged in his spine and doctors overseeing his recovery aren’t sure if he will be able to walk again, according to a report.
Elizabeth Price, whose 20-year-old son Hisham Awartani attends Brown University, told ABC News, “I’m shaking. I’m hollow inside. I’m aching to be with my son” following the incident that happened Saturday night in Burlington.
“He’s lying immobilized in a bed, but he had very high spirits in the beginning. And I think now it’s beginning to sink into him the extent of — the enormity of — the challenge that faces him,” Price reportedly said. “He may have to be in a wheelchair. … I believe that he’ll be able to walk, but his life has been taken away from him as it is, and he’s gonna have to recreate this new life.”
“Justice to me means making sure that the man who shot my son is behind bars,” Price also told ABC News. “Justice to me is making sure that crimes like this don’t happen again. Justice to me is also about my son finding a way to rebuild his life.”
Attorney General Merrick Garland on Monday morning said that federal authorities are probing whether the shooting was a hate crime.
Israeli journalists are blasting tech billionaire Elon Musk’s visit to Israel this week as the X owner is facing accusations of antisemitism.
On Monday, Musk met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyhu, Israeli President Isaac Herzog as well as the families of Israeli hostages taken by Hamas. He also toured an Israeli kibbutz where civilians were murdered on Oct. 7 during terrorist attacks.
But his trip wasn’t welcomed by everyone in Israel, particularly members of the media.
“Blatant antisemite & publisher of antisemitism Elon Musk should be persona non grata in Israel,” Haaretz editor in chief Esther Solomon posted on X. “Instead, Netanyahu – plumbing new depths of amoral sycophancy – gifts him a PR visit to the kibbutzim devastated by Hamas. Profane, venal, bilious, both of them.”
“Hard to stomach welcoming someone who just days ago endorsed a virulently antisemitic trope, has dabbled for years in antisemitism and has turned this platform into a cesspool of hate. It’s quite frankly gross,” Times of Israel reporter Amy Spiro similarly wrote.
Israel-Hamas war: US looks to increase aid into Gaza through Egypt, includes warning for Israel
Israel-Hamas war: US looks to increase aid into Gaza through Egypt, includes warning for Israel
The United States will accelerate its humanitarian assistance into Gaza, including food, fuel and medical supplies, with the first of three relief flights beginning this week, Fox News has learned.
The U.S. military will be sending a series of items, which also include supplies to help Palestinians survive the upcoming winter conditions, to North Sinai and Egypt on Tuesday, according to senior administration officials. Additional plane loads of supplies and aid will then be sent in the coming days, the officials said.
Additional talks are in the works with the Israeli government on how to allow even more assistance to the 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza, many of whom have been displaced from their homes and face unsustainable living conditions in south and central Gaza, where about 80% of the Gaza Strip population now lives.
These supplies and fuel are not linked to the release of hostages, the officials said. As of Tuesday, Hamas has released at least 69 hostages, 51 of them Israeli, while Israel has released roughly 150 Palestinian prisoners.
Hamas is expected to release 10 more Israeli hostages Tuesday as the extended cease-fire between the two sides holds.
Fox News Foreign Correspondent Trey Yingst reported on the latest developments as the first day of the extended cease-fire began. Yingst said the majority of the hostages released so far have been women and children. Each of the hostages released on Monday still have fathers and husbands in Hamas custody.
Hamas transfers 10-month-old Israeli hostage, family to separate Palestinian terror group in Gaza
Hamas transfers 10-month-old Israeli hostage, family to separate Palestinian terror group in Gaza
Hamas transfered custody of a 10-month-old Israeli hostage and his family to another terrorist group in southern Gaza, Israeli Defense Forces said Tuesday.
The IDF’s Arabic spokesman Avichay Adraee announced the transfer late Monday night. The family consists of the infant, Kfir; his 4-year-old brother Ariel, and their parents. The IDF did not specify precisely which organization they have been transfered to.
“In Hamas prison, infants under one year old who have not seen the light of day for more than 50 days are detained. Hamas treats them as if they were spoils and sometimes hands them over to other terrorist organizations in the Gaza Strip,” Adraee wrote on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.
“For example, the Bibas family, the two red-haired children “The Reds,” who were kidnapped from their home in Nir Oz by a member of the Hamas terrorist organization (pictured) and are being held in the Khan Yunis area by one of the Palestinian factions.”
Israel-Hamas war: U.S. Navy says Houthis fired 2 ballistic missiles toward Israel-linked ship
Israel-Hamas war: U.S. Navy says Houthis fired 2 ballistic missiles toward Israel-linked ship
U.S. intelligence officials told Fox News on Monday that the Iran-backed Houthis are the group that fired two ballistic missiles toward the USS Mason.
The assessment was done by the U.S. Navy. Officials believe that the Yemeni Houthis more likely wanted to target the MV Central Park, a vessel linked to Israel, based on the missiles’ trajectory.
One of the two missiles splashed in the ocean, five nautical miles from the MV Central Park and 10 nautical miles from the USS Mason.
Two U.S. officials told Fox News that the second missile exploded midair.
Fox News Digital’s Jennifer Griffin and Andrea Vacchiano contributed to this report.
Video shows Eitan Yahalomi and his mother BatSheva greeting each other.
The temporary cease-fire agreement includes the swap of hostages taken by Hamas during the Oct. 7 attack against Israel for Palestinian prisoners held in the Jewish State.
More than 15,000 people have been killed in Gaza and Israel since Hamas launched its largest attack against Israel in decades on Oct. 7, leading to a military response from Israeli forces.
Thousands more have been wounded, and many others have been taken hostage by Hamas and raped, tortured and murdered.
California GOP Rep. David Valadao’s office vandalized by anti-Israel protestors
California GOP Rep. David Valadao’s office vandalized by anti-Israel protestors
A California congressman is the latest victim of antisemitism attacks happening across the country as Rep. David Valadao’s (R-Calif.) Hanford office was vandalized Monday morning, according to a post on X from Rep. Valadao.
Rep. Valadao posted a photo of his Hanford office Monday afternoon covered in “Murdered by Israel” posters and fake blood.
“This morning, my Hanford office was vandalized by anti-Israel protestors. I strongly support the right to peaceful protest, but violence and vandalism are never acceptable. In a democracy, harassment and intimidation is not how you make your voice heard,” Rep. Valadao posted.
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BBC/Nik Millard “We see women of all ages… We see the bruises, we learn about the cuts and tears, and we know they have been sexually abused,” Captain Maayan told the BBC
BBC/Nik Millard Hamas fighters stormed the Nova festival on 7 October and killed hundreds
BBC/Dave Bull Israelis are still grappling with the Hamas attack in October
BBC/Dave Bull” It really feels like Hamas learned how to weaponize women’s bodies from ISIS in Iraq, from cases in Bosnia,” said Cochav Elkayam-Levy
BBC/Dave Bull May Golan: “For the first five days, we still had terrorists on the ground in Israel. And there were hundreds, hundreds of bodies everywhere.”
BBC/Dave Bull Debris litters the ground at the Nova festival site
BBC/Dave Bull” Israel on 7 October is not the same country that woke up the following morning”: police chief Yaacov Shabtai
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