Hamas has reportedly handed over a fifth group of hostages to the International Committee of the Red Cross, according to Egyptian officials, with the report coming after Israel reported the deaths of three soldiers captured during the Hamas attacks on Oct. 7.
The group of 10 hostages was turned over to the Red Cross in Gaza, with Israeli officials expecting them to arrive in the country shortly thereafter, according to The Wall Street Journal, quoting the unnamed Egyptian sources.
Video from southern Gaza on Tuesday showed trucks and vans driving through the streets that were believed to contain some of the hostages, according to Hebrew-language media reports, noted The Times of Israel. Some of the vehicles in the video, which the site said has not been independently confirmed, had multiple gunmen hanging from their sides.
The hostages’ release comes after Israel and Hamas agreed to extend the four-day cease in hostilities for two more days while more hostages are released.
The military Tuesday declared three soldiers as being dead, identifying them as Sgt. Shaked Dahan, 19; Staff Sgt. Tomer Yaakov Ahimas, 20; and Sgt. Kiril Brodski, 19, reported The Times of Israel. They were described as being “fallen soldiers held hostage by a terror group” who were earlier reported as being abducted during the Hamas raids.
The military’s chief rabbi declared their deaths based on various findings obtained by the IDF, but reportedly, only Ahimas and Brodski can be buried according to Jewish law.
Dahan’s mother, Sigalit Gal, said on Facebook on Tuesday that she is not going to observe the traditional seven-day Jewish mourning period until her son’s body is returned to her from Gaza.
“I did for you what I needed to as a mother. I managed to keep you safe and protect you in many situations,” she said. “You’ve been taken from me forever. They took you and didn’t bother to return you, not even your body.”
Meanwhile, The Palestinian Prisoners’ Club on Tuesday published the names of 30 people to be released from Israeli prisons as part of the ongoing hostage release deal, reports Israeli newspaper Haaretz. One of those is Marwat al-Azza, a journalist living in East Jerusalem, who was indicted Monday for statements made on social media including one that mocked an elderly woman abducted by Hamas on Oct. 7.
Al-Azza, a freelancer for NBC News, has been accused of incitement to terrorism and identifying with a terrorist organization.
The latest release of hostages taken by Hamas comes after the Israeli government accused the organization of breaking the cease-fire agreement Tuesday. Several members of the Israel Defense Forces were injured when three explosive devices and gunfire targeted forces in northern Gaza.
“Over the last hour, three explosive devices were detonated adjacent to IDF troops in two different locations in northern Gaza, violating the framework of the operational pause,” said the military, according to the Jewish News Syndicate.
Earlier Tuesday, Israel received a list of 10 hostages that were to be released, with the list being reviewed and the captives’ families being notified, according to the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office, reported the Jewish News Syndicate.
So far, 50 Israeli women and children, plus one Israeli man, have been freed since the initial four-day cease-fire started on Friday morning, along with 17 Thais, one Filipino, and one American, a child.
Meanwhile, Israel has vowed to resume the war with the “full force” needed to destroy Hamas once the prisoner releases stop, and the Biden administration has told Israel it must avoid “significant further displacement” and mass casualties among Palestinian civilians if it resumes the offensive.
The administration has also insisted that Israel must operate with more precision in southern Gaza than it has used in its strikes in the north, according to U.S. officials.
Since 2021, the Biden Department of Homeland Security has abandoned efforts to deter, detain, and deport illegal aliens in favor of letting in as many as possible. This continues to cost America, from our border towns to our biggest cities. Pictured: Rep. Bob Good, R-Va., speaks at a news conference outside the U.S. Capitol to call for the impeachment of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on Feb. 1. (Photo: Tom Williams, CQ-Roll Call, Inc/Getty Images)
Simon Hankinson, a former foreign service officer with the State Department, is a senior research fellow in The Heritage Foundation’s Border Security and Immigration Center.
The BorderLine is a weekly Daily Signal feature examining everything from the unprecedented illegal immigration crisis at the border to immigration’s impact on cities and states throughout the land. We will also shed light on other critical border-related issues like human trafficking, drug smuggling, terrorism, and more.
———————————————————
The Biden administration would have you believe that its purportedly “safe, orderly, and humane” immigration policy comes at no cost to you, the American citizen. But the truth is just another casualty of its open border agenda.
Joe Biden has presided over an unprecedented degradation of U.S. sovereignty, as our laws no longer determine who gets in. Instead, aliens do—just by showing up. This loss of sovereignty at the border can literally apply to territory as well: Recently, the Texas Department of Public Safety had to move Mexican cartel gunmen off Fronton Island in the middle of the Rio Grande.
Since January 2021, the Biden Department of Homeland Security has abandoned the effort to deter, detain, and deport illegal aliens in favor of letting in as many as Congress will fund. This “Mayorkas Migration Machine” (I named it after our feckless secretary of homeland security, Alejandro Mayorkas) grinds away nationally and locally, from the border town of McAllen, Texas (which I just visited), to up north and our failing big cities. And the bills are coming due.
In New York, the homeless shelters are full and city officials are running out of makeshift places to put the relentless stream of illegal aliens. Mayor Eric Adams has announced cuts to city services on which citizens rely—including police, education, and libraries—to pay to feed and house them, and the City Council seems likely to approve them.
Chicago plans to build a giant tent camp to hold 2,000 of the illegal aliens waiting for free housing. This will cost over $30 million, on top of the $250 million the city already spent this year on illegal aliens, such as those who are housed in a K-12 school.
Locals are outraged—maybe because, according to Fox News, other migrant shelters in the city have been prone to “loitering, engaging in late-night partying, prostitution, littering, and even fighting with community members.” Chicago’s budget for 2024 is already half a billion in the red, but taxpayers, not illegal aliens, will pay this cost. When the city says “equity,” it means treating newly arrived aliens who’ve never paid taxes better than Chicagoans.
Massachusetts, a “sanctuary” state nicknamed “Taxachussetts” for its historically high taxes, finally capped its free housing of illegal aliens at 7,500 people. But they keep coming. Boston’s Logan Airport has been informally housing families flown from the border for months.
The airport’s manager gave the excuse that “they’re paying passengers”—but who’s paying? All of us are, through FEMA and numerous other government grants paid to nongovernmental organizations that transport, shelter, feed, advise, and provide other “wrap-around” services to illegal aliens coming to the U.S.
Local Texans used to swim, boat, and recreate on the Rio Grande near McAllen. No longer. On a recent fact-finding mission, I visited the Hidalgo County water pumping station, which owns property on the river. Its employees have been shot at by cartel thugs on the other side.
The river was devoid of civilian traffic. Cartels battle each other for control of the Mexican side and the lucrative payoffs from illegal aliens crossing through their turf. Dead bodies—executed victims of the narco-traffic wars—regularly wash up on the banks. The water authority had to install a screen to keep the corpses out of their pumps.
Drug cartels have sabotaged Border Patrol boats by stringing cables underwater to destroy outboard engines and at head height to kill or injure American officers. The Border Patrol boats now use water-jet engines and are equipped with twin wires from the bow to the top of the command box to divert strung cables.
At the airport in McAllen, I saw several families who appeared to be from Haiti camped out on the floor, waiting for their free flight north. Sources at the airport told me that 100 such people go through security and board flights every day with nothing more than their Notice to Appear—a letter from DHS telling them to go to immigration court at some point in the future—as identification. The Transportation Security Administration is required to accept this worthless document from foreigners, although you and I need a “Real ID” such as a state driver’s license or passport to board a plane.
An airline employee told me that her early morning flight to Dallas is usually half full of women and children from the border. That plane holds about 160 people. That’s just for one flight, one airline, one border airport, one day.
On my early afternoon flight to Dallas, I sat across from two young men with neat clothes, Puma sneakers, and fashionable haircuts, both incessantly on their late-model phones. They had Haitian passports and the telltale folders of travel itineraries and documents given by nongovernmental organizations to released illegal aliens for their onward journeys further into the U.S.
Who were they? What did they do back in Haiti?
I have no idea, and neither does DHS. Haiti’s government is feckless, and civil order has given way to high levels of murder, theft, and kidnapping. But although many poor Haitians are victims of all this, someone is doing the murdering, too. So how does DHS know the two guys on my plane and thousands more like them who they let in each week are average citizens or victims and not the perpetrators fleeing the consequences of their own crimes?
They don’t.
Lacking any way to verify identities and check foreign criminal records in most cases, DHS is forced to trust the information provided by people who have everything to gain and nothing to lose by lying. It is a statistical certainty that some of the millions paroled in or released at the border will have committed acts at home that render them legally ineligible to be admitted into the United States. The high risk of this percentage of aliens re-offending is now borne by the American communities into which DHS is sending them.
To take but one example, in July 2023, Border Patrol caught a 25-year old man entering the U.S. illegally in Hidalgo, gave him his Notice to Appear, and let him go. Three months later, Boston police arrested him for assaulting a member of his family—probably before he even made his first immigration court appearance. Did he have a criminal record in Haiti that could have warned DHS or Boston police that he had a history of violence? It’s too late to ask now.
In recent testimony before the Senate, Mayorkas claimed that he had paroled into the U.S. over 240,000 aliens on a “case-by-case” rather than blanket basis. This is simply not credible. He’s just rolling the dice on the safety of the American people.
The cold hard truth is Biden’s policies have surrendered control of our borders to Mexican cartels and illegal aliens and foisted all the ensuing costs and risks onto our taxpayers.
Maryland’s attorney general suspends Zainab Chaudry from the state’s hate crimes commission after she compareds Israel to Nazi Germany in Facebook posts. Pictured: Chaudry, center, joins others from the Council on American-Islamic Relations for a press conference outside the U.S. Supreme Court on Feb. 25, 2015. (Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
Tyler O’Neil is managing editor of The Daily Signal and the author of “Making Hate Pay: The Corruption of the Southern Poverty Law Center.”
Maryland’s new commission to “prevent and respond to hate crime activity” has met only once, but one member already has been suspended—for comparing Israel to Nazi Germany. This incident seems to echo a trend: Many of those on the Left who rush to police “hate” often spread their own kind of hate.
Zainab Chaudry, director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations’ Maryland chapter and one of the commission’s first 10 members, described the Hamas terror attacks of Oct. 7 as an “uprising” and condemned the state of Israel as oppressive and worse.
Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown, a Democrat, last week suspended Chaudry from the newly launched Commission on Hate Crimes Response and Prevention.
The Maryland Legislature passed HB 1066 in April and Gov. Wes Moore, a Democrat, signed it into law in May. The law established the Commission on Hate Crime Response and Prevention to prevent and respond to hate crimes and “evaluate state laws and policies relating to hate crimes.”
“The commission has only met once, with its inaugural meeting on Sept. 6, 2023,” Brown noted in a Nov. 21 press release. “Ms. Chaudry’s posts on her personal social media since Oct. 7, in these very early days of the commission, have challenged the commission’s ability to do its work.”
Brown said he determined that Chaudry’s “social media posts risk disrupting the work and mission of the Commission,” so he temporarily suspended her, assigned staff to write a values statement to protect the commission from similar scandals, and urged members of the panel to “exercise great care in their communications and conduct.”
What led Brown to this conclusion?
On Oct. 7, Hamas terrorists slaughtered about 1,200 Israelis, including women and children, and took more than 240 hostages. Horrific videos of terrorists bragging about killing Jews hit social media. Hamas terrorists slaughtered parents in front of their children and children in front of their parents. They raped women before killing them and mutilating their bodies. Terrorists bragged about this in horrifying detail when questioned after the fact by Israel Defense Forces.
On social media, Chaudry described these horrific events as “the uprising in Palestine,” urging readers to “keep in mind that they are a people who are illegally occupied.” She added that “the thirst for freedom is an innate instinct we’re born with.”
“Resistance is a reminder that it can’t be quenched through might and force,” she wrote.
Chaudry did not condemn the Hamas terrorists or lament the Israeli dead. Rather, she apparently praised the attacks in Israel as an “uprising” of freedom.
Chaudry’s later posts echoed the same ideas.
On Oct. 9, she compared “Palestinian freedom fighters” to “Ukrainian freedom fighters.”
She also suggested that a focus on the Israeli victims of the terrorists amounted to centering “white pain” in “global consciences.”
After appearing to celebrate the terrorist attacks that killed the most Jews in one day since the Holocaust in the 1940s, Chaudry compared the Jewish state to Germany’s Nazi regime during World War II that sought to eradicate Jews from the face of the Earth.
She shared two photos of the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, Germany: a 1936 photo of a Nazi parade and a 2023 photo of the gate lit up in the blue and white of the Israeli flag.
Chaudry posted the photos with the message: “That moment when you become what you hated most.”
Chaudry has not shown remorse for these posts, which remain public on her Facebook page. The Council on American Islamic Relations has not condemned them either. Instead, it mobilized nearly 4,000 petitioners to demand Chaudry’s reinstatement to Maryland’s hate crimes commission.
“There is no conflict between condemning the Israeli government’s war crimes overseas and standing up against all forms of hate here at home, including antisemitism, Islamophobia and anti-Palestinian racism,” Chaudry said in a formal statement after her suspension by Brown, the Free State’s attorney general. “False smears from anti-Palestinian and anti-Muslim extremists will not stop me from standing up for justice here and abroad.”
Supporters wrote in a Nov. 22 letter to Brown that they “completely agree” with Chaudry’s quote.
“As the only American Muslim on the Attorney General’s Hate Crimes Commission, Zainab Chaudry’s voice was critical in representing our community’s concerns to your office,” the petitioners wrote. “Even a temporary suspension of her role is harmful and completely unjustified. Like Zainab, many members of the Maryland community have been critical of the Israel government’s horrific crimes against the Palestinian people.”
Since last night, dozens of Maryland Muslim organizations and over 3,800 petitioners have called on @OAGMaryland Anthony Brown to reverse his decision to temporarily suspend our MD director Dr. Zainab Chaudry from the Hate Crimes Commission under pressure from anti-Muslim &… pic.twitter.com/eob0t9FFSL
Chaudry may disagree with Israel and condemn its actions, but in what world is it acceptable to compare the world’s only Jewish state with the genocidal regime that sought to eliminate all Jews?
Rather than condemning Hamas for slaughtering women and children, she blamed Israel. She did not even acknowledge that Israel’s military takes key steps to minimize civilian casualties, while Hamas deliberately stages terrorist activities in civilian buildings such as hospitals to use civilians as human shields.
Israel’s military objective, stated from the beginning, has been the eradication of Hamas’ military capabilities, to prevent another Oct. 7 pogrom. A Hamas terrorist infamously called his parents to brag, “Mom, Dad, I killed 10 Jews!” Israelis do not call their parents to brag, “Mom, Dad, I killed Palestinians.”
Although Chaudry is correct that criticizing Israel is not ipso facto a form of antisemitism, this blatant double standard, and the extreme hyperbole of comparing Israel to the Nazis, is absolutely antisemitic. Yet the Left’s intersectional ideology gives Chaudry a smokescreen for her hatred.
As Chaudry’s statement about “white pain” reveals, she considers Israelis part of the “white” oppressor class, putting the Jews—the No. 1 example of an oppressed people group throughout history—in the same category as the Nazis. The Marxist lens of analyzing every conflict along oppressor-versus-oppressed lines leads her to moral insanity, a moral insanity that inspires hatred.
This moral insanity reminds me of the perverse accusations of the Southern Poverty Law Center. As I wrote in my book “Making Hate Pay: The Corruption of the Southern Poverty Law Center,” the SPLC began as a noble civil rights nonprofit, helping poor people in the South. It later expanded its operations to suing truly hateful groups such as the Ku Klux Klan into bankruptcy, and then expanded that effort to “monitor” conservative groups as if they were themselves hateful.
Now, religious freedom groups such as Alliance Defending Freedom, the American Freedom Law Center, and the Family Research Council find themselves on the SPLC’s “hate group” list alongside Klan chapters and plotted on a map with neo-Nazis. Groups that call for the enforcement of immigration law, such as the Center for Immigration Studies and the Dustin Inman Society, find themselves on the same map. So do parental rights groups such as Moms for Liberty and Parents Defending Education.
In the name of fighting hate, the SPLC has inspired hate—and even terrorism. In 2012, a man used the SPLC “hate map” to target the Family Research Council for a mass shooting. After a brave security guard foiled his plan, the gunman confessed to the FBI that he planned to slaughter everyone in the building.
Amid a racial discrimination and sexual harassment scandal in 2019, a former SPLC employee revealed that the organization’s “hate” accusations are a “highly profitable scam,” but that hasn’t stopped government agencies from relying upon those accusations.
The FBI infamously used the SPLC to target “radical-traditional Catholics” in a since-rescinded January memo. In 2019, Michigan’s Democratic attorney general, Dana Nessel, announced a hate crimes unit “to fight against hate crimes and the many hate groups … in our state.” Her announcement cited the SPLC hate map and highlighted an area of the state that includes the headquarters of the Judeo-Christian group American Freedom Law Center.
The American Freedom Law Center sued Nessel, arguing that the announcement violated the group’s rights to free speech under the First Amendment. The center, a nonprofit public interest law firm, principally defends the First Amendment rights of conservative Christians and Jews.
Robert Muise, the center’s co-founder, recounted how the SPLC attacked him.
“I was on active duty in the Marine Corps for 13 years as an officer. I’m a father of 12 and a devout Catholic,” Muise told me in 2019. “They had me listed as an antisemite when my co-founder is a yarmulke-wearing Orthodox Jew!”
Much of the Left’s “hate” monitoring boils down to an excuse to demonize conservatives and exclude them from the conversation. This ideological policing often seems to miss antisemitism when it doesn’t outright enable it.
Many civil rights commissions and hate crimes commissions are slanted heavily to the Left, leading to perverse outcomes. Jack Phillips, the Christian baker who refused to create a custom cake to celebrate a same-sex wedding, found himself prosecuted by the Colorado Civil Rights Commission. Phillips won his case because members of that commission had demonstrated hostility toward Phillips’ faith.
The Maryland hate crimes commission shows a clear leftward tilt. It includes left-leaning organizations such as the Anti-Defamation League, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and the Pride Coalition of Maryland, but not any right-leaning organization.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations, Chaudry’s organization, has worked with the SPLC to urge charitable institutions to blacklist “Anti-Muslim hate groups,” including the American Freedom Law Center.
Until hate crime commissions start including conservative members, conservatives rightly will view these efforts with skepticism. Brown not only should refuse to reinstate Chaudry, but also take the opportunity of the vacancy to find a conservative voice for the commission.
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The Hamas mantra is “from the river to the sea” to the Jews in Israel, but with Biden and the Democrat’s open border policies, how long before it comes to America? Many people on the terrorist watch list have already been apprehended at the border, and they suspect many more than that have escaped into the country. So, more than likely, it isn’t a matter of if it is a matter of when the mantra will be “from the Atlantic to the Pacific,” with terrorist attacks happening on a grander scale than what happened on 9-11
Biden and the Democrats seem to be so blinded by their Globalist Leftist ideology they don’t care or can’t see the danger.
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.
A teacher allegedly attended a pro-Israel rally in Queens on Oct. 9. Students at the Hillcrest High School in Jamaica – where the teacher is employed – reportedly found out that the instructor participated in the pro-Israel demonstration. Someone purportedly found the teacher’s Facebook profile that had a photo of the instructor at a pro-Israel rally in Queens holding a sign that read: “I stand with Israel.”
Just after 11 a.m. on Monday, the students reportedly stormed the hallways of the school to protest the teacher having a pro-Israel viewpoint. The pre-planned protest allegedly deteriorated into a riot. The pro-Palestinian students reportedly attempted to barge into the teacher’s classroom despite school staffers guarding the room.
The New York Post reported, “School administrators and the NYPD, which responded to the school at about 11:20 a.m., got wind of their plans just in time to rush the teacher into an office and lock the door, another educator said.”
A senior told the outlet, “Everyone was yelling ‘Free Palestine!'”
A ninth-grader said, “Everyone was screaming ‘(The teacher) needs to go!’ They want her fired.”
A student said that teens had found out where the teacher lives, her phone number, and other personal information.
A video of the unrest at the school was posted on social media.
One comment on a TikTok video called the teacher “cracker ass bitch.”
The NYPD’s counterterrorism bureau was reportedly asked to investigate possible threats against the school.
City Councilman James Gennaro (D-Queens) said, “Whether it was one student or multiple students who did or said something, whatever the trigger was, something happened. And I know from my many years on the City Council that the counterterrorism task force is not engaged unless they believe it is potentially a serious situation.”
The teacher – who didn’t want to be identified for her own safety – told the New York Post, “I have been a teacher for 23 years in the New York City public school system — for the last seven at Hillcrest High School. I have worked hard to be supportive of our entire student body and an advocate for our community, and was shaken to my core by the calls to violence against me that occurred online and outside my classroom last week.”
The teacher added, “No one should ever feel unsafe at school — students and teachers alike.”
“It’s my hope in the days ahead we can find a way to have meaningful discussions about challenging topics with respect for each other’s diverse perspectives and shared humanity,” she continued. “Unless we can learn to see each other as people we will never be able to create a safe learning community.”
New York City Mayor reacted to the anti-Semitic unrest by saying:
The vile show of antisemitism at Hillcrest High School was motivated by ignorance-fueled hatred, plain and simple, and it will not be tolerated in any of our schools, let alone anywhere else in our city. We are better than this. NYC Schools is already conducting a full investigation into how this incident took place, and, this week, Project Pivot teams will begin outreach with students at Hillcrest to ensure they understand why this behavior was unacceptable. No student, teacher, or staff member should fear for their safety in our schools.
Democratic Councilman Robert Holden said, “I don’t know why these students are so misinformed, so intolerant and so radicalized. They don’t even know the history of the Middle East. They haven’t been taught that.”
(WARNING: Explicit language)
The scene at Hillcrest High School in Queens as a Jewish teacher hid in her locked office for hours while students demanded she be fired for attending a pro-Israel rally. pic.twitter.com/jzVCEofvJS
As Americans celebrate the holidays with their families, the Biden administration is laying the groundwork to destroy families by taking children away from their parents in order to sterilize and sexually mutilate them.
The Biden administration has proposed new rules for foster care, which would treat any parent rejecting LGBT ideology as a child abuser. The public comment deadline is today, the Monday after Thanksgiving, a bureaucratic middle finger to the public it is supposed to serve. The proposed regulations state that “to be considered a safe and appropriate placement, a provider is expected to utilize the child’s identified pronouns, chosen name, and allow the child to dress in an age-appropriate manner that the child believes reflects their self-identified gender identity and expression.” In short, those who don’t believe the superstition that a child can somehow be born into the wrong body are, per the Biden administration, unfit to be foster parents.
This won’t stop with foster parents.
Cutting Christians and other dissenters from the sexual revolution out of the foster care system is only the start. Given the government control of the foster care system, this is a convenient place for the left to establish the precedent that rejecting gender ideology and the rest of the LGBT movement’s dogmas is abusive and harmful to children and that those who do so are unfit parents. Once they have set this point, they’ll expand it to everyone else — after all, if it’s abuse for foster parents, it’s abuse for biological parents as well.
This should not be a surprise. Democrats have been suggesting taking children away from “non-affirming” parents for years now, but they have thus far been too scared to go through with it. But the folks in Biden’s administration — led by Babylon Bee “Man of the Year” Rachel Levine — are going to see if they can get the ball rolling this time.
The justification for these new rules is based on the usual junkscience, created and pushed by activist organizations and those whose reputations and livelihoods depend upon validating transitioning children. For example, the Biden administration repeatedly cites a survey by the activists at The Trevor Project. This survey consisted of a self-selected online sample. The Biden administration wants to keep kids away from loving homes because the science told them to — the science of a self-selected online survey created by an activist group.
These sorts of garbage studies are necessary for the LGBT movement to justify itself, especially as it has shifted to an obsession with “LGBT youth.” They long ago dropped the pretense that this is about consenting adults, or that they seek some sort of live-and-let-live settlement. Rather, they are determined to claim other people’s children for themselves and their movement.
Trying to take children away from “non-affirming” parents is the predictable result of the lies that children are born LGBT, and that sexual and gender identities are the essential core of our being. The belief that nothing is more authentic or important than sexual desire and “gender identity” is what lies behind the LGBT movement’s fanatical drive to groom other people’s children. It is why educators are eager to push sexually explicit material onto even very young children. It is why schools fill kids’ minds with gender ideology, and then encourage them to transition without telling their parents. And it is why the left has wholeheartedly embraced medically “transitioning” children, sometimes starting before they are even teenagers.
This wrongly termed “gender-affirming care” is incredibly abnormal medicine. It attempts to treat psychological distress by radically remaking the patient’s body in a way that is completely medically unnecessary, indeed, medically harmful. As the proposed Biden administration rules make clear, there is no objective physical or psychological diagnosis for being transgender; rather, it is a purely subjective, self-diagnosed identity — a “self-identified gender identity and expression.” And there is never any medical need to transition.
When someone who identifies as transgender does not chemically and surgically transition, his or her body continues its natural, healthy development and functioning. The only harm that can come from not transitioning is self-harm, which is why the transgender movement has become totally reliant on threats of suicide. This suicide narrative is used to rush children into transition, with almost all the power centers of our nation pushing them on. But studies show that children overwhelmingly desist from transgender identification if given time and counseling. The Biden administration nonetheless relies on threats of self-harm in making its case for the proposed rules for foster care. It is pure hostage-taking, done to enable the sterilization and sexual mutilation of children on the superstition that they are being born into the wrong bodies.
In short, the Biden administration plans to treat parents who object to this grotesque medical malpractice as child abuse. They are coming for your children, and they aren’t bothering to hide it anymore.
Nathanael Blake is a senior contributor to The Federalist and a postdoctoral fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.
Shooting sports are gaining popularity among high schoolers across the United States, despite conflicting attitudes toward guns. Maryland State Police will continue enforcing the state’s handgun law for now, despite a federal appeals court ruling that the licensing requirement is unconstitutional.
“At this time, the HQL law remains in effect and there are no immediate changes in the process to purchase a firearm in Maryland,” the department wrote in an agency-wide advisory after last week’s ruling.
A three-judge panel of the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Maryland’s handgun licensing requirement is unconstitutional and overly “burdensome.” (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
Maryland’s Handgun Qualification License (HQL) requires applicants to submit fingerprints for a background check, take a four-hour firearm safety course with a live fire component, and wait up to 30 days for approval before purchasing a handgun, which then requires another application and seven-day waiting period.
Last Tuesday, a three-judge panel of the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 2-1 that the law is overly “burdensome” and cannot stand under the 2022 landmark Supreme Court decision that a firearm regulation is unconstitutional unless the government can prove it is consistent with the nation’s historical tradition.
“The challenged law restricts the ability of law-abiding adult citizens to possess handguns, and the state has not presented a historical analogue that justifies its restriction; indeed, it has seemingly admitted that it couldn’t find one,” Judge Julius Richardson, a Trump appointee, wrote in the court’s majority opinion.
But the Maryland State Police’s licensing division said it will continue enforcing the law until the federal court issues a mandate.
Gun control advocacy groups rally with Democratic members of Congress outside the U.S. Capitol on May 26, 2022. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
Maryland officials have 14 days to file for a rehearing before the full appeals court. If the state does not file within that window, the court will issue a mandate seven days later, which means the final court ruling would be Dec. 11, Fox45 News reported.
Officials have not yet confirmed whether they plan to file for a rehearing or, alternatively, seek a review before the U.S. Supreme Court.
Maryland Gov. Wes Moore said in a statement that he would “continue to fight for this law” and that his administration was evaluating its options.
Similarly, a spokesperson for Attorney General Anthony Brown told Fox45 News that they were “weighing options for next steps.”
Under Maryland’s HQL law, prospective handgun owners had to take a firearm safety class, submit fingerprints for a background check, and wait up to 30 days for processing before then being able to start the application to purchase a firearm. (Getty Images)
The NRA previously described Maryland’s HQL as a “draconian process” and praised the Fourth Circuit ruling as a “significant victory, for the Second Amendment and Americans who value constitutional freedoms.”
“Striking down Maryland’s oppressive Handgun Qualification License requirement affirms that the burdensome process infringes on the rights of the law-abiding,” the NRA’s lobbying arm executive director Randy Kozuch told Fox News Digital.
Fox News Digital’s Brianna Herlihy contributed to this report.
Hannah Ray Lambert is an associate producer/writer with Fox News Digital Originals.
The Israeli military says 11 hostages have been released from Hamas captivity in the Gaza Strip and returned to Israeli territory. Military officials said late Monday that the hostages were on Israeli soil and undergoing initial medical checks before being reunited with their families.
It is the fourth such release under a cease-fire deal with the Hamas military group. Israel is to free 33 Palestinian prisoners later Monday. The cease-fire had been set to expire early Tuesday. But Qatar, which has been mediating between the sides, said they agreed to extend the truce by two more days.
The war broke out Oct. 7 when Hamas militants burst across the border into Israel, killing some 1,200 people and taking 240 others captive. Israel declared war, and over 13,000 Palestinians have been killed in weeks of Israeli strikes, according to health authorities in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip.
Israeli media said the hostages included two women and nine children. Two of the children are 3 years old.
The release of 11 Israeli hostages and 33 Palestinians under the original ceasefire agreement, which had been due to end Monday night, dominated the day’s flurry of truce activity. According to a Reuters report, the Israeli hostages released from Gaza on Monday include three French citizens, two Germans and six Argentinians. The news service cited a Qatari foreign ministry spokesman on social media platform X.
The White House said U.S. officials had hoped two American women would be among the latest group to be freed from Gaza, where it believes eight or nine U.S. citizens are being held.
Hamas said it had received a list of Palestinians to be released from Israeli jails. It said these included three female prisoners and 30 minors.
A voter arrives at a polling place on March 3, 2020, in Minneapolis for that year’s presidential primary. Legitimate voters shouldn’t have to worry about whether their votes are canceled out by fraudulent ones. (Photo: Stephen Maturen/Getty Images)
You can see it with your own eyes. But Democrats and their left-wing media allies call it a “fantasy.” What is it?
A Lawrence, Massachusetts, voter who had been turned away from the polls on Election Day and told he had already voted found out he was the victim of fraud. He checked the footage on the video camera outside his front door and saw that a woman had removed mail-in ballots from his mailbox. He called police.
It’s happening in many places. On Tuesday, Fight Voter Fraud Inc., a nonprofit voter rights group, appeared in Connecticut Superior Court to demand the arrest of a woman alleged to have been caught on video committing mail-in ballot fraud in the 2019 Bridgeport Democratic mayoral primary and again in the 2023 primary. The group, protesting that city officials pretend there’s no problem, also called on the Connecticut legislature to appoint a special prosecutor.
A staggering 60% of likely voters nationwide consider election cheating a problem, according to Rasmussen Reports. Yet the Left denies it’s happening. The Washington Post calls it a “myth” and a “fantasy offense.” Worst of all, the federal government is suppressing the evidence and censoring anyone who complains about election cheating.
Never-before-seen emails released by the House Judiciary Committee on Nov. 6 reveal that a government-sponsored task force is muzzling public figures, thousands of ordinary Americans, and media outlets like Newsmax and The Babylon Bee when they report election irregularities. The emails show that officials within the Department of Homeland Security and the State Department—”the deep state”—organized the Election Integrity Partnership in 2020, recruiting academics at Stanford University and the University of Washington to question election honesty and then instruct social media companies such as Google, Facebook, and YouTube to label the postings as “misinformation” or take them down entirely.
Don’t be fooled by the name Election Integrity Partnership. This task force does the opposite, silencing concerns about election integrity.
In 2020, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich objected when the state of Pennsylvania adopted new election rules during the COVID-19 pandemic that, in his view, invited cheating. He tweeted, “Pennsylvania Democrats are methodically changing the rules so they can steal the election.”
When Nicole Malliotakis was running for Congress in 2020 from Staten Island and southern Brooklyn, N.Y., she posted on Facebook: “Be sure to vote tomorrow because we’re not only taking on Max Rose, Nancy Pelosi & Bill de Blasio. We’re taking on Dead Democrats, too!”
The Election Integrity Partnership disagreed and instructed Facebook to remove Malliotakis’ post, which it did. Even if Malliotakis were wrong about dead people voting, she has a right to raise the issue. In fact, Malliotakis was correct. A Staten Island grand jury subsequently identified numerous instances of fraud in the race for City Council there, including a ballot submitted on behalf of a dead person.
The emails released by the House Judiciary Committee should outrage Americans. The federal government devised a scheme to covertly stamp out public debate over election fraud just when Democrats were pushing many states to adopt new election rules in the face of COVID-19. Americans were entitled to hear the pros and cons of those rules. They still are.
The First Amendment bars government from censoring. So, what did the government do? It outsourced the censorship to the Election Integrity Partnership. All the same, it was government calling the shots, telling third parties to censor on its behalf. Louisiana and Missouri are suing to stop the federal government’s censorship scheme, and that case is now in the Supreme Court.
Kate Starbird of the University of Washington, a member of the Election Integrity Partnership, told NPR she regrets the House Judiciary Committee’s investigation, and the lawsuit will dampen the Election Integrity Partnership’s future censorship operations.
No worries. Russian President Vladimir Putin is said to be running for reelection in March 2024. Putin, President Xi Jinping of China, and other dictators who don’t tolerate complaints about election rigging will find the Election Integrity Partnership very handy.
It has no place in America.
Tell our leaders to crack down on election fraud, instead of censoring its critics.
Flag redesign commission member blasts process as ‘absurd’ and a ‘colossal waste of time’
Others criticized any potential incorporation of the state motto “L’etoile du Nord” or the statehood date of “1858” into a new state seal or flag as “hurtful” to many with indigenous backgrounds. A lengthy deliberation Tuesday among 13 Minnesotans tasked with selecting a new state flag and seal at times devolved into argument and confusion among some, with one member of the State Emblems Redesign Commission calling it “a colossal waste of time” for those who submitted the designs.
Others criticized any potential incorporation of the state motto “L’etoile du Nord” or the statehood date of “1858” into a new state seal or flag as “hurtful” to many with indigenous backgrounds. Read More…
The film is based on Liz Collin’s Amazon bestseller, “They’re Lying: The Media, The Left, and The Death of George Floyd,” which exposes the holes in the prevailing narrative surrounding George Floyd’s death, the trial of Derek Chauvin, and the fallout the city of Minneapolis has suffered ever since.
The documentary features more than a dozen interviews with the people directly involved, including exclusive interviews with former officers Derek Chauvin and Alexander Kueng who spoke to Liz Collin from prison. The families of Chauvin and Kueng also speak out publicly for the first time.
The film also features current and former Minneapolis police officers who tell their harrowing stories from the riots, recount the planned surrender of the Third Precinct, and explain why so many of them left the job. Read More…
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country in various news outlets, including NewsMax, Fox News, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Rep. Devin Nunes, Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Chris Salcedo, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Trump.
Javier Milei, Argentina’s newly elected president, is making headlines everywhere. He’s anti-establishment, he’s anti-woke, and he’s absolutely fearless when it comes to speaking his mind.
Dave Rubin explains how Milei is a breath of fresh air, considering Argentina has seen “massive government growth, complete devaluation of their currency … creeping socialism for a long time, [and] craziness with gender stuff and all of the woke stuff.”
Luckily, Milei “has come in to absolutely obliterate it.”
In a recent interview, Tucker Carlson asked the Argentine if he had advice for Donald Trump, who many hope will do the same thing for the United States.
“Donald Trump is running for president again in the United States, as you know,” said Tucker. “What advice would you give him?”
“He should continue his fight against socialism because he is one of the few who truly understood that we are fighting socialism, that we are fighting the statists. He understood perfectly that the generation of wealth comes from the private sector. The state does not create wealth; the state destroys it. The state can give you nothing because it produces nothing, and when it attempts it, it does so poorly,” Milei answered.
“So I’d say, if I could humbly offer advice, all I could say would be to double down on his efforts in the same direction: defending the ideals of freedom and refusing to give an inch to the socialists.”
*Insert applause*
“Argentina, after 20 years of this nonsense, is pushing back,” says Dave. “Donald Trump was pushing back; there are pockets — places like Florida — that are pushing back. You should be pushing back, and might I suggest that we all go a bit more on offense?”
Want more from Dave Rubin?
To enjoy more honest conversations, free speech, and big ideas with Dave Rubin, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.
Individuals who have undergone “any form of male puberty” will not qualify to compete in international women’s cricket, the International Cricket Council has announced.
“The new policy is based on the following principles (in order of priority), protection of the integrity of the women’s game, safety, fairness and inclusion, and this means any Male to Female participants who have been through any form of male puberty will not be eligible to participate in the international women’s game regardless of any surgery or gender reassignment treatment they may have undertaken,” the ICC noted.
The ICC noted that “gender eligibility at domestic level is a matter for each individual Member Board, which may be impacted by local legislation.” It also noted, “The regulations will be reviewed within two years.”
The issue of whether men who identify as women should be permitted to compete in women’s athletics remains an ongoing point of significant debate between those who advocate radical leftist gender ideology and those who oppose it. Cricket player Danielle McGahey, who apparently identifies as a transgender woman, responded to the news.
“Following the ICC’s decision this morning, it is with a very heavy heart that I must say that my international cricketing career is over. As quickly as it begun, it must now end,” McGahey wrote on social media.
“While I hold my opinions on the ICC’s decision, they are irrelevant. What matters is the message being sent to millions of trans women today, a messaging say that we don’t belong. I promise I will not stop fighting for equality for us in our sport, we deserve the right to play cricket at the highest level, we are not a threat to the integrity or safety of the sport,” McGahey wrote. “Never stop fighting!”
The Israel Defense Forces shared a video of a mosque, alleging that Hamas had been using the
facility to make and store weapons.
“Hamas used this mosque as a weapons storage facility and a laboratory for Hamas’ rockets. Finding dozens of mortars, warhead missiles, thermobaric weapons, RPGs and a tunnel shaft,” the IDF tweet about the facility declared.
The post included a video with English captions as someone walked into the mosque and showed footage of it.
“In the mosque’s basement, there is a weapon storage facility, a Hamas rocket manufacturing lab, and lots and lots of explosive devices as well as explosive materials,” the captions on the video read. “Hamas built entire walls to hide the lab” the captions continued, “we had to destroy them in order to expose the lab.”
Holy places, such as mosques, should not be used as fronts for terrorism.
Hamas used this mosque as a weapons storage facility and a laboratory for Hamas’ rockets. Finding dozens of mortars, warhead missiles, thermobaric weapons, RPGs and a tunnel shaft.
The Jewish state went to war last month after Hamas perpetrated atrocities in Israel, including murders, rapes, and kidnappings. Israel has approved a temporary ceasefire with Hamas that will involve the release of some of the hostages.
“The Government of Israel is obligated to return home all of the hostages,” the Israeli government noted in a statement. “Tonight, the Government has approved the outline of the first stage of achieving this goal, according to which at least 50 hostages – women and children – will be released over four days, during which a pause in the fighting will be held,” the statement added. “The release of every additional ten hostages will result in one additional day in the pause.”
“The Government of Israel, the IDF and the security services will continue the war in order to return home all of the hostages, complete the elimination of Hamas and ensure that there will be no new threat to the State of Israel from Gaza,” the statement concluded.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, this evening, at the start of the Government meeting:
While this meeting is to discuss the return of our hostages, I would like to start with something that should be self-evident: We are at war – and will continue the war. pic.twitter.com/YaICV89yEU
Tens of thousands of protesters have flooded city streets across Spain since October in sustained demonstrations opposing a socialist takeover of the Spanish government. Protesters are showing their opposition toward an amnesty deal between Spain’s socialist President Pedro Sánchez and treasonous Catalan separatists, who violated the Spanish constitution in 2017 by attempting to secede from Spain. By striking a deal to free incarcerated and exiled Spanish criminals, Sánchez was able to secure a third term in power.
The protests are organized by Spain’s conservative People’s Party and Vox, its further right, populist party. In an interview between Vox President Santiago Abascal and Tucker Carlson last week, Abascal explained that the amnesty deal is a crime “against the constitution” and “national unity.”
Ep. 40 Spain’s descent into tyranny seems eerily familiar. Opposition leader Santiago Abascal is one of the few people standing up to it. We traveled to Madrid to talk to him.
TIMESTAMPS: 1:11 Santiago Abascal 2:23 The end of democracy in Spain 8:43 “Are you ready to go to jail… pic.twitter.com/fE4zrYrqAC
But the massive demonstrations are not just in defense of the Spanish Constitution, Abascal explained; they’re about what an illegal third Sánchez term means for Spain, namely a failing Spanish economy, two-tier justice, mass illegal immigration from Muslim countries, speech policing, globalism, the demonization of Spanish history, and loss of Spanish identity.
Where Are the American Demonstrations?
The problems faced by Spaniards are strikingly similar to those facing Americans. The American left hates our heritage so much they torched American cities and destroyed historical statues and monuments for an entire summer.Our corrupt president, Joe Biden, was able to take power thanks to a rigged election, and his administration has weaponized the federal government against his most prominent political adversary, former President Donald Trump, and anyone in ideological opposition to the Democrats.
The Biden administration’s disregard for border security encourages mass illegal immigration at the Southern Border, exposing the public to dangerous criminals and additional economic burdens while the middle class struggles to stay afloat amid increasing taxes, inflation, and gas prices. And despite the public’s rapidly increasing suffering, Biden prioritizes sending billions of tax dollars to foreign wars and international green energy projects.
All these things, but particularly the federal government’s targeting of conservatives and its assault on election integrity, should be sparking massive protests. Yet they aren’t. Unlike Spain, America was founded on the idea that human beings have God-given, inalienable rights. Freedom of speech and assembly are not just First Amendment givens in the United States, but part of our culture. So why aren’t conservatives protesting?
Using fear and intimidation, the left is scaring conservatives into giving up their freedom to assemble. One of the primary fear tactics is to severely punish those who, on Jan. 6, 2021, opted to protest Democrat’s election-rigging practices, such as mass mail-in balloting and Big Tech censorship. As newly-released Jan. 6 footage further reveals, many of the Jan. 6 protesters accused of rioting were peaceful.
Yet federal courts openly admitted to making examples out of peaceful protesters in order to “deter others.” J6 demonstrators have been harassed by federal agents, held in solitary confinement, and demonized by the Jan. 6 Committee, Biden, and the corporate media.
Conservatives aren’t just afraid — they’re also hopeless.After witnessing the Marxist race riots of 2020 and the erasure of their civil liberties during Covid, many Americans no longer recognize their homeland. A recent Harvard Harris poll shows that 80 percent of GOP voters feel the country is headed in the wrong direction. Meanwhile, a July 2023 poll reported that 86.92 million Americans find “somewhat” or “very” difficult to pay their household expenses, with the middle class being the most affected income bracket.
How many times have we heard friends and family members say, “The country is lost?” This fear and despair are understandable, but the stakes have never been higher. Bravery and self-sacrifice are necessary to defend a nation against forces wishing to destroy it. As Abascal explained to Tucker:
“The nation isn’t just made up of all the Spaniards here today, it’s not just the people you can see walking down the street. Our nation is our history. It’s in the cemeteries where our forebears rest. The nation is the sum of the living, the dead, and those yet to be born… I think that what we do today, even if we aren’t victorious as we hope, can make it so that others in the future, our children, future generations, can achieve that victory. [Then] it will have all been worthwhile.”
Spain Understands The Stakes
Spain has first-hand experience with communism. When communists controlled Spain, both in the lead-up to and during the civil war in the 1930s, it resulted in the persecution of Spanish intellectuals, clerics, and Christian laypeople. Spanish communists began their anti-Christian hate by banning all religious schools, removing crucifixes from classrooms, and deeming all religious marriages invalid in the eyes of the state. Eventually, they started burning Catholic Churches and mass executing Catholic religious and laypeople. Property rights were thrown out, and conservatives were unjustly convicted in kangaroo courts and executed. By the end of the war, a reported “13 bishops, 4,172 priests, 2,364 monks and friars and 283 nuns and sisters,” and an unknown number of laypeople were killed.
The wounds inflicted by Spanish communists are still raw. The memory has not died. So, in 2022, Spain implemented its “Democratic Memory” law, an Orwellian piece of legislation that mandates a pro-leftist view of the Spanish Civil War and the post-war period. Through “criminal and economic sanctions for dissidents,” the law effectively eradicates “academic freedom, freedom of expression and freedom of education,” writes Hermann Tertsch, a Vox Member of the European Parliament.
Like in America, Spanish leftists brand anyone who contradicts their history narratives as thought criminals. According to Abascal, leftists have also created a two-tier justice system and “are now arresting young people for protest[ing] … saying they don’t have permits.” Unfortunately for the left, these fear tactics have not been entirely effective, as the ongoing protests demonstrate, perhaps because too many Spaniards know what communist control looks like.
In America, we are blessed not to know. However, that blessing is also a curse. We don’t appreciate how easily a free nation can fall into tyranny. Unable to oppose or even recognize tyranny, younger generations have lost touch with the American revolutionary spirit after sending generations of Americans to spend their formative years in reeducation camps run by cultural Marxists (aka public school and the university system).
Perhaps a way to regain America’s lost fortitude is by watching conservative freedom fighters in Spain. We may not have the national memory of communists burying priests alive or defiling and decapitating nuns, but we can look to Spain for motivation.
Indeed, the Spanish protests should inspire Americans, and Spanish history should be a warning.If we resign ourselves to failure or allow ourselves to be intimidated into silence, the consequences will be nothing short of complete national destruction.
Evita Duffy-Alfonso is a staff writer to The Federalist and the co-founder of the Chicago Thinker. She loves the Midwest, lumberjack sports, writing, and her family. Follow her on Twitter at @evitaduffy_1 or contact her at evita@thefederalist.com.
Many Americans have seen the footage of 77-year-old American lawyer Kenneth Darlington approaching and engaging a group of demonstrators blocking the Pan-American Highway in Panama before firing his handgun. Darlington is currently in Panamanian custody for killing two people during the incident. But what most Americans don’t know is what is going on in Panama, and what has been going on here for more than a month. Yet they should, because the unrest in this Central American country — home to a canal through which 40 percent of all U.S. container traffic travels — should serve as a warning as to what might await our own nation.
Holding a Nation Hostage
Since late October, protests have roiled Panama because of a government contract with Canadian mining company First Quantum Minerals, which would grant the company rights to mine massive deposits of copper for years. The Cobre Panama mine already contributes almost 5 percent of the nation’s GDP. However, many Panamanians view the contract as unfair, too favorable to the Canadian company, and an ecological threat, especially given that almost 9 percent of national GDP comes from the tourism industry and the country’s many celebrated nature reserves. Thus the contract has united labor unions and environmental activists against the Panamanian government for negotiating the contract under what they perceive as poor terms.
These protesters are highly organized and have been quite efficient at bringing Panama’s society and economy to its knees. Major roads across the country have been routinely blocked, as have various ports. Roadblocks in certain parts of the country have prevented fresh produce grown in the agricultural region of Chiriqui from reaching the capital, where more than a third of all citizens live. Many fruits and vegetables, including bananas, have been unavailable for weeks. Thousands of Panamanians who live outside the city have been unable to commute to their jobs. Major tourist attractions — such as the World Heritage Site Casco Viejo, the historic section of the city — have often been inaccessible, affecting the hundreds of businesses located there. United Airlines even canceled flights into the city because the roads to and from Tocumen International Airport were blocked.
The alleged murder of two Panamanians by a U.S. citizen has provoked international headlines, but there has been extensive other violence and crime. Clashes have resulted in several other deaths, many stores have been vandalized, and enterprising demonstrators have established checkpoints at major thoroughfares where they shake down passersby for money.
Multiple American friends of mine have been robbed at these checkpoints, and one of them was pulled out of his car and beaten so badly he required more than a dozen stitches, including to his skull. In that example, Panamanian police stood nearby and did nothing until after the criminals had robbed my friend and left him lying on the road. (It was, if you can believe it, the second time he had been attacked and almost killed by criminals in Panama).
Panamanian police have engaged with demonstrators when they’ve congregated en masse and threatened government buildings or the financial district but have been notably absent elsewhere in the capital or broader country. Why, I’ve wondered, do the police not simply clear these roadblocks and tell protesters that even if they have the right to demonstrate, they are not free to cripple the country?
“They aren’t paid enough for that,” was the response from one American expat I asked who has lived in Panama for more than two decades. The typical response from the government and security forces to these kinds of protests, which happen fairly regularly, including last year, is to give demonstrators extensive latitude to express their frustrations. It is, authorities believe, a sort of “release valve” that will eventually lose steam.
Does Any of This Sound Familiar?
I hope I have provided enough details for readers to recognize the similarities between what is happening in Panama in the past two months and what happened in the United States more than three years ago. Between May 26 and June 8, rioters caused between $1-2 billion worth of damage in about 20 states, making it the costliest example of civil disorder in U.S. history. An estimated 25 people died in the riots. In some cities, such as Minneapolis and Chicago, police were ordered to stand down from intervening while rioters looted or destroyed businesses and even police stations.
In Panama, popular frustrations over the roadblocks are growing. Working-class Panamanians are increasingly vocal in their anger toward road closures that have lost them as much as one month’s pay — when you’re already poor, that kind of financial loss is more than an annoyance, it’s debilitating. Some clashes have already occurred between laborers and protesters, and if this crisis isn’t resolved soon, there’s likely to be more protests, and they’ll probably be more violent.
Panama’s elite, who live in tony districts such as Costa del Este — which could easily pass for downtown Miami or San Diego — have been thus far largely insulated from the damage caused by more than a month of protests. They may not have butterhead lettuce for their salads or bananas for their smoothies, but they’ll make do, much as the American elite class did in 2020. Yet, also like America, the continued wealth and success of the elite class and their neighborhoods can distract from decaying infrastructure, a massive divide between rich and poor, and systemic corruption.
How long, one wonders, will everyday citizens put up with a system so obviously biased toward those wealthy and powerful enough to shield themselves from increasingly common criminality and violence on their streets? How long will the police protect those who view them as expendable, and even as a politically expedient scapegoat? In Panama, we may learn the answer soon. Perhaps Americans should be pursuing policy options with regard to public safety and police forces that ensure we won’t have to ask that question ourselves.
Casey Chalk is a senior contributor at The Federalist and an editor and columnist at The New Oxford Review. He has a bachelor’s in history and master’s in teaching from the University of Virginia and a master’s in theology from Christendom College. He is the author of The Persecuted: True Stories of Courageous Christians Living Their Faith in Muslim Lands.
Non-“affirming” adults would be barred from becoming foster parents under the Biden administration’s proposed rule. Pictured: Thousands of New Yorkers take to the streets of Manhattan on June 25 for the Reclaim Pride Coalition’s fifth annual Queer Liberation March. (Photo: Erik McGregor/LightRocket/Getty Images)
Transgender orthodoxy may soon become a litmus test for parenthood, according to the logic of a new policy working its way through the Department of Health and Human Services under President Joe Biden.
A new rule in HHS’ Administration for Children and Families would apply the idea that any lack of “affirmation” constitutes a form of child abuse to foster care placements. Once that idea takes root in foster care, child protective services agencies might start applying it more broadly.
The rule would reinterpret the Social Security Act, which requires agencies to ensure that each child in foster care receives “safe and proper” care. The rule would lay out steps agencies must take to meet that requirement for “LGBTQI+ children,” defined as kids who “identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer or questioning, intersex, as well as children who are non-binary, or have non-conforming gender identity or expression.”
Why is our government so interested in grooming America’s children to become homosexual? Are these efforts Gestapo in function? Why? Is it Eugenics? Are the disciples of Margarett Sanger that powerful in America’s Deep State?
Before agencies place a child with a foster parent, known as a “provider,” that person must “establish an environment free of hostility, mistreatment, or abuse based on the child’s LGBTQI+ status;” receive training “to be prepared with the appropriate knowledge and skills to provide for the needs of the child related to the child’s self-identified sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender expression;” and must be able to “facilitate the child’s access to age-appropriate resources, services, and activities that support their health and well-being.”
As the Federalist Society’s Rachel Morrison pointed out, the rule does not define “hostility,” “mistreatment,” or “abuse.” However, it does clarify that “a provider who attempted to undermine, suppress, or change the sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression of a child, including through the use of so-called ‘conversion therapy,’ would not be a safe and appropriate placement.”
The proposed rule cites medical associations such as the American Psychological Association to claim that efforts to “undermine, suppress, or change” sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression “are not supported by evidence and have been rejected as harmful.”
The rule does not acknowledge that gender ideology has infiltrated these medical associations and that many doctors—including those who once embraced gender ideology—have warned against confusing children on their gender and putting them on a path to mutilating their own bodies.
Dr. Stephen B. Levine, a psychiatrist and early proponent of transgender medical interventions, joined and briefly helped lead the Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria Association, which later became the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, the central medical group that organizations such as the American Psychiatric Association rely upon.
A member from 1974 to 2001, Levine served as chairman of the eight-member International Standards of Care Committee that issued the fifth version of the standards. He ultimately resigned his membership in 2002 upon concluding that the organization “had become dominated by politics and ideology, rather than by scientific progress.”
In a document opposing the use of Medicaid funding for experimental transgender medical interventions for children, Levine explains that “there is no consensus or agreed ‘standard of care’ concerning therapeutic approaches to child or adolescent gender dysphoria.” He notes that gender identity “is not biologically based” and “empirically not fixed for many individuals.” Levine also warns that social transition “is a powerful psychotherapeutic intervention that radically changes outcomes” and makes it far less likely that young children will “desist” from a transgender identity.
Contrary to the transgender activists’ claims, many doctors have raised serious concerns about the long-term effects of “gender-affirming care.” Cross-sex hormones can weaken children’s bones and make them more prone to heart disease. So-called puberty blockers, often billed as fully reversible, involve introducing a disease into a child’s body and make puberty harder to start again, should the child change his or her mind.
European countries, long considered more “progressive” than the U.S., have found a lack of evidence for medical interventions on children and are recommending a “watchful waiting” approach for minors.
Ultimately, gender ideology rests on the claim that a nebulous gender identity is more important than an individual’s biological sex. If a biological male claims to identify as female, society must consider him a woman and allow him to enter women’s restrooms, prisons, and sports teams, even though some men pose a threat to women in intimate situations and enjoy biological advantages in many sports. Similarly, this ideology encourages bodily alterations to make a male appear female and vice versa, despite the lack of evidence that such interventions actually improve well-being over the long haul.
This idea is particularly harmful for children who are just learning what it means to be male or female. If a boy likes to play with Barbie dolls, that does not mean he is really a girl. If a girl likes to play with G.I. Joes, that does not mean she is really a boy. Yet the ideology behind transgender identity urges parents to abandon all sanity and declare that such kids are transgender.
Before you object, think about how nebulous “gender identity” actually is. It doesn’t rely on a specific set of standards that may be verified objectively. Instead, it relies on an individual’s claim that he or she experiences painful and persistent dissonance between an “identity” and his or her biology. Any attempt to resolve this dissonance through mainstream talk therapy is ipso facto a form of “conversion therapy” to be condemned as “harmful.”
Yet Levine argues that “affirming” a transgender identity is a “powerful psychotherapeutic intervention” that will set kids on the path to mutilation and sterilization—long before they have any concept about what their own fertility means.
Under Biden’s proposed new rule, any potential foster parent who aims to protect a child from this confusion and damage may soon face expulsion from the program. That means the process will be designed to weed out guardians who actually would take good care of the kids and enable guardians who would assist in harming them.
In this topsy-turvy world, biology takes a back seat to a child’s insistence that he or she is really the opposite sex, even if the child might just as well identify as Queen Elsa of Arendelle or a Tyrannosaurus rex.
The rule justifies this by claiming that kids in the foster care system are more likely to identify as LGBTQI+, i.e. to face gender confusion. This means they are more vulnerable to the damage of gender ideology, not less. They need someone to protect them from “gender-affirming care,” and Biden seems dead set on preventing that.
Sadly, the HHS rule is not the first time Americans have faced this type of policy. In my home state of Virginia, state Del. Elizabeth Guzman, a Democrat, supports a bill to expand the definition of “child abuse” to include disagreement with gender ideology.
California’s Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom, signed a bill turning California into a “sanctuary state” for “gender-affirming care,” which the law defines as an absolute right. The law gives California courts the ability to award custody over a child if someone removes the child from his or her parents in another state in order to obtain such “care” for that child despite the parents’ disagreement.
Ultimately, Americans cannot have it both ways. Either it is child abuse to deny a child’s transgender identity, or it is child abuse to encourage experimental medical alterations that will leave that child stunted, scarred, and infertile.
Those on the Left seem hell-bent on forcing gender ideology in the name of safety, and Americans need to stand up and say, “No.”
Thankfully, HHS’ Administration for Children and Families must read every single written comment that concerned Americans send in on the rule. Americans may make their voices heard by submitting comments at this link.
Top Stories • Nevada Judge Rejects Attempt to Make Killing Babies in Abortions a Constitutional Right • Idaho Goes to Supreme Court to Protect Babies From Joe Biden’s Radical Abortion Agenda • Abortions Increased 5% in 2021 Thanks to COVID and Joe Biden’s Pro-Abortion Agenda • South Carolina Supreme Court Upholds Heartbeat Law That Has Saved Thousands of Babies From Abortion
More Pro-Life News • Argentina Elects New Pro-Life President Who Wants to Protect Babies From Abortion • Vivek Ramaswamy is Pro-Life Because He and His Wife Lost a Baby to Miscarriage • Pro-Life Advocate Who Helped Save 43,000 Babies From Abortions Passes Away • Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer Signs Radical Bill Allowing Partial-Birth Abortions • Scroll Down for Several More Pro-Life News Stories
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It is hard not to see the difference between Thanksgiving in 2019 with low inflation, cheap gas, no new wars, low food costs, and an excellent overall economy compared to Thanksgiving 2023. Trump’s Horn-of-Plenty vs. Biden’s Horn of Disaster.
This Thanksgiving, I’m giving thanks that Trump has a good chance of being elected back into the White House to clean up Biden and the Democrats’ mess they have perpetrated on the American people. But, having pointed out the obvious, I hope we can ignore the Biden/Democrat disaster for one day and focus on what’s really important: God, Family, and Friends.
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.
U.S. senators led by John Fetterman, Elizabeth Warren, and Bernie Sanders would turn unemployment insurance into something closer to a universal basic income program — with predictably awful results.
Hard work has always defined our nation, fueling our rise as a global economic superpower. The American workforce used to be synonymous with American greatness.
But our workforce was devasted in 2020, when even the casual observer came to understand that the federal government couldn’t pay people to stay idle and out of work forever.
So why are Democrats in Congress so eager to repeat the one of the most glaring pandemic-era policy blunders?
With a breathtaking disregard for lessons learned, Senators John Fetterman (D-Penn.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), and others are seeking to expand state-run unemployment insurance programs, transitioning them into something more closely resembling a federally mandated universal basic income scheme than an emergency safety net program. Their new plan would replace up to 100% of workers’ wages for more than a year. That’s not insurance — that’s a new entitlement paid for by the employers taxed to fund the program.
Senate Bill 3140, the Unemployment Insurance Modernization and Recession Readiness Act, could be forgiven as merely naïve if it hadn’t arrived so soon after pandemic policies cost taxpayers billions of dollars and encouraged millions of able-bodied Americans to exit the workforce even as employers struggled to find workers. With the COVID experience so recent, the senators’ plan is a deliberate attempt to sabotage the moral and economic dignity afforded by a job. It represents a final neutralizing of the once-great American work ethic and, with it, the civic virtues of independence, individual responsibility, and self-government.
It’s clear that big-government types like Sanders and Warren find work antithetical to their aims of cradle-to-grave dependency. They’ve been trying to mainstream socialism for decades. Now they’ve turned their sights on the worker safety net program as a vehicle to destroy work itself. Unemployment insurance has always been about providing limited, temporary assistance to workers who lose a job through no fault of their own. Funded by employer taxes, the largely state-run program has served as a rapid on-ramp to the workforce, ensuring the unemployed have some immediate support as they look for their next job. The arrangement has worked well, allowing states to devise innovations that result in higher rates of re-employment, shorter periods of unemployment, and lower taxes on employers. But all of that would change under this new proposal. In place of state innovation would come federal standardization — and not in a good way, either.
In 2020, Democrats pushed successfully for an expansion of unemployment benefits as part of federal pandemic relief spending. Stopping just short of a federal takeover of the unemployment program, Congress increased weekly benefit levels up to $600 per week above existing limits, expanded benefits to individuals whose employers (if they had one) did not pay into the program, and paid benefits for more than a year and a half. The results were disastrous.
Billions of additional dollars flooding the system became a magnet for fraudsters. The Department of Labor’s inspector general estimates at least $35 billion in unemployment benefits was lost to fraud. State programs took a hit as well, losing more than $12 billion to fraudulent and ineligible claims. Perhaps worst of all, the fact that an unemployment claimant could replace most — if not all — of his income by remaining unemployed slowed the pace of the post-pandemic recovery. While tens of millions of hardworking Americans returned to work as quickly as possible, millions of others stayed on unemployment. It wasn’t until a year after the federal benefit expansion ended that U.S. employment returned to its pre-pandemic level.
So, what do Democrats want to do now? Their new bill would force states to pay unemployment claims for up to six months and make an additional federally funded year of benefits available after that. Those benefits would be expensive, replacing 75% of a worker’s salary at minimum. But under certain circumstances, a worker could receive up to 100% of his former wages.
And, naturally, labor unions and nongovernmental organizations are thrilled at the prospect of compelling employers to pay striking workers — an idea so ludicrous that even California Governor Gavin Newsom vetoed a similar proposal in the Golden State.
Substituting government dependency for the dignity and upward mobility work provides is not a formula for American prosperity and success. For American greatness to endure, let’s hope Congress never takes this plan seriously.
The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) is calling on “intelligent speed assistance technology” (ISA) to be mandatory “in all new cars” after a fatal accident in Nevada killed nine people.
In a press release last week, the federal agency outlined how ISA “uses a car’s GPS location compared with a database of posted speed limits and its onboard cameras to help ensure safe and legal speeds.”
“Passive ISA systems warn a driver when the vehicle exceeds the speed limit through visual, sound, or haptic alerts, and the driver is responsible for slowing the car,” the agency explained. “Active systems include mechanisms that make it more difficult, but not impossible, to increase the speed of a vehicle above the posted speed limit and those that electronically limit the speed of the vehicle to fully prevent drivers from exceeding the speed limit.”
The NTSB board issued the recommendations last week after a 2018 Dodge Challenger rammed into a minivan at 103 mph in North Las Vegas in January 2022. The driver, however, was high on cocaine and PCP.
“This crash is the latest in a long line of tragedies we’ve investigated where speeding and impairment led to catastrophe, but it doesn’t have to be this way,” NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy said in last week’s press release. “We know the key to saving lives is redundancy, which can protect all of us from human error that occurs on our roads. What we lack is the collective will to act on NTSB safety recommendations.”
While legal speed limits are capped at 85 mph in the U.S., vehicles are designed to go far faster to allow safe passing and escape in emergency situations. The capacity to go faster also puts less strain on vehicles at lower speeds.
The NTSB released the proposal weeks after the Republican House majority helped Democrats preserve their “kill switch” mandate for new vehicles earlier this month. All cars produced in 2026 and onward will be required to implement technology that can automatically disable the vehicle “if impairment is detected” after 19 Republicans joined Democrats to kill an amendment defunding the mandate.
During debate last night on my amendment to defund the 2026 kill-switch mandate for cars, some Democrats claimed the technology wouldn’t monitor or disable cars. Here’s the actual law I had to read to them:
The NTSB’s ISA mandate, combined with the “kill switch” requirement embedded in the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, lays the groundwork for corporate and government access to monitor and interfere with personal movement.
In California, activists have cited climate change as justification for new standards limiting transit. The California Air Resources Board released new regulations last summer banning the sale of gasoline-powered cars by 2035. The following week, California Gov. Gavin Newsom begged residents not to charge electric vehicles during a heat wave so the power grid would not become overwhelmed.
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.
Last week, newly elected House Speaker Mike Johnson publicly released 90 hours of Jan. 6, 2021, security footage featuring protesters peacefully walking through the Capitol, often with the encouragement or indifference of Capitol Police officers.
The footage further delegitimizes the Biden administration, corporate media, and Jan. 6 Committee’s insistence that the 2021 Capitol protest was on par with Pearl Harbor and 9/11. It also exonerates countless peaceful protesters who have been slandered by the media and J6 Committee, harassed by Biden’s Department of Justice, and held in solitary confinement without due process.
Many protesters were severely punished because federal courts stressed a “need to deter others, especially in cases of domestic terrorism.” In other words, they made examples out of Jan. 6 protesters for daring to question the results of the rigged 2020 election. Some Jan. 6 protesters crumbled under the Biden DOJ’s political persecution. Four of them took their own lives. Here’s what we know about those victims.
Matthew Perna
According to journalist Julie Kelly, Matthew Perna reportedly “graduated at the top of his class at Penn State University and traveled the world teaching children in southeast Asia how to speak English.” Perna had become interested in holistic medicine after his mother’s death and worked as a CBD distributor.
Surveillance video shows Perna entered the Capitol through an open door and peacefully walked through the building for about 20 minutes. Perna “did not assault anyone, carry a weapon, or vandalize property,” Kelly reported.
NEW JAN. 6 FOOTAGE: Matthew Perna (seen in red sweatshirt) committed suicide after being targeted by the DOJ for going into the Capitol.
Video shows him calmly walking through, guided by police.
Perna initially plead guilty to charges believing he would only be facing up to one… pic.twitter.com/iCONNjLEDs
Nonetheless, after getting in touch with his local FBI and “voluntarily submitt[ing] to questioning,” he was arrested by six FBI agents at his home and was “indicted by a grand jury on four counts including obstruction of an official proceeding and trespassing misdemeanors.”
Perna pleaded guilty to all four counts, and given his previously clean record, he expected a prison sentence of less than a year.
In a letter to the judge, Perna’s father begged him to be lenient, writing, “This past year cost Matthew his income, the love of his life, his friendships, and his standing in the community. He will never be the same, and I ask that you take all of this into consideration before sentencing him.”
However, “Matthew Graves, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia handling every January 6 prosecution, intervened and asked the court to delay Perna’s sentencing,” wrote Kelly. This was devastating news, as Graves’ office is famous for throwing the book at J6 defendants in order to “deter others in cases involving domestic terrorism.”
Before he could receive his sentencing, Perna took his own life at 37 years old. In his obituary, his family wrote:
Matthew Lawrence Perna died on February 25, 2022 of a broken heart. His community (which he loved), his country, and the justice system killed his spirit and his zest for life. He attended the rally on January 6, 2021 to peacefully stand up for his beliefs. He entered the Capitol through a previously opened door (he did not break in as was reported) where he was ushered in by police. He didn’t break, touch, or steal anything. He did not harm anyone, as he stayed within the velvet ropes taking pictures. For this act he has been persecuted by many members of his community, friends, relatives, and people who had never met him. Many people were quietly supportive, and Matt was truly grateful for them. The constant delays in hearings, and postponements dragged out for over a year. Because of this, Matt’s heart broke and his spirit died, and many people are responsible for the pain he endured.
Jord Meacham
According to his obituary, Nejourde “Jord” Meacham “worked on the family’s ranch, and enjoyed riding horses, hunting, fishing, and doing anything outdoors. He was a big history buff and was a good cook — soup being his specialty.” Kelly reported that Meacham was one of 10 children and came from an apparently “tight-knit family.”
At 19 years old, he attended the Jan. 6 protest with his uncle. Meacham did not appear to be violent nor destructive. Surveillance footage shows him simply walking through the Capitol with a Trump flag. Yet the Biden DOJ charged Meacham with disorderly and disruptive conduct in a restricted building or grounds; disorderly conduct in a Capitol building; and parading, demonstrating, or picketing in a Capitol building.
On Aug. 28, 2021, just hours after a judge scheduled his arraignment, Meacham died from “an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound” at just 22 years old.
Mark Aungst
Mark Aungst was a gas field well service technician, practicing Lutheran, father, and soon-to-be grandfather. “A loyal and dedicated man, Mark showed tremendous pride for God and his country,” stated his obituary. “Above all else, Mark loved his daughter and any time they spent together, as she was truly his world.”
Aungst traveled to Washington, D.C., on a chartered bus from Pennsylvania for the protest on Jan. 6, 2021. He was initially in the Capitol for only 30 seconds. Then, 20 minutes later, he reentered the Capitol, spending 10 minutes inside taking pictures and video.
Aungst was arrested in February of 2021 and reportedly pleaded guilty to a charge of parading, demonstrating, or picketing in a Capitol building. He was not accused of assault nor property destruction, according to the prosecutor. His sentencing was set for Sept. 27, where he reportedly could have faced “up to six months in prison and [been] fined $5,000.” But he took his own life on July 20, 2022, at 47 years old.
Christopher Georgia
According to Christopher Georgia’s LinkedIn profile, he was a regional portfolio manager at a bank holding company. Georgia’s neighbor reportedly told The Sun that Georgia was a “loving father” and someone “who always had a smile and loved cutting his own grass.”
According to court documents, Georgia was accused of violating the city curfew and trying to “enter certain property, that is, the United States Capitol Grounds, against the will of the United States Capitol Police.” He was arrested on the day of the J6 protest. Three days later, on Jan. 9, he died of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound at 53 years old.
The DailyMail reported that Georgia’s wife called 911 that Saturday morning, saying there was “blood everywhere.” The police reportedly described Georgia’s family as “extremely distressed” when officers arrived.
Aftermath
The hopelessness, demonization, and fear felt by Georgia, Aungst, Perna, and Meacham are not isolated. More than 1,100 people present in our nation’s capital on Jan. 6 are targets of Biden’s Justice Department.
The Jan. 6 footage should have been released immediately for the benefit of J6 defendants and clarity for the American people. Since it wasn’t, Democrats have been able to destroy lives and freely lie for nearly three years about what truly transpired.
Biden and the corporate media claim that these protesters, the vast majority of whom were peaceful, are domestic terrorists and a threat to the nation. But these four men who felt hopeless and took their own lives weren’t terrorists; they were regular citizens who just wanted to exercise their First Amendment rights by protesting what they believed was a stolen election.
Questioning Democrats and their blatant election-rigging tactics, such as mass mail-in balloting or Big Tech censorship in favor of their preferred candidates, was deemed unacceptable by the tyrannical Biden administration. The feds made examples out of J6 defendants like Georgia, Aungst, Perna, and Meacham as part of their crusade to paint all conservatives as domestic terrorists and to instill fear in the hearts of all Americans. Now there’s blood on their hands.
Evita Duffy-Alfonso is a staff writer to The Federalist and the co-founder of the Chicago Thinker. She loves the Midwest, lumberjack sports, writing, and her family. Follow her on Twitter at @evitaduffy_1 or contact her at evita@thefederalist.com.
The wheels are starting to fall off the green energy bandwagon. The rose-colored glasses are clearing up and reality is sinking in.
The giant push toward a net zero utopia is not practical and has been a complete disservice to the American consumer. Components of the green movement are experiencing major setbacks, namely offshore wind, electric vehicles (EVs), and investments.
Offshore wind projects are struggling to secure financing and stay on track. The biggest blow came last month, when the world’s largest offshore wind developer Ørsted canceled two major projects off the New Jersey coastline, taking the wind right out of Gov. Phil Murphy’s green energy sails. Ørsted is also suspending work on offshore projects in Maryland and Delaware.
The EV market is also losing steam. Sales are slumping and manufacturers are scaling back on production. (Anna Moneymaker/Pool/Getty Images | Sean Gallup/Getty Images)
Among the wave of cancellations are projects in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New York and Connecticut. Several other projects are on the ropes and a host of companies are paying millions to break their contracts.
The industry hit another snag recently when Germany-based Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy pulled the plug on its wind turbine blade facility in Portsmouth, Virginia. Siemens Gamesa, one of the world’s leading suppliers, says, “development milestones to establish the facility could not be met.”
According to BloombergNEF, at least half of U.S. wind contracts have or are at risk of being terminated. The causes are typically due to skyrocketing inflation, high interest rates, choked supply chains and financial troubles.
Ford Motor Company stands to lose $4.5 billion on its EV business for 2023 and will be delaying many of their EV investments.
General Motors said it was restructuring EV goals, Honda shelved plans to develop affordable EVs with GM, and Hertz said it will slow their rate of purchasing them due to high repair costs. Elon Musk is even considering putting off plans for a $1 billion plant in Mexico.
Most, if not all, manufacturers are reporting major losses per EV sold. Ford lost $62,000 per vehicle in the third quarter; one luxury electric vehicle company lost an astounding $430,000. Countless others are losing tens of thousands of dollars per vehicle, quarter after quarter.
Car dealers are slashing EV prices. EVs sit on lots nearly twice as long as internal combustion engines. Even industry-leader Tesla has been shaving thousands off their retail prices due to unmet sales expectations.
This kind of loss is not sustainable for any company.
The EV market is niche. Those who want one have one. But the rest of America is not convinced they would be better off with an EV on account of a multitude of reliability factors. Nor can they afford the steep price tag.
Consequently, the last few months have seen stock prices drastically dropping in companies across the green spectrum. From wind to solar to EVs to fuel cells, investors are abandoning the “green” energy ship in droves. It might be sinking.
Siemens Energy stock is down 45%; Ørsted, 67%; Power Inc., a hydrogen fuel cell producer, 71%; Charge Point Holdings Inc., an EV charging company, 70%; Blink Charging Co., another EV charging company, 72%; and Nikola Corp., maker of heavy-duty EVs, has gone from $65 a share in mid-2020 to the current price of less than $1 per share.
A recent Wall Street Journal article noted that such companies are “finding it more difficult to secure financing than at any time in the past decade.”
We need to read between the lines here. The green energy revolution is not working, nor is central planning. You cannot force Americans to buy cars they don’t want any more than you can force energy transitions that aren’t viable.
Green energy is wholly inadequate to meet the needs of all Americans, and turns out, is insanely expensive.
The World Economic Forum says that getting to net zero by 2050 will cost an extra $3.5 trillion a year. The U.S. has already poured hundreds of billions into the effort and continues to keep shoveling. All on the backs of the American taxpayer, to save a mere fraction of temperature. Maybe.
Heritage Foundation’s chief statistician estimates that even if all fossil fuels were eliminated from the United States, not even 0.2 degrees Celsius would be salvaged.
Kristen Walker is a policy analyst for the American Consumer Institute, a nonprofit education and research organization. For more information about the Institute, visit www.theamericanconsumer.org or follow us on Twitter @ConsumerPal.
Two journalists working for a Lebanon-based TV channel and a third person were killed by a rocket strike near Lebanon’s border with Israel on Tuesday, the Lebanese state news agency reported. The agency said the incident took place near the town of Tir Harfa, about a mile from the Israeli frontier. The strike came less than a day after Hezbollah hit Israeli Defense Forces’ military positions near the border, according to reports.
“According to Israeli Media, Hezbollah has launched upwards of 40 Rockets and 3 Attack Drones against IDF Positions in Northern Israel this morning causing Significant Damage to at least 1 Military Outpost along the Border, with this being seen as a Serious Escalation,” an open-source intelligence monitor posted Monday on X.
Israeli aircraft Tuesday struck three-armed terror cells in Lebanese territory close to the border, as well as a number of Hezbollah targets, the army said, according to Jewish News Syndicate. Sirens sounded in northern Israel on Tuesday morning due to a potential hostile aircraft intrusion from Lebanon, with the IDF later giving the all-clear.
Three anti-tank missile launches from Lebanon toward the area of Metula near the Israel-Lebanon border were identified by the IDF on Tuesday morning. No injuries were reported, and the IDF struck the source of the launches. Later on Tuesday morning, the IDF reported that terrorists fired mortar shells at a military post in northern Israel.
Lebanon’s Al Mayadeen TV, which the two killed reporters were working for, said Israel had carried out the attack and deliberately targeted the journalists. Israel’s military did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Fighting between Israel and Iran-backed Lebanese group Hezbollah broke out after Hezbollah’s Palestinian ally Hamas launched an attack on Israel on Oct. 7. The border violence has escalated, raising Western fears of a widening war in the Middle East that could draw in both the United States and Iran.
It is the worst violence at the border since Israel and Hezbollah fought a war in 2006 and has so far killed more than 70 Hezbollah fighters, 13 Lebanese civilians, seven Israeli troops and three Israeli civilians.
Newsmax writer Eric Mack and JNS.org contributed to this report.
Democrats’ opposition to voter identification requirements was called out Tuesday by former President Donald Trump as “the biggest giveaway” of their alleged intention to stuff ballot boxes.
“No radical left Democrat politician has ever been able to explain why their party is so rabidly opposed to Voter ID — and that’s the biggest giveaway of all that they are cheating on a monumental scale,” Trump said Tuesday in one in a series of video statements posted to Truth Social. “They don’t want voter ID, because they want to cheat.”
Trump denounced Democrats’ past arguments that “voter ID is racist,” calling it “offensive” that Democrats attempted to suggest voters are incapable of getting a photo ID.
“What century are these radical Democrats living in?” Trump said. “Americans of all colors and creeds are fully capable of obtaining identification, which is required to drive a car, buy a beer, see an R-rated movie, get on an airplane, get a bank account, check into a hotel, and even to get cold medicine at a pharmacy.”
Trump cited polls showing “over 80% of Americans” supporting voter ID requirements.
“Yet in the last Congress every single Democrat in the House of Representatives voted to ban voter ID nationwide,” Trump said. “That because they cheat, and their policies which are so bad and so destructive — especially to our cities or inner-cities — no wonder they have to cheat, because nobody could get elected with those policies.”
Trump added only “two things are scared” in the anti-democracy party: “Open borders and no voter ID,” two policies he said are tied to stuff ballots for Democrats’ agenda.
“When I am reelected we will secure our borders and we will launch a nationwide campaign to get voter ID in every federal, state, and local election,” Trump’s video statement concluded. “What we really want to do is get down to paper ballots, one-day voting, and voter ID, and we’re going to have safe elections again.”
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
Ensuring fair elections should be a top priority for federal, state, and local lawmakers. Pictured: An employee at the Utah County election office puts mail-in ballots into a container to register the vote in the midterm elections on Nov. 6, 2018, in Provo, Utah. (Photo: George Frey/Getty Images)
The American public wants and deserves an election system in which the candidates who get the most legitimate votes of eligible voters are declared the winners, and elections are not marred by errors, fraud, and other serious issues and misbehavior that make voters and candidates question the legitimacy of election outcomes.
Anyone who doubts the need for reform should take a look at The Heritage Foundation’s Election Fraud Database, which is constantly being updated with new cases of and convictions for fraud from across the country.
In an era of razor-thin elections, guarding against this type of illegal behavior, as well as errors made by election officials, is especially important. In 2024, it could prove critical.
The good news is that there is still time to implement the kind of reforms needed to help secure elections and maintain the public’s confidence in them. Although most states have part-time legislatures, most of those legislative sessions occur in the first quarter of each year, giving state legislators the ability to make final improvements—at least for the general election in November—starting in January.
States with full-time legislatures, such as California and Michigan, can pass such improvements immediately.
So, what can be done? For starters, states should ensure that election officials maintain current, accurate voter rolls. They should require photo identification to vote, both in person and absentee. For registered voters who don’t already have a photo ID, states should provide one free of charge.
States should also ban funding of state and local election offices by partisan private donors and organizations. This sort of shady funding occurred in the 2020 election and created clear and obvious conflicts of interest.
States should also prohibit ballot trafficking. Allowing third-party strangers such as candidates, campaign staffers, party activists, and political guns-for-hire, all of whom have a stake in the outcome of an election, to handle a voter’s ballot is an invitation to fraud and coercion.
Finally, transparency is fundamental for states seeking to conduct honest elections and maintain public confidence in their credibility. With that in mind, states should reject calls to restrict the access of election observers and ensure that observers have complete and unfettered access to every aspect of our elections, from the processing of voter-registration applications to the casting of votes and the counting of ballots.
The best and easiest toolkit that legislators and citizens can use to determine how to improve their elections is the Election Integrity Scorecard, which The Heritage Foundation launched in December 2021. The scorecard analyzes the election laws, regulations, and procedures of all 50 states and the District of Columbia by comparing them with a list of 47 best-practices recommendations. These recommendations outline the best ways for election officials to ensure the integrity of their state elections.
Each state is scored based on its implementation of these best practices. No state in the country has a perfect score of 100, which means everyone has some work to do. Tennessee and Georgia are at the top of the ranking, with scores of 84 and 83, respectively. Nevada and Hawaii find themselves at the bottom, with abysmally failing marks of only 28 and 26, respectively.
Heritage’s scorecard also includes a detailed analysis for each state (plus the District), informing legislators and election officials what they need to fix. The scorecard even offers model legislation on absentee ballots, accurate voter rolls, election observers, private funding of election offices, vote trafficking, and other important reforms.
Less than one year away from Election Day 2024, the time for the public, local, and state election officials and state legislators to ensure the integrity of our elections and protect the franchise for voters is now.
Hans von Spakovsky is a senior legal fellow at The Heritage Foundation, a former commissioner on the Federal Election Commission, and former counsel to the assistant attorney general for civil rights at the U.S. Department of Justice. He is a member of the board of the Public Interest Legal Foundation.
Gender dysphoria is a disability that requires accommodation, Biden’s Department of Health and Human Services says, based on one court ruling. (Photo illustration: SB Arts Media/Getty Images)
The Biden administration has been known to stretch the law beyond a plain reading to support a desired policy outcome. Take the longstanding federal law that criminalizes the shipment of abortion drugs, for example. The Justice Department argues that the law doesn’t mean what it says. Wrong.
Or how about Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972—crafted to guarantee sex equality in education—which the Department of Education argues permits biological boys to compete on female athletic teams? Wrong again.
Now, the Department of Health and Human Services is arguing that gender dysphoria is a disability under federal law. And that disability, HHS argues, requires accommodation. How does HHS reach that conclusion? By relying on one decision from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit, a decision not followed by any other federal appellate court. It’s also a decision about which certain justices of the U.S. Supreme Court expressed significant concern.
On Sept. 14, the Department of Health and Human Services published a proposed rule to amend section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, which is the federal law that prohibits disability discrimination in any program conducted by federal agencies or receiving federal funding.
There is much good in the proposed rule to be sure, including updates on obligations concerning web and mobile accessibility, service animals, facilities, and medical care. But the proposed rule also adopts the rationale of the 4th Circuit in Williams v. Kincaid to justify extending the definition of disability to include gender dysphoria.
The Department agrees that restrictions that prevent, limit, or interfere with otherwise qualified individuals’ access to care due to their gender dysphoria, gender dysphoria diagnosis, or perception of gender dysphoria may violate section 504.
There’s just one problem: Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act excludes the exact disorder HHS is trying to shoehorn into its interpretation. That law reads:
For the purposes of sections 791, 793, and 794 of this title, the term ‘individual with a disability’ does not include an individual on the basis of—(i) transvestism, transsexualism, pedophilia, exhibitionism, voyeurism, gender identity disorders not resulting from physical impairments, or other sexual behavior disorders.
Happily for the Biden administration, the appeals court in Williams held (inexplicably) that “gender dysphoria” and “gender identity disorder” were two different things.
In the case, inmate Kesha Williams, who was born a male but “identifies” as a transgender woman, sued Sheriff Stacey Kincaid of Fairfax County, Virginia, based on alleged mistreatment at the county jail.
Williams sued under both the Rehabilitation Act and the Americans With Disabilities Act (or ADA), a civil rights law that prohibits discrimination against individuals with disabilities in all areas of public life, including employment, education, transportation, and places open to the general public. The Rehabilitation Act and the Americans With Disabilities Act contain identical, exclusionary language on “gender identity disorders.” The two laws often appear together when a claimant alleges discrimination based on disability.
Williams’ contention was that as Fairfax County sheriff, Kincaid violated both laws by refusing to accommodate Williams’ “gender dysphoria.” Williams argued that the sheriff did so by assigning the inmate to men’s housing, failing to offer hormone therapy, and permitting “persistent and intentional misgendering and harassment.”
Because the ADA clearly doesn’t provide disability protections for “gender identity disorder,” Judge Diana Gribbon Motz, writing for the 2-1 majority, engaged in a contorted legal analysis before concluding that gender dysphoria wasn’t actually a gender identity disorder. To reach that conclusion, Motz didn’t look to the statute’s plain language at the time of its enactment. Instead, she focused on a much more recent change by the American Psychiatric Association on gender-related psychiatric diagnoses—one not envisioned, anticipated, or incorporated by the original drafters of the Americans With Disabilities Act in 1990.
This change first appeared in 2013 in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (DSM-5). This manual is the standard classification of mental disorders used by mental health professionals in the United States. At that time, the American Psychiatric Association replaced the term “gender identity disorder” with “gender dysphoria.” The change focused the diagnosis on the distress that some people who consider themselves transgender experience (and for which they may seek psychiatric, medical, and surgical treatments) instead of on an individual’s desire to be a gender other than the one he or she was born as. Motz determined that this change was good enough to stretch the Americans With Disabilities Act well beyond the limits of what Congress determined the law ought to bear originally.
In sum, the APA’s removal of the ‘gender identity disorder’ diagnosis and the addition of the ‘gender dysphoria’ diagnosis to the DSM-5 reflected a significant shift in medical understanding. The obsolete diagnosis focused solely on cross-gender identification; the modern one on clinically significant distress … Put simply, while the older DSM pathologized the very existence of transgender people, the recent DSM-5’s diagnosis of gender dysphoria takes as a given that being transgender is not a disability and affirms that a transgender person’s medical needs are just as deserving of treatment and protection as anyone else’s.
Motz and the other judge in the majority argued that the concept of “gender identity disorder” as used in the statute encompassed all “cross-gender identification,” but the current American Psychiatric Association-defined concept of “gender dysphoria” is defined by stress that goes beyond “being trans alone.” So, Motz concluded in her opinion, “gender identity disorder” as a category “no longer exists,” thereby rendering the statutory exclusion without any effect.
In his dissent, Judge Marvin Quattlebaum argued that the majority’s focus on this linguistic change ignored the plain text of the Americans With Disabilities Act at the time of its enactment in 1990. And that plain text explicitly excluded “gender identity disorders.” In Quattlebaum’s view, Motz was incorrect to focus on an apparent shift in medical understanding, something she argued had rendered the exclusion of “gender identity disorder” as obsolete.
The Supreme Court denied review in Williams on June 30, but Justice Samuel Alito was joined by Justice Clarence Thomas in strenuously dissenting from this denial. Alito wrote that the case presented a question of “great national importance” that required prompt review. He added:
The Fourth Circuit’s decision makes an important provision of a federal law inoperative and, given the broad reach of the ADA and the Rehabilitation Act, will have far-reaching and important effects across much of civil society in that Circuit. Voters in the affected States and the legislators they elect will lose the authority to decide how best to address the needs of transgender persons in single-sex facilities, dormitory housing, college sports, and the like.
As seems typical for the Biden administration, the Department of Health and Human Services relied on a single, problematic ruling—one based on faulty reasoning and subject to withering criticism—for the purpose of advancing its preferred social policy interests. HHS intends that all entities covered by the Americans With Disabilities Act and the Rehabilitation Act now must make accommodations for any feelings of stress or discomfort that result from a person’s “assigned” (i.e., birth) sex.
If the proposed HHS rule is finalized, it would open the door for those who consider themselves transgender and feel clinically distressed to receive requested accommodations in bathrooms, locker rooms, sports, prisons, same-sex housing, preferred pronouns, and more.
The public comment period on the proposed HHS rule closed Nov. 13, and the Biden administration now must wade through over 5,200 comments received before drafting and issuing a final rule.
The administration shouldn’t rely on another faulty interpretation of federal law. Instead, it should rescind the proposed HHS rule immediately.
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Today, as I’m drawing this cartoon (November 20th, 2023), Joe Biden is celebrating his 81st birthday, so obviously, many are bringing up the question, “How old is too old to be president? But is age really the issue? There are many his age and older, much more mentally fit to be President than he is.
Trump, 77, is still cognitively vibrant, shows no sign of letting up, and is a stark contrast to stumbling bumbling Joe. In my opinion, Joe Biden has never been mentally fit to be president. So, I don’t think age is the issue, but instead of judging by age, maybe a mental test of some sort that I’m sure Biden wouldn’t be able to pass today.
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.
More footage from the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, further contradicts the left-wing narrative that the day’s events constituted a “violent insurrection” wherein democracy itself was placed in jeopardy at the hands of virulent demonstrators.
Last week, Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana began releasing tapes containing more than 40,000 hours of footage from the Capitol, which were buried for three years while House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and lawmakers on the partisan Jan. 6 Committee worked to dramatize the riot with prime-time show trials.
“When I ran for Speaker, I promised to make accessible to the American people the 44,000 hours of video from Capitol Hill security taken on January 6, 2021. Truth and transparency are critical,” Johnson said in a statement. “This decision will provide millions of Americans, criminal defendants, public interest organizations and the media an ability to see for themselves what happened that day, rather than having to rely upon the interpretation of a small group of government officials.”
With a bulk of the footage made available by Friday, the rest of the tapes will be made public on a rolling basis. Cameras captured demonstrators peacefully marching through the halls of the Capitol while police officers stood by.
Jan 6 defendants have long argued that the initial entrants were peaceably escorted into the building by Capitol Police, and therefore had no reasonable expectation that their conduct was unlawful
In another clip, a Capitol police officer is seen removing restraints on one demonstrator after walking him down a hallway out of sight from the crowd — before another officer bizarrely congratulates him with a fist bump.
I don’t think Capitol Police would take restraints off of a protester, FIST BUMP him, and then let him go if this were an actual “insurrection”
The footage corroborates what was shared by former Fox News host Tucker Carlson in March before his abrupt exit from the network. Johnson’s Republican predecessor, Kevin McCarthy, gave Carlson’s producers access to the footage that had been kept under seal by the Democrat majority.
“That video,” Carlson said, “tells a very different story about what happened on Jan. 6.”
The tapes aired by Carlson showed Jacob Chansley, the infamous “QAnon Shaman,” being escorted by police around the complex; revealed deceased Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick “healthy and vigorous” after allegedly being hit in the head with a fire extinguisher; and unearthed new contradictions in Ray Epps’ testimony. The tapes also exposed outright fabrications by the House Select Committee on Jan. 6, which was established by House Speaker Pelosi ostensibly to probe the Capitol turmoil while concealing her own failures.
Democrat Mississippi Rep. Bennie Thompson, who chaired the partisan Select Committee, bizarrely conceded that over the course of the panel’s two-year investigation, lawmakers never reviewed the blockbuster footage that was later published by Fox News.
“I’m not actually aware of any member of the committee who had access,” Thompson said. “We had a team of employees who kind of went through the video.”
Former Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney, meanwhile, who was vice chair of the Select Committee before an overwhelming primary defeat by Rep. Harriet Hageman, tried to downplay Friday’s release by resharing some of the panel’s carefully selected footage of the mob.
“Here’s some January 6th video for you,” she wrote on X, previously known as Twitter.
Utah Republican Sen. Mike Lee, whom Cheney’s Soviet-style committee sought to frame as a collaborator in an apparent insurrection, pushed back on Cheney’s narrative.
“Liz, we’ve seen footage like that a million times. You made sure we saw that — and nothing else,” Lee wrote on X. “It’s the other stuff — what you deliberately hid from us — that we find so upsetting.”
Liz, we’ve seen footage like that a million times.
You made sure we saw that—and nothing else.
It’s the other stuff—what you deliberately hid from us—that we find so upsetting.
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.
Corporate media have gotten every single major story of the last decade wrong, in big and little ways. Whether it’s the 2016 election, the Russia-collusion scam, the threats posed by Covid and response to the same, the effort to destroy Brett Kavanaugh’s life and family, accurate discussion of the Biden family business, immigration, abortion, crime, racism, guns, hate crime hoaxes, the economy, inflation, education, the relationship between the sexes, the radical trans agenda, or a thousand other stories, the media haven’t just been bad. They have been absolutely irredeemably awful.
A record-high percentage of Americans (39 percent) have literally no — as in none, zilch, nada — trust in corporate media to “report the news in a full, fair and accurate way,” according to Gallup. Another large percentage (29 percent) has “not very much” trust in the media to get the story right. Only 11 percent of Republicans trust the media, compared to nearly 60 percent of Democrats. The gap between the parties is because corporate media overwhelmingly shape news and information to support Democrats and their policy goals.
If The Washington Post were doing journalism instead of propaganda, its reporter who covers the news media might be focused nonstop on the fact that trust in the media is extremely low. But Paul Farhi thinks there are more important problems. Namely, he’s worried that some unwashed masses might be practicing their First Amendment right to do journalism without a license.
“Someone invented the phrase ‘citizen journalism’ a few years ago to describe amateurs doing the work of pros. Yes, it occasionally works, but probably no more often than ‘citizen cop,’ ‘citizen attorney’ or ‘citizen soldier,’” he wrote on social media.
First off, and definitely most importantly, someone needs to take Farhi aside and gently explain to him the meaning of “citizen soldier.” Our armed services were created around the idea of a broad swath of citizens working together to defend the nation’s values. The notion is fundamental to Western civilization and has routinely been shown to achieve better results than armies made up of professionals.
Even now, “citizen soldier” is how military reserve and National Guard members throughout the country think of themselves. In fact, the National Guard’s publication is called “Citizen-Soldier.” There is no need for Farhi to disparage these citizen soldiers or the many successful citizen-soldier armies throughout time and history.
Heck, while we’re at it, let’s go ahead and note that it was a “citizen attorney” with an eighth-grade education who wrote a handwritten appeal to the United States Supreme Court in the case that found that the Sixth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution requires states to provide attorneys for criminal defendants who are impoverished. But of the three groups he mentions, attorneys are the best for his case for professionalism on account of the intense education top lawyers receive.
But journalism? Journalism needs credentialing? Really? Farhi has been on this kick about the need to keep the lower castes out of journalism for a while now. Seven years ago he wrote, “Is there any other profession in which more people think they can do the job better than the pros than journalism? Medicine? Teaching?”
Again, one of these things is not like the others. There is a reason why people generally respect surgeons and don’t try to do their jobs. And there is a reason why people have taken to reporting real news and information since those at corporate media outlets such as The Washington Post are so bad at doing actual journalism.
The Washington Post, we might recall, launched the Russia-collusion scam by having one of its longtime journalists launder an information operation against the American people. The criminal leak against the Trump administration remains one of the great uninvestigated and unsolved crimes of recent memory. That the Post gleefully and willingly took part in an information operation against the country is reprehensible. The paper perpetuated the Russia-collusion hoax with hundreds of stories based on anonymous sources from the intelligence bureaucracy. This scam was no minor thing. It was the lie that Donald Trump was a traitor who had stolen the 2016 presidential election by colluding with Russia. It caused massive amounts of damage to the republic.
Farhi, for his part, seemed to think that many things in the invented “Steele dossier” were true. Falling for a completely false and unsubstantiated claim from fellow Russia hoax outlet McClatchy, Farhi wrote, “If this is accurate, put another check mark next to the Steele Dossier.” Another? ANOTHER? Way to showcase the bare minimum of skepticism and do real professional journalism there, guy.
After finding out the absolutely jaw-dropping news that the Steele dossier was an information operation, bought and paid for by the Hillary Clinton campaign, Farhi wrote, “Most surprising thing abt Clinton’s involvemnt w/Steele Dossier (aside from paying for it) is why her campaign didn’t make more of it.” Citizen journalists knew enough to be even more suspicious about the quality of the shoddy product after realizing its provenance, but not the “professionals” at The Washington Post! In fact, Farhi seemed to be bitterly clinging to the Russia-collusion scam as of a month ago, even after the Post begrudgingly corrected some of its fake news on the matter.
One citizen on social media replied to Farhi’s smug arrogance about the superiority of professional journalists, “The media’s track record in the last 5 years is like a prostitute’s track record on being a virgin.” A bit too kind, but the point is made.
As one of the exceedingly few “professionals” — to use Farhi’s parlance — to do actual journalism on this story and thereby debunk the information operation the Post pushed relentlessly for years, I have nothing but respect for the many “citizen journalists” who did the work corporate media refused to do. I frequently relied on them and their detailed research in the Herculean task of taking on the Post, The New York Times, CNN, and every other media outlet that participated in the intelligence agencies’ information operation against Americans.
In addition to the many articles the full-time professional team at The Federalist researched, reported, and published, we also published many articles from some of these citizen journalists who researched details far better than the entire “professional” journalism class combined.
The Federalist and citizen journalists may not have the corporate sponsorship that Farhi and his cohorts have, but we are wealthy in something few if any at The Washington Post have: a desire to find the truth and share it with others.
Pure Propaganda
The same goes for another information operation run by The Washington Post. In 2018, that paper ran the effort to destroy Brett Kavanaugh’s family and life by publishing an absolutely disgusting and unsubstantiated series of stories alleging he was secretly a serial gang rapist roaming the streets of suburban Maryland. This was a redo of a playbook The Washington Post and other Democrats had used in 1991 in an attempt to derail Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’ nomination.
While the Post carefully edited out exonerating details, shaded information to help the Democrat operation, and amplified some of the flimsiest claims on record, The Federalist got to work reporting the real story. We were aided in this effort by tips from community members who were aghast at what The Washington Post was willing to do in pursuit of its political goals. Some of them gave us information they said they tried to share with The Washington Post but were shut down over.
Farhi, for his part, wrote a tendentious article asserting that the obvious collusion between Democrats in and out of the media was a “conspiracy theory.” Quoting — and I’m not joking here — Jane Mayer (yes, really, Jane Mayer), he said there was absolutely no coordinated effort to run the smear operation everyone witnessed against Kavanaugh. (For an alternate fact-based and fact-filled perspective, feel free to read the best-selling book I co-authored with Carrie Severino on the matter.)
A few years later, when The Washington Post was brutally deriding Sen. Tom Cotton for suggesting the U.S. government should look into the Wuhan Institute of Virology as a potential source of the Covid-19 pandemic (the Post called it a “debunked conspiracy theory”), The Federalist was publishing citizen experts who were arguing that maybe the paper owned by billionaire Jeff Bezos didn’t have the story right.
At every step of the way, the Post didn’t do journalism so much as uncritically regurgitate claims from “experts,” about the pandemic and the response to it. Because we at The Federalist published truthful information and hosted debates from citizen experts about the proper response to a global pandemic, we were throttled by the Censorship-Industrial Complex. Those who misled the public as The Washington Post did on the Wuhan Institute of Virology were rewarded with awards and algorithmic amplification.
The “professionals” of The Washington Post continue to republish every unsubstantiated claim coming out of the Censorship-Industrial Complex. For example, a disinformation group called “Center for Countering Digital Hate,” which attempts to get governments and Big Tech to shut down political speech it dislikes, is routinely quoted by the “professionals” over at The Washington Post. So are many other groups that work to censor political speech. Few “citizen journalists” are as gullible as the average Washington Post reporter when it comes to such mindless participation in disinformation operations.
Real Journalism
We could go on and on and on. Who did better on the stories involving Jussie Smollett, Covington’s Nick Sandmann (for which the Post settled a $250 million defamation lawsuit), or the Biden family business? No, citizen journalists probably wouldn’t describe Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi as an “austere religious scholar,” as The Washington Post did.
The Washington Post and other media outlets aren’t “failing” to get the story right. They are doing exactly what they set out to do: frame news and information in a way that advantages their political allies.
They have massive corporate backing and establishment support in their efforts. Stop thinking that they’re salvageable. That was silly thinking decades ago. By now, it’s suicidal. Start shunning them for their propaganda and thinking instead about how to support and amplify journalism that cares about the truth.
Vice President Harris reacted to a number of polls showing Donald Trump was ahead of President Biden in hypothetical election match-ups, as well as in battleground states during an interview with CNN and said that they were going to have to earn their re-election.
“We’re going to have to earn our re-elect, there’s no doubt about it,” she said to CNN in a phone interview Sunday, replying to a question about the recent surveys.
Multiple recent polls have shown Biden trailing Trump in hypothetical 2024 match-ups, including a new NBC News poll that showed Trump with a slight advantage, although within the margin of error.
“It is absolutely right in a democracy with free and fair elections that the candidates, the people who want to continue in leadership have to make their case, and have to make it effectively,”Harris told CNN. “And that means communicating in such a way that the message is received about the accomplishments and what we care about.”
Vice President Kamala Harris said on “60 Minutes” that she had no doubt the Biden-Harris ticket would win in 2024. (Screenshot/CBS/60Minutes)
“I have a great sense of duty and responsibility to do as much as I can, to be where the people are and to not only speak with them but listen to them and let them know what we’ve accomplished,” she added.
After noting Harris’ plans to engage with TikTok influencers and pick up the slack on the campaign trail, CNN reported that Harris has struggled with communication and messaging.
“This is a politician, after all, whose staff the night before a scheduled speech to the most core party members at the Democratic National Committee meeting last month in St. Louis replaced it with a ‘fireside chat’ moderated by her outside adviser and former DNC chair Donna Brazile, worried that otherwise she would struggle to come across,” the report said, citing people involved in the decision.
Harris, citing the campaign’s effort to reach Black voters, suggested their list of accomplishments was “too long.”
President Joe Biden speaks during a press conference after meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Leaders’ week in Woodside, California on November 15, 2023. (BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP via Getty Images)
“Actually, probably there’s a hindrance, in that the list is really long, and we have to triage around what we repeat over and over again to make sure that it resonates, and it’s actually heard,” she said.
CNN also asked Harris why younger people should “see themselves in a president who is old enough to be older than many of their grandparents.”
“It is they,” Harris said, “who are going to either benefit from or pay the price.”
Former President Donald Trump leaves the courtroom for a lunch break during his civil fraud trial at New York State Supreme Court on November 06, 2023 in New York City. (Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)
Harris said in early November that she and Biden had a lot of work to do.
“The president and I obviously have a lot of work to do to earn our re-election. But I am confident we’re going to win,” she said.
Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority leadership has revoked the membership of two prominent alumnae this week, after more than 50 years of sisterhood and service. Their crime? Standing up for women — specifically the young women in KKG’s University of Wyoming chapter who are suing to keep biological males out of their sorority.
Patsy Levang and Cheryl Tuck-Smith got kicked out of KKG for advocating that the sorority hold to its own bylaws, which limit membership to “women.” Sadly, KKG is suffering from the broader cultural confusion around sex and gender — confusion that will harm women and rob the next generation of the benefits of single-sex organizations and environments.
Personally, I never planned to become a “sorority girl,” and didn’t initially see the value of Greek Life. But in my case, I started to open my mind when, after my freshman year, I still felt lost in a proverbial “big pond” after growing up in a small town.
I suspected that joining a sorority — and particularly living in a sorority house — would help me find a close-knit community. My university offered precious few single-sex housing options, meaning that when I lived on campus I was surrounded by both women and men.
A Facebook picture of the Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority at the University of Wyoming includes a biological male, which is why some in the sorority sued. (Fox News)
The guys in my dorm buildings were respectful enough, but I could tell that 18-year-old men and women living in close quarters was a recipe for disaster. Although this went unspoken, the students in coed housing felt pressure to act a certain way to impress members of the opposite sex. We kept our doors closed a lot of the time, for privacy, which didn’t foster a friendly vibe.
Incredibly, I lucked into the re-launch of a new chapter of Phi Mu sorority on my campus. Our charter chapter attracted a lot of girls like me: Greek-skeptical but desiring to “make campus smaller.”
As I got to know more sorority women from my chapter and across campus, I learned that many of them shared my motivation for membership: community with other women. I also learned that sorority membership was more diverse than stereotypes depict.
Sororities include women of various races, sizes and socioeconomic backgrounds. The only things that all sorority members had in common were that we were all students at the same university, and we were all women.
I moved into the Phi Mu house as quickly as I could, and spent two years living there. We had our own dining room and meal plan, and various common spaces in the house both downstairs (where visitors were always welcome) and upstairs (sisters only).
We could only bring a male guest upstairs on moving day. Even then we had to shout “Man on the floor!” — which was kind of comical for us, but also practical… it was a warning to cover up if you happened to be “indecent.”
Of course, the prohibition on men upstairs was not followed 100% of the time, but it was truly taboo for a man to be upstairs in the bedroom/bathroom areas.
This female-only environment was very freeing. I could be myself at our sorority house, without any pretense. My sisters and I bonded during chapter meetings, study hours, social events and charitable fundraising events.
As I got to know more sorority women from my chapter and across campus, I learned that many of them shared my motivation for membership: community with other women. I also learned that sorority membership was more diverse than stereotypes depict.
Four of my bridesmaids were Phi Mu sisters. To this day, they are some of my best friends.
I can’t imagine what my sorority experience would have been like if my chapter had been open to men, even those who identify as women. There’s no question about it: Including men inevitably and fundamentally changes the mission and experience of sorority life.
Sororities were founded during a time — the 1800s — when women were excluded from many opportunities. Our founders understood that our shared biological sex and experiences as women serve as a starting point for sorority sisterhood. Although much has changed for women in our society, the reality of biological sex differences has not.
Sorority women, and all women, deserve the basic right to safety and privacy, and the presence of males can threaten that right. But female-only environments are about more. They’re about the communities and bonds that women form when it’s “just us girls.” Similarly, men and boys should be free to join all-male organizations if they choose, and can reap similar benefits.
The Kappa plaintiffs deserve the same opportunities I had — the opportunities they were promised — to participate in a women-only community. Patsy Levang and Cheryl Tuck-Smith rightly stood up for them. In ousting these alumnae, KKG leadership has broken faith with more than the word “woman,” but with sisterhood itself.
Hadley Heath Manning is the vice president for policy at Independent Women’s Forum.
The Hamas tunnel that the Israeli army revealed under Gaza City’s Al-Shifa Hospital is one of many in the terrorist organization’s vast network, said Lt. Col. Peter Lerner, an IDF spokesman.
“This is just one of the many, many long kilometers of tunnels that Hamas has invested in over the course of the last 16 years,” Lerner said on Newmax’s“National Report.”
Lerner said that in the very poor conditions in which the Palestinians live, the terror tunnels built by Hamas, which is the ruling authority there, are the “most expensive construction project ever to exist in the Gaza Strip, all at the expense of the people of Gaza.”
BREAKING:
The Israeli Army took control of the Rantisi children’s hospital in Gaza & found a secret tunnel leading 20 m below ground to a Hamas command & control center.
Weapons, baby bottles & motorcycles in the tunnel indicate hostages were held there pic.twitter.com/ArFWOqfkgl
After describing the details of the sophisticated tunnel, including that it is some 10 meters deep under ground, Lerner said “this is how they have built extensively their tools of death and terror throughout the Gaza Strip, and we have been finding it everywhere we proceed, everywhere we advance.”
Lerner also noted the reality that the Israeli army faces is that hospitals are “being used as a base of operations for terrorist activities.”
Lerner said the Israeli army found weapons and other military equipment in the tunnel, even though Hamas knew the IDF was on its way and almost assuredly tried to cover its tracks, leading the army to believe that as it presses its attack forward it will discover more evidence of weapons in other tunnels.
Lerner also said that while negotiations over the fate of the hostages are being handled on the diplomatic front, Israel remains steadfast.
EXPOSED: In the Shifa Hospital complex, IDF troops found a hidden booby-trapped vehicle containing a large number of weapons, including: · AK-47s · RPGs · sniper rifles · grenades · other explosives
“The army is very, very much focused on advancing our military activities in order to achieve our objectives of dismantling and destroying Hamas to make sure that they can never do this again,” he said.
Brian Freeman, a Newsmax writer based in Israel, has more than three decades writing and editing about culture and politics for newspapers, online and television.
In a potential foreshadowing of blocking responses to House Oversight Committee subpoenas, Chair Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., took to X to call out President Joe Biden’s vow to be the most “transparent” president.
“The White House is withholding over 82,000 pages of Joe Biden’s pseudonym emails, refuses to provide proof that Joe loaned his brother money, and now seeks to block the Bidens and former staff from testifying before Congress,” Comer wrote Monday on X, sharing a video from his Newsmax appearance last week.
“@POTUS’s pledge to be transparent was just hot air.”
In that “Wake Up America” appearance, Comer announced Hunter Biden is expected to testify before House investigators before Dec. 4 under the orders of the subpoena. Though Hunter Biden’s lawyers had expressed an eagerness for Hunter Biden to testify, Comer said he has not gotten a reply on his subpoena.
“If President Biden has nothing to hide, then he should make his current and former staff available to testify before Congress about his mishandling of classified documents,” Comer wrote in a statement Friday after receiving a letter from the special counsel to the president that told the committee, in its words: “The White House intends to continue obstructing our investigation.”
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
Regulations created in a time of energy scarcity aren’t applicable to a time of energy abundance and decrease innovation in energy efficiency, yet the Biden administration is abusing those regulations to fight so-called climate change. Pictured: President Joe Biden speaks at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Leaders’ Week on Nov. 16 in San Francisco, California. (Photo: Kent Nishimura/Getty Images)
Americans have experienced appliance inflation over the past few years, and it could be about to get worse as the Biden administration continues its onslaught of appliance regulations. While blaming Washington bureaucrats is always a reasonable response, in this case, any problems that they are causing is a result of them exercising the authority granted to them by legislation passed at the height of the 1970’s energy crisis—the 1975 Energy Policy and Conservation Act.
The act gives the Department of Energy authority to regulate nearly everything in a household that uses energy. While it doesn’t require the Department of Energy to continuously impose ever stricter standards, the reality is this is precisely what it does. Worse, this trend has worsened in recent years as the Biden administration freely uses the act to advance its extreme agenda with ever stricter government standards, using climate change as a primary justification.
While the Energy Policy and Conservation Act does grant the secretary of energy broad authority, current law also requires that certain factors, like the effect on cost and competition, the amount of energy saved, and the need for energy conservation in general be taken into account. Unfortunately, Washington bureaucrats not only routinely ignore these requirements in any meaningful way but choose instead to focus on extraneous alleged benefits like climate change.
This could be expected, perhaps, because the underlying justification for the efficiency regime established by the act has largely dissipated over time. The act was born out of a time of perceived energy scarcity. But today, America has hundreds of years of known energy reserves, and new technology is allowing for new discoveries and more efficient use of existing reserves all the time. In justifying the policies that act ultimately set in place, President Gerald Ford laid out three broad policy objectives. These included reducing oil imports, ending American vulnerability to economic disruption by foreign suppliers, and developing energy technology and resources to supply a significant share of the free world’s energy needs.
In each case, America has achieved Ford’s objectives.
The Energy Policy and Conservation Act Has Lost Relevancy
In 1975, net imports of crude oil were close to 6 million barrels per day. By 2020, the United States had become a net exporter. Geopolitical shocks and cartels, specifically the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, or OPEC, which produces about 40% of the world’s crude oil, can still have a near-term impact on American energy prices. However, due to the large amount of energy on global markets, energy disruptions do not present the sort of systemic threat that policymakers feared in the 1970’s.
The extent to which the United States economy remains vulnerable is purely a function of energy restriction policies—like Biden’s recent decision to ban energy development in parts of Alaska—and have nothing to do with energy efficiency. Further, American technologies like fracking, the nation’s vast coal resources, and commercial nuclear reactors not only can keep America energy independent but also grow its role as a global supplier of energy.
Further, appliances of all sorts are becoming more efficient because that is what people want. While the consuming public considers many attributes of the purchases they make, including capability and upfront cost, efficiency is clearly something Americans value. The government does not need to compel efficiency; the market demands it.
America Is in an Era of Energy Abundance, Not Scarcity
America has ample energy reserves. According to the U.S. Energy Information Agency, in 2020, the United States held over 373 billion barrels of technically recoverable crude oil reserves, which would provide the U.S. with over 50 years of supply. The same is true for natural gas. The agency estimated in 2020 that the U.S. held 2,925.8 trillion cubic feet of technically recoverable natural gas. At current consumption levels, that equates to nearly 100 years of supply.
Further, new discoveries are always occurring that would expand this supply over time, which is demonstrated by the growing availability of unconventional sources like oil shale. According to Energy Information Agency, the U.S. currently holds 195.5 billion barrels of crude oil and 1,712.9 trillion cubic feet of natural gas in unconventional reserves.
According to the Institute for Energy Research, conventional and unconventional reserves combine to provide nearly 300 years of energy supply at current consumption levels. These energy resources do not even account for uranium deposits, which are widely spread throughout the U.S., nor for advancements in other energy generating technologies.
Any regulatory regime promulgated out of fears regarding energy scarcity simply can no longer be justified.
Compelled Efficiency Standards Reduce Competition
Energy efficiency regulations do not simply alter standards; they can effectively remove products and technology from the marketplace and reduce competition. This is antithetical to Congress’ wishes as evidenced by Energy Policy and Conservation Act, which makes clear that maintaining a competitive market for the covered products is an essential element of the cost-benefit calculation. Yet ultimately, most rules have a tremendous effect on the market. Whether it’s gasoline engines, light bulbs, furnaces, or showerheads, every American will ultimately experience less choice in terms of price, availability, and capability. In some cases, such as with incandescent light bulbs and some refrigerants, this is already the case.
What DOE does not appreciate is the positive benefit that technological competition and product variation has on long-term market health, something even the White House has acknowledged. According to a White House memo published on July 9, 2021, “Healthy market competition is fundamental to a well-functioning U.S. economy.” It goes on to point out that insufficient competition will lead to higher prices and lower quality.
By removing entire classes of technology and product lines from the market, efficiency standards limit incentives to lower prices, or even to increase efficiency further, because the regulation will have captured a substantial portion of the market for the preferred technology. Further, the efficiency standards eliminate opportunities for firms to specialize in specific offerings to gain market share. While some firms may retool to compete, it is unlikely that the market will support the same number of firms when they all must adhere to strict regulatory standards. This will almost necessarily lead to fewer firms offering fewer choices.
Fewer firms and less technological competition will be bad for consumers and is antithetical to Energy Policy and Conservation Act. Having a lower-priced option that may be less efficient competing against a more efficient higher-priced option will engender competition to develop technologies that move prices lower and efficiency higher overall. By eliminating half of the equation, these compelled standards eliminate an essential force to move technology forward.
Congress, right or wrong, sought to improve consumer product efficiency when it passed the act, but it was not seeking to empower the DOE to, in effect, ban products.
Empower Americans, Not Washington
None of this is to argue that energy efficiency does not have value. It obviously does. However, that value is best determined by American consumers and businesses calculating the value of long-term savings against the near-term costs.
The flexibility to assess economic tradeoffs is even more important to low-income Americans. According to the United States Office of Management and Budget, “some research indicates that energy efficiency regulations adversely affect lower-income consumers more than those who earn a higher income.” Scholarly research shows further that energy efficiency regulation hits lower-income Americans harder than energy taxes, which are recognized as being generally regressive.
Indeed, marketplace choice provides the precise sort of flexibility that American consumers depend on to manage home economic challenges.
The DOE often attempts to justify increased near-term costs with alleged savings. Unfortunately, these savings are generally averages for an entire market and often do not account for variability for costs like installation fees and retrofits. The fact is that some families will necessarily incur much greater costs than others, and DOE rarely reflects this reality.
This is a critical point when assessing how a proposed standard will affect individual Americans—especially those facing economic challenges. Each individual American is perfectly capable of weighing for himself the value of additional efficiency against the additional costs associated with most compelled efficiency upgrades. Indeed, Americans are making those decisions, and many are opting for greater efficiency, which makes imposing these costs on everyone even less rational and justified.
Conclusion
Given America’s energy abundance, the value of efficiency to consumers, and the importance of consumer choice, the president, be it President Joe Biden or a future president, should direct the secretary of energy to cease all efficiency-related actions pending a review and certification that those actions are consistent with the word and spirit of the Energy Policy and Conservation Act. Simultaneously, Congress should begin work to significantly curtail, if not completely repeal, the act’s energy efficiency provisions.
The conditions that gave rise to the act in 1975 are clearly no longer in place. Further, like most regulations, federal bureaucrats have taken the authorities granted them by Congress to expand their power far beyond what anyone intended. The time has come for policymakers to stop complaining about ridiculous efficiency regulations and finally do something about it.
Siblings Ido (left) and Yonatan (right) Lulu-Shamriz say they have not been able to find any peace since Hamas took their little brother hostage on Oct. 7. (Photo: Philip Reynolds/The Daily Signal)
Yonatan Lulu-Shamriz’s daughter was celebrating her 2nd birthday on Oct. 7 in Israel. Inside the safe room of their home one mile from the border of Gaza, Lulu-Shamriz’s little girl was delighted that she was allowed to eat her birthday cake with her fingers as her parents had not had time to grab forks as they fled into the safe room. The child was unaware of the Hamas terrorists outside, and her parents did everything they could to ensure it stayed that way.
“I told her that we were going to play a game,” Lulu-Shamriz said, “the whisper game, that if we whisper, we get the balloons after.”
For the 22 hours he, his 7-month pregnant wife, his daughter, and their two dogs were in the safe room, they tried to remain as silent as possible, and if his daughter started to sing or talk loudly, he reminded her of the game and the prize of balloons if she remained quiet. After being in the safe room for a few hours, Lulu-Shamriz, who is 33 and the oldest among three boys, received a text from his 26-year-old brother Alon Lulu-Shamriz telling the family he heard Hamas terrorists in his house.
“I wrote him that I love him, and he’s strong, and this is the last time we spoke,” Lulu-Shamriz told The Daily Signal during a recent interview.
Lulu-Shamriz’s youngest brother was taken hostage by Hamas during the attack in October. At first, the family thought he was among the 1,200 Israelis killed in the terrorist attack, but later, the Israel Defense Force confirmed that he was taken hostage.
Lulu-Shamriz and his brother Ido Lulu-Shamriz, 32, recently traveled from Israel to Washington, D.C., to share their story and advocate for their little brother and the release of about 240 hostages being held in Gaza.
The oldest Lulu-Shamriz said he and his family have not found any peace since his little brother was kidnapped, but instead said he feels “blame all the time.”
“You wear these clothes, you eat food, you go to bed, you brush your teeth in the morning, and you always ask yourself if Alon get the same conditions,” the oldest brother said. “When you put your blanket at night, you ask yourself, is Alon cold now?”
Alon Lulu-Shamriz was taken hostage by Hamas Oct. 7. Photo compliments of JDA Worldwide.
Ido Lulu-Shamriz, the middle brother, had a different experience on Oct. 7. The middle brother is part of the civilian emergency squad in his kibbutz near the Gaza border in Israel. Every kibbutz near the Gaza Strip has a civilian squad that can respond to threats until the Israel Defense Force arrives, Ido Lulu-Shamriz explained.
Around 6:30 a.m. on Oct. 7, Ido Lulu-Shamriz received a message from a squad member that someone had parachuted into his kibbutz with a gun. He then started to hear missiles go off and alarms sound and realized that “this is not just the missile attack.”
“This is something unique, something that never happened to us,” he said.
Ido Lulu-Shamriz and the members of his civilian emergency squad were instructed via a group WhatsApp message to go to the shelter in the kibbutz where their guns are stored. He reached the shelter and got his gun and he and the other squad members began to fight “dozens of terrorists around the shelter,” he recalled.
“Seven of my friends were killed,” Ido Lulu-Shamriz added. “Seven of them fought shoulder to shoulder with me, and the other seven guys survived.”
“At the beginning, we thought about attack,” he said, but “then you realize you need to defend because there are so many, they were everywhere. And then you realize it’s self-defense, you know, everyone needs to rescue himself before you’re going to be dead like your friends.”
Ido Lulu-Shamriz and his good friend retreated back to his house, but before they made it to safety, Ido Lulu-Shamriz saw that his neighbor’s door was open. His neighbors, a husband and wife, had two 10-month-old twins.
“When I saw the door open, I realized that they are not with us anymore,” he said, bluntly.
Ido Lulu-Shamriz entered the safe room in his home with his friend and initially believed that Hamas terrorists had killed the parents and their twin babies. Later, however, through the walls of the safe room, they heard the babies crying. “They didn’t stop for 12 hours,” the middle brother said.
He sent a message to Israel Defense Force soldiers alerting them to the twin babies, but “they didn’t reach them for 12 hours, 12 hours that I’m hearing those twins crying nonstop while their parents are dead between their beds.”
Reflecting on the events of Oct. 7, Ido Lulu-Shamriz added, “Nothing can prepare you for those moments, you know, for such a battle, such a sight to fight with your best friends that are now alive and a couple of minutes later, they are dead. It’s terrible. You can’t prepare for those moments in your life.”
When asked what message they have for President Joe Biden and America’s leaders, Yonatan Lulu-Shamriz, the eldest brother, said America needs to put “pressure on Qatar” because the nation has a “direct channel to Hamas” and Qatar could play a role in negotiating the release of the hostages.
Victoria Coates, vice president of the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for National Security and Foreign Policy at The Heritage Foundation, told The Daily Signal that “Qatar does have leverage with Hamas.” But Coates noted that the hostage negotiations are complex and that there is no simple answer to moving negotiations forward. (The Daily Signal is the news outlet of Heritage.)
Yonatan Lulu-Shamriz said he hopes U.S. citizens understand that what “happened in Israel on the seventh of October, it’s not aimed only for Jews, for Israelis, and Zionists.”
“They killed everyone,” he said, referring to Hamas. “They kill Thai people, they kill Americans, they killed Russian, and Europe is next. America is next.”
Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy speaks to supporters after the Thanksgiving Family Forum on Friday in Des Moines, Iowa. (Photo: Jim Vondruska/Getty Images)
DES MOINES, IOWA—National standards, including requiring an ID to vote and making Election Day a national holiday, are needed to ensure free and fair elections, says Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy. While states typically run elections, the federal government has set minimum standards under the Help America Vote Act of 2001, and prior to that, the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, to ensure election integrity.
“The federal government should set minimal standards. You have historical precedents for that, dating back 20 years. The federal government can set minimal standards,” Ramaswamy told The Daily Signal Friday after participating in the Thanksgiving Family Forum, an event hosting three Republican presidential contenders and staged by the Iowa-based Family Leader. The Daily Signal was the media sponsor.
The other GOP presidential contenders at the forum were Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley. Former President Donald Trump did not accept an invitation to joint the forum.
“Making an election a national holiday is important, single-day voting on Election Day as a national holiday, with paper ballots and government-issued ID to match the voter file—that’s the standards I want to be done in national elections,” Ramaswamy said.
Ramaswamy, who founded the pharmaceutical company Roivant Sciences, also staked out positions on abortion, Big Tech and border security.
Although voters in his home state of Ohio approved a state constitutional amendment for abortion without restrictions through the ninth month of pregnancy, he said that’s no reason for pro-lifers to back down.
He said if pro-life advocates had offered an alternative amendment, Ohio voters would have “flocked to it.”
“We need to offer an alternative of our own. I think that’s part of what was missing,” Ramaswamy said. “If there was a different amendment that was on the table in my home state of Ohio, people would have gone for it, flocked for it. The reality is that that didn’t exist. That’s why we lost.”
He added that should be seen as lessons learned for the movement.
“I don’t think the right answer is to compromise on our principles,” he said. “So, I think, stand for principles, but in a way that unites the country.”
During the forum, Ramaswamy, Haley and DeSantis all expressed their strong support for protecting life.
On the illegal immigration border crisis, Ramaswamy said the federal government should take a more aggressive approach.
“Use our military to secure the border,” Ramaswamy said. “Use aquatic barriers on the southern border. End federal funding for sanctuary cities and end any funding or foreign aid to Central American countries until they’ve dealt with their end of the problem. End birthright citizenship for illegal migrants, for whom the Constitution was never intended to apply.”
Sanctuary cities are jurisdictions that refuse, as a matter of public policy, to cooperate with federal immigration authorities.
Birthright citizenship occurs when illegal immigrants enter the United States and have children, who automatically become citizens under current law by virtue of being born in the country. The Supreme Court determined in an 1898 case that the 14th Amendment applied to anyone born on U.S. soil even though the language of the amendment doesn’t specify this.
Ramaswamy says the way to hold Big Tech companies accountable for censorship is to amend existing federal law, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. which protects social media platforms from being held liable for the content users posts.
“My answer is, Section 230 should be an opt-in statute,” he said.
Social media platforms have favored some political and social content over others, acting as a publisher. Companies that opt in to the liability protections should be prohibited from censoring content, he said.
“If you opt in to it, then you are bound by the same constraints as the government itself, including the First Amendment,” If not, there is the free market. You’re free, and you don’t get special liability protection. If you want special liability protection, you are bound by the same standards as the government. That’s the First Amendment.”
In partnership withGood morning. It’s Monday, Nov. 20, and we’re covering a potential deal for Hamas to release some hostages, the passing of a former US first lady, and much more. First time reading? Sign up here. You share. We listen. As always, send us feedback at hello@join1440.com.
Need To Know Hostage Negotiations Israel and Hamas appear to be nearing an international-brokered deal for the release of some of the roughly 240 hostages the militant group captured from Israel and hid in Gaza after an Oct. 7 surprise attack. According to reports, under the latest proposal—led by Egypt, Qatar, and the US—Hamas would release a number of women and children hostages in exchange for the release of roughly the same number of Palestinian women and children held in Israeli prisons. A short pause in fighting is expected to be part of the deal, though the length of the potential pause is reportedly a sticking point in negotiations. Meanwhile, at least 31 premature babies and 2,500 civilians, patients, and staff were evacuated from northern Gaza’s al-Shifa hospital, which Israeli forces raided last week and said they discovered the presence of a Hamas command center inside (see previous write-up). Separately, Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels (see overview) seized an Israeli-linked cargo ship in the Red Sea, taking 25 crew members hostage. The militant group warned it will continue to target Israeli-linked ships until the Israel-Hamas war ends. See updates on the war here. Rosalynn Carter Dies Former US first lady Rosalynn Carter died Sunday at the age of 96 at her home in Plains, Georgia, due to complications from dementia. Her husband, former President Jimmy Carter, survives Rosalynn at the age of 99. The Georgia-born future first lady ran the office of her husband’s family peanut business before actively assisting him with campaigns for state senate, governor, and president. As first lady, Carter championed women’s rights and became the first to establish a policy office in the West Wing. Amid her broad advocacy, Carter took a special focus on mental health (see efforts) and later established the philanthropic Carter Center alongside her husband. In 1999, she received the Presidential Medal of Freedom and was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame in 2001. She became the second-longest living former first lady after Bess Truman (97), but the two Carters hold the record for the longest presidential marriage in US history. See her life in photos here. Starship Makes Progress SpaceX’s second test flight of its massive 400-feet-tall Starship vehicle hit new milestones Saturday before ending in a pair of unscheduled explosions after launching from Boca Chica Beach in South Texas. Starship, designed to carry NASA astronauts to the moon and Mars, is the world’s tallest and most powerful launch system. The uncrewed vehicle crashed into the Gulf of Mexico. See the video here. The test flight was considered a success by SpaceX as the vehicle traveled farther than and exhibited improvements from an initial attempt in April, which also ended in an explosion. The latest attempt lasted roughly eight minutes rather than four minutes. Unlike in the first flight, all of the 33 methane-fueled Raptor engines on the Super Heavy first-stage booster ignited, and the spacecraft successfully separated from the booster, achieving a goal for the second attempt and reaching an altitude of 92 miles. SpaceX said the booster and spacecraft likely self-destructed due to a midflight issue and it hopes to use data for future improvements. The Federal Aviation Administration will conduct a review before SpaceX can proceed with another launch. See a Starship overview here.
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Business & Markets In partnership with The Ascent>US stock markets close up Friday (S&P 500 +0.1%, Dow +0.0%, Nasdaq +0.1%); S&P 500, Dow clinch first three-week win streak since July (More) | Short seller Jim Chanos, known for betting against Enron before its 2001 bankruptcy, shutting down hedge fund after 38 years (More) >Apple, Disney, IBM among major advertisers suspending ads from X (formerly Twitter) after owner Elon Musk backs an antisemitic post on the platform (More) >OpenAI investors reportedly planning for Sam Altman’s possible return after the board ousted him as CEO Friday, citing a lack of confidence in his leadership (More) From our partners: 0% intro APR. 21 months. 100% insane offer. This card offers 0% intro APR for 21 months on balance transfers, giving you almost two years to save big on interest. Enjoy that, and no annual fee.
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Cartoon on the documentary that features more than a dozen interviews with the people directly involved, including exclusive interviews with former officers Derek Chauvin and Alexander Kueng who spoke to Liz Collin from prison.
The film is based on Liz Collin’s Amazon bestseller, “They’re Lying: The Media, The Left, and The Death of George Floyd,” which exposes the holes in the prevailing narrative surrounding George Floyd’s death, the trial of Derek Chauvin, and the fallout the city of Minneapolis has suffered ever since.
The documentary features more than a dozen interviews with the people directly involved, including exclusive interviews with former officers Derek Chauvin and Alexander Kueng who spoke to Liz Collin from prison. The families of Chauvin and Kueng also speak out publicly for the first time.
The film also features current and former Minneapolis police officers who tell their harrowing stories from the riots, recount the planned surrender of the Third Precinct, and explain why so many of them left the job. READ MORE….
Barbara Streisand is among the many celebrities who claim they are leaving America if Donald Tromp is elected again. May I recommend they move to the GAZA strip war zone that her party, the Democrats, helped to create with all the money sent to the number one State sponsor of terrorism, Iran, by Obama and Biden?
It shows how little those celebrities care about the middle-class everyday folks whose life was much better under Trump with low fuel prices, lower food cost, cost of living, inflation, and no new wars. Some experts say that a dollar under Trump is now worth less than .85 cents under Biden exercising Democrat policies. But rich celebrities could care less about that; they rather bitterly cling to their fantasy land politics to the detriment of the rest of us Americans.
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 • Joe Biden Puts Elderly Pro-Life Woman in Prison for 11 Years for Protesting Abortion • Kamala Harris Calls Killing Babies in Abortions “Reproductive Freedom” • Joe Biden Wants to Force Every Hospital to Kill Babies in Abortions • Indiana Abortions Dropped to “Essentially Zero” as Abortion Ban Saves Babies
More Pro-Life News • Top OGBYN Confirms Abortion Pill is Dangerous: They’re Lying to Women • 27 Senators Slam Joe Biden’s Policy Making Americans Fund Military Abortion Travel • Doctor Confirms Abortion Pill Reversal is Safe for Women • Indi Gregory’s Deaths Reminds Us to Defend Parental Rights Over Government Power • 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.
Comments or questions? Email us at news@lifenews.com. Copyright 2003-2023 LifeNews.com. All rights reserved. For information on advertising or reprinting news from LifeNews.com, email us.
Abeloved religious leader was shot in the head Wednesday night while preaching the gospel in Glendale, Arizona.
Hans Schmidt, a young father and outreach director for the nondenominational Victory Chapel First Phoenix, was standing at the northwest corner of 51st and Peoria avenues with his megaphone, quoting scripture and preaching to passersby ahead of an evening service. Around 6 p.m., someone evidently pulled a gun on him, reported AZFamily.
It’s unclear whether the shooter attempted the apparent assassination on foot or from a car.
KNXV-TV indicated police initially were dispatched to a hospital following reports that someone had been assaulted, but they soon discovered the victim had been shot.
The Victory Chapel revealed in a statement Thursday, “Hans was taken to the ER where they discovered he had been shot after conducting a CT scan. He began seizing and was intubated. There has been some movement; however, physicians are uncertain how much is voluntary and began draining fluid from his brain. He remains in critical condition, please continue praying.”
Zulya Schmidt, the victim’s wife, noted in a Meta post, “Believing God has the final say. I love you so much babe.”
Henry Branch, a nearby resident, said, “Who knows why someone would want to take it out on a preacher like that because he’s speaking the gospel and good news to everybody. He’s out to help the community.”
KSAZ-TV indicated that following the shooting, police told nearby business owners to clear out, including the titular owner of Jesse James Comics.
“It’s something where they preach so much on this corner, and it’s such a congested area,” said James. “I always thought they might get hit by a car. I didn’t know they would be shot.”
Paul Sanchez works nearby and recalled occasionally seeing people drive by, cursing and screaming at Schmidt as he preached. However, Sanchez said the preacher never responded with hostility.
“There was a slurry of everything, really. I mean, hateful comments, people yelling at him, ‘Just get off the street.’ All sorts of mean things,” Sanchez told AZFamily.
Larry Dettman, a congregant who learned during a church service Wednesday night from Pastor Gary Marsh what had befallen Schmidt, said, “Out of nowhere, how does this happen? You know, there’s some evil people in this world that have got a bunch of human junk in their life and they take it out on somebody else.”
“People are following darkness instead of light,” continued Dettman.
As of Thursday, police were still investigating and had not yet arrested a suspect.
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Democrats are finally facing their day of reckoning with black voters, and their waning support for President Joe Biden is only half the story. A recent New York Times/Sienna poll reveals that Biden barely leads among nonwhite voters under 45 in a 2024 election matchup against former President Donald Trump. The same nonwhite voters reported backing Biden by almost 40 points in the 2020 election.
The hidden story is that Trump is capturing more than 22 percent support among black voters. The NYT article said a Republican winning over so many black voters “would be unprecedented in the post-Civil Rights Act era.”
Why Are Blacks Finally Breaking Ranks?
Black Americans are beginning to understand that the years of promises of better days have resulted in decades of broken promises. A recent Wall Street Journal article tells the story of Michelle Smith, who lives in North Philadelphia. She works two jobs as a black single mother with three teenage boys. She describes her disappointment in Biden, whom she supported strongly in 2020. Despite efforts by the Democrats to spend more money on advertising, voter canvassing, and educating voters in black communities, Smith said the Democrats might not be able to convince her to vote. “I think I’m not going to vote, period,” she said.
Smith is not alone. There is a growing recognition that Democrats have duped black Americans. And as they increasingly realize it, Democrats will be left saying, “Katy, bar the door,” because their party will begin to implode.
Ironically, the modern-day Democrat Party has essentially achieved the same objectives as the Civil War-era Democrat Party. It has unfortunately taken 60 years for black Americans to realize what has happened to them and their culture. It’s hard to keep blaming Republicans when Democrats run major cities, school systems, and police departments. In many cases, black Democrats run these institutions.
Black Decline After Civil Rights
The status of black Americans today in Democrat-controlled cities and states is essentially the worst it has been since before the Civil Rights era. For example, during slavery, Democrats restricted access to opportunities that allowed slaves to obtain an education. Today, in nearly every major city controlled by Democrats, literacy rates are abysmal. Local and national Democrat Party leaders have severely restricted access to private or charter schools.
Proponents of apartheid used segregation as a cruel psychological tool. Democrats, however, are bringing segregation back in style. In Democrat Party strongholds, such as American universities, the country is witnessing the practice of segregated dorms and graduation ceremonies.
One of the most devastating changes that the Democrat Party facilitated involves the destruction of the nuclear family in black communities. During the era of slavery, masters would break up families after wives bore children. After the Civil War and for 100 years afterward, most black children grew up in traditional two-parent families.
It wasn’t until Democrats introduced and heavily marketed social welfare programs to black Americans in the 1960s that two-parent families began to erode drastically. Those programs ushered in a cultural transformation. Over 50 years, black families fell from having two parents in 80 percent of homes. Today, approximately 80 percent of black children grow up in fatherless homes.
Democrats Harm Black Americans
For the Democrats, family disruption and government dependency were the objectives from the beginning. If that wasn’t their intention, then why hasn’t there been one national initiative to reverse the trend?
In 1957, Sen. Lyndon B. Johnson, D-Texas, then the pro-segregationist Senate majority leader, knew blacks would eventually get the right to vote. When speaking to then-Sen. Richard Russell Jr., D-Ga., regarding the Civil Rights Act of 1957, Johnson said, “These Negroes, they’re getting pretty uppity these days and that’s a problem for us since they’ve got something now they never had before, the political pull to back up their uppityness. Now we’ve got to do something about this, we’ve got to give them a little something, just enough to quiet them down, not enough to make a difference.”
Democrat Party leaders and their left-wing friends in academia and the media convinced blacks (and the general public) that Republicans were the racists. They were, according to the effective narrative, indifferent to poor people. They wanted to keep blacks as second-class citizens. Ironically, Republicans voted to support the Civil Rights Act in greater numbers than Democrats.
Their goal was to have black Americans switch their votes from Republicans to Democrats.
Black Americans Coming Home to the GOP
As we look forward to the 2024 election season, the NYT/Sienna poll is not the only one raising the alarm. A recent Fox News poll revealed that 26 percent of black Americans support Trump for president in 2024 over Biden. In the past 12 months, black elected officials switched from the Democrat Party to the Republican Party in southern states such as Georgia and Texas. For the first time in 140 years, Alabama voters elected a black man to the state House of Representatives as a Republican.
In statewide elections, voters in Virginia and North Carolina elected black Americans to the No. 2 leadership position as lieutenant governors. Although Daniel Cameron did not win his bid for Kentucky governor, we should expect to see more black Republicans running for statewide and federal offices.
Even the legacy media won’t be able to spin and hide this major political shift.
Kendall Qualls is an Executive Faculty-in-Residence at the Crown College School of Business and Founder/President of the non-profit foundation TakeCharge. Qualls was a candidate for the Republican nomination for Governor of Minnesota in the 2022 election cycle.
After Hamas massacred 1,400 men, women, and children in Israel last month, FBI Director Christopher Wray warned that the terror group “and its allies” could inspire attacks on Americans “here on our own soil.” He also told the Senate that the FBI is conducting “multiple, ongoing investigations” into people affiliated with the U.S.-designated terrorist group.
What Wray didn’t say is that the FBI has been investigating Hamas’ biggest ally in America for the past 30 years — without seeking any charges. Launched in 1994 as a secret front organization to support Hamas, according to declassified FBI wiretap transcripts and FBI testimony, the Council on American-Islamic Relations has, in the decades since, become an accepted member of Washington’s lobbying community. The New York Times and other influential newspapers routinely describe CAIR as a “Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization.”
Although it has not repudiated its support for Hamas — which is committed to the destruction of Israel and the Jewish people — CAIR was enlisted by the Biden administration in May to take part in a White House initiative to fight antisemitism.
On Oct. 7, the day Hamas terrorists butchered 1,400 Jews, including 33 Americans — raping many and abducting some 240 others to Gaza from southern Israel — CAIR’s national executive director, Nihad Awad, delivered an anti-Israel message in Arabic which seemed to justify what Hamas did. Translated into English, it read: “All Arab peoples must go out on Sunday, Oct. 8 — and every day — in demonstrations in support of the Palestinians and in rejection of normalization with the occupier and the apartheid regime [Israel].”
On Saturday afternoon, CAIR helped rally more than 100,000 Muslims in D.C. to instead condemn Israel for supposedly carrying out “genocide” in Gaza in response to the Oct. 7 attacks. Multiple speakers called for the destruction of Israel — and, by implication, the Jewish people there — by demanding Palestinians take all the lands “from the [Jordan] river to the [Mediterranean] sea.”
Awad was front and center, delivering a fiery speech bashing Israel and President Biden for not calling on Israel to stop bombing Hamas targets inside Gaza, which he called “genocidal attacks.” He threatened to hurt Biden at the ballot box in 2024 if he does not urge a ceasefire.
“We have discovered the language that President Biden understands: ‘No ceasefire, no votes,’” Awad bellowed to the crowd, which erupted into a chant repeating his words. “No votes in Michigan, no votes anywhere if you do not call for a ceasefire now. He then led a chant: “Free, free Palestine!”
Also, Awad promised to provide legal support to Muslim Americans who protest in support of Palestine. “We are with you,” he said. “The people of Gaza rely on your voices and activism.”
Protesters later marched on the White House, where they defaced the white brick gate of the Executive Mansion with red paint symbolizing the blood of Gazans who have died from the Israeli army’s counterstrikes. Awad is on record declaring his support for Hamas. At Barry University in 1994, for example, he said: “I am in support of the Hamas movement.”
CAIR did not respond to requests for comment, but without addressing specifics, it has previously argued it “is not a ‘front group for Hamas.’” The White House declined to comment, while the FBI claimed charging CAIR or its executives was outside its authority. “The FBI is an investigative agency and we don’t make the decisions about filing charges or prosecuting a case,” FBI spokeswoman Susan McKee said. “Prosecutors make those decisions.” The Justice Department did not respond to requests for comment.
While CAIR is now a mainstay of American politics — headquartered just three blocks from the U.S. Capitol, with 35 offices across the country — its history reveals its close connections with terror groups such as Hamas, as detailed in the 2009 book this reporter co-authored with counterterrorism expert P. David Gaubatz, Muslim Mafia: Inside the Secret Underworld that’s Conspiring to Islamize America.
The story began in the Palestinian refugee camp in Jordan in the 1960s, where Awad and a co-founder of CAIR, Omar Ahmad, were born. Both men eventually came to the United States for university studies. By 1992, Awad was a key member of the so-called Palestine Committee in America, which helped finance Hamas. According to a 1992 letter from the Gaza Strip, Hamas asked the Committee for money to buy “weapons, weapons, our brothers.” The letter continued: “The meaning of killing a Jew for the liberation of Palestine cannot be compared to any jihad on earth.”
Around the same time, the FBI was eavesdropping on several Hamas leaders in connection with terrorist activities, which produced tapes documenting the incarnation of CAIR in 1993. At a secret meeting that October, Omar Ahmad called to order the Hamas summit in Philly at a Courtyard by Marriott hotel in Philadelphia to discuss the formation of a new front organization to support their “movement” in America. Awad also attended the meeting.
According to court testimony by FBI agent Lara Burns, who runs a major counterterrorism program for the bureau, Ahmad, Awad, and the other leaders who gathered there hatched a scheme to disguise overseas payments to Hamas terrorists and their families as charity. FBI wiretaps also recorded them stating the need to deceive Americans about the true aims of their planned American front group as Hamas launched a campaign of terror attacks on Israel known as the “Intifada.”
They compared the deception to the “head fake” in basketball, where a shooter tricks an opponent guarding him into moving in a different direction. The group, according to the wiretap transcripts, envisioned an “alternative” organization whose pro-Palestinian stripes were “not very conspicuous.” Burns testified CAIR was what they had in mind. During the talks, they tried to mislead any authorities who might be listening in by referring to Hamas as “Samah” — Hamas spelled backward.
Ahmad would co-found CAIR in 1994, hiring Awad as executive director that same year. Both men have expressed hatred toward Israel and resentment toward their adopted country for helping fund and arm the Jewish nation.
Burns testified during the 2008 terrorism trial of a charitable front for Hamas known as the Holy Land Foundation. It was the largest terror funding case in U.S. history. As part of the court filings, the Justice Department included CAIR on a list of co-conspirators underwriting Hamas terrorism — though CAIR and its founders were never indicted in the case. The HLF, busted up as the main fundraising arm of Hamas in America, commingled funds, assets, and personnel with CAIR, according to tax records and court documents.
“CAIR has been identified by the government as a participant in an ongoing and ultimately unlawful conspiracy to support a designated terrorist organization [Hamas] — a conspiracy from which CAIR never withdrew,” said former Assistant U.S. Attorney James Jacks, who was the lead prosecutor in the case.
A federal judge agreed. “The government has produced ample evidence to establish the associations of CAIR with Hamas,” then-U.S. District Judge Jorge Solis wrote in a July 2009 ruling.
A number of FBI counterterrorism agents were frustrated that CAIR’s national office and executives were never charged in the conspiracy, although the founder of CAIR’s Texas chapter was sentenced to prison. They said politics intervened. After 9/11, they said FBI headquarters viewed CAIR as a link to the Muslim community through which they might obtain tips about terror threats to the homeland. Brass even invited CAIR officials up to the executive suites located on the seventh floor of the Hoover building to discuss outreach policy.
“We said, ‘These are the bad guys, this is Hamas. What are you doing?’” former FBI Special Agent John Guandolo said, describing how he and other agents protested the special treatment afforded CAIR.
After CAIR was named an unindicted co-conspirator in the HLF’s criminal scheme to funnel more than $12 million to Hamas terrorists, the FBI finally disengaged from the group. The agency stopped conducting formal outreach with CAIR’s national office until, it said, it could resolve issues with Awad and other worrisome leaders.
“Until we can resolve whether there continues to be a connection between CAIR or its executives and Hamas, the FBI does not view CAIR as an appropriate liaison partner,” then-Assistant FBI Director Richard Powers said in a 2009 letter to the Senate.
But some investigators say the FBI should have shut down the group, not just the outreach program, issuing search warrants and conducting more intrusive surveillance, which they say would have allowed the government to run the Hamas front out of business.
“CAIR is the leading Hamas entity inside the United States, and the FBI has taken no action to prosecute them,” said Guandolo, who helped lead several major counterterrorism probes at the Washington field office after 9/11. He explained that “politically correct” FBI leadership is hesitant to go after a minority religious group and is overly sensitive to charges of “Islamophobia” often leveled by CAIR against its critics.
The FBI’s reluctance to roll up the Hamas front has pushed private investigators to take matters into their own hands. In 2008, a counterterrorism specialist led a team of investigators in a daring undercover operation of CAIR that included infiltrating its national headquarters located on New Jersey Avenue in Washington, D.C., near the Capitol building. Working as interns, the investigators, who posed as recent converts to Islam wearing traditional Muslim garb, secretly video-recorded conversations with CAIR officials. During the six-month operation, they also intercepted more than 12,000 pages of documents CAIR intended to shred as trash. The evidence, which was turned over to the FBI, is documented in Muslim Mafia, which also features an appendix with several key internal CAIR documents reprinted.
Among other things, the book revealed that CAIR employed violent Islamic terrorists, and then supported the terrorists behind the scenes even after they were convicted. It also uncovered an influence operation against members of key homeland security committees in Congress that included planting CAIR operatives in congressional offices. Internal CAIR documents laid out a plan to elect dozens of pro-Hamas Muslims to Congress. CAIR even started holding Muslim prayer sessions each Friday in the basement of the Capitol.
Muslim Mafia also traced the deeper roots of Hamas back to the secretive Muslim Brotherhood, the pro-jihad group founded in Egypt that built a sophisticated network of Islamic nonprofits inside the U.S. several decades ago. The book documented how Muslim Brotherhood leaders wrote a secret blueprint for “destroying [America] from within … so that it is eliminated and Allah’s religion is made victorious over all other religions.” FBI investigators discovered the manifesto stashed in a sub-basement of a Brotherhood leader’s home in Annandale, Virginia, after raiding his residence as part of a terrorism probe.
Several alarmed Republican members of Congress held a press conference about the book’s findings, warning a Hamas terror front group was infiltrating Congress.
Besides exposing Hamas’ political arm in America, the book exposed the inner workings of the broader anti-Israel lobby, which includes several left-wing groups aligned with CAIR. This lobby is now revealing itself in the wake of Israel’s own 9/11.
“The seeds for 9/11 were planted in 1948,” according to a draft of a “Proposed Muslim Platform” found at CAIR’s headquarters. “A resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict needs to be based on recognizing and correcting the harm that was done to the Palestinians since 1948,” when the United Nations partitioned land for Israel.
Guandolo said Hamas proved just how dangerous it is on Oct. 7. He warned that the terrorist group has already penetrated American society, and CAIR is the tip of the spear.
“Currently, CAIR is directing efforts at the ground level across the United States with organizations known for violent extremism,” he added in a recent interview with RealClearInvestigations. “Again, the FBI is doing nothing to adhere to their oaths of office and protect the American people.”
This article was originally published by RealClearInvestigations.
Investigative journalist Paul Sperry is a regular contributor to RealClearInvestigations and has written news or op-ed pieces for the New York Post, New York Times and Wall Street Journal. His books include ‘The Great American Bank Robbery’ (2011), and ‘Crude Politics: How Bush’s Oil Cronies Hijacked the War on Terrorism’ (2003).
President Joe Biden and China’s leader Xi Jinping met this week on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in San Francisco. The Biden administration touted the meeting as a significant foreign policy achievement, even though it accomplished little but photo ops.
Leading up to the APEC meeting, Xi had a weak hand, while the leverage was on the U.S. side. China’s economic growth has slowed down significantly. Its once high-flying property sector crashed and exports dropped. The youth unemployment rate reached 22 percent in June 2023 before Beijing stopped publishing the data altogether out of fear of causing public panic. Foreign firms have pulled billions out of China, concerned over its weak economy, hostile regulatory environment, and geopolitical tensions with the U.S. China risks prolonged economic stagnation as consumers are unwilling to spend money due to financial and political uncertainty.
In contrast, the U.S. economy grew almost 5 percent in the third quarter despite facing its own
challenges, such as inflation and ballooning national debt. Since China needs American companies’ investments and technologies to revive its weak economy, Biden could have waited for Xi to plead for a summit and used it as leverage to demand some behavioral changes from China. Preconditions could have been that China’s military stops its harassment of Taiwan and the Philippines in the South China Sea, or no more funding Russia and Iran’s geopolitical aggressions by purchasing their oil.
Sadly, Biden and his foreign policy team are known to turn U.S. leverage into weakness by focusing on the wrong priorities. For example, they continue to believe that climate change is the world’s biggest challenge and that the U.S. needs China’s cooperation to save the planet, even though China remains the world’s biggest polluter after signing the Paris Climate Agreement.
Biden’s green initiatives have only deepened the U.S. economy’s dependency on China since the communist regime dominates the global supply chain for solar panels, wind turbines, and batteries for electric vehicles due to its willingness to exploit slave laborers (most are ethnic minorities) and the nation’s abundant supply of coal.
Biden, led by misguided policies, sent several cabinet-level officials to China, including Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen. They practically begged Xi for a meeting. Xi, of course, played hard to get. Rather than reciprocating senior U.S. government officials’ multiple visits, Xi waited until last month to send Wang Yi, China’s minister of foreign affairs, to visit the U.S. and only recently agreed to a meeting with Biden.
A few days before the summit, China’s People’s Daily, the mouthpiece of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), faulted the U.S. for the deterioration of the Sino-U.S. relationship and demanded the U.S. “abandon its aggressive Cold War and aggressive mindset, fix the ‘action deficit’ with practical actions and concrete policies,” even though China is the one who has an action deficit as wide as the Grand Canyon. Remember when Xi promised President Barack Obama not to militarize artificial islands in the South China Sea and then armed those islands anyway and claimed 90 percent of the international waterway is Chinese territory?
Communist Party’s Playbook
What Xi has been doing is following the typical CCP playbook. Miles Yu, a former senior adviser to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, points out that CCP leaders, starting with Mao, love to “use international gatherings to lend legitimacy to [a] beleaguered regime at home.” By playing hard to get with the Biden administration, Xi hid his weakened hand behind a strongman image. He “seeks to send the message to his caged people — aided by the CCP’s relentless propaganda machine — that their supreme leader is respected, even revered, on the global stage,” according to Yu. Another CCP go-to tactic is to make vague and unenforceable pledges for the distant future in exchange for concessions from the other side now.
Unfortunately, the Biden team fell for the CCP’s trick. In a post-summit press conference, Biden put on a brave face and claimed the summit was “among the most constructive and productive we’ve had,” with three key agreements: to restart cooperation on controlling fentanyl, to resume direct (high-level) military-to-military contact, and to set up expert exchanges on risks and safety issues in artificial intelligence (AI).
But none of these represent any meaningful achievement, since the CCP is known for making empty promises, and the joke is on whoever believes them. On the fentanyl issue, many China observers, including Kelley Currie, a former diplomat, quickly pointed out on X, “Don’t forget that China agreed to do this exact thing in 2019 and dramatically reduced the flow of fentanyl out of China, only to switch tactics and instead supply mass amounts of precursor chemicals to Mexican cartels.”
On the AI issue, China promised nothing. Xi has made enhancing the People’s Liberation Army’s capabilities through AI a national priority and has already committed plenty of resources for AI research and development. Xi will not change his course because of some experts’ exchanges on AI with Americans. If such a discussion occurs, China will exploit it to identify which American AI expert to poach and what latest AI technology China should steal.
Military Aggression
Biden clearly believes that resuming direct, high-level military-to-military contact between the U.S. and China was a significant accomplishment. He tweeted, “Clear and open communication between our defense establishments is vital to avoid miscalculation by either side and prevent conflict.” But it was Chinese military leaders who refused to pick up phone calls from the U.S. side, and they did so under Xi’s order.
Chinese pilots frequently made dangerous maneuvers near the U.S. and its allies’ military assets in the South China Sea, not because of a lack of communication but because of Xi’s deliberate policy decision: China regards the international water as its territory and tries to block the U.S. and its allies from accessing it through intimidation. According to Jacob Stokes, a senior fellow at the Center for New American Security, “China wants the United States and its partners to feel worried about rising military and security risks in East Asia.”
It’s unlikely the Chinese military’s aggressive behavior in and above the South China Sea will stop after the Biden-Xi summit. Furthermore, Elbridge Colby, a former Pentagon official, points out that military-to-military communication is “not vital. It’s not the key issue.” Responding to Biden’s self-congratulatory tweet, Colby wrote, “The key issue is China undertaking a historic military buildup and increasingly using that military to get ready for a war, as your own appointees and generals point out. Just really nowhere near the seriousness we need.”
President Biden and his foreign policy team want Americans to believe that his meeting with Xi in San Francisco was successful. But in truth, the U.S. gained nothing from the Biden-Xi summit. Don’t expect Xi to fulfill any promises or change his policies. The U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission’s recent 753-page report to Congress presented evidence that Xi is preparing his military forces and the rest of the country for war and treats diplomacy with the United States, such as the most recent Biden-Xi summit, “primarily as a tool for forestalling and delaying U.S. pressure over a period of years while China moves ever further down the path of developing its own economic, military, and technological capabilities.”
If anything, the world is becoming more dangerous after the Biden-Xi summit, and we are on Xi’s timeline.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) released video on Friday showing what it says is a stash of mortar bombs hidden in the vicinity of a kindergarten classroom. The short video shows a damaged kindergarten classroom and then pans into a small storage area, revealing a pile of mortar shells.
An IDF spokesman said the mortar shells and other weapons were recovered by soldiers in schools inside the Gaza Strip.
A photo of mortar shells next to a school classroom. (IDF)
Additionally, IDF troops also found numerous Hamas weapons hidden in the Al-Karmel elementary school, the IDF said. Those weapons are understood to consist of rocket-propelled grenades and other military equipment.
U.S. and Israeli officials have said the Hamas terrorist organization uses civilian infrastructure like schools, homes and hospitals as cover for its military activities.
The IDF also released an image of a stockpile of weaponry and ammunition it says were seized from the Al-Quds Hospital, located in the Tel al-Hawa area of Gaza City. The IDF says terrorists are using tunnels beneath hospitals to conduct its operations.
The IDF also released an image of a stockpile of weaponry and ammunitions it says were seized from the Al-Quds Hospital, located in the Tel al-Hawa area of Gaza City. (IDF)
The IDF also announced on Friday that it had captured a post in Gaza belonging to the Palestine Islamic Jihad, a Sunni Islamist militant group, where they seized many rockets and other weapons.
The IDF post was a major asset for weapon production used to attack Israeli civilians and train terrorist fighters, the IDF said. It was located next to a courthouse and a Turkish hospital, according to the Israeli military.
“IDF troops searched the post and removed two trucks full of weapons, including Badr-3 rocket parts (a surface-to-surface rocket), UAV parts, and intelligence materials belonging to the [Palestinian Islamic Jihad],” an IDF spokesperson said.
The Israel Defense Forces seized a large weapons cache from a post belonging to the terrorist group, the Palestine Islamic Jihad. (Israel Defense Forces)
IDF troops also found a training tank used by terrorists to train fighters on how to capture an Israeli tank, the IDF said.
“During the operation, an anti-tank missile was launched at the troops from an adjacent building. The troops directed a helicopter to strike the terrorist cell that launched the missile,” the military said. “Furthermore, a terrorist cell fired additional shots at the troops from an adjacent courthouse and was struck by an IDF tank.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. (Abir Sultan/Pool Photo via AP)
The seizures come as the Israeli military continues to target Hamas leadership in northern Gaza and has captured several of the terrorist group’s key bases in the region.
The Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry claims more than 11,200 Gazans have been killed in the fighting, though they do not distinguish between Palestinian civilians and Hamas terrorists.
The war was sparked after Hamas launched a series of brutal terror attacks on Oct. 7.
Louis Casiano and Elizabeth Pritchett contributed to this report.
Michael Dorgan is a writer for Fox News Digital and Fox Business.
You can send tips to michael.dorgan@fox.com and follow him on Twitter @M_Dorgan.
City officials in the birthplace of Jesus Christ are tearing down Christmas decorations in solidarity with Palestinians amid Israel’s continued invasion of Gaza. Bethlehem, an ancient city located in the West Bank, declared via social media and official spokespeople that decorations installed in previous years are being removed amid the conflict between Israel and Hamas.
“Bethlehem Municipality crews announced the dismantling of Christmas decorations installed several years ago in the city’s neighborhoods and removing all festive appearances in honor of the martyrs and in solidarity with our people in Gaza,” the city wrote on Facebook, according to the Jerusalem Post.
Please remember that Bethlehem is controlled by Palestinians, who Great Britton brought in to take over Israel’s land. These are NOT a people. They are Arabic, from Saudi Arabia, who kick them out of Saudi Arabia because they tried to kill the Royal Family to take over Saudi Arabia. No portion of Israel belongs to them. It has been Israels for over 3,000 years, given to them by God. God promised to bless those that bless Israel, and curse those that don’t. All fighting against Israel is fighting against God the Father.
People attend Christmas celebrations around the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, West Bank. Domestic and foreign visitors gather around the Church of the Nativity, where Jesus is believed to have been born, participate in a Christmas ceremony and the Mass. (Issam Rimawi/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
A city spokesperson also acknowledged the campaign to remove Christmas decorations in a statement to the Telegraph.
“The reason is the general situation in Palestine; people are not really into any celebration, they are sad, angry and upset; our people in Gaza are being massacred and killed in cold blood,” the spokesman said, according to the outlet.
They added, “Therefore, it is not appropriate at all to have such festivities while there is a massacre happening in Gaza and attacks in the West Bank.”
Armenian Orthodox arrive at the Church of Nativity in the West Bank city of Bethlehem to celebrate Christmas and the Epiphany. (Wisam Hashlamoun/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
Despite the significance of Bethlehem to Christians and its high religious tourism from the faithful during the Advent season, the city is majority Muslim. The Christian population of Bethlehem has been in steady decline since the mid-20th century. In 1950, Christians made up over 80% of the local population, but now hover around 10% in a Muslim-dominated region.
Christian communities celebrate the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem in the West Bank, where Christ is believed to have been born. (Photo by Issam Rimawi/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
Many Christians have chosen to flee the area due to persecution and religious harassment. Additionally, low birth rates among Christian communities in Bethlehem have also contributed to the collapsing demographic in the West Bank. Approximately 185,000 Christians live in Israel, where they make up just under 2% of the population, according to Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics.
Timothy Nerozzi is a writer for Fox News Digital. You can follow him on Twitter @timothynerozzi and can email him at timothy.nerozzi@fox.com
Seattle residents have once again voted to raise the cost of housing to lower housing costs. If it sounds contradictory, you must be new to the Emerald City. Here, a liberal ethos prevails, with a penchant for endorsing any proposal cloaked in the mantle of progressivism.
Consider the Seattle Housing Levy as a case in point: a colossal program nearing $1 billion, earmarked for the construction of affordable housing. This levy did not simply extend a pre-existing tax from 2016; it more than tripled the tax rate from 14 cents to 45 cents per $1,000 of assessed property value.
Predictably, the levy passed with early voting results showing a commanding 66% support. The only firm number the levy commits to is a mere 3,200 new rental home constructions.
While it helps build some affordable housing, it also increases the cost of housing. Homeowners will see their property tax bills surge by roughly $400 annually. Tenants won’t be spared either, as these tax hikes are passed along via increased rents.
Andrea Suarez, executive director of We Heart Seattle, a non-profit that stages trash cleanups across the city, dismantles a tent as garbage lies piled at a homeless encampment in Seattle on March 13, 2022. The accumulation of garbage at such sites has become a major issue as the city tries to move the unhoused out of shared public spaces. (John Moore/Getty Images)
Adding insult to injury, the levy allocates $30 million for rental assistance to 4,500 tenants, yet the administrative costs to implement it are twice as much. This is in a city where the median house price has soared to $800,000, and where record-high fatal overdoses and a surge in homicides have marred the previous year’s statistics.
This trend mirrors the distressing trajectory of other Democrat-run cities, where residents pay a premium to live in areas that are deteriorating thanks to extreme leftist policies.
Despite the clear evidence that increased regulations and taxes have propelled the cost of living to exorbitant heights, the radical left remains steadfast in their dogma demanding higher taxes, conveniently sidestepping the fact that all of us are already contributing more than our “fair share.”
Landlords, often misperceived as affluent, are merely striving to earn a respectable living while providing affordable housing. Yet, they find themselves beleaguered by a system that disproportionately favors tenants, including those who are clearly gaming the system.
Seattle Grassroots Landlords is a local group of about 600 that connect on social media “to support each other and to prevent the ongoing degradation of rental housing options in Seattle.” Independent landlord Charlotte Thistle told me on my Seattle-based radio show that 17 new laws implemented citywide and statewide over the last three years have made the job nearly impossible. She highlighted the bureaucratic labyrinth that can result in a yearlong process and $20,000 in legal fees to remove a disruptive occupant.
Jason Roth, another landlord, learned this the hard way. After his tenant allegedly stopped paying rent, sublet the property on Airbnb and flaunted his exploits on social media, Roth found himself homeless, with his court case to evict postponed for months due to the tenant invoking the claim of being low-income. It triggered the system to offer him even more benefits.
Thistle and Roth’s experiences have prompted them, along with many others, to pull their properties from the market. This landlord exodus, in a state that penalizes property ownership, only serves to inflate rental costs further.
Seattle continues to battle homelessness and crime as liberal solutions to its problems fail. (John Moore/Getty Images)
Democrats’ response is to pour tax dollars into affordable housing, but there’s a problem with relying on the wealthy to “pay their fair share” (whatever that is). They leave.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos announced this month that he’s leaving the Seattle area for Miami, to be closer to his parents and partner. It’s hard to ignore a striking difference between Washington and Florida.
Washington Democrats passed a statewide capital gains tax, managing to convince an eager state Supreme Court to redefine income taxes, which are unconstitutional here, so that they could get more tax dollars from the wealthy.
They bizarrely claimed it’s an excise tax, before justifying their position by arguing their new definition is necessary because the state’s “upside-down tax system perpetuates systemic racism by placing a disproportionate tax burden on BIPOC residents.”
This trend mirrors the distressing trajectory of other Democrat-run cities, where residents pay a premium to live in areas that are deteriorating thanks to extreme leftist policies.
Before the tax took effect, Bezos sold more than 1.3 million Amazon shares, sparing him about $1.1 billion in taxes. He won’t have to worry about this in Florida. Moreover, Seattle wants to implement an additional capital gains tax and Democrats in the legislature are eyeing a wealth tax.
Democrats believe the homelessness crisis is due to the high costs of homes. But they also believe housing developers and landlords are wealthy, privileged and greedy. This perspective has led to punitive regulations and a reliance on government agencies to manage housing “the right way.” Yet, there is scant evidence to suggest that these measures are making the housing market more accessible. On the contrary, the situation continues to deteriorate.
Maybe if they stopped “helping” so much, let the market operate with fewer impediments, we’d have housing for everyone. But Seattle voters seem eager to keep getting in the way of progress with more taxes.
Pictured: Mourners gather Oct. 29 at the Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul for a remembrance ceremony for the 18 slain by a gunman in in Lewiston, Maine. (Photo: Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
The tragic mass shooting last month in Lewiston, Maine, sent gun control activists into their typical attacks on the right to keep and bear arms. Many defaulted to their standard narrative that the real “bad guy” wasn’t the murderer, but the Second Amendment and its supporters. Instead of demanding accountability from the government officials who failed to enforce existing criminal and mental health laws, they immediately demanded additional gun control measures that punish ordinary, peaceable Americans.
Even worse, some derided millions of law-abiding gun owners by asserting that the murderer was just another “good guy with a gun” up until the moment he started killing innocent people. Others mocked gun owners by asking where all the “good guys with guns” were to stop the slaughter.
Comments like these, of course, ignore reality. As is the case in so many mass public shootings, the Lewiston gunman was anything but a “good guy,” and he targeted victims in places where he was least likely to be met with armed resistance.
Meanwhile, the fact that the Lewiston shooter wasn’t stopped by an armed civilian doesn’t negate the many other instances last month in which Americans successfully used their firearms to defend themselves, their loved ones, and even complete strangers from criminal violence.
Such defensive gun uses are far from uncommon. Almost every major study has found that Americans use their firearms in self-defense between 500,000 and 3 million times annually, as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has acknowledged. In 2021, the most comprehensive study ever conducted on the issue concluded that roughly 1.6 million defensive gun uses occur in the United States every year.
For this reason, The Daily Signal publishes a monthly article highlighting some of the previous month’s many news stories on defensive gun use that you may have missed—or that might not have made it to the national spotlight in the first place. (Read other accounts here from past months and years. You also may follow @DailyDGU on Twitter for daily highlights of defensive gun uses.)
The 12 examples below represent only a small portion of the news stories on defensive gun use that we found in October. You may explore more using The Heritage Foundation’s interactive Defensive Gun Use Database. (The Daily Signal is Heritage’s news organization.)
Oct. 3, Chicago: In the aftermath of a multi-vehicle crash involving a city bus, police said, a gunman opened fire in the direction of bystanders, striking and wounding a Chicago Transit Authority bus supervisor. A tow truck driver with a concealed carry permit returned fire at the gunman, who fled.
Oct. 5, Phoenix: Police said an armed resident fatally shot a man who broke into a residence through a window while the family, including two young daughters, was home.
Oct. 6, Bismark, North Dakota: A couple woke up when a highly intoxicated and naked intruder broke into their home, police said. The man claimed he was there to “retrieve his clothing.” The husband held the intruder—a complete stranger—at gunpoint until police arrived.
Oct.11, Shreveport, Louisiana: After a woman’s ex-boyfriend broke into her home while armed with a knife and a bat, police said, a man inside shot him. The intruder, whose wounds weren’t life-threatening, was taken into police custody.
Oct. 13, Virginia Beach, Virginia: Police said a contractor for a flooring company was justified in shooting and wounding a man who, during a dispute over construction noise, brandished a gun and physically assaulted the contractor’s co-worker.
Oct. 15, Hollywood Hills, California: An award-winning Hollywood hair stylist fatally shot an intruder as he tried to force his way into her home through a window in the middle of the night, police said. The woman’s neighbors told reporters that this was not the first time she’d been the victim of burglars.
Oct. 16, Bellaire, Ohio: Police said a man shot and wounded an ax-wielding assailant who attacked him and another woman during a domestic dispute. The assailant was taken to jail on active warrants. Both his victims were hospitalized and treated for injuries.
Oct. 19, Auburn, Washington: During an attempted home invasion, police said, three armed and masked men tried to force their way inside while shouting, “Seattle police!” The homeowner fired several shots through the door, sending all three men fleeing.
Oct. 21, Wake Forest, North Carolina: An armed bystander with a concealed carry permit intervened during an altercation in a grocery store parking lot that was related to domestic violence, police said. The bystander returned fire when a man began shooting, causing him to flee. Police caught the assailant, who is charged with two counts of assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill, among other offenses.
Oct.22, Skokie, Illinois: A man attending a pro-Israel rally got out of his car, which was covered in Israeli flags, only to be surrounded by pro-Palestine demonstrators, some of whom physically attacked him, police said. The man, a concealed carry permit holder, drew his gun and fired into the air. Police later determined it was an act of lawful self-defense.
Oct.25, Philadelphia: A convenience store employee fatally shot an armed robber who threatened him with a gun and started taking cash from the register, police said. Other employees told reporters that their armed co-worker had gotten his concealed carry permit and sought out firearms training after surviving an earlier armed robbery at the store.
Oct.28, Atlanta: A man was doing construction work at a residence when he saw a juvenile breaking into his utility vehicle and confronted him, police said. The juvenile drew a gun and fired. The construction worker, also armed, returned fire, striking and wounding the would-be thief.
As these examples demonstrate, far more “good guys with guns” live in the United States than gun control advocates often care to admit. And they successfully protect themselves and others on a regular basis.
Don’t be misled: None of the gun control measures proposed in the wake of last month’s Lewiston shooting likely would have saved a single life. Those measures certainly wouldn’t have been more effective than merely using existing laws to disarm those who, like that mass killer, are mentally ill and dangerous.
The right to keep and bear arms won’t protect every innocent person from every evil, any more than seatbelts will protect every passenger in every car crash.
The Second Amendment does, however, give them a fighting chance.
American Family Association
American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
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American Family Association
American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
American Family Association
American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
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American Family Association
American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
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American Family Association
American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
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