House Democrats are on a crusade to destroy the reputation of whistleblowers to save President Joe Biden and to run cover for those in the Justice Department and FBI who obstructed the investigation into the Bidens’ business dealings. But Republicans are starting to fight back. Kash Patel, who served as chief of staff to the acting secretary of defense under President Trump and as the senior counsel for the House Intelligence Committee under then-Rep. Devin Nunes, launched the counteroffensive on Wednesday when his attorney filed an ethics complaint against Rep. Dan Goldman, D-N.Y., and simultaneously sent a referral to the Department of Justice.
Patel’s complaint to the House Ethics Committee charged that soon after hearing the sworn testimony of FBI whistleblowers Garret O’Boyle, Steve Friend, and Marcus Allen during the Subcommittee on Weaponization’s hearing on May 18, 2023, Goldman used his official Twitter account to falsely claim the whistleblowers were “bought and paid for” by Patel.
“The clear implication” of Goldman’s Tweet, the Patel complaint argued, was “that the witnesses lied under oath in exchange for payment by Mr. Patel.” In the same tweet, which was viewed by more than 4 million users, Goldman asserted Patel was “under investigation by the DOJ for leaking classified information.”
By publishing lies about a private citizen on his official Twitter account, Goldman violated Rule XXIII of the House of Representatives rules, which provides that a member “shall behave at all times in a manner that shall reflect creditably on the House,” the ethics complaint asserted.
The ethics complaint further suggested Goldman’s lies may have constituted crimes. Here, Patel’s complaint points to Section 1519 of the federal criminal code and suggests that “by making false statements on his official U.S. Government Twitter account, Rep. Goldman has arguably made a false entry on the record with the intent to impede or influence the investigation of the Select Subcommittee.” The complaint also suggests, “Rep. Goldman’s dishonest tweet is a corrupt attempt to obstruct, influence, or impede the investigation of the Select Subcommittee,” which Patel notes is an arguable violation of Section 1512(C)(2) of the criminal code.
While the ethics complaint notes that he “is not under investigation by the DOJ for anything—much less leaking classified information,” Patel adds that if there were such an investigation underway, someone would have illegally leaked that fact to Goldman.
The Federalist contacted Goldman’s office to inquire whether the congressman stood by his claim that Patel was under investigation. A Goldman representative responded that Patel was reportedly under investigation and shared two articles with The Federalist, one being an April 2021 Washington Post article authored by David Ignatius, and the second being an article citing Ignatius’ piece.
When reached for comment by The Federalist, Patel called Goldman’s office’s reference to the Washington Post article a “congressional cop out,” and “more lies through back peddling.” Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., has taught America you “can find any lie in the media,” Patel added, a likely reference to the many lies the then-ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee peddled about Nunes’ memorandum on FISA abuse — something that transpired during Patel’s time as senior counsel for the committee.
FBI whistleblower Steve Friend, who was one of the three whistleblowers Goldman accused of being “bought and paid for” by Patel, told The Federalist the Democrat’s accusations were absurd. Friend explained that Patel’s charitable organization contacted him in November of 2022 after he had been indefinitely suspended without pay for two months. “The organization generously furnished me a $5,000 donation so I could provide for my family during the Christmas holiday,” Friend said, stressing they told him “they did not want any public recognition.”
“Any insinuation that I sacrificed my career for a $5,000 payoff is patently ridiculous and defamatory,” Friend countered, adding that his family is grateful “to live in a country where men like Kash Patel can establish charitable organizations to assist those in need.”
Goldman’s office disagreed that there was an implication of an illicit payout for the whistleblowers’ testimony, telling The Federalist the New York congressman’s “bought and paid for” Tweet merely referred to the whistleblowers’ testimony from the linked video.
Referral to DOJ
In addition to the ethics complaint filed in the House, Patel’s lawyer also sent a criminal referral to Attorney General Merrick Garland. It seems unlikely the Department of Justice will enter the fray. However, given the growing number of unjust attacks on whistleblowers, the House Ethics Committee may well reprimand Goldman for his tweet.
The increased targeting of whistleblowers was on full display on Wednesday when House Democrats wage a similar attack against whistleblowers during FBI Director Christopher Wray’s testimony before the Judiciary Committee. Goldman’s fellow New York Democrat, Rep. Jerry Nadler, carried the defamation baton into that hearing, falsely accusing whistleblower Marcus Allen of receiving a $250,000 payout. Nadler’s representation was false and “far from profiting, he’s had to deplete his family’s retirement savings to survive,” Marcus’ attorney Jason Foster countered.
Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas, would later attempt to discredit the whistleblowers with the same tripe, although she couldn’t keep her villains straight, confusing money raised for the whistleblowers through a GoFundMe account organized by former FBI Agent Kyle Seraphin and the donations made by the charitable foundation established by Patel.
“They can’t even keep their smears straight,” Foster scoffed in an interview with The Federalist.
Patel put it more bluntly, saying those attacking the brave whistleblowers who are exposing FBI corruption are “masquerading behind a baseless personal attack, knowing the media will carry their disinformation campaign.”
The legacy press is doing just that and will likely continue to do so, handing politicians free rein to defame the whistleblowers. The question, then, is whether the House Ethics Committee will curb Goldman to send a message that whistleblowers aren’t political pawns.
Margot Cleveland is The Federalist’s senior legal correspondent. She is also a contributor to National Review Online, the Washington Examiner, Aleteia, and Townhall.com, and has been published in the Wall Street Journal and USA Today. Cleveland is a lawyer and a graduate of the Notre Dame Law School, where she earned the Hoynes Prize—the law school’s highest honor. She later served for nearly 25 years as a permanent law clerk for a federal appellate judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Cleveland is a former full-time university faculty member and now teaches as an adjunct from time to time. As a stay-at-home homeschooling mom of a young son with cystic fibrosis, Cleveland frequently writes on cultural issues related to parenting and special-needs children. Cleveland is on Twitter at @ProfMJCleveland. The views expressed here are those of Cleveland in her private capacity.
Few Republicans have high confidence that votes will be tallied accurately in next year’s presidential contest, suggesting years of sustained attacks against elections by former President Donald Trump and his allies have taken a toll, according to a new poll. The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll finds that only 22% of Republicans have high confidence that votes in the upcoming presidential election will be counted accurately compared to 71% of Democrats, underscoring a partisan divide fueled by a relentless campaign related to the 2020 presidential election. Even as he runs for the White House a third time, Trump continues to promote the claim that the election was stolen.
Overall, the survey finds that fewer than half of Americans – 44% — have “a great deal” or “quite a bit” of confidence that the votes in the next presidential election will be counted accurately. While Democrats’ confidence in elections has risen in recent years, the opposite is true for Republicans. Ahead of the 2016 election, 32% of Republicans were highly confident votes would be counted accurately — a figure that jumped to 54% two years later after Trump won the presidency. That confidence level dropped to 28% a month before the 2020 election, as Trump signaled to voters that the voting would be rigged, and now sits at 22% less than 16 months before the next presidential election.
“I just didn’t like the way the last election went,” said Lynn Jackson, a registered nurse from El Sobrante, California, who is a registered Republican. “I have questions about it. I can’t actually say it was stolen — only God knows that.”
Trump’s claims weren’t sustained by judges, including several he appointed, nor did audits and recounts confirm widespread tampering. Even so, Trump’s attempts to explain his loss led to a wave of new laws in GOP-dominated states that added new voting restrictions, primarily by restricting mail voting and limiting or banning ballot drop boxes. Across the country, some Republican-controlled local governments have explored banning machines from tallying votes in favor of hand counts.
The AP-NORC poll suggests that the persistent messaging has sunk in among a wide swath of the American public. The survey found that independents — a group that has consistently had low confidence in elections — were also largely skeptical about the integrity of the 2024 elections. Just 24% have the highest levels of confidence that the votes will be counted accurately.
Chris Ruff, a 46-year-old unaffiliated voter from Sanford, North Carolina, said he lost faith in elections years ago, believing they are rigged to favor certain candidates. He also sees no difference between the two major parties.
“I don’t vote at all,” he said. “I think it only adds credibility to the system if you participate.”
About four in 10 U.S. adults are highly confident that scanning paper ballots into a machine provides accurate counts. Democrats are about twice as confident in the process as Republicans —63% compared to 29%. That marks a notable shift from a 2018 AP-NORC poll that found just 40% of Democrats were confident compared to 53% of Republicans.uracy testing.
Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
Members of the House Oversight Committee will be able to dig more deeply into two IRS whistleblowers’ statements about alleged interference that hindered the investigation into President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, and if the information is damaging enough, it could be used toward impeaching Biden and Attorney General Merrick Garland, Rep. Byron Donalds said on Newsmax Friday.
“What is becoming crystal clear to me is that the political bureaucrats at the Department of Justice stonewalled and slow-walked this investigation into Hunter Biden,” the Florida Republican said on Newsmax’s “John Bachman Now.”
“And if it becomes clear that part of the purpose of this obstruction from the Department of Justice was to protect Joe Biden, these are serious allegations, which in my view lead to impeachment proceedings of Merrick Garland and potentially the president of the United States,” Donalds added.
The public hearing is scheduled for July 19, with members of the committee expected to hear from former IRS criminal investigator Gary Shapley and a second, unnamed IRS investigator who are expected to present critical information related to Oversight’s probe into the Biden family, the committee said in announcing the hearing.
In May, Shapley told the House Ways and Means Committee, during closed-door testimony, that U.S. Attorney David Weiss had sought authority to charge Hunter Biden in Washington, D.C., and California, but was denied the ability, reports NBC News. Weiss wrote in a letter to Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, that he has “never been denied the authority to bring charges in any jurisdiction.”
The discrepancy in the claims makes it “critical” that the testimony takes place, said Donalds.
“The attorney general goes before the Judiciary Committees in both in both House and Senate, in regularly scheduled intervals, so when he comes back, and he has to answer questions under oath, it’s going to be very important to have this stuff on the record from the Ways and Means Committee and the Oversight Committee,” said Donalds. “Some of the officials who say we can’t answer due to an ongoing investigation, we have the whistleblowers themselves who are supposed to have whistleblower protection so they won’t be as guarded.”
Meanwhile, Donalds commented on support in some circles he’s getting for him to become vice president under former President Donald Trump if he’s reelected, and Donalds said no discussions are going on behind the scenes with that in mind.
“It’s not something that we’re pushing forward,” said Donalds. “I’ve got to be honest with you, of course, it’s a great honor. It gives you an opportunity to help get the country back on track and help America continue to be the greatest nation in the world.”
The Biden administration, he added, ‘is a dumpster fire,” so there is a lot of work to be done.
“But right now, I’m just a member of Congress, just doing my job,” said Donalds. “I’m focused on appropriations right now, making sure that we cut federal spending as much as we can. But I want to do everything we can to help our country be successful, and that’s not just domestically, that’s internationally as well. So whether it’s being a member of Congress or anything else. I’ll let the voters decide that.”
Donalds also talked about the cocaine that was found at the White House earlier this month, as well as reports that the Secret Service found marijuana there twice in 2022.
That’s happening, said Donalds, because the current administration is “very lax and not serious at all.”
“If you look at the policy that comes out of this White House, that’s not a shock because some of the stuff that they’re putting forward, I personally think you got to be on drugs [to] support some of this policy because it’s just stupid, and it’s a detriment to the country.”
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A federal appeals court Friday temporarily paused a lower court’s order limiting executive branch officials’ communications with social media companies about controversial online posts. Biden administration lawyers had asked the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans to stay the preliminary injunction issued on July 4 by U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty. Doughty himself had rejected a request to put his order on hold pending appeal.
Friday’s brief 5th Circuit order put Doughty’s order on hold “until further orders of the court.” It called for arguments in the case to be scheduled on an expedited basis.
Filed last year, the lawsuit claimed the administration, in effect, censored free speech by discussing possible regulatory action the government could take while pressuring companies to remove what it deemed misinformation. COVID-19 vaccines, legal issues involving President Joe Biden’s son Hunter and election fraud allegations were among the topics spotlighted in the lawsuit.
Critics of the administration say the White House specifically sought to silence conservative voices.
Doughty, nominated to the federal bench by former President Donald Trump, issued an Independence Day order and accompanying reasons that covered more than 160 pages. He said the plaintiffs were likely to win their ongoing lawsuit. His injunction blocked the Department of Health and Human Services, the FBI and multiple other government agencies and administration officials from “encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner the removal, deletion, suppression, or reduction of content containing protected free speech.”
Administration lawyers said the order was overly broad and vague, raising questions about what officials can say in conversations with social media companies or in public statements. They said Doughty’s order posed a threat of “grave” public harm by chilling executive branch efforts to combat online misinformation.
Doughty rejected the administration’s request for a stay on Monday, writing: “Defendants argue that the injunction should be stayed because it might interfere with the Government’s ability to continue working with social-media companies to censor Americans’ core political speech on the basis of viewpoint. In other words, the Government seeks a stay of the injunction so that it can continue violating the First Amendment.”
In its request that the 5th Circuit issue a stay, administration lawyers said there has been no evidence of threats by the administration. “The district court identified no evidence suggesting that a threat accompanied any request for the removal of content. Indeed, the order denying the stay — presumably highlighting the ostensibly strongest evidence — referred to ‘a series of public media statements,’” the administration said.
Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
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.
Moms for Liberty cofounders Tiffany Justice, left, and Tina Descovich, right, blamed the Southern Poverty Law Center for some of the death threats they have received after the SPLC put their organization on a “hate map” alongside KKK chapters. Pictured: Justice and Descovich speaking at the inaugural Moms For Liberty Summit on July 15, 2022 in Tampa, Florida. (Photo: Octavio Jones/Getty Images)
Images in this article contain swear words.
FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL—Moms for Liberty has received countless death threats, but the messages spiked after the Southern Poverty Law Center put the parental rights group on its “hate map,” its cofounders say.
“It gave people permission to treat us as subhuman,” Tiffany Justice, one of the group’s cofounders, told The Daily Signal. She accused Moms for Liberty’s critics of trying “to whip people up into such a frenzy that they end up sending death threats to me and to the members and our children.”
“Designating us as a hate group gives people permission to dehumanize us, and the SPLC knows it,” Justice added.
The SPLC brands mainstream conservative and Christian organizations “hate groups,” placing them on a map with chapters of the Ku Klux Klan. In June, it added a slew of parental rights organizations to that “hate map” for 2022 and labeled them “antigovernment groups,” part of an “anti-student inclusion movement.”
As I wrote in my book “Making Hate Pay: The Corruption of the Southern Poverty Law Center,” the SPLC has faced multiple scandals and defamation lawsuits. In 2019, after the SPLC fired its cofounder amid a racial discrimination and sexual harassment scandal, a former employee called the hate accusations a “highly profitable scam.” In 2012, a now-convicted terrorist targeted the Family Research Council for a mass shooting, using the “hate map” to identify his target. The SPLC condemned the attack but kept the council on the map ever since.
Protesters mobbed the Moms for Liberty summit in Philadelphia, held June 29-July 2, citing the SPLC accusation. They also cited a Moms for Liberty chapter which apologized after quoting Adolf Hitler to illustrate that the Nazis tried to brainwash and recruit children.
Tina Descovich, the other cofounder, exclusively shared many of the death threats her organization received after the SPLC’s accusation.
“I will personally eradicate you from Massachusetts,” one person wrote to the organization’s “Contact Us” page. He condemned Moms for Liberty as “nasty sows.”
One person, who gave the name “Execute All-Nazis,” wrote, “Piece of s— fascists like you deserve to be dragged against a wall and force-fed hot lead. Eat s— and die.”
“You women have no soul, no morals, for quoting Adolf Hitler in your newsletter,” another threat-sender wrote. “The state should remove your kids and/or grand kids from your homes. Evil, evil, evil people you are!”
Another threat appeared to reference the SPLC. “You are NOTHING But a bunch of F—ING C—S who should be F—ING DESTROYED AS AN EXTREMEST [sic] GROUP YOU F—NG BIGGOTED [sic] C—S,” the person wrote.
A person who gave the name “Satan Anti-Christ” wrote that Moms for Liberty “will answer for the crimes YOU committed against our LGBTQ children (legally of course).”
“We are Legion.”
Another person merely wrote, “Eat s— and die.”
Descovich shared other voicemails, emails, and “Contact Us” responses that included vile threats against the family members of Moms for Liberty, and she said the group has received many, many more.
“I send them to law enforcement,” Descovich said.
“The SPLC is purposely putting a target on all moms’ backs—all moms that are standing up for their children,” she added.
She mentioned the FRC shooting as evidence of how the SPLC’s demonization inspires hate and could spark violence.
“I don’t think you have to look any further than at the Family Research Council and how they were threatened by a shooter because of the designation as a ‘hate group,’” Descovich argued.
Despite the threats, Descovich said Moms for Liberty will stand firm.
“We ask ourselves all the time, ‘If not us, then who?’” she said. “The future of our children and our country is too important to stay silent. Generations of Americans have sacrificed their own lives to protect our liberty and freedom and we will not back down.”
The Southern Poverty Law Center did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the threats or the accusation that its attack gave “permission” for them.
The U.N. is planning to unveil sweeping policy proposals that would massively expand its influence.
The policies could attempt to impose strict regulations on individual democracies and put freedom of speech at risk, policy experts told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
“It is clearly an effort to empower the Secretary-General and the United Nations,” Brett Schaefer, senior researcher in International Regulatory Affairs at Heritage Foundation, said to the DCNF.
The United Nations (U.N.) is unveiling proposals for a massive expansion of its influence in the upcoming “Summit of the Future” conference in 2024, including policies that would grant the organization an “emergency platform” during global crisis events and a digital code of ethics to censor “misinformation.” The conference will bring together U.N. allied nations and non-governmental organizations to discuss a sweeping policy agenda that speaks to left-wing initiatives, like increasing the size of government, digital censorship and drastic pandemic and climate proposals. These policies signal a concerning expansion of the U.N.’s influence over individual democracies, according to policy experts who spoke to the Daily Caller News Foundation.
CAN YOU SAY “ONE WORLD GOVERNMENT”?
“Back when Americans called themselves Englishmen, we couldn’t abide being ruled by people we didn’t vote for and never saw,” Michael Chamberlain, director of Protect the Public’s Trust, a government watchdog organization, said to the DCNF. “Self-government is in our national DNA. We elect representatives to enact the laws we live by… not so with the United Nations and other international and foreign organizations. That is why it is exceedingly dangerous for the United States to relinquish its sovereignty and allow any of these organizations the power to rule over us.”
In the event of a global crisis, such as a “major climactic event” or “future pandemic risk,” the emergency platform policy would give the U.N. the ability to “actively promote and drive an international response that places the principles of equity and solidarity at the center of its work,” according to the “Strengthening the International Response to Complex Global Shocks – An Emergency Platform” policy proposal.
The proposal was written by U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, who would have the authority to declare an emergency platform and extend it on his own whim if the policy was ratified.
“It is clearly an effort to empower the Secretary-General and the United Nations,” Brett Schaefer, senior researcher in International Regulatory Affairs at Heritage Foundation, said to the DCNF. “The Emergency Platform policy brief would grant the Secretary-General ‘standing authority to convene and operationalize’ a response to a broad array of international crises with minimal consultation with the member states, including the U.S.”
“While the member states would not be compelled legally to abide by the recommendations of the Secretary-General, the pressure to ‘contribute meaningfully to the response and [be] held to account for delivery on those commitments’ would be immense,” said Schaefer. “The U.S. should be willing to respond positively to assist other nations in times of crisis, but this should be a decision made by our elected leaders, not driven from Turtle Bay.”
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres appears remotely at a conference in Geneva, Switzerland on July 6. (Photo by Johannes Simon/Getty Images)
Another one of the “Summit of the Future” proposals would seek to develop a “code of conduct” online that would demonetize and censor what the U.N. considers misinformation, titled “Information Integrity on Digital Platforms,” the DCNF previously reported.
The U.N. and the Global Disinformation Index (GDI) – which is funded by the U.N. itself, as reported by the DCNF – cite multiple conservative news outlets as sources of misinformation while accrediting left-leaning sources as highly reliable, according to the GDI’s “Disinformation Risk Assessment.” For example, the GDI gave the New York Times, the Washington Post and BuzzFeed News “low” risk levels, while giving the Daily Wire, the New York Post and the American Conservative “high” risk levels.
The U.N.’s definition of “misinformation” poses a major risk to free speech, Schaefer said.
“We have seen firsthand how efforts to repress ‘disinformation’ and ‘misinformation’ instead are misused to silence opposing opinions and repress inconvenient evidence – such as the Chinese lab leak theory on the origin of COVID,” Schaefer said. “It is hard to see any U.N. Code that would not run roughshod over the First Amendment.”
Chamberlain agreed and added that the U.N. has no basis to establish the policy in any democratic country.
“Americans still have the protections of the First Amendment that prohibit the government from infringing on their rights to free speech,” said Chamberlain. “Not only is the government barred from trampling on those rights, it is not allowed to outsource that trampling to others, not even to large, powerful international organizations, regardless of how highly regarded those organizations may be.”
Calling for guardrails to contain the proliferation of hate and lies in the online world, @antonioguterres puts forward proposals for a Code of Conduct for Information Integrity on Digital Platforms in new report. https://t.co/7ZoX9i81ukpic.twitter.com/Punt48XxYi
Other policy proposals include a global vaccination plan for COVID-19, which would seek to administer a minimum of 11 billion doses worldwide and increase funding and authority to the World Health Organization.
“The independence, authority and financing of WHO must be strengthened,” wrote the U.N. Secretary-General in the “Our Common Agenda” report. “This includes greater financial stability and autonomy, based on fully unearmarked resources, increased funding and an organized replenishment process for the remainder of the budget.”
Another proposal seeks to enforce climate change initiatives by reaching net zero carbon emissions by 2050 “or sooner” via abolishing fossil fuels and coal energy worldwide and coercing financial actors to shift away “from high-emission sectors to the climate resilient and net zero economy.”
“We should be shoring up our populations, infrastructure, economies and societies to be resilient to climate change, yet adaptation and resilience continue to be seriously underfunded,” the U.N. Secretary-General said in the “Our Common Agenda” report.
Schaefer told the DCNF he remains skeptical that the U.N.’s climate plan is possible.
“China’s priority – and the priority of many other countries, especially developing countries – is to maximize economic growth and increase standards of living. To the extent that net zero and phasing out fossil fuels impede those goals, they will not abide by limitations,” Schaefer said.
The United Nations did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The manosphere, a loose confederation of male, anti-feminist internet content creators, loves Pearl Davis. She is our queen, our ally in the fight to save the patriarchy. She’s a soldier in the coldest, longest-running war in the history of the planet, a war that is heading to a climax as you read this. It’s the gender war, the battle of the sexes, the matriarchy vs. the patriarchy.
A spat sparked by a disagreement over an apple in the garden has brought the world to the brink of collapse. We should not be surprised. The issues and conflicts we ignore or wish away are the very maladies that destroy us. We hyperfocus on racial, political, and geographical conflict, falsely believing that solving those disputes will bring us peace and order. We draw lines in sand with conservatives and liberals, between blacks and whites, and among bordering nations. We’re willing to die over race, politics, and land encroachments.
The planet-long dispute between men and women forces us to compromise. Those compromises have led us where we are today. Men have been seduced into surrendering power and authority to women. The emotion and feelings of women rule Western civilization.
This has created the manosphere, an isolated, passionate corner of the internet where men grumble about their loss of dominion over the fish of the sea, the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that creepeth upon the earth. The matriarchy and its culture have rewritten the book of Genesis. Their rewrite warns against being fruitful, multiplying, and replenishing the earth.
Man no longer subdues the earth. Woman subdues man.
In this climate, Pearl Davis is a tall glass of water in a feminist-controlled desert. She’s joined the manosphere in discussing the most important issue facing mankind: the natural order of authority.
The church has shied away from the topic or acquiesced to the feminist point of view. This topic goes much deeper than prominent evangelists such as Rick Warren ushering in an egalitarian view on pastoral leadership.
What are the consequences of women voting and joining the workforce? Have welfare and other government subsidies undermined male rulership and made America chaotic and vulnerable? Has the country gone too far promoting the development of girls and neglected the development of boys?
All of these issues and many more need to dominate the pulpit. They’re mostly ignored and left to the manosphere.
Bold, polarizing, and humorous, Pearl Davis won the adoration of the manosphere with a string of viral videos that proclaim the superiority of men and mock the delusion and whoredom of modern women.
What’s not to love? Pearl tells men of the manosphere exactly what we want to hear:
Women should submit to their husbands. America should repeal the 19th Amendment. Women aren’t as valuable as men. Women should expect and accept that “high value” men will cheat.
From her temporary home in London, the Chicago native is building an online empire that may one day rival Andrew Tate’s. She has approximately 1.5 million YouTube subscribers. Her rants arguing against women voting and their declining beauty and fertility in their 30s are adding thousands of Twitter followers daily.
She’s mastered the art of triggering both conservative and liberal women.
Yesterday, I interviewed Pearl on my show, “Fearless with Jason Whitlock.” It was my first interaction with the six-foot volleyball player turned internet influencer. We chatted for a little more than 30 minutes. I liked her.
Later that evening, I participated in a Twitter Spaces conversation for two hours that discussed the importance and authenticity of Pearl’s meteoric rise to relevance. Shemeka Michelle, Lauren Chen, and Isabella Riley Moody participated in a nuanced conversation with myself, T.J. Moe, and men and women across the Twitterverse.
The full day of discussing “Pearlythingz” left me wondering if the well-intentioned influencer is more of an unwitting double agent than force for good. She stumbled into her role as a cheerleader for the manosphere and outspoken critic of feminism. She studied finance in college. She launched her influencer career on TikTok posting videos about building a waterslide in her family’s backyard. She then made sarcastic videos interpreting raunchy rap music videos as the stereotypical suburban white girl.
She had a simple goal: She wanted to earn enough money to move out of her parents’ house. She achieved that goal when she leaned into being the female voice of the manosphere. Her innocent, girl-next-door charm mixed with her natural conservative values made her unique and irresistible.
She’s Shirley Temple parroting the talking points of Andrew Tate. I don’t say that to dismiss her. I love Pearl. I find her entertaining and authentic. But I have to admit there is some danger to Pearl. My conversation last night on Twitter Spaces helped me see the danger.
While mocking the delusion of modern women, Pearl inadvertently condones the delusion of modern men. Make no mistake, the manosphere is delusional. It delights in ridiculing the failures of women without recognizing that their failures are a reflection of men’s horrendous leadership.
The manosphere argues that the problem with the world is the fallen standards and morality of women. The truth is it is man’s fallen standards and morality that have ruined women and the world.
The manosphere wants women to fall in line and submit to the natural order of male leadership while relieving men of the responsibility of falling in line and submitting to the natural order. The natural order is man follows God and woman follows man. The manosphere rejects God’s order of cleaving to one woman and avoiding adultery. It’s one of the reasons we find Pearl irresistible. She repeats the Kevin Samuels’ mantra that “high-value men” are going to be promiscuous and that women seeking high-achieving men should learn to accept that fact.
The manosphere believes it’s natural for men to cheat and/or be promiscuous. Well, it’s equally natural for women to usurp authority from men. Should we allow that? We want women to slay their flawed instincts. The key to inspiring them to do that is for men to slay their flawed instincts.
Pearl, like all of us, has much to learn. She needs a biblical understanding of the value of women. Man cannot reproduce and has little life purpose without women. I don’t blame Pearl for her naive and misguided thoughts. I don’t blame the manosphere, either. I blame the church for not being as bold and courageous as Pearl and the manosphere.
Tucker Carlson may spark fireworks Friday as he goes head to head with presidential nominees live on stage at the FAMiLY Leadership Summit in Des Moines, Iowa.
The former Fox News Channel personality has a history of holding nothing back and has conducted heated interviews with some of this year’s summit participants in the past. His individual on-stage interviews with presidential candidates at this year’s summit in the run-up to the 2024 election may well prove to be extra spicy.
In a preview of what may be in store for viewers, at last year’s summit, Tucker was adamant about voters holding would-be political leaders’ feet to the fire.
“If you continue to get leaders, leaders that you vote for, whose campaigns you fund, who can look directly into a camera and say the single most important thing in the world is, in a material sense, totally unrelated to your life or the life of any of the other 350 million people who live here, that’s a huge problem,” Carlson said during a speech at the 2022 FAMiLY Leadership Summit.
Prior to leaving Fox News, Carlson openly shared pointed opinions on conservative political figures, regularly raising some Republican viewers’ hackles.
“In all the ways that matter, Nikki Haley is a member in good standing of the most protected class of all — upper income, liberal white ladies with fashionable political views. She may be running to be the Republican nominee, but she is fundamentally indistinguishable from the neoliberal donor base of the Democratic Party,” Carlson said of former Governor Nikki Haley in February.
Haley is among the confirmed participants at this year’s summit.
“Nikki Haley believes in collective racial guilt. She thinks Ukraine’s borders are more important than our own. She believes identity politics is our future,” Carlson also said of the former South Carolina governor.
Carlson, an outspoken critic of surgery and chemical interventions on children with gender dysphoria, was devastatingly blunt in an interview with then Governor Asa Hutchinson two years ago. Hutchinson had just vetoed a bill that would have prevented physicians from prescribing puberty blockers and/or surgically castrating children who believe they are transgender.
“I think of you as a conservative. Here you’ve come out publicly as pro-choice on the question of chemical castration of children. What changed? … We’re talking about minors, children here … why do you think it’s important for conservatives to make certain that children can block their puberty? Why is that a conservative value?”
One issue almost certain to be on the table during the conference is the United States’ involvement in the war between Russia and Ukraine. Carlson is openly opposed to the war, while some of the Republican nominees he will be interviewing at the summit appear openly hawkish.
Whether it is the Russia-Ukraine war, January 6, transgender surgery for kids, abortion, or other controversial topics, one thing is certain: Carlson will not shy away from pressing this year’s slate of Republican candidates to defend their positions. Voters will surely be the wiser for it.
“The FAMiLY Leader is thrilled to partner with BlazeTV to bring this unique content to a national audience looking for a better vision for America’s future. BlazeTV brings insightful and inspiring voices to Americans, and we are grateful that commitment will continue with the FAMiLY Leadership Summit,” FAMiLY Leader president and CEO Bob Vander Plaats told TheBlaze Monday.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R), former Vice President Mike Pence (R), Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.), author and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy (R), former United Nations Amb. and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley (R), and former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson (R) have all confirmed their attendance at the 2023 FAMiLY Leadership Summit: Principle over Politics.
As they worked tirelessly to oust Donald Trump from the White House in 2020, a chorus of corporate media, Never Trumpers, establishment Democrats, and Joe Biden himself promised Americans a Biden presidency would usher in a “return to normalcy.”
Two and a half years later, normalcy has yet to appear. Biden’s tenure has cemented a new “normal” of men pretending to be women, a march toward global conflict, and synthetic drugs in the White House. Decency and decorum? Not exactly. As the 2024 election season heats up, now is as good a time as ever to take stock of our cultural and political status quo and remind ourselves that the self-proclaimed unifier-in-chief and his administration’s lackeys have done everything in their power to upend our norms, not return to them. Here are 10 examples.
1. Obscene LGBT Activism
In exchange for Trump’s mean tweets, Biden’s normal includes men showing off their prosthetic breasts on the White House lawn. As LGBT extremists enforced pride month on the rest of the country, the Biden family saw fit to host a pride party at the symbolic residence. Three of their guests proudly stripped off their tops to flaunt their mutilated “true” selves.
After immediate backlash, the Biden administration noted the behavior was “inappropriate” and disinvited the three people involved — but there was nothing “normal” about nude White House party guests.
Speaking of indecent exposure, LGBT activism under the Biden administration has taken an obscene turn and not just during “pride month.” The White House’s gay and trans agenda has no limiting principle, with the president going out of his way to promote irreversible medical interventions for confused youths. This radicalism trickles down into defending pornographic books for children, explicit “education,” public nudity, and graphic sexual depictions in family-friendly public environments.
2. Corruption
When Biden talked about normalcy, did he mean multimillion-dollar bribery schemes? Thanks to astute lawmakers like Sen. Chuck Grassley and brave whistleblowers within the Internal Revenue Service and FBI, Americans are finally seeing past the Biden-protection racket to the corrupt family business.
Biden and his DOJ will pretend the sins are littler misdemeanor tax crimes limited to his poor addict son Hunter, but whistleblower testimony about a damning FBI document suggests “the big guy’s” hands are dirty — and the Justice Department has been covering it up.
3. Cocaine at the White House
The same administration that tracked down grandmas who happened to be in D.C. on Jan. 6, 2021, claims it won’t be able to figure out who brought cocaine into the high-security White House, complete with Secret Service agents, cameras, and records of every guest’s name, date of birth, and social security number, among other things.
Whether the synthetic drug belongs to Hunter Biden, an obvious suspect who is believed to be living in the White House right now, or someone else, Colombian bam-bam turning up at the president’s house isn’t normal.
4. Federal Weaponization and Censorship
To suppress its ideological and political opponents, the Biden administration found convenient ways to silence social media users. As recent House reports have shown, Biden’s agencies regularly engaged in collusion with the largest Big Tech companies to suppress free speech. Not only did they push for the censorship of speech that was factually wrong — speech that is still protected by the First Amendment — but they labeled information critical of the Democrat regime as “disinformation” and “misinformation” to justify stripping it from the public square. Worse, the Biden administration devised a category of speech that’s true but inconvenient, called “malinformation” — and worked to silence that too.
5. Bidenomics
Despite recovering some of the jobs the government forced workers out of during Covid lockdowns, Biden’s economy overall has been disastrous for the American people. Inflation in particular has been a steady theme, with prices for essentials from groceries to gasoline soaring throughout the early years of Biden’s term. Prices are still high and many Americans are still suffering in 2023, but in January the president had the audacity to claim a high inflation rate was a good thing because it had “cooled” from the 40-year record Biden broke the previous year.
6. The Edge of World War
Aggressive support for Ukraine in its war with Russia has been a constant theme of the Biden administration. Unfortunately, this support edges us closer to a global war. With escalation as the apparent goal of this conflict, depleted stockpiles put the U.S. at increased risk of war with insufficient supplies to fight it. NATO’s recent shortening of Ukraine’s membership application process could threaten to drag NATO member countries, and America in particular, into a great power conflict once again.
Of course, this is in addition to rising threats from China and at America’s southern border, with foreign threats growing under the noses of a distracted national security apparatus.
7. Science-Denying HHS Assistant Secretary
How’s this for normal? Biden appointed a science-denying man as the first “female” four-star
admiral in the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps. The president selected Dr. Rachel Levine, a transgender-identifying person and motivated LGBT ideologue, as the assistant secretary for health at the Department of Health and Human Services.
Levine previously promoted the most extreme policies of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention during Covid and was responsible for thousands of excess deaths in Pennsylvania during his tenure as the head of the Pennsylvania Health Department. In his position as Assistant Secretary, Levine has consistently fought to deny biological realities and promote the sterilization and mutilation of gender-confused children.
8. Pop Star as a Medical Expert
In keeping with Biden’s elevation of the unqualified, his administration turned to celebrities such as Olivia Rodrigo to persuade Americans to fawn over a flailing Anthony Fauci. In 2021, Rodrigo partnered with Fauci and Biden to produce videos encouraging youth vaccination. Her fans, along with the rest of the world, realized her expertise in healing hearts through music did not extend to medicine; her vaccination video remains one of her least-liked social media posts.
9. Senility and Lying
Probably the easiest return to normal would have been the election of a younger, coherent president who maintained some semblance of accountability to Americans. Instead, Biden offers regular doses of verbal incoherence, sleepiness, gaffes, uncomfortable whispers and shouts, and tumbles. These are all bad looks, but not as bad as the lies that spill out of the president on the daily, which The Federalist has tracked since his first day in office. Lying may be normal for Biden, but it shouldn’t be normal for the presidency, and neither should perceived physical and cognitive weakness on the world stage.
10. War on SCOTUS
It’s no surprise attacks on the Supreme Court have ramped up under the Biden administration. After all, this president evidently believes he’s above the law, and the court has disagreed, smacking down his administration on everything from student loans to Covid jab mandates. Not to mention other blows to the left during Biden’s tenure, such as the overturning of Roe v. Wade, the 303 Creative decision, and a university affirmative action takedown.
With the help of the media, the Biden administration has gotten bold about its plans to undercut and circumvent the court wherever it can. And the president is not alone; private universities will also be doing their best to dodge the law to keep supporting racial discrimination.
Samuel Boehlke is a rising senior in Mass Communication/Law and Policy at Concordia University Wisconsin and a current intern at The Federalist. He is Web Editor for CUW’s The Beacon and External Affairs Editor for Quaestus Journal. Reach him at sboehlkefdrlst@gmail.com or by DMs @vaguelymayo.
Children’s books are one of the most powerful tools parents have to help teach their kids how to be good humans. From picture books being read at bedtime to novels being read by flashlight under blankets, kids flourish in the safety of stories as they develop their belief systems. Resilience, empathy, respect, and many other noble traits are portrayed and experienced vicariously through books. What a powerful tool!
Having been a part of the children’s book publishing industry for several decades, and as a passionate participant, I have watched in growing dismay as the children’s literature, or “kidlit,” world has shifted and changed, and most recently taken a drastic plummet. Parents need to understand the destructive path this industry has taken, or they will discover too late as the damage hits home.
Seeing the Shift
This shift in kidlit has been happening for a long time. About 25 years ago, novels that portrayed kids as environmental activists began to win awards. About 15 years ago, the award-winning books showed shocking, disturbing scenarios. Ten years ago, books that depicted sexualization and abuse at younger ages began to win awards. Then, five years ago, it shifted a bit more to where books focused on systemic racism and sexual identity won awards. Today, if books don’t include any of the above depictions, they are rarely published by medium and large publishing houses.
And it’s the medium and large publishing houses that supply schools, libraries, and bookstores.
Eight years ago, I organized a statewide writer’s conference for children’s book authors. We brought in several high-powered industry members from major publishing houses. One editor’s words threw open the window to this shifting world. She asked a writer at our conference, who was a leftist himself, about his story. He explained that in his manuscript, his main character learns that his hero is gay. The protagonist is troubled by this and works through his feelings to come to acceptance later in the book.
The respected editor stopped the writer mid-explanation and said, “No.” She explained that in kids’ books, we must present the ideal as if it already exists. There can be no “being troubled by” gayness. There can be no “coming to terms with” sexual identity. The characters in our stories must immediately accept with positive responses any representation of modern social constructs. This immediately laudatory reaction to woke ideology is now required in kidlit. If an author doesn’t portray it as such, his book will not be published.
This pronouncement by the editor shocked me and many other writers there. The line had now been drawn. As writers, our hope of publication rested on our willingness to positively portray woke ideology.
Shortly after this conference, as a part of several online writers’ groups, I started to see comments like this: “We have a duty to save children from conservative, Christian thought,” and “It’s our responsibility as writers to right the wrongs of past traditional thinking.” In their minds, they were in a strategic position as writers of kids’ books to influence young minds in the direction they wanted. These groups soon canceled me.
“We have a duty to save children from conservative, Christian thought,” and “It’s our responsibility as writers to right the wrongs of past traditional thinking.”
A Normalization Campaign
In the past three years, there has been another dangerous shift. In 2020, the Publisher’s Weekly list of Best Middle Grade Books of the year featured 14 titles. These are books for kids ages 9 to 13. Out of the 14 books, nine on that year’s list openly spoke about racism and sexual identity. Each book’s description clearly identified these themes. Of the 14 books on the 2021 Best Books list, nine of the 14 again included topics of racism and sexual identity, but this time, some were clearly identified and others subtly presented. On the Publisher’s Weekly list of Best Middle Grade Books for 2022, nine of the 14 books discussed racism and sexual identity, but only one clearly stated so in the book description. Publishers no longer openly tell readers about the portrayal of radical social agendas in their books. They are subtly inserting the concepts that they want to teach young kids without letting parents know they are there.
Any more questions about why reading and math score are so awful?
This shift frightens me more. We have moved from the inclusion of liberal social agendas in kids’ books — and flaunting it — to sneaking them in under the radar of parents. This is called normalization. The goal is to include these ideologies in exciting, adventurous stories so they become commonplace. Woke ideology has shifted from being the make-up of a book’s plot lines to the fabric of the setting — the normal backdrop of the story as if it exists that way in real life. This normalization leads to acceptance, which leads to embracing. By weaving these social agendas into the “normal” background of a story, a child who feels shocked at a scene or description immediately shifts to feeling shame for being shocked in the first place. Kids will seek to replace their shame with acceptance. This is the power of normalization.
When I know what a book is about, I can make sure my child doesn’t read it. When I’m being kept in the dark, these ideologies may slip past me and fall directly into my child’s hands and mind. Strong storytelling mixed with normalized social agendas creates a book that will influence my child in ways I don’t want. This is the power the industry holds.
We can no longer walk into a library or bookstore, grab a children’s novel off the shelf, and expect it to be clean, based on traditional values, or to contain age-appropriate material. It won’t.
The Library Lurch
And not only books and publishers pose a problem. After the seismic cultural shift that happened in 2016, libraries across the nation purged their shelves of anything “old.” This weeding out pulled many classics, which got some attention, but the deepest cuts were made in the children’s departments. Traditional values were ejected to make room for new, modern left-wing values — from board books for babies to young adult novels.
Many homeschool families use literature extensively in their programs because of the versatility of the media. But these families have increasingly become dismayed at what they are finding at the local libraries they have depended on for so long. I have heard from many parents that they no longer go to the library at all. What a shame! Even when well-meaning people donate clean books with traditional values to their local libraries, in the hopes of spreading light, many new library acquisition policies dictate that the donations be thrown away.
Of 12,000 librarian donors to the 2020 presidential campaign, 93 percent went to President Joe Biden. The vast majority of public and school librarians across the nation are leftist in their personal beliefs and are more than happy to join the publishing industry in promoting their ideals. We see this in children’s book promotional displays, in the way librarians arrange books on shelves, and in the books they order. In your library, you may find more than a dozen different children’s biographies on Ruth Bader Ginsberg, but not even one on Amy Coney Barrett. This has become typical.
On Feb. 25, 2023, conservative children’s book publisher Brave Books, hosted a story hour at the Hendersonville, Tennessee Public Library. Kirk Cameron, Missy Robertson, and Riley Gaines went to read their traditional-value books to kids. When the librarian learned who they were, he tried to stop the story hour, saying he “didn’t want their movement” in his library. This librarian had previously hosted drag queen story hours. But Brave Books had arranged the story hour according to the library’s policies, so it couldn’t be stopped. So instead, the head librarian, along with his two assistants, did everything they could to disrupt the event. They blasted music, banged tables, and tried shouting them down.
Fortunately, Hendersonville is a very conservative community. Almost a thousand families came to the library for the story hour and appreciated the opportunity to stand up for traditional values in kids’ books. Due to public outcry, within a few weeks, the librarian had been fired.
This is what we’re up against. The entire children’s book publishing industry — from authors to publishers to librarians — believes it should have the power to control your children’s minds. And it has systematically and progressively gained that access.
Kiri Jorgensen is the Publisher and Senior Editor at Chicken Scratch Books.
FBI Director Christopher Wray sat for nearly four hours of questioning on Wednesday before the House Judiciary Committee. Here are the top takeaways from the hearing.
1. Wray Indicates Foreign Intel Agencies Worked with Big Tech to Silence Speech
The FBI director faced fierce questioning from Republican committee members on the FBI’s efforts to induce Big Tech to censor American speech. Several representatives specifically challenged Wray to justify the FBI passing along requests from the Ukrainian intelligence agency, SBU, to social media companies. The FBI’s role as a conduit for SBU was just revealed on Monday in a report from the House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government.
That report revealed that following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the SBU enlisted the FBI to forward to American social media companies lists of accounts that allegedly “spread Russian disinformation.” The FBI obliged, sending a flurry of requests for accounts to be removed, including many American accounts, to multiple social media platforms. In fact, the House report highlighted the inclusion of the official, verified, Russian-language account of the U.S. State Department. The House Judiciary Committee queried Wray on how this could happen, while also inquiring why the FBI would assist the SBU in this endeavor, especially in light of Russia’s known infiltration of SBU.
In explaining the FBI’s involvement, Wray stressed that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 had cut off Ukraine’s communications, causing SBU to ask the FBI to contact U.S. companies on their behalf with the list of accounts supposedly spreading Russian disinformation. But as Republicans on the committee highlighted, the account lists in question included American accounts. Thus, the FBI’s involvement triggered the same First Amendment problems as those litigated in Missouri v. Biden.
This testimony also raised a second area of concern, namely the apparent coordination between U.S. social media companies and foreign governments. Wray said he served as an intermediary because Ukraine’s communications system was down. But in that case, it appears SBU would have contacted the American companies on its own behalf, seeking the silencing of Americans’ speech.
So the question for American social media companies is this: Do they accept requests to remove accounts or posts from foreign countries? And do they censor Americans’ speech based on foreign claims of disinformation?
2. Private Corporations Present a Bigger Concern Than Wray
Social media companies are not the only ones who have some explaining to do following Wray’s testimony. Americans should also demand answers from private businesses with access to consumer information, especially those in the financial sector.
This concern flows from Wray’s response to questioning about Bank of America handing the FBI financial records of customers who had purchased firearms within the six months before the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot. Wray defended the FBI’s receipt of this information by noting that “a number of business community partners, all the time, including financial institutions, share information with us about possible criminal activity.” Such activity is entirely lawful, the FBI director maintained, although he added that the FBI opted not to use the Bank of America data to avoid concerns over the bureau obtaining that data.
That the FBI decided not to use the data, however, provides no comfort because Bank of America obviously had no qualms about sharing the information. Further, Wray framed Bank of America’s data sharing as consistent with “business partners” who “all the time” share information about possible criminal activity.
But financial data showing a customer had previously purchased a gun does not represent evidence of “possible criminal activity.” Yet that didn’t stop Bank of America from giving the information to the FBI. So what other financial information is Bank of America providing? And what about other “business partners”?
3. Wray Needs to Read the Court’s Opinion in Missouri v. Biden
The partnership that took main billing during Wednesday’s hearing was that forged between the FBI and social media companies, and Republicans drilled Wray on the coordinated efforts to censor American speech. Throughout the entire hearing, though, Wray unwaveringly maintained the bureau was not responsible for the censorship because the FBI was merely making suggestions that posts involving foreign malign influence be removed.
No one who read the district court’s opinion in Missouri v. Biden could reasonably reach that conclusion. And since the FBI played such a heavy role in the censorship enterprise summarized in that case, the FBI director owes it to the public to actually study that opinion.
DOJ lawyers may be telling Wray the FBI is in the clear, but a federal judge disagreed,
and since the court has ordered the FBI to abandon its unconstitutional conduct, Wray needs to understand precisely what that means. Reading the court’s unfiltered opinion is the only way to see the many ways the FBI violated the First Amendment.
4. So Much Ignorance, So Little Time
Wray was not only ignorant of the facts underlying Missouri v. Biden, but he also revealed several other blind spots. For instance, during the hearing, Wray acknowledged he had previously testified that the FBI had not used Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which allows the federal government to collect communications of foreign individuals, in its investigation of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. That ended up not being accurate, however, but Wray was “blissfully ignorant” of that fact when he testified to the contrary to Congress.
Democrat Rep. Eric Swalwell also put on a display of ignorance Wednesday, although in his case it was a feigned ignorance, with the California congressman framing the Hunter Biden laptop as concerning the nudes of a private citizen. While Swalwell may still be fixated on the nudes on the laptop, Republicans’ concern has always been of the evidence of a pay-to-play scandal implicating now-President Biden.
Then there’s Rep. Zoe Lofgren who claimed the GOP majority was engaging in “conspiracy theories” to discredit “one of the premier law enforcement agencies in the United States,” and “without any evidence” trying to “make the case that the FBI is somehow opposed to conservative views.”These20 examples tell a different story.
5. Why Was Auten Anywhere Near Biden Evidence?
Wray and the Democrats weren’t the only ignorant ones, however. Republicans were clueless when it came to understanding why FBI analyst Brian Auten was anywhere near evidence implicating Hunter Biden. After all, Auten had been under internal investigation since 2019 for his role in Crossfire Hurricane. Given the partisan witch hunt that investigation proved to be, why would the bureau allow Auten to play a part in the highly political investigation of Hunter Biden?
Yet it apparently did. A whistleblower has told Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, that Auten opened an assessment in August 2020 and that assessment provided other FBI agents the ability to falsely brand derogatory information about Hunter Biden as disinformation.
Wednesday’s testimony by the FBI director shed no light on the question of Auten’s involvement.
6. AG Garland’s the Real Hack Targeting Parents
While Wray was unable to explain Auten’s involvement in the Hunter Biden investigation, he made clear that when it came to the parents-are-terrorists memorandum, that was all Attorney General Merrick Garland’s doing. That testimony proved enlightening by showing that for all of the FBI’s deficiencies, even its director sees the attorney general as more of a hack for targeting parents at school board meetings.
7. Orange Man Bad, FBI Good
Also enlightening were the Democrats’ main lines of questioning. Here, there were two. The leftist lawmakers spent most of their time rehabilitating the FBI, reciting the many important bureau missions, showcasing hero agents, highlighting horrible attacks on FBI offices, and rejoicing in the FBI’s family days. Then the far-left faction merely attacked Donald Trump and MAGA Republicans.
Together these lines of questioning exposed the Democrats as unconcerned by the many abuses Americans have witnessed over the last half-dozen years. And what was unserious appeared downright absurd when Democrat Pramila Jayapal used her allotted time to challenge the FBI director over the bureau’s purchase of citizens’ data, including location data, from various data brokers. Pre-Trump, every Democrat would have been drilling Wray on such abuses of civil liberties, but this week it was only Jayapal.
8. The Speech or Debate Clause Does Some Heavy Lifting
In addition to the Democrats’ two main lines of questioning, a sub-theme of many of the comments concerned the whistleblowers, with Democrats attempting to discredit their testimony. One way they sought to do that was by presenting the whistleblowers as hired tongues. But beginning with Rep. Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., and continuing through Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas, they made this point by slandering the whistleblowers, falsely stating they had been paid for their testimony.
Of course, the speech or debate clause prevents the whistleblowers from suing the committee members who lied about them, which is precisely why they had no qualms about doing so.
REMEMBER WHAT THE DEMS WERE SAYING ABOUT THE SO-CALLED WHISTLEBLOWER THAT CAME OUT ABOUT PRESIDENT TRUMP? I guess it’s the accused that makes their speech different.
9. Schiff Can’t Stop Lying
Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., is proof of this point because he can’t stop lying. He lied about the Carter Page FISA warrants. And on Wednesday, he lied again about President Donald Trump’s telephone call with the Georgia secretary of state following the November 2020 election.
Unfortunately, “as I’ve been forced to detail time and again because the corrupt media continue to lie about the conversation, the transcript of the call established that Trump did not request that Raffensperger ‘find 11,780 votes.’” As I wrote in February, “It never happened.” Instead, during that “telephone conversation between Trump’s legal team and the secretary of state’s office, Trump’s lawyer explained to Raffensperger that ‘the court is not acting on our petition. They haven’t even assigned a judge.’” Thus the legal team wanted the secretary of state’s office to investigate the violations of Georgia election law because the court refused to do its duty.
Schiff knows this, but he also knows there are no consequences for lying. On the contrary, he might just convince Californians to send him to the Senate so he can follow in Harry “He Didn’t Win, Did He?” Reid’s footsteps.
10. A Mixed Bag on the Pro-Life Question
The final takeaway topic from Wray’s testimony concerned the pro-life question, and Wray presented a mixed bag. On the one hand, he outrageously refused to condemn the FBI agents who decided to use a SWAT-like display of force to arrest a pro-life sidewalk counselor at his family home when the man’s attorney had agreed to arrange for his client to voluntarily appear to face the charges — of which he was later acquitted.
On the other hand, when Rep. Deborah Ross, D-N.C., attempted to frame abortionists and abortion facilities as being increasingly targeted in the wake of Dobbs, Wray corrected the narrative, noting that the uptick in violence has been to pro-life centers, with 70 percent of the cases involving such organizations.
Margot Cleveland is The Federalist’s senior legal correspondent. She is also a contributor to National Review Online, the Washington Examiner, Aleteia, and Townhall.com, and has been published in the Wall Street Journal and USA Today. Cleveland is a lawyer and a graduate of the Notre Dame Law School, where she earned the Hoynes Prize—the law school’s highest honor. She later served for nearly 25 years as a permanent law clerk for a federal appellate judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Cleveland is a former full-time university faculty member and now teaches as an adjunct from time to time. As a stay-at-home homeschooling mom of a young son with cystic fibrosis, Cleveland frequently writes on cultural issues related to parenting and special-needs children. Cleveland is on Twitter at @ProfMJCleveland. The views expressed here are those of Cleveland in her private capacity.
The Secret Service found marijuana twice in the White House in 2022, long before cocaine was located in the West Wing. The Secret Service revealed the information to members of Congress during a classified briefing on the investigation into cocaine found in the West Wing over the Fourth of July weekend and confirmed the pot discoveries to Fox News Digital.
Possessing less than two ounces of marijuana is not a crime in Washington, D.C., but the substance is still not allowed on federal property — including the White House. A spokesperson for the Secret Service told Fox News Digital that agents had found “small amounts of marijuana” on two separate occasions, in July and September of last year.
Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., caught up with Fox News Digital after attending the Secret Service’s classified briefing into the cocaine found at the White House over the Fourth of July weekend. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)
“No one was arrested in these incidents, because the weight of the marijuana confiscated did not meet the legal threshold for federal charges or D.C. misdemeanor criminal charges, as the District of Columbia had decriminalized possession,” the Secret Service spokesperson said. “The marijuana was collected by officers and destroyed.”
The spokesperson told Fox News Digital that agents had found “less than .2 ounces of marijuana in both instances” and noted D.C.’s marijuana decriminalization. The Secret Service did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s follow-up questions, including on whether U.S. law prohibits illicit substances on federal property.
Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., told Fox News Digital following the classified briefing that the area where cocaine had been found over the 4th of July weekend “should have had video surveillance,” especially since marijuana had been found twice in 2022 “on the White House property” under President Biden’s watch.
The Colorado Republican also told Fox News Digital that, during the briefing, she had inquired about specific security measures in place for the lockers where the cocaine was found. Boebert said the Secret Service had admitted that the key to the locker in question “is missing.” (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, File)
“This probably is an area that should have had video surveillance, especially since this is not the first time that drugs have been found on the White House property since Biden has taken office,” she said.
“There should have been implementations made to ensure security at the White House already before this cocaine appeared,” Boebert said. It was not immediately clear where the marijuana had been located on White House grounds.
Boebert also said, “We did not have scandals when President Trump was in office to this degree.”
“And it just poses the question: What kind of people is Joe Biden bringing into the White House?” she added.
The Colorado Republican also told Fox News Digital that, during the briefing, she had inquired about specific security measures in place for the lockers where the cocaine had been found. Boebert said the Secret Service had admitted that the key to the locker in question “is missing.”
“There are 182 lockers in that foyer and currently … locker number 50 where the cocaine was found, that key is missing,” she said. “There were more than 500 people who went through the West Wing during the weekend of when this substance was found, when the cocaine was found in the White House, and none of those people who have come through are classified as suspects.”
“We do not know how many were tourists, individual citizens, or staffers, and they currently are not looking any further into those more than 500 people who entered that foyer of the West Wing during that weekend,” she said. “Instead, they are quickly wanting to close this investigation and move on to the next Biden crime crisis.”
Boebert also told Fox News that she had learned that “there are no logs of the lockers. There’s no video surveillance of the lockers.”
Boebert told Fox News Digital that the area the cocaine was found in “should have had video surveillance,” especially since marijuana was found twice in 2022 “on the White House property” under President Biden’s watch. (Joe Biden for President)
“The only thing that the Secret Service did was conduct background searches for past drug use or conviction of the over 500 individuals that came through that weekend,” Boebert said. “They did not go further back in time, nor did their investigation produce any results to flag an individual person.”
She added, “I believe that every staffer who went into the White House that weekend… should be drug tested.”
Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., defended the Secret Service, saying that testing hundreds of potential suspects for drugs would be “a massively disproportionate and overblown response that would violate people’s civil liberties.”
“I mean, if there were small amounts of marijuana or cocaine found somewhere in the Capitol Complex, we would not want to drug test everybody who works here,” he said.
Houston Keene is a politics writer for Fox News Digital. Story tips can be sent to Houston.Keene@Fox.com and on Twitter: @HoustonKeene
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
Senate Republicans grilled Gen. Charles Q. Brown over racial politics and transgenderism throughout the U.S. military during a committee confirmation hearing on Tuesday. Brown, who serves as Air Force chief of staff, was nominated by President Joe Biden to replace Gen. Mark Milley as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in May.
Among the more contentious issues raised during Tuesday’s Senate Armed Services Committee hearing was an August 2022 Air Force memo Brown signed, directing the Air Force Academy and Air Education and Training Command to “develop a diversity and inclusion outreach plan” aimed at “achieving a force more representative of our Nation.” When pressed on the memo by Sen. Eric Schmitt, R-Mo., Brown claimed the recruiting targets stratified by race and sex in the memo are based “on application goals, not the make-up of the force,” and that “those numbers are based on the demographics of the nation.”
As The Federalist previously reported, Brown has a documented history of supporting the same so-called “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) ideology wreaking havoc on the U.S. military. DEI initiatives employ a divisive and poisonous ideology dismissive of merit to discriminate based on characteristics such as skin color and sexual attraction.
While participating in a virtual discussion hosted by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs in November 2020, for instance, Brown indicated that “[a]t the higher level of the Air Force, diversity ha[d] moved to the forefront of personnel decisions such as promotions and hiring.” During the same event, the Air Force general also admitted to using his post to increase opportunities for so-called “diverse candidates” in the Air Force, saying he “hire[d] for diversity” when building his staff.
Brown has also previously pushed back against congressional Republicans who have expressed concerns about the Biden administration’s attempt to spread DEI instruction throughout the military.
“This administration has infused abortion politics into our military, Covid politics into our military, DEI politics into our military, and it is a cancer on the best military in the history of the world. Those men and women deserve better than this,” Schmitt said. “I believe we … ought to be recruiting in various areas to make sure we have the best and the brightest from every community. … But that’s not what DEI is.”
Schmitt further admonished DEI as “an ideology based in cultural Marxism” and expressed concerns about how the military can continue to have leadership that advocates for “this divisive policy.”
The Center for Military Readiness, a public policy group that analyzes military matters, sent a letter to committee members on Monday, encouraging them to press Brown on issues such as “[r]acial discrimination known to exist in military service academy admissions” and “[m]andates to increase percentages of minority persons, while consciously reducing non-minority (white males) in aviation and other demanding occupations,” among other things.
Schmitt also raised the issue of the more than 8,000 U.S. service members kicked out of the military for not getting the experimental Covid jab due to medical or religious reasons. When pressed on how he would personally recruit these individuals back into service, Brown said he would “provide them the opportunity to re-apply.”
“I just don’t think that’s good enough,” Schmitt replied. “We did a great disservice to this country by firing people because they made that decision. I think they ought to be reinstated with rank and backpay. I have not heard that from anybody that’s come before this committee.”
Another problem raised during the hearing was transgenderism in the military. Shortly after his inauguration, Biden issued an executive order allowing transgender-identifying individuals to serve in the U.S. armed forces, marking a policy reversal from that of the Trump administration.
During his line of questioning, Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., referenced an alleged “young woman in the South Dakota National Guard [who] experienced a situation at basic training where she was sleeping in open bays and showering” with female-identifying males who had not undergone surgery, “but were documented as females because they had begun the drug therapy process.”
According to Rounds, this 18-year-old woman “was uncomfortable with her situation but had limited options on how to deal with it” because “she feared she’d be targeted for retaliation.” When asked how he would handle such issues as Joint Chiefs chair, Brown didn’t offer a specific answer, instead saying that “as you’re being inclusive, you also don’t want to make other individuals uncomfortable” and that if confirmed, he would “take a look to see if [the military] can improve on how [it] approach[es] situations like this.”
Meanwhile, several Democrats spent their time attacking fellow committee member Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., who has been holding up Biden’s DOD civilian and general flag officer nominees in response to the Pentagon’s radical abortion policies. As The Federalist’s Jordan Boyd previously reported, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin “announced in February that the taxpayer-funded Pentagon would grant up to three weeks of paid time off and travel for U.S. military members and their family members to obtain abortions.”
According to Tuberville, the policy — which “would subsidize thousands of ‘non-covered abortions‘” without congressional authorization or taxpayer approval — is “immoral and arguably illegal.”
“One of my colleagues is exercising a prerogative to place a hold on 250 generals and flag officers. I’m unaware of anything that they have done … that would warrant them being disrespected or punished or delayed in their careers,” Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., said in reference to Tuberville. Sens. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Jacky Rosen, D-Nev., also criticized Tuberville, with Rosen indirectly accusing the Alabama senator of partaking in an “extreme, anti-choice agenda.”
A committee vote on Brown’s confirmation will be held at a later date.
Shawn Fleetwood is a staff writer for The Federalist and a graduate of the University of Mary Washington. He previously served as a state content writer for Convention of States Action and his work has been featured in numerous outlets, including RealClearPolitics, RealClearHealth, and Conservative Review. Follow him on Twitter @ShawnFleetwood
FIRST ON FOX: Republican lawmakers erupted Tuesday after learning about a 2015 email chain that predated President Biden’s infamous 2015 trip to Ukraine, when a Burisma Holdings executive revealed the “ultimate purpose” of Hunter Biden’s involvement with the Ukrainian energy company.
One month before then-Vice President Joe Biden traveled to Ukraine, where he threatened to withhold $1 billion in U.S. aid if Ukrainian leaders did not fire their top prosecutor, Hunter Biden and Burisma executives were discussing executing a contract for counter-messaging against any federal investigations into Burisma’s founder and then-president, Mykola Zlochevsky.
“The sequence of events that led to the firing of Viktor Shokin, and the subsequent comments by then-Vice President Biden, raise serious concerns as to what machinations were really at play — and were purposefully concealed from the American people,” Rep. Virginia Foxx, R-N.C., who sits on the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, told Fox News Digital. “No matter how you slice Hunter Biden’s involvement, it screams public corruption at the highest levels and must be fully investigated.”
“The calm, judicious, steady reveal of incredibly condemning evidence that clearly incriminates the Biden crime family will eventually alarm even the most ardent supporters of this WH occupier,” said Rep. Clay Higgins, R-La., also a committee member. “Our President is compromised, he should resign and be forever condemned, and the Democrat Party should begin rebuilding itself.”
From left to right, Rep. Kelly Armstrong, President Biden and his son Hunter Biden, and Rep. James Comer, R-Ky. (Fox News)
On Nov. 2, 2015, Burisma executive Vadym Pozharskyi emailed Hunter Biden, who was serving as a Burisma board member, his associates Devon Archer, a fellow board member, and Rosemont Seneca Partners president Eric Schwerin about a “revised proposal, contract and initial invoice for Burisma Holdings,” from lobbying firm Blue Star Strategies, according to emails from Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop, which have been verified by Fox News Digital. Pozharskyi emphasized in his email that the “ultimate purpose” of the agreement with Blue Star Strategies was to shut down “any cases/pursuits against Nikolay in Ukraine,” referring to Zlochevsky, who also went by Nikolay.
On Nov. 2, 2015, Burisma executive Vadym Pozharskyi emailed Hunter Biden, Devon Archer and Eric Schwerin about a “revised proposal, contract and initial invoice for Burisma Holdings.” (Fox News)
“My only concern is for us to be on the same page re our final goals,” Pozharskyi wrote. “With this in mind, I would like us to formulate a list of deliverables, including, but not limited to: a concrete course of actions, incl. meetings/communications resulting in high-ranking US officials in Ukraine (US Ambassador) and in US publicly or in private communication/comment expressing their ‘positive opinion’ and support of Nikolay/Burisma to the highest level of decision makers here in Ukraine :President of Ukraine, president Chief of staff, Prosecutor General, etc.”
“The scope of work should also include organization of a visit of a number of widely recognized and influential current and/or former US policy-makers to Ukraine in November aiming to conduct meetings with and bring positive signal/message and support on Nikolay’s issue to the Ukrainian top officials above with the ultimate purpose to close down for any cases/pursuits against Nikolay in Ukraine,” Pozharskyi continued.
Upon joining Burisma, Hunter Biden reportedly connected the company with Blue Star Strategies to help the firm fight corruption charges levied against Zlochevsky. The firm reportedly came under federal investigation from the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Delaware in 2021 for its lobbying practices. The same office, led by U.S. Attorney David Weiss, is leading the federal investigation into Hunter Biden’s business dealings.
“I would tell Vadym that this is definitely done deliberately to the be on the safe and cautious side and that Sally and company understand the scope and deliverables,” Schwerin wrote to Hunter Biden and Archer the same day, forwarding Pozharskyi’s message. “And that we will be having regular (daily, weekly, monthly) opportunities be in through conference calls or memos to be continually refining and updating the scope.”
Eric Schwerin said the contract was deliberately vague “to the be on the safe and cautious side.” (Fox News)
Hunter Biden responded to Pozharskyi, saying he wanted to “have one last conversation” with Blue Star, but later said he was “comfortable” with Blue Star. “You should go ahead and sign,” he wrote on Nov. 5, 2015.
“Looking forward to getting started on this,” Hunter Biden added.
Hunter Biden emailed Vadym Pozharskyi in November 2015. (Fox News)
The email exchange came one month before then Vice President Biden traveled to Ukraine’s capital of Kiev, where he gave a speech about rooting out corruption in politics.
Ahead of the trip, an associate at Blue Star Strategies emailed Blue Star executives, Hunter Biden, Archer and Pozharskyi about a White House conference call that “outlined the trip’s agenda and addressed several questions regarding U.S. policy toward Ukraine.”
Vice President Joe Biden gestures next to Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, right, after addressing the Ukrainian Parliament in Kiev on Dec. 8, 2015. (Sergei Supinsky/AFP via Getty Images)
During the trip, Biden pressured Ukrainian officials to fire Viktor Shokin, the prosecutor investigating Zlochevsky at the time. Shokin was fired less than four months later in March 2016.
In February 2016, roughly two months after Biden’s trip and two months before Shokin’s firing, Hunter Biden thanked Zlochevsky in an email for “the beautiful birthday gifts,” which he described as “far too extravagant.” It is unclear what he received from the Ukrainian tycoon.
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and Vice President Joe Biden arrive to deliver a statement on the results of talks in Kyev on Dec. 7, 2015. (Sergei Supinsky/AFP via Getty Images)
Biden would later boast on camera in 2018 that when he was vice president, he successfully pressured Ukraine to fire Shokin. The White House has repeatedly said Biden put pressure on Ukraine to fire Shokin because he was too lax on prosecuting corruption. However, Oversight Committee Republicans told Fox News Digital the timing of events is more than just a coincidence.
“I don’t think Biden had Shokin fired because he was too lax on corruption,” said Rep. Tim Burchett, R-Tenn. “I think Biden had him fired to cover his own tail when it comes to the Biden family’s shady business dealings in Ukraine and because Shokin was looking into Zlochevsky very seriously. It’s not a coincidence that this email came a month before his visit to Kyiv. Our work on the Oversight Committee isn’t finished.”
Hunter Biden arrives at Fort Lesley J. McNair in Washington, D.C., on July 4, 2023. (Ting Shen/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
“Evidence makes it clear that Hunter Biden was only appointed to Burisma’s board of directors because of his last name and family’s network,” said Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., the committee’s chairman. “Additionally, the FBI’s Biden bribery record detailing an alleged extortion and bribery scheme between then-Vice President Biden and a Burisma executive in exchange for certain actions mirrors the purpose of Hunter Biden’s appointment. The Department of Justice has been sitting on a mountain of evidence pointing to the Bidens’ corruption for years but has been engaged in a coverup. We need to root out this politicization and misconduct at the Department of Justice and deliver answers, transparency, and accountability to the American people.”
“The timeline in these emails further supports the conclusion that Burisma hired Hunter Biden to gain access to his father,” said Rep. Kelly Armstrong, R-N.D. “They wanted a U.S. policymaker to take their side, and they got Vice President Joe Biden, who was in charge of Ukraine policy for the Obama administration. These emails raise even more questions that need answers.”
“Additional emails heighten concerns about the question of whether then-Vice President Biden was aware of his son Hunter’s engagements,” added Rep. Glenn Grothman, R-Wisc. “Whether in Ukraine or China, it’s difficult for Congress to rely on information from the Executive Branch with so many questions about whether our President and his family are compromised by foreign entities. The House Oversight Committee will continue conducting thorough investigations into the Biden family to determine the degree to which the Biden administration may be making decisions for reasons other than to best serve the American public.”
President Biden departs Dublin Airport on Air Force One with his sister Valerie and son Hunter on April 14, 2023. (Julien Behal/Irish Government via Getty Images)
“It seems like every day there is a new headline on another revelation of the corruption within the Biden Crime Syndicate,” said Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz. “The emails further establish bribery and corruption between Ukraine officials and the Bidens. In short, they are evidence of potential criminal activity by Joe, the Big Man, Biden and his son, Hunter.”
“Putting personal interests ahead of American interests is not just a dishonor of the office, but treasonous,” he continued. “It is a major scandal unprecedented in the annals of our history and the House Oversight and Accountability Committee will investigate and expose as much of the ugly truth as possible.”
“Yet again, it seems all roads lead to Hunter Biden’s ‘business deals’ being directly tied to his father’s position of power and influence,” said Rep. Russell Fry, R-S.C. “This adds to the long list of red flags surrounding Hunter and the Biden family that the Oversight Committee has been working to uncover for the past six months.”
“Everything we are uncovering points to Hunter Biden using his name and his father’s position to get rich,” said Rep. William Timmons, R-S.C. “It’s bribery – and it is both wrong and illegal. House Democrats, the legacy media, and even top brass at the FBI and DOJ failed to do their job and investigate all the literal and figurative smoke that clouds Hunter Biden. House Republicans will do our job and uncover the truth.”
Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley told Fox News Digital that “there can be no doubt about Burisma’s motives for paying Hunter Biden millions despite his lack of industry expertise.” (Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Sens. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and Josh Hawley, R-Mo., who both sit on the Senate Judiciary Committee, told Fox News Digital that the uncovered emails further point to the Bidens being tied to a foreign bribery scheme.
“There can be no doubt about Burisma’s motives for paying Hunter Biden millions despite his lack of industry expertise, it’s right there in black and white,” Grassley said. “This was always about enlisting the Biden name to influence U.S. policy and public perception of a Ukrainian company mired in corruption investigations. The Justice Department forced Burisma’s lobbying firm to register as foreign agents. Why wasn’t Hunter Biden?”
Sen. Josh Hawley slammed President Biden in a quote to Fox News Digital, saying he “should cooperate fully with investigators and stop stonewalling.” (Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)
“Practically every day brings new revelations that appear to tie Joe Biden to foreign bribery schemes,” said Hawley. “If Biden has nothing to hide, he should cooperate fully with investigators and stop stonewalling.”
The White House did not respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.
FBI Director Christopher Wray insisted Wednesday that the bureau is “absolutely not” protecting the Biden family, amid allegations that the Hunter Biden probe was influenced by politics.
But Wray also refused to answer questions from House Judiciary Committee lawmakers on whether President Biden is under federal investigation for an alleged criminal bribery scheme.
Wray told the committee about the good work of the FBI, denied any alleged politicization within the bureau, and blasted claims that he is biased against conservatives as “somewhat insane.” Despite those denials, Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, maintained his commitment to stopping the “weaponization of the government against the American people,” and slammed the “double standard that exists now in our justice system.”
Christopher Wray, director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, is sworn in during a House Judiciary Committee hearing in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday. (Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
The sentiment of a “double standard” of justice was prominent throughout the hearing, as GOP members pointed to the FBI’s handling of investigations related to the Bidens compared to the probe into former President Donald Trump.
Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., pointed to allegations leveled against the Justice Department by IRS whistleblower Gary Shapley, who said steps were taken throughout the years-long Hunter Biden probe to protect him and limit any questioning related to President Biden.
Gaetz referred to a specific WhatsApp message to a Chinese energy executive in which Hunter Biden seems to indicate he is “sitting here with” his father, Joe Biden, threatening the executive that he and his father would “forever hold a grudge” if a deal was not complete, and warning that the executive would “regret not following” his “direction.”
“You seem deeply uncurious about it, don’t you?” Gaetz said. “Almost suspiciously uncurious. Are you protecting the Bidens?”
“Absolutely not,” Wray replied. “The FBI has no interest.”
Rep. Jim Jordan, a Republican from Ohio and chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, speaks during a hearing in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday. (Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
IRS whistleblowers have alleged that federal prosecutors blocked lines of questioning related to President Biden, despite having evidence that could point to the president’s knowledge or involvement in his son’s business dealings.
Whistleblowers said the FBI had the laptop in its possession in December 2019 and knew ahead of the 2020 presidential election that it contained “credible” evidence as part of the Hunter Biden probe. Despite that, the FBI still allegedly worked with social media companies to suppress stories about the laptop.
Lawmakers have also been demanding answers from the FBI on what it did with information contained in a key FD-1023 form, alleging a criminal bribery scheme between then-Vice President Biden and a foreign national.
The House Oversight Committee subpoenaed the FBI to turn over the document for Congress to review, but the FBI did not comply. Instead, the FBI made accommodations to bring a redacted version of the document to a secure setting on Capitol Hill for lawmakers on that committee to review. Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., threatened to hold Wray in contempt of Congress for not complying with the subpoena.
The document in question details allegations made by a top executive of Ukrainian natural gas firm Burisma Holdings to a “highly-credible” FBI confidential human source. The executive alleged that he paid $5 million to Joe Biden and $5 million to Hunter Biden in exchange for influence over policy decisions.
Hunter Biden arrives at Fort Lesley J. McNair in Washington, D.C., on July 4, 2023. (Ting Shen/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Federal prosecutors and agents on the team investigating Hunter Biden were briefed on that FBI form, but lawmakers in both the House and Senate are questioning if the FBI ever investigated the claims. Wray was pressed on the allegations contained in that form during Wednesday’s hearing by Rep. Tom Tiffany, R-Wisc. — specifically whether the president took any payments from foreign nationals or companies while serving as vice president.
Wray pointed to the “ongoing investigation” led by U.S. attorney for Delaware David Weiss, and referred all questions related to the matter to his office.
“So the president is under investigation?” Tiffany asked.
“I’m not going to confirm or speak to who is or isn’t under investigation for what,” Wray replied.
Pointing to FBI and Justice Department practice, Wray said he is “not going to be confirming or denying” if President Biden “is or isn’t under investigation.”
Ahead of Wray’s testimony, an FBI official told Fox News Digital that lawmakers on the committee are taking issue with “prosecutorial decisions,” but stressed that those decisions are “not made by the FBI, but, rather, the Department of Justice.” That official stressed that the FBI is focused on gathering facts, and not involved in charging decisions.
President Biden leaves following services at St. Edmond Catholic Church in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, on April 15, 2023. (Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images)
The Justice Department last month announced that the president’s son had entered a plea agreement that will likely keep him out of jail. Hunter Biden is set to plead guilty to two misdemeanor counts of willful failure to pay federal income tax, and to one charge of possession of a firearm by a person who is an unlawful user of or addicted to a controlled substance. Whistleblowers and those familiar with the investigation say more charges were warranted. Hunter Biden is set to make his first court appearance on July 26.
Meanwhile, Jordan has called on key FBI and DOJ officials involved in the Hunter Biden investigation to appear before the committee for transcribed interviews related to that probe. Those interviews have yet to be scheduled.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
Outside the Supreme Court building in our nation’s capital, Lady Justice is depicted blindfolded holding a scale that’s in balance because in principle justice is both “blind” and “equal.” But under President Biden, Justice is neither.
Evidence continues to mount that the Biden Justice Department enforces the law unequally by tilting the scales to favor friends and family while unleashing the FBI and prosecutors on President Biden’s political opponent. This is a perversion of the founding principles of our Republic and a violation of the constitutional guarantee of equal protection under the law.
The good news is that Americans are now learning about these abuses of power because House Republicans are uncovering the weaponization of our government, especially at President Biden’s Department of Justice.
Republicans have been in the majority for six months. Yet even before then, we began investigating possible corruption by the Biden family. Those investigations continue today, as our committees work together to gather testimony, investigate misconduct, and uncover the truth, despite attempts by the media and the Biden administration to downplay and disrupt these efforts.
Leading the charge are Chairman Jim Jordan of the Judiciary Committee, Chairman James Comer of the Oversight Committee, and Chairman Jason Smith of the Ways and Means Committee.
Here’s what we know so far:
After a five-year investigation, the president’s son received a sweetheart deal from his father’s DOJ in which Hunter Biden was allowed to plea down to misdemeanor tax charges and would not face any charges for money laundering or working as an unregistered lobbyist.
Attorney General Merrick Garland insists that David Weiss, the Delaware U.S. Attorney in charge of the Hunter Biden probe, has not faced any interference from the Department of Justice, telling Congress under oath that Weiss “has full authority to … bring cases in other districts if he needs to do that.” But compelling evidence from whistleblowers refute Garland’s version of events.
The Ways and Means Committee learned that Weiss sought to bring charges in two other districts and was denied both times. They also learned that Weiss reportedly sought and was refused special counsel status, telling a room full of IRS and FBI officials, “I am not the deciding person on whether charges are filed.”IRS agent Gary Shapley, who was present at the meeting, memorialized these comments in an email at the time.
Political interference from the Biden administration also prevented investigators from taking basic steps that they would have in other tax evasion cases. For example, Garland’s DOJ allowed the statute of limitations to run out on Hunter Biden’s tax evasion on payments from Ukrainian energy firm Burisma when his father was President Obama’s lead on Ukraine while Vice President of the United States. As Shapley said, “the purposeful exclusion of the 2014 and 2015 years sanitized the most substantive criminal conduct and concealed material facts.”
And when investigators uncovered a WhatsApp message from Hunter Biden to an executive at a Chinese energy firm in which Biden said, “I am sitting here with my father and we would like to understand why the commitment made has not been fulfilled”, prosecutors refused to authorize search warrants of the Delaware home or obtain location data to confirm the location of Joe Biden.
In fact, according to the whistleblower, one of the prosecutors admitted there was “more than enough probable cause for a physical search warrant” of President Biden’s home and “a lot of evidence in our investigation would be found in the guest house of former Vice President Biden.” Yet the search warrants were never approved because of “optics.”
Shapley stated clearly what this meant for his team: “I would say that they limited certain investigation leads that could have potentially provided information on the President of the United States.”
A prosecutor allegedly even tipped off Hunter Biden’s lawyers that the IRS had probable cause to search Hunter’s storage unit, a clear violation of the unbiased and independent role DOJ has to investigate allegations of wrongdoing. Additionally, Shapely testified that while there was probable cause for a search warrant, no warrant was obtained and no search was conducted.
After slow-walking this investigation for five years, the DOJ turned what the whistleblower described as a “slam dunk” felony case against Hunter Biden into a sweetheart plea deal and possibly buried evidence of crimes that have sent other Americans to prison. When a prosecutor shields his boss’s son from investigators, it smells like a cover–up. Garland’s DOJ did not aggressively follow the money. Why? Are they afraid ofwhere that trail ends?
Recently, Weiss sent a letter to the House Judiciary Committee disputing that his charging authority was limited. He later claimed he had not requested special counsel designation from Garland but admitted he had some discussions about obtaining authority to file charges in a district outside of Delaware. What Weiss and DOJ have failed to answer is why Weiss told a room full of IRS and FBI officials, “I am not the deciding person on whether charges are filed.”
Clearly, someone is not telling the truth, and Congress has a duty to get answers. To get all the facts, Weiss and others must testify before Congress, cooperate fully, and provide full access to their records.
David Weiss (Fox News screenshot)
The United States needs an attorney general who defends equal justice under the law rather than engaging in a political, partisan agenda. Attorney General Garland took an oath to uphold the Constitution and faithfully discharge the duties of his office. If the whistleblowers’ allegations are true, it raises serious concerns that Garland lied to Congress under oath.
Our committees will continue to gather evidence and conduct oversight, and we will follow the facts wherever they lead. Nothing will stop us from getting to the truth for the American people.
If warranted by the facts, the entire House could decide whether a formal impeachment inquiry is necessary. At the conclusion of a serious, thorough and fair inquiry, the Judiciary Committee would decide whether to refer any articles of impeachment to the full House for an impeachment vote. Given the gravity of this constitutional remedy, House Republicans will ensure that any inquiry would be conducted in a transparent and public manner, without the partisan missteps of prior impeachments.
There are serious questions about the credibility of the Department of Justice. It is our responsibility to hold them accountable.
Were President Joe Biden and his family involved in a foreign bribery scheme? Fifty-six percent of U.S. voters say it’s “likely.” According to a poll released Wednesday by I&I/TIPP, 56% of U.S. voters say it’s “likely” compared with 27% who said it was “unlikely.”
The survey of 1,341 adults, taken July 5-7 with a margin of error of +/- 2.7%, comes as Republicans continue to try to get their hands on an FBI record that documents an unverified tip about Biden. Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., issued a subpoena to FBI Director Christopher Wray on May 3 after GOP Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa received a whistleblower complaint. They said they were told the bureau has a document that “describes an alleged criminal scheme” involving Biden and a foreign national “relating to the exchange of money for policy decisions” when Biden was vice president.
“It has been alleged that the document includes a precise description of how the alleged criminal scheme was employed as well as its purpose,” Comer and Grassley wrote in a letter to Wray.
Both men have said they do not know if information is true, but insist the allegations warrant further investigation. The White House has accused Republicans of “floating anonymous innuendo.”
The document Republicans are focused on is what is known as an FD-1023 form, which is used by federal agents to record tips and information they receive from confidential human sources. The FBI says such documents can contain uncorroborated and incomplete information, and that the record of a tip does not validate the information.
Information from the Associated Press was used in this report.
FBI Director Christopher Wray insisted during testimony before the House Judiciary Committee that he is “absolutely not” working to protect President Joe Biden’s family, including his son Hunter, and said the agency has not been politicized by the current administration to go after former President Donald Trump and other conservatives, both public and private. His denials came during a grilling by Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., who displayed a text message that had been allegedly sent by Hunter Biden to a Chinese Communist Party official, in which he demanded money and said his father was sitting by his side when the message was being sent.
“You seem deeply uncurious about it — almost suspiciously uncurious,” Gaetz told Wray. “Are you protecting the Bidens?”
“Absolutely not,” Wray responded.
In other testimony, Rep. Mike Johnson, R-La., pointed out that a federal judge in his state “found the FBI engaged in a massive effort to suppress disfavored conservative speech,” including threatening “adverse consequences to social media companies” to suppress stories, resulting in “millions of citizens” not being able to hear about the Hunter Biden laptop story before the 2020 presidential election, along with other news items, including about COVID 19.
“The FBI is not in the business of moderating content or causing any social media company to suppress or censor,” Wray said.
Wray also defended the FBI against claims that have been made by whistleblowers who have testified before Congress concerning actions the FBI has taken in various investigations, including on the Biden family.
“Why would the FBI offer Christopher Steele $1 million to verify a dossier about Trump and Russian collusion and then the same FBI offer $3 million to Twitter to squash a story on Hunter’s laptop?” he said.
“The dossier story and I know that wasn’t under your watch, but also the Hunter Biden laptop story, that to me, looks political to the American people,” said Moore. “It looks political, and I’m just an everyday guy … that is why you’re having trouble keeping the FBI’s reputation afloat.”
Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, laid out in his opening statement the bureau’s efforts to suppress the Hunter Biden laptop story; target conservatives; and more. Jordan said he is determined to fight back against the “weaponization of the government against the American people,” and slammed the “double standard that exists now in our justice system.” Jordan also accused the FBI of supporting the suppression of conservatives on social media, retaliation against whistleblowers, and tracking parents angry with their school boards.
“I haven’t even talked about the spying that took place of a presidential campaign or the raiding of a former president’s home,” Jordan said. “Maybe what’s more frightening is what happens if you come forward and tell Congress you’re a whistleblower. Come tell the Congress what’s going on? Look out. You will be retaliated against.”
Also on Wednesday, Rep. Ben Cline, R-Va., told Wray that the American people are “outraged” about the actions that have “damaged the FBI’s reputation and undermined the good work of the vast majority of the men and women within your agency,” including on the Biden family investigations but also with an anti-Catholic memo that went out from the agency’s Richmond field office, and other controversial investigations that have taken place.
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including NewsMax, Fox News, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Rep. Devin Nunes, Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Chris Salcedo, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Trump.
The FBI colluded with a Russian-infiltrated intelligence agency in Ukraine to censor American speech, according to a new document out Monday. In an interim report published by the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, House investigators exposed the FBI’s cooperation with foreign agents to orchestrate online censorship.
“The Committee’s analysis of these ‘disinformation’ registries revealed that the FBI, at the request of the [Security Service of Ukraine (SBU)], flagged for social media companies the authentic accounts of Americans, including a verified U.S. State Department account and those belonging to American journalists,” the report reads. “At times, the FBI would even follow up with the relevant platform to ensure that ‘these accounts were taken down.’”
The SBU was notoriously infiltrated by the Kremlin’s Federal Security Service (FSB), whose agents were instrumental in President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. In March last year, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky fired the head of the SBU’s Crimean branch, who is accused of being a double agent. Ivan Bakanov, who ran the entire SBU, was let go in July last year over the service’s status as a compromised agency.
The FBI, lawmakers added, “had no legal justification for facilitating the censorship of Americans’ protected speech on social media.”
House investigators compiled the report based on subpoenas to Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, and Alphabet, which oversees Google and YouTube.
“The inclusion of American accounts on the SBU’s lists indicates that the FBI either did not properly vet the SBU’s requests or was aware of their domestic nature, and nonetheless carried them out,” lawmakers concluded.
At the heart of the operation was FBI Agent Elvis Chan in the San Francisco field office, who served as the “primary liaison” between the FBI and Silicon Valley. Chan also coordinated meetings between the FBI and social media companies during both the 2020 and 2022 elections. House investigators reported the SBU wasn’t purged of Russian agents until months after the Ukrainian security service began colluding with the FBI to censor U.S. citizens.
The FBI and SBU reportedly sent “massive spreadsheets” that contained “thousands of accounts” for censorship to Meta. The FBI also “facilitated” the SBU’s requests for censorship on Alphabet platforms. Posts flagged for removal were often supportive of Ukraine and critical of Putin.
One episode of censorship on Instagram included the suspension of a verified account run by the State Department with the username “@usaporusski.”
“Neither the FBI nor the SBU provides an explanation as to how the U.S. State Department account was ‘involved in disinformation,’” lawmakers noted.
One censorship request also included an American journalist whose name has been redacted.
The government coordination with Silicon Valley ran so deep that Meta even proposed a “24/7 channel” with foreign agents to facilitate censorship. The operation continued at least into May, even after Twitter’s Yoel Roth warned U.S. officials about the SBU’s targeting of American accounts.
“The full extent of the FBI’s collaboration with the SBU to censor American speech is unknown,” investigators wrote, but added, “To be clear, the FBI’s participation in the SBU’s censorship enterprise was a willing and intentional choice by the FBI, involving no fewer than seven agents across the Bureau.”
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.
Kay Yang (Image Source: Fox News Digital video screenshot)
A former LGBT center employee expressed regret for having been a part of the left’s gender ideology “indoctrination campaign” that is “grooming” children, she told Fox News Digital on Tuesday. Kay Yang, a former employee at a nonprofit LGBT center in New York, told the outlet that she was “exploited” and “indoctrinated” into promoting harmful gender ideology to young children. Yang explained that she started working for the center in 2011 because she wanted to advocate for same-sex couples to be able to marry.
“I was hired to conduct LGBT community outreach and education,” she told Fox News Digital. “I thought, ‘Wow, I want to help people who are being marginalized, who are being oppressed. I don’t think that anyone should be discriminated against.'”
She noted that, at the time, the center rarely had people who identified as transgender, none of whom were children.
“I had no idea that what I was doing at the time I was being used as a Trojan horse for this like huge marketing campaign [for gender ideology],” Yang continued. “I didn’t know what was going on that was normalizing these policies and these practices that are pushing irreversible medical damage on healthy children.”
Despite knowing little able transgenderism, Yang was “considered an expert on the topic,” she claimed.
“Through working there, I became indoctrinated,” Yang stated about her position. “We would go into schools or businesses, organizations, and the community. They would see us as experts.”
“I started to realize that what I had been doing at my job at the LGBT Center, it was grooming,” she added.
Looking back, Yang now believes that her “good intentions” were “taken advantage of” to promote a “widespread social engineering and indoctrination campaign” in her local community.
She stated, “I came to realize what we were doing… years after the fact. I looked back and [thought], ‘Oh my God, what have I done?’ What have I contributed to? I actually felt devastated. It was very difficult to process and deal with. I had to really face myself and what I had done.”
Yang, now an outspoken critic of gender ideology, said she is concerned that the “sex-based rights of women and girls are also being undermined.”
“I’m very concerned that this ideology is grooming young girls to believe that they don’t need sex-based rights anymore and grooming them to promote this ideology. Because that’s what happened to me,” she added.
In June, Yang protested at a New York City Pride event when a mob of leftist activists allegedly attacked her.
“I was just kicked, hit, pushed, mobbed by dozens of people in Washington Square Park. [Male] who identify as [female] called me ‘bitch’ & assaulted me,” Yang posted on Twitter along with a video that captured part of the tense altercation.
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An everlasting truism of the political left is that when they hold an indefensible position, they pretend everything is more complicated than it actually is, and, therefore, it’s your fault for failing to understand the complexities of the world. So shut up and just let them do what they need to do!
You think crime is addressed with more policing and criminal prosecutions? How naive! It’s not so simple! This is an issue that requires time and new solutions!
There is no truer example of that reality than the way they talk about “racism.” The Supreme Court just ruled that it’s unconstitutional for institutions in higher education to discriminate against an applicant based on his race. What has been congenially known as “affirmative action” is, by definition, racial unfairness.
Knowing full well that defending the kind of discrimination America erased 50 years ago is untenable, the left has once again attempted to take a very simple concept and distort it beyond recognition so that, hopefully, everyone will be too confused to even argue about it.
Washington Post contributor Theodore Johnson wrote Tuesday that the Court’s decision didn’t eliminate yet another form of toxic discrimination but exacerbated existing racial tensions by reinforcing the idea of a supposed “model minority” — ethnic minorities who assimilate to the broader (white) population. The Court’s “portrayal of Asian Americans as model assimilators is neither a compliment, nor is it proof that structural racism is an artifact of the past,” Johnson wrote. “It serves only to exploit one minority group, to condemn others and to argue against accounting for a people’s history.”
Wow, the ruling did all that? Here I am thinking it’s a good thing that schools can no longer deny access to an applicant because he’s not a specific race. Little did we all know that, actually, the ruling perpetuated a myth for the purpose of pitting Asians against blacks in some type of Cold War.
Thanks for the lesson, Theodore!
It’s garbage. Racism means one thing — the belief that a person’s value is contingent upon his skin color. What it doesn’t mean is, “Anything that I think denies me advantages because now I’m expected to follow the same guidelines as everyone else and, by the way, model minorities are a construct of white supremacy, and the very idea advances my argument.”
Overcomplicating and distorting the very basic, straightforward concept of racism is how we all ended up paraplegics from contorting ourselves trying to understand “equity,” “unconscious bias,” and every other convoluted new term cooked up by the left.
It’s now racist to even expect that it’s enough to say racism is bad. Now you have to dwell on it, consume it, and ultimately accept that the only way to truly absolve yourself of racism is to do whatever people like Johnson say.
But no matter what they say, the word for that isn’t “racism.” It’s submission.
You might have noticed a media narrative taking shape the last few days about how Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ presidential campaign has “stalled.” A Politico Playbook item over the weekend described it as a “failure to launch,” noting that polling for DeSantis peaked in January at 40.5 percent and has since settled in the low 20s amid a barrage of attacks from former President Donald Trump.
Playbook also cited other news outlets recently casting doubt on the DeSantis operation, from fundraising struggles to lack of endorsements to difficulties distinguishing himself from Trump on policy. DeSantis super PAC official Steve Cortes added fuel to the narrative fire in an interview Sunday night, bemoaning the polls and admitting, “clearly Donald Trump is the runaway frontrunner.” One could of course object that it’s only July, that polls don’t mean much this far out from the primaries, and that corporate media want nothing more than to push a DeSantis-is-stalled narrative whether it’s true or not, because they hate and fear him just as they hate and fear Trump.
But maybe there’s something else going on here. If enthusiasm for DeSantis seems lacking, maybe it has little or nothing to do with DeSantis or his campaign. Perhaps what we’re seeing is less about him and still less about 2024 or the upcoming GOP primary scrum, and more about what happened in 2020. Put bluntly, maybe what we’re seeing now is an early sign that what Democrats, Big Tech, and corporate media did in 2020 was inject poison into our political system, and the 2024 election cycle is going to show us just how deadly that poison is.
Recall that 2020 was unlike any election in American history. One need not declare that it was “stolen” to admit that it was obviously rigged. After all, the people and institutions that rigged it have freely admitted what they did. They suppressed the Hunter Biden laptop story, censored what Americans could say on social media, introduced unprecedented changes to our voting system under the pretext of pandemic precautions, and poured hundreds of millions of dollars into putatively nonpartisan local election offices through Mark Zuckerberg-connected nonprofits for the sole purpose of turning out Democrat voters in swing states. Nothing like that has ever happened in American history. And it was all done for the singular purpose of ensuring that Trump would not serve a second term. What’s more, all of that came after four years of the permanent regime in Washington discarding every political norm, bending every rule, and breaking more than a few laws in a failed effort to oust Trump from office during his first term.
Now, maybe you think that’s all nonsense, or just water under the bridge. What’s done is done, we can’t go back, and even if the 2020 election wasn’t on the level, we all just need to move on and go about the 2024 primary season like its business as usual. There’ll be debates and a deluge of political ads and campaign shenanigans. There’ll be a chaotic, rambunctious primary full of zingers and debate moderator tomfoolery, and at the end of it, Republicans will have their nominee and we can all get on with the general election.
Sorry, but that’s not going to happen. It won’t happen because Trump supporters are understandably not willing to forget 2020 and just trundle along through 2024 like none of it happened. Plenty of them will always believe, not without reason, that 2020 was stolen outright. Many millions more believe, with even more reason, that it was rigged unfairly against Trump and that the same forces are at work now to rig it against whomever the GOP nominee turns out to be. Does that mean Trump is somehow entitled to the nomination, or even to another term in the White House? Not necessarily. To the extent that 2020 was stolen, it wasn’t strictly speaking stolen from Trump but from the American people, the voters who cast their ballots for Trump in good faith, trusting that our elections were free and fair.
Now that their faith has proved misplaced, do you think they’re going to line up for a GOP primary and consider each candidate on his or her merits, giving them all a fair hearing? Of course not. As far as they’re concerned, they were robbed of their votes in the last election by a corrupt cabal of powerful elites who are still in control.
Indeed, we know more today about the astounding level of corruption and election-rigging in 2020 than we did at the time. None of the problems have been fixed, and no reparations have been made. You can’t expect these voters to simply move on and act like 2024 is going to be a free and fair election, and accept whatever result the machine coughs up.
To win over GOP primary voters who supported Trump in the past two cycles, these candidates have to speak to the injustice that was done in 2020, they have to admit what happened, name who did it, and affirm that we cannot have a self-governing republic if that’s how our elections are going to be.
And therein lies the problem for a candidate like DeSantis — to say nothing of such winsome and meritorious gunners like Vivek Ramaswamy or Tim Scott. How can you decry what they did to Trump in one breath and in the next proclaim that you’re the best person to redress those grievances? That Trump should stand aside and let you, Nikki Haley, restore faith in American elections and put Democrats in their place.
Maybe it can be done, maybe they can come up with a rationale for their candidacies that will appeal to Trump supporters. It certainly would be a neat trick.
But if you’re trying to explain why an otherwise popular figure like DeSantis isn’t gaining traction among GOP primary voters, the answer has less to do with Trump and more to do with what Democrats did in 2020. No one should expect Trump voters to forgive and forget. Democrats and their accomplices might have thought they were getting rid of Trump once and for all, and maybe they will get rid of him in the end. But right now, it looks like they sowed the wind.
John Daniel Davidson is a senior editor at The Federalist. His writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the Claremont Review of Books, The New York Post, and elsewhere. Follow him on Twitter, @johnddavidson.
FIRST ON FOX: A Peach State lawmaker who angered her Democrat colleagues in the Georgia state House of Representatives over her support for a recent school choice bill has announced she is officially switching parties.
Mesha Mainor – a Democrat who has represented District 56 in the Georgia House since January 2021 – announced the decision shortly before noon Tuesday that she will switch her party registration to Republican.
“When I decided to stand up on behalf of disadvantaged children in support of school choice, my Democrat colleagues didn’t stand by me,” Mainor explained of her decision in a statement to Fox News Digital. “They crucified me. When I decided to stand up in support of safe communities and refused to support efforts to defund the police, they didn’t back me. They abandoned me.“
“For far too long, the Democrat Party has gotten away with using and abusing the black community,” she added. “For decades, the Democrat Party has received the support of more than 90% of the black community. And what do we have to show for it? I represent a solidly blue district in the city of Atlanta. This isn’t a political decision for me. It’s a moral one.“
Mesha Mainor is a Democrat who has represented District 56 in the Georgia state House of Representatives since January 2021. (Mesha Mainor)
Mainor made clear that her work across party lines will continue after she switches parties, saying she has “never hesitated to work across the aisle to deliver results for my community and the people I was elected to represent. And that won’t change.”
Mainor said that she has “been met with much encouragement” amid her decision to switch parties and noted that it’s “humbling to be embraced – for the first time in a long time – by individuals who don’t find fault in a black woman having a mind of her own and be willing to buck the party line.“
Asked whether she believes she will face pushback from Democrats over her decision, Mainor said, “The most dangerous thing to the Democrat Party is a black person with a mind of their own. So, it wouldn’t surprise me.”
As for her priorities after switching parties, Mainor said she will continue to focus on education and expanding the Republican majority in the House.
“Education and the importance of school choice has been – and will continue to be – a key focus of mine,” she said. “But outside of education, I look forward to working with my colleagues in the Georgia General Assembly to tackle the most pressing issues facing our state and to help grow the Republican Party, helping us focus not just on preaching to the choir but growing the congregation.”
In a video shared to social media in May, Mainor accused Democrats of turning against her for being a staunch school choice advocate.
“I support school choice, parent rights and opportunities for children to thrive, especially those that are marginalized and tend to fail in school,” Mainor said at the time. “The Democrats at the [Georgia State] Capitol took a hard position and demanded every Democrat vote against children and for the teachers union. I voted yes for parents and yes for children, not failing schools.”
Mainor justified her position by noting that some schools in her district have 3% reading proficiency rates and that many kids cannot do simple math.
Mainor made clear that her work across party lines will continue after she switches parties, saying she has “never hesitated to work across the aisle to deliver results for my community and the people I was elected to represent.” (Georgia House of Representatives)
“I have a few colleagues upset with me to the point where they are giving away $1,000 checks to anyone that will run against me,” Mainor continued. “I’m not apologizing because my colleagues don’t like how I vote.”
Mainor also explained at the time that parents are upset that some politicians “put the teachers union and donors ahead of their constituents.”
Mainor’s speech took a personal turn when she accused her colleagues of being upset that she stood up for her principles.
“It’s ironic. I’ll say every election year, I hear ‘Black Lives Matter.’ But do they? I see every other minority being prioritized except Black children living in poverty that can’t read,“ Mainor argued.
“We’ll send $1,000,000 to the border for immigrant services. But Black communities, not even a shout-out. I’m sorry, I don’t agree with this,” she added. “I’m not backing down and I’m actually just getting started.”
Earlier this year, amid criticism from her Democrat counterparts in the state legislature, Mainor supported a school choice bill that would have expanded opportunities for students who attend Georgia’s lowest-rated schools. Georgia Senate Bill 233 would have created $6,500 vouchers for students at schools performing in the bottom 25% in the state to help pay for private school tuition and homeschooling expenses if they were inclined. Republican Gov. Brian Kemp pushed for it, and it appeared to have the votes to pass under the Republican-controlled Golden Dome, until 16 House Republicans voted it down.
Mainor’s decision to switch political parties while in office, which extends the Republican majority in the House, comes after former Georgia state Rep. Vernon Jones made the same move in 2021.
Vernon Jones (Getty Images)
In an op-ed for Fox News, Jones argued in January 2021 that he was no longer a Democrat because he “cannot stand for the defunding of the police, higher taxes on working families and job-killing socialist policies that will devastate Americans of all walks of life.”
“Now, let me make one thing clear – I haven’t changed. The Democratic Party has changed. It’s become a toxic combination of radical leftists and liberal elites in San Francisco and Hollywood have taken over my former Party,” he added at the time.
Fox News’ Andrea Vacchiano, David Rutz and Brian Flood contributed to this report.
2020 candidate Joe Biden sold himself to the fatigued American public as an empathetic, ice-cream-loving grandpa who was going to usher decency and expertise into the White House — but those carefully crafted narratives that helped propel him to the Oval Office are crumbling as the country barrels toward the 2024 election in a time of economic and global instability.
On the 2020 campaign trail, Biden and the media consistently billed him as the candidate to unify the country after four years under former President Donald Trump, who critics blasted as “divisive.” After his election win, Biden declared in a speech that it is “time to put away the harsh rhetoric, lower the temperature, see each other again, listen to each other again.”
Biden took it one step further after he took office, threatening to fire anyone who didn’t share his views on decency and respect, telling nearly a thousand federal appointees and staff: “I’m not joking when I say this: If you’re ever working with me and I hear you treat another with disrespect, talk down to someone, I promise you I will fire you on the spot.”
But Biden’s inconsistency between his actions and his words are coming more to the forefront ahead of what is expected to be an explosive 2024 presidential election.
President Joe Biden’s carefully crafted narratives that helped propel him to the White House are slowly crumbling. (Fox News)
The president’s son, Hunter Biden, settled his child support case in Arkansas in June, ending a years-long paternity dispute over his 4-year-old daughter, Navy Joan Roberts, whom both Biden and first lady Jill Biden refuse to acknowledge as their seventh grandchild.
The New York Times released a damning report last week claiming Biden’s aides have been told to say publicly that he only has six grandchildren. The report said the family dispute is rooted in “money, corrosive politics and what it means to have the Biden birthright.”
On Thursday, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre was asked specifically about the report and whether the president considers Roberts his granddaughter, to which she responded, “I don’t have anything to share from here.”
In April, Biden listed six of his grandchildren by name during a “take your child to work day” event at the White House.
“I have six grandchildren, and I’m crazy about them. And I speak to them every single day. Not a joke,” he said at the time.
US President Joe Biden lifts grandson Beau, the son of Hunter Biden, after Biden returned to Washington, DC on June 30, 2022. (MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images)
Biden has also put up Christmas stockings at the White House for six of the grandchildren, but has repeatedly left his seventh grandchild out of the annual tradition. But as Biden seeks re-election in 2024 and as the speculation into Hunter’s foreign business dealings ramps up, the president has decided to more publicly embrace his son, Hunter, and grandson, Beau, recently bringing them to Camp David two weekends in a row.
CNN anchor Dana Bash said Monday that it’s “disturbing on so many levels” that Republicans are “using” the Roberts story to criticize Biden, but she acknowledged they’re “able to do that” because of “the brand and the kind of person that we all know and believe Joe Biden to be, because it’s who he says he is, and it’s somebody who is a family man. That’s who we see all of the time.”
Dana Bash claims that Joe Biden shunning his grandkid is "disturbing on so many levels" not because that's what the President is doing, but because "Republicans are using it." She says it goes against "the brand and the kind of person that we all know and believe Joe Biden to be" pic.twitter.com/oM8vsXzUdb
Upon taking office, Biden promised to restore the American story of “decency and dignity” and threatened to fire any staffer who didn’t share that view. However, a new report suggests that the 80-year-old president is prone to yelling at aides behind closed doors and roping them in for “angry interrogations.” Hidden from public view, Biden allegedly has such a “quick-trigger temper” that some White House aides try to avoid meeting him one-on-one, Axios reported Monday.
Biden’s dressing-down of staff often includes profane condemnation, including phrases such as “God dammit, how the f— don’t you know this?!,” “Don’t f—ing bulls— me!” and “Get the f— out of here!”
Speaking with Axios, former Biden campaign and Senate Aide Jeff Connaughton said Biden “hides his sharper edge to promote his folksy Uncle Joe image — which is why, when flashes of anger break through, it seems so out of public character.”
Biden, who is often asked softball questions from sympathetic members of the press, also has a history of responding with anger or sarcasm when faced with tougher questions. In late June, the president berated a reporter who asked if the president was involved in his son Hunter Biden’s business negotiations with a Chinese company. He also called NBC News’ Kelly O’Donnell a “pain in the neck” in the Oval Office for a question about a vaccine mandate for Veterans Affairs and once called Fox News’ Peter Doocy a “stupid son of a b—-.”
“Read the polls, Jack. You guys are all the same,” Biden said in 2022 when asked by a reporter what he would say to Democrats who didn’t want him to run for a second term.
In 2021, Biden scolded CNN’s Kaitlan Collins when she suggested he was confident Russian President Vladimir Putin may change his malign behavior, asking her, “What in the hell, what do you do all the time?”
U.S. President Joe Biden speaks during a State of the Union address at the US Capitol in Washington, DC, US, on Tuesday, Feb. 7, 2023. (Jacquelyn Martin/AP/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
‘I don’t discuss business with my son’
President Biden has repeatedly insisted he had no knowledge of son Hunter’s business dealings, but multiple Fox News Digital analyses show that narrative is becoming more difficult to maintain.
“I have never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings,” Biden scolded Doocy as he jabbed his finger in his face on the campaign trail in Iowa in 2019. “You should be looking at Trump. Trump’s doing this because he knows I’ll beat him like a drum. … Everybody’s looked at it and said there’s nothing there. Ask the right question.”
“I don’t discuss business with my son,”Biden said again a month later in October 2019.
We have evidence of multiple meetings of Joe Biden w Hunter’s business partners – at least 10 in photographs. Yet Joe said: "I have never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings."pic.twitter.com/X6RreEsi1Y And the @washingtonpost, the paper of Watergate, lies for him. https://t.co/JeIV3ciws9
But records show Biden met with more than a dozen of Hunter’s business associates, and some of those associates and top staffers at Hunter’s now-defunct company Rosemont Seneca Partners visited the White House more than 90 times when Biden was vice president in the Obama administration. Further, nearly a dozen current and former officials serving in the White House and Biden administration, including Secretary of State Antony Blinken and President Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, have extensive ties to Hunter.
Hunter, who is accused by Republicans of selling access to his father, dating back over a decade, is expected to make his first court appearance for a tentative probation-only plea agreement on July 26 for two alleged misdemeanor tax violations and a felony gun charge.
Biden has repeatedly said his son did “nothing wrong” and that he will continue to support him.
U.S. Attorney for the District of Delaware David Weiss, who led the investigation, is facing demands from Republicans probing alleged improper retaliation against whistleblowers who claimed the probe was “influenced by politics” and that Weiss was “hamstrung” when making prosecutorial decisions, which Weiss has denied.
In this handout image provided by the Irish Government, US President Joe Biden departs Dublin Airport on Air Force One with his sister Valerie and son Hunter on April 14, 2023 in Dublin, Ireland. (ulien Behal/Irish Government via Getty Images)
The foreign policy expert
“America is back. Diplomacy is back at the center of our foreign policy,” Biden promised allies shortly after his inauguration.
Biden promoted himself as a seasoned foreign policy expert who was going to restore diplomacy on the world stage, but his administration has seen increased aggression by foreign adversaries like Russia, China, North Korea and Iran.
The Biden administration’s series of missteps during the chaotic Afghanistan withdrawal in August 2021, which led to the death of 13 U.S. service members, marked a political turning point for the public’s perception of the president’s competency and ability to lead.
Before what turned out to be a watershed moment in his presidency, Biden was enjoying high approval ratings on issues ranging from the economy to his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. But Biden’s decision to pull troops from Afghanistan faced widespread global backlash after Taliban insurgents retook the country in a matter of days on Aug. 15, 2021, just a month after the president assured Americans that the likelihood of a Taliban takeover was “highly unlikely.”
The military evacuation, which required thousands of additional U.S. troops on the ground and significant cooperation from the Taliban to complete, left behind hundreds of U.S. citizens and tens of thousands of Afghan allies, despite Biden’s promise days earlier to “get them all out.” While Biden admitted that the Taliban’s takeover had caught the U.S. off guard, he has insisted he made the right decision in ending the war and has declined to fire a single official over the pullout.
Biden’s decision to act unilaterally in withdrawing troops without consulting his NATO allies sparked backlash from officials in the U.K., Germany, Italy and France, among others, with foreign officials describing it as a betrayal and damaging to America’s credibility.
President Biden rests his heads in his hands in a moment of frustration during a contentious back and forth with Fox News’ Peter Doocy during a press conference following a terrorist attack in Kabul, Afghanistan, that left 13 service members dead on Aug. 26, 2021. (Getty Images)
The president campaigned in 2020 on his decades of foreign policy experience with promises to repair the U.S. standing on the world stage after four years of the Trump administration. However, critics have often compared the withdrawal to the fall of Saigon at the end of the Vietnam War and have said Biden’s foreign policy blunders have given the green light to authoritarian leaders to act aggressively across the globe.
Two months after the Afghanistan withdrawal, Russian President Vladimir Putin renewed a major buildup of troops near the Ukrainian border in October 2021. On Feb. 24, 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine in a bloody and economically devastating war that continues today. Critics have said the Biden administration was too slow to act in imposing economic sanctions against Russia during the months-long military buildup. Experts say Chinese President Xi Jinping has been closely watching the U.S. response to Russia to determine his own potential military action regarding Taiwan. China has long claimed Taiwan as its own territory, despite the island having its own democratic government. In February, as Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine, nine Chinese aircraft entered Taiwan’s air defense zone.
Biden’s multiple foreign policy blunders, starting with Afghanistan, have caught up with him in the polls.
Fox News’ Nikolas Lanum, Anders Hagstrom, Brian Flood, David Rutz and Joseph A. Wulfsohn contributed to this report.
Jessica Chasmar is a digital writer on the politics team for Fox News and Fox Business. Story tips can be sent to Jessica.Chasmar@fox.com.
The first hearing in former President Donald Trump’s criminal case involving classified documents has been pushed to July 18. A court order Monday established the new date after a dispute in which special counsel Jack Smith implied that Trump and co-defendant Walt Nauta were seeking an “unnecessary” delay by moving the date back from this coming Friday, the Washington Examiner reported on Tuesday. Nauta had submitted a request to delay the hearing due to his main attorney, Stanley Woodward, having prior obligations this week at a bench trial in Washington, D.C.
Earlier Tuesday, the Examiner reported that Trump wants the classified documents trial postponed until after the 2024 general election. Trump, currently the leading contender to win the Republican presidential nomination, and his aide, Nauta, are scheduled to go on trial in December.
The first hearing before U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon may not be conducted in public due to the sensitivity surrounding the classified materials, the Examiner reported. It will likely be the first of many proceedings before the actual trial begins.
Smith disputed Nauta’s request to delay the first hearing. The special counsel wanted to know why Florida-based lawyer Sasha Dadan couldn’t handle the hearing instead of Woodward.
“An indefinite continuance is unnecessary, will inject additional delay in this case, and is contrary to the public interest,” Smith’s team wrote in its filing, the Examiner reported.
Nauta said he had “little notice” that prosecutors would bring charges in the Southern District of Florida, where he would be required to have an attorney licensed in the state.
The Examiner said the co-defendant also raised concerns about his defense team’s lack of security clearances. Nauta wrote that it was not reasonable to expect Dadan to assume a lead role on Friday.
A later filing on Monday showed that the defense team and the special counsel team agreed that July 18 would be the date of the first hearing.
Trump has pleaded not guilty to 37 federal charges in connection to the classified documents case, including 31 counts of willful retention of classified documents under the Espionage Act.
Nauta pleaded not guilty to charges he helped the former president hide top secret documents that Trump took when he left the White House in 2021, Reuters reported.
Despite President Joe Biden’s campaign against the idea of a border wall, his administration is filling in small gaps along the southern wall, the Washington Examiner reported.
Workers are halfway through filling in 129 gaps in border wall projects, the Examiner said. Gaps have been filled in Arizona, California, New Mexico, and Texas, where more than 450 miles of 18-and 30-foot steel wall was put up by former President Donald Trump’s administration.
But despite such efforts, much of the 2,000-mile boundary is wide open. According to the Examiner the work to fill in the gaps has been done without any fanfare.
When Biden took office, he immediately signed an executive order halting all border wall construction, but his administration has approved projects at multiple locations along the border, the Daily Mail reported in July, 2022.
“To date, DHS [Department of Homeland Security] has authorized the completion of multiple life, safety, environmental and other remediation activities which include, among other activities, the closure of 129 gates and gaps across the southwest border,” CBP [Customs and Border Protection] said. “Of the 129 approved gates and gaps, 68 have been completed to date with an additional 50 anticipated for completion by Sept. 30, 2023. The remaining 11 are anticipated to be completed in fiscal year 2024.”
And Ken Oliver, director of Right on Immigration at the Texas Public Policy Foundation said: “There never was any legitimate justification for waiting nearly 2 1/2 years to get around to doing construction that should have never stopped and that should have been completed by now.
“It was a highly irresponsible and unlawful action by the Biden administration to halt construction of duly appropriated border-wall funding in the first place.”
The Examiner noted that filling in the gaps is being funded with leftover money from the Trump wall projects. The Biden administration has not disclosed how many miles the gap projects total. One gap in Deming, New Mexico, was no wider than 20 feet, but had been left open for 2 1/2 years. It was finally closed up in the last two weeks, according to landowner and fourth-generation rancher Russell Johnson.
Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., who visited the border city of Yuma in June, said the gaps are being closed.
“Significant progress has been made on construction for all the gaps, with two nearly finished and all four expected to be complete within two months,” a spokesperson for Kelly said in a statement to the Examiner. “This remains a priority for him, and he will continue pushing to have the construction finished as soon as possible.”
The news outlet pointed out that instead of installing the same type of dark steel slatted beams, CBP in Yuma constructed 30-foot-tall wire mesh panels in some of the gaps. The sections included doors that open to allow police to come and go.
Tim Ballard is the former Department of Homeland Security agent whose dogged pursuit of child traffickers across the globe is the subject of the massively successful new film “Sound of Freedom.” In a recent interview, Ballard accounted for some of the reasons the radical left might appear so desperate to attack and denigrate the movie: It illustrates the consequences of the left’s thinking and policies.
Ballard, joined by Jim Caviezel who plays him in the film, explained to the Daily Signal that wittingly or not, transgender activists and the Biden administration are both dressing the sacrificial altar whereon children may be victimized as a consequence of the policies they pursue.
When elaborating on a mission to save children in Ukraine from sex traffickers after the country’s invasion by Russia, Ballard noted that his team locked into “this pedophile ring. Now, it’s a frightening ring because it’s a political party that was out of Holland. … They were trying to legalize sex with children. They thought that a 3-year-old could consent to sex.”
Ballard said that some members of PNVD fled Holland after law enforcement finally came down on them but were ultimately arrested in Ecuador.
Thanks to the efforts of O.U.R., @freeagirl and local authorities, suspected child predators Marthijn Uittenbogaard and Lesley Luijs were arrested in Ecuador on June 22. They were a part of the recently dissolved pedophile association, Vereniging Martijn. https://t.co/GIOOgnTjJTpic.twitter.com/MAVcV8ngxM
— Operation Underground Railroad (@OURrescue) June 27, 2022
In advance of the Dutch politicians’ arrest, Ballard noted that he had to “study their literature. This was a political platform. This was a political party. And what I started recognizing is, I named them the … ‘pedophile network doctrines.'”
According to Ballard, the so-called pedophile network doctrines — not strictly specific to the PNVD — are:
“Children can consent to anything — at 12-years-old they should be able to vote, they should do anything.”
“Now, what am I seeing here?” said Ballard. “My stomach is getting sick as I’m reading this. I read this every day. It’s the woke left agenda.”
The child liberator clarified that he wasn’t alleging that trans activists and the PNVD or other such pedophiles were “colluding or talking,” but that “it doesn’t matter. It’s the same dark source. … Pedophiles are sitting back right now, going, ‘We’ve been pushing this agenda for decades and now we don’t have to push any more because the left are taking care of it for us in America.’ In America!”
For instance, Democrats in Washington state recently passed a law that reportedly enables individuals or youth/homeless shelters to avoid informing a child’s parents or law enforcement of their whereabouts if a child is seeking — without parental consent — a sex change, a tracheal shave, a mastectomy, breast implants, an abortion, puberty blockers, or “assisted reproduction” services.
In another instance where the left has ostensibly advanced the cause of those “sitting back right now,” California state Sen. Scott Wiener, who claimed that “the word groomer is categorically an anti-LGBTQ hate word,” successfully pushed a law enabling judges to keep men who prey on grade-schoolers 10 years their junior, between the ages of 14 and 17, off sex-offender registries.
Ballard stressed that both transgender activists and pedophiles argue that children can consent to destructive and sexualizing acts.
This mentality, granted legitimacy by policy decisions and laws that enable children to “consent to having their bodies filled with a chemical that will destroy their reproductive system” and “ripping apart their genitalia,” will lead to “what the pedophiles have been asking for for,” said Ballard. “If you can consent to that, guess what: What’s more fluid than gender? Age.”
'PEDOPHILE NETWORK DOCTRINES': Tim Ballard, who rescued kids from sex slavery, issues dire warning about transgender ideology. Jim Caviezel, who plays him in 'Sound of Freedom,' explains the evil mentality behind child exploitation and "pedophile laws."https://t.co/GcVfIZEM8Gpic.twitter.com/UuyFk5arS9
Extra to the left’s pursuit of greater social deregulation, Ballard suggested that its support for open borders has similarly fed the “economy of pedophilia.”
The Daily Signal highlighted how, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection, over 150,000 unaccompanied minors were encountered crossing the U.S.-Mexico border last fiscal year and over 91,000 have been intercepted crossing the border so far this fiscal year.
“Thousands of them … are under 5 years old,” said Ballard. “Why is a 3-year-old showing up at the border? … Well, I can tell you why, because they show up with a name — the name of the sponsor that they’re given by the trafficker.”
“[The Department of Health and Human Services] gets the kids and they by law have to call the number. ‘Hi, we have Jose Gonzalez, Mr. George Smith.’ ‘Yeah, yeah, that’s my kid, whatever.’ ‘Okay,'” said Ballard, dramatizing a hypothetical conversation between a prospective predator and an unwitting facilitator at the HHS.
“They used to actually fly down and have to pick the kid up. Not anymore. Our taxpayer dollars will then send the kid by plane or bus to this George, the sponsor; no background check, no DNA, nothing. And they deliver the kids. Our taxpayer dollars are literally — for the first time in American history — our taxpayer dollars are going to facilitate the last leg of a child-trafficking event,” said Ballard.
“$14 million a day are landing in the pocket of smugglers and traffickers, thanks to the Biden-Harris border policy,” continued Ballard. “The only compassionate policy is border enforcement — barriers, walls. Why? And the ‘Sound of Freedom’ talks about this. Because the walls and the barriers lead the children who are being hurt into that funnel of rescue. Trained women and men in uniform are there. Those kids want to go through the port of entry. … Those kids pray for a wall. The wall will save their lives.”
The child liberator noted that the Biden administration tore “it all down.”
Rolling Stone ran a hit piece entitled, “‘Sound of Freedom’ Is a Superhero Movie for Dads With Brainworms,” with the sub-headline, “The QAnon-tinged thriller about child-trafficking is designed to appeal to the conscience of a conspiracy-addled boomer.”
Miles Klee, the Los Angeles-based culture writer responsible for the Rolling Stone article, accused the movie of “fomenting moral panic for years over this grossly exaggerated ‘epidemic’ of child sex-trafficking, much of it funneling people into conspiracist rabbit holes and QAnon communities.”
Variety reported Sunday that the film had generated roughly $40 million after six days of release, ranking third on domestic box office charts despite playing at far fewer theaters than “Insidious” and “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny,” which occupy the top two spots.
Transgender Movement and Biden Border Policy Aid and Abet Child Sex Slavery, Tim Ballard Warns youtu.be
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Columbus City Schools (CCS) shelled out more than $24,000 taxpayer dollars to a consulting firm that taught staff how to sneak radical gender ideology into classrooms without parents’ permission, a public records request made by Parents Defending Education revealed.
The two-day training in September 2022 was conducted by Q-inclusion, now known as “Hey Wes,” an organization led by a woman disguised as a man that boasts of partnering “with schools, healthcare clinics, businesses, and communities in order to support queer & trans belonging.”
Before the symposium, CCS had policies allowing students “affirming name and pronouns” to be “on all other documents, so long as this does not out them or put them in danger.” Some gender-bending students were also granted access to opposite-sex bathrooms and lockers.
During the sessions, CCS staff such as speech-language pathologists, occupational therapists, physical therapists, school psychologists, and school counselors were schooled on methods and tools such as “gender support plan” sheets they could use to further their campaign to quietly force the LGBT agenda on children without parents’ knowledge.
CCS hires were specifically instructed what to do “when a student is out to you but not to their family” and how to handle “caregiver concerns and pushback” with conversation tactics while still hosting sexual conversations with children.
“Transgender and nonbinary students have a FERPA-protected right to privacy; this extends to students’ gender identity, birth name, sex assigned at birth and medical history. This includes privacy rights from parents/caregivers,” a Q-inclusion handout used for the training states.
Another set of slides boldly asserts that “children are not too young to talk about or know their gender” and that “gender expansiveness” should be discussed with toddlers.
Other slides used during the training included infamous imagery such as the genderbread person iteration, “the gender unicorn,” and the “wheel of power and privilege,” which argues that a mentally and financially stable, white, heterosexual, educated male in good health is the epitome of societal “privilege.”
The session hosts cited phony statistics from the Trevor Project, which not only promotes the mutation and castration of children but was recently caught hosting online, anonymous conversations about sex between adults and children.
Any religious staff who believe marriage is between a man and a woman and may have taken issue with some of the training’s content were educated on “What to do when your personal/religious beliefs don’t align with LGBTQ+ inclusion.” Q-inclusion’s suggestion for staff looking for ways to promote “LBGT inclusion” starts with displaying pride flags, wearing pronoun pins, and calling boys and girls “Friends, scholars, learners, children, mascot/community name.”
The consultants also encouraged CCS staff to fill their offices and classrooms with sexually explicit books.
“Families assume that when their children’s teachers attend professional development sessions, educators learn how to be more effective. But as these documents show, taxpayer dollars were instead spent encouraging school officials to treat pupils differently on the basis of superficial characteristics, hide information from parents, and discuss adult content with young students,” President of Parents Defending Education Nicole Neily told The Federalist. “It’s appalling that Columbus City Schools would choose to spend its finite resources on a consultant pushing such toxic content on teachers — particularly because less than half of all students in the district are proficient in reading and math.”
Jordan Boyd is a staff writer at The Federalist and co-producer of The Federalist Radio Hour. Her work has also been featured in The Daily Wire, Fox News, and RealClearPolitics. Jordan graduated from Baylor University where she majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow her on Twitter @jordanboydtx.
President Joe Biden may be the biggest serial liar ever to occupy the White House, but he wasn’t the only one lying about his track record during a CNN interview this weekend. Biden espoused several of his usual falsehoods — from fibs about traveling thousands of miles with China’s Xi Jinping to the price of oil. But it was his interviewer, CNN’s Fareed Zakaria, who told the biggest whopper of them all.
“I think a lot of people do watch you and are impressed and they think you’ve been a great president,” Zakaria said with a smile. “You’ve brought the economy back. You’ve restored relations with the world.”
CNN's Fareed Zakaria to Pres. Biden:
"I think a lot of people do watch you and are impressed and they think you've been a great President. You've brought the economy back. You've restored relations with the world." pic.twitter.com/ZE6beEI4C8
Biden didn’t “restore relations with the world,” either. Americans know he botched the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, which had fatal consequences. They’ve also watched him go soft on China and its transnational spy balloon, while he continues funneling money and munitions to an overseas conflict that puts the world on the brink of nuclear war.
Zakaria isn’t the only member of the propaganda press shilling for Biden despite his crisis-riddled track record.
MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough wrote for The Atlantic on Monday that, contrary to what he dubs the “right’s meltdown over all things woke,” “America Is Doing Just Fine.”
“Quit your whining. America is doing pretty d-mn well,” he added on Twitter.
Given the corporate media’s fawning and corruption-covering when it comes to the Bidens, it’s no surprise that Zakaria, Scarborough, and their many left-wing colleagues at CNN, The Washington Post, MSNBC, and The Atlantic feel the president is doing his best (aka exactly what they want).
Americans, on the other hand, could hardly be less “impressed” or less “fine” with how the Biden White House has handled the last two years. Seventy percent of Americans say the nation is “off on the wrong track” and a majority of the nation disapproves of the job Biden is doing as president.
A fair and independent press couldn’t and wouldn’t want to overlook Americans’ feelings about the future of the nation under Biden. But the U.S. doesn’t have a fair and independent press.
If the last two and a half years have taught us anything, it’s that no amount of media “stop being poor” moments, of which thereare many, can convince the nation that the Biden administration is leading Americans in the right direction. Yet, corporate media keep trying with the type of spin that puts the wheels on Biden’s shiny Corvette to shame.
Today’s corporate media exist for one primary purpose, and it’s to cheerlead Democrats’ wrongs and cover up Americans’ opposition to those wrongs. Biden made it this far because mouthpieces like Zakaria lie to his face and to viewers about the failures of his administration, while shills like Scarborough demand Americans stop caring about those failures.
Jordan Boyd is a staff writer at The Federalist and co-producer of The Federalist Radio Hour. Her work has also been featured in The Daily Wire, Fox News, and RealClearPolitics. Jordan graduated from Baylor University where she majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow her on Twitter @jordanboydtx.
A Delaware assistant U.S. attorney was briefed in October 2020 that a confidential human source (CHS) had reported Hunter and Joe Biden each received $5 million in bribes, Sen. Chuck Grassley revealed Sunday in a letter to Delaware U.S. Attorney David Weiss. A source familiar with that briefing has now confirmed to The Federalist that the Pittsburgh office told the Delaware office the CHS’s reporting appeared credible and merited further investigation. That added detail increases the significance of Grassley’s Sunday letter and his question to Weiss about whether his deputy thwarted the investigation.
“On October 23, 2020, Justice Department and FBI Special Agents from the Pittsburgh Field Office briefed Assistant U.S. Attorney Lesley Wolf, one of your top prosecutors, and FBI Special Agents from the Baltimore Field Office with respect to the contents of the FBI-generated FD-1023 alleging a criminal bribery scheme involving then-Vice President Biden and Hunter Biden,” Grassley’s letter said. “What steps have the Justice Department and FBI taken to investigate the allegations?” the Iowa senator asked before noting his concerns about Wolf’s involvement.
Grassley then highlighted the numerous ways Wolf appeared to have obstructed the investigation into Hunter Biden’s potentially criminal business activities. “IRS whistleblowers have affirmed that AUSA Wolf prevented investigators from seeking information about Joe Biden’s involvement in Hunter Biden’s criminal business arrangements,” Grassley said, adding that she also “frustrated investigative efforts” by the IRS agents to question Hunter Biden’s business partner, Rob Walker, about Joe Biden.
Wolf also refused to allow agents to search Joe Biden’s guest house, even though there was “more than enough probable cause,” and she prevented investigators from searching a storage unit used by the now-president’s son, the letter said. In fact, Grassley stressed, Wolf alerted Hunter Biden’s lawyers to the investigators’ interest in the storage unit.
Given what Grassley called Wolf’s “questionable and obstructive conduct,” he asked Weiss whether Wolf had taken “similar proactive measures to frustrate any investigation into the FD-1023.” Grassley also probed Weiss’s knowledge of the accusations leveled against Wolf and how he has handled them. From Grassley’s questions, he seems to believe Wolf knows whether the DOJ buried evidence that Joe and Hunter Biden received bribes from the Ukrainian oil and gas company Burisma.
Former Attorney General William Barr had previously confirmed that the FD-1023 summary of the CHS’s intel had been sent to the Delaware U.S. attorney’s office for further investigation, following then-Pittsburgh U.S. Attorney Scott Brady’s conclusion that the reporting was not Russian disinformation. Barr later also said the Delaware office had been briefed on the FD-1023 material. Until now, however, it was unclear who had received that information.
Knowing that Wolf and FBI special agents from the Baltimore field office received a briefing on the contents of the FD-1023 allows congressional oversight committees to probe precisely who investigated the CHS’s allegations and how — or if not, why. Did Wolf direct agents to disregard the FD-1023? Did anyone else? If so, why? Who was involved in the decision? Who knew of the decision?
While we do not know the answers to those questions yet, we do know from the Internal Revenue Service whistleblowers that they were not informed of the FD-1023. As Grassley noted in his letter, the IRS agents were excluded from the meeting with the Pittsburgh field office. We also know from the IRS whistleblowers’ congressional testimony and supplemental statements that they first learned of the FD-1023 when Barr publicly stated the information had been sent to Delaware for further investigation.
Who decided to exclude the IRS agents from the meeting? Who decided to keep them in the dark about the FD-1023 and the information contained in it? Was anyone from the Baltimore field office adequately skilled to investigate the CHS’s reporting? As members of the IRS’s International Tax and Financial Crimes group, both the IRS whistleblowers working with the Delaware U.S. attorney’s office were. So why were they cut out of the case?
Following the release of Grassley’s letter, a source familiar with the Delaware briefing told The Federalist that in addition to summarizing the contents of the FD-1023, the Pittsburgh office requested the FBI provide FD-1023 access to the Delaware U.S. attorney’s office and the agents out of the Baltimore field office working on the case. The Pittsburgh office also told Wolf and the FBI agents present during the briefing that the information contained in the FD-1023 bore indicia of credibility and they recommended it be further investigated.
But was it investigated? Grassley asked precisely that question to Weiss.
The Iowa senator also asked Weiss when he became aware of the October 2020 briefing and why the IRS agents were excluded from that meeting. Grassley further inquired of the Delaware U.S. attorney whether the scope of the “alleged ‘ongoing investigation’ include[s] criminal bribery with respect to the alleged criminal scheme between a foreign national and then-Vice President Biden and Hunter Biden?”
In posing these questions, Grassley noted that from information provided to his office, “potentially hundreds of Justice Department and FBI officials have had access to the FD-1023 at issue.” This comment proves intriguing because in an earlier letter, Grassley had noted that in August 2020, FBI Supervisory Intelligence Analyst Brian Auten had opened an assessment that FBI headquarters used in September 2020 to falsely label derogatory information about Hunter Biden as disinformation. According to Grassley’s letter, the FBI HQ team then “placed their findings with respect to whether reporting was disinformation in a restricted access sub-file reviewable only by the particular agents responsible for uncovering the specific information.”
Grassley’s recent comment suggests that contrary to the earlier assumption, it may have been other derogatory information labeled misinformation and not the FD-1023. Or possibly the FD-1023 had been at one time restricted and then made more broadly available. But if it wasn’t the FD-1023 that Auten buried, that means there was even more derogatory information about Hunter Biden that the FBI failed to investigate. What was that information?
Grassley’s letter may raise more questions than it answers, but it also establishes the senator is nearing the end of the trail that leads to the individuals responsible for deciding to — or not to — investigate the FD-1023 and the allegations that the now-president of the United States accepted a $5 million bribe from a corrupt Ukrainian.
Margot Cleveland is The Federalist’s senior legal correspondent. She is also a contributor to National Review Online, the Washington Examiner, Aleteia, and Townhall.com, and has been published in the Wall Street Journal and USA Today. Cleveland is a lawyer and a graduate of the Notre Dame Law School, where she earned the Hoynes Prize—the law school’s highest honor. She later served for nearly 25 years as a permanent law clerk for a federal appellate judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Cleveland is a former full-time university faculty member and now teaches as an adjunct from time to time. As a stay-at-home homeschooling mom of a young son with cystic fibrosis, Cleveland frequently writes on cultural issues related to parenting and special-needs children. Cleveland is on Twitter at @ProfMJCleveland. The views expressed here are those of Cleveland in her private capacity.
The U.S. national debt has increased by $1 trillion in the five weeks since President Biden signed a bill into law that effectively turns off the debt ceiling until 2025. According to Treasury Department data, the total national debt stood at $32.47 trillion on July 6, $1 trillion more than the $31.47 trillion level last seen on June 2. The national debt had been stuck at or near that June 2 level for months because the government had hit the debt ceiling and was legally prohibited from borrowing any more money.
On June 3, however, Biden signed legislation reflecting negotiations with House Republicans that requires a small spending cut next year and allows unlimited federal borrowing until 2025. With no debt ceiling in effect, federal borrowing jumped more than $350 billion in a single day and crossed the $32 trillion mark in less than two weeks.
That quick increase reflected pent-up demand for borrowing that the government delayed while the debt ceiling deal was being negotiated.
The national debt has jumped more than $1 trillion in the five weeks after President Biden signed a bill into law that temporarily suspends the debt ceiling. (Leon Neal/Getty Images)
The national debt has increased $4.7 trillion since Biden took office in January 2021, and is expected to keep rising in the face of annual budget shortfalls of at least $1 trillion per year. So far in fiscal year 2023, the government has spent $1.16 trillion more than it has collected and the Biden administration is predicting a $1.5 trillion budget deficit when the fiscal year ends in September.
Biden has continued to boast that he has shrunk the budget deficit.
“And by the way, parenthetically, I want you to hear about the deficit. I cut the deficit $1.7 trillion in two years,” he said last week. “Nobody’s ever done that – cut the debt $1.7 [trillion].”
But many mainstream news outlets have discounted that bragging point because the lower deficit mostly reflects the end of emergency spending related to COVID-19 and increased tax revenue that reflects the post-COVID economic recovery. When COVID hit in 2020, federal spending exploded by $2 trillion – the government spent a total of $6.5 trillion that year instead of the $4.4 trillion it spent a year earlier, and the budget deficit exceeded $3 trillion.
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen delayed certain federal spending while the debt deal was being negotiated, and borrowing surged as soon as the ceiling was suspended. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)
Even though the COVID emergency has ended, federal spending has remained high. It is estimated to spent $6.3 trillion in the current fiscal year, still well above the $4.4 trillion it spent in 2019, before COVID hit.
Instead of falling back to 2019 levels, federal spending is not expected to dip below $6 trillion again. Treasury Department projections expect that the government will spend more than $7 trillion by 2025 and will exceed $8 trillion in spending by 2028, accompanied by more borrowing that is fast approaching $2 trillion per year.
As the debt ceiling deal was being negotiated between Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., several conservatives argued that the GOP should be pushing for much steeper cuts to federal spending.
While Biden has boasted about reducing the budget deficit, most see that drop as a reflection of lower COVID spending and higher tax revenues, and deficits are expected to keep rising toward $2 trillion per year. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky, File)
Russ Vought, former President Trump’s director of the Office of Management and Budget, criticized Republicans for moving away from a House-passed plan that would have capped the growth in federal spending to a maximum of 1% per year over the next decade.
“They have never been in a stronger place,” Vought said in May. “They have passed a bill that this town and the country did not think was possible, they kept their team together, they have 75-25 polling to their backs, they had the Democrats in a situation where they had said you did not negotiate for months, and yet up against a deadline that’s not a real deadline… they just completely caved.”
Pete Kasperowicz is a politics editor at Fox News Digital.
Nearly a dozen current and former officials serving in the White House and Biden administration, including the president’s national security adviser and the secretary of state, have extensive ties to Hunter Biden, who is accused by Republicans of selling access to his father, dating back over a decade.
A Fox News Digital analysis reveals the extent of Hunter’s potential reach in the White House, while the embattled first son is expected to make his first court appearance on July 26 for two alleged misdemeanor tax violations and a felony gun charge.
The Justice Department announced last month that Hunter had entered a plea agreement in the case that will likely keep him out of jail. U.S. Attorney for the District of Delaware David Weiss, who led the investigation, is facing demands from Republicans probing alleged improper retaliation against whistleblowers who claimed the probe was “influenced by politics” and that Weiss was “hamstrung” when making prosecutorial decisions.
The analysis includes two members of Biden’s Cabinet and one former Cabinet member, a top aide to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, a national security adviser, five top Biden White House aides, and a top Biden campaign aide who is currently on leave from her role as a communications director for first lady Jill Biden.
Jake Sullivan
Hunter Biden and President Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, served together on the board of the Truman National Security Project, a liberal foreign policy think tank, for roughly two years before Sullivan joined the president’s campaign in 2020.
President Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, left, Hunter Biden, President Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken (Getty Image)
Hunter, who started serving on the board in 2012, and Sullivan both served on the Washington-based nonprofit’s board between 2017 and early 2019, according to internet archives captured by the Wayback Machine.
During that time, Hunter was also serving on the board of Ukrainian energy company Burisma Holdings and the Chinese private equity fund BHR Partners. The federal investigation into Hunter’s foreign business dealings, which is still ongoing, also launched during the same time frame in 2018.
Sullivan was recently accused by former White House official Mike McCormick of being a “conspirator” in the Biden family’s “kickback scheme” in Ukraine when Biden was vice president.
Sullivan denied the allegations, telling reporters that he had nothing to do with such an operation.
Jake Sullivan, left, and Hunter Biden (Getty Images)
Antony Blinken
Secretary of State Antony Blinken held a meeting with Hunter Biden at the State Department in July 2015 when he was serving as the deputy secretary of state in the Obama-Biden administration and Hunter was on Burisma’s board, according to emails previously reviewed and verified by Fox News Digital.
The meeting was two months in the making after Hunter emailed Blinken in late May 2015, asking, “Have a few minutes next week to grab a cup of coffee? I know you are impossibly busy, but would like to get your advice on a couple of things.”
Blinken said “absolutely” and Hunter forwarded Blinken’s full email response to Devon Archer, who was also serving on the Burisma board with him. However, the initial meeting appeared to have been canceled due to the admission of Hunter’s older brother, Beau Biden, to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Maryland because of a recurrence of brain cancer. Beau passed away on May 30, 2015.
Antony Blinken emails with Hunter Biden on May 22, 2015. (Fox News)
Less than two months later, Blinken and Hunter met, prompting Blinken to send a follow-up email saying it was “great to see” Hunter and “catch up.”
“You will love this,” Antony Blinken wrote to Hunter Biden on July 22, 2015, “after you left, Marjorie, the wonderful african american woman who sits in my outer office (and used to be Colin Powell’s assistant) said to me: ‘He sure is pleasant on the eyes.’ Tell you wife. Tony.” (Fox News)
In April of this year, former CIA Deputy Director Michael Morell testified to the House Judiciary and Intelligence Committees that Blinken, as President Biden’s then-campaign senior adviser, “played a role in the inception” of the public statement signed by intelligence officials claiming Hunter’s abandoned laptop was part of a Russian disinformation campaign just weeks before the 2020 presidential election.
Blinken denied having any role in getting the letter signed by members of the intelligence community and claimed, “One of the great benefits of this job is that I don’t do politics and don’t engage in it. But with regard to that letter, I didn’t – it wasn’t my idea, didn’t ask for it, didn’t solicit it.”
Emails from Hunter’s infamous laptop that Blinken allegedly sought to discredit show that Hunter has ties to Blinken and his wife, Evan Ryan, dating back over a decade. Those emails also show that Hunter scheduled meetings with Blinken while he was on the board of Burisma and Blinken was deputy secretary of state.
Multiple profiles pieces over the years said Blinken has advised Biden on more than just foreign policy in his decades-long friendship with the president and serving as a confidant. Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., President Biden’s re-election campaign co-chair, told CNN in 2021, “President Biden is personally close to both Tony Blinken and Evan Ryan and Tony has been an incredibly loyal, capable and effective adviser, staffer and personal friend of the sort that is rare in Washington.”
Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Hunter Biden (Getty Images)
Evan Ryan
Evan Ryan, Blinken’s wife who is currently serving as White House cabinet secretary, communicated frequently with Hunter and his longtime business partner, Eric Schwerin, when she was working at the White House during the Obama-Biden administration.
Hunter tried to connect with Blinken on June 16, 2010, when he asked Ryan for his non-government email address, according to emails. Ryan, who also worked on Biden’s unsuccessful 2008 presidential campaign, then provided Blinken’s personal email address to Hunter.
It appears that Hunter Biden tried to connect with Antony Blinken on June 16, 2010, when he asked Blinken’s wife, Evan Ryan, for his non-government email address. (Fox News)
White House visitor logs also show that Schwerin, who was the president of Hunter Biden’s investment firm Rosemont Seneca Partners for several years, met with Ryan at the White House’s Old Executive Office Building (OEOB) in October 2010.
She was also in communication with Hunter and Schwerin about a couple of White House events that year, including the Mexico State Dinner and the annual “Easter Egg Roll.”
“OVP has 250 tix to the Easter Egg Roll and your Mom has an additional 200. Family, etc is coming out of your Mom’s allotment,” Schwerin said in the email to Hunter, referring to Blinken’s wife. “Evan is handling your Dad’s and we can pass on names to her for outreach purposes. Let’s discuss. I don’t think we have 50 spots, but if we had 20 or so names we’d probably be fine.”
Eric Schwerin sent Hunter Biden an email about two upcoming White House events and mentioned that he talked with Evan Ryan, Blinken’s wife, about tickets to the events. (Fox News)
“More importantly, OVP has 12 spots to fill for the Mexico State Dinner in May and needs to send in their names by Monday,” he continued. “Evan is looking for any suggestions. Hispanic Americans or just any outreach related suggestions. Obviously they won’t have trouble filling this number but is still looking for suggestions.”
A couple of months later, Hunter and Ryan exchanged emails about the Mexico State dinner guest list, and she sent him the seating chart for his table.
(Fox News)
Evan Ryan and Antony Blinken have ties to Hunter Biden dating back over a decade. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
Fox News Digital previously reported several other ties between Hunter and Ryan.
Jeff Zients
White House chief of staff Jeff Zients, who led the federal COVID-19 pandemic response between early 2021 and April 2022, met Hunter multiple times in 2016, according to emails and White House visitor logs.
Zients met with Hunter Biden twice in February 2016 and on another occasion in May 2016, just months before Biden, the vice president at the time, was set to leave the White House.
Former Joe Biden aide Anne Marie Muldoon invites Hunter Biden to a meeting with Zients and his father in July 2016. (Fox News)
Hunter Biden’s former business partner Joan Mayer sends him his schedule on Feb. 12. It includes a meeting with his father, then-Vice President Joe Biden, Jeff Zients and David Rubenstein. (Fox News)
Biden attended the first two meetings, which both took place at the U.S. Naval Observatory, where the vice presidential residence is located.
Hunter Biden’s business partner Joan Meyer sends him his schedule on Feb. 23. (Fox News)
Additionally, Anne Marie Muldoon, who was an assistant for then-Vice President Biden between 2014-2017, sent Hunter Biden an invitation to attend a potential fourth meeting with his father, Zients, David Bradley, a Washington, D.C.-based political consultant and chairman of media group Atlantic Media, and Eric Lander at the Naval Observatory on July 12, 2016. While it is unclear whether Hunter Biden joined the meeting, Muldoon sent him a copy of the meeting agenda after it took place.
Kathy Chung
Kathy Chung, who is currently serving as the Pentagon’s deputy director of protocol, communicated frequently with Hunter when she was serving as Biden’s executive assistant during the Obama administration.
Throughout much of her five-year tenure working for Biden, Chung regularly shared information with Hunter about his father’s schedule and passed messages directly from the then-vice president, according to emails.
Chung’s relationship with Hunter also appears to date back to before she worked for his father. The emails showed that Hunter recommended Chung for the executive assistant role when the previous holder of the job, Michele Smith, departed the White House in the spring of 2012.
A month after Chung thanked Hunter for “thinking” of her and getting her to apply for a job in the vice president’s office, Chung emailed Hunter Biden informing him that she had been offered the job.
Kathy Chung informs Hunter Biden that Vice President Biden had selected her to be his executive assistant. (Fox News)
“I cannot thank you enough for thinking about me and walking me thru this,” she said. “What an incredible opportunity! Thanks, Hunter!!”
In another email exchange shortly after the Obama-Biden administration concluded, Hunter suggested that Chung come work at his company. It does not appear that she ever joined Hunter’s company.
Hunter Biden tells Kathy Chung she should work for him in February 2017, adding that he can “make everyone money.” (Fox News)
Chung made headlines in January after she was reportedly questioned by federal investigators as part of the probe into the president’s handling of classified documents.
Ron Klain
Biden’s former White House chief of staff, Ron Klain, who stepped down in February, previously served as the chief of staff for Vice President Biden until the end of January 2011. In September 2012, Klain reached out to Hunter for help in raising $20,000 for the Vice President’s Residence Foundation (VPRF), telling him to “keep this low low key” to prevent “bad PR,” according to emails Fox News Digital previously reported on.
“The tax lawyers for the VP Residence Foundation have concluded that since the Cheney folks last raised money in 2007 and not 2008, we actually have to have some incoming funds before the end of this fiscal year (i.e., before 9/30/12 – next week) to remain eligible to be a ‘public charity,'” Klain, who had left his chief of staff position in Vice President Biden’s office a year earlier but was the foundation’s chairman at the time, said in an email to Hunter.
“It’s not much – we need to raise a total of $20,000 – so I’m hitting up a few very close friends on a very confidential basis to write checks of $2,000 each,” Klain continued. “We need to keep this low low key, because raising money for the Residence now is bad PR – but it has to be done, so I’m trying to just collect the 10 checks of $2,000, get it done in a week, and then, we can do an event for the Residence Foundation after the election.”
Hunter then forwarded the email to Schwerin, who helped manage a majority of Hunter’s finances, and the two discussed donating to the foundation, though it’s not clear what was ultimately decided.
Klain’s career with Biden dates back to his failed presidential campaign in 1988 and serving as counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Former White House chief of staff Ron Klain (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
Elizabeth Alexander
Elizabeth Alexander, the communications director for first lady Jill Biden who went on temporary leave in May to help lead the messaging arm of Biden’s re-election campaign, also has ties to Hunter.
In 2014, Alexander, who served as Biden’s spokesperson when he was a senator and the vice president, reached out to praise Hunter for his statement after he was kicked out of Navy Reserve for testing positive for cocaine.
“Hey Hunter – just wanted to write you a quick note to say David and I are thinking of you,” she wrote in an email. “Your statement was perfect and gracious. Sending you a virtual hug from both of us and hoping you can get some peace this weekend.”
Alexander is married to David Wade, a former State Department staffer who helped advise Hunter with rapid response as he was receiving increased public scrutiny regarding his lucrative position with Burisma.
Emails uncovered by Fox News Digital last month showed Hunter’s firm, Rosemont Seneca Partners, was paying Wade for communications consulting, and he strategized with Hunter and his partners on how to respond to inquiries by the Wall Street Journal and New York Times.
Wade has visited the White House at least five times during Biden’s presidency, according to visitor logs.
Annie Tomasini
Annie Tomasini, an assistant to the president and the current director of Oval Office operations, was in frequent communication with Hunter, referred to him as her “brother” and often ended her emails with “LY” for “love you,” according to emails dating from 2010 to 2016.
Biden publicly announced on Dec. 20, 2010, that Tomasini was stepping down to take a position with Harvard University, and Tomasini kept Hunter clued in on the details of that position before she took it, according to emails. The month prior, on Nov. 19, 2010, she forwarded information to Hunter about Harvard’s employee benefits and added, “Thanks.”
Annie Tomasini, director of Oval Office operations, left, follows President Biden on the South Lawn of the White House before boarding Marine One on May 17, 2023. (Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
“Hey – I looked at benefits And they look pretty amazing. Any word on comp?” Hunter responded on Nov. 23, 2010.
“I’ll keep you posted. Thanks for looking at all the background Hunt,” Tomasini replied.
Tomasini was offered the job on Nov. 30, 2010, writing to Hunter, “Director of intergovernmental relations. > 120k ish – may be a little higher.”
She later thanked him and said she was going to tell his father the news. Months later, Hunter gave a speech at Harvard, but not before running the draft by Tomasini first.
Tomasini has accompanied Biden and Hunter to Camp David twice in the past few weeks.
Michael Donilon, a current senior adviser to Biden who served as his chief campaign strategist in 2020, was on dozens of emails with Hunter and other members of Biden’s inner circle coordinating strategy meetings throughout the 2012 campaign, mulling over a 2016 presidential bid, and later plotting Biden’s endeavors post-vice presidency.
In August 2015, Schwerin shared a Politico article with Hunter that says Donilon and a few other advisers from Biden’s inner circle, including Hunter, are the only ones “involved in the real decision-making.”
An email from February 2016 showed that Hunter, Donilon and a few others were also involved in the planning stages for the Biden Foundation. And shortly after Biden left office in 2017, Hunter, Donilon and others in his inner circle were invited to a meeting at Biden’s residence in McLean, Virginia, according to emails.
Days later Hunter, Donilon and several others were invited to a meeting at Biden’s Wilmington, Delaware, home where classified documents were recently discovered. The meeting took place on Feb. 7, 2017, the same day it was announced that the former vice president would be leading the Penn Biden Center at the University of Pennsylvania, where classified documents were also found, and the Biden Institute at the University of Delaware.
Donilon accompanied Biden a few months ago on the trip to Ireland, which included Hunter and Biden’s sister, Valerie Biden Owens.
Steve Ricchetti
Steve Ricchetti, who currently serves as Biden’s White House counselor, was also on dozens of emails with Hunter dealing with strategy meetings and helping Biden with post-VP life.
Fox News Digital reported last year that Schwerin visited the White House at least eight times in 2016, meeting with Ricchetti at least twice when he was serving as Biden’s chief of staff.
Morell, the former CIA deputy director who testified in April, said he received a call in October 2020 from Ricchetti, who was serving as the chairman of Biden’s campaign at the time, following the final debate against then-President Donald Trump, when Biden said the Hunter laptop was a “Russian plant” and a “bunch of garbage.”
Morell said the call from Ricchetti was to thank him for spearheading the letter signed by intelligence officials that tried to debunk the laptop.
Steve Ricchetti, counselor to the president, gestures after playing a round of golf with President Biden at Wilmington Country Club in Delaware on April 17, 2021. (Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images)
Louisa Terrell
Louisa Terrell, who is serving as assistant to the president and the director of the Office of Legislative Affairs, communicated with Hunter dozens of times during the Obama-Biden administration, with some of the correspondence including Schwerin on the emails.
In February 2014, Terrell emailed Hunter and Schwerin, saying, “So nice to catch up over lunch – thank you. Enjoy the snow day and talk soon.”
Louisa Terrell, White House legislative affairs director, walks with Steve Ricchetti to a House Democrat caucus meeting at the U.S. Capitol on May 31, 2023. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
Another email chain from late 2014 through early 2015 shows that she reached out to Hunter for help in getting her daughter into Sidwell Friends School, one of the most expensive and elite PK-12 schools in the country, which includes both of former President Obama’s daughters and some of Biden’s grandchildren as alumni.
“Thank you for agreeing to speak with Sidwell about Olivia’s application to next year’s 7th grade class. I recognize how busy you are and appreciate you making the time to chime in with Bryan,” Terrell said in February 2015. “Below is some logistical information and some background on why Olivia is a good fit for Sidwell. Let me know if this is helpful and/or you need some additional information.”
“[Bryan] was very cordial/ nice – sent me two emails – one saying he received my message and email and a second that was more personal acknowledging that he also spoke to Chris and others who had weighed in on behalf of Olivia and he hopes it all works out etc…” Hunter said. “Very nice – looking forward to having dinner sometime soon – but didn’t give any thing up in the way of real information.”
Less than two weeks later, Terrell emailed Hunter saying her daughter got into Sidwell and added, “Thank you so so much for your help. I hope you know how much I appreciate it. Thank you, thank you!”
Terrell has worked for Biden going back as early as 2001 and served a two-year stint as executive director at the Biden Foundation, according to her LinkedIn profile.
The White House, Biden’s campaign and Hunter Biden’s lawyer did not respond to Fox News Digital’s requests for comment.
Fox News’ Joe Schoffstall and Thomas Catenacci contributed to this report.
Jessica Chasmar is a digital writer on the politics team for Fox News and Fox Business. Story tips can be sent to Jessica.Chasmar@fox.com.
The overwhelming feeling at the Moms for Liberty conference in Philadelphia last weekend was joyfulness, which is interesting for an organization that was started and stoked in 2021 by so much anger and outrage at our education system.
The paradox is fructive, both in that it shows us how the group so quickly became the new grassroots of the conservative movement, and why their message has been so persuasive.
On the two floors of the elegant hotel where the event took place were to be seen bright floral dresses mixed with hugs and laughter as attendees met and mingled. Many it appeared were experiencing that oh-so-modern phenomenon of meeting a social media friend for the first time in real life.
There was also something of a secretive nature to the affair as, for example, the media, for the most part, were not allowed into the breakout sessions where strategy was discussed, but can you really blame them for this?
2024 presidential candidate gives remarks at Moms for Liberty’s Joyful Warriors National Summit in Philadelphia on June 30, 2023. (Fox News Photo/Joshua Comins)
Take an incident earlier this month when a local chapter in Florida used a quote from Adolf Hitler, disapprovingly obviously, to show the dangers of the government indoctrinating children. The left and their media allies piled on with a bizarre and ridiculous claim that Moms for Liberty supports the ideology of Hitler. At best this take is insane, at worst it is malicious and politically driven. When I asked the chair of that Florida chapter what she made of the backlash, she smiled, shook her head and said, “They just lie.”
And this really is the crux of the problem. Much of the left has decided that certain conversations touching on identity simply cannot be had, even if that conversation is central to public policy. Perfectly reasonable positions, like not exposing young children to sexually explicit images are forbidden, leaving frustrated, often furious parents powerless to have a say in their kids’ education. The members of Moms for Liberty I spoke to simply will not accept this. They do not accept that worrying about your kids is hatred.
The organization spread like wildfire all over the country to now include 285 chapters in 44 states with over 120,000 members working to unify, educate and empower parents to defend their parental rights at all levels of government. (Courtesy of Moms for Liberty)
This is the crucible in which Moms for Liberty was founded by Tina Descovitch, Tiffany Justice and Bridget Zeigler, who two years ago fought back, first against lockdown measures, but then also against the curriculums in public schools that push critical race theory and gender ideology.
It was a strange side effect of COVID that no expert could have predicted, a fever spreading across the moms and dads of America as in-person education was being ripped away from their kids, and as the far left cultural messages from school flowed into living rooms on Zoom calls. A phenomenon cited by several attendees I chatted with.
One woman I spoke with had been a teacher for decades but gave it up when she realized that fighting from inside wouldn’t work, that she was not able to do her job under the rules imposed by her school district. It reflected a general attitude that change had to come the education system’s top, or at least its middle management.
Many of the moms and dads I spoke with had run for their local school boards in states from Florida to Pennsylvania and Indiana to name just a few. When I asked one woman how her chapter of Moms for Liberty operates, she told me, “We mainly organize around local elections, that’s where change happens.”
2024 presidential candidate gives remarks at Moms for Liberty’s Joyful Warriors National Summit in Philadelphia on June 30, 2023. (Fox News Photo/Joshua Comins)
This hyper-focus on the local was evident in how little talk there seemed to be about the 2024 GOP nomination, even at a conference that had impressively drawn almost all the major figures in the race, Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis, Vivek Ramaswamy and Nikki Haley. The general attitude I heard was that most people liked all of them. Indeed, it was telling that the candidates seemed more interested in Moms for Liberty than Moms for Liberty was about the candidates. It’s a testament to the truly remarkable amount of political power they have amassed in such short order.
As is generally the case at such conferences, the chattiest and friendliest people were to be found in the small smoking area just to the left of the Downtown Marriott’s entrance. In this instance, it had the added value of being within the din and flashing rainbows of the protesters, who made their mayhem, in modest numbers, all three days. Here among the drums and shouting, the sweating anger of young communists in love with their own voices, I asked a question I would pose to dozens of attendees, “When these people call you a Nazi, or White supremacist, or fascist, does that hurt? Does it take an emotional toll on you, especially since this is face-to-face, not disembodied Twitter?”
Many were stoic, I heard a lot of, “water off a duck’s back” or “badge of honor,” but not all. Some admitted that it did hurt, especially at first, that having such vile rhetoric hurled at them did have an impact. And why should it not? Why would an assault of slurs from the left at the right be any less emotionally harmful than the other way around? Of course, it hurt. But as one woman told me, “I know I’m not any of those things, and I just pray for the protesters.”
Speaking of those protesters, they were, for the most part, that strange kind of political activist who tries to shut down anyone covering them and their message. When you do find someone willing to be interviewed it is thwarted almost immediately by black bloc Antifa types who block your camera. On the rare occasion when you snag a minute or two with a protester, the answers as to what exactly they are protesting are an inchoate regurgitation of lies and exaggerations from the mainstream media.
“They are an official hate group!” “They hate gay and trans people!” “They are banning books!” When you ask what books they are opposed to giving to young children you get met with a blank stare.
Protesters descend on Philadelphia as former President Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis give remarks at ‘Moms for Liberty”s ‘Joyful Warriors National Summit’. (Fox News Photo/Joshua Comins)
One older man I spoke to was a perfect embodiment of this. His sign called Moms for Liberty fascists. I said, “Why do you think they are fascists?” He said I should ask his wife, who wasn’t there, because she is a librarian. I persisted, basically saying, “If you’re calling someone a fascist shouldn’t you at least know why?” “Again,” he replied, “she knows more about it.”
This is doubtless the attitude that many in the mainstream had as they covered the conference. You could see the suspicion in their eyes as media credentials were picked up. After all, this was a real live hate group, right? The journalists were ready to expose the bigots. But a funny thing happened on the way to the hit piece. As these mainstream media journalists actually talked to the moms, had real conversations with them instead of judging them based on angry school board meeting clips and fabulism from the Southern Poverty Law Center, they didn’t have much bad to say. The progressive Media Matters went so far as to send a reporter undercover, posing as an attendee. But instead of exposing the dark underbelly of a hate group, the would-be Woodward or Bernstein spent most of her expose discussing the food. Seriously.
Jennifer Pippin, president of the Indian River County chapter of Moms for Liberty, attends a campaign event in Vero Beach, Florida on Oct. 16, 2022. (Giorgio Viera)
This comically induced its own backlash as leftists criticized the coverage for normalizing the group. Progressive influencer George Takai reacted to one ABC News tweet calling the moms “joyful warriors,” with “WTF are you doing normalizing these fascists?” The tweet was deleted because ABC News is cowardly, but the message it sent is clear.
When Moms for Liberty is given a free and fair platform, when people actually hear them out instead of hurling insults at them, their message is effective. It resonates, even with those predisposed to oppose them, and obviously, the vociferous critics and protesters know this too.
During one protest a leader of the Young Communists took to the microphone to say, “There is no room for these conversations in Philadelphia,” and that really summed it up. These leftists aren’t afraid of the conversation because it’s harmful or legitimizing. They are afraid because their own arguments don’t stand up.
They will never tell you why a first-grader should be looking at a book with images of oral sex, because it isn’t actually defensible.
At the end of the day, and the end of the conference, this is why Moms for Liberty is winning. With charming smiles and well-kept hair they stay on target, confident that their message of protecting children can and will win the day if they get an honest fight.
The greatest contribution that Moms for Liberty has made in its brief existence is not just demanding to ask important questions, demanding that progressives answer them, but also giving millions of Americans across the nation the courage and backup to do the same. One got the sense these three days in the nation’s birthplace that this organization is just getting started, that its righteous fire is spreading fast, and that anyone trying to get between them and their kids should know they won’t stop fighting until that threat is gone.
VILNIUS, Lithuania — NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said Turkey President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has agreed to send Sweden’s NATO accession protocol to the Turkish Parliament “as soon as possible.” Stoltenberg made the announcement after talks with Erdogan and Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson on the eve of a NATO summit in Lithuania. Sweden’s NATO accession has been held up by objections from Turkey since last year.
Earlier Monday, Erdogan said his country might approve Sweden’s membership in NATO if European Union nations “open the way” to Turkey’s bid to join the EU. It was the first time that Erdogan linked his country’s ambition to join the EU with Sweden’s efforts to become a NATO member.
Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
A federal judge in Louisiana denied a request by the Biden administration to delay an order he imposed last week banning federal officials from communicating with social media companies, Bloomberg reported.
U.S. District Court Judge Terry Doughty on Monday refused to pause his July 4 nationwide injunction blocking multiple government agencies and administration officials from meeting with or contacting social media companies for the purpose of “encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner the removal, deletion, suppression, or reduction of content containing protected free speech.”
WHY WOULD THE BIDEN ADMINISTRATION, AND THEIR PUPPET MASTERS, WANT THE COURT TO STAY THIS ORDER? Only nefarious motivations want a stay. Is it just me, or are they no longer concerned about being blatant with their cheating?
Doughty, nominated to the federal bench by then-President Donald Trump, also denied the government’s alternative request for a seven-day pause while it petitions the appeals court to step in.
The Justice Department is expected to ask the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to intervene, Bloomberg reported. DOJ had insisted that Doughty’s order was broad and unclear in defining what kind of communication with tech companies is no longer allowed.
The judge responded by saying the government isn’t entitled to a delay in enforcing his order since they were likely to lose on the merits of the case, Bloomberg reported. Doughty added that DOJ failed to identify specific examples of government activity that would be hurt in the meantime.
“[The injunction] it is not as broad as it appears,” Doughty wrote in the order. “It only prohibits something the Defendants have no legal right to do — contacting social media companies for the purpose of urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner, the removal, deletion, suppression, or reduction of content containing protected free speech posted on social-media platforms. It also contains numerous exceptions.”
Doughty last week ruled the government likely violated the First Amendment in its efforts to persuade tech companies to take steps to limit the spread of misinformation and fake accounts, especially during the pandemic. The Biden administration wants the ban put on hold while it challenges the judge’s 155-page opinion.
Doughty’s order bars many agencies and their employees from “urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing” social media companies to remove or restrict content covered by the First Amendment’s free speech protections. The judge included exceptions for communications about criminal activity, national security threats, election integrity issues, and other “permissible public government speech,” Bloomberg reported.
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.
In a preliminary injunction issued against the White House and federal agencies on Tuesday in Missouri v. Biden, Judge Terry Doughty eviscerated government actors for colluding with social media companies to censor users’ protected speech in the name of eliminating “misinformation.”
Doughty, as others have done, compares the government censorship to Orwell’s hypothetical “Ministry of Truth.” But Orwell’s satirical title gives the speech police too much credit: It assumes “truth” is still a functional part of their vocabulary. No, our censors speak in terms of “misinformation.”
The perversion of truth is falsehood; misinformation is just the perversion of information. Truth has a moral component; information doesn’t. Years of moral relativism have eroded our cultural understanding of “truth” as a knowable, agreed-upon concept — and in our modern world, all we’re left with is an infinite supply of information.
Truth, Discerned in Nature by Reason
For most of Western history, philosophers and laymen alike have agreed upon the existence of “truth,” as a factual concept but also as a moral one. Plato said the “true philosophers” were those “who are lovers of the vision of truth,” which he described in terms of an ideal reality that transcended the imperfect reflections of truth, goodness, and beauty in the natural world. Similarly, Cicero believed in the existence of a natural law that could be understood via man’s reason.
Christianity describes the law being written on the hearts of men in similar terms, and presents the good, true, and beautiful as originating from and perfectly fulfilled in the triune God. The Bible refers to Christ as the Logos, the Word of God — a term closely associated with wisdom, reason, and truth. Elsewhere, Christ describes himself as “the way, and the truth, and the life.”
As Christianity and Greek thought spread throughout the West, an emphasis on the comprehension of truth via reason took root. Presuppositions about rational thought and laws of nature spawned mathematic, scientific, and artistic advancements, most famously during the Renaissance. A few centuries later, Enlightenment thinkers began to break away from the theistic grounding of the Western pursuit of truth, elevating reason alone as a sufficient basis for a functioning society. Modernism rejected the Enlightenment obsession with reason, as the booming industrial world sought to overcome nature and its laws and limits. As religious foundations continued to crumble, relativism emerged and completely unmoored itself from traditional assumptions about objective and knowable truth.
Today, we see factual relativism as well as moral. Not only does our prevailing social ethic tolerate individuals’ self-determination of “what’s right for me,” we’ve gone so far as to nod along when a man says he is actually a woman, lacking the philosophical footing to explain why that simply can’t be true.
To “speak your truth,” as distinct from the truth, is a moral victory to be praised according to our prevalent irrational dogma. Our cultural rejection of reason is evident in every field: Look at the deconstructionist sculptures and poetry that pass for art, or the assault on the fixed, rational rules of mathematics.
In this cultural condition, people are no longer equipped to speak in terms of truth, grounded in the divinely appointed laws of nature, discernible by human reason. Those concepts aren’t in our contemporary vocabulary.
“What’s right for me.” “Speak your truth.” These are samples of a culture that rejects all authority except their own. Self-centered, selfish, insecure, afraid of normal society, and moral laws they create their own world with cliches, beliefs, and a language that supports their self-created world. They are a spiritual, and natural law unto themselves.
Rather than blind themselves into society, their self-centered egos demand sociaity change just for them, adapt their language and definition to theirs, and respect their decisions or else they’ll shame you, or bully you (riots and violent demonstrations) into submission.
This is what happened with the homosexual lobby in the beginning of all this mess going back to the 60’s, 70’s, 80’s and 90’s. The bully has made a lot of progress. Now they are so bold that they don’t care we know what they are doing in indoctrinating our children recruiting them into homosexuality. With the help of Margrett Sangers disciples of birth control, they are sterilizing our children through this trans garbage getting children to sterilize themselves through sex change surgeries. Welcome to 2023 Liberalism Psychotics.
Truth Isn’t Fragile, But Regime-Approved Narratives Are
In granting the preliminary injunction, Judge Doughty explains: “It is the purpose of the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment to preserve an uninhibited marketplace of ideas in which truth will ultimately prevail, rather than to countenance monopolization of the market, whether it be by government itself or private licensee.”
The essential context and goal of meaningful free speech — a world in which ideas are debated openly so that truth may triumph — is no longer feasible when ideas cease to be judged on their merits and are instead judged by the intensity with which a person feels them to be true.
When there is no longer an agreed-upon concept of “truth,” ideas are reduced to those with which you agree and those you don’t. When you can’t rely on your ideas to endure simply because they’re true, contradictory perspectives and ideas become more of a threat.
Enter the pervasive concept of “misinformation.” It’s not a new term — Noah Webster defined it in 1828 as “false account or intelligence received.” The very idea of “misinformation” as it was understood in Webster’s time was basically a photonegative of truth: One could be misinformed, but the “false account” could be understood to be false precisely because it contradicted something true.
But in a post-rational world, “misinformation” means something else. One of the government bureaucrats accused in Missouri v. Biden of working to censor Americans admitted as much, in a very un-self-aware statement: “CISA Director Easterly stated: ‘We live in a world where people talk about alternative facts, post-truth, which I think is really, really dangerous if people get to pick their own facts,’” according to Doughty.
Of course, if everyone is picking his own facts, the government doing so is no different. As Doughty concluded, “The Free Speech Clause was enacted to prohibit just what Director Easterly is wanting to do: allow the government to pick what is true and what is false.” If there is no ultimate truth, then all that’s left is the prevailing narrative and information that challenges that narrative: misinformation. Government censors can make an appeal to reported facts or scientific studies, but man is ultimately fallible and those conclusions have no grounding if they are rooted in no higher law than the men who derive them.
That’s because truth is inseparable from goodness. It’s more than sterile informational accuracy — to be true is to reflect the created order that is ultimately good because its Creator is goodness Himself.
Man possesses the knowledge of good and evil, and it cost him dearly. Until we admit the language of goodness — and its opposite — back into our cultural vocabulary, we’ll be vainly squabbling over “misinformation,” and the most powerful actors will get to define it.
Elle Purnell is an assistant editor at The Federalist, and received her B.A. in government from Patrick Henry College with a minor in journalism. Follow her work on Twitter @_etreynolds.
Rep. Morgan Griffith, R-Va., introduced legislation earlier this week ensuring that only eligible U.S. citizens are able to vote in federal elections.
Titled the “NO VOTE for Non-Citizens Act of 2023,” the proposed bill includes amendments to the 1993 National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) and 2002 Help America Vote Act that seek to clarify states’ authority in maintaining federal voter registration lists and establish that federal election funding cannot be “used to support States that permit non-citizens to cast ballots in any election.”
Under the NVRA, states are required to “ensur[e] the maintenance of an accurate and current voter registration roll for elections for Federal office.” The current version of the law, however, only refers to “eligible voters” and does not include a provision about citizenship requirements.
While the Constitution and federal law stipulate that only U.S. citizens can vote in federal elections, several Democrat-led cities in states such as Maryland and California have adopted measures in recent years permitting the practice for their respective municipal elections. In October, for instance, Washington, D.C. passed legislation granting foreign nationals the ability to vote in the district’s local elections. House Republicans’ efforts to revoke the law have been blocked by Senate Democrats.
“Since the Constitution prohibits non-citizens from voting in Federal elections, such ineligible persons must not be permitted to be placed on Federal voter registration lists,” the NO VOTE for Non-Citizens Act reads.
In order to ensure noncitizens aren’t voting in federal elections, Griffith’s bill includes a provision requiring states that permit localities to allow noncitizen voting in their respective elections to place such non-citizens on a voter registration list “separate from the official list of eligible voters with respect to registrants who are citizens of the United States.” The measure further mandates “the ballot used for the casting of votes by a noncitizen in such State or local jurisdiction may only include the candidates for the elections for public office in the State or local jurisdiction for which the noncitizen is permitted to vote.”
While Congress does not possess the authority to manage state and local elections, it can control federal funding that is allocated to these jurisdictions for the purposes of election administration. Griffith’s bill seeks to utilize this authority by reducing any federal payments issued to a state or locality that permits noncitizen voting by 30 percent and prohibiting them from using funds for certain “election administration activities.”
“One of the rights and privileges granted in the U.S Constitution is an American citizen’s ability to vote in our country’s federal elections,” Griffith said in a statement. “If non-citizens are allowed to vote in our federal elections, it could invite foreign interference and dilute the voice of American citizens. The NO VOTE for Non-Citizens Act upholds Americans’ right to vote, preserving our great democracy.”
Shawn Fleetwood is a staff writer for The Federalist and a graduate of the University of Mary Washington. He previously served as a state content writer for Convention of States Action and his work has been featured in numerous outlets, including RealClearPolitics, RealClearHealth, and Conservative Review. Follow him on Twitter @ShawnFleetwood
A preliminary injunction issued Tuesday by U.S. District Judge Terry A. Doughty explicitly prohibits the White House and several federal agencies from violating the First Amendment by directing social media companies to censor Americans.
Up to and even after the injunction’s release, Democrats have insisted that any suggestion the federal government is colluding with Big Tech to censor conservatives (or pretty much any information inconvenient to the current administration) is a “conspiracy” theory. However, in his injunction, Judge Doughty cited shocking evidence that the deep state’s collusion with Big Tech is very much real. Here are 12 of the dozens of damning instances cited by the judge that demonstrate the severity of our government’s illegal partnership with Big Tech.
1. White House Orders RFK Tweet Removal ‘ASAP’
On Jan. 23, 2021, the White House requested Twitter remove a tweet by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. that was critical of Covid-19 vaccines. “Hey folks-Wanted to flag the below tweet and am wondering if we can get moving on the process of having it removed ASAP,” wrote a Biden official. The White House also expressed a desire to “keep an eye out for tweets that fall in this same genre.”
2. White House Requests ‘Immediate’ Ban On Biden Family Member Parody Account
On Feb. 6, 2021, the White House asked Twitter to ban a “parody account linked to Finnegan Biden, Hunter Biden’s daughter and President Biden’s granddaughter.”
“Cannot stress the degree to which this needs to be resolved immediately,” the official wrote to Twitter. “Please remove this account immediately.” The account was banned within 45 minutes, Doughty noted.
3. Twitter Streamlines White House Censorship Requests
On Feb. 7, 2021, Twitter provided the White House with a “Twitter’s Partner Support Portal” that, according to the injunction, “expedited review of flagging content for censorship.” The portal was created because Twitter felt overwhelmed by the large volume of censorship requests coming from the White House and wanted to both prioritize and expedite the administration’s requests.
4. Twitter Promises White House It Will Boost Censorship
On March 1, 2021, after a meeting with White House officials about “misinformation,” Twitter sent a follow-up email promising that it would do more to suppress “misleading information.”
“Thanks again for meeting with us today. As we discussed, we are building on ‘our’ continued efforts to remove the most harmful COVID-19 ‘misleading information’ from the service,” Twitter wrote.
5. Facebook Fulfills White House’s Covid Censorship Requests
Sometime between May and July, a “senior Meta executive” sent emails to White House officials, letting them know that Meta was fulfilling White House “requests” to censor alleged Covid-19 misinformation. The email also said Meta was “expand[ing] penalties” for “Facebook accounts that share misinformation.”
“We think there is considerably more we can do in ‘partnership’ with you and your team to drive behavior,” Meta wrote.
6. Facebook Agrees to More Sweeping White House Covid Vaccine Censorship Demands
On March 21, 2021, Facebook sent an email to the White House recapping a March 19 in-person meeting during which the Biden administration apparently “demanded a consistent point of contact with Facebook, additional data from Facebook, ‘Levers for Tackling Vaccine Hesitancy Content,’ and censorship policies for Meta’s platform WhatsApp.” In response, according to Doughty, Facebook said it was “censoring, removing, and reducing the virality of” anti-vaccine content “that does not contain actionable misinformation.”
7. Facebook Shadowbans Vaccine Content on WhatsApp at Behest of White House
In the same aforementioned email, Facebook also agreed to shadowban anti-Covid vaccine content on Meta-owned WhatsApp. “As you know, in addition to removing vaccine misinformation, we have been focused on reducing the virality of content discouraging vaccines that do not contain actionable misinformation,” the Big Tech company explained.
8. Facebook Boosts White House’s Vaccine Propaganda
On April 13, 2021, the White House asked Facebook multiple times to “amplify” pro-vaccine messaging in the wake of a “temporary halt” of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine. “Re the J & J news, we’re keen to amplify any messaging you want us to project about what this means for people,” Facebook wrote back.
9. White House Demands Censorship of Tucker Carlson Post
On April 14, 2021, a White House official emailed a Facebook executive inquiring into why a Tucker Carlson post with an “anti-vax message” had not been censored. Facebook responded, stating that while the post did not violate community guidelines, it was being “demoted.” Another White House official, unsatisfied with the shadowbanning since Carlson’s post had garnered 40,000 shares, wrote an email demanding an explanation from Facebook. The official also apparently directly called a Facebook executive. Facebook subsequently assured the White House that the video was given a “50% demotion for seven days and stated that it would continue to demote the video.”
10. Twitter Deplatforms Alex Berenson After White House Calls Him ‘Epicenter of Disinfo’
On April 21, officials from the White House and the Department of Health and Human Services met with Twitter for a “Twitter Vaccine Misinfo Briefing.” During the meeting, White House officials “wanted to know” why journalist Alex Berenson had not been “kicked off” Twitter, calling him “the epicenter of disinfo that radiated outwards to the persuadable public.” Berenson was later suspended and eventually deplatformed.
11. Facebook Appeases White House Censorship Demands to Get Back in Biden’s ‘Good Graces’
In July 2021, after intense public and internal pressure from White House officials, including Press Secretary Jen Psaki and President Joe Biden himself, Facebook waged a mass censorship campaign against the “Disinformation Dozen” and anyone connected to them. The “Disinformation Dozen” are 12 users (one of whom is RFK Jr.) who were apparently responsible for the majority of anti-vaccine content. Around that same time, a Facebook official asked one of Biden’s senior advisers for ways to “get back into the White House’s good graces,” adding that Facebook and the White House were “100% on the same team here in fighting this.”
12. White House Successfully Pressures Twitter to Remove Jill Biden Parody Video
On Nov. 30, 2021, the White House emailed Twitter to flag an edited video of First Lady Jill Biden “profanely heckling children while reading to them,” according to the injunction. In response, Twitter slapped a label on the video, warning that it had been “edited for comedic effect.” However, that wasn’t enough for the White House. After several back and forths that included the first lady’s press secretary, Twitter removed the video in December 2021.
The above list is only the tip of the iceberg. The Biden administration’s colossal war on the First Amendment includes an even wider range of targets, such as the Hunter Biden laptop story, the lab-leak theory, anyone who questions the integrity of the 2020 election, anyone who questions the security of voting by mail, anyone who questions climate change, pro-lifers, people who believe in the sex binary, negative posts about the economy, and general criticism of the president. “If the allegations made by Plaintiffs are true, the present case arguably involves the most massive attack against free speech in United States’ history,” wrote Judge Doughty.
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.
“Sound of Freedom” follows the true story of Special Agent Tim Ballard who specialized in catching
sex criminals, particularly in regard to the exploitation of children on the internet. But Tim is challenged early in the film by the seeming futility of catching criminals when real children’s lives are at stake. Years of looking at the darkest side of humanity has broken his heart to pieces, and the only way he can see to rebuild his humanity is by liberating the lost and forgotten victims of the sex trafficking network. He goes on a quest to South America to do just that.
Jim Caviezel plays Ballard. His classic no-frills acting approach is perfect for this role. Caviezel is best known for playing Jesus in Mel Gibson’s controversial “The Passion of the Christ.” He brings the same level of intensity and compassion from this role to Ballard’s story. In fact, Ballard’s mission to seek and save lost children is a distinctly Christian value based on the theological principle that each child is uniquely beloved by God.
When Jesus said, “Let the little children come to me,” he was making a revolutionary claim. Children, the most vulnerable and dependent members of society, had a special place in his kingdom. They mattered to him in a way that no other religious founder has ever envisioned. The faith of a child was the type of faith Jesus wanted from his followers — one free from the pollution and cynicism of adulthood, one of total dependence on their Heavenly Father.
These values aren’t universally understood and accepted. Ballard’s story is proof of that. According to the movie, the child sex industry brings in $150 billion dollars every year. This industry is powerful and is not nearly as niche as we would like to think it is. While its visible activists are milquetoast perverts we can easily jail, the invisible perpetrators are the ones who do the real damage — the cartels, drug lords, and even our own politicians enable the child sexual slavery that is more prominent now than ever before.
At the end of the film, Caviezel addresses the viewers and makes the point that this story isn’t about a movie production or even about Ballard. It’s about the children — lost, invisible children who suffer in the depths of hell every single day. While the rich and powerful try to indoctrinate us with critical race theory and other ideological moralisms, true victims suffer in literal cages and chains.
The children are by far the best and worst part of this film. The two lead child actors are heart-wrenchingly perfect — a brother and sister who have been ripped apart by this evil industry. I’ve never seen such realistic and effective acting from children. Thankfully, the film only ever implies the atrocious things that are done to them, but in some ways that makes it even more disturbing. Our imaginations torture us, and they should torture us on this issue — more than visual depictions could.
And that is what makes the child acting simultaneously the worst thing about this film. All the children seem like genuine children. None of them look like actors — they are presented to us with complete realism. If you have anything even resembling a conscience, watching these children is an utter tragedy. It is painful to see their pain on full display.
This film might not depict anything visually distasteful, but it is not for the weak-hearted and is difficult to watch. It is honest about what this world is and does. I heard crying throughout the entire theater audience — it is beyond moving. At the end of the film, I wanted to clap, but it felt inappropriate. It was similar to watching “Schindler’s List.” What exactly are we celebrating by clapping for films like this? The heroism I suppose, but it doesn’t feel right. Silent repose seemed to be the most appropriate response.
The film itself is magnificently produced. The direction by Mexican filmmaker Alejandro Monteverde is fantastic and is tonally similar to the brilliant “Sicario.” However, the best part of the production is the score. It is full of the voices of children, which gives voice both to the lament of evil and the hope in the midst of it. And despite the pain, there is much hope in this film.
Children have been freed from chains due to the efforts of people like Ballard. That hope should inspire us all to action. We cannot act out of guilt or shame that we have not done more already. Instead, we must move forward in the hope that justice will be brought to this evil. It is possible to seek and save those who are lost.
During his message in the credits, Caviezel explains that “Sound of Freedom” is supposed to call a sleeping nation to seek justice for the oppressed. The United States is actually one of the largest consumers of child sex trafficking — a large part of the responsibility is in our own backyard.
So what can we do about it? First and foremost make sure people see this film. Angel Productions has even provided free tickets online. This story can change people’s hearts and inspire them to do something about child slavery. It is a call to action.
Early on in the film, Caviezel looks at a pedophile he’s using to try to find some of the lost children, and he quotes Jesus: “If anyone causes these little ones to stumble, it would be better for them if a millstone were hung around their neck.”
The current culture war is all about children. Children are the most important thing in the world. We cannot allow our world to be dominated by child sexual abuse. We must help. To quote the film, “God’s children are not for sale.”
A.C. Gleason is a proud alumnus of Biola University and Talbot Seminary. He teaches philosophy full-time. His writing has appeared in numerous outlets including Hollywood in Toto, The Daily Wire, and The Imaginative Conservative.
Tucker Carlson says he “doesn’t know” why he was fired by Fox News but that he isn’t angry about it.
“Honestly, I don’t know,” Carlson said during an appearance Friday on actor Russell Brand’s podcast, “Stay Free,” the TV host’s first public interview since being fired by Fox in April. “They didn’t agree with me, of course, I don’t think.”
“It’s not the first time I’ve been fired … when you say what you think there’s an expectation you can get fired. I didn’t expect to get fired that morning at all, so I was shocked. But I wasn’t really shocked … I wasn’t mad,” he added.
“The only thing that bothers me? I’m 54. When you get a little bit older … you can lose your drive … It’s a little bit too nice,” he said of his extended vacation in Maine filled with fishing and late breakfasts. “My only fear has been … being a little bit too happy.”
Carlson during the wide-ranging interview also discussed the 2024 presidential election, electronic voting machines, the Jan. 6 Capitol incident, President Joe Biden’s immigration policies, and his new broadcasts on Twitter.
“Trump is the only person … who is saying: ‘Wait a second. You know, why are we supporting an endless war in Ukraine?'” he said of Trump’s criticism of the U.S.’s involvement.
“All I can say at this point is I’m so grateful that he has that position. He’s right. And everyone in Washington is wrong, everyone,” Carlson continued.
“Trump is right on that question … the war is reshaping the world. It’s reshaping the economy of the world. It’s reshaping populations,” he went on. “Later, Carlson said that U.S. had an unique power to force a peace in the conflict, but the powers that be refuse to do so.”
On immigration, Carlson said the Biden administration’s approach to the issue is “designed to wreck the country and make it unstable.”
“I’m not against immigrants, that’s insane. The way the U.S. is doing immigration is designed to wreck the country … and add to racial division which I hate because it’s not solvable. Our leaders not only want racial conflict but are stoking it,” he said.
He also said he was “hurt” the first time he was called a white supremacist.
The interview comes a week after Fox News paid $12 million to settle a former producer’s lawsuit claiming that Carlson’s show was an abusive place to work.
Tucker Carlson on why he chose to launch his show on Twitter: “I’m not working for Elon Musk… what he’s done is offered me is what he’s offered every other user at Twitter which is a chance to broadcast your views without a gatekeeper” pic.twitter.com/NySormlv18
Special counsel Jack Smith, the prosecutor behind the indictment of former President Donald Trump and the investigation into sensitive national security documents being kept at his Mar-a-Lago home in Florida, has spent more than $9 million since taking on the assignment late last year, according to Department of Justice figures released Friday.
Smith has spent about $5.4 million on personnel, rent, and other costs from his own budget and brought about another $3.8 million in spending by other DOJ agencies in the four months after he was picked last November to lead the investigation and other probes involving alleged efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, reports Politico.
The report only accounts for Smith’s spending through March and does not include the period leading up to Trump’s indictment in June or the increased activity in the election investigation, as the special counsel started the process for a second Florida grand jury.
Part of the $3.8 million includes the cost for Smith’s security detail in the high-profile investigations, the report said.
When Smith was brought on, the investigations involving Trump had already been underway. He kept most of the staff that was already involved but added more prosecutors in recent months.
The report doesn’t include how much the DOJ had already spent on the probes before bringing on Smith.
The special counsel, who had headed the DOJ’s Public Integrity Section, left his job in Europe, where he was prosecuting war crimes, and returned to Washington to take over the investigations on Trump.
Meanwhile, special counsel Robert Hur, who was appointed in January to examine President Joe Biden’s handling of classified documents spent $615,000 through March, with the DOJ incurring another $572,000 in expenses, according to another report.
John Durham, the special counsel appointed to examine the origins of the Russian conspiracy probe involving Trump’s first election campaign spent $1.11 million in the six months before March 31 while wrapping up his investigation of the FBI, with the DOJ adding in another $59,000.
There is an epidemic in the United State military. It’s not the kind of epidemic that Anthony Fauci profits from, but an epidemic that is truly threatening our national security.
Since the days of Barack Obama’s presidency, the Pentagon has started focusing more on social experiments than on excellence. Woke liberals have made it their mission to indoctrinate cadets at our military academies with Marxist ideas, force transgender ideology on our troops, and claim that “extremism” is pervasive in our military. Their mission is simple: Transform our military into a weak, feelings-first social program that promotes leftist ideas.
We cannot let that happen. The true mission of the U.S. military remains: Win wars and act as a deterrent against potential wars.
The American military is the greatest fighting force the world has ever known – and the greatest force for freedom. While other countries try to conquer, America defends and liberates. And the men and women who compose our military represent the greatest forms of sacrifice and courage.
But the left views our military differently. Leftists put pronouns before petty officers, diversity initiatives before Devil Dogs, wokeness before warriors. In other words, they care more about programming and indoctrinating our men and women in uniform than they care about the soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines themselves. It’s shameful, and America deserves better.
Potential recruits clearly agree, and it is no surprise that the Army missed its 2022 recruiting goals by 25%. The Navy and Air Force missed their recruiting targets as well.
The United States needs real leaders to stand up to this nonsense and fight back. And I don’t just mean posting a statement on Twitter. I mean real action.
First, we need leaders in Congress to defund DEI initiatives that have wormed their way into every corner of our military. The Pentagon is spending tens of millions of dollars hiring individuals whose sole job is DEI. That’s absurd. That money should be immediately repurposed to pay for next-generation equipment that will defeat America’s enemies. We need military members focused on actual warfighting – not making someone feel special.
Second, it’s time for military commanders to be courageous and push back. Wokeness is rotting our military from the inside out, distracting from the actual mission of the Unites States military. We don’t need political military leaders who are only worried about advancing their careers. We need officers to fulfill their responsibility to put the mission first and take care of the troops under their command. Commanders should find ways to minimize the nonsense on their bases, promote unifying leadership initiatives that lead to improving warfighting, and deliver blunt and direct feedback to their superiors about how the obsession with DEI is damaging our military.
Third, we need voters to make their voices heard. When the American people speak loudly, politicians are forced to listen. It’s not enough for members of Congress to just say the right thing; we must hold them accountable at the ballot box based on their actions. Ask your congressman and senator: What specific actions have you taken to stop the work nonsense in our military?
Excellence is the standard in the United State military. We should accept nothing less. But when we allow leftists to make “feelings” the standard, we are jeopardizing our national security. China, Russia, and Iran love it when America’s military is distracted with drag shows on military bases. Enough is enough. It’s time that the Pentagon refocuses on defending our country.
John Warren is a successful businessman, entrepreneur, and combat veteran who served as an infantry officer in the United States Marine Corps. Warren is the co-author of “Lead Like a Marine” and the honorary chairman of South Carolina’s Conservative Future.
We are now 2+ years into consuming reams of information showing the vaccines were devastating to humanity. What will Republicans do about it other than whine about censorship? Refusing to focus on vaccine injury and the perfidy of the government-vaccine complex is an act of self-censorship.
There is a bizarre dynamic unfolding as it relates to GOP sentiment toward the vaccine. All Republicans recognize and decry the growing evidence of the government’s collaboration with big tech to censor all information about vaccine injury. Yet they seem to be more upset about the censorship of the information than about the information itself. Why is there no push from Republicans to defund the vaccines and fix the regulatory and legal structures that allowed Operation Warp Speed to occur and that continue to gaslight the next iteration of rushed, dangerous vaccines?
In an extraordinary ruling on Independence Day itself, Louisiana federal Judge Terry Doughty issued a broad injunction against all government agencies on working with social media companies to censor politically unfavored speech. Citing “substantial evidence” of government’s “dystopian” violations of the First Amendment, Judge Doughty prohibited the federal government from “encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner the removal, deletion, suppression, or reduction of content containing protected free speech.” The injunction not only includes the HHS agencies censoring COVID information, but also the FBI, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, the State Department, the DOJ, and the White House censoring all forms of protected speech.
This ruling comes a week after the House Judiciary committee produced a preliminary report showing DHS’ CISA was behind the censorship enterprise. It turns out that CISA funded a nonprofit group to work with social media on a process, known as “switchboarding,” which would “trigger content moderation” to “ensure priority treatment of misinformation reports.”
Republicans seem united in combating this censorship and plan to include provisions in the relevant appropriations bills for fiscal year 2024 to block funding for these surveillance and censorship programs. However, where is the same degree of outrage about the dangers of the vaccines themselves?
We now have over two years of information showing ubiquitous injury stemming from damage to all parts of the body, particularly cardiac and neurological. Whether it’s VAERS, European data, countless independent studies, epidemiological data, excess deaths and “died suddenly” mysteries correlating with the take-up of the vaccines, health insurance data, life insurance data, or disability data – we have enough evidence to convict this shot for murder if it were a human standing for trial. Yet not only have these vaccines not been defunded, the same framework that rushed their approval has already been used for countless other new vaccines.
The government’s new shell game is to concede the existence of these problems, but play semantics with the term “rare” when describing their risk. Science Insider published a piece acknowledging the “rare link between coronavirus vaccines and Long Covid–like illness,” including blood clotting, heart inflammation, and neurological disorders. Even Peter Marks, the man at the center of Operation Warp Speed, admitted, “We can’t rule out rare cases.”
“If a provider has somebody in front of them, they may want to take seriously the concept [of] a vaccine side effect,” admits the director of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, two years after emails show he ignored concerns of rushing the vaccine amidst a pileup of adverse event reporting.
However, what is rare? The CDC’s own pharmacovigilance program showed a 7.7% rate of clinical-level injury. Coupled with the underreporting rate in VAERS, there were likely millions of severe and long-term injuries, including several hundred thousand deaths in the U.S. So yes, we can suggest that 92% of people didn’t experience clinical levels of injury and 98%-99% didn’t experience long-term and deadly injuries. In that sense, I guess you can say it’s rare. But how many people are we talking about when 5.5 billion people were given at least one dose? Potentially, millions of deaths and hundreds of millions of injuries! Just consider the fact that 25% of injuries reported to VAERS and about a third reported by the European Medicines Agency are considered serious, well beyond the standard of 15%.
House Republicans can no longer ignore the problem with the vaccines. They must also stop ignoring the endless approvals of monkeypox and RSV shots based on dubious data and the same rushed framework. To that end, Speaker McCarthy should take the following actions.
Create a commission of members of Congress to examine the rationale, safety, and efficacy data of all vaccines, beginning with the new ones recently approved and in the pipeline.
Bar any involvement in a WHO pandemic treaty or expansion of the International Health Regulations.
Repeal immunity for vaccine manufacturers, including the provision in the 21st Century Cures Act of 2016 that extends the immunity to vaccines offered to pregnant women.
To this day, we still can’t get Republicans to shake their support for the V-word even in red states. Last week, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, the consummate COVID fascist governor, used his line-item veto to strike a provision from the budget ending vaccine mandates in colleges. “University and college dormitories and student housing are congregate settings where such policy may be of great importance to ensure resident safety,” said DeWine of vaccine mandates in his veto message. It takes a new level of cognitive dissonance to support mandates on those who don’t want the shot out of fear of harming those who did supposedly get the protection that evidently fails to protect unless the other person gets it!
Republicans all agree that our government engaged in an unprecedented operation to cover up the truth about vaccines. How come their curiosity stops at the degree of exposing the cover-up with no interest in delving into what exactly they are trying to cover up? After all, this is the only product that automatically goes into every arm of every baby multiple times after birth with a set schedule mandated by schools. Certainly the COVID shots are proven to be poison, but is there no interest in uncovering the broader truth?
Editor’s note: This article has been corrected to note that 5.5 billion, not 5.5 million, received at least one dose of a COVID vaccine.
A man waves a rainbow flag while observing a gay pride parade in San Francisco, California June 28, 2015. | Reuters/Elijah Nouvelage
It was a normal Wednesday commute, crawling across the 14th Street Bridge with thousands of other frustrated D.C. drivers — until out the corner of my eye, I saw the metro glide across the tracks next to us. There, suspended above the Potomac, were eight cars — all wrapped in transgender and rainbow flags — speeding into the most powerful city in the world.
Even now, weeks into this contrived celebration, it was a jarring picture of how insufferable the Pride movement has become. Deep into June, you can’t blame Americans for wondering: When will this train of extremism end?
Like me, Free Republic’s Kristinn Taylor was annoyed to see that even commuters can’t escape the LGBT oversaturation. “DC Metro cars [have] transformed into rolling ‘Pride’ struggle sessions,” she protested on Twitter. And according to a new poll, she’s not alone. Pride fatigue is real, The Trafalgar Group found, and it’s across the board.
In a new survey, Robert Cahaly’s group asked more than 1,000 people (who leaned Democratic by 4%) if they’re sick of the public LGBT pandering. A whopping 62% said yes, they just wished companies would stay neutral. Only 23% think corporations should continue on with their extreme political themes.
Equally as damning — at least for the CEOs still clinging to their offensive activism (think Nike, Target, Kohl’s) — are the massive swaths of consumers who are avoiding leftist brands. While 41% of all voters say they’ve “personally boycotted a company that took a public stance on a cultural or political issue they disagree with,” almost 70% are Republicans, who’ve refused to shop with “progressive” businesses. Forty percent of non-affiliated voters admitted to doing the same.
That’s a sizeable gap in pushback compared to Democrats, who are much less likely (45%) to punish “conservative or MAGA-leaning” businesses. Interestingly, 14% of Joe Biden’s party admitted to joining Republicans in abandoning overly woke companies — a surprisingly high cross-over rate that shows just how much radical CEOs have overplayed their hand on issues like transgenderism.
And the farther we get into June, the more intense the backlash has become. Shoppers everywhere have made punching bags out of Bud Light and Target — forcing several of American brands to reconsider just how much capital they’re willing to sacrifice. As the losses to those brands dip into the multi-billions, there’s a growing sense that businesses are getting the message.
According to Bloomberg, brands are dramatically toning down their Pride promotion from last year. In the wake of the Dylan Mulvaney scandal in April, “references to ‘Pride Month’ in filings, presentations and transcripts from April to June at more than 900 of the largest US companies dropped almost 40% from this time last year, the first decline in five years. Other LGBTQ terms showed similar declines, the analysis found.”
That’s a seismic shift for the U.S. market and an enormous victory for grassroots Americans who’ve finally put their dollars where their values are. As Dr. Ben Carson said on Wednesday’s “Washington Watch,” these big brands have finally been forced to reevaluate their purpose — and, just as importantly, their loyalties. “Corporate America has a very important purpose, and that is to reward their stockholders. Now, they can’t necessarily do that if they have another agenda — like being social manipulators. And I think they’re starting to recognize that. And I’m glad to see also that the people are pushing back.”
The Bud Light disaster, Target’s trans outreach, “all of these things,” Carson pointed out, “are wake-up calls for corporate America to get back to doing what they’re supposed to be doing and stop meddling. You know, one of the reasons that our country was established is because people wanted to come to a place where they could live the life that they wanted to live without it being manipulated and without all kinds of mandates. And whether those mandates come from the government or from corporate America, they still have a deleterious effect on the freedoms that people experience.”
“And the only people who can change that is we the people … We have to put our foot down and say, this is America. This is where we are free to live the way that we want to, to worship the way we want to, to say what we want to say. And we’re not going to stand for government or corporate America to try to dictate [what we think and believe].”
No one has been in that bullseye more than Anheuser-Busch CEO Brendan Whitworth, who called the crashing and burning of his brand a “challenging few weeks” on Fox. And while he has yet to apologize for the firestorm that Bud Light started by embracing transgenderism, he does accept the blame for the devastating consequences of that decision. “We have to understand the impact that it’s had … on our employees, the impact on our consumers, and as well the impact on our partners,” he said. “One thing I’d love to make extremely clear is that impact is my responsibility and as the CEO, everything we do here I’m accountable for.”
“There’s a big social conversation taking place right now,” Whitworth acknowledged, “and big brands are right in the middle of it. And it’s not just our industry or Bud Light. It’s happening in retail, happening in fast food. And so for us, what we need to understand is — deeply understand and appreciate — is the consumer and what they want, what they care about and what they expect from big brands.”
What they expect, the polls have shownsince 2021, is neutrality. When a good 40% of your consumer base ups and walks away, there should be plenty of motivation for corporations to sit down and rethink their politics.
“Most Americans respond to relentless, preachy marketing from businesses trying to virtue signal their progressive bona fides like they respond to street preachers thumping a Bible,” Family Research Council’s Joseph Backholm told The Washington Stand. “But the LGBTQ movement, like the street preacher, doesn’t care because they have simply decided anyone who rejects their message is going to hell. The LGBT movement has become what they claim to hate, but they haven’t recognized it yet.”
In the meantime, what they and everyone else can’t help but recognize is Americans’ buying power. May it continue to be the bridle that holds the woke in check.
Suzanne Bowdey serves as editorial director and senior writer for The Washington Stand. In her role, she drafts commentary on topics such as life, consumer activism, media and entertainment, sexuality, education, religious freedom, and other issues that affect the institutions of marriage and family. Over the past 20 years at FRC, her op-eds have been featured in publications ranging from the Washington Times to The Christian Post. Suzanne is a graduate of Taylor University in Upland, Ind., with majors in both English Writing and Political Science.
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American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
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American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
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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
NEWSMAX
News, Opinion, Interviews, Research and discussion
Spiritual
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
Bible Gateway
The Bible Gateway is a tool for reading and researching scripture online — all in the language or translation of your choice! It provides advanced searching capabilities, which allow readers to find and compare particular passages in scripture based on
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