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Gender studies professor reprimanded after failing student for using ‘biological women’

July 6, 2023

By Samantha Kamman, Christian Post Reporter | THURSDAY, JULY 06, 2023

University professor addresses his students during a lecture. | Getty Images

An Ohio gender studies professor was formally reprimanded and ordered to complete free speech training after giving a student a failing grade on a project centered around women’s rights in sports that used the phrase “biological women.”

Melanie Nipper, an adjunct professor at the University of Cincinnati, received an official reprimand from the school in June after she gave her student, Olivia Krolczyk, a zero out of 20 on a May final project in a Gender in Popular Culture class, stating that “biological women” is an “exclusionary” term.

A copy of the reprimand obtained by The Cincinnati Enquirer stated that Nipper’s actions violated the university’s Campus Free Speech Policy. The letter also stated that any other violations of the university’s policies may result in termination.

“To prevent any further violation of this policy, you must complete training on the requirements of the Campus Free Speech Policy,” Ashley Currier, head of the Department of Women’s Gender and Sexuality Studies at UC, wrote in the letter. “Through the end of Academic Year 2024/2025, you must submit all syllabi to me at least two weeks prior to the beginning of classes for review and approval.”

Nipper appealed the reprimand in a June 19 letter to UC’s Interim Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, Margaret Hanson. She argued that the restriction on what she referred to as “harmful speech” was necessary to “ensure a safe learning environment.” The professor defended her actions, stating that she informed the student that her project was “inappropriate” because she believed it framed trans individuals as oppressors.

“My language in the Canvas comment informed the student that the term “biological women” was the issue; however, in follow-up emails with the student, I answered her questions and explained that the context of the topic with the phrase was the issue, rather than the isolated phrase itself,” Nipper wrote.

The adjunct instructor felt it necessary to tell the student to change her project topic or alter the language to include “all women.” Another reason the professor cited for the failing grade was that the project failed to use in-class sources, which she noted do not support “trans-exclusionary feminism.”

“Additionally, as the class has students that identify as gender non-conforming and/or trans, I felt it was necessary to educate her regarding inclusive language to ensure a safe learning environment for other students in the course discussion boards,” Nipper added.

Nipper concluded her letter by requesting that the interim dean reconsider the reprimand, expressing confidence that she can continue teaching students without violating the school’s policy on freedom of expression.

The University of Cincinnati did not immediately respond to The Christian Post’s request for comment.

In May, Krolczyk shared her final project grade and the professor’s comments in a TikTok video. The student’s video featured a screenshot of Nipper’s remarks on her project, saying that she’d regrade the assignment if Krolczyk edited it to focus on “women’s rights (not just females).” In addition to deriding the phrase “biological women” as “exclusionary,” Nipper said that the term is not allowed in the course because it reinforces “heteronormativity.”

Krolczyk’s project focused on women’s rights in sports, from securing a spot for women in the Olympic Games to the current challenges female athletes face when biological men are allowed to compete as women. The student questioned in the video how she was supposed to complete her project if she couldn’t use the phrase “biological women.”

More evidence of the Transgender-Agenda sickness is disrupting our society, but even more, our colleges and universities. How many centuries of biology has been taught that there are TWO GENDERS. Now, these are the same people that tried to shame us when we stood our ground about all the COVID-19 propaganda, shouting, “FOLLOW THE SCIENCE”. “BELIEVE THE SCIENCE”.

In years past, the term, “mental illness” would be associated with this kind of conduct.”

Women’s sports advocates such as Riley Gaines have repeatedly addressed the impact that allowing biological men into women’s spaces has had on female athletes. Last month, Gaines testified during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing titled “Protecting Pride: Defending the Civil Rights of LGBTQ+ Americans.”

Gaines, a former collegiate swimmer and University of Kentucky graduate, discussed her experience competing against Will Thomas, a biological man who identifies as a woman named Lia Thomas. Thomas previously competed as a man for three seasons at the University of Pennsylvania before he started competing on the girls’ team during the 2021-’22 season.

Besides being forced to share a locker room with Thomas, the women athletes watched Thomas beat multiple female swimmers. Gaines accused the NCAA of discriminating against women by allowing a man to compete against them and claim their awards.

Samantha Kamman is a reporter for The Christian Post. She can be reached at: samantha.kamman@christianpost.com. Follow her on Twitter: @Samantha_Kamman

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4th of July chaos: Videos show ‘war zone’ erupt in Minneapolis as police, residents attacked with fireworks

By: PAUL SACCA | July 06, 2023

Independence Day celebrations in Minneapolis descended into chaos as police and residents were attacked with fireworks, videos reveal. Independent journalist Rebecca Brannon wrote on Twitter, “Insanely chaotic night across Minneapolis as I tracked 250-500 group of mostly juveniles across the city until 3 AM. State troopers as far as Stillwater joined MPD tonight but authorities were still overwhelmed; many officers seemed very frustrated.”

Brannon posted numerous videos of people intentionally launching fireworks at buildings, residents, cars, and police officers on the night of the 4th of July. Brannon noted that several of the people firing fireworks were dressed in all black and wearing masks.

Brannon said she was attacked: “Hundreds set off a war zone of fireworks shooting at people and vehicles – behind and all around me. One person even started shooting roman candles at me while I filmed.”

(WARNING: Graphic video)

https://twitter.com/RebsBrannon/status/1676541684962787328?s=20

https://twitter.com/RebsBrannon/status/1676583068654551040?s=20

https://twitter.com/RebsBrannon/status/1676569693065211909?s=20

EXCLUSIVE VIDEO: From our post last hour. Four suspects assault a man and his dog with fireworks at 27th and Grand Ave S, Minneapolis.#WhatsTheFussAboutMpls #Mpls pic.twitter.com/TE1AAiPMwv
— CrimeWatchMpls (@CrimeWatchMpls) July 5, 2023

More Lake Calhoun. pic.twitter.com/8BTbeiBAqd
— CrimeWatchMpls (@CrimeWatchMpls) July 5, 2023

Near Lake Calhoun. pic.twitter.com/msZ26su0aZ
— CrimeWatchMpls (@CrimeWatchMpls) July 5, 2023

A young man suffered a serious injury to his abdomen after a firework exploded in a crowd of people.

Near Lake Calhoun. pic.twitter.com/msZ26su0aZ
— CrimeWatchMpls (@CrimeWatchMpls) July 5, 2023

A WCCO-TV news team was feet away from a firework exploding while conducting an interview about the chaos in the neighborhood near Boom Island.

https://twitter.com/RebsBrannon/status/1676551090274181121?s=20

There was a confrontation between police officers and several individuals near Lake Calhoun. An officer orders the group to “go home” and accuses them of “terrorizing people.”

https://twitter.com/RebsBrannon/status/1676587575480397825?s=20

KMSP-TV reported that commercial-grade fireworks were being launched from a vehicle at Minnehaha Regional Park.

Erin Gormley, caretaker for her condominium near Bde Maka Ska, told KMSP-TV, “They were shooting explosives at me because I was protecting the property. They had no regard for anything, they were putting fireworks, like explosive ones, under the cars.”

Gormley added, “I felt afraid. I was not going to leave my front door.”

Despite the heavy police presence, including officers from the Hennepin County Sheriff’s Office and a Minnesota State Patrol helicopter, the crowds seemed unwilling to disperse.

Local resident Erin Hewitt said, “There was just a complete disrespect for everybody. Once the police came, there was no leaving. They were just hanging out, they weren’t listening to the police whatsoever. It was pretty intense.”

Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara said at a press conference, “The targeting of innocent people with fireworks is unlawful, dangerous, and wholly unacceptable.”

“But it was really I think after midnight, we had probably a couple of hundred young people gathered in the area of the lake around Bde Maka Ska,” O’Hara stated. “And that was where it became challenging just because there were so many kids gathered, onlookers to observe this activity, and they were parked deeply into some of the neighborhoods there. And it just took us time to clear everybody out. And just because of the volume of that, then it became, you know, trying to keep disrupting them wherever they were, then trying to go after them.”

Police said there were 16 people arrested, 11 of whom were juveniles.

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Top Republicans Demand Federal Investigation Into Retaliation Against IRS Whistleblowers

BY: TRISTAN JUSTICE | JULY 06, 2023

A coalition of top Republicans on Capitol Hill is demanding a federal investigation into allegations of retaliation against Internal Revenue Service whistleblowers who revealed misconduct related to the Hunter Biden investigation.

In June, the House Ways and Means Committee published the transcripts of interviews with a pair of IRS whistleblowers detailing improper interference from the Justice Department surrounding the federal tax probe of the first family. According to the whistleblowers, federal prosecutors concealed critical documents from tax investigators while officials from the Justice Department sought to undermine IRS efforts altogether.

[READ: IRS Whistleblower Docs Show DOJ Obstructed Hunter Biden Probe To Protect President]

On Wednesday, Republican House and Senate lawmakers led by Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley sent a letter to the Office of Special Counsel urging the agency to open a probe into retaliatory conduct against the IRS whistleblowers.

“The Department of Justice (DOJ) and Internal Revenue Service (IRS) have reportedly engaged in unlawful whistleblower retaliation against veteran IRS employees,” lawmakers wrote. “Multiple news reports indicate that the whistleblower and investigative team were removed from the Hunter Biden investigation by the IRS at DOJ’s request as retaliation for making protected whistleblower disclosures to Congress.”

Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson signed the letter with Missouri Rep. Jason Smith, who chairs the Ways and Means Committee; Kentucky Rep. James Comer, who chairs the Oversight Committee; and Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan, who chairs the Judiciary Committee.

“The importance of protecting whistleblowers from unlawful retaliation and informing whistleblowers about their rights under the law cannot be understated,” they wrote, without naming the whistleblowers. “After all, it is the law. Accordingly, we request that you immediately investigate all allegations of retaliation against these IRS whistleblowers…”

Transcripts of interviews between two IRS whistleblowers and Republicans on the Ways and Means Committee were made public last month after Hunter Biden struck a light plea deal with federal prosecutors. Hunter Biden pled guilty to two misdemeanor tax crimes and a felony firearm violation. The latter charge will be forgiven following two years of sobriety and a forfeiture of gun ownership.

The former chief of the DOJ’s tax division published an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal recommending the judge presiding over the agreement reject the deal.

According to whistleblower Gary Shapley, a veteran agent with the IRS who served on the case, “the most substantive felony charges were left off the table.”

“We weren’t allowed to ask questions about ‘dad,’” Shapley said in an interview with Fox News. “We weren’t allowed to ask about ‘the big guy.’”

Hunter Biden did not pay taxes on $1.2 million between 2017 and 2018, Shapley told Bret Baier.

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.

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TRISTAN JUSTICE

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Missouri v. Biden Proves Corporate Media Lied About Big Tech’s Censorship Crusade Against Conservatives

BY: JORDAN BOYD | JULY 06, 2023

JORDAN BOYD

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Corporate media mocked widespread conservative outrage over online censorship as a “baseless” and misdirected ploy to gin up controversy and votes, but Missouri v. Biden proves Big Tech and the federal government colluded to suppress “millions of protected free speech postings by American citizens.”

There is hardly a lack of proof that Americans were the subject of years of government-led partisan purges on Twitter, Facebook, and other social media platforms.

Emails, documents, files, and statements show that it was often at the prompting of federal agencies such as the Department of Health and Human Services, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Census Bureau, the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of State, the FBI, and the Department of Justice, as well as the White House, that Big Tech effectively silenced the voices of countless Americans on Covid-19, elections, and criticism of the Biden regime.

In his 155-page memorandum ruling handed down on July 4, Judge Terry Doughty, chief judge of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana, asserted that the attorneys general who brought the case will likely see victory in court with their claim that “the United States Government, through the White House and numerous federal agencies, pressured and encouraged social-media companies to suppress free speech.”

“Defendants used meetings and communications with social-media companies to pressure those companies to take down, reduce, and suppress the free speech of American citizens. They flagged posts and provided information on the type of posts they wanted suppressed. They also followed up with directives to the social-media companies to provide them with information as to action the company had taken with regard to the flagged post,” Doughty confirmed.

U.S. media should care about preserving the same constitutional amendment that protects their existence. Instead, outlets repeatedly insisted that online censorship — like critical race theory and mutilative gender experiments on minors — simply wasn’t happening. Any documented instances of muzzling, outlets claimed, only affected a few people and didn’t violate the First Amendment.

Even before lockdowns, BLM riots, and the 2020 election, corporate media outlets were smearing conservative claims of Big Tech censorship.

“Google and Facebook aren’t infringing on the right’s freedom of expression, but insisting otherwise is politically convenient,” the Atlantic asserted in 2019.

One year after the Atlantic claimed “there is no evidence” that Americans were suffering suppression of online speech, Pew Research found that “most Americans think social media sites censor political viewpoints.”

American suspicions that the government was involved in the censorship industrial complex only grew and were later confirmed by the “Twitter Files.” When corporate media weren’t ignoring the “Twitter Files” completely, outlets “repeatedly rolled eyes, dismissed, and mocked [the revelations of censorship] as a nothingburger.”

Meanwhile, the Biden administration feigned innocence about its role in limiting Americans’ speech at the same time it was expanding its efforts to muzzle citizens. Corporate media proudly participated in blackouts on information like the Hunter Biden laptop, and other Democrats also joined in the smear campaign.

“It may be possible — if we can take off the tinfoil hat — that there is not a vast conspiracy,” Democrat Rep. Colin Allred of Texas said after the release of the “Twitter Files.”

Missouri v. Biden didn’t uncover a couple of instances of accidental deplatforming, as Big Tech, corporate media, and the Biden White House so often like to claim. Doughty confirmed that attorneys general provided “substantial evidence in support of their claims that they were the victims of a far-reaching and widespread censorship campaign.”

Not only that, but Doughty agreed that Big Tech’s decision to take down:

“Opposition to COVID-19 vaccines;
opposition to COVID-19 masking and lockdowns;
opposition to the lab-leak theory of COVID-19;
opposition to the validity of the 2020 election;
opposition to President Biden’s policies;
statements that the Hunter Biden laptop story was true;
and opposition to policies of the government officials in power” at the behest of the government appears blatantly partisan.

“It is quite telling that each example or category of suppressed speech was conservative in nature. This targeted suppression of conservative ideas is a perfect example of viewpoint discrimination of political speech,” Doughty wrote. “American citizens have the right to engage in free debate about the significant issues affecting the country.”

The First Amendment, Doughty wrote, was designed to protect an “uninhibited marketplace of ideas in which truth will ultimately prevail.” Yet, for years now, the federal government and Big Tech, with cover from corporate media, have repeatedly violated Americans’ right to that “uninhibited marketplace.”

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.

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Ketanji Brown Jackson made ‘mathematically absurd claim’ on Black newborns: WSJ op-ed

Supreme Court Justice argued affirmative action ‘saves lives’

By Hanna Panreck | Fox News | Published July 6, 2023 1:46pm EDT

Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson made a “mathematically absurd claim” about Black newborns in her dissenting opinion in the affirmative action decision, attorney Ted Frank wrote in a Wednesday Wall Street Journal op-ed.

Jackson argued in her dissent that diversity “saves lives” and that it was essential for “marginalized communities.”

“It saves lives. For marginalized communities in North Carolina, it is critically important that UNC and other area institutions produce highly educated professionals of color. Research shows that Black physicians are more likely to accurately assess Black patients’ pain tolerance and treat them accordingly (including, for example, prescribing them appropriate amounts of pain medication). For high-risk Black newborns, having a Black physician more than doubles the likelihood that the baby will live, and not die,” she wrote.

Frank responded to the argument in his Journal opinion piece: “A moment’s thought should be enough to realize that this claim is wildly implausible. Imagine if 40% of black newborns died—thousands of dead infants every week. But even so, that’s a 60% survival rate, which is mathematically impossible to double. And the actual survival rate is over 99%.”

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson argued in her dissenting opinion to the Supreme Court’s affirmative action ruling that promoting diversity “saves lives.” (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File )

Frank, a senior attorney at Hamilton Lincoln Law Institute, filed an amicus brief in support of the petitioners in SFFA v. Harvard, according to the WSJ.

“How could Justice Jackson make such an innumerate mistake?” he wrote.

Frank wrote that Jackson’s claim came from a 2020 study, according to a footnote in the dissent, but added that the study didn’t match Jackson’s claim.

“The study makes no such claims. It examines mortality rates in Florida newborns between 1992 and 2015 and shows a 0.13% to 0.2% improvement in survival rates for black newborns with black pediatricians (though no statistically significant improvement for black obstetricians),” he said.

Supreme Court members — The Supreme Court struck down affirmative action in a landmark 6-3 ruling on June 29. (Collection of the Supreme Court of the United States via Getty Images)

The Supreme Court rejected the use of race as a factor in college admissions at the end of June, citing a violation of the 14th amendment. In a 6-3 decision, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the majority opinion that, “A benefit to a student who overcame racial discrimination, for example, must be tied to that student’s courage and determination.”

President Joe Biden Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson — President Biden nominated Jackson to the high court in 2022 and the first Black female Supreme Court Justice began her first term last October. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

Frank said the study cited in Jackson’s dissent was “flawed.”

“So, we have a Supreme Court justice parroting a mathematically absurd claim coming from an interested party’s mischaracterization of a flawed study. Her opinion then urges ‘all of us’ to ‘do what evidence and experts tell us is required to level the playing field and march forward together.’ Instead we should watch where we’re going,” Frank continued.

Hanna Panreck is an associate editor at Fox News.

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Unilever Loses $2.5B Over Calls to Boycott Ben & Jerry’s

By Lee Barney | Thursday, 06 July 2023 12:02 PM EDT

Rad more at https://www.newsmax.com/finance/streettalk/ben-andjerrys-unilever-boycott/2023/07/06/id/1126184/

Unilever Loses $2.5B Over Calls to Boycott Ben & Jerry's — Ben & Jerry’s factory in Waterbury, Vermont (Jakub Porzycki/AP)

Ben & Jerry’s parent company Unilever (UL) has lost $2.5 billion in market cap amid calls to boycott the ice cream maker for its anti-American July 4 message, the New York Post reports.

The stock of the Anglo-Dutch conglomerate fell to $51 after closing $52.28 Monday, just ahead of Ben & Jerry’s July 4 entreaty for the U.S. to return “stolen Indigenous land,” starting with Mount Rushmore.

“The faces on Mount Rushmore are the faces of men who actively worked to destroy Indigenous cultures and ways of life, to deny Indigenous people their basic rights,” Ben & Jerry’s said.

Unilever’s market capitalization has lost $2.5 billion, falling from $133.5 billion on Monday to $131 billion Wednesday.

“This 4^th of July, it’s high time we recognize that the U.S. exists on stolen Indigenous land and commit to returning it,” Ben & Jerry’s said in a tweet and on its website.

The Burlington, Vermont-based company also issued a press release asking for Americans to work together to return the land on which they have lived for the past 247 years. While Unilever acquired Ben & Jerry’s in 2000, it permitted its board to remain independent on political and social issues.

Twitter users immediately reacted to Ben & Jerry’s unpatriotic and untimely denunciation, comparing it to Bud Light’s transgender marketing fiasco and urging customers to boycott its goods.

“Make @benandjerrys Bud Light again,” one Twitter user wrote.

“Just when you think @benand jerrys couldn’t go any lower—they pull this stunt. Boycott Ben and Jerry’s,” wrote another.

A group called the Moral Rating Agency called out Unilever on Wednesday for continuing to sell its Cornetto ice cream and other products in Russia, whereas hundreds of Western companies immediately exited the nation in protest of its invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022. The United States, Europe and Japan also imposed economic sanctions against Russia and its oligarchs.

Unilever has defended remaining in Russia, saying leaving is “not straightforward.” The multinational firm argues that its 3,000 employees and brands that remain in Russia “would be appropriated—and then operated—by the Russian state.”

“We do not think it is right to abandon our people in Russia,” Unilever said in a statement.

Neither Unilever or Ben & Jerry’s responded to a request for comment from the Post.

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Former Prosecutors Say Judge Should Toss Hunter Plea Deal

By Solange Reyner | Thursday, 06 July 2023 11:56 AM EDT

A pair of former prosecutors say the judge presiding over the case against Hunter Biden should toss his plea deal. Eileen O’Connor, a Washington lawyer who headed the Justice Department’s tax division from 2001-07 last week in an editorial for the The Wall Street Journal titled, “Throw Hunter Biden’s Plea Deal in the Trash,” said judges can reject plea agreements, which “would be an appropriate disposition here.”

“And Congress, in fulfillment of its oversight obligation, must learn and share with the American public what evidence the IRS gathered, what evidence its agents weren’t permitted to obtain, and what charges might have been brought if they had,” she added.

Brett Tolman, the former U.S. attorney for the district of Utah, in a tweet on June 20 suggested Hunter Biden was getting off easy.

“If DOJ treated Hunter Biden like the thousands of no-names who get prosecuted he would be looking at decades in federal prison. Yes, I said decades,” he said.

U.S. District Judge Maryellen Noreika, a Trump appointee supported in her 2017 nomination process by Democrat senators, was assigned to Biden’s case in late June after the president’s son agreed to plead guilty to misdemeanor charges and enter into a pretrial diversion agreement. He was not expected to face jail time in his guilty plea.

The news sparked accusations of favorable treatment from conservatives whose accusations of influence-peddling in Ukraine and China prompted the investigation that led to the charges.

The younger Biden has worked as a lobbyist, lawyer, consultant to foreign companies, investment banker and artist, and has publicly detailed his struggles with substance abuse.

A hearing is slated on July 26 at the federal courthouse in Wilmington, Delaware.

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Today’s Politically INCORRECT Cartoon by A.F. Branco

A.F. Branco Cartoon – Tightrope

A.F. BRANCO | on July 6, 2023 | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-tightrope/

DOJ protects Hunter and the Biden Crime Family from the IRS and other Scandals.

DOJ Protecting the Bidens — Political cartoon by A.F. Branco ©2023.

DONATE to A.F.Branco Cartoons – Tips accepted and appreciated – $1.00 – $5.00 – $25.00 – $50.00 – $100 – it all helps to fund this website and keep the cartoons coming. Also Venmo @AFBranco – THANK YOU!

A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including NewsMax, Fox News, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Rep. Devin Nunes, Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Chris Salcedo, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Trump.

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LA Times editorial leadership: A trans-identified man ‘is and was a man’ even prior to transition

July 5, 2023

By Ian M. Giatti, Christian Post Reporter | TUESDAY, JULY 04, 2023

The Los Angeles Times headquarters in El Segundo, Calif., on July 5, 2022. The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper that started publishing in 1881. | iStock/JHVEPhoto

Are legacy media outlets breaking basic rules of grammar and journalism in pursuit of a more transgender-friendly editorial approach?

A Los Angeles Times article from June 4 on Elliot Page, the trans-identified actor formerly known as Ellen Page, is the latest example in which a highly respected news outlet violated some fundamental rules of storytelling — namely, using Page’s preferred pronouns of “he/him” even when it is factually inaccurate, such as when referring to events that occurred before the transition — or when “he” was a “she.”

For example, the article recounts an episode in 2008 where Page — who still publicly identified as “she” — was in a relationship with another woman: “He was dating a woman at the time but had been urged by his manager to hide this relationship from the press, so he did not have his partner by his side.”

In context, this statement makes little sense and lacks context unless the reader already understands why Page had to hide this relationship from the press: because it was a same-sex relationship, and as such, the statement implies, would likely have stirred no small scandal and potential damage to Page’s career.

Yet because of how The LA Times article is written, the reader is forced to do the math on their own about when Page transitioned and whether “he” identified as “she” at that point.

Furthering the confusion, the next line of the story states that it “would be six more years before Page came out as queer in a speech at a Human Rights Campaign event.”

It’s just one of a number of similar statements in the article that, while acknowledging Page’s current chosen gender identity, are factually incorrect when it comes to relating Page’s identity for the time period specified in the context of the story.

LA Times managing editor Scott Kraft told The Christian Post that the newspaper’s guidelines instruct journalists and editors to “use the pronoun that the person currently uses” and “are consistent with the way they live publicly, even for past events.”

“We do try, generally, to use the person’s last name when referring to past events, to avoid confusion and be crystal clear who we’re talking about without resorting to using the person’s ‘dead’ name or pronoun,” Kraft said.

While he disagrees that using an inaccurate pronoun “alters the facts” of the story, he does acknowledge that “it can be confusing at times.”

Kraft said The Times’ editorial guidelines are based on the person’s current gender identity, regardless of how they “presented” themselves at the time of the event being described.

“Our guidelines rest on the principle that a transgender man who has always known that he was male, even when using a female name and presenting outwardly as female earlier in life, is and was a man,” said Kraft.

So is that principle accurate?

Not according to Kara Dansky, author of The Abolition of Sex: How the “Transgender” Agenda Harms Women and Girls, who says she and other “radical feminists like me have just about had it with mainstream legacy news outlets like the Los Angeles Times that are simply outright lying to the American people about what is really going on here.”

“The same people who say things like [Kraft’s statement] will also tell us that a ‘transgender man’ is someone who was originally female but has ‘changed gender in order to affirm his authentic self,’ or something like that,” Dansky told CP. “It’s all internally inconsistent and none of it is logical.”

For Danksy, even the fact that a journalist would use terminology like “presenting outwardly as female” is “wildly sexist … from a feminist perspective.”

“What on earth does it mean to ‘present outwardly as female?” she added. “A woman is an adult human female regardless of how she presents. A woman who wears combat boots and cargo pants is no less female than a woman who wears dresses and makeup.

“Feminists have fought hard for decades to combat these regressive stereotypes.”

The LA Times, of course, is not alone in its use of the language preferred by transgender activists to convey factual events. The Associated Press, long considered the standard of editorial desks and newsrooms worldwide, has told its reporters to avoid using the term “transgenderism,” which the AP says “frames transgender identity as an ideology.”

In what he described as an “institutionalized betrayal of journalism and the truth,” CP’s Social Commentator and writer Brandon Showalter detailed how AP reporters, who have already been told to use “preferred pronouns” in recent years, should also avoid the terms biological sex, biological male and biological female because “opponents of transgender rights sometimes use [those terms] to refer to transgender women and transgender men, respectively.”

According to the new AP Transgender Coverage Topical Guide, reporters also should refrain from referring to “birth gender” and instead opt for “sex assigned at birth” because the guidelines state sex is usually assigned at birth “by parents or attendants, sometimes inaccurately.”

The guidelines also advocate for reporters using “they” or “them” — which have historically been used as third-person plural pronouns — instead as “a gender-neutral singular personal pronoun.”

Between grammatical misuse and ideological assertion, Showalter says the guidelines do little to help readers understand what they’re reading.

“Journalists following the new AP guidelines on this subject do the public a tremendous disservice because it forces readers to think in murky, convoluted categories and function behind an epistemological wall of distortion,” he wrote. “It posits that physical reality is not knowable and presents postmodern word salad and fantastical theories as neutral, brute facts.”

This agenda was perhaps most chillingly illustrated in March following the murder of six people — including three children — at a Christian school in Nashville, Tennessee, when The New York Times issued a clarification on the murderer’s pronouns.

In response to a tweet about a report on the rarity of female shooters, the Times tweeted: “There was confusion later on Monday about the gender identity of the assailant in the Nashville shooting. Officials had used ‘she’ and ‘her’ to refer to the suspect, who, according to a social media post and a LinkedIn profile, appeared to identify as a man in recent months.”

There was confusion later on Monday about the gender identity of the assailant in the Nashville shooting. Officials had used “she” and “her” to refer to the suspect, who, according to a social media post and a LinkedIn profile, appeared to identify as a man in recent months.
— The New York Times (@nytimes) March 28, 2023

While an original CNN report — now archived — used the word “woman,” CNN later, without any editorial acknowledgment, changed the headline to omit any reference to the shooter’s identity or the Covenant School as a Christian institution. This pattern was repeated in the days and hours following the Nashville shooting: CBS News reportedly banned the word “transgender” in the network’s coverage, while some of America’s most prominent newspapers avoided using the word “Christian” in their headlines.

While such an obsession with language — how to phrase this, what is the technically correct term for that — has always been part of the job, traditionally, this pursuit has been in the name of accuracy, not ideology.

Following Bruce Jenner’s public transition to Caitlyn Jenner in 2015, The New York Times acknowledged the potential for “pronoun confusion” and, in doing so, highlighted the potential for editorial quagmires. After Vanity Fair released its now-famous cover photo of the newly-transitioned Jenner, The New York Times reported that Vanity Fair writer Buzz Bissinger, despite spending “hundreds of hours with Jenner post- and pre-op” — language, incidentally, which now violates Associated Press guidelines — confessed to experiencing “continual pronoun confusion during the interviews.”

“I constantly used ‘he’ instead of ‘she,'” Bissinger wrote, “and at one point called Caitlyn ‘dude’ out of force of habit.”

The New York Times also noted how some journalists, including one of its own reporters, “chose to use ‘she’ in all circumstances presumably to show respect to Jenner’s preferred gender choice, resulting in the eyebrow-raising construction: ‘As Bruce Jenner, she had been on the cover of Playgirl.'”

Dansky says these sorts of grammatical and linguistic acrobatics fail to address a crucial point: simply using “preferred” language to communicate a “preferred” reality doesn’t necessarily mean that reality actually exists. Put another way, as Shakespeare famously wrote, “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”

“When someone uses the phrase ‘transgender man,’ the person is referring to a woman who claims to be a man. No women have ever been male and no men have ever been female,” Dansky said.

“There is simply no credible scientific evidence to support the idea that anyone can be ‘born in the wrong body’ or that it is possible to change sex.”

And while such criticism may sound familiar coming from Christians or social conservatives, Dansky wants to make clear that she speaks for neither group, regardless of whether the mainstream media wants to acknowledge it.

Dansky said she’s tired of legacy outlets failing to report honestly about what she describes as the “leftist feminist critique” of “gender identity.”

“We are not conservatives,” she said. “We are leftist feminists who think that ‘gender identity’ is a regressive, authoritarian, sexist, and homophobic ideology.”

“Outlets like the Los Angeles Times know that we exist, but they refuse to platform our voices.”

Ian M. Giatti is a reporter for The Christian Post and the author of BACKWARDS DAD: a children’s book for grownups. He can be reached at: ian.giatti@christianpost.com.

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Philly mass killing suspect is a cross-dressing BLM activist — and police are using ‘they/them’ pronouns

By: CHRIS ENLOE | July 05, 2023

The suspect accused of gunning down five people in a mass killing on Monday is reportedly a Black Lives Matter activist and cross-dresser.

Shortly before 8:30 p.m. on Monday, the killer opened fire on a street in a southwest Philadelphia neighborhood, killing five people and injuring two others. The killer allegedly used an AR-15-style weapon and a handgun, wore body armor and a ski mask, and targeted victims randomly. Police officers chased and cornered the suspect, taking the individual into custody without issue.

The suspect, a 40-year-old male, posted pictures of himself to social media wearing women’s clothing just three months ago, according to the New York Post. The individual also repeatedly posted in support of Black Lives Matter. It’s not exactly clear how the suspect “identifies,” but law enforcement is using “they/them” pronouns to refer to the suspect. CNN reported:

The Philadelphia district attorney’s office is using they/them pronouns to refer to the suspect based on “information we have at this time,” a spokesperson for the office told CNN. Philadelphia officials previously used he/him pronouns for the suspect during a Tuesday news conference.

The suspect faces more than 30 criminal charges, including five counts of murder, five counts of attempted murder, 10 counts of assault, 10 counts of recklessly endangering another person, and four counts of weapons charges.

City officials, including Mayor Jim Kenney (D) and District Attorney Larry Krasner (D), decried supposedly lax gun laws the day after the mass killing. Krasner, moreover, specifically attacked Republicans, claiming they are “against” the “safety” of citizens because they support Second Amendment rights. It’s not clear what laws would have prevented Monday’s atrocity. Neither Krasner nor Kenney offered suggestions, though Krasner suggested that Pennsylvania should adopt strict gun control laws similar to those in neighboring New Jersey.

The suspect has a criminal history that includes a 2003 arrest for possession of a weapon without a license, carrying a firearm in public, and drug possession, the Post reported. The individual later pleaded guilty to possessing a firearm without a license, receiving three years’ probation, while the other charges were dropped.

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Here’s How America’s ‘Rainbow’ Military Commemorated This 4th Of July Weekend

BY: SHAWN FLEETWOOD | JULY 05, 2023

Maj. Rachel Jones posing with pride flags

The U.S. military issued a series of social media posts commemorating LGBT-themed “diversity” on the same weekend millions of Americans came together to celebrate the nation’s founding.

The first of such incidents occurred on Sunday when the Defense Department’s official Twitter account posted a June 22 article detailing the “coming out journey” of U.S. Army Maj. Rachel Jones, a man who identifies as a “transgender female.” In a tweet accompanying the first post, the agency claimed that Jones “faced deep-rooted challenges on her path to self-acceptance” and that his “resilience shines as a hope for others facing similar struggles.”

Jones faced deep-rooted challenges on her path to self-acceptance. In a world where LGBTQ+ voices were often marginalized, she battled depression and contemplated suicide. Today, her resilience shines as a hope for others facing similar struggles.
— Department of Defense 🇺🇸 (@DeptofDefense) July 2, 2023

You do not become a Major overnight. This confused individual has been in Army leadership for some time. Think that through. How many more of these “confused” people do we haev in our military?

You know our enemies are laughing themselves silly with this knowledge that America has sexually confused, obsessed, leaders in its forces. Does that sound prepared for war to you?

In the attached article — which was published on the Army’s official website — Jones described his process of “accept[ing] and lov[ing]” himself and further claimed it “was very risky to [his] career to be seen in public as a transwoman” during the Trump administration when transgender-identifying individuals were not permitted to openly serve in the military. Upon taking office, President Joe Biden signed an executive order reversing the policy, which allowed Jones to “come out publicly as transgender” to his colleagues.

“People here have been amazing. I know how lucky I am to work in an organization with such acceptance and everyone here has been really supportive,” Jones said. “I was initially a bit fearful of coming out as my true self and how I would be perceived, but I had nothing to worry about.”

To commemorate “pride month,” Jones also recorded a video claiming that for him, “pride” is about “celebrating that diversity is our strength, as a nation and as an Army.”

US Army Major “Rachel” Jones on diversity in the military 🤡 🌎

God help us. pic.twitter.com/kexqtzggwg
— Jordan Schachtel @ dossier.today (@JordanSchachtel) July 1, 2023

A similar incident exemplifying the military’s increased focus on so-called “diversity” occurred on Friday and Sunday, when the U.S. Navy posted two separate Instagram clips highlighting the importance of removing alleged “barriers” for LGBT service members’ “total inclusion” in the fleet.

“It’s a necessary effort to make sure that the chief of naval operation and our operational commanders are getting the very best from the 6 to 8 to 10 percent of our force that identifies as LGBTQ+,” said Rear Admiral Mike Brown in the Friday clip.

I am a Combat Marine Veteran. There is no possible way for me to trust anyone like this into combat. As adults they are confused about the way they “feel”, makes every other aspect of their lives questionable.

When asked in the second video what it means to have a “diverse force,” Brown further claimed it’s important for the Navy to be “inclusive of all parts of the American population.”

“Inclusion means recognizing that we have a diverse force and getting the most of every part of our force, every individual sailor,” Brown said. ”We will not be able to compete and win if we don’t continue to pull from the amazing talent that resides in every corner of the United States, harness that talent, respect it, and use it.”

It’s worth mentioning that both the Army and Navy are expected to miss their recruiting goals for the 2023 fiscal year.

Since Biden’s inauguration, the Defense Department has seemingly ramped up its push for military leadership to adopt discriminatory “DEI” ideology. DEI — which stands for diversity, equity, and inclusion — is a divisive and poisonous ideology that dismisses merit to discriminate based on characteristics such as skin color and sexual preferences. Individuals who qualify for a certain position due to their merits but don’t meet the discriminating entity’s goal of being more “diverse” are passed over in favor of those who meet the preferred identitarian standards.

[READ: Legal Group Demands Navy Investigate Active-Duty Drag Queen For Allegedly Violating Military Protocol]

Last month, for instance, the Air Force went all out to celebrate “pride month” by authorizing the use of U.S. taxpayer dollars to cover the travel costs for service members seeking to attend the branch’s June “pride” events. Several Air Force bases also held LGBT-related events on their respective grounds last month.

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

SHAWN FLEETWOOD

VISIT ON TWITTER@SHAWNFLEETWOOD

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IRS Whistleblower Knocks Out Hunter Biden’s Lawyers and the Washington Post with One Blow

BY: MARGOT CLEVELAND | JULY 05, 2023

IRS whistleblower Gary Shapley — Hunter Biden’s lawyers tried to turn him into a victim by smearing Gary Shapley — but Shapley fired back.

Author Margot Cleveland profile

MARGOT CLEVELAND

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Hunter Biden’s high-priced attorneys again tried to turn the president’s son into a victim by portraying IRS whistleblower Gary Shapley as a partisan leaker and a criminal — but on Monday, Shapley responded. Shapley’s counter was a devasting blow to Hunter Biden’s legal strategy and also represented a shot across the bow of the Biden-friendly Washington Post.

On Friday, Winston and Strawn attorney Abbe David Lowell dispatched a 10-page missive to Rep. Jason Smith, R-Mo., the chair of the House Ways and Means Committee, regarding what Lowell called the Republican House’s “obsession with attacking the Biden family.” While the letter complained of the House’s supposed abandonment of congressional protocol and rules of conduct, Hunter Biden’s attorneys’ real focus was Shapley, whom they painted as a partisan hack, not a whistleblower — and a criminal to boot.

The June 30 letter from Hunter’s attorneys strongly implied Shapley was responsible for leaking information to The Washington Post that served as the basis for an Oct. 6, 2022 article authored by Devlin Barrett and Perry Stein. The article claimed that “federal agents investigating President Biden’s son Hunter have gathered what they believe is sufficient evidence to charge him with tax crimes and a false statement related to a gun purchase…” Biden’s lawyers then challenged the House to ask the whistleblowers if they had leaked information to the Post.

Shapley didn’t wait for the House to ask, instead submitting an affidavit to the House Ways and Means Committee on Monday in which he unequivocally swore he “was not the source for the October 6, 2022, Washington Post article.” Shapley further attested that he had never “had any contact with Barrett or Stein,” the authors of the article. He also stated under oath that he “never leaked confidential taxpayer information.”

The whistleblower then expressly authorized “the Washington Post and/or journalists Devlin Barrett, Perry Stein, or any other Washington Post reporter to release any communications directly or indirectly to or from me,” agreeing “to waive any purported journalistic privilege and/or confidentiality that would have arisen had I been a source for the Washington Post.”

At the same time, Shapley’s lawyers wrote to Washington Post authors Barrett and Stein, noting that “Biden family attorneys have falsely accused SSA Shapley of illegally leaking to you for your story, ‘Federal agents see chargeable tax, gun-purchase case against Hunter Biden.’”

“As you know, SSA Shapley was not a source for you on that story, or any other story for that matter,” the letter continued. “SSA Shapley has never communicated with either of you, either on or off the record.”

Then, after stressing that Shapley had waived any confidentiality that would have arisen, the whistleblower’s lawyers asked them “to correct Mr. Biden’s attorneys and clear SSA Shapley’s good name of these false and retaliatory charges.”

The Federalist asked both Barrett and Stein whether Shapley was a source for their article, but the reporters did not respond to the inquiries. Whether they will respond to Shapley’s entreat remains to be seen.

What is clear, however, is that Hunter Biden’s attorneys don’t care whether Shapley was the source. They are being paid to defend Hunter Biden, and beyond cutting a sweetheart deal with Joe Biden’s DOJ, that means attacking everyone else. With Shapley and his testimony representing the most serious threat to the Biden family, the attacks on the IRS whistleblower are likely to continue.

While there is little that can be done to stop Hunter Biden’s lawyers from smearing Shapley, congressional oversight committees should ensure the Biden administration’s DOJ isn’t providing an assist. A recent New York Times article suggests Hunter Biden’s attorneys are attempting to inveigle the DOJ in the attack on Shapley.

“Hunter Biden’s lawyers have told the Justice Department that Mr. Shapley has broken federal laws that keep grand jury material secret,” The New York Times reported last week. In his Monday affidavit, Shapley also refuted this point, saying he never knowingly released grand jury material. But that might not matter to a Justice Department that answers to Hunter’s father.

Thankfully, Shapley and the other whistleblowers have a strong advocate in Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, who seems two steps ahead of everything the DOJ and other Biden apologists pull. It is unfortunate, though, that the left-wing press that once championed whistleblowers seems intent now to serve as scribes for Hunter Biden’s attorneys. If the Post reporters remain silent, we’ll know they intend to keep things that way.

This article has been updated since publication.

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.

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If Alleged DOJ Misconduct Is True, A Judge Could Dismiss The Whole Case Against Trump

BY: WILL SCHARF | JULY 05, 2023

Merrick Garland press conference — The conduct claimed is perhaps unprecedented and certainly flagrant. If proven true, the judge would be well within her rights to consider dismissal.

WILL SCHARF

Lost in the breathless headlines over the indictment of President Trump for alleged violations of the Espionage Act is a story that deserves much more attention than it has received thus far: the allegation that a senior official at the Department of Justice attempted to shake down Trump’s co-defendant’s lawyer. It is a scandal in the making that could result in the investigation of senior DOJ officials, which should lead to public congressional hearings, and that might even result in the entire case against Trump being dismissed.

Trump’s co-defendant is Waltine “Walt” Nauta, a Navy valet who served in Trump’s White House and who remained a personal aide to Trump after he left office. Several weeks ago, Nauta’s lawyer, a distinguished, highly-regarded Washington attorney named Stanley Woodward, leveled accusations against senior members of the Department of Justice, including DOJ Counterintelligence Chief Jay Bratt, who is now a part of Special Counsel Jack Smith’s team of prosecutors. According to news reports, Woodward claimed in a sealed letter to D.C. District Chief Judge James Boasberg that, in a meeting to discuss Nauta’s case, Bratt indicated that Woodward’s application to be a D.C. Superior Court judge could be impacted if he could not get Nauta to testify against Trump.

If true, and I see no reason why Woodward would make such a threat up — and especially no reason why Woodward would risk his career by making such a representation to a federal judge — Bratt’s alleged misconduct could result in heavy sanctions, and is a potential ground for dismissal of the entire case against Nauta and Trump. Depending on what exactly was said, Bratt could even face criminal prosecution himself.

In cases of flagrant prosecutorial misconduct, courts have the discretion to dismiss indictments altogether. If Woodward’s claims are proven, U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon would be well within her rights to consider a dismissal here. The conduct claimed is perhaps unprecedented and certainly flagrant, amounting to nothing less than an effort by a high-ranking DOJ official to deprive a defendant of his Sixth Amendment right to counsel through inappropriate and potentially unlawful acts.

At the very least, Trump and Nauta deserve answers. Courts routinely allow discovery by the defense in cases of alleged prosecutorial misconduct — including depositions and requests for documents and communications — in order to determine the scope, breadth, and effects of any misconduct that occurred. The defense team in this case should seek testimony from Bratt to get to the bottom of what he said and why.

As importantly, defense counsel should also seek to subpoena any communications between Bratt and others in DOJ and the White House relating to Woodward’s judgeship application and Bratt’s approach to Woodward more generally. My assumption is that these communications will be eye-opening, and may reveal even more misconduct on the part of the DOJ, the special counsel’s team, and their political masters.

The legal teams defending Trump and Nauta surely know all of this, and I am confident that they will pursue this and other lines of defense aggressively. But the American people also deserve to know the full details of misconduct by senior officials at the Department of Justice. Republicans in Congress should demand answers publicly and aggressively. The House Judiciary Committee has jurisdiction to investigate matters relating to the administration of justice in the federal court system. It has the power to subpoena Bratt, the other lawyers involved in the Trump prosecution, and senior Biden administration officials to get to the bottom of this.

Make no mistake, this is a huge deal. Bratt’s conduct may even fall within the ambit of federal criminal statutes. Depending on what exactly was said, Bratt’s conduct could constitute attempted witness tampering in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1512(b)(1), attempted federal bribery in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 201(b)(3), attempted extortion by a federal official in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 872, or attempted subornation of perjury in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1622.

If the Department of Justice is truly committed to the open and transparent treatment of this case, a special counsel should be empowered to investigate Bratt’s actions and any other alleged misconduct by Jack Smith’s team.

Note: This piece has been updated.

Will Scharf is a former federal prosecutor, who also worked on the confirmations of Supreme Court Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett. He is currently a Republican candidate for Missouri Attorney General.

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Holiday Weekend News Dump Implodes Merrick Garland’s Biden-Investigation Testimony

BY: MARGOT CLEVELAND | JULY 05, 2023

Author Margot Cleveland profile

MARGOT CLEVELAND

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A new letter sent by Delaware U.S. Attorney David Weiss to the House Judiciary Committee suggests Attorney General Merrick Garland lied to Congress when he testified that Weiss “has full authority” to charge Hunter Biden in “other jurisdictions.” Whether Garland committed perjury will all come down to the meaning of the word “has.”

Late Friday, just as Americans unplugged for the long Independence Day weekend, Weiss confirmed he didn’t really have “ultimate authority” over the Hunter Biden criminal investigation. In his letter, Weiss gave away the deceptive word game he has been playing with Congress — and Garland has been playing with America. More significantly, the letter suggests Biden’s attorney general lied to Congress and that everything the IRS whistleblower has said is true.

What the Whistleblower Said

Weiss’s letter followed the House Ways and Means Committee’s release of IRS Criminal Supervisory Special Agent Gary Shapley’s testimony and related exhibits concerning the Hunter Biden investigation headed out of the Delaware U.S. attorney’s office. The transcript of Shapley’s May 26, 2023, closed-door testimony revealed the IRS agent had told the House committee that during an Oct. 7, 2022 meeting between Weiss and senior-level managers, Weiss allegedly said, “I am not the deciding person on whether charges are filed.”

According to Shapley’s testimony, Weiss then explained that the Biden-appointed U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, Matthew Graves, refused to allow Weiss to charge Hunter Biden in the D.C. district — the necessary venue for certain charges based on Hunter Biden’s residency during the relevant time. Shapley noted, “Weiss stated that he subsequently asked for special counsel authority from Main DOJ at that time and was denied that authority.” “Instead,” Shapley recounted, Weiss “was told to follow the process,” which sent Weiss through another Biden-appointed U.S. attorney, for other potential criminal charges based in California.

Without the cooperation of Biden-appointed U.S. attorneys, Shapley told the House committee, Weiss was unable to bring charges outside his Delaware district. And Weiss’s lack of authority led to the statute of limitations expiring on felony tax charges against the president’s son for the 2014 and 2015 tax years.

To corroborate his testimony, Shapley provided the House Ways and Means Committee with an email he had sent a colleague soon after the meeting summarizing the key points. That Oct. 7 email recounted the details to which Shapley had testified and, significantly, Shapley copied the special agent in charge of criminal investigations of the IRS D.C. field office, Darrell J. Waldon, who had also attended the Oct. 7 meeting. Waldon would then reply to Shapley’s email summary, “Thanks Gary. You covered it all,” indicating Shapley had accurately recounted Weiss’s representation that he is “not the deciding person on whether charges are filed.”

The release of Shapley’s testimony and the collaborating email was huge because it indicated both Weiss and Garland had deceived Congress. Weiss for his part had sent a letter to the House Judiciary Committee on June 7, 2023, stating:

I want to make clear that, as the Attorney General has stated, I have been granted ultimate authority over this matter, including responsibility for deciding where, when, and whether to file charges and for making decisions necessary to preserve the integrity of the prosecution, consistent with federal law, the Principles of Federal Prosecution, and Departmental regulations.

Weiss’s Friday letter was in response to questions House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan posed to the Delaware U.S. attorney about his claim “to have been granted ultimate authority” over the Hunter Biden investigation.

In his pre-Fourth of July weekend epistle, the Delaware U.S. attorney said he stood by what he wrote in the June 7, 2023 letter. He added, however, that he wished to expand on what he meant. Weiss then acknowledged that as the U.S. attorney for the District of Delaware, his charging authority is geographically limited to his home district.

“If venue for a case lies elsewhere, common Departmental practice is to contact the United States Attorney’s Office for the district in question and determine whether it wants to partner on the case,” the letter noted. “If not, I may request Special Attorney status from the Attorney General pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 515.” Weiss concluded by stressing that he had “been assured that, if necessary after the above process,” he “would be granted § 515 Authority in the District of Columbia, the Central District of California, or any other district where charges could be brought in this matter.”

There was no reason Weiss could not have provided this explanation earlier — or at least no good reason: The Delaware U.S. attorney clearly intended to convey to Congress the false impression that he had “ultimate authority” to charge Hunter Biden, which would in turn suggest the IRS whistleblower’s claims to the contrary were false.

But Weiss’s clarification confirms he lacked “ultimate authority,” which is entirely consistent with Shapley’s testimony. In fact, had Shapley falsely summarized the statements Weiss made during the Oct. 7, 2022 meeting, Weiss could have easily said so. That he didn’t speaks volumes.

Lies, Lies, Lies

While Weiss’s clarification from late last week is technically consistent with what he told Congress in his June 7, 2022 letter, the same cannot be said for Garland’s earlier testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee.

On March 1, 2023, Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, asked Garland whether Weiss had “independent charging authority over certain criminal allegations against the President’s son outside the District of Delaware.” After responding that Weiss “would have to bring the case in another district,” Garland added that “the U.S. attorney in Delaware has been advised that he has full authority … to bring cases in other jurisdictions if he feels it’s necessary” (emphasis added).

But according to Weiss’s latest letter, he didn’t have “full authority” and still doesn’t. Rather he had been assured, “if necessary,” he “would be granted § 515 Authority in the District of Columbia, the Central District of California, or any other district where charges could be brought in this matter.”

Given Shapley’s testimony, there is a huge difference between Weiss having “full authority” to bring charges in other districts and being promised a grant of such authority. If Weiss had “full authority,” as Garland told Congress, that would mean that either the whistleblower lied to Congress or Weiss lied to his senior team handling the Hunter Biden investigation. It would also clear Garland, the DOJ, and FBI headquarters of interfering in the investigation — a second allegation the whistleblower leveled in his testimony to the House Ways and Means Committee.

With both Weiss and Garland playing word games with Congress, it seems likely Weiss also sought to mislead the House when he stressed that he “had been assured” he “would be granted § 515 Authority in the District of Columbia, the Central District of California, or any other district where charges could be brought in this matter.” That language suggests Weiss always had that assurance, but from the whistleblower’s testimony, it appears Weiss had previously requested such authority and been denied it. (The whistleblower and Waldon likely confused Weiss’s reference to special attorney status with special counsel status.)

A belated promise by Garland to give Weiss special attorney authority under § 515 means nothing, as the statute of limitations has already run out for the felony tax charges. So the question remains: Was Weiss denied such authority, as the whistleblower claims Weiss told him? And when did Garland assure Weiss he would have § 515 authority? For that matter, why wouldn’t Garland have immediately conferred such authority on Weiss?

It seems unlikely Congress or the American public will learn the answers to these questions any time soon. Weiss appears to be coordinating his communications with Garland, as demonstrated by his reference in Friday’s letter to the DOJ’s Department of Legislative Affairs — further proof that Weiss is no more independent from the Biden administration than the rest of the Department of Justice.

This article has been updated since publication.

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.

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Judge praised for ‘stunning’ July 4 rebuke of Biden admin on Big Tech censorship: ‘Finally’

Federal judge says White House likely violated First Amendment during COVID-19 pandemic

By Madeline Coggins | Fox News | Published July 5, 2023 2:02pm EDT

A federal judge is being applauded for a surprise July 4 ruling stating the Biden administration likely violated the First Amendment during the COVID-19 pandemic. U.S. District Court Judge Terry A. Doughty ordered an injunction on Independence Day to prevent White House officials and federal agencies from meeting with tech companies about social media censorship, arguing past actions likely violated the Constitution.

“I think that language reflects that this was a stunning rebuke, but also an appropriate one,” former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe told “America’s Newsroom” Wednesday.

The holiday injunction was in response to recent lawsuits from Louisiana and Missouri attorneys general. The suits allege that the White House coerced or “significantly encourage[d]” tech companies to suppress free speech during the COVID-19 pandemic.

BIDEN LIKELY VIOLATED FIRST AMENDMENT DURING COVID-19 PANDEMIC, FEDERAL JUDGE SAYS

Former WH press secretary Jen Psaki was named by a judge in a ruling on the Biden administration and efforts to combat COVID-19 misinformation. ((Left:REUTERS/Leah Millis, Right:REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/File Photo))

Several federal officials and agencies – including some of Biden’s Cabinet members and White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre – have been barred from contacting social media companies in efforts to suppress speech. The injunction, which was obtained by Fox News, states that the government’s actions “likely violate the Free Speech Clause” and that the court “is not persuaded by Defendants’ arguments,” dealing a significant blow to the White House.

“I read this opinion yesterday, I couldn’t stop saying thank you. Finally,” OutKick founder Travis said on “Fox & Friends” Wednesday. “This is going to be incredibly difficult for the Biden administration to overturn.”

Video

“It’s unbelievable the amount of information, and the discovery that we were able to obtain through this particular case should concern all Americans, irrespective of their political ideology, their party affiliation,” Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry remarked earlier on the show.

“The judge basically spells it out. He does it in this great 120-page opinion. He takes things step by step. He says, look, the government went out there and censored America’s speech on COVID-19, on vaccine policies, on mask mandates, on election questions, in the Hunter Biden laptop.”

“This is a completely direct violation of the First Amendment.”

Video

“During the COVID-19 pandemic, a period perhaps best characterized by widespread doubt and uncertainty, the United States Government seems to have assumed a role similar to an Orwellian ‘Ministry of Truth,’” Doughty wrote.

“If the allegations made by Plaintiffs are true, the present case arguably involves the most massive attack against free speech in United States’ history,” the injunction adds. “In their attempts to suppress alleged disinformation, the Federal Government, and particularly the Defendants named here, are alleged to have blatantly ignored the First Amendment’s right to free speech.”

The injunction also claims that “the censorship alleged in this case almost exclusively targeted conservative speech,” but that issues the case raises are “beyond party lines.”

“Viewpoint discrimination is an especially egregious form of content discrimination,” Doughty argued. “The government must abstain from regulating speech when the specific motivating ideology or the perspective of the speaker is the rationale for the restriction.”

Video

The cases could mean that interactions between tech companies and government officials may be significantly limited in the future. Exceptions might include national security threats or criminal matters on social media.

Fox News Digital reached out to the White House, Google, Meta and Twitter for statements, but has not heard back. The Department of Justice declined to comment.

Some critics have challenged the ruling, with a Washington Post article warning the judge’s decision could “upend years of efforts to enhance coordination between the government and social media companies.”

Ratcliffe agreed with the sentiment but argued the judge is not the one to blame.

“The problem is in this case that the years of good work have been upended by social media executives and government officials who have abused that and the examples that we’ve just talked about. It’s ironic because The Washington Post is actually a coconspirator in that. It was the mainstream media, ironically, that was complicit in this abuse of the First Amendment and suppressing Americans’ free speech. So they did it to themselves that that’s the problem.”

“My take is that this is going to hold up on appeal, because everything that the plaintiffs in this case allege has been proven largely to be true,” Ratcliffe argued. “When you think about, with respect to COVID-19, everything from the origins of the lab leak, the efficacy of certain treatments, the transmissibility. You just heard President Biden talking about pandemic of the unvaccinated. All of that was frankly, wrong, and yet Americans ability to engage in honest debate about it was suppressed. And so you have these agencies with social media working to suppress the truth and amplify lies.”

“As the judge says, I truly do believe this is the greatest infringement on our First Amendment rights that any of us have seen occur in any of our lives. It cannot be allowed. And we’re finally getting judges pushing back,” Travis said.

Fox News’ Andrea Vacchiano contributed to this report.

Madeline Coggins is a Digital Production Assistant on the Fox News flash team with Fox News Digital.

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Cocaine Was in WH Visitor Cubby; Secret Service Reviewing Logs, Cameras

NEWSMAX | Wednesday, 05 July 2023 03:50 PM EDT

Cocaine discovered in the White House on Sunday was found in a cubby hole in a West Wing entry area where visitors place electronics and other belongings before taking tours, a source familiar with the matter said on Wednesday.

The Secret Service is investigating the matter, the White House said. “They’re checking visitor logs and … looking at cameras. Those are the next steps. Cross-checking,” said the source.

White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters: “Where this was discovered is a heavily traveled area where many … West Wing visitors come through.”

Asked whether anyone had undergone drug testing as part of the investigation, Jean-Pierre said: “We will take any action … that is appropriate and warranted, pending the outcome of Secret Service.”

The West Wing is attached to the executive mansion where President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden live. It includes the Oval Office, cabinet room and workspace for presidential staff. Hundreds of people pass through the West Wing on a regular basis, including political staff, their guests and members of the press.

Jean-Pierre said West Wing tours took place on Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

The substance was found during a routine Secret Service sweep on Sunday evening. A Secret Service spokesperson did not respond to requests for comment on Wednesday. The agency has not said how much cocaine was found. The discovery led to a brief closure of the White House complex on Sunday. Biden and his family were not at the White House then.

Biden did not answer questions that reporters shouted at him about the cocaine on Wednesday. The president thinks it’s “incredibly important” to get to the bottom of it, Jean-Pierre said.

Administration officials are able to offer tours of parts of the West Wing to friends and family members. People who are not members of staff must leave electronics and other belongings in the storage cubicles before taking a tour.

“It was in one of the cubbies,” the source said about the cocaine.

Biden and his family returned to the White House early on Tuesday after spending the holiday weekend at the presidential retreat at Camp David, Maryland. Family members who visit the Bidens traditionally enter and exit through the East Wing, the source said.

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Dick Morris to Newsmax: Biden Social Media Ruling ‘Most Important’

By Sandy Fitzgerald | Wednesday, 05 July 2023 03:11 PM EDT

A federal judge’s order for an injunction barring President Joe Biden’s administration from contacting social media companies and requesting censorship of some users may be “the most important decision of this year,” political strategist Dick Morris told Newsmax Wednesday.

“Certainly [it is] more important than even affirmative action,” Morris, the host of Newsmax’s “Dick Morris Democracy,” said on “John Bachman Now.”

Morris explained that the administration was using rules under the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), which former President Donald Trump set up in 2018 to protect the United States grid against cyber attacks.

“Biden has completely changed it and made it an instrument for domestic surveillance,” said Morris. “CISA monitors all social media posts in the country and the world, and calls social media vendors to account and says on your platform, ‘You’re now running a statement that says that the COVID vaccine doesn’t work,’ or … what they’ll say is ‘You’re running something factually wrong that we want to change, that is not the administration line.'”

As a result, CISA has become a “muscle arm for social media censorship,” as have the CDC, the FBI, and the DOJ, said Morris.

Morris also responded to news that former GOP Rep. Denver Riggleman of Virginia has been working with Hunter Biden’s legal team while helping it with data analysis.

“Obviously he’ll assemble a legal team and obviously he has to say something,” said Morris. “The tax deal that he did was absolutely absurd … it completely misrepresents what Biden did.”

He also raised questions about the income the president and first lady reported in 2017 and 2018, when they reported income of $15 million and another $8 million from the sale of Biden’s book about his son who died.

“To do that, he would have had to sell 15 million books, and they sold 300,000,” said Morris. “Now there’s $10 million of income rattling around Biden’s tax return that nobody knows where it’s from. He claims it’s from the book, but it couldn’t be. And it’s not from his pension. It’s not from his vice presidential salary. It’s from unnamed sources. And that $10 million very possibly was the money that he got from Ukraine and from China that he dressed up as income from his book.”

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Judge: Psaki Pushed Social Media to Censor COVID Info

By Solange Reyner | Wednesday, 05 July 2023 02:54 PM EDT

Former White House press secretary Jen Psaki pushed social-media platforms to censor COVID-19 information coming from conservative voices starting in May 2021, a federal judge ruled Wednesday, the Daily Caller reported. U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty of Louisiana granted an injunction barring President Joe Biden’s administration from contacting tech companies to request the censorship of some users.

The ruling came in response to a 2022 lawsuit brought by attorneys general in Louisiana and Missouri. Their lawsuit alleged the federal government overstepped in its efforts to convince social media companies to address postings that could result in vaccine hesitancy during the COVID-19 pandemic or affect elections.

“If the allegations made by plaintiffs are true, the present case arguably involves the most massive attack against free speech in United States’ history,” the injunction read. “In their attempts to suppress alleged disinformation, the federal government, and particularly the defendants named here, are alleged to have blatantly ignored the First Amendment’s right to free speech.”

Doughty cited “substantial evidence” of a far-reaching censorship campaign. He wrote the “evidence produced thus far depicts an almost dystopian scenario. During the COVID-19 pandemic, a period perhaps best characterized by widespread doubt and uncertainty, the United States government seems to have assumed a role similar to an Orwellian ‘Ministry of Truth.'”

The Justice Department is reviewing the injunction “and will evaluate its options in this case,” said a White House official, who was not authorized to discuss the case publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.

“This administration has promoted responsible actions to protect public health, safety, and security when confronted by challenges like a deadly pandemic and foreign attacks on our elections,” the official said. “Our consistent view remains that social media platforms have a critical responsibility to take account of the effects their platforms are having on the American people but make independent choices about the information they present.”

Information from the Associated Press was used in this report.

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Today’s Politically INCORRECT Cartoon by A.F. Branco

A.F. Branco Cartoon – Executive Odor

A.F. BRANCO | on July 5, 2023 | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-execurive-odor/

Biden and his minions are bragging about his economy that is wreaking havoc on everyday Americans.

Bidenomics — Political cartoon by A.F. Branco ©2023

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Prof. Jonathan Turley Op-ed: Biden’s unhinged ideas of Supreme Court and our Constitution

July 3, 2023

President distorts history to attack Supreme Court as ‘not normal’

By Jonathan Turley | Fox News | Published July 3, 2023 4:00am EDT

The decision of the Supreme Court to end the use of race in college admissions was not unexpected. Yet, President Joe Biden expressed outrage and actually claimed that the court gutted the constitutional guarantee that “all men and women are created equal.”

In declaring that this court was not “normal,” Biden further insisted that these admissions decisions and the Dobbs abortion decision reversed the gains that “we fought a war over in 1860” to secure. In an interview on MSNBC’s “Deadline: White House,” President Biden accused the court of ignoring what “the Constitution says: We hold these truths to be self-evident, all men and women are created equal, endowed by their creator.” That is actually a reference to the Declaration of Independence, but it was the substance of the point that was so baffling.

LIBERALS LAMENT STRING OF SUPREME COURT VERDICTS: ‘THIS TRULY SUCKS’

In barring the use of race in admissions, the court believed that it was protecting that very “self-evident” guarantee. It erased what the court viewed as a glaring anomaly in its cases in the treatment of racial discrimination in education as opposed to employment.

Biden tugs at collar — President Biden accused the Supreme Court of ignoring what “the Constitution says.” (Getty Images)

It was the capstone opinion for Chief Justice John Roberts, who, in 2017, declared: “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.” In 2006, Roberts also said: “It is a sordid business, this divvying us up by race.”

The court thought it was doing the work started (but not fulfilled) with the Declaration in treating that all men and women are created equal in both education and employment.

The president is not alone in such hyperbole. Figures like ABC’s Whoopi Goldberg actually asked whether the decision will be “leading to no women in colleges soon? Who knows.”

We actually do know. An opinion rejecting the use of racial classification to determine who goes to college could not be read by anyone as endorsing the exclusion of other groups.

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The truly baffling statement was Biden’s claims over the Civil War. By leaving questions like abortion to the states, Biden claims that the court was reversing what was gained in that war. The criticism came in response to an opinion insisting that there is no place for racial discrimination in higher education. That would hardly seem an argument that would be embraced by the Confederacy.

Biden has long taken liberties with our constitutional history. Many of us have repeatedly objected to claims that he has made in areas like the Second Amendment. One of his most repeated lines is that the Second Amendment was passed with the understanding that certain guns would be banned and adding, “You couldn’t buy a cannon when, in fact, the Second Amendment passed.”

That happens to be utterly false. Yet, even after the Washington Post declared Biden’s understanding of the Second Amendment to be false, he has continued to make the same false assertion over and over again.

Now Biden has moved on to the Civil War and his revisionism is about as subtle as Sherman’s scorched “March to the Sea.”

photo of Whoopi Goldberg — ABC’s Whoopi Goldberg ridiculously asked whether the court’s decision will lead “to no women in colleges soon?” (ABC/”The View”/Screenshot)

The Civil War did not end federalism or states rights. It denied the right of the states to secede and ultimately fulfilled the pledge to equality first made in the Declaration of Independence.

One can have good-faith disagreements on whether to use racial criteria in admissions. However, Biden is belittling our prior struggles for equality with these sweeping and erroneous claims.

In his interview, the president also insisted that one has to “look at how it’s ruled on a number of issues that are — have been precedent for 50-60 years sometimes. And that’s what I meant by not normal.”

In reality, the court’s decisions on affirmative action in education have been muddled and conflicted for decades. In 1977, in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, the court barred affirmative action in higher education. However, it allowed some consideration of race as part of a holistic admissions process.

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In the decades that followed, the court remained sharply divided. By 2003, in Grutter v. Bollinger, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor supplied the fifth vote to uphold the use of race by the University of Michigan.

Yet, O’Connor wrote that the court “expects that 25 years from now, the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary to further the interest approved today.” That was roughly 20 years ago.

It is also ironic to hear the president bewailing the reversal of precedent since the greatest advance in racial equality was the reversal of Plessy v. Ferguson and the doctrine of “separate but equal.” That was the governing precedent from 1894 to 1954, but few denounced the Supreme Court for reversing that precedent to eliminate separate or different treatment on the basis for race.

The president also asserted that “the vast majority of the American people don’t agree with a lot of the decisions this court is making.” The majority clearly opposed the Dobbs ruling, but that is not the case on the affirmative action ruling.

One can have good-faith disagreements on whether the use of racial criteria in admission. However, Biden is belittling our prior struggles for equality with these sweeping and erroneous claims.

Polls have consistently shown (including this week) that the majority of the public does not support the use of race in college admissions. Indeed, even in the most liberal states like California, voters have repeatedly rejected affirmative action in admissions.

We should have a robust and passionate debate over these issues. Yet, a president should be seeking to facilitate that dialogue rather than distorting and weaponizing our shared history. It is a continuation of his prior declarations that members of Congress opposing his election reforms to block state laws are voting with “Jefferson Davis” and the Confederacy.

Despite the laws in states like Georgia being upheld as constitutional, Biden declared them a return to the “Jim Crow” South based on distorted accounts of those laws. The claim was again historically and legally ridiculous even if one opposed these state laws.

We should not allow the president’s constitutional and historical distortions to become, to use his description of the court, “normal.” We have fought hard to address the scourge of slavery and racism in our country. That struggle is continuing, but we cannot address those problems in the future by distorting our past.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE JONATHAN TURLEY

Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro professor of public interest law at George Washington University and a practicing criminal defense attorney. He is a Fox News contributor.

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Rep. Tim Burchett to Newsmax: ‘Classic Misdirection’ in Hunter Biden Case

By Fran Beyer | Monday, 03 July 2023 02:33 PM EDT

House Oversight Committee member Rep. Tim Burchett, R-Tenn., on Monday charged that Hunter Biden’s lawyers engaged in “classic misdirection” in an effort to exonerate the president’s son of alleged shady business dealings. The alleged misconduct “goes really deep,” Burchett told Newsmax‘s “John Bachman Now.”

“There [are] two forms of justice in this country,” he said, “the Bidens and the rest of us.”

“The Justice Department in their infinite wisdom after this so-called five-year investigation gives [Hunter Biden] a slap on the wrist,” Burchett lamented. “In Tennessee, I’ve seen people do more time and more punishment for traffic violations … than what Hunter Biden got.”

Hunter Biden is set to appear before a judge July 26 to formally strike a plea agreement with prosecutors on tax and gun charges that will likely spare President Joe Biden’s son time behind bars. A plea agreement calls for Hunter Biden to plead guilty to two misdemeanor counts of failing to pay taxes; he also must commit to court-imposed conditions that will spare him full prosecution on a felony gun charge.

“You’ve got over 20 intelligence professionals who said that the [Hunter Biden] laptop was a Russian hoax, and now we know it isn’t,” Burchett said. “And yet none of those so-called intelligence people are being called on the carpet for it or being denied their security clearances. So this goes really deep.”

According to Burchett, allegations from Hunter Biden’s lawyer that included assertions a whistleblower in the case was “disgruntled” is “classic misdirection. You know, ‘don’t look at this.'”

“That’s exactly what the attorney’s doing – what he’s paid to do,” Burchett said

But Americans “cannot disregard” the “over $10 million that flowed through Hunter Biden for no other reason than he was the vice president’s son and to gain access to the vice president who is now the president,” he added.

Hunter Biden “got his hand caught in the cookie jar — both hands and both feet,” Burchett asserted. “And this thing is going to go deep, and there’s more and more to it.”

Burchett lamented the “five-year investigation” being unable to find what the House Oversight Committee found.

“I’m no accountant by any stretch,” he said, “or an attorney, but I could read. I could follow the trail of the money, the laundering.”

Hunter Biden clients do not pay “tens of thousands or millions of dollars,” and “you don’t set up 21 bank accounts in LLCs that don’t do anything,” according to Burchett.

“You have to do something,” he said. “That’s why the mob used to invest in flower shops and things like that. Because you know it shows a cash flow.

“You can run it through some kind of business.”

But when it comes to the Bidens, he alleged, “They just stuck it in their pocket.”

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Today’s TWO politically INCORRECT Cartoons by A.F. Branco

A.F. Branco Cartoon – Shots Fired

A.F. BRANCO | on July 2, 2023 | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-shots-fired/

Fireworks are made illegal in Minneapolis while gunfire continues nearly unstopped.

Fireworks in Minneapolis — Cartoon by A.F. Branco ©2023.

A.F. Branco Cartoon – Life in the Swamp

A.F. BRANCO | on July 3, 2023 | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-life-in-the-swamp/

The powerful political wheeler and dealers in the swamp, are destroying America.

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SUMMING UP THE WEEK OF JUNE 30, 2023

June 30, 2023

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Elderly woman NYC Mayor Adams compared to plantation owner escaped Nazi regime with family: report

‘I didn’t have a microphone,’ she said. ‘I had to speak loudly so that everyone could hear what I was saying’.

By Houston Keene | Fox News | Published June 30, 2023 3:40pm EDT

New York Mayor Eric Adams engaged in a tense back-and-forth with a woman who he accused of treating him like he was “on a plantation” during a community town hall Wednesday. The elderly woman whom New York City Mayor Eric Adams compared to a plantation owner was born as her family fled the Holocaust.

A Thursday New York Times report revealed that housing activist Jeanie Dubnau, who was berated by Adams in a racial attack for questioning him about the Big Apple’s back-to-back rent increases, fled during the Holocaust to New York City with her family. Dubnau, a molecular biologist, told reporters of her family’s journey fleeing Nazi Germany just before she was born and accused Adams of deflecting from her question because he did not have an answer.

Eric Adams attends state of the state address — The elderly woman whom New York City Mayor Eric Adams compared to a plantation owner fled the Nazi regime in Germany with her family. (AP Photo/Hans Pennink, File)

“It was a complete deflection from what I was saying, because he has no answer,” she told the Times.

Dubnau said she was not trying to be disrespectful to Adams and that she had to shout her question because there was no microphone at the event.

“I didn’t have a microphone,” she said. “I had to speak loudly so that everyone could hear what I was saying.”

Fox News Digital asked Adams’ office for comment on the Times’ report and whether the mayor believed it was appropriate to make racial attacks on people asking questions about his policies. Adams’ spokesperson Fabian Levy told Fox News Digital that the “community conversations were created as a space where we could discuss different issues.”

“That’s why the mayor asked this individual to stand up, so she could speak her mind,” Levy said. “To be clear, anyone who believes this mayor isn’t fighting for tenants hasn’t been paying attention.”

Jeanie Dubnau, a molecular biologist, revealed to reporters her family’s journey fleeing the Nazis and blasted Adams as deflecting from her question because he did not have an answer. (Daniel William McKnight)

“This administration has invested more money for housing than any in New York City history. We’re advancing comprehensive plans to build more homes, faster, and across the city, which is the only way to truly solve the affordability crisis,” he continued. “And we’ve invested in efforts to protect tenants from eviction and expanded rental assistance.”

“The Rent Guidelines Board is tasked with making difficult decisions based on hard data, and balancing the need to protect tenants with the need to provide small property owners — who have seen expenses go up by the most in two decades — with the revenue they need to make repairs and protect our housing stock,” Levy added.

Adams’ attack on Dubnau came after the housing activist interjected during his comments at a community conversation town hall in Manhattan. Dubnau had interrupted his remarks and accused the mayor of raising New York City rent and supporting increases.

“If you are going to ask a question, don’t point at me and don’t be disrespectful to me,” Adams told the woman. “I’m the mayor of the city. Treat me with the respect I deserve to be treated. I’m speaking to you as an adult. Don’t stand in front like you treating someone that’s on the plantation that you own. Give me the respect I deserve and engage in the conversation up here in Washington Heights.”

“Treat me with the same level of respect I treat you,” Adams continued. “So, don’t be pointing at me, don’t be disrespectful to me. Speak with me as an adult because I’m a grown man. I walked into this room as a grown man, and I’ll walk out of this room as a grown man. I answered your question.”

Following his response to the woman, audience members and city officials briefly applauded Adams.

Mayor Eric Adams — Adams’ attack on Dubnau came after the housing activist interjected during his comments at a community conversation town hall in Manhattan. Dubnau had interrupted his remarks and accused the mayor of raising New York City rent and supporting increases. ((Luiz C. Ribeiro/New York Daily News/Tribune News Service via Getty Images))

The mayor’s fierce comments came moments after his initial response to the woman. He noted that he owns a three-family home in Brooklyn but has never increased the rent on his tenants. Adams also sidestepped blame for rent increases, saying the New York City Rent Guidelines Board makes those decisions.

“I think it was a three percent recommendation,” he said. “I don’t control the board. I make appointments. They made the decision.”

On June 21, the Rent Guidelines Board announced recommendations paving the way for landlords to increase rents by 3% this year. The move impacts more than a million rent-stabilized apartments in the city. Following the announcement, Adams commended the board’s decision.

“Finding the right balance is never easy, but I believe the board has done so this year — as evidenced by affirmative votes from both tenant and public representatives,” he said in a statement.

Fox News Digital’s Thomas Catenacci contributed reporting.

Houston Keene is a politics writer for Fox News Digital. Story tips can be sent to Houston.Keene@Fox.com and on Twitter: @HoustonKeene

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Alfredo Ortiz , Elaine Parker Op-ed: What happens now that Supreme Court struck down Biden’s student loan handout scheme

By Alfredo Ortiz , Elaine Parker | Fox News | Published June 30, 2023 10:42am EDT

The U.S. Supreme Court has struck down the Biden administration’s $400 billion student loan bailout in response to a legal challenge by Job Creators Network Foundation. This ruling sets the stage for long-overdue bipartisan action to address the underlying reason for this debt crisis: unaccountable colleges that have raised tuition by more than double the inflation rate over the last generation.

The court ruled that the cancelation program was a clear act of executive overreach, a position that both President Biden and Nancy Pelosi have taken in the past. Congress neither authorized broad student loan forgiveness nor indicated intent to do so. In fact, Congress has repeatedly rejected student loan cancelation bills in recent years. The president is not a king and cannot usurp lawmakers’ authority.

With this ruling, the Supreme Court has protected hardworking Americans who have paid back their student loans or never went to college from having to unfairly cover the college debt of others.

The Supreme Court building — The Supreme Court struck down President Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)

A student debt jubilee would have let colleges off the hook for their role in this crisis and given them a blank check to keep on raising costs, secure in the knowledge that the federal government will step in when debts get out of hand. Lawmakers can now begin to address the problem’s root.

The average annual tuition at private, nonprofit universities has grown to $50,000. As a result, American colleges are sitting on $700 billion in endowments. They are taking advantage of their “nonprofit” status and favorable opinion from Democrats and the media to price gouge ordinary Americans.

A lot of fat can be cut from colleges and returned to students through lower tuition. For instance, colleges have hired an army of high-paid administrators that provide little to no educational value. Some colleges now have around the same number of administrators as students, and most have more administrators than faculty.

College sports coaches can make more than $10 million per year, and college presidents can make over $1 million.

President Joe Biden talking to crowd — President Biden’s plan to forgive $10,000 in student loan debt for qualifying individuals was struck down by the Supreme Court. (Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images)

This begs the question: Have colleges become glorified jobs programs funded by students and taxpayers?

Colleges have launched dozens of expensive humanities degree programs that don’t provide students with marketable skills. These sociology-adjacent majors generally teach postmodernism, identity politics and a victim mentality that leave students unprepared to succeed in today’s competitive economy. British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has vowed to end such low-value degrees in his country.

Colleges have also engaged in a decades-long building boom that has added expensive resort-style amenities to campuses. Features like state-of-the-art dorm rooms, lecture halls and sports facilities don’t improve learning but cost a lot of money for students and taxpayers. These aren’t the college campuses you remember attending.

Student loan debt protesters — The Supreme Court took action Thursday, striking down President Biden’s student loan bailout plan. (Jemal Countess/Getty Images for We, The 45 Million)

Under the status quo, where the federal government backs all student loans, there’s little check on such college profligacy. Yet smart reforms can reverse runaway college tuition and spending.

Recent legislation introduced by Senate Republicans helps get to the root of the problem by imposing student loan transparency and eliminating inflationary Graduate PLUS loans, but more needs to be done.

Broader reforms such as requiring colleges to take over some responsibility for making student loans will incentivize them to ensure students don’t take on too much debt and graduate with skills to succeed. Talk about a win-win.

Democrats have long stood against price gouging, institutional greed and preying on vulnerable folks. They can do so again by joining with Republicans to take on the college cartel. Many top Democrats, such as Sen. Elizabeth Warren, have railed against corporate excess, and they should stay consistent by also calling out colleges.

Thanks to the court’s decision, lawmakers can now come together to finally reduce escalating college costs burdening so many. Everyone agrees student loans are a crisis. It’s time we all identify colleges as the true culprit and pursue bipartisan reform to hold them accountable.

Elaine Parker is president of the Job Creators Network Foundation.

Alfredo Ortiz is President and CEO of the Job Creators Network, a non-partisan organization founded by entrepreneurs.

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Matthew Whitaker to Newsmax: House GOP’s Key Step in Hunter Probe

By Michael Katz | Friday, 30 June 2023 04:09 PM EDT

Matthew Whitaker, former acting attorney general in the Trump administration, told Newsmax on Friday that House Republicans’ request that the investigation into Hunter Biden be made available for transcribed interviews is a crucial next step in getting to the bottom of whether the president’s son received favorable treatment.

The chairs of the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability (James Comer, R-Ky.), Judiciary Committee (Jim Jordan, R-Ohio), and Ways and Means Committee (Jason Smith, R-Mo.), sent letters to Attorney General Merrick Garland, IRS Commissioner Daniel Werfel, and Kimberly Cheatle, the director of the Secret Service, requesting individuals be made available by 5 p.m. July 13. The inquiries, according to the letters, are based on testimony from two IRS whistleblowers that raise “serious questions about the federal government’s commitment to evenhanded justice and the veracity of assertions made to Congress” regarding “allegations of politicization and misconduct with respect to the investigation of Hunter Biden.”

“This is an important development, and only the Republicans in the House can get these answers,” Whitaker told “John Bachman Now.” “These are people that have been identified by the whistleblower under oath. And remember, these whistleblowers are very experienced IRS special agents that investigate serious crimes, felonies. And so these individuals had various roles.”

Two of the people requested are Martin Estrada, the U.S. attorney for the central district of California, and Matthew Graves, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, who IRS whistleblower Gary Shapley testified declined requests by David Weiss, the U.S. attorney for Delaware overseeing the case, to bring felony charges against Hunter Biden.

“Others were in this critical meeting where U.S. Attorney Weiss said he did not have the authority to bring certain types of cases and had, you know, expressed his frustration,” Whitaker said. “I think there are also people at main justice — political appointees of Joe Biden that serve under Merrick Garland — that also need to be brought in, because all of them have a piece and a part into how this investigation was frustrated and how Hunter Biden is going to get away with two misdemeanors and a don’t-do-it-again letter.”

In a plea agreement with the Department of Justice, Hunter Biden pleaded guilty to two misdemeanor tax offenses and admitted to illegally possessing a weapon after his 2018 purchase of a handgun. As part of that admission, he would enter a diversion program; and if he meets the conditions of the program, the gun charge would be removed from his record.

“There are more questions than answers right now,” Whitaker said. “And at the end of the day, House Republicans are the only people that can get to the bottom of this.”

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Today’s Politically INCORRECT Cartoon by A.F. Branco

A.F. Branco Cartoon – Happy Depends Day

A.F. BRANCO| on June 30, 2023 | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-happy-depends-day/

Biden like’s everything made in China to the detriment of his own country. Can you say “bribery?

Biden’s 4th of July — Cartoon by A.F. Branco ©2023.

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DeSantis supports abolishing the IRS, Department of Education, and more — but he also has a backup plan

June 29, 2023

By: ALEX NITZBERG | June 28, 2023

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is currently running for president, has indicated that he would support abolishing the Department of Education, the Department of Energy, the Internal Revenue Service, and the Department of Commerce. He named the four government entities after Fox News Channel’s Martha MacCallum asked him if he would support nixing any agencies.

DeSantis, who previously served in the U.S. House of Representatives, indicated that he would support eliminating those four government entities if Congress would work with him to do so. But he also said if the legislature will not support such a move, he would utilize the agencies to counter “woke ideology” and “leftism,” such as by using the Department of Education to “reverse all the transgender sports stuff.”

DeSantis said that either route would mark a “win for conservatives.”

BREAKING: Ron DeSantis was just asked if he's in favor of eliminating any federal agencies.

He says he wants to eliminate the Departments of Education, Commerce, and Energy — and the IRS. pic.twitter.com/xwdA0GiJ9Y
— More Perfect Union (@MorePerfectUS) June 28, 2023

In the Republican presidential contest, the Florida governor, who just won re-election last year, has been polling in second place, far behind former President Donald Trump. But while DeSantis is trailing Trump, he has been polling higher than the rest of the GOP presidential primary field.

The first Republican presidential primary debate will be held in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on August 23.

Earlier this week, during remarks in Texas, DeSantis said that he would support rules of engagment that allow for using deadly force against drug cartel operatives who cut through America’s border wall. “If somebody were breaking into your house to do something bad, you would respond with force. Yet why don’t we do that at the southern border?” he said. DeSantis also said he would designate the cartels as foreign terrorist organizations or transnational criminal organizations.

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Yes, Trans Exhibitionists Showing Their Junk to Kids Is Directly Downstream of Redefining Marriage

BY: NATHANAEL BLAKE | JUNE 29, 2023

woman officiates gay wedding — Indulging and endorsing falsehoods about the nature of marriage and sex only leads to more lies and more injuries.

NATHANAEL BLAKE

Of course the slope was slippery.

As naked men parade in front of kids and pride marchers chant “we’re coming for your children,” a few LGBT activists are beginning to worry that things have gone too far. For example, Andrew Sullivan, an early and ardent advocate for same-sex marriage, is unhappy about reaping what he has sown. And he should be — from sterilizing and mutilating children via “gender-affirming care” to flashing children at pride festivities, the LGBT movement is proving social conservatives right.

Sullivan is repulsed and worried about a backlash, but he still denies any responsibility for the fruits of his labor. He argues his ideas needn’t lead to the illiberalism and radicalism his side is indulging. He is adamant that we could have, however uneasily, agreed to live and let live if the LGBT movement had taken his advice and closed up shop after its legal victories. He insists, “There is no slope in the case I made. There is a clear line: formal legal equality alongside cultural and social freedom on all sides.”

He is wrong. Same-sex marriage was always a radical project with implications for all of society, which is why there is a direct line from Sullivan’s case for it to the extremism he now deplores. Same-sex marriage reduces the differences between men and women to a matter of personal sexual preference, rather than a fundamental ontological one upon which civilization is based. If the sex binary doesn’t matter in marriage, it doesn’t matter anywhere.

Instead of a lifelong covenant that unites the two halves of the human race in a relationship that provides for the future of the human race, marriage was redefined as the mere legal recognition of an indefinite and androgynous pairing. The collapse of the older understanding of marriage began before the LGBT movement, but the triumph of same-sex marriage sealed it.

As Pastor Hans Fiene has put it, expecting that same-sex marriage would have no significant social effects is like blowing up the Hoover Dam and expecting Lake Mead to move only a few inches. And so, less than a decade after the Supreme Court invented a constitutional right to same-sex marriage, men think they can be women, women think they can be men, doctors are amputating the healthy breasts from increasing numbers of troubled adolescent girls — and our leaders from President Joe Biden on down are cheering them on.

The Lie of Being ‘Born This Way’

Evils such as this were baked into the arguments used to establish same-sex marriage. In particular, the claim that people are “born this way” — that LGBT identities are intrinsic and immutable — ensured that dissenters would be persecuted and children would be groomed into rainbow identities. However, though the mantra of “born this way” was a public relations triumph, it was false. The search for a “gay gene” quietly ended in failure a few years ago. The experiences of same-sex attraction and gender dysphoria are often fluid and felt with varying intensity. The causes are diverse and complex; that these feelings and desires may be unchosen does not mean they are determined at birth, or that environmental and psychological factors play no role.

Nonetheless, the lie of “born this way” enabled the hijacking of civil rights law to serve the LGBT agenda, which ensured that opponents of the LGBT movement were not only defamed as the equivalent of racists but that the enormous state power used to break segregation would be deployed against them. And so every wedding cake artist and photographer must bow before the state-enforced metaphysical doctrine that sex is irrelevant to the meaning of marriage. And the dogmas of gender identity demand that women and even little girls must get comfortable with males ogling and flashing them in what used to be female-only spaces.

Worse still, the false doctrine of “born this way” demands the grooming of other people’s children into rainbow identities. After all, if we are born with our sexual orientation and gender identity already fixed for life, then some children are necessarily born into the rainbow elect. Affirming these identities is seen as essential to their flourishing, for the sexual self is seen as the authentic self. Therefore, in order for the children born into the LGBT elect to live as their true selves, they must learn who they really are. And because we do not know which children are born with a rainbow identity until they tell us, then all children must be taught about sexual orientation and gender identity as young as possible, and encouraged to explore any hints of rainbow identity.

Of course, because “born this way” is a lie, the result has been a surge in children and young adults claiming to be LGBT. Consequently, we are now debating whether public schools should encourage children to transition and then hide it from their parents, and whether the government should take children away from parents who don’t affirm a child’s transgender identity. Somehow, “love wins” has become a mandate to seize children from their parents and mutilate them.

Social Conservatives Vindicated

These evils show that though social conservatives have been defeated, we have been vindicated. And there is more than the logic of social and legal revolution at work here. What religious conservatives understood — and what almost everyone else overlooked — is that sin stays hungry. Indulging and endorsing falsehoods about the nature of marriage, sex, and what it means to be embodied as a man or a woman only leads to more lies and more injuries.

If the cause of same-sex marriage had been righteous, we might have seen a result like that Sullivan imagines. That matters have instead gone so wrong, so quickly, should prompt us to look for where we went astray.

This reevaluation will often be uncomfortable, for the premises of the LGBT movement are derived from the sexual revolution as a whole, and that implicates almost all of us. Same-sex marriage was not the top of the slippery slope, it was just a point where it got steeper. The slide began with the effort to separate sex and its pleasures from obligation and commitment — the lie that we could and should separate sex from marriage, and marriage from the natural family of mother, father, and children. This is, of course, a perennial temptation, but the wealth and technological prowess of our age made it seem less harmful than it did in less prosperous times that lacked the pill and penicillin. But money and technology are poor substitutes for virtue and justice, so we have kept sliding down the slope.

Same-sex marriage accelerated this, building on past lies and adding new ones. And it also prevents recovery, insofar as it institutionalizes lies about sex, marriage, and family. Truth must be the foundation of any effort to rebuild a healthy sexual and family culture. And that will require rejecting government dogmas declaring that men and women are sexually and relationally interchangeable, subject only to the sovereign whim of adult preference.

Nathanael Blake is a senior contributor to The Federalist and a postdoctoral fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.

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Electric Cars Are An Expensive Scam

BY: DAVID HARSANYI | JUNE 29, 2023

Gustave Trouvé's personal electric vehicle (1881)

Author David Harsanyi profile

DAVID HARSANYI

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The left likes to treat skeptics of electrical cars as if they were Luddites. Truth is, making an existing product less efficient but more expensive doesn’t really meet the definition of innovation.

Even the purported amenities and technological advances EV-makers like to brag about in their ads have been a regular feature of gas-powered vehicles going back generations. At best, EVs, if they fulfill their promise, are a lateral technology.

Which is why there is no real “emerging market” for EVs in the United States as much as there’s an industrial policy in place that props up EVs with government purchases, propaganda, endless state subsidies, cronyism, taxpayer-backed loans, and edicts. The green “revolution” is an elite-driven, top-down technocratic project.

And it’s increasingly clear that the only reason giant rent-seeking carmakers are so heavily invested in EV development is that government is promising to artificially limit the production of gas-powered cars.

In March, Joe Biden signed an executive order to “set a target” for half of all new vehicles sold in 2030 to be zero-emission. California claims it is banning combustion engines in all new cars in about 10 years. So carmakers adopt business models to deal with these distorted incentives and contrived theoretical markets of the future.

In today’s real-world economy, though, Ford announced this week that it was firing at least 1,000 employees — many of them white-collar workers on the EV side. Ford projects it’s going to lose $3 billion on electric vehicles in 2023, bringing its EV losses to $5.1 billion over two years. In 2021, Ford reportedly lost $34,000 on every EV it made. This year it was losing more than $58,000 on every EV. In a normal world, Ford would be dramatically scaling back EV production, not expanding it. Remember that next time we need to bail out Detroit.

Then again, we’re already bailing them out, I suppose. Last week, the U.S. Energy Department lent Ford — again, a company that loses tens of thousands of dollars on every EV it sells — another $9.2 billion in taxpayer dollars for a South Korean battery project. One imagines no sane bank would do it. The cost of EV batteries has gone up, not down, over the past few years.

Ford says these up-front losses are part of a “start-up mentality.” We’re still pretending EVs are a new idea rather than an inferior one. But scaremongering about climate and a misplaced romanticizing of “manufacturing” jobs have softened up the public for this kind of waste. In the statist’s utopian vision, highly paid union members will be grabbing their lunchpails and biking over to the local solar panel factory or EV production line and toiling there for the common good.

In the real world, there is Lordstown. In 2019, after GM — which also loses money on every EV sold — shut down a plant in Lordstown, Ohio, then-President Donald Trump made a big deal of publicly pressuring the auto giant to rectify the situation. So CEO Mary Barra lent Lordstown Motors, a new EV outfit, $40 million to retrofit the plant. Ohio also gave the company another $60 million.

You may remember the widespread glowing coverage of Lordstown. After Joe Biden signed his “Buy American” executive order, promising to replace the entire U.S. federal fleet with EVs, Lordstown’s stock shot up. By the start of this year, Lordstown had manufactured 31 vehicles total. Six had been sold to actual consumers. (But to be fair, five would be recalled — following a recall of 19.) The stock was trading at barely a dollar. Tech-funding giant Foxconn was pulling its $170 million. And this week the company filed for bankruptcy.

Without massive state help, EVs are a niche market for rich virtue signalers. And, come to think of it, that’s sort of what they are now, even with the help. A recent University of California at Berkeley study found that 90 percent of tax credits for electric cars go to people in the top income strata. Most EVs are brought by high earners who like the look and feel of a Tesla. And that’s fine. I don’t want to stop anyone from owning the car they prefer. I just don’t want to help pay for it.

Really, why would a middle-class family shun a perfectly good gas-powered car that can be fueled (most of the time) cheaply and driven virtually any distance, in any environment, and any time of the year? We don’t need lithium. We have the most efficient, affordable, portable, and useful form of energy. We have centuries’ worth of it waiting in the ground.

Climate alarmists might believe EVs are necessary to save the planet. That’s fine. Using their standard, however, a bike is an innovation. Because even on their terms, the usefulness of EVs is highly debatable. Most of the energy that powers them is derived from fossil fuels. The manufacturing of an EV has a negligible positive benefit for the environment, if any.

And the fact is that if EVs were more efficient and saved us money, as enviros and politicians claim, consumers wouldn’t have to be compelled into using them and companies wouldn’t have to be bribed into producing them.

David Harsanyi is a senior editor at The Federalist, a nationally syndicated columnist, a Happy Warrior columnist at National Review, and author of five books—the most recent, Eurotrash: Why America Must Reject the Failed Ideas of a Dying Continent. Follow him on Twitter, @davidharsanyi.

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Ethan Blevins Op-ed: Supreme Court puts universities on notice, but missed an opportunity

By Ethan Blevins | Fox News | Published June 29, 2023 11:37am EDT

Universities take note — the Supreme Court will not tolerate the fanatical and wanton reliance on race that has become the norm in admissions.

In Students for Fair Admissions v. University of North Carolina, the Supreme Court held that Harvard and North Carolina had gone too far with racial preferences in weighing student applicants. Too many universities, said Chief Justice John Roberts in his majority opinion, “have concluded, wrongly, that the touchstone of an individual’s identity is not challenges bested, skills built, or lessons learned but the color of their skin. Our constitutional history does not tolerate that choice.”

While this is a key win for individual rights, the court did not go far enough. The court should have held that race can play no role in university admissions whatsoever. Instead, the court has opted to prop up a feeble precedent that leaves the door ajar for ongoing discrimination.

While the Supreme Court added a few supporting beams to its rickety case law on racial preferences in admissions, it should have torn down the whole structure.

In 2003, the Supreme Court decided Grutter v. Bollinger, holding that universities can consider race in admission decisions (which is another way of saying they can discriminate based on race) to build student body diversity. The court said universities have a compelling interest in the “educational benefits that flow from” racial diversity, which — according to the court — promotes “cross-racial understanding” and combats racial stereotypes “because nonminority students learn there is no ‘minority viewpoint.’” How ensuring admission to racial minorities promotes viewpoint diversity when there is “no minority viewpoint” is a mystery.

But the court set limits. Universities cannot set quotas, they cannot racially balance the student population, and they can only resort to racial preferences if race-neutral methods of achieving a diverse student body won’t do the job. And there’s a time limit. Once racial preferences are no longer needed to achieve diversity, they must be retired.

These safeguards may sound strict, but Grutter also told courts to “presume” universities are acting in “good faith.” In other words, if the universities say they’re playing nice and plaintiffs can’t prove otherwise, the courts shrug and move on.

Grutter also declined to resolve how much diversity is enough diversity. Universities can discriminate until they reach a mystical “critical mass” of racial minorities. Once again, courts defer to universities on the question of how much is too much.

Grutter’s presumption of “good faith” is an unsettling echo of Plessy v. Ferguson, the case in which the Supreme Court upheld racial segregation on trains by accepting the government’s claim to be acting “in good faith for the promotion of the public good, and not for the annoyance or oppression of a particular class.”

Despite Grutter’s blustering about its “strict” scrutiny of university admissions, the decision was little more than an indulgent wag of the finger that has left universities free to discriminate. The Supreme Court’s failure to fire this sleepy sentinel of equal rights will allow universities to continue to put skin color above achievement.

Yet Harvard and North Carolina’s wanton discrimination was blatant enough to raise the alarm even under Gruttter. Both universities rely on race in student admissions to a startling degree. For example, an Asian American student in the highest tier of academic performance has less chance at Harvard admission than an African American in the fourth-lowest tier. An African American student in the top tier has well over a 50% chance of admission, while an Asian American in the same tier has about a 10% chance. North Carolina is similar. These universities are not alone; many schools view Harvard’s approach as the gold standard for admissions.

Trial evidence indicated that neither Harvard nor North Carolina had considered race-neutral alternatives as Grutter requires (subject to that pesky presumption of good faith, of course). Plaintiffs, for instance, demonstrated that Harvard could increase racial diversity if it jettisoned preferences for legacy candidates (children of alumni, donors and faculty), who are overwhelmingly White and wealthy. Likewise, an increased focus on socioeconomically disadvantaged students would lead naturally to greater racial diversity. Neither university has bothered to try these alternatives.

According to Chief Justice Roberts, Harvard and UNC have engaged in unlawful stereotyping by assuming skin color says something about the content of someone’s character. As the chief justice put it, “The entire point of the Equal Protection Clause is that treating someone differently because of their skin color is not like treating someone differently because they are from a city or from a suburb, or because they play the violin poorly or well.”

All said, Students for Fair Admissions is a step forward toward racial equality, if not the leap that many court watchers hoped for. It puts universities on notice that courts will not just take universities at their word that they are behaving themselves. It also patches up a few of Grutter’s more glaring flaws. For example, it rejects the idea that universities are owed unlimited deference in their racial gerrymandering as Grutter had implied.

If courts do begin to take Grutter more seriously, as Thursday’s decision does, we could see universities slink toward more covert methods, such as proxy discrimination — where schools adopt “neutral” methods such as zip code quotas with the intent to discriminate. This is already happening in admission-only K-12 schools. For example, at Thomas Jefferson High School, school administrators adjusted their admissions process in an underhanded effort to reduce Asian American admission. A lawsuit against the high school brought by my employer, Pacific Legal Foundation, will soon ask the Supreme Court how to address this discrimination by proxy.

Students for Fair Admissions offers hope that the Supreme Court will continue to side with genuine equality.

Ethan Blevins is an attorney at Pacific Legal Foundation, which litigates nationwide to achieve court victories enforcing the Constitution’s guarantee of individual liberty.

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Lara Trump to Newsmax: ‘No Doubt Hunter Biden Received Special Treatment’

By Peter Malbin | Wednesday, 28 June 2023 02:50 PM EDT

Responding to the news that Attorney General Merrick Garland will be called to testify before the House Judiciary Committee Sept. 20, as two IRS whistleblowers are alleging that the Department of Justice interfered in the criminal investigation into Hunter Biden, Lara Trump told Newsmax on Wednesday that there’s no question that President Joe Biden’s son received special treatment.

“There’s no doubt that Hunter Biden received special treatment,” she said while appearing on “John Bachman Now.” “Anyone in America can very clearly see that, and you have to ask yourself, ‘Why would that happen here?’ I mean, think about the fact that Merrick Garland almost became a Supreme Court justice. Imagine him making decisions on the Supreme Court bench. That would be terrifying.”

Lara Trump, a senior adviser for former President Donald Trump’s 2020 campaign and the host of “The Right View Podcast,” said that Americans need the truth, and need clarity about the Hunter Biden probe.

“We need equal application of the law,” she said. “I sure hope that we get a lot of answers to a lot of questions that I think we all still have. Think about what it takes to come forward as a whistleblower. Think about what these people are putting on the line, especially Gary Shapley by putting his name out there.”

Shapley, the IRS supervisory agent who helped oversee the investigation of Hunter Biden, told CBS News earlier this week that, dating back to the Trump administration, he was repeatedly prevented from taking steps he would have considered routine in other cases. Shapley said the five-year investigation uncovered conduct that he says could have resulted in additional charges.

“Based on my experience, if this was a small business owner or any other non-connected individual, they would have been charged with felony counts,” Shapley said.

Shapley told CBS News that Hunter Biden wrote off as business expenses the money he paid for “prostitutes, sex club memberships, travel for the prostitutes, hotel rooms for purported drug dealers, no show employees.”

Shapley also said his efforts to explore money trails that involved “dad” or “the big guy” were blocked by a senior prosecutor working for David Weiss, the U.S. attorney for Delaware (who was appointed by President Trump).

“I would say that they limited certain investigative leads that could have potentially provided information on the president of the United States,” Shapley said.

Speaking about the whistleblowers, Lara Trump said: “These are people who are saying, ‘We love this country enough to see that this sort of thing does not happen. This is not how our country is supposed to function.’ So when you have all of these folks saying, ‘Here’s what we saw, and here’s our testimony to back it up,’ and we gain nothing from coming forward to talk about this, I think it raises a lot of red flags. I think that’s why a lot of people have really started to pay attention to this. As they should, and as we all should, as American citizens.”

The conversation turned to CNN and the audio recording of a 2021 meeting in Bedminster, New Jersey, where former President Trump purportedly discusses holding secret documents he allegedly did not declassify.

“Well, look, none of this is surprising. I think we all know where these leaks are coming from,” Lara Trump said. “It seems to be on purpose to distract from a very obvious problem that the Biden family has right now. All the information that is coming out about Hunter Biden, about Joe Biden, about their connections to money they received from, you know, entities all around the world from Ukraine, from China. These are very problematic for the Democrat Party, for the Biden family, and for our entire government, and so they want to distract people.”

Trump continued: “The goal is clear: to damage Donald Trump and prevent people from wanting to vote for him in 2024. I think people see this, and they say, ‘Really, this is where you want us to obsess and focus, when we have real national security implications happening right now with the Biden family that you guys don’t want us to talk about?'”

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Supreme Court Backs Christian Mail Carrier Who Wanted Sundays Off

NEWSMAX | Thursday, 29 June 2023 12:54 PM EDT

The Supreme Court on Thursday used the case of a Christian mailman who didn’t want to work Sundays to solidify protections for workers who ask for religious accommodations. In a unanimous decision the justices made clear that workers who ask for accommodations, such as taking the Sabbath off, should get them unless their employers show doing so would result in “substantial increased costs” to the business. The court made clear that businesses must cite more than minor costs — so-called “de minimis” costs — to reject requests for religious accommodations at work. Unlike most cases before the court, both sides in the case had agreed businesses needed to show more.

The case before the court involved a mail carrier in rural Pennsylvania. The man was told that as part of his job he’d need to start delivering Amazon packages on Sundays. He declined, saying his Sundays are for church and family. U.S. Postal Service officials initially tried to get substitutes for the man’s shifts, but they couldn’t always accommodate him. When he didn’t show, that meant more work for others. Ultimately, the man quit and sued for religious discrimination.

The case is the latest religious confrontation the high court has been asked to referee. In recent years, the court’s 6-3 conservative majority has been particularly sensitive to the concerns of religious plaintiffs. Last year, the court split along ideological lines in ruling for public high school football coach who wanted to pray on the field after games. Other recent religious cases have drawn wide agreement among the justices, such as upholding a cross-shaped monument on public grounds and ruling that Boston had violated the free speech rights of a conservative activist when it refused his request to fly a Christian flag on a City Hall flagpole.

In the latest case, a federal law — Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 — requires employers to accommodate employees’ religious practices unless doing so would be an “undue hardship” for the business. But a 1977 Supreme Court case, Trans World Airlines v. Hardison, says in part that employers can deny religious accommodations to employees when they impose “more than a de minimis cost” on the business.

During arguments in the case in April the Biden administration’s top Supreme Court lawyer, Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar, who was representing the Post Office, told the justices that the Hardison case as a whole actually requires an employer who wants to deny an accommodation to show more. But Justice Samuel Alito wrote in his majority opinion for the court that while some lower courts have understood Hardison the way the Biden administration suggested, other courts incorrectly latched on to the “de minimis” language “as the governing standard.”

“In this case, both parties agree that the ‘de minimis’ test is not right, but they differ slightly in the alternative language they prefer. … We think it is enough to say that an employer must show that the burden of granting an accommodation would result in substantial increased costs in relation to the conduct of its particular business,” Alito wrote.

The Biden administration has said that requests for religious accommodation come up most often when employees seek schedule changes like the Sabbath off or midday prayer breaks or exemptions from a company’s dress code or grooming policies. They also come up when an employee wants to display a religious symbol in the workplace.

As for the particular dispute in front of them, the justices sent the case back to a lower court for another look in light of their decision. The case involves Gerald Groff, a former employee of the U.S. Postal Service in Pennsylvania’s Amish Country. For years, Groff was a fill-in mail carrier who worked on days when other mail carriers were off. But when an Amazon.com contract with the Postal Service required carriers to start delivering packages on Sundays, Groff balked. Initially, to avoid the shifts, Groff transferred to a more rural post office not yet doing Sunday deliveries, but eventually that post office was required to do them, too.

Whenever Groff was scheduled on a Sunday, another carrier had to work, or his spot went unfilled. Officials said Groff’s absences created a tense environment and contributed to morale problems. It also meant other carriers had to deliver more Sunday mail than they otherwise would.

Groff resigned in 2019 rather than wait to be fired. He sued the Postal service for failing to accommodate his religious practice. Lower courts ruled against him previously. As a result of the court’s ruling, his case will get another look.

Groff said in a statement after the ruling that he was grateful the court heard his case. “I hope this decision allows others to be able to maintain their convictions without living in fear of losing their jobs because of what they believe,” he said.

The case is Groff v. DeJoy, 22-174.

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Supreme Court Outlaws Consideration of Race as a Factor in College Admissions

NEWSMAX | Thursday, 29 June 2023 10:53 AM EDT

The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday struck down race-conscious student admissions programs at Harvard University and the University of North Carolina in a sharp setback to affirmative action policies often used to increase the number of Black, Hispanic and other underrepresented minority groups on campuses.

The justices ruled in favor of a group called Students for Fair Admissions, founded by anti-affirmative action activist Edward Blum, in its appeal of lower court rulings upholding programs used at the two prestigious schools to foster a diverse student population.

The decision, powered by the court’s conservative justices with the liberal justices in dissent, was 6-3 against the University of North Carolina and 6-2 against Harvard. Liberal Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson did not participate in the Harvard case.

In major rulings last year also spearheaded by the conservatives justices, the court overturned the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that had legalized abortion nationwide and widened gun rights in a pair of landmark rulings.

Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the majority said, “Harvard and UNC admissions programs cannot be reconciled with the guarantees of the Equal Protection Clause,” referring to the U.S. Constitution’s promise of equal protection under the law.

Roberts said that students “must be treated based on his or her experiences as an individual not on the basis of race. Many universities have for too long done just the opposite. And in doing so, they have concluded, wrongly, that the touchstone of an individual’s identity is not challenges bested, skills built, or lessons learned but the color of their skin. Our constitutional history does not tolerate that choice.”

“At the same time,” Roberts said, “as all parties agree, nothing in this opinion should be construed as prohibiting universities from considering an applicant’s discussion of how race affected his or her life, be it through discrimination, inspiration, or otherwise.”

Many institutions of higher education, corporations and military leaders have long backed affirmative action on campuses not simply to remedy racial inequity and exclusion in American life but to ensure a talent pool that can bring a range of perspectives to the workplace and U.S. armed forces ranks. Liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor said in a dissent that the decision “subverts” the constitutional guarantee of equal protection and further entrenches racial inequality in education. “Today, this Court stands in the way and rolls back decades of precedent and momentous progress,” she wrote in a dissent joined by Jackson and Liberal Justice Elena Kagan.

Sotomayor added, The “court cements a superficial rule of colorblindness as a constitutional principle in an endemically segregated society where race has always mattered and continues to matter.”

Blum’s group in lawsuits filed in 2014 accused UNC of discriminating against white and Asian American applicants and Harvard of bias against Asian American applicants. Students for Fair Admissions alleged that the adoption by UNC, a public university, of an admissions policy that is not race neutral violates the guarantee to equal protection of the law under the Constitution’s 14th Amendment. The group contended Harvard, a private university violated Title VI of a landmark federal law called the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which bars discrimination based on race, color or national origin under any program or activity receiving federal financial assistance. According to Harvard, around 40% of U.S. colleges and universities consider race in some fashion.

Affirmative action had withstood Supreme Court scrutiny for decades, most recently in a 2016 ruling involving a white student, backed by Blum, who sued the University of Texas after being rejected for admission.

The Supreme Court has shifted rightward since 2016 and now includes three justices who dissented in the University of Texas case and three new appointees by former Republican President Donald Trump.

Harvard and UNC have said they use race as only one factor in a host of individualized evaluations for admission without quotas – permissible under previous Supreme Court precedents – and that curbing its consideration would cause a significant drop in enrollment of students from under-represented groups. Critics, who have tried to topple these policies for decades, argue these policies are themselves discriminatory.

AMERICAN HISTORY

The United States is a nation that long has struggled with issues of race, dating back to its history of slavery of Black people that ended only after a Civil War, the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s and in recent years racial justice protests that followed police killings of Black people.

Reaction to the ruling was swift.

“The Supreme Court ruling has put a giant roadblock in our country’s march toward racial justice,” said Democratic U.S. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer in a statement.

“Affirmative action is systemic discrimination,” Republican Senator Tom Cotton wrote on Twitter. “I’m thankful the Supreme Court held this discrimination violates the constitution. Admissions should be decided on merit – not by color of skin.”

Many U.S. conservatives and Republican elected officials have argued that giving advantages to one race is unconstitutional regardless of the motivation or circumstances. Some have advanced the argument that remedial preferences are no longer needed because America has moved beyond racist policies of the past such as segregation and is becoming increasingly diverse.

The dispute presented the Supreme Court’s conservative majority an opportunity to overturn its prior rulings allowing race-conscious admissions policies. Lower courts rejected the group’s claims, prompting appeals to the U.S. Supreme Court asking the justices to overturn a key precedent holding that colleges could consider race as one factor in the admissions process because of the compelling interest of creating a diverse student body.

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Today’s Politically INCORRECT Cartoon by A.F. Branco

A.F. Branco Cartoon – Forcing Behaviors

A.F. BRANCO | on June 29, 2023 | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-forcing-behaviors/

Blackrock and Wall Street are trying to force woke behavior but have run into harsh boycotts by We The People.

BlackRock Forcing Behaviors — Cartoon by A.F. Branco ©2023

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New York becomes sanctuary state for transgender children, will not arrest anyone who performs child sex-change surgeries

June 28, 2023

By: ANDREW CHAPADOS | June 27, 2023

New York Governor Kathy Hochul has signed legislation into law that has made the state a sanctuary for those who have illegally given children sex-change drugs, hormones, or surgeries. Hochul finalized the legislation ahead of her appearance at the New York City Pride parade according to TimCast, which was co-sponsored by four New York state senators.

Authorities in the state are henceforth prohibited from cooperating with investigations from other states into individuals who have broken related laws in their jurisdiction. The state will not provide information about or arrest individuals who have been involved with what is colloquially known as “gender-affirming care” by those who support sex changes for children. The changes also affect family law in New York; the state will not remove a child from their guardian if that person was attempting to illegally provide their child with a sex change.

New York Senate Bill S2475B “prohibits consideration of a law of another state that authorizes a child to be removed from their parent or guardian based on the parent or guardian allowing their child to receive gender-affirming care in custody cases,” the law reads.

Law enforcement agencies are barred from “cooperating with or providing information to any individual or out-of-state agency or department regarding the provision of lawful gender-affirming care performed in this state,” as well.

“I stand together with champions of this movement who have joined us today to say no more,” Hochul said, according to the Gothamist. “We will give you the template, rest of the country. We will show you what you need to do.”

The state now “prohibits the issuance of a subpoena in connection with certain out-of-state proceedings relating to seeking health or related information about people who come to New York to receive gender-affirming care,” and “prohibits the arrest of a person for performing or aiding in the lawful performance of gender-affirming care within this state.”

New York has become a state where children can unequivocally be given sex changes without punishment from the government as the bill plainly stated such a person cannot be arrested:

“A police officer may not arrest any person for performing or aiding in the performance of gender-affirming care within this state, or in procuring or aiding in the procurement of gender-affirming care in this state, if the gender-affirming care is performed in accordance with the provisions of any other applicable law of this state.”

TimCast also reported that Governor Hochul signed an amendment that required New York State employees to use “preferred pronouns” as well.

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LGBTQ+ AND TRANSGENDER, Political

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Multi-Faith Coalition Of Immigrant Parents Protest Maryland Public Schools’ Woke Sex Ed

BY: ASRA Q. NOMANI | JUNE 28, 2023

Author Asra Q. Nomani profile

ASRA Q. NOMANI

VISIT ON TWITTER@ASRANOMANI

ROCKVILLE, Md.—Here at the crossroads of Mannakee Street and College Drive in the suburbs of the nation’s capital, woke intersectionalism came to die.

Outside the headquarters of Montgomery County Public Schools, a cleric at a local Ethiopian Orthodox church stood in a white turban, gold-colored robe, and church insignia. Like Seyouman Getahun was in an interfaith crowd of about 1,000 parents, students, and community members. The crowd of largely “brown and black” people, as equity warriors so often colorize minorities, rallied for the right of parents to opt children out of age-inappropriate sex education in local public schools.

Meet Like Seyouman Getahun, a cleric at a local Ethiopian Orthodox Church. He told me why he was at the Montgomery County MD rally. I am putting 7 minutes of our chat here so you can hear from people in the trenches. Watch his reactions to Gay BCs and Gender Queer at the end! pic.twitter.com/SoCLuFlqrF
— Asra Nomani (@AsraNomani) June 28, 2023

Co-organized by a new group called Coalition of Virtue, these parents are the “intersectional” answer to the Woke Army. The Woke Army are the leftist activists who exploit “black, indigenous, people of color” (BIPOC) to put children in the crosshairs of the “rainbow mafia” in K-12 schools. These parents who defy their stereotypes are the Woke Army’s worst nightmare.

Hundreds of Ethiopian Orthodox Christians from an estimated 40 local churches, including Getahun’s, rallied beside Muslim immigrant families from a dozen mosques and other area community members. Their ranks included a Filipino-Puerto Rican-American Christian dad and a Peruvian-American Catholic mother.

All were here to protest the refusal of the local school board, all affiliated at some point with Democratic Party politics, to allow parents to opt their kids out of sex ed that includes an introduction to homosexual behavior and gender identities that contradict one’s natural sex.

“This hill is where the democrats have chosen [to] die. Bizarre. Totally bizarre,” said a Twitter user.

Today, at the corner of Campus Drive and Mannakee Street, in Montgomery County, Maryland, woke intersectionalism came to die.

Today, June 27, about 1,000 Arab Muslims, Ethiopian Christians, Peruvian Catholics and so many other brown and black immigrant families outflanked the… pic.twitter.com/G623Q6Sw7x
— Asra Nomani (@AsraNomani) June 28, 2023

From Rockville to Glendale, Calif., where Armenian American parents oppose school board indoctrination, a new “intersectional” rejection of wokeism includes voters up for grabs by Republican politicians and efforts like No Labels, which may advocate for a third-party presidential candidate in 2024.

“Vote them out!” the Rockville crowd chanted, packed shoulder to shoulder.

The protestors’ demands were simple enough: “Protect families’ rights!” “What do we want? Opt out! When do we want it? Now!” “We want freedom! We want rights!”

Across the parking lot, about a dozen all-white leftist activists stood, chatting with each other. They looked awkward and out of place, with rainbow umbrellas over their heads but no rain yet and soap bubbles from a party machine streaming by.

Later, inside for public comments at a school board meeting, local activist Laura Stewart complained about a video I had posted from a protest of Muslim parents early last month. She objected that it “was retweeted by Elon Musk,” the owner of Twitter.

In video testimony, Stewart omitted a critical detail from her resume: she has been an officer and leader in the Montgomery County Women’s Democratic Club. She has also been vice president of advocacy for the Montgomery County Council of Parent-Teacher Associations and just received the “National PTA Lifetime Achievement Award” from the local council.

The rallying parents are mostly new American citizens. Their lifetime achievement is immigration, acculturation, employment, and parenthood in a new nation where they enjoyed no legacy, no property, no bank account, and no “privilege,” except the inherited grit to navigate a new society with a new language and culture.

If you can believe it, the night before this rally filled with immigrants, the Montgomery County Women’s Democratic Club issued a statement with a newly formed group, “Coalition for Inclusive Schools” that Stewart now leads. It condemned “outside influences” seeking to opt-out children from age-inappropriate sex ed.

The #WokeArmy is dealt a lethal blow. The battlefront: Montgomery County, Maryland. TODAY. The hard-left came after the kids and Muslim parents aren’t having it. 🧵

Montgomery County Public Schools recently refused to allow parents to opt out of indoctrination that relates to… pic.twitter.com/KIMTI1fAIM
— Asra Nomani (@AsraNomani) June 7, 2023

This multicultural crowd was anything but “outside influences.” It was filled with recent immigrants who live locally. These parents made an argument that parent groups are increasingly expressing around the country and in Canada, asserting religious freedom rights.

“Our beliefs! Our choice! Religious freedom, raise your voice,” they chanted.

Peruvian-American mother Norma Margulies carried a handmade sign that read: “Respetemos el derecho de las familias a compartir su cultura y religión con sus hijos e hijas!” “Respect the rights of families to share their culture and religion with their children, sons and daughters,” she translated, adding, “It’s a basic right.”

Margulies joined the protest from her home in nearby Fairfax County, Va., with a friend, Tony Sabio. He’s the son of parents from the Philippines and Puerto Rico and a military veteran who rescued a boy from Ukraine.

Sabio said he is running for school board in Fairfax County because of the disenfranchisement of parents. “I’m here for these parents,” Sabio said over the crowd’s chants as he carried the American flag over his shoulders.

In recent years, woke activists have exploited “intersectionality.” That’s a concept critical race theorist Kimberlé Crenshaw invented in 1989 to look at injustices through the prism of an “intersectionality” of various allegedly oppressed social identities. While the idea had some merits, far-left activists and politicians have weaponized it.

In recent days, Maryland and Virginia parents have held sign-making events and parent educational seminars at local places of worship including mosques like the Islamic Center of Maryland and affiliates of the Medhanialem Orthodox Church. Holding signs that read “Respect Our Values” and “Parents Know Best,” they voiced concerns about the sex curriculum being taught to their children.

Across the street from the school system’s offices, a strip of locally owned storefronts showcased the diversity in this suburb community. On Hungerford Drive, an Ethiopian restaurant sits beside Island Pride Jamaican Restaurant, Yunnan Rice Noodle, Aria Halal Supermarket, and 5-10 Quick Mart.

In the crowd, Getahun, the Ethiopian Orthodox cleric, told me he was there to support parental rights as enshrined in the 14th Amendment and the U.S. Constitution. He flipped through copies of the books “The Gay BCs” and “Gender Queer” tucked in my “Mary Poppins” bag of inappropriate books in public schools and furrowed his brow at the images.

“T is for TRANS,” he read, not the usual “trains” in most books teaching the ABCs. “It’s a brave step to take,” he continued, “to take to live as the gender you know is innate.”

The book is meant for toddlers, as young as three.

While the rally primarily focused on the right to opt out of sex curriculum, the attendees also saw the school board’s refusal to address their concerns as an infringement on their religious freedom.

Nearby a rally organizer, Ismail Royer, a director of Islam and religious freedom at the Religious Freedom Institute based in Washington, D.C., said: “This is the intersection, this is the alliance that really matters. This is the moral consensus that is at the heart of the American moral tradition and virtue tradition.”

By about 5 p.m., the rally ended, with Getahun among the last leaving the rally off Mannakee Street and College Drive, as members of this new intersectional alliance chanted, “We will prevail!”

Asra Nomani is a senior contributor at The Federalist. A former Wall Street Journal reporter, she is also the author of “Woke Army: The Red-Green Alliance Destroying America’s Freedom.” She is a senior fellow in the practice of journalism at Independent Women’s Network. She can be reached at asra@asranomani.com or @AsraNomani on Twitter.

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DOJ Rot Goes So Much Deeper Than Merrick Garland

BY: ELLE PURNELL | JUNE 28, 2023

Author Elle Purnell profile

ELLE PURNELL

VISIT ON TWITTER@_ETREYNOLDS

Following the sensational whistleblower testimony that dropped Thursday, revealing how the Department of Justice systematically blocked an IRS investigation into Joe Biden’s son Hunter and diverted agents from examining the incriminating evidence against his presidential father, House Republicans are threatening the overdue impeachment of Attorney General Merrick Garland — except most of the pro-Biden interference in the DOJ happened before Garland was installed, while President Donald Trump was still in office.

Does Garland still deserve impeachment for his assortment of abuses, such as sitting on his hands to avoid real accountability for the younger Biden (and his pop), while weaponizing the country’s top law enforcement agency to try to send Biden’s top presidential challenger to federal prison? Absolutely. Is it smart politically for Kevin McCarthy to use the current momentum to hold Garland to account? Probably. Is the alleged involvement in a foreign bribery scheme enough to merit Biden’s own impeachment? Most definitely.

But if the blame — and punishment — for the DOJ corruption revealed by whistleblowers stops with Merrick Garland or even Joe Biden, it will happen again. That’s because the Justice Department’s pattern of shielding the Biden family from the law wasn’t masterminded by either man. It happened because of career officials and bureaucrats, whose names most Americans don’t know, and whom Americans will never have the chance to vote out. They didn’t have to be told what to do.

According to whistleblower Gary Shapley, it was in late 2019, a year before Joe Biden was elected, that the FBI acquired and authenticated the infamous laptop Hunter Biden left at a Delaware computer repair shop. The IRS began an investigation into likely tax crimes almost immediately.

Between April and June 2020, when IRS agents were preparing to execute interviews and search warrants, it was “career DOJ officials,” Shapley said, who “purposely slow-walk[ed] investigative actions.” After IRS agents discovered a WhatsApp message in which Hunter Biden purportedly threatened a Chinese business associate that “I am sitting here with my father” and that the Bidens could “hold a grudge” if a “commitment made” to them was not “fulfilled,” federal prosecutors rejected IRS efforts to look into the messages. That was around August 2020, when Trump had nearly half a year left in the White House.

In October 2020, Assistant U.S. Attorney Lesley Wolf acknowledged “probable cause had been achieved” for executing a search warrant on Hunter Biden but still refused to allow a search. In the meantime, the DOJ continued to block IRS investigators from accessing the laptop and openly cited the investigation’s potential to hurt Biden’s electoral chances as their reason for slow-walking it.

Wolf would also order IRS investigators not to ask about “dad” or about an email stating there would be “Ten held by H for the big guy.” That happened in December, more than a month before Biden’s inauguration. That same month, IRS and FBI investigators planned to seek a consent search of Hunter Biden’s residence and interviews with Hunter and his associates, since the search warrant had been rejected. “FBI headquarters,” Shapley said, apparently notified the transition team of the plan, a move which “tipped off” the Bidens’ inner circle. Of the 12 interviews investigators sought, they got one.

All of that happened under Trump and his attorney general, William Barr. That’s not to make the absurd suggestion that it happened at Trump or Barr’s direction. Rather, it shows how monstrous the triple-letter leviathan and its grip on our political process are. The regime, the deep state, the bureaucracy, whatever you want to call it: Shapley’s testimony shows their ability to manipulate political outcomes is so entrenched that their own elected overseers are powerless to stop it.

Unsurprisingly, as Shapley noted, “This same sort of unprecedented behavior continued through” Joe Biden’s first year in the White House. When IRS agents finally sent their recommended charges against Hunter Biden to the DOJ, the agency — by then under Attorney General Merrick Garland — opposed the recommendation. Based on the deal offered to Hunter Biden last week, we know the DOJ dropped most of the charges. Shapley also testified that he has been subject to retaliation from the DOJ since speaking out.

Before the investigation into Hunter Biden was even opened, the Russia-collusion hoax orchestrated against then-candidate Trump in 2016 offered more evidence of rank-and-file DOJ corruption, such as Peter Strzok and Lisa Page‘s conversation about their plan to “stop” Trump from becoming president. While that op occurred under a Democrat president, it relied on individual hacks in Justice Department cubicles, not just on Obama-appointed political operatives like then-FBI Director James Comey.

The problem of a bureaucracy so bloated that the people’s elected servants in Congress and the White House can’t keep track of, let alone shut down, its mischief is not unique to the DOJ. But the Justice Department’s role as arbiter of how — or to whom — the law applies makes its rule-by-pencil-pusher especially dangerous.

Electing the right president or appointing the right attorney general will only help with that insofar as he can root out the career rot in the 115,000-employee DOJ. As the Gary Shapleys get pushed out, the integrity they bring to agencies like the DOJ and IRS will go with them.

And while corruption in the vastly left-leaning bureaucracy almost always benefits Democrats, the problem goes beyond partisan politics. If government agencies are so powerful that their work to protect political allies and topple their challengers continues unabated by the electoral process, then elections are no real transfer of power and we are not a functioning republic.

That’s not just having a bad apple for an attorney general. That is a crisis of governance.

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.

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Netherlands euthanizing autistic and intellectually handicapped people, researcher finds

By Timothy H.J. Nerozzi | Fox News | Published June 28, 2023 12:33pm EDT

Netherlands programs have euthanized otherwise healthy individuals with autism and intellectual handicaps in recent years, researchers have found. Five individuals under the age of 30, who cited autism as a factor in their decision to seek legal euthanasia, are among the cases reviewed by specialists at the U.K.’s Kingston University.

“Factors directly associated with intellectual disability and/or ASD were the sole cause of suffering described in 21% of cases and a major contributing factor in a further 42% of cases,” Kingston University’s report on the issue found.

NETHERLANDS EXPANDS EUTHANASIA LAWS TO INCLUDE TERMINALLY ILL CHILDREN AS YOUNG AS 1 YEAR OLD

Dutch protesters — Protesters pray outside Dutch government buildings in The Hague, Netherlands, as the Upper House of Parliament began debating registration that will legalize euthanasia under strict guidelines. The slogan on the table reads, “Human considers, God decides.” (AP Photo/Serge Ligtenberg)

The study noted that in many cases, doctors determined there was “no prospect of improvement” for intellectually challenged individuals because there is no treatment for their handicap.

“Reasons for the EAS [euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide] request included social isolation and loneliness (77%), lack of resilience or coping strategies (56%), lack of flexibility (rigid thinking or difficulty adapting to change) (44%) and oversensitivity to stimuli (26%). In one-third of cases, physicians noted there was ‘no prospect of improvement’ as ASD and intellectual disability are not treatable,” the study reads.

CANADIAN RELIGIOUS LEADERS SPEAK OUT AS COUNTRY SET TO ALLOW EUTHANASIA FOR MENTAL ILLNESS

Hague Netherlands — The Parliament building in The Hague, Netherlands. (Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images)

Palliative care specialist Irene Tuffrey-Wijne — one of the lead authors of the Kingston University report — found Dutch doctors were legally killing patients who sought their own euthanasia because their intellectual disability or mental condition prevented them from leading a normal life, according to The Associated Press.

One record includes the case of a Dutch woman in her 30s with autism and borderline personality disorder. Doctors determined her afflictions prevented her from maintaining relationships and made forming connections with others “too difficult.”

TOP MASSACHUSETTS COURT RULES AGAINST OVERTURNING LAW PROHIBITING PHYSICIAN-ASSISTED SUICIDE

Sarco suicide pod — Dutch designer Alexander Bannink, right, explains how the “Sarco” euthanasia pod works as a woman experiences sitting in the device by wearing virtual reality glasses at the Amsterdam Funeral Expo. (JAN HENNOP/AFP via Getty Images)

“There’s no doubt in my mind these people were suffering,” Tuffrey-Wijne said. “But is society really OK with sending this message, that there’s no other way to help them, and it’s just better to be dead?”

Dutch psychologist Dr. Bram Sizoo expressed horror at the trend of autistic youths seeking assisted suicide and euthanasia’s expanding acceptance.

Parliament Netherlands Hague — A photo shows a view of the plenary room during the first session of questions after the summer recess in the temporary Parliament building in The Hague, Netherlands. (BART MAAT/ANP/AFP via Getty Images)

“Some of them are almost excited at the prospect of death,” Sizoo said. “They think this will be the end of their problems and the end of their family’s problems.”

The Royal Dutch Medical Association has left the decision of who qualifies for assisted suicide up to medical professionals with few hard guidelines or rules.

Timothy Nerozzi is a writer for Fox News Digital. You can follow him on Twitter @timothynerozzi and can email him at timothy.nerozzi@fox.com

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Op-ed: The trans-sport two-step dishonors female athlete pioneers like my mom

By John Ullyot | Fox News | Published June 28, 2023 2:00am EDT

The Senate Judiciary Committee recently held a hearing entitled, “Protecting Pride: Defending the Civil Rights of LGBTQ+ Americans,” where former University of Kentucky women’s swimmer Riley Gaines gave emotional testimony about her experience losing an NCAA championship to a male transgender swimmer, and having to change in a locker room with the 6’4″ 22-year-old biological man exposing his male genitalia in front of her and other female swimmers.

Senate Democrats, led by Dick Durbin of Illinois, downplayed the elite woman swimmer’s powerful message and delivered general bromides about transgender discrimination and its “divisive and hateful rhetoric” putting “children in danger.” He noted, “LGBTQ+ Americans are asking for no more—and no less—than the full freedom to live as who they are.”

Actually, on this score, transgender activists are indeed asking for a lot more, and their demands discriminate against women athletes who train hard for the right to compete and win on a level playing field with other women. Such efforts also dishonor real advocates of gay rights, as well as the pioneers of women’s sports who worked so hard to let females enjoy and compete in sports previously restricted to men.

Rights for gay Americans like me have made incredible strides in a few short decades, when we faced true discrimination in the areas of military service, marriage, employment, and – in many quarters – general social acceptance. In my own case more than 30 years ago, I had to mask my sexuality to serve my country in the Marine Corps, before the advent of “don’t ask, don’t tell,” and long before gay Americans were accepted fully in the military. That was real discrimination, and thankfully it was resolved fully across the uniformed services a decade ago. Now, thanks to the efforts of so many trailblazers over the past 60 years, gays enjoy full equality in the military, as well as in each of these other important societal realms.

RILEY GAINES: REWRITE OF TITLE IX IS AN ABOMINATION

Video

The same is true for women’s sports, where decades ago women were not allowed to compete in many athletic events open to men because they were not considered physically up for the stress of participating, and it took true pioneers to change that for the benefit of society.

My late mother was a world-class marathon runner, and a member of the U.S. women’s national team in the mid-1970’s – a time when women were not allowed to compete in that event in the Olympics or in other marquee long-distance events. In fact, another top woman runner of that era, Katherine Switzer, was attacked and nearly pushed to the ground by a race official when she was discovered running covertly in the 1967 Boston Marathon, when women were barred from that storied event. Surrounded by a few burly male friends, she continued the race and made it across the finish line. Her story spread nationally and led to the event admitting women five years later.

Several years after that, my mother and other top female and male long-distance runners formed the International Runners’ Committee that worked hard to break down barriers for women in long distance running competitions. Thanks to their efforts and those in other countries, the Olympic Games added a women’s marathon event in 1984, which American Joan Benoit won that year, along with a 3,000-meter race. Over the next decade-plus, the Olympics added the three remaining long-distance events, bringing women to full parity with men in track-and-field racing worldwide.

Video

In 1984, the women’s record in the marathon stood at 2 hours 24 minutes, and the men’s record was a full 16 minutes below that at 2 hours 8 minutes. How would Joan Benoit, my mother, and other pioneers like Katherine Switzer feel when they achieved their hard-fought goal of allowing women to compete in the Olympic marathon, only to have several biological male second-stringers limber up at the starting line with the best women runners in the world, intending to run ten-plus minutes faster than the rest of the field simply by declaring themselves to be women and taking a few hormone treatments? It would be absurd on its face, and true pioneers of women’s equality in sports like my mother would oppose it 100 percent.

The transparent unfairness of this trans-sport two-step is not hard for Americans to grasp – no matter their gender or sexual identity. Asking transgender biological male athletes to stick to competing in men’s sports instead of women’s sports, and to shower in men’s locker rooms, not women’s, does not represent discrimination.

Transgender advocates who say otherwise dishonor those who have made monumental strides in recent decades both on true gay rights and on forging a level playing field for women in competitive sports.

John Ullyot served for seven years as a senior staff member in the U.S. Senate and is a former deputy assistant to the president.

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Futures of Thomas, Alito Raise Stakes in 2024

By Solange Reyner | Wednesday, 28 June 2023 12:58 PM EDT

Lawmakers say speculation that Supreme Court justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito are considering retirement make the 2024 presidential election outcome more crucial, The Hill reported.

The Court is made up of nine justices, with a 6-3 conservative majority, after former President Donald Trump filled three vacancies: Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett. They helped form the majority to overrule Roe v. Wade in June 2022, allowing states to outlaw abortion.

“It’s critical. President Biden, who I feel confident will be reelected, needs to be able to put more judges on the bench, federal judges, including Supreme Court. It is absolutely critical that the Senate remain in Democratic hands,” Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., who will retire at the end of next year, told the Hill.

Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., told the Hill that the next president will likely “have a chance to appoint another member of the court. … I expect that you’d see, over the course between now and the end of the next [presidential] term, probably another retirement or two.”

Neither Alito or Thomas has said he is mulling retirement. Thomas, who has served on the Court for nearly 32 years, is the oldest justice on the Court at 75. Alito, who has served since 2006, is 73.

“I do think that the 2024 election is important,” said Brian Fallon, co-founder and executive director of left-wing judicial advocacy group Demand Justice. “I do think Alito and Thomas will be getting up there in age, and there’s quite a real possibility that replacements for them could be in order in the next four-year presidential window.‘

“It’s hugely important to win the upcoming election, and I think the court will be more salient of an issue than ever. It’s important to win the next election because if there is going be an opportunity to replace a Thomas or Alito, you don’t want to miss it by not winning a Senate race here or there and preventing us from filling a seat.‘

“But we shouldn’t delude ourselves into thinking that the court’s balance is going to be shifted anytime soon just by winning a few elections.”

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Today’s Politically INCORRECT Cartoon by A.F. Branco

A.F. Branco Cartoon – King of the Hill

A.F. BRANCO | on June 28, 2023 | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-king-of-the-hill/

Jack Smith, MS Media, and the deep state are interfering in the 2024 election under the guise of prosecuting Trump.

Biden Election Interference — Cartoon by A.F. Branco ©2023.

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HORRIFIC ABUSE: Surgeon Intentionally Mauled 14-year-old Girl!

June 27, 2023

By: Tiffany Layne | June 26, 2023

malpractice, surgery, negligence, transgender — Image credit: MOS Medical Record Reviews

When are people going to stop sitting on the sidelines while our children are pulled into the ring and beaten half to death?

Sure, you might say I’m being a bit dramatic, but am I? Considering what is happening to these young girls, I think not. Leftists are no longer satisfied with destroying our children socially, emotionally, spiritually, and academically, but now, they are destroying our children physically.

Breitbart reports:

A North Carolina surgical clinic has allegedly removed the breasts of girls as young as 14 years old in double mastectomy procedures.

Pictures of results from the operations recently began circulating on Twitter. The patients’ ages are also listed under the images, with some of the girls being as young as 14 and 16. The children appear to have visited the Cosmetic Concierge, a plastic surgery clinic located in Charlotte, North Carolina.

🚨 DISGUSTING: Charlotte, NC doctor @hopesheriemd is chopping the breasts off of girls as young as 14.🚨@NCGOP make this stop now.

📷: @sherribissell pic.twitter.com/K4xB6kOYLg
— Sara Gonzales (@SaraGonzalesTX) April 8, 2023

Double mastectomies, in which patients have their breasts removed, are used as part of the “gender-affirming care” regimen. The procedure is often referred to as “top surgery.” Under the “gender-affirming” model, medical interventions, ranging from puberty blockers to surgical sex change operations, are used to affirm the sexual identity of the patient.

Stop right there! That’s the hypocrisy of all this, in a nutshell.

If you check the dictionary, you will see that the word ‘affirm’ means one of two things: to state as a fact; assert strongly and publicly; or to offer emotional support or encouragement.

Gender-reassignment does nothing to affirm a child’s sexuality. I mean no disrespect to anyone who is part of the LGBTQIA community, but your gender at birth is your actual gender. Born a girl, stay a girl. Born a man, stay a man. It’s pretty cut and dry. In other words, if you want to affirm someone’s sexuality, affirm their biologically appointed gender.

Next, if you want to support kids emotionally, you help them deal with their mental anguish, help put them on higher ground. Don’t teach a child that everything about his body is wrong, and in need of changing. Instead, we have to tell these kids that everything about the way their body works is right!

Transitioning from male to female isn’t going to make someone suddenly feel hunky-dory and wash all their pains away. In fact, it can be the exact opposite, because once you cut into a child and remove pieces of their body, the message that “you are broken,” and “we HAD to fix you” will be cemented into their psyches. I don’t know about you, but I personally wouldn’t want that on my conscious.

What did we learn from Audrey Hale?

Hale stormed her former school in Nashville and murdered three adults and three students before she was taken down by police gunfire. Her manifesto will surely shed more light on the underlying issues Hale experienced, but researching transgender violence taught me a few things. One of which is that loading up a girl/woman with male hormones is a bad idea.

When someone is not used to those high levels of testosterone, they can become possessed by rage. Especially when you throw PMS in the middle of all that. If you are a girl, trying to become a man, your body’s default is still producing female hormones and a menstrual cycle. Mix testosterone with that and BOOM! Talk about a tornado.

I don’t think many transgenders stop and consider what it would do to them if the sex change wasn’t so easy after all. What if something went wrong, or if the results left them with “ugly parts” if you get my drift.

This morning, a fellow writer and I were texting. I told her about the young girls who lost their breasts, and she told me that it was time for America to hear the gory details. Otherwise, they aren’t truly making informed decisions.

On top of taking breasts off they do a complete hysterectomy- dump out uterus and ovaries- PLUS cut up the vagina to make it into a small penis. But guess what? Every day they have to use stretchers to keep the penis hole open. And some of the post-op complications involve the vaginal flaps getting necrotic and sloughing off, the ureter not working so the urine remains inside, etc.

I replied: Ewww. Bizarre AND disgusting.

Thus, Christie added:

People need to be told the gory details. The public cannot imagine what it entails. There should be minimum life in prison (I prefer capital punishment) for doing this to people.

I couldn’t agree more. Actually, life in prison almost sounds like a slap on the wrist in this particular instance.

Dear Mom and Dad, I’m a real boy.

If you read many of my writings, you may know that I’m a mom of seven. My youngest four are stair-stepped. Thus, they played together a lot growing up. My now fifteen-year-old son used to play Barbies and paint nails with his fourteen-year-old sister.

It’s a good thing I didn’t jump to conclusions and take him to the closest big city to turn him into a girl. Because I just watched a video in which a little boy picked out a pink toy at Target, which lead his mom to believe it was time to accept her son was really her daughter. How do you make this determination with a four-year-old?

If there’s one thing I know young children and teenagers cannot do, its to consider the future possibilities and how they hinge on your present-day actions. Gender reassignment is PERMANENT. There is no going back to undo the wiring, unhook the plumbing, or put back the boobies. Once they’re gone, they’re gone.

Hope Sherie, the doctor that performed sex change surgeries in the North Carolina clinic also sponsors Point of Pride, a pro-LGBT activist organization. Through this organization, clients gain access to financial assistance. In addition, they give young women breast binders, articles of clothing meant to flatten the chest.

Personally, I don’t get it. When I was growing up, girls that age were just waiting to bloom. In fact, if you were eavesdropping outside my door, you might’ve heard something like this going on:

But in today’s world, there is no time allotted for growth and development. We think ten-year-olds should already have a ten-year plan in place. But it doesn’t work like that. The teenage brain is still growing and developing. Thus, forging ahead on the route of reassignment has devastating effects.

No Regrets?

Issues with fertility and reproduction top the list of regrets transgenders experience. But some transgenders come to terms with who they were created to be, only by then, it’s too late to go back and be exactly who they were born to be.

There are so many unanswered questions out there. Personally, I don’t understand how a parent can allow their child to change genders. Do they not fear they are using a permanent solution for something that could be a temporary problem? Do they not understand the dangers involved every time your child has anesthesia?

I really don’t understand how schools feel justified in teaching PreK students to choose their own genders and pronouns with the help of a unicorn.

Most of all, I don’t get the logic in allowing kids to transition their sexuality without parental consent, or acknowledgement. I’ve had children in public school for the past twenty-three years. I have to sign a waiver for my child to use the internet, or have their picture taken. I have to approve giving them Tylenol or Benadryl if needed. Certainly, they can’t take my kid on a field trip without my permission. But in today’s schools, students can switch genders and keep it a secret from the people who brought them into this world? As my momma used to say all the time, “I don’t think so!” (insert crazy eyes here).

If we can’t remove this toxic leftism from our schools, it’s time we remove our kids. The subsequent loss of funding will grab a lot more attention than a PTO meeting ever could.

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First trans-identified lawmaker in US charged with distributing child sex abuse images

By Samantha Kamman, Christian Post Reporter | MONDAY, JUNE 26, 2023

Stacie Laughton | Nashua Police Department

The first trans-identified legislator elected in the United States was charged with distributing images of child sex abuse in connection with another case involving a woman accused of taking sexually explicit photos of preschool-age children.

On Monday, Sgt. John Cinelli, the public information officer for the Nashua Police Department in New Hampshire, provided The Christian Post with a statement detailing the arrest of 39-year-old former Democratic state Rep. Stacie Laughton. Laughton previously served in the New Hampshire House of Representatives from 2020 to 2022.

Police arrested Laughton Thursday on a felony arrest warrant, charging him with the distribution of child sex abuse images. The former representative was also charged with three additional counts of distribution of child sex abuse images.

Police arrested Laughton after responding to a “local facility for a juvenile matter” on Tuesday, where they spoke with reporting parties who accused Laughton of distributing images of child sex abuse. Laughton was held on preventative detention. Cinelli told CP that the former lawmaker was held at the Hillsborough County Jail in Manchester. He couldn’t confirm whether Laughton was still there because the case was no longer within the department’s jurisdiction.

A spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Massachusetts confirmed to CP Monday that an investigation is ongoing. The spokesperson did not provide further details about the connection between Laughton and Lindsay Groves of Hudson, who allegedly took sexually explicit photos of children at the Creative Minds Early Learning Center in Tyngsboro, Massachusetts, where she worked.

According to the U.S. Justice Department’s Thursday statement, Groves was charged with one count of sexual exploitation of children and one count of distribution of child pornography. Between May 2022 and June 2023, Groves allegedly took nude photos of the children at the facility during bathroom breaks and diaper changes. At least four of the photos contain images of children believed to be around 3 to five 5 old.

The suspect reportedly sent the photos to her partner, but sources have yet to confirm whether Laughton is the partner who received the images. Groves is believed to have sent over 2,500 text messages to her partner discussing the photos and their transfer.

“The charge of sexual exploitation of children provides for a sentence of at least 15 years and up to 30 years in prison, at least five years and up to a lifetime of supervised release and a fine of up to $250,000,” the DOJ statement reads. “The charge of distribution of child pornography provides for a mandatory minimum sentence of five years and up to 20 years in prison, a mandatory minimum of five years and up to a lifetime of supervised release and a fine of up to $250,000.”

“Sentences are imposed by a federal district court judge based upon the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and statutes which govern the determination of a sentence in a criminal case,” the statement continued.

WMUR9 reported Friday that Laughton waived his arraignment and was ordered to be held due to concern that he is a threat to himself and the public. The Creative Minds Early Learning Center is cooperating with investigators and parents are demanding answers.

“I want to know how entangled my daughter is with all of this,” one parent, Rosemary Denommee, told the outlet. “I don’t know if I’ll get those answers.”

The child sex abuse charges are not the first time that Laughton has faced legal troubles. While he has been elected to the State House three times, he has been forced to resign twice. In 2012, Laughton became the first trans individual to win a New Hampshire State House election, but he could not take office due to a 2008 credit card fraud conviction, according to WMUR9. Laughton was also accused in 2015 of calling in a fake bomb threat. In 2022, he was accused of misusing the state’s emergency texting system by texting 911 during non-emergencies. In 2022, Laughton was accused of stalking Groves, who he identified to police as his wife. Groves is facing federal charges in Massachusetts and is set to appear for an arraignment on Wednesday.

Samantha Kamman is a reporter for The Christian Post. She can be reached at: samantha.kamman@christianpost.com. Follow her on Twitter: @Samantha_Kamman

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Biden Admin Grew Censorship Complex To Silence True But Inconvenient ‘Malinformation,’ House Committee Shows

BY: TRISTAN JUSTICE | JUNE 27, 2023

Author Tristan Justice profile

TRISTAN JUSTICE

VISIT ON TWITTER@JUSTICETRISTAN

The Biden administration’s war on so-called disinformation included a federal initiative to censor “malinformation,” information that is true but inconvenient to the Democrat ruling regime.

On Monday, lawmakers on the House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government published an interim report on the Department of Homeland Security’s “disinformation” programs within the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). According to the report, CISA “metastasized into the nerve center of the federal government’s domestic surveillance and censorship operations on social media,” and has steadily expanded the scope of its censorship since 2018.

“In 2022 and 2023, in response to growing public and private criticism of CISA’s unconstitutional behavior, CISA attempted to camouflage its activities, duplicitously claiming it serves a purely ‘informational’ role,” the report reads.

CISA ultimately outsourced its dystopian censorship regime to third-party nonprofits and colluded with Big Tech companies to suppress information deemed incorrect or harmful to regime narratives. CISA, lawmakers wrote, “exploited its connections with Big Tech and government-funded non-profits to censor, by proxy, in order to circumvent the First Amendment’s prohibition against government-induced censorship.”

“This included the creation of reporting ‘portals’ which funneled ‘misinformation’ reports directly to social media platforms,” the report says.

The government’s disinformation efforts extended to the censorship of “malinformation,” defined by CISA as “based on fact, but used out of context to mislead, harm, or manipulate.”

“In other words, malinformation is factual information that is objectionable not because it is false or untruthful, but because it is provided without adequate ‘context’ — context as determined by the government,” lawmakers explained.

According to their report, CISA tried to “disguise the true nature” of the agency’s work by “removing references to surveillance and censorship” from its website. President Joe Biden’s Department of Justice also interfered with CISA public records requests to stonewall congressional oversight. The select subcommittee is still waiting on CISA’s compliance with subpoenas.

The select subcommittee held a hearing on the federal government’s disinformation efforts in March featuring two journalists behind the “Twitter Files,” Substack reporters Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger.

“American taxpayers are unwittingly financing the growth and power of a censorship industrial complex run by America’s scientific and technological elite, which endangers our liberties and democracy,” Shellenberger told lawmakers. “The censorship industrial complex combines established methods of psychological manipulation, some developed by the U.S. military during the global war on terror with highly sophisticated tools from computer science.”

“We learned Twitter, Facebook, Google, and other companies developed a formal system for taking in moderation requests from every corner of government, from the FBI, the DHS, the HHS, DoD, the Global Engagement Center at State, even the CIA,” Taibbi added. “A focus of this fast-growing network … is making lists of people whose opinions, beliefs, associations or sympathies are deemed misinformation, disinformation, or malinformation. That last term is just a euphemism for ‘true but inconvenient.’”

MALINFORMATION = Information that’s TRUE, but INCOVENIENT.

Lawmakers made clear in their report Monday that the committee “will continue to investigate CISA’s and other Executive Branch agencies’ entanglement with social media platforms.”

The Department of Homeland Security isn’t the only agency in the Biden administration engaged in the censorship industry. The Biden State Department funded a “Disinformation Index” that blacklisted conservative websites from major advertisers.

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.

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What the Hell Did Kamala Harris Just Say?

By: Matt Vespa | June 27, 2023 11:35 AM

The anniversary of the Dobbs decision is here, and it has the left wing fired up. The landmark decision rightfully overturned Roe v. Wade and sent this contentious issue back to the legislature to be decided through the political process. Some people don’t know we were heading toward a consensus on the subject before the 1973 decision blew that up. To commemorate the occasion, President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris attended a campaign event organized by the top pro-abortion groups in the country, NARAL Pro-Choice America, Planned Parenthood Action Fund, and EMILY’s List, on June 23.

And yes, she was an incoherent mess again, providing another soundbite in the annals of ‘what the hell did Kamala just say.’ What she said is somewhat different from the prepared remarks on the White House website:

And let’s take a moment to really reflect on the historic progress that we’ve made thus far. You know, so many of us are always in the process of fighting to achieve full equality, full freedom, the rights that people are fully entitled to. But let’s always take a moment to also see what we have achieved thus far while we clearly see the moment that we are presently in. So, we have achieved a lot, and I know that in particular when the Dobbs decision came down, a lot of us — it — it hit us very hard.

Here’s what she actually said:

Kamala Harris: "Let's always take a moment to also see what we have achieved thus far, while we clearly see the moment that we are presently in. So we have achieved a lot." pic.twitter.com/Krdce4n1fE
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) June 23, 2023

Okay, let’s play devil’s advocate here: did the teleprompter malfunction? It happens. Or was this another time when Kamala thought she could wing it and go off-script? Because she can’t do that—she doesn’t have the ability. Never did. There is a stream of stories about how the VP doesn’t read memos or notes from her staff to ensure she doesn’t look like an idiot in public. That tendency has led to many fleeing for other job opportunities and allegations that Harris fosters a toxic work environment. That narrative has been around since her failed 2020 campaign. From COVID to the Highland Park shooting and the war in Ukraine—it’s well-established that Kamala Harris can’t walk and chew gum simultaneously. Her penchant for spewing nonsense is pervasive, and I don’t think this was an exception.

KAMALA: “We gotta take this stuff seriously, as seriously as you are, because you have been forced to have take it seriously.” pic.twitter.com/FQaOwZp65w
— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) July 6, 2022

Thank you, Kamala Harris, for so eloquently explaining the conflict in Ukraine. pic.twitter.com/myaMXpJXxV
— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) March 1, 2022

Here's the full transcript of her answer: https://t.co/1fhObFk9mi pic.twitter.com/unYzTA1md5
— Noam Blum (@neontaster) December 30, 2021

.@craigmelvin asks if it’s time to change admin’s strategy on Covid, Harris says:
“It is time for us to do what we have been doing. And that time is every day. Every day it is time for us to agree that there are things and tools that are available to us to slow this thing down” pic.twitter.com/8I52Q43050
— Alex Thompson (@AlexThomp) January 13, 2022

And she’s overall just not likable.

NBC News: "Vice President Kamala Harris’ net-negative rating (-17) is the lowest for any vice president in the poll’s history."
— Josh Kraushaar (@JoshKraushaar) June 26, 2023

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Here’s Why New Jersey Is Suing Several School Districts

By: Madeline Leesman | June 27, 2023 2:30 PM

New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy’s (D) administration has sued three school districts in the state over policies that require staff to inform parents if their children show signs of changing their “gender identity.” The lawsuits against the school districts were reportedly filed on Wednesday by Attorney General Matt Platkin, a Democrat. In the lawsuit, he alleged that the Manalapan-Englishtown, Marlboro and Middletown school districts violated the state’s law against discrimination (via Politico):

“‘Outing’ these students against their will poses serious mental health risks; threatens physical harm to students, including risking increased suicides; decreases the likelihood students will seek support; and shirks the District’s obligation to create a safe and supportive learning environment for all,” reads the Marlboro lawsuit. “Indeed, LGBTQ+ students in New Jersey and elsewhere have died by suicide after being outed.”

The lawsuits, which seek to stop the districts enforcing the policies, come as some of the most intense battles of the culture wars, nationally and in New Jersey, play out in suburban and rural school districts. Middletown is also where Murphy resides.

Last month, New Jersey filed a similar lawsuit against the Hanover Board of Education. The two sides are currently at an impasse over how to amend the Morris County district’s parental notification policy.

Guidance from the state says schools “shall ensure” students be addressed by their preferred names and pronouns, be allowed to dress “in accordance with their gender identity” and that “parental consent is not required” for the district to accept the student’s “asserted gender identity.”

“School policies that single out or target LGBTQ+ youth fly in the face of our State’s longstanding commitment to equality,” Sundeep Iyer, director of the Attorney General’s Division on Civil Rights, said in a statement. “Our laws prohibit discrimination on the basis of gender identity or expression, plain and simple, and we will not waver in our commitment to enforcing those protections.”

Marc Zitomer, an attorney for Marlboro’s school board, told Politico in a statement that “we vehemently disagree with Attorney General’s argument that it is somehow discriminatory or improper to notify a parent that their minor child is changing their gender identity or expression.”

“It is our position that keeping parents in the dark about important issues involving their children is counterintuitive and contrary to well established U.S. Supreme Court case law that says that parents have a constitutional right to direct and control the upbringing of their children,” Zitomer added.

Reportedly, each school district makes exceptions to the parental notification policy if there is reason to believe that doing so would put the student in harm’s way.

Townhall has covered several instances of school districts across the country attempting to keep parents out of the loop when it comes to their child’s gender identity, including in Colorado, Virginia, Kansas, Ohio and California. Last year, Republican Sen. Tim Scott (SC), who is running for the White House in 2024, introduced legislation that would prevent schools from hiding information about a student’s gender identity from their parents.

“The law in the United States has long recognized the importance of parental rights. A parent’s right to oversee the care education of their child is guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment,” the bill said. “Parents have a fundamental, constitutionally guaranteed right to raise and educate their children in the way they choose.”

“Public schools across the country are violating these fundamental parental and familial rights by deliberately hiding information about gender transitioning from their parents,” it continued. “These schools are sabotaging the parent-child relationship and encouraging children to keep secrets from the adults who are charged with protecting and defending them – their parents.”

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The White House’s New Excuse for Biden’s Economic Failures Is Something Else

By: Spencer Brown | June 27, 2023 3:10 PM

It’s no secret, now more than two years into President Joe Biden’s term, that Americans are less than thrilled with his economic policies and their ability to deliver on the 2020 campaign promise to “build back better.” According to the latest polling averages from Real Clear Politics, Biden’s overall job approval remains more than ten points underwater with more than 53 percent of Americans saying they disapprove of his performance. On his handling of the economy, Americans have an even worse opinion of Biden. RCP’s average shows just 39.2 percent of Americans approve of Biden’s handling of the economy — what the White House is trying to label “Bidenomics” this week — while 56.3 percent disapprove of Biden’s economic policies.

So, as the White House embarks on a week-long push aimed at highlighting Biden’s economic policy with the hope — which is feeble at this point — of turning Biden’s economic and overall job approval in the right direction, what’s the White House’s excuse for why supposedly wonderful “Bidenomics” hasn’t won over the American people?

“We’re just starting to feel the impact of the president’s economic agenda,” argued Principal Deputy Press Secretary Olivia Dalton in Tuesday’s White House briefing:

REPORTER: "Why does the White House think…that Americans grade the president so poorly on his handling of the economy?"

WHITE HOUSE: "We're just starting to feel the impact of the president's economic agenda!" pic.twitter.com/d3wd7qw0pO
— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) June 27, 2023

In that one response, the White House again attempted to avoid any responsibility for the consequences of Biden’s economic policies and inability to deliver a better economy for the American people. You see, it’s not that Biden’s spending binge triggered inflation and his war on fossil fuels sent gas prices to all-time highs making Americans grow exceedingly disenchanted with Biden’s handling of the economy, it’s that “Bidenomics” just hasn’t kicked in yet.

Well, that doesn’t pass the smell test. Biden took swift actions on day one that drove energy costs soaring. He signed a handful of bills — including the American Rescue Plan and the falsely named “Inflation Reduction Act” — that the White House has touted endlessly. Now that Americans have buyer’s remorse, the White House spin is: well, nothing we’ve done over the last 30 months has kicked in yet. It’s bogus.

But Dalton also argued in Tuesday’s briefing that Americans should just “look at where we were when [Biden] came into office…after four years of Donald Trump” in order to see the impacts of “Bidenomics” that she, contradictorily, said had not yet been fully felt.

REPORTER: "54-36% say Donald Trump did a better job handling the economy…"

WHITE HOUSE: "Look at where we were when we came into office…after four years of Donald Trump…" pic.twitter.com/mjO8bCK6mQ
— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) June 27, 2023

If the White House really wants Americans to consider where the economy was when Biden took office “after four years of Donald Trump” to inform their opinion of “Bidenomics,” why not.

In January 2021, the Consumer Price index pegged the annual growth of inflation at 1.4 percent. In May 2023, the annual rate of inflation was 4.0 percent. That is, “after four years of Donald Trump,” inflation was below the Federal Reserve’s target of two percent inflation. Under Biden, inflation spiked to 8.9 percent before falling to its current rate of 4.0 percent — twice the Fed’s goal.

Americans — by a significant margin — know that they’ve not been better off economically since Biden took office and implemented his “build back better” or “Bidenomics” or whatever he wants to call his disastrous policies. The White House is not willing, however, to admit what Biden’s policies have done or that reversing them is the only quick way to address Americans’ disapproval.

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Scary video: Pro-LBGTQ mob gangs up on, gets physical with lone woman holding sign defending female rights

June 26, 2023

By: DAVE URBANSKI | June 26, 2023

Image source: Twitter video screenshot via @StopXXErasure

Cellphone video captured the rather scary moment when a lone woman holding a sign defending female rights found herself surrounded by a pro-LBGTQ mob that ganged up against and got physical with her over the weekend. The clip was posted to Twitter by K. Yang, who said she’s a “former trans rights activist & LGBT non-profit whistleblower.” Yang said the incident occurred Sunday in Washington Square Park during a New York City Pride event.

“I was just kicked, hit, pushed, mobbed by dozens of people,” Yang wrote, adding that men who identify as women “called me ‘bitch’ and assaulted me.”

Indeed, the clip shows Yang encircled by a large crowd of smiling pro-LBGTQ individuals who seemed empowered by their shared ideology and started taunting and yelling at Yang — and there was the obligatory middle finger close to her face. But when that failed to convince her to cave, put her sign down, and walk away, a few of the mob members came in physical contact with Yang — from behind, of course — as they reached for her sign.

Yang hollered for the mob to stop touching her. Still, one mob member rammed a cup of liquid against Yang’s head:

The same woman with the cup also made attempts to get at Yang’s sign:

Finally, an individual sporting a clown-red shock of hair somehow found the courage to bat down Yang’s sign (again, from behind), which really got the crowd going:

This tolerant trio appeared decidedly pleased:

Here’s the video. Content warning: Language:

NYC Pride – 6/25/2023
My name is K. Yang, I'm a former trans rights activist & LGBT non-profit whistleblower. I was just kicked, hit, pushed, mobbed by dozens of people in Washington Square Park. ♂️ who identify as ♀️ called me "bitch" & assaulted me. @KnownHeretic @bjportraits pic.twitter.com/4J9AaFXSEf
— Stop Female Erasure / K Yang (@StopXXErasure) June 25, 2023

It was quite the weekend in the Big Apple as LGBTQ activists marching Friday in the city’s annual drag queen parade chanted, “We’re here, we’re queer, we’re coming for your children!”

Glenn Beck interviewed Yang about her work back in January:

Former LGBT activist now helps parents DE-PROGRAM their kids youtu.be

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Hundreds of threatening letters containing white powder sent to GOP lawmakers in states that passed laws unfavorable to LGBT activists

JOSEPH MACKINNON | June 26, 2023

Image source: YouTube video, ABC News – Screenshot

Hundreds of suspicious packages containing white powder and threatening notes have been sent to GOP lawmakers in three states where Republicans have recently passed legislation unpopular with fringe LGBT activists, such as laws protecting children from sex-change mutilations and puberty blockers. The latest was addressed to Montana House Speaker Matt Regier, bearing exterior post markings that “follow the pattern of the other letters.”

It appears that not only has the same stamp been used in a number of instances, but the names of slain or prominent transvestites have been repeatedly inscribed on the letters, reported the Wichita Eagle.

Kansas

The Kansas Bureau of Investigation noted that as of June 18, around 100 letters containing suspicious white powder had been received by Republican lawmakers and other public officials across the state.

“Preliminary tests have returned from this lab indicating the substance is presumptively negative for common biological agents of concern. Further and more complete testing will be conducted on this sample, as well as on additional letters that have been collected, in an effort to determine the components of the substance,” said the KBI in a statement.

“Our focus remains on ensuring the safety of Kansans, and holding those responsible for these crimes accountable,” said KBI Director Tony Mattivi. “The KBI is so appreciative of the incredible coordination and outstanding response by countless federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies, as well as by fire departments, and hazmat teams to this unprecedented event.”

17 hazmat teams and 12 bomb squads initially responded upon the receipt of the threatening letters. Over 60 special agents, forensic scientists and other specialists have been tasked with collecting or screening evidence.

While the KBI has not publicly identified a motive, State Rep. Tory Marie Blew, among those targeted, told CNN that Kansas Republicans’ successful overrides of Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly’s vetoes on bills — including a bill banning transvestites from women’s sports teams from kindergarten through college and another bill that defined an individual’s sex as that comporting with biological reality — may have drawn the ire of those behind the letters.

Kansas Rep. Stephen Owens agreed that Republican lawmakers may have been targeted as a result of their legislative successes on the transgender and abortion fronts.

“It’s really terrifying to think that because of someone’s political beliefs that they can be a target,” said Owens. “Violence and acts of violence and threats do absolutely nothing, nothing to change one’s perspective. As a matter of fact, that strengthens the resolve of myself and my colleagues and of our party to continue the work that we’re doing.”

The names of dead transvestites were reportedly written on the back of the letters sent to both Owens and Blew.

This intimidation campaign was not limited to Kansas.

Tennessee

On June 22, threatening letters containing white powder sent to Republican lawmakers in Tennessee prompted a temporary lockdown of the sixth floor of the Cordell Hull Building, a legislative office building connected to the state Capitol in Nashville, reported the Associated Press. Firefighters with the Nashville Fire Department were among those who responded to test the substance.

Our personnel responded to a suspicious letter call at the Cordell Hull Building. They donned protective suits and air tanks to test the substance. @THPNashville @FBI @DHSgov have personnel on the scene investigating. We have made no transports and have no reports of injuries. pic.twitter.com/D2WCEDcTig
— Nashville Fire Dept (@NashvilleFD) June 22, 2023

House Republican Caucus spokeswoman Jennifer Easton said the letters “contained obvious threats made by a liberal activist specifically targeting Republicans.”

The FBI indicated it is looking into the Tennessee incident, reported KECI.

Montana

Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte (R) noted Friday that “Montana legislators are receiving anonymous, threatening letters containing white powder.”

I've received disturbing reports that Montana legislators are receiving anonymous, threatening letters containing white powder. The state will bring to bear whatever resources are needed to support law enforcement officers as they investigate.
— Governor Greg Gianforte (@GovGianforte) June 24, 2023

Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen revealed Friday that his mother, state Rep. Rhonda Knudsen, had opened one such letter addressed to her at her home address, which contained a white powder substance.

Rep. Knudsen said, “I will not be intimidated by these kinds of tactics.”

House Majority Leader Sue Vinton and Rep. Neil Duram were also among the Montana Republicans targeted.

The letter addressed to state Rep. Neil Duram (R), an image of which was obtained by KECI, appears to be written in various fonts.

“Salutations, to honor your recent accomplishments I send to you a gift from the exclusive astruc Baruch collection,” says the letter. “It is important not to choke on your ambition.”

The letter is signed, “your secret despiser.”

SUSPICIOUS LETTERS: State Rep. Rhonda Knudsen (R-Culbertson) and State Rep. Neil Duram (R-Eureka) reportedly received anonymous, threatening letters today that contained a white powder. Full story: https://t.co/8LVc6TGLeJ pic.twitter.com/rVqStY4UUR
— NBC Montana (@NBCMontana) June 24, 2023

The Montana Senate GOP indicated Sunday that another suspicious letter had been identified, this time addressed to House Speaker Matt Regier.

A third suspicious letter has been identified. This one was addressed to House Speaker Matt Regier and exterior post markings follow the pattern of the other letters. Speaker Regier's letter is now in the possession of law enforcement. #mtleg #mtpol
— Montana Senate Republicans (@MTSenateGOP) June 25, 2023

Further afield, cybercriminals attacked the Texas city of Fort Worth’s computer systems over the weekend, citing the state’s restrictions on child sex-change mutilations as cause.

TheBlaze previously reported that the alleged hackers stated in a recent Telegram post concerning the Fort Worth attack, “We have decided to make a message toward the U.S. government. It just happens to be one of the largest states banning gender affirming care, and for that we have made Texas our target.”

Lawmakers in 3 states receive letters with suspicious powder | WNT youtu.be

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Perspectives; Thoughts; Comments; Opinions; Discussions

By Samantha Kamman, Christian Post Reporter | THURSDAY, JULY 06, 2023

In years past, the term, “mental illness” would be associated with this kind of conduct.”

Samantha Kamman is a reporter for The Christian Post. She can be reached at: samantha.kamman@christianpost.com. Follow her on Twitter: @Samantha_Kamman

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BY: TRISTAN JUSTICE | JULY 06, 2023

A coalition of top Republicans on Capitol Hill is demanding a federal investigation into allegations of retaliation against Internal Revenue Service whistleblowers who revealed misconduct related to the Hunter Biden investigation.

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BY: JORDAN BOYD | JULY 06, 2023

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Supreme Court Justice argued affirmative action ‘saves lives’

By Hanna Panreck | Fox News | Published July 6, 2023 1:46pm EDT

Hanna Panreck is an associate editor at Fox News.

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A.F. Branco Cartoon – Tightrope

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By Ian M. Giatti, Christian Post Reporter | TUESDAY, JULY 04, 2023

Ian M. Giatti is a reporter for The Christian Post and the author of BACKWARDS DAD: a children’s book for grownups. He can be reached at: ian.giatti@christianpost.com.

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By: CHRIS ENLOE | July 05, 2023

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BY: SHAWN FLEETWOOD | JULY 05, 2023

You know our enemies are laughing themselves silly with this knowledge that America has sexually confused, obsessed, leaders in its forces. Does that sound prepared for war to you?

I am a Combat Marine Veteran. There is no possible way for me to trust anyone like this into combat. As adults they are confused about the way they “feel”, makes every other aspect of their lives questionable.

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BY: MARGOT CLEVELAND | JULY 05, 2023

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BY: WILL SCHARF | JULY 05, 2023

Will Scharf is a former federal prosecutor, who also worked on the confirmations of Supreme Court Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett. He is currently a Republican candidate for Missouri Attorney General.

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BY: MARGOT CLEVELAND | JULY 05, 2023

What the Whistleblower Said

Lies, Lies, Lies

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Federal judge says White House likely violated First Amendment during COVID-19 pandemic

By Madeline Coggins | Fox News | Published July 5, 2023 2:02pm EDT

Madeline Coggins is a Digital Production Assistant on the Fox News flash team with Fox News Digital.

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NEWSMAX | Wednesday, 05 July 2023 03:50 PM EDT

Cocaine discovered in the White House on Sunday was found in a cubby hole in a West Wing entry area where visitors place electronics and other belongings before taking tours, a source familiar with the matter said on Wednesday.

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By Sandy Fitzgerald | Wednesday, 05 July 2023 03:11 PM EDT

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By Solange Reyner | Wednesday, 05 July 2023 02:54 PM EDT

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A.F. Branco Cartoon – Executive Odor

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President distorts history to attack Supreme Court as ‘not normal’

By Jonathan Turley | Fox News | Published July 3, 2023 4:00am EDT

Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro professor of public interest law at George Washington University and a practicing criminal defense attorney. He is a Fox News contributor.

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By Fran Beyer | Monday, 03 July 2023 02:33 PM EDT

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A.F. Branco Cartoon – Shots Fired

A.F. Branco Cartoon – Life in the Swamp

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‘I didn’t have a microphone,’ she said. ‘I had to speak loudly so that everyone could hear what I was saying’.

By Houston Keene | Fox News | Published June 30, 2023 3:40pm EDT

Houston Keene is a politics writer for Fox News Digital. Story tips can be sent to Houston.Keene@Fox.com and on Twitter: @HoustonKeene

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By Alfredo Ortiz , Elaine Parker | Fox News | Published June 30, 2023 10:42am EDT

Alfredo Ortiz is President and CEO of the Job Creators Network, a non-partisan organization founded by entrepreneurs.

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By Michael Katz | Friday, 30 June 2023 04:09 PM EDT

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A.F. Branco Cartoon – Happy Depends Day

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By: ALEX NITZBERG | June 28, 2023

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BY: NATHANAEL BLAKE | JUNE 29, 2023

The Lie of Being ‘Born This Way’

Social Conservatives Vindicated