High-priced attorneys for Hunter Biden dispatched letters on Wednesday to the Delaware attorney general and the Department of Justice pushing them to launch investigations into a slew of individuals who had shared information allegedly retrieved from the laptop abandoned at a Delaware computer repair shop. But yesterday’s transparent attempt to sic top state and federal law enforcement officials on those exposing the Biden family pay-to-play scandal is already backfiring, with Biden’s clarifying the letters are not an admission that the laptop was Hunter’s.
In two detailed, 14-page letters penned by Winston & Strawn attorney Abbe David Lowell, the Hunter Biden attorney requested the attorney general of Delaware and the Department of Justice investigate whether John Paul Mac Isaac, Robert Costello, Rudy Giuliani, Stephen Bannon, Jack Maxey, Garrett Ziegler, and Yaacov Apelbaum committed state or federal crimes. “There is considerable reason to believe” those individuals violated various laws “in accessing, copying, manipulating, and/or disseminating Mr. Biden’s personal computer data,” Hunter’s attorney opened his Wednesday missive.
The lengthy letters then detail each of the individuals’ purported actions that Lowell claims provide “considerable reason to believe” they committed various state or federal crimes, which the Winston & Strawn attorney then identifies and analyzes.
Starting with John Paul Mac Isaac, the owner of the Delaware repair shop where the laptop was left for repairs, Lowell asserts, “Mr. Mac Isaac has admitted to gaining access to our client’s personal computer data in Delaware without Mr. Biden’s consent.”
“Mr. Mac Isaac has admitted to copying that data without Mr. Biden’s consent, and Mr. Mac Isaac has admitted to distributing copies of that data from his place in Delaware,” the letter to the Delaware AG continues.
Given that Mac Isaac has maintained from day one that the “computer data” he copied was contained on a laptop abandoned at his repair shop by an individual he believed was Hunter Biden, yesterday’s letters to the Delaware attorney general and the DOJ appeared as an apparent admission by Hunter that yes, the laptop was his.
But when asked whether Hunter “now acknowledge[s] he or someone on his behalf dropped off his laptop for repairs at Mac Isaac’s store,” Lowell told The Federalist, “These letters do not confirm Mac Isaac’s or others’ versions of a so-called laptop. They address their conduct of seeking, manipulating and disseminating what they allege to be Mr. Biden’s personal data, wherever they claim to have gotten it.”
In an exclusive interview with The Federalist, Mac Isaac’s attorney Brian Della Rocca seemed flabbergasted by the continued obfuscating by Hunter Biden’s legal team. “Is Hunter denying that he was in Delaware in April of 2019 then? To this day, he has not denied being in Wilmington at that time,” he said. “Nor has he ever denied dropping off the laptop with John Paul. Is he denying doing so now?”
“John Paul has not, nor will he ever manipulate the data on Hunter’s hard drive. That is just not who he is,” Della Rocca told The Federalist. And it would be easy to confirm the authenticity of the data, Della Rocca explained, stressing that “the data on the drive he has can be compared to the laptop, which is in the possession of the FBI, to show he has not made any changes to the information.”
Della Rocca also condemned the letters’ attempt to suggest Mac Isaac lied to law enforcement officials.
“Mr. Mac Isaac has insisted that he did not make a bit-by-bit copy or clone of the hard drive,” page eight of the Biden attorney’s letter maintained, continuing:
Nor could he make such a copy because the hard drive was soldered to the laptop’s mother board, and he could not stay logged into the waterlogged laptop long enough to copy the entirety of the hard drive because the waterlogged laptop would periodically turn off. Instead, Mr. Mac Isaac chose what he wanted to access and copy from Mr. Biden’s personal data that Mr. Mac Isaac unlawfully obtained. Thus, any representation by Mr. Mac Isaac to law enforcement that what was in his possession was the entire hard drive would have been a knowing false statement. Moreover, the absence of a true clone of the hard drive created the opportunity for mischief—namely, the addition of files to this “hard drive,” the manipulation of files on this “hard drive,” and the destruction of files from this “hard drive.”
Mac Isaac’s attorney told The Federalist this passage represents a fundamental misunderstanding of the process for retrieving data from a damaged MacBook Pro 13. “Due to the damaged condition and poor stability of the MacBook, John Paul had to manually recover the user data,” Mac Isaac’s attorney explained. “John Paul was able to recover the entire contents (220GB) [of] the folder named, RobertHunter.”
“Per Hunter’s request, no attempt to recover the remaining system files or applications was made because they did not include personal data,” Mac Isaac’s lawyer stressed. Della Rocca added that “the only law enforcement agency to which John Paul has provided a copy of Hunter Biden’s laptop was the FBI,” and that the FBI also took custody of the laptop at the same time, making it possible for the FBI to compare what Mac Isaac recovered from the “RobertHunter” folder on the original laptop. “There would be no difference,” Mac Isaac’s attorney emphasized.
The accusation that Mac Isaac accessed Hunter Biden’s personal data without his consent is also “absolutely false,” Della Rocca told The Federalist.
While Della Rocca did not elaborate, the signed repair contract stated that if the laptop was not retrieved within 90 days of “notification of completed service,” it would be treated as “abandoned.” Hunter Biden’s attorney did not respond to The Federalist’s inquiry on whether it was his position that Hunter Biden had “not abandoned the property under the repair contract,” with the Winston & Strawn attorney instead stressing the letters do not confirm Mac Isaac’s “versions of a so-called laptop.”
The repair contract further provided that the owner of the equipment agreed to hold Mac Isaac “harmless for any damage or loss of property.”
Yet, here we are, with “another privileged person hiring yet another high-priced attorney to redirect attention away from his own unlawful actions,” Della Rocca scoffed. “This is entirely a P.R. move,” he added, telling The Federalist he first saw the lengthy letters from Hunter’s attorney when CBS contacted him for comment.
The public relations move, however, is already backfiring, with the general public interpreting the letter as an implicit acknowledgment that the laptop from hell was Hunter Biden’s. And things may only get worse, if the FBI is forced to confirm that, yes, the damning documents publicly circulating are authentic copies of the material contained in the MacBook’s “RobertHunter” folder.
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.
“Yet again, we’re seeing evidence of what happens to Black and brown people from simple traffic stops.” — Ben Crump, attorney for Tyre Nichols’ family
“It is yet another painful reminder of the profound fear and trauma, the pain, and the exhaustion that Black and brown Americans experience every single day.” — President Joe Biden
“[V]iolence like what happened to [Tyre Nichols] is about how some bad cops use their power over Black and brown victims.” — CNN’s Van Jones
Hey! Where’d all the “browns” go?
George Floyd, Michael Brown, Freddie Gray, Breonna Taylor, Daunte Wright, and on and on and on — all black people, generally “justice-involved,” who resisted the police and ended up dead. Name a civilian killed by cops of any other race that led to international protests, billboards, renamed streets, hashtags, memorials, NBA jerseys, murals, busts, tribute songs or Omagazine covers.
Only black people reflexively defend their own criminals. The “blacks and browns” scam is an attempt to rope Hispanics into the black community’s dysfunction.
Hispanics don’t champion their criminals! (Asians don’t even champion their A-minus students.) When 13-year-old Adam Toledo was shot by a cop in Chicago, “activists” did their best to incite worldwide protests, but Hispanics weren’t interested. Why are we going to take off work?
To the contrary, the residents of Toledo’s overwhelmingly Hispanic neighborhood blamed his mother, complained about gangs and demanded more policing. Journalists hoping for anti-police rage instead got quotes like these:
“We are tired of gang violence; it’s sad what happened with the young boy, but he had a gun with him and his friend had been shooting, so the officer responded to the threat.”
“We can’t even go out safely because there are random shootings everywhere and you never know if a stray bullet might hit you.”
“The only reason people are talking about (killings) now is that it was a police officer who shot and killed the kid.”
Meanwhile, normal black people are made to feel like race traitors if they ever say something like, I don’t know, the guy was kind of a scumbag.
No matter how much the activists push, Hispanics simply will not rush out on the streets to protest whenever a Latino is killed by a cop. (In places like Los Angeles, Hispanics arethe cops.) Journalists are beside themselves that the “browns” refuse to be more like black people.
NBC News: “Police killings of Latinos lack attention, say activists”
Los Angeles Times: “What will make people care about police shootings of Latinos?”
The Washington Post: “Latinos are disproportionately killed by police but often left out of the debate about brutality, some advocates say”
And, no, black people are not killed by the police at a “disproportionate” rate. Every single study claiming otherwise is comparing the percentage of blacks killed by police to the black percentage in the population. This, obviously, is absurd. Lots of people never have any contact with the police. (Obey the law — you’ll see!)
It would be like accusing grizzly bears of systemic racism against Alaskans because 29% of all grizzly attacks are against Alaskans — a mere 0.2% of the population — whereas grizzlies kill zero Texans, and they make up 9% of the population! (There are no grizzlies in Texas at last count.)
Police don’t stop people at random. They stop people whom they believe to be breaking the law. Judging by the pantheon of black martyrs, they’re often right.
George Floyd was a fentanyl addict (which, of course, contributed in no way to his death) who’d just passed a counterfeit $20 bill — not to mention the armed home invasion robbery he’d committed back in Texas; Michael Brown had just knocked over a convenience store and gratuitously roughed up the small Asian owner on his way out; Freddie Gray was a heroin dealer in possession of an illegal switchblade; Breonna Taylor was the bag woman for a fentanyl dealer; Daunte Wright was driving with an expired registration and had a warrant for his arrest stemming from his choking a woman during an attempted armed robbery.
For any meaningful comparison of civilians killed by cops, the denominator needs to be “percentage of contacts with the police.” Maybe officers are searching out black people to harass for no reason whatsoever, but another explanation for the high number of police encounters is that, compared to other groups, a relatively large cohort of black people are violent criminals.
Although only 13% of the population, black people commit more than 50% of all murders, more than 50% of all robberies and more than 30% of all aggravated assaults. And yet blacks remain about one-quarter of the thousand civilians shot by police every year, the vast majority of them armed.
Instead of unveiling more George Floyd murals, how about some refresher courses on “The Talk”? (Which apparently makes much more sense in Spanish.) All these black luminaries would be alive today if they’d done one simple thing: Obey the police. It’s not that hard.
Guys, we want to help! But you’ve got to abandon this impulse to turn any member of your group who fights a cop into a beatified saint.
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 Donald Trump.
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A dozen Catholic school students were kicked out of the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C., because they were wearing beanies with a pro-life message.
The American Center of Law and Justice is representing the parents of the students from Our Lady of the Rosary School in Greenville County, South Carolina. An attorney for the ACLJ told WYFF-TV that the teenagers tried to attend the museum after attending the annual March for Life on Jan. 20.
A mother of one of the students posted to Twitter about the incident. She wrote that her daughter told the man they were wearing the hats in order to identify each other in the crowd attending the museum. They said that a security guard approached them and told them to either take off the beanies or leave the museum. When they asked why they were being asked to leave, the guard reportedly told them that the museum was a “neutral zone.”
Nora Luz Kriegel, a parent of students at the Catholic school, joined a group that wrote the museum to petition for a change in its policies.
“They should be allowed to wear the hats that they were wearing and to be able to express themselves,” said Kriegel to WYFF. “And I felt it was very wrong that this person harassed them.”
A spokesperson for the air and space museum released a statement about the incident.
“Asking visitors to remove hats and clothing is not in keeping with our policy or protocols. We provided immediate training to prevent a re-occurrence of this kind of incident, and have determine steps to ensure this does not happen again,” said Alison Wood, the museum’s deputy director of communications.
Here’s a local news report about the incident:
Greenville students removed from National Air and Space Museum for wearing pro-life hats www.youtube.com
Fox Nation host Alveda King reflects on her uncle, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s, life and legacy and urges others to love and forgive.
Black History Month begins this week, just two weeks after tens of thousands of Americans gathered in Washington, D.C., for the 50th annual March for Life. This month and the March for Life collectively present an important
opportunity to highlight two of the most pressing issues facing America’s Black community today: abortion and fatherlessness.
Ultimately, the reason these issues are widely accepted in the Black community is our country’s decline in church attendance and its move away from Jesus. Yet the sad reality of our times is that these issues receive little to no attention from the mainstream media or the far left today. Instead of focusing on these issues and working to develop solutions for them, the left and the media continue to promote ideas about “systemic racism” and critical race theory while calling for ever-expanding forms of “racial equity.” Rather than responding to these distractions, we want to use this Black History Month to raise awareness about fatherlessness and abortion and the devastating effect both are having on America’s Black community.
Our Nation is home to approximately 24 million fatherless children, or about 1 in 3 of all American children. Approximately 80% of these homes are led by single mothers, and the rate of children living in single-parent households is the highest of any country in the world. Our Nation’s fatherlessness epidemic has particularly ravaged the Black community. Nearly 70% of all Black babies in America today are born to unmarried mothers, and 64% of all Black children grow up in a single-parent home.
Tragically, fatherlessness strongly correlates with negative outcomes in nearly every aspect of a child’s life. Fatherless families are 25% more likely to raise a child in poverty, and 90% of all homeless and runaway children do not have a father. Additionally, 85% of children and teens with behavioral disorders come from fatherless homes. Fatherless children also account for 71% of child substance abuse cases, and approximately 70% of all youths in state-operated institutions are fatherless.
This Black History Month, we want to draw attention away from the noise and back to the issues that matter. The rampant fatherlessness and shocking rates of abortion in the Black community should be stunning to all Americans of good faith.
The issues of abortion and fatherlessness are closely linked, as one of every three pregnancies in a fatherlessness home end in abortion. America’s epidemic of fatherless children largely correlates with abortion rates, and women raised in fatherless homes account for approximately 70% of all teen pregnancies.
Equally tragic is the vastly disproportionate impact abortion has on the Black community. Of the roughly 930,000 abortions performed in 2020, about 39% were performed on Black women, for a rate of 24.4 abortions per 1,000 Black women. This means that over the course of a year, more than 350,000 Black babies, or almost 1,000 per day, are aborted. As a result, approximately 1 million Black babies are killed in the womb every three years.
Deep down, Americans understand that fatherhood is essential to society. According to a poll by Scott Rasmussen, 84% of Americans believe a strong family is foundational to a strong America.
Most Americans also understand the relationship between absent fathers and abortion. Sixty-nine percent of Americans think a man becomes a father at the moment of conception, and 78% think the father’s financial responsibility begins at the start of a pregnancy. The book of Malachi reflects this wisdom and reminds us that God “will turn the hearts of the fathers to their children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers.”
This Black History Month, we want to draw attention away from the noise and back to the issues that matter. The rampant fatherlessness and shocking rates of abortion in the Black community should be stunning to all Americans of good faith, and we genuinely believe these two related issues are among the biggest civil rights battles of our time.
Fixing anything begins with first identifying the problem. The simple truth is that Black Americans will continue to struggle and fall behind if the fatherlessness crisis is not addressed.
At the same time, the effects of abortion on significant parts of the Black community will keep robbing our country of untold ingenuity and talent.
By highlighting fatherlessness and abortion this Black History Month, we can help the American people learn more about the biggest issues Black America faces. Then, and only then, can Americans of all stripes unite to solve them.
Jack Brewer serves as Chair, Center for Opportunity Now and Vice-Chair, Center for 1776 for the America First Policy Institute (AFPI).
Evangelist Alveda King is Chairman of the Center for the American Dream at the America First Policy Institute. A niece of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., she is the author of several books, including “King Rules” and “How Can the Dream Survive if We Murder the Children.”
The FBI search of President Joe Biden’s vacation home in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, on Wednesday, continues the search for classified material in various homes and work spaces used by the president and his family in the past decade. What is surprising about Wednesday’s search is not the fact that a sitting president has now been subject to two FBI searches of his residences, but the fact that this search has come roughly three months after the first discovery of documents in a closet in Washington.
Despite that rather lackadaisical record, Biden’s personal counsel Bob Bauer still stated on Wednesday, with no sense of irony, that this has been a “timely DOJ process.” It is “timely” if you use glacial measurements.
If this is how the FBI moves with dispatch, it is chilling to think of the schedule for lower-priority matters. The FBI waited to conduct their search until both counsel and the president went to the house. They will now see if they can find anything.
The search of the president’s small Delaware beach house is also telling in that it sits roughly 80 miles from a massive trove of Biden documents that neither counsel nor the FBI has shown much interest in. The University of Delaware is currently holding a colossal collection of Biden documents from the time before his presidency. The Bidens have effectively converted the university into a type of political safe deposit box, barring media from reviewing documents going back to Biden’s time in Congress.
Universities are usually dedicated to facilitating access to knowledge and information. However, the University of Delaware has spent public funds in resisting media requests for access to look at the documents for material linked to sexual harassment allegations and other controversies. Since some of the material reportedly included classified documents removed by Biden as senator, there is obviously the chance that the university files could also contain classified material.
The sheer size of the documents magnifies those concerns. Biden parked 33 pallets holding 1,875 boxes and 415 gigabytes of electronic records at the university. He then barred the public and the public from looking at the collection. The university has continued to run interference for the president in arguing technical exclusions from public access rules and by claiming to be organizing the material. This has gone on for over a decade.
Since the FBI is already in the state, they might want to consider a trip to the university. However, for the moment, no one seems to want to discuss the collection. It seems that this is all an intractable game of “Delawhere?”
At some point, the Delaware faculty need to object to the use of their institution as a political lock box. While the university’s motto is “knowledge is the light of the mind,” neither the university nor the president appear eager to shed light, let along knowledge, on what these papers contain.
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.
Two Dutchstudies touting the great success of “gender-affirming” medical intervention on youth have been deemed bad research by experts at the Society for Evidence-Based Gender Medicine. In the report “The Myth of ‘Reliable Research’ in Pediatric Gender Medicine” published earlier this month, researchers describe how the 2011 and 2014 studies that formed the foundation of the transgender industry in the U.S. should never have been accepted by the professional community, falling “unacceptably” short of modern research standards. The studies led to a global movement of wrongly named “gender-affirming care,” resulting in hormone experimentation on youth and, in some cases, irreversible mutilation.
The Dutch studies had several major flaws, according to the report. Study authors only recorded the cases with the best outcomes, concluded without evidence that gender dysphoria disappeared solely as a result of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones, and failed to properly examine the risks of the interventions, with disastrous effects.
The American College of Pediatricians responded to the report in a press release on Jan. 25 calling on organizations to “reconsider current protocols for gender dysphoric children.”
“The entire pediatric transgender industry is based on these two Dutch studies,” Michelle Cretella, immediate past executive director of ACPeds and advisory board spokeswoman for Advocates Protecting Children, told me. “This open access report is critical because it exposes the fraudulent foundation of pediatric transgender medicine in the United States.”
The Dutch studies were so foundational to the U.S. movement that the first pediatric gender clinic in the United States was opened by Dr. Norman Spack, a pediatric endocrinologist who was convinced of the necessity of “gender-affirming” interventions after visiting the Dutch physicians who published them, Cretella said.
But if these studies had been published today, the authors conclude, the research would have been recognized as very low quality and would not have encouraged the use of puberty blockers, wrong-sex hormones, and surgery in confused children and young adults in general medical settings.
‘No Evidence’ of Genetic Cause
The report criticizing these studies was published in the Journal of Sex and Marital Therapy, and authors E. Abbruzzese, Stephen B. Levine, and Julia W. Mason have years of experience studying so-called gender identity. Levine has worked in the field as a psychiatrist since 1974.
“We had no bias, we are just responding to and trying to articulate the limitations of the studies,” Levine told me. “We are doing harm to an unknown percentage of kids, and the data that is supportive of this work does not really address the issue. The real issue here is what happens to these children when they get into their 20s and 30s.”
Youth who have been hormonally and surgically “transitioned” have major obstacles to their happiness and productivity later in life, Levine said.
“After people have sex reassignment surgeries … they want more surgeries,” according to Levine. “It’s very clear they have continued gender dysphoria. The idea that they are being ‘cured’ by affirmative care is an artifact, it’s a myth.”
Hormone and surgical treatment, and subsequent medical intervention, leads many people to assume this must be a “medical problem” but “we don’t have any evidence that this is genetically determined,” Levine said.
“Just because we have hormone treatment doesn’t mean there is a hormonal defect in the person,” he said. “People believe, erroneously, that there is some genetic, pre-determined factor here, but we have not been able to find a genetic cause.”
Cultural, interpersonal, psychological, and developmental factors all contribute to the development of a person’s behavior, Levine said. Gender dysphoria can be a resulting psycho-social problem.
Biased, Uncontrolled Studies
Though the Dutch studies were found to have selection bias and multiple, uncontrolled variables, they were broadly applied in the U.S.
“The Dutch study researchers only took healthy kids from supportive and reasonably healthy families,” Levine said. “They carefully screened kids, so if they had major developmental problems they were not included in the studies. But in the U.S. … the vast majority of these kids have a history of psychiatric issues before they developed gender dysphoria. The Dutch rejected these kids from their research.”
The Dutch study had 196 participants initially and only put 70 in the protocol. Only 55 then completed the protocol. As well as having selection bias, the study was uncontrolled.
“Wisely, the Dutch people gave these kids and their families continued psychotherapy during this protocol,” Levine said. “Is the positive results they found due to the psychotherapy, improvement as they got older, or affirmative care? This is an uncontrolled study. They cannot make conclusions about what caused what. But the world took this as scientific evidence.”
In the U.S., youth who had rapid-onset gender dysphoria and didn’t even meet the baseline criteria for the Dutch study began receiving interventions in pediatric clinics, with doctors utilizing the studies as justification. Furthermore, when the Dutch began this project there was also much less awareness of autism, Levine said. A very large percentage of these kids that have come to American facilities are on the autism spectrum, according to Levine.
Courageous Pediatricians Have Resisted
ACPeds physicians have spoken out against sexual disfigurement and medical intervention in youth with gender dysphoria for years.
“There are a handful of us physicians within ACPeds and across the country who have the courage and expertise to speak out on this issue,” Cretella said. “When we are able to do so in an environment open to dialogue, we are met with significant appreciation and affirmation by fellow physicians and laypersons alike.”
Most colleagues, Cretella said, appreciated ACPeds’ stance, acknowledging that the studies affirming medical intervention in gender dysphoric youth were likely flawed or fake; but too many feared losing their jobs to speak out against transgender interventions.
“Trans interventions are big money,” Cretella said. “Billionaire elites promote trans ideology over truth across all public institutions and media platforms, and [in America] a severe cancel culture results in everything from severe harassment and doxing to ending one’s career.”
Fortunately, signs of sound medical ethics triumphing over junk science are breaking through, Cretella said.
In the United Kingdom, Sweden, and Finland, cultures that embraced transgender interventions for youth early on have reversed course. France has urged greater caution in these cases.
In the United States, Gov. Ron DeSantis, R-Fla., has rooted his administration in medical ethics and utilized the best science to establish pro-child treatment of gender confusion with psychotherapy, Cretella said.
Currently, about 13 other states are attempting similar legislative efforts.
Ashley Bateman is a policy writer for The Heartland Institute and blogger for Ascension Press. Her work has been featured in The Washington Times, The Daily Caller, The New York Post, The American Thinker and numerous other publications. She previously worked as an adjunct scholar for The Lexington Institute and as editor, writer and photographer for The Warner Weekly, a publication for the American military community in Bamberg, Germany. Ashley is a board member at a Catholic homeschool cooperative in Virginia. She homeschools her four incredible children along with her brilliant engineer/scientist husband.e who lives in Virginia.
“Boys are boys from the beginning. Girls are girls right from the start.” No, those aren’t the words from a tweet banned for “hate speech” — though they could be. They’re prophetic lines from none other than Mister Rogers, who put the immutable truths to a tune decades before the trans craze.
Resurfaced in a recent TikTok, the clip shows Fred Rogers, host of the classic children’s show “Mister Rogers Neighborhood,” singing his ditty “Everybody’s Fancy,” which goes:
Boys are boys from the beginning Girls are girls right from the start Everybody’s fancy Everybody’s fine Your body’s fancy and so is mine
Girls grow up to be the mommies Boys grow up to be the daddies Everybody’s fancy Everybody’s fine Your body’s fancy and so is mine
TRIGGER WARNING. ⚠️ This is the most upsetting thing you will see all weekend. https://t.co/eVLPZ3J3RI
In his first appearance on “The Tonight Show” starring Johnny Carson in 1980, Rogers delved into the song’s importance. When Carson asked Rogers a series of lighthearted questions about his show and asked how Rogers communicates important themes to his audience of children, it didn’t take long for the host to pivot to the topic of sex. “Are they too young for that?” Carson asked.
That’s how they learn the difference between boys and girls, Rogers replied. “Sometimes children think that they might change, they might have to change after a while,” he continued, to which the audience laughed.
But Rogers wasn’t laughing. “You know, we laugh about that now,” he said, “but it’s because we had that concern when we were little.”
Some have argued that Rogers was simply the product of his generation or speculated that he was a homosexual to explain his gentle demeanor. In a 1969 Senate Commerce Committee hearing, however, Rogers made his case clear: “I’m very much concerned about what’s being delivered to our children in this country.”
And of course, some of Disney’s most recent productions have forged ahead with an increasingly explicit LGBT agenda for children. The latest “Toy Story” installment, “Lightyear,” boasted a lesbian kiss. “Baymax!” taught kids that men can have periods.
“Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” was not a political program, but it tackled issues, both big and small, that troubled children. This included not only instilling truths about the immutability of the sexes, but reassuring kids that they wouldn’t get sucked down the bathtub drain or lose an ear during a haircut.
“Children are concerned when they get their first haircut that the barber’s going to cut more than hair,” Rogers said on “The Tonight Show.” So to assuage kids’ fears, he visited a barber to ask whether the trimmer cuts more than hair.
It isn’t that Rogers hated children who wanted to be unique—far from it. As he stated in the Senate hearing, he merely wanted to address the “inner drama of childhood.” Long before libraries began hosting drag queen story hour, Rogers tried to warn us about the dangers of gender-bending. But in true Mister Rogers’ fashion, he did so while celebrating each person for being “fancy” and unique, no transgender interventions required.
EXCLUSIVE: Texas law enforcement arrested an Iranian illegal immigrant at the southern border last week whose name and date of birth were initially flagged as a match on the FBI’s terror watchlist, but who a DHS official tells Fox News was ultimately determined not to be a match on the database after further vetting.
Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) arrested 29-year-old Alireza Heidari last week after a traffic stop involving a human smuggler at the border in Val Verde County, Texas as part of Operation Lone Star. Heidari was being smuggled in the vehicle along with four other illegal immigrants. He was located in the trunk. Fox is told that Heidari was handed over to Border Patrol custody and later determined to be a match of the FBI’s Terrorist Screening Database (TSDB).
Fox reached out to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) on Thursday and multiple times since. Only on Tuesday did DHS refer Fox to the FBI, which declined to comment. The FBI’s website says it does not confirm anyone’s status on the watchlist.
However, on Wednesday, a DHS official told Fox News that after further vetting, Homeland Security officials determined that Heidari was not a match on the TSDB.
Jan 23, 2022: Authorities stop a human smuggler in Val Verde County, Texas.
The FBI’s TSDB contains information about the identities of those who are “reasonably suspected” of being involved in terrorism or related activities. There were 17 people stopped by Border Patrol in December alone whose names matched on the list. That brings the total of individuals arrested at the southern border between ports of entry to 38 since October.
There were 98 terror watchlist arrests in FY22, 15 in FY21 and just three in FY 20 at the southern border caught between ports of entry. At the ports of entry at the northern and southern borders, meanwhile, CBP’s Office of Field Operations has encountered 125 people on the TSDB so far this fiscal year. In FY 2022 there were 380 apprehensions, 157 in FY21 and 196 in FY20.
The increase in apprehensions between ports of entry has raised concerns that, amid a historic spike in illegal immigration across the southern border, illegal criminals and terrorists could be slipping by overwhelmed Border Patrol agents.
So far this fiscal year, nearly 300,000 illegal immigrants have evaded Border Patrol, with an average of 2,450 a day in the last 120 days, sources told Fox News last week.
In fiscal 2022, there were nearly 600,000 gotaways. There were 389,155 gotaways at the border in fiscal 2021, and fiscal 2023 is on track to easily outpace those numbers. Last week, agents told Fox News there have been more than 1.2 million gotaways during the Biden administration.
Jan 23, 2022: Illegal immigrants are caught in the back of a vehicle at the border.
Tom Homan, a former acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) director, told Fox News on Saturday that the number should “scare the hell out of every American” and said there was a reason these migrants are not turning themselves in to Border Patrol to be processed and released into the U.S.
“Why would they not take advantage of the program? Because they don’t want to be fingerprinted, and there’s a reason for that.”
Fox News’ Griff Jenkins contributed to this report.
Adam Shaw is a politics reporter for Fox News Digital, primarily covering immigration and border security.
Biden loves big money people. He certainly could never achieve what the billionaires who support him have.
He admires them; their wealth. And they admire their ability to have someone in power whom they can and do control. You can bet that Biden is under control.
A guy like him makes too many mistakes for multiple people to not have reams of information on him and his family. Understand that Biden’s crackhead son has not one but two laptops currently being scrutinized by multiple sources; not all of which are friendly to America. For anyone in which Democrats had not invested so heavily, they would have been jettisoned like dirty mop bucket water. But Biden still has work to do for many “Johns”.
In 1973, as the Watergate investigation was ramping up, then-President Richard Nixon infamously declared, “People have got to know whether or not their president is a crook.” Indeed they do…
That same year, 50 years ago, Joe Biden took office as a U.S. senator at age 30, one of the youngest in American history. Before his election, the sum total of Biden’s “public leadership” experience was as a member of the New Castle County Council in Delaware. But with just over a million residents, Delaware elections, like those of other small states, are comparatively inexpensive, and thus sometimes big idiots get elected. Biden, an idiot’s idiot, held that seat for 36 years until 2009, when a then-unknown freshman senator, Barack Obama, tapped Biden as his veep — ostensibly to provide a measure of gravitas and bona fides to his presidential ticket.
Notably, in 2009, Biden declared his net worth was $27,012. But in the four years after leaving office in 2017, his net worth swelled to more than $9 million — most of it reportedly from “book deals.” Of course, Biden, a.k.a. the “Big Guy,” the head of the Biden Crime Family, had Hunter Biden as his investment adviser…
Biden certainly does not owe his political success and subsequent wealth accumulation to brilliance. He owes it to his ability to lie.
He learned to ply his trade of deception from two of the most accomplished big-wig Demo prevaricators, Bill and Hillary Clinton — the latter having established herself as a consummate congenital liar. With a little help from his Democrat Party’s implementation of a massive bulk-mail ballot fraud scheme, Biden is now the prevaricator-in-chief.
Lean Mean Gaffe Machine!
Of course, Biden has proven himself to be one of the best gaffe machines in presidential history. We didn’t even get this many jokes out of Jimmy Carter’s administration, and he’s still made fun of to this very day.
Alexander adds:
Biden has a long and proven track record as a lying dog-faced pony soldier, which he has demonstrated most recently in his obfuscatory lies about the illegal possession of classified documents, some of which were reportedly taken when he was vice president, and others prior to 2009, when he was still a senator.
On rare occasions, in an unintentional moment of honesty, a man with career political ambitions will tell you exactly what you can expect from him — and Biden did just that shortly after becoming a senator. During the 2008 election, The New York Times observed that Biden’s “weak filters make him capable of blurting out pretty much anything.” Recently, I came across a 1974 Biden interview, and it is very revealing.
Some people would describe such moments as gaffes — when a politician says something mind-numbingly stupid in any number of categories, from an unintentional truth to a BIG Lie, from the creepy or inappropriate to the unintelligible. Biden has a rich history across all four types of gaffes, and he knows it. “I am a gaffe machine,” he acknowledged ahead of the 2020 election.
In that PBS interview, Biden, who shamelessly described himself as being “like the token black or the token woman,” lamented the fact that he depends on “people who have money,” and “they always want something.” And over the last 50 years, Biden certainly has proven himself as a “giver.”
He said, “You run the risk of deciding whether or not you’re going to prostitute yourself to give the answer you know they want to hear in order to get funded to run for that office.”
He added: “I went to the big guys for the money. I was ready to prostitute myself in the manner in which I talk about it…” Apparently, the second-oldest profession is akin to the first! He insisted he was able to raise lots of money because he was “a 29-year-old oddball,” and “was able to have a national constituency to run for office because I was 29.”
Biden certainly perfected the prostitution thing, and unlike his rival Bernie Sanders, who raised much of his 2020 presidential campaign funding from small donors, Biden courted billionaires.
Show Me the MONEY!!
Remember Jerry Maguire? One of the iconic moments from the movie happens when Cuba Gooding, Jr is taunting Tom Cruise to shout “show me the money…..I love black people…..Show me the money!!!” That’s our president… he’s on the verge of a mental breakdown and all he wants is to see the money.
As Alexander puts it:
According to Biden: “I love Bernie, but I’m not Bernie Sanders. I don’t think 500 billionaires are the reason why we’re in trouble. The folks at the top aren’t bad guys. I get in trouble in my party when I say wealthy Americans are just as patriotic as poor folks. I’ve found no distinction.”
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 Donald Trump.
Fans hold a candlelight vigil for Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin at the University of Cincinnati Medical Center on Jan. 3, 2023, in Cincinnati, Ohio. Hamlin suffered cardiac arrest and is in critical condition following the Bills’ Monday Night Football game against the Cincinnati Bengals. | Jeff Dean/Getty Images
A new poll reveals that the overwhelming majority of Americans see public calls for prayer in a time of tragedy as a force for good, with such a belief extending across all demographic subgroups.
Summit Ministries, in conjunction with McLaughlin & Associates, conducted an online poll released to the public Tuesday of 1,000 likely voters from Jan. 19-23, asking them to weigh in on the power of prayer.
The poll came a few weeks after Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin’s collapse after suffering cardiac arrest during a Jan. 2 game against the Cincinnati Bengals and his subsequent recovery. Hamlin’s recovery followed an outpouring of support from the American public, which included the offering of prayers on his behalf.
With a sampling error margin of 3.1 percentage points, the poll found that two-thirds of respondents (67%) told pollsters that they saw public calls for prayer after a national tragedy as “helpful.”
On the other hand, nearly 20% of those surveyed characterized public calls for prayer amid a national tragedy as “pointless.” The remaining 13% either had no opinion or refused to answer the question.
Belief in the power of prayer cut across all demographic subgroups, with most respondents of all races, age groups, genders, marital statuses, political ideologies and regions classifying it as “helpful.”
The share of respondents with favorable opinions of public calls to prayer in times of tragedy descended with each generation, with 77% of Americans over the age of 65 believing in the power of prayer, followed by 70% of those aged 56-65, 68% of those between the ages of 41 and 55 and 62% of respondents aged 30-40.
Americans between the ages of 18-29 were the group least likely to view public calls for prayer as effective. Fifty-five percent of respondents under 30 identified calls for prayer as “helpful,” while 27% dismissed them as “pointless.”
Liberals had a higher share of respondents who viewed public calls to prayer as “pointless” (30%).
“Some people say there’s not really a generational difference, but there is,” Summit Ministries President Jeff Myers, whose ministry seeks to provide resources to ground Christians in a biblical worldview, said in a statement. “Young adults are more likely to say that they have no religious preference and this poll seems to reflect that.”
Myers expressed gratitude that “still, more than half of young Americans, the most skeptical generation, believe that public calls to prayer are effective.”
“In times of crisis, Americans are still likely to come together even in spite of their partisan differences,” he added. “The fact that people want to pray together, I think, is one of those … increasingly rare moments of unity. If it happens around prayer, all the better.”
The poll illustrated a degree of consensus, with majorities of conservatives (80%), Republicans (73%), Democrats (65%), independents (62%) and liberals (59%) seeing calls to prayer as helpful.
Majorities of African Americans (73%), southerners (72%), women (71%), residents of the Midwest (70%), married respondents (69%), whites (67%), Hispanics (66%), Americans living in the eastern U.S. (64%), men (63%), single respondents (62%) and residents of the west coast (60%) said the same.
Summit Ministries partners with McLaughlin & Associates for a monthly poll to ask questions related to several topics, such as prayer, biblical values and the rejection of cancel culture.
The nonprofit seeks to “find out where there really is consensus in spite of the key divide that we often see in America.”
“We’re finding that probably 70% of Americans are people with solid values who just want to live their lives,” Myers added. “Thirty percent of Americans want to tell everybody else what to do and they can be nasty about it. Sometimes, the fear of the 30% causes the 70% to be silent, and I’m hoping that our polls show that they don’t need to be, that most people are with them.”
Myers expressed gratitude that the nation rallied around Hamlin and that “a lot of people, especially high-profile NFL athletes, felt comfortable with sharing their faith.”
In his first on-camera comments since his collapse on the field, the 24-year-old Hamlin said Saturday that his collapse “was a direct example of God using me as a vessel to share my passion and my love directly from my heart with the entire world.”
Since his collapse, Hamlin’s charity has raised over $9 million to help provide toys for kids in need.
“Now, I’m able to give it back to kids and communities all across the world who need it the most, and that’s always been my dream, that’s always been what I stood for and what I will continue to stand for,” Hamlin said.
Photo by Mike Ruane/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
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The Colorado State University Health Network plans to host multiple vocal workshops this week to teach transgender and non-binary students to alter their voices to sound feminine, masculine, or neutral, the Daily Caller News Foundation reported.
According to the CSU website, the university will host three sessions teaching transgender and non-binary students how to change their voices to better align with their chosen gender identity. All three courses are free and offered to students regardless of whether they are on hormonal therapy.
“teaching transgender and non-binary students how to change their voices to better align with their chosen gender identity.”
“Voice Feminization Workshop,” the first course, will be held on January 31, and it welcomes “transfeminine and nonbinary individuals” to attend. The class promises to introduce attendees to “vocal exercises utilized for voice feminization.”
A “Voice Neutralization Workshop” will be held on February 1 to teach non-binary individuals how to make their voices sound neutral and neither feminine nor masculine.
“The class provides an overview of vocal features related to perceptually masculine, feminine, and androgynous voices,” the website states.
CSU will host the final session, a “Voice Masculinization Workshop,” on February 2, which seeks to train “transmasculine and nonbinary individuals” how to alter their voices to sound more masculine.
Maggie Hendrickson, the director of the Pride Resource Center, told the university’s news publication, the Rocky Mountain Collegian, “We really don’t want people to think that they have to be like on hormones, or so far along in their transition, or out, or any other precursors to coming to the workshop.”
“It’s just another way for people to feel more comfortable in their bodies,” Hendrickson continued. “A lot of people just think about transitioning as like, hormones and surgery, but there’s lots of other ways to socially or culturally or not medically transition. It’s really [for] people [who] are interested in voice training or experience any type of dysphoria that they think this could help with. That’s who the intended audience is for, and so this is just another tool for folks to kind of explore gender and the way that they’re received by others.“
The courses will be facilitated by Annie Schubert, a certified speech-language pathologist and clinical vocologist at the Speech and Language Stimulation Center in Fort Collins.
The center offers multiple voice programs, including “Transgender Voice Services,” which aim to train clients to modify their voices to sound like the opposite gender. The training works on altering pitch, resonance, and intonation patterns.
“Driven by each client’s goals and gender identity, we provide voice training services for transgender or gender-diverse clients seeking to modify their voice,” the Speech and Language Stimulation Center website states. “At SLSC, we prioritize using both objective feedback from voice analysis software as well as each client’s self-analysis of their speech samples across the duration of training. Above all, it is our goal to provide a supportive environment for each client on their path toward confidently presenting their gender identity.“
Schubert told the Rocky Mountain Collegian that the introductory courses also teach “vocal hygiene” and “healthy voice principles” to ensure individuals do not cause strain or injury when attempting to modify their voices.
“We talk about the different vocal features that lead to a listener to perceive a voice to be more feminine or masculine, or in that kind of gender-neutral range, and then we break it down into its parts,” Schubert stated. “So [that means] learning about the difference between average pitch and pitch variation and the different prosody and intonation patterns that lead a voice to be perceived more masculine or more feminine.“
Schubert, CSU, and the Health Network did not respond to a request for comment, the Daily Caller News Foundation reported.
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Two dozen Republican senators have signed a letter to President Joe Biden noting that they do not plan to vote to raise the debt ceiling unless action is taken to address the nation’s spending problem.
The lawmakers conveyed their “outright opposition to a debt-ceiling hike without real structural spending reform that reduces deficit spending and brings fiscal sanity back to Washington. It is the policy of the Senate Republican conference ‘that any increase in the debt ceiling must be accompanied by cuts in federal spending of an equal or greater amount as the debt ceiling increase, or meaningful structural reform in spending, such as the Prevent Government Shutdown Act or the Full Faith and Credit Act.’ We intend to stand by that policy.”
Today Senate conservatives sent a letter to @POTUS stating our outright opposition to a debt-ceiling hike without REAL spending reform. Americans are keenly aware that their government is not only failing to work for them – but actively working against them. Read the letter ⬇️⬇️ pic.twitter.com/2i2oRTNmdD
America’s massive and ever-increasing national debt is currently more than $31 trillion.
“Our nation’s fiscal policy is a disaster. Our country owes $31 trillion, a level of debt that now well exceeds the size of our economy,” the letter states. “We do not intend to vote for a debt-ceiling increase without structural reforms to address current and future fiscal realities, actually enforce the budget and spending rules on the books, and manage out-of-control government policies.”
The Republicans who signed the letter include Sens. Rand Paul of Kentucky, Mike Lee of Utah, Tommy Tuberville of Alabama, Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, J.D. Vance of Ohio, Eric Schmitt of Missouri, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, Mike Braun of Indiana, Ted Budd of North Carolina, Kevin Cramer of North Dakota, Ted Cruz of Texas, Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming, Sen. Rick Scott of Florida, Sen. Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma, Sen. Mike Crapo of Idaho, Sen. Roger Marshall of Kansas, Joni Ernst of Iowa, James Risch of Idaho, John Barrasso of Wyoming, James Lankford of Oklahoma, Deb Fischer of Nebraska, Pete Ricketts of Nebraska, Katie Britt of Alabama, and Tim Scott of South Carolina.
Paul has described America’s debt as “the greatest threat to our national security.”
Utah Republican Gov. Spencer Cox signed new legislation over the weekend that appeared to bar permanently deforming transgender surgeries for minors, but things aren’t always what they seem. Senate Bill 16, titled “Transgender Medical Treatment and Procedures,” was a top priority for lawmakers who introduced the measure two days after the legislature opened on Jan. 17.
Despite immediately receiving praise from numerous figures critical of transgender ideology, including a detransitioner, the bill signed into law Saturday certainly isn’t perfect. In fact, it doesn’t do much of anything.
The new law signed by the Utah governor, who has a history of introducing himself by stating his so-called preferred pronouns, only bars transgender procedures and hormone interventions for minors who have not been diagnosed with gender dysphoria. In other words, minors can find a sympathetic physician steeped in wrongly named “gender-affirming care” who will give them a diagnosis that enables them to pump their bodies full of wrong-sex hormones and amputate their healthy organs. Teens focused on gender-bending can even be diagnosed online.
“who have NOT been diagnosed with gender dysphoria.“
Furthermore, under the new Utah law, once individuals turn 18, they’re free to do whatever they want. They can even schedule transgender surgeries on their 18th birthday.
“Legislation that impacts our most vulnerable youth requires careful consideration and deliberation,” Cox said in a press release after his signature. “More and more experts, states and countries around the world are pausing these permanent and life-altering treatments for new patients until more and better research can help determine the long-term consequences.”
Cox also thanked the legislation’s sponsor, State Sen. Michael Kennedy, while giving a passing mention of the deficiencies in the new law. “While not a perfect bill, we are grateful for Sen. Kennedy’s more nuanced and thoughtful approach to this terribly divisive issue,” Cox said.
Ideally, Cox would have sided with lawmakers a year ago in their attempt to fight back against the transgender craze. In March last year, the statehouse had to override the governor’s veto of legislation prohibiting men from invading women’s sports.
“We will continue to push the Legislature for additional resources to organizations that work to help this important Utah community,” Cox said on Saturday. “While we understand our words will be of little comfort to those who disagree with us, we sincerely hope that we can treat our transgender families with more love and respect as we work to better understand the science and consequences behind these procedures.”
Despite its reputation as a deep-red state, Utah has been no exception to cultural currents imposing transgender ideology on children across the nation. Last fall, a Utah LGBT group sponsored an “all ages” back-to-school drag show with performers whose names sound like “anal leakage” and “genitalia” when pronounced aloud.
Last spring, Fox News’ Tucker Carlson mocked Cox’s use of pronouns after the Utah governor’s veto of transgender sports legislation.
“Bright red Utah is now led by a cut-rate Gavin Newsom imitator named Spencer Cox,” Carlson said. “He’s beyond belief.”
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.
The media fell head over heels for a shoddy propaganda operation spearheaded by an ex-FBI agent. Twitter, internally, understood the operation to be partisan hackery but never spoke out. Organizations full of influential ex-government officials promoted the operation. And it’s only thanks to Matt Taibbi’s most recent contribution to “The Twitter Files” that we know the full extent of institutional corruption in the mind-boggling case of Hamilton 68.
American intelligence operatives have a history of using credulous reporters to spread disinformation for political purposes. (Remember when President Nixon’s team forged cables about John F. Kennedy and tried to get them in Life? Or the fate of Jean Seberg and her baby, thanks in part to COINTELPRO and the Los Angeles Times?) We’ve learned more and more about this in the years after the Cold War, yet elite media outlets eagerly swallow tactical disinformation when it confirms their priors.
The consequence? Self-appointed disinformation police in government and media shape American politics with actual disinformation, crafted specifically to quiet dissent.
New Information
Given access to Twitter’s internal records by new CEO Elon Musk, Taibbi pulled the company’s communications surrounding Hamilton 68 and reported his findings last Friday. The project styled itself as a “dashboard” that tracked Russian disinformation on Twitter.
As Taibbi wrote, “The secret ingredient in Hamilton 68’s analytic method was a list of 644 accounts supposedly linked ‘to Russian influence activities online.’ It was hidden from the public, but Twitter was in a unique position to recreate Hamilton’s sample by analyzing its Application Program Interface (API) requests, which is how they first ‘reverse-engineered’ Hamilton’s list in late 2017.”
The files unearthed by Taibbi show Twitter’s internal audit of the Hamilton 68 list found it to be, in the words of former executive Yoel Roth, “bullish-t.”
“These accounts are neither strongly Russian nor strongly bots,” another employee said. What Hamilton 68 was passing off as foreign disinformation was largely legitimate speech from anti-establishment American tweeters. Here’s Roth again: “Virtually any conclusion drawn from [the dashboard] will take conversations in conservative circles on Twitter and accuse them of being Russian.”
The “dashboard” confirmed elites’ bizarre anti-Trump Russia-collusion narrative by secretly classifying as Russian activity political speech from Americans with whom they disagreed.
Who ran Hamilton 68? Created by former FBI Special Agent Clint Watts, the project was supported by the Alliance for Securing Democracy and the German Marshall Fund. That means a host of powerful former government officials with long histories in and around intelligence agencies promoted the shoddy research for years or, at the very least, were complicit in Hamilton 68’s work by lending their support. Watts himself is an NBC News and MSNBC contributor. (Bill Kristol is a member of the Alliance’s advisory board.)
Institutional Corruption
It gets so much worse on three fronts: academia, Big Tech, and media.
First, Taibbi notes the suspicious research was promoted uncritically by elite American universities, including Harvard and Princeton. Second, the files show Twitter declined to call out Hamilton 68 publicly, opting to “play a longer game here,” in the words of one employee who now advises Pete Buttigieg at the Department of Transportation.
Third, and most importantly, Twitter’s efforts to privately nudge reporters away from the story failed miserably. Taibbi found, “[Emily] Horne wrote several times that she had no luck in steering journalists away from these hack headlines. ‘Reporters are chafing,’ she wrote, adding, ‘it’s like shouting into a void.’” Horne works for the Biden administration as well.
This is a damning illustration of the institutional corruption rotting American politics and culture. You may wonder how ex-spooks could create a secret list, hide their results, pass off the research as legitimate, convince just about every major media outlet to run with the findings, convince elite universities to run with them, and keep Twitter quiet in the process. The answer is that some institutional powerbrokers are corrupt, some are inexcusably incompetent, and others are a combination.
Media Enable It All
If the media, however, had a semblance of the competence and virtue journalists claim to have, there would be much more incentive for powerful people in other institutions to stop behaving badly.
Watts and Co. did not make an honest mistake. When leftists at Twitter saw the same information, they immediately and literally called BS — privately, at least. Even their warnings could not dissuade dozens of journalists and politicians from blasting Hamilton 68’s findings to millions of Americans for years. This was an attempt to create junk science, hide the results with a laughable excuse, and use it to bolster a false narrative that discredited a political opponent.
“This was an attempt to create junk science, hide the results with a laughable excuse, and use it to bolster a false narrative that discredited a political opponent.“
Journalists did their part and took the bait. Bear in mind that NBC News and MSNBC have used Watts himself as a national security contributor for years, ignoring plenty of evidence that he was a dishonest propagandist using their airwaves to advance the interests of intelligence agencies. They actually used their own “disinformation” reporters to spread more disinformation.
My colleague Mollie Hemingway called this out all the way back in 2018, when the likes of Adam Schiff, Dianne Feinstein, and an astounding array of media outlets were promoting Hamilton 68.
“Hamilton 68 won’t let anyone review their dashboard to determine in any way if they’re tracking actual Russian propaganda bots, or just conservative Americans who, for instance, care about FISA abuse,” Hemingway wrote. “Yet Hamilton 68’s claims are repeated uncritically by a media that asks no questions about the methodology.” (Twitter seemed to be misrepresenting its internal knowledge at the time, as well.)
Five years ago, making that point was met with attacks from anti-Trump activists who engaged in amateur intellectual gymnastics to classify every argument they disliked as Russian propaganda. The effect was to turn down the volume on people who were undercutting the campaign against Trump, empowering their own false narrative. Taibbi’s reporting vindicates the people who pushed back.
Emily Jashinsky is culture editor at The Federalist and host of Federalist Radio Hour. She previously covered politics as a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner. Prior to joining the Examiner, Emily was the spokeswoman for Young America’s Foundation. She’s interviewed leading politicians and entertainers and appeared regularly as a guest on major television news programs, including “Fox News Sunday,” “Media Buzz,” and “The McLaughlin Group.” Her work has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Post, Real Clear Politics, and more. Emily also serves as director of the National Journalism Center, co-host of the weekly news show “Counter Points: Friday” and a visiting fellow at Independent Women’s Forum. Originally from Wisconsin, she is a graduate of George Washington University.
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 Donald Trump.
Planned Parenthood in Peoria, Illinois. | Screenshot: Google Maps
The U.S. Department of Justice has announced the arrest of an Illinois man a little over a week after he allegedly set fire to a Planned Parenthood facility, as pro-life groups maintain that federal law enforcement is not acting quick enough to bring justice to those responsible for the arson of pro-life pregnancy centers and churches.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Central District of Illinois announced Wednesday the arrest of Tyler Massengill, 32, for the malicious use of fire and an explosive and attempt to damage a Planned Parenthood facility in Peoria, Illinois. The clinic reported on its website that the building is closed indefinitely following the “substantial fire and damage.” The fire occurred in the late evening on Jan. 15, 2023, 10 days before news broke about Massengill’s arrest.
“A review of area surveillance from the fire scene revealed that at approximately 11:20 PM, an older white pickup truck with red doors parked in an area adjacent to Planned Parenthood,” the statement reads. “Video footage depicts a man walking up to the building with a laundry detergent-sized bottle. The man lit a rag on fire on one end of the bottle, smashed a window with an object, then placed the container inside of the Planned Parenthood building. He then quickly left the area on foot.”
The rest of the announcement details the collaboration between “multiple law enforcement agencies, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Springfield Field Office; the Peoria Police Department; and the Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.” If convicted on a malicious use of fire charge, Massengill faces a mandatory minimum prison sentence of five years and faces up to 40 years in prison.
Massengill could also face up to three years of supervised release and a possible fine of up to $250,000.
According to a complaint filed Wednesday, authorities received a tip about an Illinois license plate number for the pickup truck. Peoria police “conducted an inquiry of the subject plate number in a license plate reader database system which returned a photo of an older white pickup truck, with red doors,” The Journal Star quotes the complaint as reading. The complaint further stated that Massengill told investigators that he was upset after a girl he was in a relationship with three years ago got an abortion.
The arson comes as the abortion issue has become a source of contention following the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision last June, finding that the U.S. Constitution does not contain a right to abortion.
Since Politico published a leaked draft decision in the Dobbs case on May 2, pro-life pregnancy centers and churches have found themselves subject to acts of vandalism and arson. While pro-abortion groups and individuals have experienced incidents of violence, a report compiled by the Crime Prevention Research Center found that their pro-life counterparts have experienced 22 times as much violence in the 4.5 months following the publication of the leaked Dobbs draft.
Rev. Jim Harden, the CEO of CompassCare, a network of pro-life pregnancy centers whose Buffalo, New York, office was firebombed last June, praised the Peoria police for their “top-notch investigative work” in a statement released Wednesday. He also denounced the attack on Planned Parenthood, asserting that “Attacking an abortionist does not make someone pro-life, it makes them crazy.”
At the same time, CompassCare noted that after a Planned Parenthood in Kalamazoo, Michigan, was targeted in an attempted arson attack, an arrest was made after four days. CompassCare believes that partisan considerations explain why federal law enforcement has handed down only two indictments of perpetrators of violence against pro-life organizations and churches.
As no arrests have yet been made in the CompassCare firebombing case, the organization partnered with the Thomas More Society legal group earlier this month to hire independent investigators to search for the perpetrators of the June 2022 attack. Vandals broke the windows of CompassCare’s Buffalo office, lit fires at the facility and spray-painted graffiti outside the building.
“What the situation in Peoria and Kalamazoo show is that the FBI has the tools, skill, and manpower to bring these criminals to justice when it is politically favorable,” Harden said. “They threw pro-life people a bone with the indictment of two pro-abortion extremists on January 18.”
A grand jury in Florida indicted two pro-abortion activists last week for vandalizing multiple pro-life pregnancy centers throughout the state. CompassCare is not the only pro-life organization to raise questions about the lack of action taken against those who have committed pro-abortion violence.
Brian Burch, the CEO of the advocacy group CatholicVote, has repeatedly raised concerns about the DOJ’s lack of action to address violence against Catholic churches dating back to May 2020, when the death of George Floyd in police custody in Minneapolis, Minnesota, led to national unrest. He wrote a letter to the DOJ in December 2021 calling on the federal law enforcement agency to investigate the attacks on Catholic churches and symbols.
In a letter to House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan published Tuesday, Burch wrote that Associate Attorney General Venita Gupta responded to the request in January 2022, telling the advocacy group that Attorney General Merrick Garland had ordered a “15-day review to ensure that all appropriate resources are being deployed to protect houses of worship.”
Additionally, Gupta informed Burch that the “Department is taking numerous steps to address such violence, consistent with our commitment to combat unlawful acts of hate in all their forms.”
“Disappointingly, it now appears that the promises made in Associate AG Gupta’s January 2022 letter were mere platitudes,” Burch concluded in his letter to Jordan. “To date, the federal government has only found evidence to charge two individuals involved in only a handful of cases, despite hundreds of actual incidences of violence. These charges only recently came to light, indicating the more sunshine that Congress shines on the indifference of the DOJ the more likely they will do their job.”
While the FBI has offered rewards for information that could lead to arrests for the vandalism of 10 pro-life pregnancy centers, Harden contends that the law enforcement agency’s efforts are “a day late and a dollar short.” He attributed the FBI’s embrace of reward money for information about pro-abortion vandals to “the House Judiciary Committee’s demands for cooperation in their inquiry into the ‘allegations of politicization and bias [against pro-life people] at the FBI.”
Bill Donohue of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights raised questions about a potential political bias against pro-life individuals and groups at the FBI in a Sept. 26 letter to Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa., the ranking member on the Senate Judiciary Committee.
“There seems to be much interest in pursuing alleged wrongdoing by pro-life activists, yet little interest in pursuing alleged wrongdoing by abortion-rights activists,” Donohue wrote.
Donohue cited the arrest of pro-life activist Mark Houck for purportedly pushing a patient escort at a Philadelphia Planned Parenthood clinic as an example of an “overreaction for a minor infraction of the law.” Houck faces the possibility of up to 11 years in prison. Donohue contrasts Houck’s case with the “underreaction by the Department of Justice when the pro-life side is targeted.”
A GiveSendGo fundraiser set up for Houck’s family maintains that the escort was harassing Houck and his son as they prayed outside the abortion clinic, prompting them to walk away from the building.
“The escort followed them, and when he continued yelling at Mark’s son, Mark pushed him away,” the fundraiser stated.
Houck’s case was heard this week at a federal court in Philadelphia. Judge Gerald Pappert rejected Houck’s defense attorney’s request for the case to be dismissed. The jury remained deadlocked Friday and will resume deliberations on Monday.
Sorry, I refuse to follow the script. The script for black influencers demanded that the Tyre Nichols tragedy be laid at the feet of so-called white supremacy.
Five black cops beat a 150-pound black man to death, and the script called for more mass shaming of white people and insinuations that policing should be outlawed.
Had I followed the script, I wouldn’t be embroiled in controversy, public enemy number one of black Twitter, Ciara, and all the other blue-check virtue-signalers.
In fact, had I dishonestly blamed systemic, institutionalized racism for Nichols’ death, I would be the toast of Twitter, drowning in retweets, likes, and applause. I would be high as a kite on dopamine and swimming in interview requests.
But that’s not what I did when I appeared on Tucker Carlson’s cable news show Friday night. I didn’t lie. I didn’t concoct some fantasy narrative where five black cops shouted, “This is MAGA country!” before attacking Tyre Nichols.
I blamed the five cops for their criminal behavior and predicted that a predominantly black jury will find them guilty of second-degree murder. I then criticized CNN and other media outlets for hyping the release of the bodycam footage like it was Al Capone’s secret vault and using the video to distract from America’s escalating involvement in the Ukraine-Russia conflict.
And, when surprisingly given an opportunity to provide an additional thought, I argued that the five police officers mimicked gang behavior and that the whole sad event is a byproduct of communities overrun with matriarchal values and controlled by single black mothers. I said that the conversation we should be having in reaction to Tyre Nichols centers on the cost of destroying the black family.
That’s my written paraphrase of what I tried to convey in the final 60 seconds of an unscripted, four-minute TV segment. Watch my comments in full here. YouTube has somehow classified my remarks as “inappropriate and offensive.”
It’s impossible to analyze a situation as complex as the Tyre Nichols tragedy in four minutes. What you try to do is spark a deeper conversation by saying something that will cut through all the garbage being spewed on social media and/or promoted on ratings-hungry television networks.
My first comment was said to establish that a black police chief, black police officers, and black citizens would be in charge of providing justice for Tyre Nichols’ family. What happened to Nichols isn’t about white supremacy. And what will happen to his alleged killers won’t have anything to do with white supremacy either.
My second comment was stated to point out that the media is intentionally overemphasizing the importance of the Nichols tragedy. Our politicians are pushing us toward nuclear conflict with Russia. Millions of lives are at stake. I’m not trying to diminish the value of Tyre’s life. But in comparison to nuclear conflict, his life pales in comparison.
Tyre Nichols is a local story, not a national one. It’s being used to provide cover for more important international tragedies, such as Big Pharma’s COVID malfeasance. The TV networks dependent on the advertising dollars of pharmaceutical companies prefer Don Lemon talking about lawless cops rather than lawless and exploitative international corporations.
Finally, my third comment, the one my critics have seized upon, is an attempt to spark a conversation about the real ramifications of America’s growing preference for female authority and alternative family structures. The matriarchy doesn’t work.
We need to talk about that.
Black urban areas are dominated by matriarchal rulership. It’s an utter failure and disaster. These areas all operate similar to Memphis. Crime is astronomical. Young men settle their differences with deadly violence. Academic performance hovers at record lows. Illegitimacy rates skyrocket.
Tyre Nichols was 29. The five police officers who participated in beating him to death range in age from 24 to 32. The behavior we witnessed from the officers resembles what happens when a group of Vice Lords catch a Gangster Disciple on their turf. The Disciple will flee. The Vice Lords will chase. Violence ensues.
My point is what we saw Friday night does not appear to be an outgrowth of bad policing. I’ve yet to see video evidence that depicts what caused the traffic stop and why Nichols had to be snatched from his car. It doesn’t feel like we’ve been shown the complete story. Something about the encounter feels far more personal than anything born of the frustration created by a resistant suspect. The use of pepper spray makes zero sense.
It feels like the outgrowth of a rotten culture, a culture where black men are canonized and celebrated for handling petty beefs and disrespect with lethal violence. That type of emotional violence is commonplace within zip codes dominated by the matriarchy.
Tyre Nichols cried out for his mama for a reason. I’m not saying that to belittle Nichols. I’m saying it’s a reflection of modern black culture, a culture that inappropriately places women at the top of the food chain. Mama is the ultimate authority and savior.
That’s not what God intended. He is our Savior. He authorized man to exercise dominion over the earth. He prescribed family (man, woman, and child) as the foundation of order, obedience, and His will. No racial group in America is more out of line with God’s natural order than black people. Seventy percent of our kids are born to unwed mothers. We don’t view family as a necessity for success. It’s just one of many options. It’s prioritized well below allegiance to racial idolatry, the Democrat political party, and hip-hop culture.
Those allegiances have made us hostile to a biblical worldview, indifferent toward marriage, and convinced there’s little value in male leadership. Scripture is the kryptonite that weakens us rather than the cape we wrap ourselves in to unleash superpowers.
We’re out of order.
Ephesians 5:22-24: “Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands.”
So what happens in communities without a culture of marriage and nuclear family?
In his book, Kingdom Politics, the great Christian minister Tony Evans says: “The saga of a nation is the saga of its families written large. Whoever owns the family owns the future. When family structure breaks down, all manner of calamity and chaos enter into society. When family breaks down, crime goes up, poverty goes up, abuse goes up. When the family breaks down, gender confusion and role confusion go up.”
Calamity. Chaos. Confusion.
You don’t need to be a Christian minister to recognize what’s going on in black communities with no consistent family structure. Here’s a video of the rapper Jay Z in 2019 explaining the connection between police brutality and single motherhood. And here’s a link to a story capturing the criticism Jay Z received for publicly discussing the obvious connection.
The social media matrix and corporate media are rigged to stop people from discussing the negative outcomes from the annihilation of the black family. The matrix blames “white supremacy” for everything bad that happens to black people, even when white people are uninvolved.
The culture we’ve adopted is designed to produce bad outcomes. The matriarchy doesn’t work.
My critics say my criticism is off base because Tyre Nichols has a mother and stepfather and the city’s female police chief, Cerelyn Davis, is married and a mother. My critics ignore the obvious. No one survives a rotten culture unscathed. A nutritionist will lose his way or suffer collateral damage if he’s forced to set up business inside a fast-food restaurant.
The pervasiveness of baby-mama culture harms everyone, including the non-participants forced to operate within it. The chaos and dysfunction negatively impact everyone.
Why did Cerelyn Davis and the Memphis Police Department implement a SCORPION (Street Crimes Operation to Restore Peace in Our Neighborhoods) unit, the special task force the five officers worked in? They started it in November 2021 to combat the violent behavior of largely unparented young black men terrorizing Memphis. These types of units are common in high-crime, single-parent neighborhoods across America.
Police start gangs to combat gang violence. Young men without fathers in the home are attracted to gangs.
Baby-mama culture celebrates gang involvement. That’s why Snoop Dogg, a proud Crip, is such a beloved cultural figure. That’s why so many black boys and girls from two-parent households and good neighborhoods think their racial identity is tied to behaving in a ghetto or criminal fashion.
Baby-mama culture rules black America in the ‘hood and the ‘burbs. So does matriarchal culture. Black men see black women as our leaders, our saviors.
I don’t. I never will. And I was raised primarily by my divorced mother. My mother was awesome. Spectacular. She took me and my brother to church every Sunday. She took a second job and moved us out of the ghetto and into a working-class neighborhood.
But I am who I am – good and bad – because of my father. I feared and revered him. He taught me the importance of self-sufficiency and never accepting a handout. He had no tolerance for excuses. And luckily I grew up in an era when there was far less pressure to conform to a criminal black stereotype. Rappers weren’t portrayed as heroes and role models. It wasn’t cool to have a baby mama. I was raised to see myself as a leader, a protector, and a provider.
The left frames men like me, regardless of color, as misogynist oppressors. Popular culture promotes the “Woman King,” especially to black people. They ignore the failing results of matriarchal rulership and send women like Cerelyn Davis to fix problems only strong, bold male leadership can solve.
It’s going to take male leadership in the home, in the church, and in law enforcement to fix the rotting culture that took Tyre Nichols’ life. That same leadership is required throughout American society. Baby-mama, matriarchal culture is being pushed within all facets of American society. Illegitimacy rates are rising among all racial demographics.
Christian male leadership has been demonized to placate the feelings and promote the values of the BLM-LGBTQ Alphabet Mafia. Your children’s neighborhoods will have more in common with Memphis than Mayberry.
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The New York Rangers hockey team took the ice for warmups before their game on Friday night without the promised rainbow-colored jerseys and stick tape meant to show deference to the so-called “LGBTQ+” community, causing outrage among left-leaning media outlets and activists.
For the past six seasons, the Rangers have hosted “Pride Night Friday” at Madison Square Garden, and that tradition continued this year. On January 27, Michael James Scott, a Broadway star who identifies as gay, performed the national anthem. Andre Thomas, the co-chair of NYC Pride and Heritage of Pride, participated in the ceremonial, pre-game puck drop. The arena, especially the jumbotron, was emblazoned in “rainbow colors,” and members of the Rangers Blue Crew, the people responsible for inciting fan engagement, still carried rainbow-colored flags.
But the players themselves did not don any gear making reference, either by word or by symbol, to sexual relationships of any kind. Instead, they wore Reverse Retro jerseys, which depict the face of the Statue of Liberty.
Writers at many news outlets and activists have heavily criticized the Rangers organization as a result. “New York Rangers … FAIL to explain why they backtrack on promise,” a Daily Mail headline howled. Mollie Walker, the New York Post beat writer for the Rangers, complained that the team took an “otherwise a beautiful celebration of inclusivity” and turned it into a “slight” against “members of the LGBTQ+ community.”
David Kilmnick, the president of the LGBT Network in Queens, called the decision “a slap in the face.”
“If the Rangers are saying they’re going to be celebrating Pride Night, everybody needs to, for lack of a better term, ‘come out’ and celebrate,” Kilmnick insisted. “To give the OK to these hockey players to be homophobic is not celebrating pride. It’s the opposite of it.“
Promotions for the seventh-annual “Pride Night” at MSG did promise that “the Rangers will be showing their support by donning pride-themed warm-up jerseys and tape in solidarity with those who continue to advocate for inclusivity.”
The organization has not explained its seemingly last-minute costume change, though it has issued a statement:
“Our organization respects the LGBTQ+ community and we are proud to bring attention to important local community organizations as part of another great Pride Night,” the statement reaffirmed.
“In keeping with our organization’s core values, we support everyone’s individual right to respectfully express their beliefs,” it concluded.
Some have interpreted the second half of the statement to mean that at least one member of the Rangers organization was planning not to participate. Another NHL team, the Philadelphia Flyers, has had to manage a lot of unwanted attention for nearly two weeks after one team member, defenseman Ivan Provorov, publicly stated that, in keeping with the tenets of his Russian Orthodox religion, he would not wear a “pride” jersey.
“I respect everybody’s choices,” Provorov told reporters after the Flyers’ win over the Ducks on January 17. “My choice is to stay true to myself and my religion. That’s all I’m going to say.”
No Rangers player has stated publicly that he would have refused to participate in the annual “Pride” celebration, but the entire team walked — or perhaps skated — away winners that night. The Rangers trounced the visiting Vegas Golden Knights 4-1 and are now 27-14-8 on the season, good for third place in the Metropolitan Division of the Eastern Conference.
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A massive fire engulfed a large egg farm on Saturday. The huge blaze likely killed thousands of chickens, and is expected to exacerbate the current dilemma of skyrocketing egg prices. Around 1 p.m. on Saturday, a three-alarm fire was reported at the Hillandale Farms property in Bozrah, Connecticut. WSFB reported that a total of 21 fire departments responded to the three-alarm fire, and it took firefighters eight hours to put out the blaze.
Norwich Firefighters Local 892 said a two-story, 400-foot by 100-foot chicken coop was on fire. The fire was so large that it could be seen from miles away. John Way, a safety officer for the Bozrah Volunteer Fire Co., said the coop housed an unknown number of chickens.
Multiple local reports cited the Salvation Army that around 100,000 chickens were killed, but that number has not been confirmed. No injuries were reported. The cause of the massive fire at the egg farm was not immediately clear. Authorities are still investigating the blaze.
Hillandale Farms said it raises over 20 million chickens for eggs and is one of the top five egg producers in the country. Hendrix Genetics lists Hillandale Farms as the third-biggest egg producer in the U.S. with 20 million hens.
Multiple fire departments are responding to a massive three alarm fire at Hillendale Farms where thousands of chickens produce eggs with thick smoke can be seen miles away pic.twitter.com/jqTxn4aBsz
There have been several major fires at egg farms in the past few years.
In December 2022, a fire caused $12 million in damages and killed a reported 250,000 chickens at a large poultry farm in Lebanon, Pennsylvania, according to WGAL.
In October 2022, approximately 7,000 chickens were incinerated in a farm fire in Lexington, South Carolina.
In February 2020, a blaze at the Michael Foods farm killed approximately 400,000 chickens.
In December 2020, around 240,000 chickens died when a fire burned three barns in Pasco County, Florida. The fire happened at a Cal-Maine-operated egg farm, which is “one the largest producer and distributor of shell eggs in the United States. It sells under brands including Egg-Land’s Best and Land O’ Lakes,” according to CBS News.
The Animal Welfare Institute reported that nearly 1.3 million cage-free hens “perished in potentially preventable barn fires” in 2020. In December, egg prices skyrocketed 60% more than a year prior, according to Consumer Price Index data. In California, the average retail price of eggs went from $2.35 a year ago to $7.37 this year, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
The worst outbreak of avian flu on record has caused egg and poultry prices to surge. More than 58 million birds from commercial and backyard flocks have been affected by avian influenza in the past year, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service.
My daughter ‘was terribly bullied, but no one told me. … Please don’t let ideology harm another child,’ pleaded the mother of a 14-year-old girl who was isolated from her parents by school and court authorities and sex-trafficked twice.
A subcommittee in the Virginia House of Delegates passed a bill on Monday that mandates public educators notify parents if their child “self-identifies” as something other than his or her natural sex. Introduced by Republican Dels. Dave LaRock, Tara Durant, and John McGuire, the measure (HB 2432) would provide parents with greater oversight into their children’s lives at school and increase transparency in public education. According to a summary of the legislation, if a school official “has reason to believe” that a student “is self-identifying as a gender different from the student’s biological sex,” said official is required “to contact as soon as practicable at least one of such student’s parents to ask whether such parent is aware of the student’s mental state and whether the parent wishes to obtain or has already obtained counseling for such student.”
Under the bill, school officials, such as counselors and clinical social workers, are barred from “encouraging or coercing a minor to withhold from the minor’s parent the fact that the minor’s perception of his or her gender or sex is inconsistent with the minor’s biological sex” or “withholding from a minor’s parent information relating to the minor’s perception that his or her gender or sex is inconsistent with the minor’s biological sex.”
Monday’s subcommittee vote came along party lines, with five Republicans voting in favor and three Democrats opposing.
Known as Sage’s Law, HB 2432 was introduced after it was revealed that a then-14-year-old Virginia girl ended up in the hands of sexual predators after her school failed to disclose her gender dysphoria to her mother. As The Federalist previously reported, the chain of events began in August 2021 when Sage began identifying as a boy and suffered intense bullying and harassment at school. Eventually, Sage ran away and was “found nine days later in Maryland, a victim of sexual assault.”
Appomattox County High School, which affirmed Sage’s new “identity” without notifying her mother, was following model guidelines issued by then-Democrat Gov. Ralph Northam’s administration on so-called gender affirmation. Such guidance has since been terminated by current GOP Gov. Glenn Youngkin.
Throughout Monday’s hearing on Sage’s Law, witnesses supporting the bill discussed its importance in keeping parents involved in their children’s livelihoods, especially in the school classroom. During her testimony, Sage’s mother Michele called on the subcommittee to put commonsense before ideology.
“If I had known [what was going on], this would be a much different story. [Sage] was terribly bullied, but no one told me,” Michele said. “Please don’t let ideology harm another child. Let parents do our jobs. We know our children best and we love them a million times more.”
Also called to testify at the hearing was Dr. Erin Brewer, a former “trans kid” who spoke about the importance of schools helping children through their gender dysphoria without affirming such confusion or concealing it from parents.
“I was insistent that I was a boy when I started first grade after a brutal sexual assault. If I had been affirmed by my teachers, it would have allowed me to completely dissociate from myself as a girl and create a new persona who could pretend that the horrible trauma that triggered my gender dysphoria hadn’t happened to me,” she said. “Instead of encouraging my confusion and hiding it from my mother, the school contacted my mother, got permission for me to be assessed by the school psychologist, and they came up with a comprehensive program to help me resolve my gender dysphoria. … I [one] hundred percent support this legislation.”
Erin Friday, a lifelong Democrat and co-founder of Our Duty, a national and international parent and child advocacy group, also spoke in support of Sage’s Law. Throughout her remarks, Friday noted her personal experiences with a gender-dysphoric daughter and stated that “schools should never keep secrets from parents.”
Opponents to Sage’s Law also spoke at the hearing, with one man claiming to be a “trans woman” arguing that such legislation is “ridiculous” and that schools should be able to conceal a child’s gender dysphoria from that child’s parents.
“It should be that child’s own choice,” he said. “If we wanna tell who we wanna tell, like, that’s on us.”
Despite leftists’ support for deceptively-termed “gender affirmation” and the “transitioning” of children, research has shown that “upwards of 80 percent of gender dysphoric childrenembrace their sex as they emerge from puberty” and that “children who are ‘affirmed’ as the opposite sex … particularly if puberty blockers are used, consistently go on to further medicalization.” Children who undergo such protocols are subjected to lifelong damage to their bodies. The practices are so horrific that nations around the world, such as England, have ended the disfiguring practices that are falsely labeled as “gender-affirming care” for minors.
“Parents should never be the last to know [about what’s going on in their children’s lives],” said Durant during the subcommittee meeting. “It’s a very strange, strange place to me that we’re in now where parents are being told to step aside, to sit down, that ‘we as educators, as counselors know better [for] your own child’ — and that’s just simply not true.”
Shawn Fleetwood is a Staff Writer for The Federalist and a graduate of the University of Mary Washington. He also serves 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
On Monday a federal jury acquitted Mark Houck, the Christian pro-life activist whose house was swarmed by FBI agents last fall in front of his wife and children. The not-guilty verdict comes more than four months after the Biden administration accused Houck of violating federal law for protecting his son from an angry abortion activist across the street from a Planned Parenthood in 2021.
After leaving the courtroom in a deadlock on Friday, on Monday a federal jury agreed Houck was not guilty of violating federal law, contrary to the Biden Department of Justice’s position.
The early-morning FBI raid on Houck’s home in front of his children and wife included battering rams and ballistic shields at the ready and was committed even after Houck’s attorney had told the U.S. Department of Justice Houck would turn himself in if they asked. Since his arrest in September 2022, Houck and his lawyers maintained“This case is being brought solely to intimidate people of faith and pro-life Americans.”
“We are, of course, thrilled with the outcome,” stated Peter Breen, head of litigation for the Thomas More Society, which defended Houck in court. “We took on Goliath – the full might of the United States government – and won. The jury saw through and rejected the prosecution’s discriminatory case, which was harassment from day one. This is a win for Mark and the entire pro-life movement. The Biden Department of Justice’s intimidation against pro-life people and people of faith has been put in its place.”
Houck is now freed from the threat of “a maximum possible sentence of 11 years in prison, three years of supervised release, and fines of up to $350,000.” He also thanked Americans and pro-lifers for their support after the FBI raid and subsequent federal prosecution.
After weeks of ignoring pro-abortion violence and threats against pro-life pregnancy support centers across the nation, dozens of FBI agents arrested Houck in front of his wife and seven children in a raid at his home in September. When Houck’s wife recounted that “they had big, huge rifles pointed at Mark and pointed at me and kind of pointed throughout the house,” the FBI defended their “guns out and ready” positions as necessary.
The Biden administration’s Department of Justice alleged Houck violated the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act, a law barring the physical obstruction of abortion facilities, by “attacking a patient escort” more than 100 feet away and across the street from a Planned Parenthood in Philadelphia during one of his regular trips to peacefully protest abortion.
The “patient escort,” Bruce Love, repeatedly initiated profanity-laced verbal confrontations with Houck and his son, Mark Houck Jr., said court documents. The documents also say Houck asked Love to stop multiple times to no avail. On Oct. 13, 2021, when Love escalated by invading Mark Jr.’s personal space, Houck Sr. shoved him away.
Love fell and claimed he “required medical attention,” an allegation the DOJ indictment took as fact. Brian Middleton, a spokesman for the Houck family, said the “medical attention” Love spoke of was “a Band-Aid on his finger.”
During his testimony to the jury, Houck gave his side of the story.
“You consider it to be a battle, don’t you?” Assistant U.S. Attorney Ashley Nicole Martin asked Houck during the trial.
“A spiritual battle,” the father of seven replied.
Houck also disclosed that Love instigated the incident that later was used to sic federal investigators on the Houck family.
“All of this was set in motion by the escort, and that’s not a FACE violation,” Thomas More Society Senior Counsel Michael McHale said in a trial recap video on Friday. “FACE is about access to clinics. And what happened here was an escort interfering with Mark and Mark’s son.”
Houck’s son Mark Jr. also testified on Friday. In his testimony, Mark Jr. explained that Love initiated a conversation with him.
“That directly contradicted Bruce Love’s testimony,” McHale said. “Mr. Love testified that he never, has ever, talked to Mark Jr. And to have Mark Jr. on the stand today and just testify confidently and clearly that Bruce Love talked to him and said ‘Your dad’s a bad person and your dad’s harassing women.’ I really think that went a long way, at least with some people on the jury.”
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 and Fox News. Jordan graduated from Baylor University where she majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow her on Twitter @jordanboydtx.
The Trump years saw a massive acceleration in the trend of unelected bureaucrats exercising power over elected officials, including by weaponizing classified information.
Procedural complaints about classified documents are quickly turning into a catch-all trap that can depose duly elected officials, especially those tasked with oversight of U.S. intelligence agencies. Last August, an unprecedented classified document complaint provided a pretext for an FBI raid on former President Donald Trump’s home, in an eerie echo of the use of police and military resources against opposing politicians typical of banana republics.
That administrative power flex has now been turned into the unprecedented appointment of three special counsels, most recently against the deeply unpopular current Democrat Party figurehead, Joe Biden. This all reverses the American structure of elected officials maintaining oversight of unelected permanent administrators. Instead, we now have unelected bureaucrats performing selective “oversight” of elected officials.
Of course, that pattern erases Americans’ deepest political birthright: government of the people, by the people, and for the people. A government not ultimately controlled by elected representatives of the citizenry is not a republic, nor is it any kind of democracy. Without elections truly affecting government policies, the original United States is no more, and its elections are a sham.
The subversion of elected representative government via weaponized intelligence has been expanding for some time. The Trump presidential years saw a massive acceleration in this pre-existing trend of unelected bureaucrats exercising increasing power over elected officials, including by weaponizing classified information, usually via highly selective leaks to leftist media.
Recall that Michael Flynn, a would-be reformer of U.S. intelligence, was neatly precluded from becoming Trump’s national security advisor via leaks of classified intel to the media that a (still) gullible Vice President Mike Pence bought hook, line, and sinker. Rather than the leaker being sought, caught, and punished, Flynn was. The selective and deceptive leaks were shanghaied into a Justice Department investigation that ended with Flynn narrowly escaping jail time and professional repercussions for his son so long as he promised to disappear from public view.
The same pattern occurred in multiple cycles with Spygate, the wholly manufactured projection of treasonous collusion with Russia from the Democratic Party onto Trump. Rep. Adam Schiff, who has been recently kicked off the House Intelligence Committee, repeatedly used his access to classified intelligence to fan the Spygate flames as well as the two impeachments of Trump. So did multiple other deep-state actors, including the Hillary Clinton campaign.
Notice there’s no probe into Schiff’s blatant and repeated misuse of the classified information he was privileged to receive on the House Intelligence Committee. But there could be if he stopped being such a useful Democrat.
This is how, as Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer threatened Trump early in the latter’s term, intelligence agencies “have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you.” It is how the intelligence tail can — and now does — wag the congressional dog. This has been ongoing now for decades and is perpetually expanding its reach.
This allows the document-holders to function as a shadow government that essentially controls the elected government by picking what bits of information to release to achieve its own ends rather than the priorities of American voters. This selective deployment of intelligence has been even used to goad the United States into wars it doesn’t win that expand the military-industrial complex and distract U.S. officials while defenestrating U.S. national interests. It was used to lie to Trump about U.S. military activities and prevent him from exercising his due presidential authority over U.S. military affairs.
Those who presented unreliable, counterproductive, and false intelligence to presidents from George W. Bush to Barack Obama to Trump have not been punished, nor often even identified. Neither has the person who compromised the safety and collegiality of the U.S. Supreme Court by leaking the pro-life Dobbs decision last May.
Curiously, neither have there been any administrative-state leaks about the many connections between the Biden family and the Chinese Communist Party. This is not a tool to be applied equally, you see, or in service of the public good. It’s only yet another knife to pull out against those who cross the wrong people.
That’s how expansive, vague, and proliferating laws, regulations, and bureaucracies all work: as tools of selective prosecution to be wielded at the whims of the powerful against those who threaten their power. The erasure of self-government and the rule of law go hand in hand, collapsed by the administrative state’s erasure of the separation of powers that protect individual liberty and justice for all.
This expanding weaponization of classified intel into selective probes of those who have access to at least some of it allows deep-state entities even more control over elected officials. This standard of probes for possessing “unauthorized” classified documents can be applied to any current or former president, as well as many other officials.
As a Project for Government Oversight lawyer told USA Today: “I’d bet you that if they go back to all of the living presidents and root through their homes and their libraries and their warehouses and garages, they’re going to unearth some classified documents there.” Other presidential experts told USA Today that essentially every presidential administration since 1978 has mishandled classified documents.
The same applies to numerous other elected and unelected officials, such as those on House and Senate military intelligence committees and in the executive branch. This is partly because U.S. intelligence agencies improperly classify “millions” of materials, partly to hide their activities by lying that materials elected representatives seek implicate “national security.” It’s a convenient, unfalsifiable excuse that allows U.S. intelligence agencies to function as poisonous self-licking ice cream cones.
U.S. intelligence agencies improperly classify “millions” of materials, partly to hide their activities by lying that materials elected representatives seek implicate “national security.” It’s a convenient, unfalsifiable excuse that allows U.S. intelligence agencies to function as poisonous self-licking ice cream cones.
This all recalls one of the famous lines of one of the world’s most famous of secret police, Joseph Stalin’s NKVD chief, Lavrentiy Beria: “Show me the man, and I’ll show you the crime.” That is how secret police function. It is how U.S. intelligence agencies function now, with help from their administrative-state allies such as the Department of So-Called Justice. Their use of selective prosecutions and investigations to hamstring and punish their enemies may not be unlimited now, but it is expanding.
All members of Congress must be aware of this and use all the powers at their disposal to fight it, for as the administrative apparatus strengthens, the American republic dissolves.
Two of the five police officers charged in the fatal beating of Tyre Nichols were hired by the Memphis Police Department after it relaxed its hiring requirements, a new report by The New York Post shows. Tadarrius Bean and Demetrius Haley both joined the MPD in August 2020 after education qualifications to become an officer were dramatically lowered two years prior. The department nixed the required associate’s degree or 54 college credit hours for recruits in 2018 due to a lack of applicants.
“They’re desperate. They want police officers,” retired NYPD detective Mike Alcazar told the Post. “They’re going through it, they check off some boxes, saying, ‘Ok, they’re good enough, get them on.”
In fact, the department was so desperate for recruits it offered $15,000 signing bonuses in both 2021 and 2022, and waivers for applicants who had been convicted of felonies. Even this did not prevent the force from being down 500 officers in January 2022.
Back in September 2020, a month after Bean and Haley were hired, former Deputy Director of MPD Mike Ryall told the Memphis Commercial Appeal that the rise of violent crime in the city could be attributed to the police department’s understaffing and lack of manpower. Bean and Haley were also hired during the summer of the George Floyd riots, a global protest movement organized by Black Lives Matter in response to the death of Floyd in Minneapolis police custody. The protests spread to more than 2,000 cities across America, causing more than $1 billion in property damage and killing at least 25 people. Such a movement, whose main mantra was “defund the police,” significantly damaged police morale.
According to a June 2021 survey by the Police Executive Research Forum (PERF), the rate of retirement at police departments rose 45% in 2020 compared to the previous year, with a 20% increase in resignations. The hiring rate also dropped by 5%. Simply put: police officers were quitting at unprecedented rates across the country to escape such a hostile environment, and departments were struggling to meet minimum staffing requirements. This coincided with a massive crime wave across America’s major cities.
“So at that very moment you’re hoping you can put police out there to try to deal with crime, you’re seeing the workforce shrinking with an unprecedented number of retirements and resignations,” PERF’s Executive Director Chuck Wexler told NPR.
While a shortage of recruits is no excuse for relaxing hiring standards for cops, it is a product of disastrous dynamics the Black Lives Matter movement and leftist elites have cultivated. There is a lot of power and money in stoking fears of racism and hatred. And it is all done at the cost of the safety of the American public, most especially black Americans like Nichols.
For sure, let the cops implicated in Nichols’ death be charged to the fullest extent of the law, but it is important to remember why officers of that quality were hired to those positions in the first place.
Victoria Marshall is a staff writer at The Federalist. Her writing has been featured in the New York Post, National Review, and Townhall. She graduated from Hillsdale College in May 2021 with a major in politics and a minor in journalism. Follow her on Twitter @vemrshll.
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 Donald Trump.
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California Gov. Gavin Newsom recently ran a pro-abortion ad wherein a young woman appears crying outside the U.S. Supreme Court. The woman’s tearful response appears to have been strategically situated in the video to convey grief over the high court’s Dobbs decision, which overturned Roe v. Wade and enabled the states to once again make their own determinations about abortion.
There was, however, nothing grievous about the woman’s actual response.
In fact, contrary to the voiceover that states in the ad, “Panic is the primary reaction,” the woman seen crying was jubilant, overwhelmed by the hard-won result of decades of pro-life efforts and prayers.
“Panic? Sad? Try ecstatic, blown away by God’s grace on this country,” tweeted Macy Petty, a pro-life activist and student at Lee University.
She has called out Newsom for seeking to retroactively convert her documented joy into anguish for the purpose of promoting state-sanctioned homicide.
In a Jan. 21 statement posted to Instagram, Petty said, “California governor Gavin Newsom has used my image in one of his political ads in yet another attempt to show his support for women. He and pro abortion Democrats have once again shown Americans that they care little for my voice as a woman.”
Despite reaching out to Newsom and his team several times, “asking them to stop their pathetic mischaracterization of who I am,” Petty noted “they have chosen once again to use my image and misrepresent me as a pro-life woman.”
Petty added, “I do not appreciate, nor do I consent to this kind of treatment and belittling of who I am as a woman. … Remove my image from your shameful ad and stop your disgraceful treatment of pro-life women just like me.”
Ahead of the midterm elections, Newsom and other supporters of pro-abortion Proposition 1, including former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, circulated a campaign video that similarly used the footage of Petty crying. Petty had called them out then as well, noting, “In your campaign video, you portrayed me in an evil light and distorted my emotions as part of your political game.”
The pro-life activist, who has also taken a stand against men in women’s sports, clarified, “As I continued to witness history, I pondered how lucky I was to witness such an event. I thanked the Lord for this decision and for opening my eyes to the evil of abortion. This is what brought me to tears.”
Clinton shared the deceptive video wherein “SAD” is superimposed on the student’s face on Oct. 18. Days later, Petty tweeted to her, “Hey Hillary, I’m the girl crying in this video. I am pro-life and those are HAPPY tears because I just witnessed a MIRACLE!”
Petty told the Christian Post, “I’m part of a generation of pro-life activists. … My mom worked at a pregnancy center, and my grandma started one. So it’s in my blood. And I was just so grateful to be there to witness it because there are so many people who were in the fight before me who didn’t get to witness it.”
Campus Reform reported that Petty has recently partnered with the California Family Council to take the Newsom administration to task.
The CFC issued a statement Monday, writing, “The California Family Council and Macy Petty are urging Governor Gavin Newsom to apologize for his act of defamation, remove the video from circulation, and never again use Macy Petty’s name to promote a pro-abortion stance.”
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An Oregon man who viewed pornographic videos of young girls being tortured has been sentenced to probation and 90 days in jail to be served “at his convenience,” a police report stated.
On Wednesday, Scott Johnson, 27, of St. Helens, Oregon, about 30 miles north of Portland, pled guilty to three counts of encouraging child sexual abuse in the first degree. The guilty plea represented the culmination of a two-year investigation which began when the state department of justice alerted local authorities that child pornography had been uploaded on a messaging app in the St. Helens area.
Investigators then zeroed in on Johnson as a suspect and seized his phone. A forensic investigation of the phone revealed that it contained child pornography, a police statement said. The nature of the evidence on the phone was particularly heinous. Fox News reported that it involved the “graphic sexual abuse and torture of young girls.”
“graphic sexual abuse and torture of young girls.”
When questioned, Johnson told authorities that “sometimes people will send him a message asking him if he wants to see something” and that they then sent him that material. Investigators determined that Johnson received a series of links and continued to click on all of them, even after he knew that they would direct him to child porn.
In an effort to reach a plea deal, Columbia County prosecutors offered Johnson a 60-month sentence. However, Johnson rejected that offer and decided to take his chances with the judge.
“He just rejected our offer, pleaded guilty, and asked the judge for probation over our objection,” the district attorney’s office said.
That decision worked out in his favor. According to a statement from St. Helens Police Department, “Johnson was ultimately sentenced to five years of probation and 90 days in jail to be served on weekends at his convenience.”
In Oregon, encouraging child sexual abuse in the first degree is a Class B felony, a crime which carries a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison. Johnson’s light sentence seems to follow a pattern of soft-on-crime policies in the state in recent years. In April 2022, when she was still governor, Kate Brown (D) granted clemency to a murderer who had previously been sentenced to life without parole, putting a violent criminal back on the streets, and Portland had more murders in 2021 than at any other time in history. Travellers Worldwide recently warned prospective visitors that theft and larceny, vandalism, auto theft, and assault are among “the city’s most prevalent crimes.”
On Tuesday, Iowa became the second state in the country to pass universal school choice, directly providing families with funds to support their children’s education. Arizona was the trendsetter for this new wave of educational freedom after Gov. Doug Ducey signed universal school choice into law on July 7, 2022.
Now the race is on to advance educational freedom, with several red states looking to follow suit. The significance of these developments can hardly be overstated. What was once a pipe dream for many education reformers — the enabling of school choice at scale during their lifetimes — is now becoming a reality.
Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds, true to her word, wasted no time in the 2023 legislative session by introducing the Students First Act in her Condition of the State address on Jan. 10. Within two weeks, the bill was signed into law. It took less than 24 hours for debate in the House and Senate, followed by Reynolds’ signing. The education savings account (ESA) program will provide parents with approximately $7,600 annually to allocate toward approved educational avenues. Most families are eligible in years one and two, and the benefit will be extended to all families statewide in year three.
Of course, powers beholden to leftist teachers unions should not be expected to go down without a fight. Even in pioneering state Arizona, new Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs seeks to undo its universal school voucher expansion law in her 2023 budget proposal. With Republicans controlling both state legislative bodies, her proposal will likely go down with the same fate as her massively failed veto referendum that sought to stop the law from taking effect while she was secretary of state last fall. For a politician, Hobbs is remarkably insensitive to the views of Arizona voters, 67 percent of whom support the state’s ESA program (the number jumps to 77 percent of Arizona parents of school-aged children).
States with a Republican governor and GOP majorities in both their House and Senate, on the other hand, are leading the charge across the United States to empower parents with options. The goal is universal school choice — through ESAs — to provide flexibility for families to select their desired educational avenue. Funds can be spent on school tuition, homeschool expenses, online learning, tutoring, special needs therapy, learning materials, and other education-related expenses.
ESA programs not only afford parents options outside of government-run, union-controlled public schools, but they save the state money because typically only a portion of the student state funding is provided. For example, in Arizona, instead of upwards of $12,000 spent per student within the public system, the ESA provided to families is only $7,000.
As the race to pass universal school choice picks up speed, several states could be heading to the home stretch in the coming weeks and months.
Utah is positioned extremely well to join the universal school choice ranks as the House and Senate have both passed the “Utah Fits All Act” as of January 26. If signed into law by Gov. Spencer Cox, families would have access to roughly $8,000 each year for educational expenses.
Florida is historically a national leader in school choice, with almost half its students learning in an option outside of their assigned traditional public school. Current legislation is calling for universal school choice. With Republican lawmakers holding supermajorities in both the House and Senate, and Gov. Ron DeSantis at the helm, it’s only a matter of time.
Oklahoma is a contender in the educational freedom race. The Education Freedom Act is currently in the Senate, which has a 40-8 Republican supermajority. The House has an 81-20 supermajority. Once the bill hits educational freedom champion Gov. Kevin Stitt’s desk, it will be signed into law. It will grant all families statewide access to an ESA based on the state’s per-pupil education expense. State Superintendent Ryan Walters is a fierce supporter of empowering Oklahoma families with educational freedom to select the schools that will best serve their children.
Texas, traditionally lagging behind other red states on school choice, is not to be counted out this session in advancing ESAs. In May 2022, Gov. Greg Abbott urged lawmakers to empower parents through state funding following students. As the months passed, the groundwork was laid, including debunking the notion that school choice does not benefit rural areas or that it hurts rural school districts.
West Virginia was the national leader prior to Arizona passing universal school choice in 2022. In West Virginia, roughly 93 percent of students have access to the Hope Scholarship to date. There is the possibility to expand it to 100 percent of the state’s children within the next three years. Despite the state’s families having negligible educational freedom options until 2019, West Virginia is now among the leaders.
Indiana has efforts underway to expand the state’s existing ESA program to all students statewide while also increasing the grant amount from 90 percent of the per-student state funding to 100 percent. That would translate to an average of $7,500 allocated per student for educational expenses of the parents’ choosing.
Arkansas shouldn’t be overlooked this session. Newly elected Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders has stated her support for plans to “empower parents with more choices … so no child is ever trapped in a failing school.”
The tide is turning, and the implications are tremendous. No longer will families be at the mercy of government-run, union-controlled traditional public schools. Parents in an increasing number of states will be empowered as decision-makers in their children’s education.
The question is: Which state will be next to achieve universal educational freedom?
Dr. Keri D. Ingraham is a Fellow at Discovery Institute, Director of the American Center for Transforming Education, and a Visiting Fellow at Independent Women’s Forum.
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The video from last year’s hammer attack on Paul Pelosi was released to the public on Friday. The police bodycam video shows the husband of Nancy Pelosi in his San Francisco home being brutally attacked by a man with a hammer.
Paul Pelosi, 82, was attacked with a hammer in the early hours of Oct. 28. Suspect David DePape reportedly broke into the Pelosi home in the affluent neighborhood of Pacific Heights. He allegedly asked, “Where’s Nancy? Where’s Nancy?” At the time, the former speaker of the House was in Washington, D.C. DePape purportedly detained Paul Pelosi. However, Pelosi was reportedly able to go to the bathroom, where his phone was charging, and he called 911.
Police dispatcher Heather Grives allegedly informed police officers that the reporting person of the incident at the Pelosi residence told her, “There is a male in the home and that he is going to wait for his wife. However, he stated that he doesn’t know who the male is but that his name is ‘David ‘and that he is a friend.” At 2:27 a.m., police reportedly arrived at the Pelosi home for a “priority well-being check.”
The newly-released police bodycam footage shows two officers approach the Pelosi residence. An officer knocks on the front door. A few seconds later, the door opens. DePape and Pelosi are holding a hammer.
Pelosi, dressed in a button-down shirt and underwear, warmly greeted the officers, “Hey guys. How are ya?”
A police officer asked, “What’s going on man?”
DePape responded, “Everything’s good.”
Pelosi was seemingly smiling. He appeared to be holding a beverage in his left hand.
The officer instructed DePape to “drop the hammer,” but he replied, “Nope.”
Pelosi and DePape can be seen struggling over the hammer, then the suspect wrestled it away. Pelosi attempted to flee to another room, but the suspect lunged and violently swung the hammer at Pelosi.
Police officers jumped into action and a struggle ensued. The shaky video shows all of the men on the floor of the home.
Police attempted to detain the suspect while Pelosi was motionless on the ground.
As an officer was attempting to handcuff DePape, the cop shouted, “Give me your f***ing hand!”
Pelosi can be heard moaning in pain in the background.
WARNING: Graphic video
#EXCLUSIVE Just released police body camera video shows moments David DePape attacked Paul Pelosi at his# San Francisco home
San Francisco Superior Court Judge Stephen M. Murphy ordered the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office to release police body camera video, audio from police interviews with alleged attacker David DePape, 911 calls, home surveillance video, and other investigative material. A coalition of news organizations requested the materials be released in the name of transparency. DePape’s lawyers argued that the release of the materials would “irreparably damage” his right to a fair trial.
DePape, 42, lived in a school bus in Berkeley, according to the New York Post. The bus sits in the yard of the home of his ex-lover – San Francisco pro-nudist activist Gypsy Taub. DePape was allegedly a hemp jewelry maker who grew up in British Columbia, Canada.
DePape was hit with state charges of attempted murder, burglary, assault with a deadly weapon, elder abuse, false imprisonment of an elder, and threats against a public official and their family. Federal prosecutors charged DePape with attempted kidnapping and assault with intent to retaliate against a federal official by threatening or injuring a family member.
Sen. Ted Cruz, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, and the attorneys general from 17 additional states should all be disbarred, according to the reasoning of the disciplinary complaint the State Bar of California filed Thursday against former Trump campaign attorney John Eastman. That detail is one of many buried in the 35-page, 11-count disciplinary complaint made public yesterday in the latest lawfare attack on attorneys who deigned to represent Donald Trump.
State Bar of California’s Chief Trial Counsel George Cardona announced on Thursday the filing of disciplinary charges against Eastman, allegedly arising from Eastman’s engagement “in a course of conduct to plan, promote, and assist then-President Trump in executing a strategy, unsupported by facts or law, to overturn the legitimate results of the 2020 presidential election by obstructing the count of electoral votes of certain states.” The press release announcing the disciplinary charges further claimed that Eastman “made false and misleading statements regarding purported election fraud,” that provoked a crowd into assaulting and breaching the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
The 11 charges against Eastman prove troubling throughout, with the State Bar of California proposing to discipline Eastman for presenting legal analyses to his client, Trump, and for speaking publicly on his views about the election, with the bar even attempting to hold Eastman responsible any violence that occurred on Jan. 6. The disciplinary complaint also misrepresents numerous arguments Eastman and others made concerning the 2020 election, falsely equating claims of violations of election law with fraud.
But it is count two of the disciplinary complaint, charging Eastman with “seeking to mislead a court,” that exposes the California State Bar as a kangaroo court.
“On or about December 7, 2020, the State of Texas filed a Motion for Leave to File Bill of Complaint in the United States Supreme Court, initiating the lawsuit Texas v. Pennsylvania,” begins count two of the complaint against Eastman. The complaint then explains that in that lawsuit, Texas argued the defendant states of Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan, and Wisconsin “usurp[ed] their legislatures’ authority and unconstitutionally revised their States’ election statutes.” As a remedy, Texas sought an order from the Supreme Court to “enjoin the use of unlawful election results without review and ratification by the Defendant States’ legislatures and remand to the Defendant States’ respective legislatures to appoint Presidential Electors in a manner consistent with the Electors Clause.”
Eastman, on behalf of then-President Trump, sought to intervene in the Texas v. Pennsylvania case, and in that motion, Eastman “expressly adopted the allegations contained in the Motion for Leave to File Bill of Complaint filed by Texas.” In adopting the allegations Texas made, Eastman, according to the California State Bar, “misl[ed] the Supreme Court by an artifice or false statement of fact or law,” in violation of California’s “Business and Professions Code” that governs attorneys’ conduct in the Golden State.
Under the California State Bar’s reasoning, then, Texas’ attorney general who filed the motion likewise “misled” the U.S. Supreme Court, as did the attorneys general of the 17 other states that supported Texas’ motion for leave to file a bill of complaint. So too would have Sen. Ted Cruz, had the Supreme Court agreed to hear the motion, as he had agreed to argue the case on Trump’s behalf in that circumstance.
While count two represents but one of the 11 distinct charges levied against Eastman, it most clearly exposes the logical conclusion reached when state bars use disciplinary proceedings to conduct lawfare against political opponents.
To date, the bars have limited themselves to targeting just a few attorneys working for Trump, with the D.C. Bar pursuing Rudy Giuliani and Jeff Clark, in addition to the California State Bar’s attack on Eastman. But there is no limiting principle to prevent the bars in other states from pursuing any politician with a law license who happens to represent the wrong person.
That is an extremely dangerous precedent, which is why tomorrow at a press conference called by Eastman’s legal team, some big legal names will condemn the move. The hastily called conference is expected to bring together former U.S. Attorney General Edwin Meese III and John Yoo, a current professor of law at the University of California-Berkley, former general counsel to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, and former deputy assistant attorney general. Former Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman and former California Supreme Court Justice Janice Rogers Brown, among others, are also expected at the conference.
Whether the legacy media will cover Eastman’s detailed response to the State Bar of California’s disciplinary complaint or bother to report on his press conference remains to be seen. But if Cruz and the attorneys general impugned by the California State Bar speak out, the corrupt press may not have any choice but to report on the ridiculous theories underlying the disciplinary attacks on Eastman.
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.
On Thursday, a three-judge panel of the Colorado Court of Appeals ruled against Masterpiece Cakeshop baker Jack Phillips, arguing he violated the Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act by refusing to bake a cake for a gender transition celebration.
Critics of the ruling point to Phillips’ earlier “win” at the Supreme Court, which narrowly ruled in his favor, as the reason the baker continues to be targeted by activists. In 2017, former Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote the majority opinion that some have argued essentially said Phillips could have lost his Supreme Court case if it hadn’t been for Colorado officials openly disparaging Phillips and his Christian views.
That narrow decision has allowed Phillips to continue to be persecuted, critics say. At the Washington Examiner, Quin Hillyer argued that the Supreme Court’s “search for the narrowest possible result merely invited further, seemingly endless rounds of new litigation.”
The latest lawsuit against Phillips comes from an activist attorney, Autumn Scardina, in Colorado who called Masterpiece Cakeshop on the same day the Supreme Court announced it would take his prior case – in which he was accused of discrimination for refusing to bake a cake for a same-sex wedding. The attorney requested Phillips create a custom cake that was pink on the inside and blue on the outside to celebrate a gender transition. According to the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), which represents Phillips, the attorney also called back to request a cake depicting Satan smoking marijuana in order to “correct the errors of [Phillips’] thinking.” Phillips declined to make either cake because of the messages they depicted. The activist has now sued.
“Naturally, Colorado’s courts ignored the patently offensive request for a Satan cake and instead again held Phillips responsible for illegal discrimination based on gender, his religious objections notwithstanding,” Hillyer wrote. “Today’s affirmation by the appeals court of the lower court’s ruling takes ample advantage of the loophole left open by the Supreme Court while cherry-picking from other Supreme Court religious liberty decisions to reach its desired, anti-Phillips conclusion.”
On Twitter, prominent conservative PoliMath also blamed the Supreme Court for the ongoing legal struggles of Masterpiece Cakeshop.
“The result of John Roberts pushing for the narrowest possible ruling in the earlier Masterpiece case is that they continued persecuting Jack Phillips for years,” PoliMath tweeted. “They will continue to do this to him until he dies.”
The result of John Roberts pushing for the narrowest possible ruling in the earlier Masterpiece case is that they continued persecuting Jack Phillips for years
The appeals court on Thursday argued that Phillips only refused to bake the cake after learning the client was transgender and wanted to use the cake to celebrate his birthday and gender transition.
“Thus, it was Scardina’s transgender status, and her desire to use the cake in celebration of that status, that caused Masterpiece and Phillips to refuse to provide the cake,” the court wrote, arguing the cake “expressed no message.”
But ADL argues that “Phillips works with all people and always decides whether to take a project based on what message a cake will express, not who is requesting it.”
“Over a decade ago, Colorado officials began targeting Jack, misusing state law to force him to say things he does not believe. Then an activist attorney continued that crusade,” the ADF said in a statement. “This cruelty must stop. One need not agree with Jack’s views to agree that all Americans should be free to say what they believe, even if the government disagrees with those beliefs.”
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 Donald Trump.
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Project Veritas released an undercover video purportedly involving Pfizer employee Jordon Trishton Walker – who claimed in the footage that the pharmaceutical company is exploring the possibility of mutating COVID through “directed evolution” to develop future mRNA vaccines.
According to a deleted LinkedIn profile, “Jordon Walker” allegedly started working for Pfizer in June 2021. The profile shows the individual as a “Director, Worldwide R&D Strategic Operations and mRNA Scientific Planning” at Pfizer in New York, New York. Before Pfizer, Walker was employed as a consultant at the Boston Consulting Group. In May 2020, Walker co-wrote a BCG article titled: “The Near-Term Outlook for COVID-19 Therapeutic Treatments.”
There is a “Jordon Walker” listed on the New York state physician listing website as well as a doctor acknowledged by U.S. News and World Report. Walker allegedly graduated from UT Southwestern Medical Center and Yale University.
Project Veritas founder James O’Keefe said his organization had “obtained internal Pfizer docs verifying Jordan Walker as Pfizer Director, Research & Development Strategic Operations.”
We’ve obtained internal Pfizer docs verifying Jordan Walker as Pfizer Director, Research & Development Strategic Operations
Graduated Yale 2013
Doctor Med at U of Texas Southwestern medical school.
According to Project Veritas, Jordon Trishton Walker revealed in great depth the possibility of Pfizer mutating the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which is responsible for COVID-19, as a way to develop mRNA vaccines against future variants.
“One of the things we’re exploring is like, why don’t we just mutate it [COVID] ourselves so we could create – preemptively develop new vaccines, right? So, we have to do that,” Walker allegedly said on video. “If we’re gonna do that, though, there’s a risk of like, as you could imagine – no one wants to be having a pharma company mutating f***ing viruses.”
Walker made the undercover journalist “promise” not to tell anyone.
“The way it [the experiment] would work is that we put the virus in monkeys, and we successively cause them to keep infecting each other, and we collect … samples from them,” Walker reportedly said.
Walker dismissed the idea that the origin of the COVID-19 outbreak was from nature; instead he believed that the virus originated from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
Walker allegedly cautioned, “You have to be very controlled to make sure that this virus [COVID] that you mutate doesn’t create something that just goes everywhere. Which, I suspect, is the way that the virus started in Wuhan, to be honest. It makes no sense that this virus popped out of nowhere. It’s bulls**t.”
“From what I’ve heard is they [Pfizer scientists] are optimizing it [COVID mutation process], but they’re going slow because everyone is very cautious – obviously they don’t want to accelerate it too much,” he continued. “I think they are also just trying to do it as an exploratory thing because you obviously don’t want to advertise that you are figuring out future mutations.”
“Part of what they [Pfizer scientists] want to do is, to some extent, to try to figure out, you know, how there are all these new strains and variants that just pop up,” Walker allegedly said. “So, it’s like trying to catch them before they pop up and we can develop a vaccine prophylactically, like, for new variants. So, that’s why they like, do it controlled in a lab, where they say this is a new epitope, and so if it comes out later on in the public, we already have a vaccine working.”
Walker reportedly said that developing vaccines for future variants before they become pandemics would be a “cash cow” for Pfizer. He boasted, “COVID is going to be a cash cow for us for a while going forward.”
The undercover journalist points out that the purported experiments sound like gain-of-function experimentation. Walker is seen on video saying that the experiments are not really gain-of-function experiments, but rather “directed evolution.”
The Department of Health and Human Services defines directed evolution as: “The laboratory process by which biological entities with desired traits are created through iterative rounds of genetic diversification and library screening or selection.”
Walker also allegedly revealed that there is a “revolving door” of government officials who later become Pfizer employees.
“So, in the pharma industry, all the people who review our drugs – eventually most of them will come work for pharma companies,” Walker purportedly said. “And in the military, defense government officials eventually work for defense companies afterwards.”
Walker allegedly admitted that the revolving door is “good” for the pharmaceutical industry, but conceded that it is “bad for everybody else in America.”
When pressed as to why it was bad, Walker responded, “Because when the regulators reviewing our drugs know that once they stop regulating, they are going to work for the company, they are not going to be as hard towards the company that’s going to give them a job.”
TheBlaze asked for a comment from Pfizer and to verify Walker’s employment at the biotechnology company. At the time of publication, Pfizer had not responded to the request.
(CAUTION: Explicit language)
BREAKING: @Pfizer Exploring "Mutating" COVID-19 Virus For New Vaccines
"Don't tell anyone this…There is a risk…have to be very controlled to make sure this virus you mutate doesn't create something…the way that the virus started in Wuhan, to be honest."#DirectedEvolutionpic.twitter.com/xaRvlD5qTo
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Mike Pompeo claimed during an appearance on Fox News Channel’s “Outnumbered” that Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff of California has leaked classified information. Pompeo, who served as CIA director and then as secretary of state during former President Donald Trump’s tenure, said during his time in those roles, he knows that Schiff “leaked classified information that had been provided to him.”
Pompeo said that when information was supplied to Schiff and his staff, that information showed up in places it should not have, “with alarming regularity.”
Adam Schiff should be nowhere near classified information: Pompeo www.youtube.com
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) has rejected the appointments of Schiff and Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) to sit on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, on which they both previously served and which Schiff has previously chaired.
I have rejected the appointments of Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell for the House Intelligence Committee.
I am committed to returning the @HouseIntel Committee to one of genuine honesty and credibility that regains the trust of the American people. pic.twitter.com/ePxlbanxta
Pompeo has indicated that he is mulling the possibility of a 2024 presidential run, while Schiff has said that he will consider running for U.S. Senate if Sen. Dianne Feinstein decides to retire.
Meta announced on Wednesday that it plans to reinstate “Trump’s Facebook and Instagram accounts in the coming weeks.”
Schiff described the social media company’s move as “dangerous.”
“Trump incited an insurrection. And tried to stop the peaceful transfer of power. He’s shown no remorse. No contrition. Giving him back access to a social media platform to spread his lies and demagoguery is dangerous,” Schiff tweeted. “@facebook caved, giving him a platform to do more harm.”
Trump, who had long been expected to announce another White House run, officially announced in November that he is running for president again.
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) did not give proper oversight to EcoHealth Alliance even after it awarded the organization millions of dollars to study bat coronaviruses, a new 72-page report from the Department of Health and Human Services Office of the Inspector General found.
More than a year and a half after the OIG announced an investigation into the NIH’s funding of the Wuhan lab suspected of playing a role in the Covid-19 pandemic outbreak, the inspector general officially announced that NIH and EcoHealth Alliance failed to comply with federal research and reporting standards. That included failing to adequately monitor what U.S. money was being used for and whether that research was safe and legal.
The report did not directly address whether EcoHealth Alliance engaged in illegal and dangerous gain-of-function research, as legislators and documents have alleged, but noted that NIH repeatedly neglected to refer questionable enhanced potential pandemic pathogens (ePPPs) research to the Department of Health and Human Services.
After EcoHealth Alliance failed to submit a mandatory report on its research progress the fall before the global Covid-19 outbreak, the NIH did not mention the report’s tardiness until nearly two years later in July 2021. That was a direct violation of HHS requirements, which state the NIH must follow up with grant recipients “no later than 30 days after the established due date.”
“This oversight failure is particularly concerning because NIH had previously raised concerns with EcoHealth about the nature of the research being performed,” the inspector general’s report states.
For more than a decade, EcoHealth Alliance received taxpayer dollars to conduct dangerous high-level research on various pathogens including coronaviruses. EcoHealth Alliance often used part of its grant money, at least $1.1 million from October 2009 to May 2019, to employ the help of the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China.
The NIH attempted in April of 2020 to cut off the money pipeline from EcoHealth Alliance to the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) over fears that the lab “may have been involved with the release of the coronavirus responsible for COVID-19.” By July 2020, the NIH reinstated the grant it had previously severed under the condition that the EcoHealth Alliance ensured the WIV fixed its “facilities in China that posed serious biosafety concerns and, as a result, created health and welfare threats to the public in China and other countries.”
Because the WIV received American tax dollars as a sub-recipient for years, it was subject to certain reporting standards just like EcoHealth Alliance was. Yet, when the NIH requested an update about the WIV in November of 2021, EcoHealth Alliance said the WIV failed to turn over key documents.
“EcoHealth officials confirmed to us that WIV had not been responsive to its request to provide the scientific documentation and indicated it was unlikely to receive the requested information,” the inspector general stated in the report.
That observation confirms previous reporting, which suggested that EcoHealth Alliance stonewalled the release of lab records to the NIH after China barred investigators from inspecting WIV databases.
Mismanagement by the NIH also allowed EcoHealth to waste $89,171 of the $8 million U.S. taxpayer dollars granted to it from fiscal years 2014-2021 on “unallowable costs,” including salaries, bonuses, travel, tuition, benefits, and sub-awards to Chinese Communist Party-controlled entities such as the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., who challenged the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases’ then-Director Anthony Fauci over the NIH’s funding of gain-of-function research, tweeted that the OIG’s report “confirms what we already knew.”
“NIH failed to conduct adequate oversight of EcoHealth Alliance’s grant awards. The continued funding of EcoHealth Alliance despite its repeated noncompliance with federal regulations and policies further demonstrates the need to reform oversight of risky research paid for by the American taxpayers,” Paul said.
The White Coat Waste Project, which first documented the connection between EcoHealth Alliance and the Wuhan Institute of Virology and discovered that the NIH helped EcoHealth Alliance circumvent a federal ban on gain-of-function research, also said the report confirms that “EcoHealth Alliance shipped tax dollars to Wuhan for dangerous animal experiments that probably caused the pandemic, violated federal laws and policies and wasted tax dollars.”
“Yet, the Wuhan lab remains eligible for even more taxpayer money for animal tests and just since the pandemic began, EcoHealth has raked in at least $46 million in new federal funds from the DOD, USAID, NIH, and NSF,” Justin Goodman, the senior vice president of advocacy and public policy at White Coat Waste, said in a statement.
Despite its history of noncompliance, EcoHealth Alliance secured another $653,392 in October of 2022 to sustain more bat-based coronavirus research, but that’s just the first installment. The five-year plan involves giving EcoHealth $3.3 million by 2027.
Goodman said Congress should “defund these rogue organizations once and for all” because, “Taxpayers should not be forced to bankroll reckless white coats who waste money, break the law and place public health in peril.”
Rep. Guy Reschenthaler of Pennsylvania and Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa, both Republicans, joined together on Thursday to do just that with the reintroduction of a bill dubbed the Defund EcoHealth Alliance Act.
If passed, the legislation would not only bar American taxpayer dollars from going to EcoHealth, but it would require the U.S. Government Accountability Office to conduct a report on how much money given to EcoHealth ended up in the hands of communist China-controlled entities in the last 10 years.
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 and Fox News. Jordan graduated from Baylor University where she majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow her on Twitter @jordanboydtx.
The first question any reasonable person asks after a horrible crime is, “What could have been done to stop it?” Yet after every mass shooting, gun controllers suggest unworkable, unconstitutional, completely ineffectual ideas that target people who will never commit a crime.
After the twin mass shootings in California last week, Gov. Gavin Newsom (flanked by armed guards) told CBS News that it was long past time to institute more gun-control laws because the Second Amendment is “becoming a suicide pact.” What he didn’t mention was that California has no functioning Second Amendment. It has passed not only every law Senate Democrats are proposing in Washington, but a slew of others. Anti-gun group Giffords gives California an “A” rating, noting that the state has the “strongest gun safety laws in the nation and has been a trailblazer for gun safety reform for the past 30 years.”
California already has “universal” background checks. California has a 10-day waiting period limit for handgun purchases, a microstamping system, a personal safety test, the ability to sue gun manufacturers even if they haven’t broken any law, an age hike on the purchase of certain firearms including rifles from 18 to 21, “red flag” laws that allow police to confiscate guns without genuine due process, a ban on magazines that hold more than 10 rounds (and legislation held up in courts to confiscate those magazines), among many other restrictions. Short of letting cops smash down the doors of gun owners and take their weapons, California has a law for it. And all it’s done is leave people attending dance halls defenseless.
The day of the Monterey Park shooting, President Biden again called on Congress to pass a federal “assault weapons” ban. So-called assault weapons have been banned in California since 1989. Last year, the state passed another bill making them super-duper illegal: SB 1327. From 1989 until today, gun trends in California mirror those of the nation at large. Which is unsurprising. The Assault Weapons Ban of 1994, despite Biden constantly claiming otherwise, did nothing to alter gun violence trends. Homicide rates began to ebb nationally before the ban was instituted. When the ban expired in 2004, and the AR-15 became the most popular rifle in the country, gun violence continued to precipitously fall — by 2014, gun homicides were the same as they were in 1963 — until the appearance of Covid.
Now, America’s gun death rates have reached a 28-year high as of 2021 “after sharp increases in homicides of Black men and suicides among white men, an analysis of federal data showed,” according to The Wall Street Journal. There are likely numerous societal reasons for this change — since about 45 percent of American households had guns 10 years ago and the number is the same today — but Democrats are busy worrying about stopping gun owners from having barrel shrouds.
Not that it matters to Democrats, but the shooter at Monterey Park didn’t use an assault weapon. He used a Cobray M11 9mm semi-automatic gun — “one of the most useless handguns in existence” — which some reporters referred to as an “assault pistol.” It’s a scary looking, if antiquated gun (out of production since 1990) that, in this iteration, fires one cartridge with a single trigger squeeze like almost every other gun owned by civilians — including AR-15s. The gun was already illegal in California. As is carrying any gun into a no-gun zone. As is murder.
After the killers of Monterey Park (72 years old) and Half Moon Bay (67) struck, Biden, naturally, called on Congress to pass legislation to raise the minimum purchase age for “assault weapons” to 21. Many mass shooters are young men, but the average age of mass shooters is 35. The number of ARs used in the commission of murder in the hands of a person under 21 is a fraction of 1 percent. Like all things Democrats are pushing these days, it’s another incremental way of eliminating gun ownership that has only a tenuous connection to the events that supposedly precipitated the action.
All mass shooters obtain guns illegally, or legally before having any criminal record (or because of a mistake by the police, as was the case in Charleston and elsewhere). Most incidents are perpetrated by young men who have exhibited serious anti-social behavior. In many, if not most, cases, the shooter is already on the cops’ radar because he has threatened others, as was the case from the Parkland shooter to the Highlands Park shooter to the Half Moon shooter and many, many others. In a study of mass shootings from 2008 to 2017, the Secret Service found that “100 percent of perpetrators showed concerning behaviors, and in 77 percent of shootings, at least one person — most often a peer — knew about their plan.” The best thing we can do is uphold laws that already exist.
None of this is to argue that simply because some people ignore laws, they are unnecessary or useless. It’s to argue that laws which
almost exclusively target innocent people from practicing a constitutional right, and do nothing to stop criminals, are unnecessary and useless. The central problem in this debate is that Democrats believe civilian gun ownership itself is a plague on the nation, so it doesn’t really matter to them what gun is being banned or what law is being passed, as long as something is being “done.” Only this past summer, Congress supposedly passed the most vital gun bill in history, yet Democrats are back to acting like nothing has been done.
The other side believes that being able to protect themselves, their families, their property, and their community from criminality — and, should it descend into tyranny, the government — is a societal good. They see gun bans as autocratic and unconstitutional, and, also, largely unfeasible. And they’re right.
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. He has appeared on Fox News, C-SPAN, CNN, MSNBC, NPR, ABC World News Tonight, NBC Nightly News and radio talk shows across the country. Follow him on Twitter, @davidharsanyi.
Lots of politicians have been caught burnishing their resumes, but recently, one of our elected representatives has come under fire for telling some real whoppers. And no, I’m not talking about George Santos.
In a space of three days last fall, President Joe Biden claimed to be Puerto Rican, practice Judaism and to have lost his house in a natural disaster.
Celebrating the Jewish New Year at the White House on Sept. 30, he told Jewish leaders, “I probably went to shul more than many of you did. You all think I’m kidding.” No, he said, “I’d go to services on Saturday and on Sunday,” adding, “You all think I’m kidding. I’m not.”
Visiting hurricane-ravaged Puerto Rico the following week, he said, “I was sort of raised in the Puerto Rican community at home.”
Days later, speaking to Floridians who’d lost everything to Hurricane Ian, Biden talked about a catastrophic fire that nearly destroyed his house after lightning struck. “We didn’t lose our whole home,” he said, “but an awful lot of it.” He’d mentioned this blaze before, claiming that he “had a house burn down with my wife in it.”
Fact-checkers determined he was referring a small kitchen fire, “under control in 20 minutes,” according to contemporaneous news reports.
In a video speech to the Tree of Life Congregation in Pittsburgh three years after the October 2018 massacre there, Biden said, “I remember spending time at the … Tree of Life Synagogue.”
Just before the 2020 South Carolina primary, Biden claimed — as he has many, many, many times — “I had the great honor of being arrested … on the streets of Soweto trying to get to see [Nelson] Mandela.” So significant was this incident, Biden said, that when Mandela came to Washington, he “threw his arms around me and said, ‘I want to say thank you. … You got arrested trying to see me.’”
Biden was never arrested in South Africa for trying to see Mandela. There’s no evidence the hug ever happened, either.
Sadly, as soon as Biden clinched the presidential nomination in 2020, Democrats locked him in the basement until Election Day. Who knows how many of Biden’s lies were lost to history that year!
But he couldn’t avoid speaking in 2019.
Campaigning in New Hampshire, he told a gripping story about flying to Afghanistan as vice president to pin a Silver Star on a Navy captain who’d rappelled down a ravine to retrieve his fallen compatriot, but who didn’t want a medal because the guy had died. “This is the God’s truth,” he said. “My word as a Biden.”
Biden did manage to fight the irresistible urge to claim he was that soldier.
However, it was President Barack Obama who’d honored an Army specialist for retrieving a soldier from a ravine — and he presented him with a Congressional Medal of Honor, not a Silver Star, in a White House ceremony, not in Afghanistan. As The Washington Post put it, “In the space of three minutes, Biden got the time period, the location, the heroic act, the type of medal, the military branch and the rank of the recipient wrong, as well as his own role in the ceremony.”
In a primary debate, he said: “I come out of a Black community” and had “more people supporting me in the Black community” than his rivals.
Kamala Harris: “No, that’s not true.”
Cory Booker: “That’s not true.”
In a nationally televised climate town hall on CNN, Biden said, “I just want to be very clear to everyone here: I am committed to not raising money from fossil fuel executives, and I am not doing that.”
The next day, Biden attended a high-dollar fundraiser held by the co-founder of a natural gas company.
At a CNN/YouTube Democratic debate in June 2007, Biden said, “Let’s start telling the truth,” then revealed that he’d been “shot at” in Iraq’s Green Zone.
Turns out, a mortar round landed a few hundred yards — i.e., a few football fields — from a building Biden was in.
At a 2012 campaign stop, Biden told African Americans that Republicans are “gonna put you all back in chains.” (At least his lies are harmless exaggerations without any potential to sow discord in our society.)
Before getting to George Santos’ apparently unprecedented and unforgivable mendacity, let’s review a few more of Biden’s Greatest Hits.
Throughout his life, Biden has alleged that he “participated in sit-ins to desegregate restaurants and movie houses,” saying, “and my stomach turned upon hearing the voices of Faubus and Barnett, and my soul raged on seeing the dogs of Bull Connor.”
None of this ever happened, according to his own aides, as well as the Democratic Party’s Praetorian Guard at The New York Times.
Most famously, he bragged about being an award-winning student, leaving college with three degrees, going to law school on a “full academic scholarship,” and graduating in the top half of his class.
Back on Earth: He graduated college with one degree and was nearly expelled from law school for plagiarizing five straight pages of a published article, coming in 76th out of a class of 85.
Most bizarrely, Biden stole British Labor leader Neil Kinnock’s speech — and his autobiography. Plagiarizing Kinnock nearly word for word, Biden claimed to have been “the first in his family ever to go to a university,” then bemoaned a system that had excluded his “ancestors, who worked in the coal mines of Northeast Pennsylvania.”
Biden’s ancestors did not work in coal mines. They went to college.
The whole point of Kinnock’s speech was to denounce the British class structure — something we don’t have. (Heard of the American Revolution? Probably not: It has nothing to do with Emmett Till.)
According to Biden’s actual life story — that is, the story based on what we know to be facts — his grandfather was an executive with the American Oil Co., and his father was to the manor born. Why on Earth was Biden clenching his fist, decrying a society where he didn’t have “a platform upon which to stand”? The executive suite at American Oil isn’t a platform?
All in all, Biden gives George Santos a pretty good run for his money.
The main difference between Biden and Santos is that one is the president of the United States, whereas the other is part of a legislative body with 435 members, including some who are certifiably insane.
But while the top story on MSNBC every night is: When is Santos resigning?, Biden’s lies are lovingly indulged by the media as the “search for a connection” by “a glad-handing pol” (The Washington Post), who has “embraced storytelling” with “the factual edges shaved off to make them more powerful for audiences” (The New York Times).
Speaking of the media’s double standards, where’s the “thank you” for the GOP’s diversity outreach? Santos is a gay Latino — and that he can prove! I swear, what do we have to do to please these people?
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 Donald Trump.
(Left) A painting of Jesus at the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy in Kings Point, New York. (Right) The painting is now obscured by a white curtain. | U.S. Coast Guard/U.S. Merchant Marine Academy
A massive painting of Jesus walking on water will no longer be visible at the United States Merchant Marine Academy (USMMA) in New York after an advocacy group complained about the artwork.
In a Jan. 10 letter addressed to USSMA Superintendent Vice Admiral Joanna Nunan, Mikey Weinstein, founder of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, issued a “demand” that Nunan “expeditiously remove a massive, sectarian painting illustrating the supremacy of Jesus Christ” from the Elliot M. See Room inside Wiley Hall, which serves as an administrative building at USMMA.
According to Weinstein, MRFF is representing 18 midshipmen, faculty, staff and graduates in their appeal to the Kings Point academy. The USSMA is not under the Defense Department but rather the Department of Transportation under Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who was also copied on Weinstein’s initial email.
Calling the painting a display of “sectarian Jesus supremacy,” Weinstein noted the room in which the painting is hung is used for various administrative meetings, disciplinary hearings and other events.
“The outrageousness of that Jesus painting’s display is only further exacerbated by the fact that this room is also used regularly for USMMA Honor Code violation boards where midshipmen are literally fighting for their careers, and, often even more, as they face the shameful ignominy of potential expulsion with prejudice if found guilty of USMMA Honor Code violations,” wrote Weinstein.
Weinstein told The Christian Post his clients “quite correctly believe that the display of the ‘Jesus painting’ is totally violative of the clear time, place and manner requirements of the No Establishment Clause of the U.S. Constitution.”
“Given the utterly illicit and unconstitutional time, place and manner of its prominent display in one of the main Administration buildings at USMMA, and during absolutely mandatory attendance gatherings there, it clearly projects the sectarian supremacy of Jesus Christ in some sort of obvious ocean rescue scenario for what appears to be distressed mariners in an open boat,” Weinstein said via email.
“It’s as though USMMA is screaming that ‘Jesus Christ is the only approved solution to all of life’s difficulties.’”
Noting that his clients represent a number of different religions, including Judaism, Roman Catholicism and Protestant Christianity, Weinstein shared emails from clients, including one who wrote: “The painting of Jesus standing over an open lifeboat carrying survivors of a sunken merchant ship has hung in the Elliot M. See room for decades denigrating non-Christians. Its location in the administration building implies that the Academy officially endorses Christianity over other faiths.’
The email added: “It marginalizes non-Christian members of the Academy. In addition, the Elliot M. See room serves as the backdrop for Midshipmen Honor Boards, creating a hostile atmosphere for non-Christian midshipmen defending themselves against alleged honor violations. The painting does not ensure a diverse, equitable, or inclusive environment for non-Christian USMMA midshipmen, graduates, staff, or faculty.”
According to Weinstein, Nunan responded within hours of the initial email and acknowledged she “had already identified similar concerns with this painting, and I am taking steps to address it.”
Acknowledging the size of the painting prohibits moving it to another location, Nunan said she asked her staff to buy a curtain to place in front of the painting, which will “completely block the painting from view, but also allow those who wish to view it the opportunity to do so.”
The Vice Admiral also said she would work with the Director of the American Merchant Marine Museum to “prepare a plaque that explains the history of the painting, which will be installed near it.”
Weinstein told CP that while he would have preferred the painting be moved to another location, such as the Mariner’s Chapel, he is “satisfied” with the response and hopes the USMMA can use it as a “teachable moment.”
“We feel that the use of the curtain covering the painting will serve to create even more positive teachable moments when observers inevitably ask why it is there at all and what is underneath,” he said.
The USMMA did not respond to a request for comment by CP.
Upon assuming command of the USMMA last month, Nunan became the first woman in the Academy’s history to serve in the role of vice admiral. She spent more than 30 years in the U.S. Coast Guard, and, according to her bio, “helped spearhead efforts to expand diversity and inclusion in the Coast Guard.”
Image source: YouTube video, CBS Boston – Screenshot
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The “non-binary” son of the No. 2 Democrat in Congress has pleaded not guilty to various charges related to his apparent involvement in a recent bout of violent anti-police extremism. Jared Dowell, 23, son of House Democratic Whip Katherine Clark (D-Mass.), was arrested Jan. 21 and charged with assault and battery on a Boston police officer inflicting serious bodily injury, vandalizing a historic monument, damaging property by tagging, and resisting arrest. On Monday, he was arraigned in Boston Municipal Court and released on a $500 bond.
Dowell and his lawyers scurried out of court after he made his not-guilty plea, refusing to comment except on his preferred name and pronouns, which the court did not bother using, reported the Boston Globe.
TheBlaze previously reported that Boston police had responded to a scene of a leftist disturbance at the Parkman Bandstand Monument in the Boston Common Saturday night, where they allegedly found Democratic Whip Katherine Clark’s son vandalizing the monument.
Dowell had allegedly defaced the monument, writing “NO COP CITY” and “ACAB,” the latter of which stands for “all cops are bastards.”
Congresswoman Katherine Clark’s daughter is accused of assaulting a Boston police officer who was trying to arrest her after she allegedly defaced the Boston Common bandstand Saturday nighthttps://t.co/PYrajBRHGupic.twitter.com/1LQuCtf1gO
The monument, constructed in 1908, was also tagged “R.I.P. Tortuguita,” referencing Manuel Teran, the leftist militant who shot a Georgia State Patrol trooper last week in the gut. According to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, officers gave verbal commands to the shooter, who had been trespassing near the new police training center in DeKalb County’s South River Forest. Instead of complying, Teran reportedly fired multiple shots at officers without warning. TheBlaze previously reported that officers answered back with a chorus of gunfire, killing the leftist gunman.
In response to the gunman’s demise, the leftist website “Scenes from the Atlanta Forest,” whereon local leftists frequently coordinate and celebrate their attacks, published a post demanding retaliation.
“Consider this a call for reciprocal violence to be done to the police and their allies,” the post said. “Wherever you are, you are invited to participate in a night of rage in order to honor the memory of our fallen comrade.”
Dowell happened to be in Boston, reportedly in the company of roughly 20 other leftist thugs who were blocking traffic and making a scene. Police were, however ready for them, having been on high alert “for the possibility of an anti-law enforcement demonstration” linked to the violent extremists in Georgia.
Officers intervened to arrest the son of the Democratic whip and restore order but in the process were reportedly swarmed by other leftist violators, some of whom attempted to interfere with Dowell’s arrest.
Conservative radio talk-show host Howie Carr obtained a copy of Dowell’s offense report, which indicated that police officers approached Dowell and commanded him to stop. As one officer, a former Marine, “got close to Dowell he attempted to flee by violently flailing his arms, striking the Officer.”
“Officer Roca was observed … to be bleeding from his nose and mouth due to the initial struggle with Dowell,” said the report.
Despite Dowell’s alleged attack on the police officer and a “brief struggle,” other officers were able to place him under arrest.
Clark’s son will return to court for a pretrial hearing April 19.
Concerning her son’s arrest, Clark, who previously suggested that House Republicans were “extremists,” tweeted, “my daughter(?) was arrested in Boston, Massachusetts. I love Riley, and this is a very difficult time in the cycle of joy and pain in parenting.”
Rep. Katherine Clark’s daughter out on bail after allegedly assaulting Boston Police officer youtu.b
Washington D.C. has long had an overclassification problem.
According to Yale Law Professor Oona Hathaway, more than 50 million documents are classified every year. In fact, “we don’t know the exact number because even the government can’t keep track of it all,” Hathaway told NPR last week. Now, laws governing classified documents in private possession have become a primary vehicle to thwart political opponents.
More documents marked classified have now been found in former Vice President Mike Pence’s Indiana residence, his team announced to Congress on Tuesday. The revelation marks the latest episode in classified documents popping up in the apparently improper possession of individuals who’ve conducted state business at the highest levels of government.
Last week, a 13-hour FBI search of President Joe Biden’s Delaware residence turned up yet another trove of documents with classified markings from his tenure in public office before he was afforded total classification powers as commander-in-chief. The search by federal agents came after the president’s attorneys found secret records in several locations, including a Washington office closet and his Delaware garage.
In August, it was first former President Donald Trump who found himself in hot water when 30 plainclothes FBI agents raided the 128-room palace at Mar-a-Lago in search of classified documents. Operating under a broad warrant issued by Attorney General Merrick Garland that allowed officials to confiscate any record Trump may have come into contact with, agents took 15 boxes of material from the Florida residence. Deep-state DOJ officials then began to leak to their public relations team at The Washington Post that former President Trump was harboring nuclear secrets.
“A document describing a foreign government’s military defenses, including its nuclear capabilities, was found by FBI agents who searched former president Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence and private club last month, according to people familiar with the matter,” the Post reported, “underscoring concerns among U.S. intelligence officials about classified material stashed in the Florida property.”
Of course, the public has little to no idea what, exactly, the documents spelled out. They are classified, after all. But the constant drip of document appearances from now three potential presidential contenders showcases how laws governing classified records can be used to get rid of nearly any federal elected official. Given that a criminal conviction of Trump has remained the top item on the Democrats’ policy agenda since 2016, it’s a conspiracy to think the enforcement of the rarely prosecuted Presidential Records Act is not being pursued for the sole purpose of thwarting his 2024 campaign — that is until the dam of others’ classified documents broke.
The real scandal isn’t that the current president, his predecessor, and the last vice president were improperly harboring classified documents beyond their government tenure. The real scandal is Washington’s chronic overclassification problem, which leads to the laws governing classified records becoming weaponized to take out political opponents. It’s probably only a matter of time before classified documents appear in the possession of any former federal employee who wants to run for president, including former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, former National Security Advisor John Bolton, and former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley.
Even The Washington Post highlighted D.C.’s obsession with classifying everything way back in 1989. In classic swamp fashion, 34 years have gone by without fixing the problem. Congress did try to address the overclassification issue in 2010 with the Reducing Over-Classification Act. President Barack Obama signed the law, but lawmakers failed to define “over-classification,” rendering the legislation practically useless.
The federal government can and should keep certain information concealed from public view. It’s probably not wise to reveal details about American nuclear operations. But anyone who’s ever submitted a request for public records through the Freedom of Information Act understands Washington hates making anything public.
The Federalist is still waiting on the Department of Transportation, of all agencies, to comply with a records request that was filed in late 2021 related to Secretary Pete Buttigieg’s prolonged eight-week absence amid a supply-chain crisis. Once the agency coughed up documents as a result of a lawsuit from Protect the Public’s Trust this month, the secretary’s husband, Chasten, berated reporters for focusing on old news.
Tristan Justice is the western correspondent for The Federalist. 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.
Emails uncovered by concerned parents in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, home of the state’s third-largest school district, reveal district leaders knew they were violating state law when they locked students out of the classroom after the 2019-2020 academic year. Years later, it’s finally coming to light.
In July 2020, an email from then-Central Bucks Superintendent John Kopicki acknowledged the legal limits to online instruction for the upcoming school year.
“Hybrid options and staggered schedule options are NOT legal as of today, absent a waiver or legislative change,” the email read. No waiver from the state house ever came, but the schools shut down anyway.
At the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, state lawmakers offered schools flexibility from Pennsylvania’s 180/990/900 rule, which requires students to be in the classroom for 180 days, for 990 hours in secondary school and 900 hours in elementary school. The legislature granted districts a suspension of the requirement for the remainder of the 2019-2020 academic calendar but refused to renew the waiver over the subsequent school years. Yet the Bucks County School District continued to shut down schools throughout the next two years. Classrooms closed again and again after the 2019-2020 school year despite no legislative waiver.
A spokesman for Pennsylvania Sen. Scott Martin, who chairs the Appropriations Committee, told The Federalist schools that violated the state’s 180/990/900 rule could face a “significant financial penalty if they fail to get a waiver.”
“If there are violations of [the] 990 rule, that can influence whether schools get their reimbursements from the state,” the spokesman said.
On whether Central Bucks County violated the rule, Martin’s office deferred to the state Department of Education. The department did not respond to The Federalist’s inquiries, leaving the possibility for substantive accountability in doubt two years later.
The Central Bucks School District also did not respond to The Federalist’s request for comment.
“It was never legal to shut schools down,” Jamie Walker, a mom of three children in Bucks County Schools told The Federalist. “It was always illegal. They knew it.”
The repeat closures in the Central Bucks School District are just the tip of the iceberg in a series of battles Walker and a group of upset parents have waged with administrators since 2020. Parents have protested the closures, accompanied by seemingly endless mask protocols and six-foot social distancing, which is an impractical standard that forced classroom shutdowns.
In June 2020, David Damsker, the director of the Bucks County Health Department, issued guidance on reopening classrooms for the fall that included three-foot distancing and an optional mask policy, given the difficulty of keeping facial coverings on children. The teachers unions, however, immediately launched an operation to discredit Damsker and demanded a six-foot distancing policy that forced students into virtual learning.
In July 2020, Pennsylvania State Education Association (PSEA) Mideastern Region President Bill Senavaitis published an op-ed in a local paper headlined, “David Damsker’s remarks about 3-foot social distancing in schools are harmful.”
“The Bucks County Department of Health should revise their school reopening guidelines to align with those made by the CDC and allow our students and staff at least the same level of basic prevention and protection as our colleagues across the state and country,” Senavaitis wrote. “Now is not the time to fall short on protecting our students and staff. I urge educators, parents, and community members to contact Dr. Damsker’s office and ask him to revise his guidance to support the health of all individuals in our public schools.”
By August, PSEA President Rich Askey sent a letter to Bucks County Commissioners and urged officials to dismiss Damsker’s three-foot distancing recommendation.
“In addition to the health risks that 3 feet of social distance will undoubtedly cause, your guidance has caused confusion in Bucks County’s schools,” Askey wrote. “This is certainly understandable, since the county guidance differs from recommendations issued by the state departments of Health and Education. The state has clearly recommended 6 feet of social distance in school.”
Additionally, Askey said he “repeatedly urged” the state’s Democrat leaders to mandate school reopening rules rather than issue guidance that could be left up to the discretion of local health authorities.
8/6/2020, Askey wrote to the Bucks County Commissioners saying, “One of the key reasons I continue to do this is because, without state directives, county governments like yours as well as many school districts are simply ignoring the state guidance and making their own rules.” pic.twitter.com/G99jSeinkC
State bureaucrats have responded to parent pushback over strict Covid protocols by stonewalling requests for public records and even suing those who dare request them.
Last summer, Bucks County filed lawsuits against Walker and Megan Brock to deny the parents access to internal documents that shed light on the school reopening process.
“Brock, Walker, and their supporters have become thorns in the side of local leaders, filing dozens of records requests — Right-to-Know requests in Pennsylvania — over the last year and speaking out passionately at government meetings,” National Review reported. “At one point, the county blocked Brock from calling any government telephone lines. Brock said that was unwarranted and unacceptable. The county said it was an accident.”
Despite parents’ activism, the government schools have escaped accountability for years over their illegal Covid protocols. The lack of checks and balances creates a pandora’s box of negative possibilities: How else could schools and teachers’ unions harm children that nobody will ever find out about, or not be able to confirm until years later?
Tristan Justice is the western correspondent for The Federalist. 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.
House GOP Conference Chair Elise Stefanik of New York pledged that aggressive oversight of executive agencies to rid the federal government of overt corruption will be a top priority for Republicans in the new Congress. On Tuesday, Stefanik became one of a dozen Republican lawmakers appointed by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy to serve on the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government.
In an exclusive interview with The Federalist on Wednesday morning, Stefanik characterized the select panel, which was established under the Judiciary Committee led by Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, as House Republicans’ primary vehicle for pursuing accountability for the Biden administration’s abuses.
“A top priority for House Republicans is rooting out the weaponization of the federal government against everyday Americans,” said Stefanik. The No. 3 lawmaker in GOP leadership highlighted the nation’s top intelligence agencies as the committee’s primary focus.
“The FBI and DOJ are ripe for oversight, and they deserve oversight,” she said, while also pledging that investigations would come for the Internal Revenue Service and National Institutes of Health. Both agencies “have run rampant in targeting Americans,” Stefanik said, adding that Congress has a “constitutional duty” to conduct meaningful oversight.
“Democrats failed to do that when we were in one-party rule,” she added.
Whom the committee plans to subpoena remains an open question. “We’re going to make that decision as a select committee,” Stefanik said.
Other prominent members of the Republican conference named to the panel include Kentucky Congressman Thomas Massie and Wyoming Rep. Harriet Hageman. In August, Hageman successfully toppled three-term incumbent Liz Cheney in the Wyoming Republican primary by 37 points. Cheney, who ran House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s Select Committee on Jan. 6 as vice chair, relied on Democrats switching parties to blunt a loss that might have otherwise been near unanimous among the state’s Republicans.
McCarthy endorsed Hageman in the race two years after Cheney endorsed a primary challenge to Massie from her perch in leadership. In the spring of 2021, House Republicans replaced Cheney with Stefanik as GOP conference chair.
Stefanik plans to take a lead role on the new panel probing the weaponization of the federal government as she did during the first impeachment saga of former President Donald Trump in 2019.
“The government has the responsibility to serve the American people, not go after them,” she said.
While Pelosi barred McCarthy’s appointments to the Select Committee on Jan. 6, Stefanik said the new House speaker was likely to seat Democrats on the probe. No minority appointments, however, have been made so far.
On Tuesday night, McCarthy kept his word to bar California Democrat Reps. Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell from the House Intelligence Committee. McCarthy has also pledged to kick Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar off the Foreign Affairs Committee. Stefanik told The Federalist that while it was ultimately the speaker’s choice to approve Democrat appointments to the Select Committee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, neither Schiff, Swalwell, nor Omar would likely be admitted to the panel.
McCarthy explained to reporters on Capitol Hill Tuesday night that the trio of lawmakers would still serve on committees but none related to the nation’s top secrets.
“They’ll serve on committees,” McCarthy said, “but they will not serve on a place that has national security relevance because integrity matters to me.”
Tristan Justice is the western correspondent for The Federalist. 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.
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 Donald Trump.
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Dr. Jordan Peterson announced in May 2021 that he would be getting the COVID-19 vaccine, citing insufficient antibody levels. The esteemed psychologist indicated Thursday he had been fooled and has since made clear that, notwithstanding demands by both the Biden administration and Canada’s Trudeau government, he will not be fooled again.
Peterson was met with significant backlash in 2021, after he tweeted, “Off to be vaccinated today. Despite having Covid last May, my antibody levels appeared insufficient to prevent re-infection. Hope Ontario opens up soon.”
Off to be vaccinated today. Despite having Covid last May, my antibody levels appeared insufficient to prevent re-infection. Hope Ontario opens up soon.
— Dr Jordan B Peterson (@jordanbpeterson) May 13, 2021
Despite having had contracted COVID-19 in 2020, the psychologist’s immune system had likely been dealt a blow by his recent recovery from a severe case of pneumonia and the “incredibly grueling” drug detox treatment for benzodiazepine reliance he received abroad.
Indy100 noted at the time of this admission that some of his fans and followers online expressed concern over his decision to get the COVID-19 vaccine and potential long-term health risks.
Peterson suggested Thursday that he “got vaccinated because I naively believed the woke force-mongers would leave me the hell alone thereafter. Fool me once….”
The psychologist was responding to a tweet from Israeli artificial intelligence researcher Eli David that said, “I got Covid shots in 2021, because I believed the claimed clinical trial results, and trusted the FDA. But looking at mountains of evidence since, I no longer think I made the right decision. These shots are much more dangerous and much less effective than claimed.”
I got vaccinated because I naively believed the woke force-mongers would leave me the hell alone thereafter. Fool me once…. https://t.co/whVCF3hR6m
Peterson told BlazeTV host Dave Rubin of “The Rubin Report” in November 2021: “I got vaccinated. And people took me to task for that. And I thought, ‘All right, I’ll get the damn vaccine.’ Here’s the deal, guys: I’ll get the vaccine, you f***ing leave me alone!” He underscored that the vaccine didn’t work to that end. The Trudeau government still required that he be tested for COVID-19 when exercising his mobility rights to leave and return to his home nation.
In a tweet Saturday — responding to a notice from Canadian state media that the country’s chief public health officer Theresa Tam was once again pushing booster shots — Peterson wrote, “How about ‘over my dead body.'” Tam and the Trudeau government have been pushing the bivalent booster shot on Canadians, many of whom have yet to get it since it was made available last fall.
Tam said Friday, “It’s still too early to stop taking the personal protective measures that have helped us weather the COVID storm.”
The Biden administration is similarly pushing boosters on the general public.
The Associated Press reported that the Food and Drug Administration has recently proposed rolling out COVID-19 boosters once a year, every year, for adults and children. While 80% of Americans have received at least one dose, only 16% cared to get the latest boosters.
Allysia Finley, writing in the Wall Street Journal, noted over the weekend that “the public-health establishment’s praise for the bivalent shots shouldn’t come as a surprise. Federal agencies took the unprecedented step of ordering vaccine makers to produce them and recommending them without data supporting their safety or efficacy.”
Finley appeared to justify the increasing reluctance of people like Peterson, stating, “Three scientific problems have arisen. First, the virus is evolving much faster than the vaccines can be updated. Second, vaccines have hard-wired our immune systems to respond to the original Wuhan strain, so we churn out fewer antibodies that neutralize variants targeted by updated vaccines.”
“Third, antibodies rapidly wane after a few months,” she added.
Peterson’s late rejection of the booster regime comes after he admitted on Dec. 19, “It’s worse than I thought. I trusted the vaccine process more than I should have. I thought the lockdowns and masks were a terrible idea but I still thought we could rely on public health and science.”
Notwithstanding this trust, now evidently depleted, Peterson had expressed skepticism in 2021, stating that “Covid is not going away. it will mutate, indefinitely, sped along in some senses by the vaccines themselves. And when is it a sufficiently ‘new variant’ to panic? How about when pharmaceutical company shares drop?”
I'm in Nashville. No masks. No mandates. Freedom. Music. Joy. Covid is not going away. it will mutate, indefinitely, sped along in some senses by the vaccines themselves. And when is it a sufficiently "new variant" to panic? How about when pharmaceutical company shares drop? https://t.co/i5WfrxmGRB
The Daily Mail reported that Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla personally earned $50 million in compensation across 2021 and 2022 and that Pfizer’s has revenue tripled to over $100 billion since the start of the pandemic. Newsweek indicated that Moderna earned $12.2 billion in profit in 2021, mostly from its vaccine production. The company had not been able to turn a profit before 2021. According to the company’s earnings report released in February 2022, its “total revenue was $18.5 billion for the full year 2021, compared to $803 million in 2020.” As for Johnson & Johnson: U.S. News reported that sinking COVID-19 vaccine sales have recently hurt its revenue.
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A British Army veteran was confronted by police for standing silently near an abortion clinic in Bournemouth, England. The man’s apparent crime: He was silently praying for his murdered son.
Adam Smith-Connor of Southampton is the second Briton in recent months to have been arrested, not for speech or actions, but for silent prayer — for the thoughts in his head.
Censoring silence
Smith-Connor told the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) UK, a faith-based freedom advocacy group, that “22 years ago, I drove an ex-girlfriend to a facility where I paid for her to have an abortion. Many years later, I came to realize what I had done and it has been a source of great grief to me in my life.”
“I now pray for my son and to God for forgiveness,” said Smith-Connor, adding, “I would never have imagined being in a position to risk a criminal record for praying silently.”
Smith-Connor approached a British Pregnancy Advisor Service abattoir in the English county of Dorset on Nov. 24 to pray “for my son Jacob, for other babies who have lost their lives to abortion, for their grieving families, and for abortion clinic staff.” The BPAS is the leading provider of abortions in the United Kingdom and boasts on its website that one in three U.K. women will “have an abortion by the time they are 45 years old.”
The National Catholic Register reported that Smith-Connor was standing silently with his back to the facility to respect the privacy of staff and visitors, when a pair of officers confronted him, pressing him on what he was doing and why. Footage of the incident shows one of the officers ask, “What is the nature of your prayer today?”
Smith-Connor responds, “What is the nature of my prayer? I’m praying for my son.”
The female officer notes that that there is “a clause within the Public Space Protection Order around prayer and around disapproval around the activities at the clinic here.”
The Scotsman reported that in October, the abattoir in Bournemouth became the fifth in the country to get a PSPO. Accordingly, in the area around the facility, various activities such as protests are verboten. Those found in violation could incur a fine of £100 ($123.65 USD) or face a conviction at a magistrates court. Among the things that are forbidden in such a buffer zone are protests via “graphic, verbal or written means” and “holding vigils where members audible pray, recite Scripture, genuflect, sprinkle holy water on the ground or cross themselves if they perceive a service-user is passing by.”
Concerning the establishment of the no-free speech zone in Bournemouth, Councilor Bobbie Dove stated, “Whilst we acknowledge the right of anyone to conduct a peaceful protest, we had to balance this against the distress caused or likely to be caused, and the detrimental impact of behaviours experienced by those accessing medical services or doing their jobs.”
Having clarified that Smith-Connor was in the buffer zone, the female officer can be heard in the video attempting to establish whether Smith-Connor’s silent prayer may have had something to do with the abattoir.
In response to Smith-Connor’s admission that he is silently praying for his dead son, the officer says, “I’m sorry for your loss. But ultimately, I have to go along with the guidelines of the Public Space Protection Order, to say that we are in the belief that therefore you are in breach of clause 4a, which says about prayer, and also acts of disapproval around the activities at the clinic.”
“What is the nature of your prayer?” authorities interrogate army veteran youtu.be
The ADF UK reported that Smith-Connor was ultimately fined on the basis of the PSPO. He is now challenging the resultant council fine, stating, “This cannot be right in a country that values freedom.”
“Freedom of thought has to be one of the most fundamental freedoms that any human being can have,” he said. “I spent 20 years in the military including spending time in Afghanistan defending the very principle of freedom.”
“I’m not a criminal,” Smith-Connor emphasized. “I am a husband. I am a father. I’m a military veteran and I’m a Christian. But I have been censored.”
TheBlaze previously reported that a woman was similarly arrested by police over her silent prayer on Dec. 6 in Birmingham, England. Isabel Vaughan-Spruce was charged with breaching a PSPO.
“Nobody should be arrested for the thoughts they have in their own mind. The arrest and charge appears to be premised entirely on her admission that she was praying internally,” Jeremiah Igunnubole, Spruce’s legal representative, said in a statement. “The clinic was closed and she was standing, in a public space, without once engaging anyone. As a public space, she was not banned from being present there.”
Igunnubole noted that in Adam’s case, he “could now face prosecution for holding thoughts, and lifting those thoughts to God in prayer, within a censorship zone..”
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The Department of Justice unsealed twin indictments on Monday against Charles McGonigal, a former FBI section chief involved in the decision to launch the Crossfire Hurricane investigation against then-Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.
Here are six takeaways from yesterday’s news.
1. McGonigal Charged with Conspiring with Russian Interpreter to Launder Money — and More.
Monday morning brought breaking news that the U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York had unsealed a five-count indictment that charged McGonigal and Sergey Shestakov with violating the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, or IEEPA, and with conspiring to launder money. Prosecutors also charged Shestakov with lying to the FBI.
McGonigal, as the indictment explained, was previously a “senior official” in the FBI, having been employed by the bureau from 1996 to 2018, and working in Russian counterintelligence, organized crime matters, and counter-espionage. From 2016 until his retirement in 2018, McGonigal was the special agent in charge of the Counterintelligence Division of the FBI’s New York Field Office, a role in which he supervised and investigated Russian oligarchs, according to the indictment.
Shestakov, for his part, is described as a “former Soviet and Russian diplomat,” who was in that role from 1979 until his retirement in 1993. The press release announcing the charges notes that Shestakov is now a U.S. citizen, and he has “more recently served as an interpreter for United States federal courts and prosecutors.”
The indictment charged that McGonigal and Shestakov violated the sanctions imposed by the United States on Oleg Deripaska, a Russian oligarch, in violation of the IEEPA. Specifically, the indictment alleged the duo, in or about 2021, “agreed to and did investigate a rival oligarch of Deripaska in return for concealed payment from Deripaska.”
According to Monday’s press release, McGonigal and Shestakov negotiated with a representative of Deripaska, identified as Agent-1 in the indictment, “to conceal Deripaska’s involvement” in the relationship “by, among other means, not directly naming Deripaska in electronic communications,” using instead various nicknames, such as “the big guy.” McGonigal, Shestakov, and Deripaska also allegedly used “shell companies,” to hide the payments coming from Deripaska.
McGonigal allegedly first met Deripaska’s representative, Agent-1, while still employed by the FBI, but then in the spring of 2021, after McGonigal had retired from the bureau, he was allegedly solicited to work directly for Deripaska. Specifically, the indictment charged that Deripaska hired McGonigal to investigate a second Russian oligarch with whom Deripaska had an ongoing dispute over control of a Russian corporation. In exchange, Deripaska allegedly agreed to pay the partners $51,280, followed by monthly payments of $41,790, although the payments were made to a New Jersey corporation, which then transferred the funds to McGonigal and Shestakov.
The activities among McGonigal, Shestakov, and Deripaska’s intermediaries “largely” ceased, according to the indictment, upon the FBI executing search warrants and seizing McGonigal and Shestakov’s electronic devices on Nov. 21, 2021. Shortly before the FBI executed the search warrant, Shestakov allegedly lied to the FBI about his relationship with McGonigal, which formed the basis of the false statement charge against Shestakov.
2. McGonigal Is in More McTrouble
If the indictment in the Southern District of New York were not enough to shake McGonigal’s world, an hour later the Department of Justice released a second press release announcing the unsealing of a second indictment in the District of Columbia. This indictment charged McGonigal with making multiple false statements, concealing material facts, and falsifying records or documents — nine counts in total.
Underlying the nine criminal counts were allegations that McGonigal failed to accurately complete financial disclosure reports, which McGonigal was required to do on an annual basis, and failed to accurately report unofficial foreign travel and ongoing professional or official contracts with foreign nationals.
The accusations are related to McGonigal’s alleged failure to accurately report his financial situation, connections with foreign nationals, and his relationship with several unnamed individuals. Those individuals are identified as Persons A, B, C, and D, with McGonigal receiving large cash payments in exchange for what appear to be questionable “favors.”
For instance, the indictment described Person A as a naturalized U.S. citizen who was born in Albania and who had previously worked for the Albanian intelligence agency. It then alleged McGonigal “hid aspects of his relationship with Person A,” including “that he had accepted more than $225,000 from Person A, had traveled to Europe with Person A, and met numerous foreign nationals through Person A.”
It was McGonigal, according to the indictment, who approached Person A with the money-making scheme, when “no later than August, 2017,” he “inquired as to whether Person A could provide money to him.” Then on Sept. 7, 2017, Person A allegedly indicated he “was working on the money.” Thereafter, McGonigal traveled with Person A to Albania where he allegedly lobbied the Albanian prime minister on behalf of Person A.
Over the next several months, McGonigal allegedly received three cash payments from Person A, ranging from approximately $65,000 to $80,000 each time. The indictment further charged that “McGonigal caused the FBI-NY to open a criminal investigation of a U.S. citizen in which Person A would serve as a confidential human source.”
Specifically, on Nov. 25, 2017, McGonigal allegedly informed a federal prosecutor of “a potential new criminal investigation involving a U.S. citizen who had registered to perform lobbying work in the United States on behalf of an Albanian political party different from the one in which the Prime Minister was a member.” Then on Feb. 26, 2018, the FBI office “formally opened a criminal investigation focused on the ‘U.S. citizen lobbyist’ at defendant McGonigal’s request and upon his guidance.”
The indictment suggests McGonigal opened the investigation into “the U.S. citizen lobbyist” to further his monetary relationship with Person A and others, with the allegations stressing that McGonigal remained in communication with the prime minister after Person A arranged for them to meet in September of 2017. Person A and Person B, the latter identified in the indictment as a former senior Albanian government official and informal adviser to the Albanian prime minister, both then assisted the FBI in the investigation of “the U.S. citizen lobbyist.”
Elsewhere, the indictment charged that McGonigal attempted to arrange a meeting with Persons C and D and U.S. government authorities to benefit from the unnamed Person A. Among other things, the indictment claimed that McGonigal proposed Person D pay Person A’s company $500,000 in exchange for the scheduling of a meeting with a representative from the U.S. delegation to the United Nations. McGonigal then worked to coordinate the meeting, according to the charges.
3. The Shockwaves of This Latest FBI Scandal Hit Spygate
The two indictments alone represent another huge scandal to the FBI: McGonigal was no low-level agent but rather a special agent in charge of the Counterintelligence Division for the New York Field Office. And although McGonigal retired in 2018, some of his allegedly criminal conduct took place while still in that position and allegedly involved the launching of an investigation of a U.S. citizen who was lobbying for a political opponent of one of McGonigal’s foreign contacts.
In isolation, yesterday’s news is a body blow to the bureau, which already has two black eyes from the last seven years of scandals. But the New York indictment of McGonigal reverberates more directly to the SpyGate scandal and specifically the failure of the DOJ to pursue Christopher Steele for his own work for Deripaska.
The inspector general’s report on FISA abuse concluded that “Steele performed work for Russian Oligarch 1’s attorney on Russian Oligarch 1’s litigation matters,” with Deripaska the generically named “Oligarch 1.” Steele, the OIG report continued, “passed information to Department attorney Bruce Ohr advocating on behalf of one of Russian Oligarch 1’s companies regarding U.S. sanctions.” The report further found that Ohr and Steele’s communications concerning Deripaska occurred “in 2016 during the time period before and after Steele was terminated as a [confidential human source].”
Additionally, the OIG report connected that “Ohr said that he understood Steele was ‘angling’ for Ohr to assist him with his clients’ issues,” and that “Ohr stated that Steele was hoping that Ohr would intercede on his behalf with the Department attorney handling a matter involving a European company.”
Steele had reportedly also previously worked for Deripaska’s London-based attorney Paul Hauser, and Steele “appeared to lobby on behalf of Deripaska through a D.C.-based attorney, Adam Waldman.” Steele, however, never registered as a lobbyist under the Foreign Agent Registration Act, or “FARA.”
Yet Steele has never been charged with violating FARA. Why?
While this question has been asked again and again, the federal charges against McGonigal for his work on Deripaska’s behalf bring this question to the forefront again.
4. Speaking of Deripaska, There’s Another SpyGate Scandal Unresolved
The raising of Deripaska’s name in yesterday’s indictment also offers the chance to revisit another SpyGate scandal yet unresolved — a lesser noticed one buried in the hundreds of pages of the inspector general’s report on FISA abuse.
As I previously detailed, the IG report noted that on Dec. 7, 2016, Bruce Ohr called an interagency meeting to discuss Deripaska. During that meeting, Ohr apparently suggested trying to work with Deripaska, and later told a subordinate that the basis for the suggestion was that “Steele provided information that the Trump campaign had been corrupted by the Russians,” and that the corruption went all the way to President-elect Trump. So Ohr apparently suggested cutting a deal with a Russian oligarch based on the fake Steele dossier.
It also appears that agents considered cutting a deal with Deripaska to possibly ensnare Paul Manafort, with the end goal being to take down Trump — another startling possibility that would reveal our FBI viewing Trump as worse than the Russian oligarch.
To date, little has been explored of possible efforts by the DOJ or FBI to go easy on Deripaska for the great goal of getting Trump. But maybe the renewed focus on Deripaska will resurrect these overlooked details.
5. McGonigal’s Role in Crossfire Hurricane Raises Huge Red Flags
The charges against McGonigal also raise concerns about his role in the decision to launch Crossfire Hurricane.
In his congressional testimony, FBI Agent Jonathan Moffa testified that from July 28 to July 31 of 2016, officials in FBI headquarters discussed whether to open a counterintelligence investigation on Trump, purportedly based on information provided by a “friendly foreign government.” That information consisted of an Australian diplomat telling his American counterpart that Trump’s volunteer campaign adviser George Papadopoulos had suggested the Russians had dirt on Hillary Clinton. In explaining how he had learned of the discussions over whether to open the investigation that became known as Crossfire Hurricane, Moffa testified he had received an email from McGonigal, the then-section chief in FBI headquarters, that contained the reporting from the friendly foreign government.
After McGonigal helped decide to launch the Crossfire Hurricane investigation into the Trump campaign, FBI Director James Comey named him “the special agent in charge of the Counterintelligence Division for the New York Field Office” in October of 2016. In that position, McGonigal stayed engaged in aspects of the investigation, with his “team” questioning Carter Page in March of 2017. McGonigal would later also express concerns about the Page FISA leaking after a briefing to the House Intel Committee, and sure enough, a few weeks later the story leaked.
Given that if the allegations in the indictments are true, McGonigal has proven himself willing to be bought, his involvement in Crossfire Hurricane is extremely troubling.
6. A New Life for Durham
While McGonigal’s involvement in the Crossfire Hurricane investigation raises serious concerns, it also provides one final chance to learn the depth of the SpyGate scandal. With McGonigal facing serious federal criminal charges in two different districts, the incentive for him to seek a deal with the government is high. Given his involvement in the decision to launch Crossfire Hurricane and his later involvement in at least portions of the investigation, he may just have something to offer Special Counsel John Durham.
And McGonigal may have just the attorney to cut that deal: Seth DuCharme. DuCharme is listed as McGonigal’s attorney of record in court filings, and emailsreleased pursuant to FOIA requests show DuCharme previously worked for Durham.
Whether McGonigal has anything of value to Durham, however, remains to be seen.
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.
Long before classified and potentially compromising documents were discovered in President Joe Biden’s “think tank” office and Wilmington home and garage, the Democrat’s actions posed a threat to U.S. national security. The discovery of even more top secret documents dating back to Biden’s time as vice president and senator sparked widespread concerns that the current president hid material that put U.S. national security at risk, potentially for decades.
Republicans worried — and even partisan hacks such as Democrat Rep. Adam Schiff conceded — that Biden’s harboring of classified documents in high-traffic, unsecured areas could have put Americans or the U.S. government at risk.
“Is it possible that national security was jeopardized here as many, including you, raised that possibility with the Mar-a-Lago documents?” ABC’s “This Week” co-anchor Jonathan Karl asked.
“I don’t think we can exclude the possibility without knowing more of the facts,” the disgraced former chair of the House Intelligence Committee replied.
It seems logical to investigate Biden’s recent scandal to ensure he didn’t compromise any sensitive material. But the truth is, he opened up the U.S. to a myriad of national security crises, abuses, and disasters long before news broke of his document scandal. Since taking office, Biden, who is charged with ensuring the national security of the U.S., has put Americans and their security at risk countless times.
By openly pursuing a policy of escalation in the U.S.-funded proxy war against Russia in Ukraine, Biden and his administration have significantly increased the threat of nuclear war. A conflict that only ends on Ukraine’s terms and might result in a radioactive third world war compromises Americans’ safety and tax dollars.
It also leaves countries like Taiwan vulnerable to communist China’s hegemonic operations. While China stockpiled hundreds of nuclear warheads and prepared to expand its influence, Biden was further emboldening his country’s No. 1 foreign threat. First, he did business with the Chinese gas giant with ties to his son. Then Biden pushed the Saudis into an amicable relationship with the Eastern communist government.
Speaking of the Middle East, it was Biden’s botched Afghanistan withdrawal that sent tens of thousands of Afghan refugees into U.S. cities without proper screening, vetting, and inspection. This lapse in security resulted in two known security risks and dozens more evacuees tainted by “derogatory information” entering the country unmonitored. Domestically, Biden and the same agency that failed to vet Afghan refugees jeopardized U.S. national security by escorting in the worst illegal immigration influx in recorded U.S. history and then doing nothing to fix it. Under Biden’s watch, more than 100 potential terrorists and hundreds more criminals crossed the U.S.-Mexico border illegally.
Even dating back to his time as vice president, Biden sacrificed national security for profit by keeping his son Hunter Biden close. Hunter didn’t just exchange access to his father for cash to fund the family’s lavish lifestyle, he was paid by oligarchs and businessmen in countries that have a vested interest in meddling with U.S. affairs. That’s likely why the inexperienced Hunter was handed a lucrative position at a prominent Ukrainian energy company at the same time his father took the lead on Ukraine policy for the Obama administration.
At one point, Biden used a non-government email to share official White House business with Hunter, a civilian who shouldn’t have had access to sensitive material. Republican senators’ attempts to investigate the emails and the role they may have played in enriching the Biden family business were ignored.
Biden’s willingness to share delicate information with his son, whose own documents stored on an abandoned laptop likely pose a serious threat to the national security of the United States, is more than problematic. Combine that with Biden’s knowledge of and involvement in Hunter’s business with foreign oligarchs, and you have a long list of foreign entanglements and finances that could severely hamper the elder Biden’s ability to put American interests first.
If early reports are correct in noting that some of the recovered Biden documents included “US intelligence memos and briefing materials that covered topics including Ukraine, Iran and the United Kingdom,” Biden’s information cache does warrant investigation and transparency. But don’t be fooled into thinking this is the first time Biden has sacrificed U.S. national security to protect his personal interests, preserve the Biden family business, and advance his radical agenda.
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 and Fox News. Jordan graduated from Baylor University where she majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow her on Twitter @jordanboydtx.
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American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
Bible Gateway
The Bible Gateway is a tool for reading and researching scripture online — all in the language or translation of your choice! It provides advanced searching capabilities, which allow readers to find and compare particular passages in scripture based on
What Did You Say? 
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