On Aug. 25, the California Air Resources Board, the state’s air quality regulator, announced a ban on the sales of new gasoline- and diesel-powered vehicles by 2035. Less than a week later, a heat wave threatened California with seven days of power shortages. So, the state’s grid operator asked electric vehicle owners not to recharge when they come home from work. This is all a painful part of the energy transition, we are told — needed to save the planet.
In its effort to wean itself off fossil fuels, California has found a willing and enthusiastic partner in the People’s Republic of China. Most batteries, solar panels, and wind turbines that make California’s green dreams possible are made in China. California leaders — from former Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to former Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown, and current Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom — have traveled to China to tout their green cooperation with Red China.
The push for electric vehicles (EVs) by California and China raises an intriguing question: Are both sides really weaning themselves off fossil fuels to save the planet and reduce pollution, or might there be an entirely different intention — at least for China?
U.S. climate czar John Kerry, a former senator, former secretary of state, and the Democratic nominee for president in 2004, epitomized American elite opinion when he said on Aug. 30 that China has “generally speaking, outperformed its (climate) commitments” and that the U.S. and China can make a difference for the world by “working together.”
When policymakers and strategists erroneously ascribe to others the same motives that they have themselves, it is called the Mirror-Image Fallacy. Opponents in warfare seek to deceive — the best deception plans are those that show the enemy what the enemy wants to believe. Mirror-Image Fallacy and deception plans can work hand-in-glove.
If China was truly going all-in on EVs to reduce pollution and curb its greenhouse gas emissions, one would expect to see that in its energy consumption profile. Instead, we see something different. Yes, China has been adding wind, solar, and nuclear power, but coal use is also increasing.
From 2010 to 2020, the amount of electricity produced by coal in China rose by 57 percent to 4,775 terawatt hours. From 2010 to 2021 — the latest year available and 2020 having been depressed by the response to Covid-19 — American coal use to generate electricity declined by 52 percent to 899 terawatt hours. U.S. coal power peaked in 2007. China surpassed U.S. coal use in 2006 and never looked back. Today, China generates more than five times the electricity from coal than the U.S., with construction underway or planned in China to build the equivalent of more than the entire operating U.S. coal fleet. By this one action alone, China will wipe out all projected U.S. reductions in greenhouse gas emissions — and then some.
Last year, China consumed 54 percent of the world’s coal. This is the main reason that China emits more greenhouse gasses than all the world’s developed nations combined — which shouldn’t be a shock given that America, Western Europe, and Japan outsourced much of their manufacturing to China over the past 20 years.
Apologists for China’s one-party communist government often cite the fact that China is still a developing nation, with about 200 million Chinese living on $5.50 a day as recently as 2018. It takes energy to be prosperous and prosperous people use energy — lots of it — for cars, air conditioning, heat, air travel, and the internet. Prosperous people, and those who expect to be, don’t typically try to overthrow their governments, either. For the Chinese Communist Party, this is key.
While the Western elite vanguard of the war against climate change sees greenhouse gas emissions as the singular existential threat, the Chinese Communist Party sees greenhouse gas emissions as the necessary byproduct of wealth, power, military might — and compliant subjects.
Were China’s leaders interested in growing their economy while improving air quality and holding the line on carbon dioxide emissions, they’d turn from coal to natural gas. If China expected to be an honest participant in the post-World War II liberal order, then it would have no qualms about increasing its dependence on natural gas.
But China has scant natural gas reserves, and the nearest large exporter, Russia, has built most of its pipeline capacity to serve Europe — which it is now cutting off, showing the danger of relying on foreign suppliers. Other major exporters in the Pacific include the U.S., Australia, and Indonesia, but China’s aggressive foreign policies have alienated these nations. Qatar has significantly increased its liquified natural gas exports to China, but these shipments are vulnerable to interdiction in the event of a conflict — it’s doubtful that much in the way of Chinese imports would make it past the Straits of Malacca.
This last point leads to a final, stunning, and very troubling conclusion. For years, strategists have assumed that China would never start a conflict that would deliberately involve America as an enemy because China imports some 72 percent of its oil, with about 85 percent of that imported oil transiting the Straits of Malacca.
But what if our policy experts have gotten China’s energy strategy all wrong? What if their efforts to reduce their reliance on oil had nothing to do with the environment and everything to do with energy security — with being able to fight a war indefinitely while being blockaded?
In 2019, 45 percent of the oil used in the U.S. was refined into gasoline for cars. Another 29 percent was made into diesel and jet fuel — applications less immediately replaceable by batteries since hydrocarbon fuels have about 100 times the energy density of lithium-ion batteries — one of the reasons why long-haul trucking and commercial jets aren’t likely to be electric anytime soon.
China is well into a program to go electric with respect to passenger vehicles. In China, this practically means that EVs are mostly coal-powered. That still leaves more oil demand than China’s modest domestic oil production can handle, risking the depletion of China’s reputed billion-barrel strategic petroleum reserve in 200 days or so.
Of course, with the onset of Covid-19, China perfected complete control of its population, shutting down travel at will and confining people to their homes. But a war can’t be won on lockdown, and people get restless. Here’s where China’s hidden ace in the hole comes in: coal gasification.
With a technology that matured in the 1920s, Germany under Hitler invested heavily in coal gasification to make gasoline and other fuels — Germany has a lot of coal and very little oil. On the eve of war in 1938, Germany produced just under 10 percent of its oil needs from domestic crude while importing 60 percent from overseas and about 8 percent from overland routes within Europe. The remaining 20 percent of Germany’s need was answered by converting coal to liquid fuels. By 1943, German synthetic fuel production had more than tripled to 42 million barrels annually.
In the 1940s, German synthetic oil was up to 20 times more costly than abundant American crude oil. But wartime necessities required its production. Today, deriving synthetic fuel from coal is about half of the cost of oil at $90 a barrel — but the process to manufacture it produces about double the greenhouse gas emissions by simply refining crude oil into fuels. Simply put, it’s cost-effective but bad for the climate — and China is investing heavily in it to reduce its reliance on imported oil.
A holistic look at China’s energy sector indicates a nation concerned only with energy security and not at all concerned with climate change. That has grave consequences for America’s ability to deter China from an ambitious campaign of military aggression.
Chuck DeVore is Chief National Initiatives Officer at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a former California legislator, special assistant for foreign affairs in the Reagan-era Pentagon, and a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army (retired) Reserve. He’s the author of two books, “The Texas Model: Prosperity in the Lone Star State and Lessons for America,” and “China Attacks,” a novel.
President Joe Biden speaks about the soul of the nation, outside of Independence National Historical Park in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on September 1, 2022. | JIM WATSON/AFP via Getty Images
With two months to go until the midterm elections, President Joe Biden has declared that former President Donald Trump and many of his supporters are a threat to “the very foundations of our republic” in a speech that critics derided as an attack on American citizens.
In a speech Thursday evening at Independence Hall in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Biden noted that the venue served as the location where “the United States Constitution was written and debated.” He noted that “this is where we set in motion the most extraordinary experiment of self-government the world has ever known,” creating a society based on “equality and democracy.”
Warning that “equality and democracy are under assault,” Biden declared that “Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic.” The term “MAGA” refers to Trump’s 2016 campaign slogan, “Make America Great Again.”
“Not every Republican, not even the majority of Republicans, are MAGA Republicans,” he clarified. “Not every Republican embraces their extreme ideology.”
“I know because I’ve been able to work with these mainstream Republicans,” Biden continued. “But there’s no question that the Republican Party today is dominated, driven, and intimidated by Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans, and that is a threat to this country.”
“MAGA Republicans do not respect the Constitution. They do not believe in the rule of law. They do not recognize the will of the people. They refuse to accept the results of a free election.”
Biden warned that “MAGA forces are determined to take this country backwards — backwards to an America where there is no right to choose, no right to privacy, no right to contraception, no right to marry who you love.” This portion of the speech indirectly refers to the U.S. Supreme Court’s June 24 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which ruled that the U.S. Constitution did not contain a right to abortion and thereby reversed the Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion nationwide.
While the Dobbs decision itself outraged Democrats and pro-abortion activists, critics of the ruling also expressed concern about Justice Clarence Thomas’ concurring opinion in Dobbs describing the doctrine of substantive due process that underpinned the Roe decision as “demonstrably erroneous” and suggesting that the court should “reconsider” all rulings based on that principle. He specifically mentioned the rulings declaring rights to same-sex marriage and contraception as constitutional rights.
While Thomas expressed an openness to examine “whether other constitutional provisions guarantee the myriad rights that our substantive due process cases have generated,” Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives passed measures to codify the rights to same-sex marriage and contraception into federal law. The bills still await action in the U.S. Senate.
Biden continued his speech by contending that Trump and “MAGA Republicans” support “authoritarian leaders, and they fan the flames of political violence that are a threat to our personal rights, to the pursuit of justice, to the rule of law, to the very soul of this country.” According to Biden, “They look at the mob that stormed the United States Capitol on Jan. 6th — brutally attacking law enforcement — not as insurrectionists who placed a dagger to the throat of our democracy, but they look at them as patriots.”
Biden argued that the “soul of America is defined by the sacred proposition that all are created equal in the image of God” and that “all are entitled to be treated with decency, dignity, and respect.” He also urged people to “vote, vote, vote” in the upcoming midterm elections, stressing that “we need everyone to do their part.”
Additionally, the president suggested that “if we do our duty in 2022 and beyond, then ages still to come will say we — all of us here — we kept the faith” and “preserved democracy.” The implication was that voting for Democrats in the midterms was necessary to preserve democracy.
“We just need to remember who we are. We are the United States of America. The United States of America,” he concluded. “May God protect our nation. And may God protect all those who stand watch over our democracy. God bless you all.”
The speech received much criticism from conservative commentators and Republican politicians, among them Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla.
“Angry man smears half of the people of the country he is supposed to lead & promised to unite,” tweeted Rubio, getting nearly 13,000 likes by Friday morning.
Angry man smears half of the people of the country he is supposed to lead & promised to unite pic.twitter.com/Bfa84JBamM
Kathryn Jean Lopez of National Review objected to Biden’s inclusion of abortion opponents in his definition of MAGA Republicans, viewing it as pandering to pro-choice groups.
“If the president actually wanted to unite, he wouldn’t have attacked Americans who believe abortion is the civil-rights issue of our lives. He wouldn’t have mentioned contraception (no one is taking it away — it’s a scare tactic, and it’s a cynical, underhanded attack on the likes of the Little Sisters of the Poor, on conscience rights),” wrote Lopez.’
“I could have agreed with much that he said — about the election results, about division and anger and violence — if he hadn’t made sure to make Planned Parenthood happy during the speech. They are purveyors of violence and ought to be renamed UnParenthood.”
Franklin Graham, the president of the Christian charity Samaritan’s Purse and the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, also condemned Biden’s speech in a lengthy Facebook post: “Tonight President Biden said that MAGA threatens the very foundation of our republic. Really? I want to see America great again. I want to see America as a leader, as a place for people who desire liberty and justice for all. I don’t want to see this country turned into a socialist country.”
“Does believing in freedom, justice, opportunity, less taxes, and smaller government make me an extremist? Absolutely not. The ones who are extremists are the ones who want to take that away from us!” he added. “President Biden is trying to vilify and demean conservative, freedom-loving Americans who do not support the failing and economically unsound policies of his administration. This is just further dividing our nation.”
Graham insisted that “America can only have true greatness through God,” adding “The blessings of this nation have come from the hand of God.” He maintained that “We need to turn to Him” because “We need His help, His direction, and His healing.”
Criticism of the speech extended beyond political opponents of the president. Brianna Keilar of CNN took issue with the optics of the Biden speech, specifically that he had U.S. Marines behind him as he spoke.
“Whatever you think of this speech the military is supposed to be apolitical. Positioning Marines in uniform behind President Biden for a political speech flies in the face of that. It’s wrong when Democrats do it. It’s wrong when Republicans do it,” she tweeted.
Whatever you think of this speech the military is supposed to be apolitical. Positioning Marines in uniform behind President Biden for a political speech flies in the face of that. It’s wrong when Democrats do it. It’s wrong when Republicans do it.
Biden’s speech in Philadelphia came 68 days before the 2022 midterm elections that will determine control of the U.S. Congress for the next two years. The president’s approval rating has been consistently underwater over the past year, although it has rose slightly in recent weeks. As of Friday morning, the RealClearPolitics average of polls measuring presidential approval showed that 42.0% of Americans approve of Bidens job performance compared to 54.8% who disapprove.
Since presidential approval often plays an outsized role in determining the outcome of midterm elections, political observers have expected Republicans to do well in the upcoming midterms. The FiveThirtyEight Deluxe Model, which predicts the outcome of elections based on “polls, fundraising, past voting patterns” as well as experts political analysis gives Republicans a 75% chance of taking control of the U.S. House of Representatives while giving Democrats a 68% chance of keeping control of the U.S. Senate as of Friday morning.
All 435 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives are on the ballot this year along with 35 of the 100 seats in the U.S. Senate. Democrats currently have a narrow majority in the U.S. House of Representatives and a 50-50 majority in the U.S. Senate, with Vice President Kamala Harris casting the tie-breaking vote in favor of the Democrats.
Over the past several months, Republicans have consistently maintained a narrow lead on the generic ballot, which asks voters which party they would like to control Congress. However, the generic ballot has tightened over the summer and the RealClearPolitics average of polls asking voters for their preferences in the midterms shows Democrats with an extremely narrow 0.1% lead as of Friday morning.
1capitalized: a congregation of the Roman curia having jurisdiction over missionary territories and related institutions
2: the spreading of ideas, information, or rumor for the purpose of helping or injuring an institution, a cause, or a person
3: ideas, facts, or allegations spread deliberately to further one’s cause or to damage an opposing causealso: a public action having such an effect
The History of Propaganda
Propaganda is today most often used in reference to political statements, but the word comes to our language through its use in a religious context. The Congregatio de propaganda fide (“Congregation for propagating the faith”) was an organization established in 1622 by Pope Gregory XV as a means of furthering Catholic missionary activity. The word propaganda is from the ablative singular feminine of propogandus, which is the gerundive of the Latin propagare, meaning “to propagate.” The first use of the word propaganda (without the rest of the Latin title) in English was in reference to this Catholic organization. It was not until the beginning of the 19th century that it began to be used as a term denoting ideas or information that are of questionable accuracy as a means of advancing a cause.
Source: Merriam Webster Dictionary Web Site
In the hands of gifted people, terminology can be used for good purposes, as well as deceptive purposes. Of course, you already knew that. It’s part of the bases for propaganda.
Public Office speech writers are expert in these areas. The command of the English Language seems to be found more with professional speech writers that America’s general population. Sad commentary.
Left alone, the rhetoric produced by political parties begin to create a populace that believe more lies than truth. In political terms, we are called “low information voters.” More accurately, we have become deluded citizens. Deluded to what is truth. Left unchecked, tyrannical slavery is just around the corner.
These facts make what prompted this article. The terminology in question is heard daily on any news program, especially cable news. That terminology is, “MAGA Republicans want to destroy (or tear down) our democracy.”
It began around the 2016 general election, and has been amplified to overwhelming proportions. This terminology is as dangerous as it is deliberately deceiving.
First of all, we are not now, nor have we ever been, a DEMOCRACY. The framers of our Constitution were deliberate in that decision. A democracy is mob rule. 51% of the population controlling/oppressing the 49%. That is why our Forefathers gave us a REPUBLIC, more accurately, a Representative Republic in order to ensure Americans are never oppressed by anyone, any political party or force. To further enhance, and guarantee the success of the REPUBLIC, they gave us the “Electoral College” in our national elections that ensures all states, regardless of size, has equal say, insuring every vote counts and matters.
President Biden’s speech writers use the term a lot. You heard it multiple times last night in the speech. In fact, we who have a differing set of opinions, are a threat to the democracy President Biden and the Left want in America: Totalitarian rule by mob. (Reference summer of 2020 leading up to November 8th. Multiple mobs of violent people burning down portions of America and threatening every American who disagreed with them).
I want to maintain our REPUBLIC. I want to do whatever I can, legally and morally correct, to stop all efforts to turn America into RULE BY MOB DEMOCRACY. How about you?
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including “Fox News”, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Donald Trump.
Students sit in a high school classroom. | Reuters/Stephane Mahe
A federal appellate court has ruled that a California high school must allow a club for Christian athletes requiring participants to sign a “sexual purity” statement opposing homosexuality to meet on campus as an official student group. On Monday, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals sided with the Fellowship of Christian Athletes over a dispute surrounding its efforts to regain official recognition at Pioneer High School in San Jose.
A 2-1 opinion authored by Judge Kenneth Lee contends that the San Jose Unified School District violated the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution by revoking FCA’s status as an official student club at its high schools in 2019. While the school district cited concerns that the club’s “sexual purity” statement and “statement of faith” constituted violations of the district’s non-discrimination policy, Lee wrote that the school district approved other student clubs whose constitutions limited membership based on gender identity and ethnicity.
The judge, appointed to the bench by former President Donald Trump, identified the district’s approval of the Senior Women of Leland High School — open only to girls — as an example of this phenomenon.
“Under the First Amendment, our government must be scrupulously neutral when it comes to religion: It cannot treat religious groups worse than comparable secular ones,” Lee wrote in the majority opinion. “But the School District did just that.”
The FCA’s “sexual purity” statement declares, “God desires His children to lead pure lives of holiness.” The statement also highlights the Bible’s teachings that “the appropriate place for sexual expression is in the context of the marriage relationship” and that “the biblical definition of marriage is one man and one woman in a lifelong commitment.”
“While upholding God’s standard of holiness, FCA strongly affirms God’s love and redemptive power in the individual who chooses to follow Him. FCA’s desire is to encourage individuals to trust in Jesus and turn away from any impure lifestyle,” the statement concluded.
In dissent, Obama-appointed Judge Morgan Christen contends that the FCA lacks standing to “seek prospective preliminary relief, and our court lacks jurisdiction over this preliminary injunction appeal.”
“It is uncontested that student groups like FCA must reapply each fall for official ASB recognition. It is also uncontested that only student club leaders may apply,” Christen wrote.
“Because the District’s nondiscrimination policy cannot cause a real or immediately impending injury to FCA if no students apply for ASB recognition, FCA cannot establish standing without evidence that a Pioneer FCA student has applied, or intends to apply, for ASB recognition for the upcoming school year. FCA failed to make that showing.”
FCA’s statement of faith contains similar language, asking members to affirm the beliefs that “God’s design for sexual intimacy is to be expressed only within the context of marriage,” that “God instituted marriage between one man and one woman as the foundation of the family and the basic structure of human society” and that “marriage is exclusively the union of one man and one woman.”
FCA was an official student club at three San Jose Unified School District high schools for over a decade before Pioneer High School social studies teacher Peter Glasser became aware of the FCA’s statement of faith and sexual purity statement. Glasser took issue with the club’s proclamation that “[t]he Bible is clear in teaching on sexual sin including sex outside of marriage and homosexual acts.” Glasser also opposed the statements’ insistence that “neither heterosexual sex outside of marriage nor any homosexual act constitute an alternative lifestyle acceptable to God.”
The FCA also required its officers to affirm that if they are “found being involved in a lifestyle that does not conform to FCA’s Sexual Purity Statement,” they will need to step down from their FCA leadership position.
Glasser posted the FCA statements on the whiteboard in his classroom, writing that he is “deeply saddened that a club on Pioneer’s campus asks its members to affirm these statements.”
In an email to the school’s principal, Glasser shared additional concerns about FCA’s beliefs stating that “God approves only of relationships between one man and one woman” and that “God assigns our gender identities at birth based on the physical parts He gives us.”
Glasser’s email led to a discussion among the school’s Climate Committee, a group of school leaders including principals and department heads, which culminated with the revocation of the FCA as an official school club. Glasser thought that the organization’s “views on LGBTQ+ identity infringe on the rights of others in my community to feel safe and enfranchised on their own campus, even infringing on their very rights to exist.”
The Climate Committee determined that the FCA statements violated school district policy requiring that “[a]ll district programs and activities within a school under the jurisdiction of the superintendent of the school district shall be free from discrimination, including harassment, with respect to the actual or perceived ethnic group, religion, gender, gender identity, gender expression, color, race, ancestry, national origin, and physical or mental disability, age or sexual orientation.”
While FCA continued to operate on campus despite lacking recognition as an official club, the organization experienced hostility from school officials, members of the school newspaper and the student community as a whole. Students from the school newspaper took “rapid-fire” photos of participants at FCA meetings and every meeting attracted protests from the student body. Teachers at the school, including Glasser, sought to “ban FCA completely from campus.”
This prompted a lawsuit seeking an injunction “requiring Defendants to restore recognition to student chapters affiliated with” the FCA and alleging violations of FCA students’ rights to free speech, expressive association and free exercise of religion under the First Amendment and the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. After a lower court sided with the school district, the 9th Circuit granted the plaintiffs’ request for a preliminary injunction and directed the lower court to “enter an order reinstating FCA as an official student club.”
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, has announced that a group of migrants was bused from the Lone Star State to Chicago, Illinois. The governor had already been busing migrants from Texas to Washington, D.C., and New York City, though the trips are undertaken voluntarily. Now, the Windy City will be another destination for migrants who opt for such a trip.
“President Biden’s inaction at our southern border continues putting the lives of Texans—and Americans—at risk and is overwhelming our communities,” Abbott said, according to a press release. “To continue providing much-needed relief to our small, overrun border towns, Chicago will join fellow sanctuary cities Washington, D.C. and New York City as an additional drop-off location. Mayor [Lori] Lightfoot loves to tout the responsibility of her city to welcome all regardless of legal status, and I look forward to seeing this responsibility in action as these migrants receive resources from a sanctuary city with the capacity to serve them.”
The first bus of migrants transported from Texas to the nation’s capital arrived in April, and earlier this month, the first bus arrived in the Big Apple. Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser, a Democrat, has twice requested the deployment of the D.C. National Guard to assist amid the migrant influx, but both times the Pentagon has rebuffed the mayor’s requests.
“As a city, we are doing everything we can to ensure these immigrants and their families can receive shelter, food, and most importantly protection. This is not new; Chicago welcomes hundreds of migrants every year to our city and provides much-needed assistance,” a spokesperson for Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s office said in a statement. “Unfortunately, Texas Governor Greg Abbott is without any shame or humanity. But ever since he put these racist practices of expulsion in place, we have been working with our community partners to ready the city to receive these individuals.”
NEWS: Today, the City of Chicago received confirmation that approximately 60 migrants were traveling to Chicago by way of Texas. Chicago is a welcoming city and as such has collaborated across various departments and agencies to ensure we greeted them with dignity and respect. pic.twitter.com/wJWEDtXLgZ
Dozens of federal officials across multiple agencies within the Biden administration communicated extensively with social media companies to coordinate censorship of information, according to internal documents released by Republican Attorneys General Eric Schmitt of Missouri and Jeff Landry of Louisiana. Officials within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) sent emails to employees at Facebook and Twitter to flag instances of alleged misinformation and provide talking points to counter allegedly false narratives spreading on the platforms. Government officials would occasionally initiate this activity, with one message from a CDC official requesting monthly meetings with Facebook to plan “debunking” strategies, and a White House official requesting the removal of a parody Anthony Fauci account.
One collection of emails shows Facebook staff collaborating closely with staff at the HHS to remove Facebook groups, with one message describing the collaboration as “critical.” Staff from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) discussed setting up “regular chats” with Twitter, and Twitter invited White House staff to be briefed on their efforts relating to vaccine misinformation. (RELATED: Court Orders Biden White House To Cough Up Top Officials’ Communications With Big Tech)
“I know our teams met today to better understand the scope of what the White House expects from us on misinformation going forward,” one email from Facebook staff to HHS staff states. “In our previous conversations I’ve appreciated the way you and your team have approached our engagement, and we have worked hard to meet the moment — we’ve dedicated enormous time and resources to fighting this pandemic and consider ourselves partners in fighting the same battle.”
Documents produced by the Department of Justice allegedly reveal a connection between 45 federal officials at the DHS and HHS and social media giants, with the social media companies disclosing connections to officials at the White House and U.S. Election Assistance Commision, among others, according to Schmitt’s press release. The administration has allegedly refused to disclose the connections of the highest-ranking members, citing executive privilege, according to the press release.
“The limited discovery produced so far provides a tantalizing snapshot into a massive, sprawling federal “Censorship Enterprise,” which includes dozens of federal officials across at least eleven federal agencies and components identified so far,” Schmitt and Landry write in a Wednesday petition for additional documents. “[These officials] communicate with social-media platforms about misinformation, disinformation, and the suppression of private speech on social media—all with the intent and effect of pressuring social-media platforms to censor and suppress private speech that federal officials disfavor.”
🚨In May, We filed a landmark lawsuit against top ranking Biden Admin. officials for colluding with social media companies to censor free speech. We have already received documents that show their cozy relationship, and now we’re demanding more. 🧵
The DHS this spring launched a short-lived initiative known as the Government Disinformation Board, which was supposed to study misinformation online and provide the DHS with tools to combat propaganda that posed a national security threat, according to The Washington Post. The program disbanded after just three weeks due to significant backlash, according to The Washington Post.
“We’re going to need another [Nina Jankowicz] down the road,” an anonymous DHS staffer to The Washington Post, referring to the board’s erstwhile executive director. “And anyone who takes that position is going to be vulnerable to a disinformation campaign or attack.”
Facebook, Twitter, DHS, HHS and The White House did not immediately respond to a DCNF request for comment.
Mark Levin suggested Wednesday that FBI agents who raided Mar-a-Lago may also have violated the Espionage Act, the same federal law that former President Donald Trump is accused of possibly violating.
The search warrant used to raid Mar-a-Lago last month revealed that Trump is under investigation for possible violations of the Espionage Act. Most likely, investigators are probing potential violation of the controversial law over Trump allegedly retaining highly classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, documents that could imperil national security in the wrong hands. Government attorneys included in a Justice Department court filing this week a picture of classified documents strewn on the floor of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago office.
Image source: The Department of Justice
The problem is that it’s not exactly clear where the documents came from. Were they discovered strewn on the floor of Trump’s office, as the picture suggests? Or were they found in a part of the property not where they were photographed, then staged for an evidentiary photo?
According to Levin, who is an attorney, staging the sensitive documents for a photo to be eventually released to the public via a court filing is a “grossly negligent use of classified documents” that should itself be prosecuted under the Espionage Act.
“It seems to me an argument should be made that spreading highly classified documents on the floor, with the covers of the documents noting that the documents are indeed classified and taking a photograph even of the covers purely for gratuitous public use (i.e., for no reasonable or legal purpose), is a grossly negligent use of classified documents and the FBI should be held accountable under the Espionage Act,” Levin wrote on Twitter.
2. and taking a photograph even of the covers purely for gratuitous public use (i.e., for no reasonable or legal purpose), is a grossly negligent use of classified documents and the FBI should be held accountable under the Espionage Act:
Whoever, being entrusted with or having lawful possession or control of any document, writing, code book, signal book, sketch, photograph, photographic negative, blueprint, plan, map, model, instrument, appliance, note, or information, relating to the national defense, (1) through gross negligence permits the same to be removed from its proper place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of his trust, or to be lost, stolen, abstracted, or destroyed, or (2) having knowledge that the same has been illegally removed from its proper place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of its trust, or lost, or stolen, abstracted, or destroyed, and fails to make prompt report of such loss, theft, abstraction, or destruction to his superior officer—Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both.
So the argument goes, the documents were strategically photographed and the picture released to drive the public narrative in a certain direction. Indeed, constitutional lawyer Johnathan Turley outright said he believes the photo was “clearly intended for public consumption.”
“It is curious that the DOJ would release this particular picture which suggests classified material laying around on the floor. The point is to state a fact that hardly needs an optical confirmation: the possession of documents with classified cover sheets,” Turley wrote. “The government could simply affirmatively state the fact of the covered pages and would not likely be challenged on that point without the inclusion of this one photo.
“For critics, the photo may appear another effort (with prior leaks) to help frame the public optics and discussion. Clearly the court did not need the visual aid of a picture of documents with covers,” he added. “It seems clearly intended for public consumption.”
The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Townhall.com, and WhatDidYouSay.org.
Source: AP Photo/Robin Rayne
Remember the twitching girls in upstate New York?
About a decade ago, more than a dozen teen girls, crazed with puberty and hormones, developed a weird medical condition. Despite the utter scientific implausibility of their alleged illness, the mania soon spread to other girls at their school. And then it all just disappeared, giving us a road map for dealing with teenaged girls today, who demand the right to mutilate their sexual organs and inject themselves with infertility-inducing drugs.
We’ll get back to the twitching girls. First a political point.
At brunch this weekend, a couple remarked, with some irritation, that in any gathering of Republicans, everybody always starts talking about transgenders. Evidently, it’s not just Republicans. The same topic was vexing Democrats at brunch the next day. The couple’s point was: STOP TALKING ABOUT TEENAGE TRANSGENDERS!
On the other hand, any politician with three functioning brain cells will hear the same story and think, The electorate is inflamed! I better start talking about transgenders! It’s nothing big, just the greatest medical malpractice in history currently being perpetrated on America’s youth.
All I needed to know about the transgender craze was that, in a massive survey of parents of transitioning teens, 92% were women, 71% had a bachelor’s or graduate degree, 86% favored gay marriage and 91% were white.
I’m dying to hear about the biological pathway of a medical condition that afflicts almost exclusively the offspring of liberal white women. (Silver lining: On breaks from talking about their transitioning daughters, the mothers can compare “long-haul COVID” symptoms.)
The adolescent transgenders themselves were 83% girls (by which I mean “female,” that mysterious life-form unidentifiable by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson).
These delicate creatures — hormones flooding their bodies, social acceptance more important than life itself — have launched any number of interesting societal phenomena through the years:
— anorexia nervosa (females are three times more likely to have anorexia than males);
— cutting (girls are three times more likely to engage in cutting than boys);
— cavalcades of prescription drugs that shouldn’t be given to any human being, least of all a teenager (teen girls are about twice as likely to be on antidepressants as teen boys); and now …
— transgenderism. (In the past decade, the number of girls seeking to transition has gone up by about 5,500%, compared to 1,500% for boys, according to the Tavistock Centre, the U.K.’s only gender identity clinic for teens.)
A Nexis search reveals that the word “transgender” was practically nonexistent in The New York Times until fairly recently. In the past 18 months, the Times has mentioned transgenders 2,784 times. You have to wonder how the Salem witch trials got rolling without the Times’ active encouragement.
But let’s get back to the twitching girls.
In 2012, the Times published a long magazine article about a rash of teenage girls in Le Roy, New York, having nonepileptic seizures — twitching, arms flailing, head jerking, uncontrollable humming, guttural noises, fainting, tics and so on.
The Tourette’s-like seizures first occurred in a cheerleader, spread to several members of the team, then leapt to a dozen other female classmates. But, oddly, this absolutely genuine medical condition barely affected the boys, staff or teachers at the school. (Only one boy and one teacher acquired the symptoms.)
This raised no suspicions among the mothers, who carried on at town meetings, screaming at school officials, “I’m done listening to you. You need to do something!”
Experts tested the water, the playing fields, the air, the abandoned manufacturing plants. The girls underwent extensive neurological testing. Erin Brockovich even sent a team to test the dirt at the school (despite the fact that she’d turned out to be completely wrong about the purported “cancer cluster” that made her famous).
The girls and their mothers appeared on “The Today Show” and the “Dr. Phil” show. CNN sent a team of experts to investigate.
In the end, there was nothing wrong with the girls. Everyone moved on. The tics went away.
Which, it turns out, is the only way these estrogen-fueled panics ever end. The Times cited famed epidemiologists, local neurologists and feminist writers all making the exact same point: The worst thing to do when facing a psychogenic outbreak is give it attention and support. Feminist literary critic Elaine Showalter, for example, listed three prerequisites to a mass hysteria: “physician-enthusiasts and theorists; unhappy and vulnerable patients; and supportive cultural environments.”
Luckily for the girls of Le Roy, they were ordinary kids in an ordinary town, not the new victim on the block, much less the little darlings of the upper crust. If they’d been students at The Brearley School in New York City, they’d be thrashing about in wheelchairs to this day.
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 “Fox News”, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Donald Trump.
U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland issued a memo Tuesday reiterating the prohibition on Department of Justice (DOJ) employees communicating with Congress. The memo directed DOJ employees to an existing guideline restricting DOJ employees’ communication with federal lawmakers, Senate and House committees and congressional staff. Garland explained that these rules help the DOJ prevent political interference in the department’s activities.
“Like the policies regarding communications with the White House, these policies ‘are designed to protect our criminal and civil law enforcement decisions, and our legal judgements, from partisan or other inappropriate influence, whether real or perceived, direct or indirect,’” the memo read. Garland also cited a section of the department’s manual that explained the guidelines also help preserve Congress’ ability to “carry out its legitimate investigatory and oversight functions.”
NEW: Attorney General Merrick Garland also sent a memo today reminding DOJ employees of the policies around communications with Congress. pic.twitter.com/8lN5tlyE7C
The memo reiterated DOJ’s policy that all communication with members of Congress is subject to approval by the Office of Legislative Affairs (OLA). This policy requires the Assistant Attorney General for the OLA to manage all communications between department members and Congress “to ensure that relevant Department or Executive Branch interests are fully protected.”
“No Department employee may communicate with Senators, Representatives, congressional committees, or congressional staff without advance coordination, consultation, and approval by OLA,” the policy states. “All congressional inquiries and correspondence from Members, committees, and staff should be immediately directed to OLA upon receipt.”
Garland issued a separate memo Tuesday prohibiting politically appointed DOJ officials from participating in political events. The memo revoked exceptions that allowed “non-career appointees” to attend partisan political events for “close family members who were running for political office” and to attend events for non-relative candidates “in their personal capacities on the evening of Election Day.”
“As Department employees, we have been entrusted with the authority and responsibility to enforce the laws of the United States in a neutral and impartial manner,” the memo read. “In fulfilling this responsibility, we must do all we can to maintain public trust and ensure that politics — both in fact and appearance — does not compromise or affect the integrity of our work.”
Garland announced August 11 that he had “personally approved the decision to seek a search warrant” for the FBI raid the former president’s private residence. The FBI said it retrieved 11 sets of classified documents, including four sets of top-secret material. Trump has disputed this account, claiming that he had declassified all the documents in question.
Republican Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley announced in a July letter to Garland and FBI Director Christopher Wray that whistleblowers had told him the FBI downplayed and discredited intelligence concerning Hunter Biden’s alleged criminal activity in his overseas business dealings. Grassley later accused the FBI of a partisan double standard in a subsequent letter to Wray.
In subsequent letter to Wray, Grassley claimed that “political bias” had “infected the FBI’s Washington Field Office” and accused Assistant Special Agent in Charge Timothy Thibault of closing the case surrounding the president’s son without any valid reason. Thibault, who frequently shared partisan content on social media while working for the FBI, resigned Friday and was allegedly escorted out of the FBI building.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has flagged thousands of Mexican passports with Middle Eastern names as part of a fraud investigation, according to a memo obtained by The Washington Free Beacon.
Since Jan. 1, DHS’ National Targeting Center has identified 28,500 individuals for “further evaluation,” according to an excerpt of the memo. (RELATED: Human Trafficker Says Cartels Harvest Children’s Organs And Stuff Drugs In Their Corpses: REPORT) The investigation will seek to determine whether the passport holders entered the U.S., according to a senior DHS official, who spoke with the Beacon. Federal officials have raised concerns about the potential risks of the vulnerabilities in border security amid the influx of illegal migration, according to the Beacon. Since October, CBP has encountered 343 people whose names appeared on a national terror watchlist,according to agency data.
“This investigation highlights that criminals often use legal travel to facilitate criminal activity. The nexus to Mexico should cause the public and lawmakers to reflect on how a porous border can be even more dangerous,” the anonymous DHS official told the Beacon.
FBI Director Christopher Wray recently said that the border posed a “significant security issue” and “represents a wide array of criminal threats that flow out of it,” including potential terrorists.
REUTERS/Jose Luis Gonzalez TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY
CBP officials apprehended two men from Yemen whose names appeared on the FBI terrorism watchlist after they illegally crossed the southern border into California during two separate occasions in January and March, 2021.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) continues to encounter record numbers of migrants under the Biden administration and is on pace to surpass 2,000,000 migrant encounters for fiscal year 2022,according to agency statistics.
DHS didn’t respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
A top FBI agent who resigned after accusations he worked to undermine the probe into Hunter Biden’s laptop and business dealings also allegedly pressured bureau employees to pad domestic terror data, drawing accusations of politicizing the agency from Republicans.
Timothy Thibault, the FBI’s former assistant special agent in charge who resigned Friday after Republican allegations of his political bias in connection to the Biden laptop investigation, was allegedly one of the agents trying to get FBI employees to bolster Domestic Violent Extremism (DVE) case counts to satisfy “performance metrics,” whistleblowers alleged in July, Breitbart News reported. Thibault and other bureau agents were allegedly pushing FBI employees to reclassify cases to involve DVE even if they do not meet the criteria, the outlet reported.
DVE defines a person “without direction or inspiration from a foreign terrorist group or other foreign power who seeks to further political or social goals wholly or in part through unlawful acts of force or violence,” according to the FBI. The allegation that Thibault was one of the FBI agent’s pressuring others to bolster DVE cases was made to Breitbart by Republican Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan.
“These whistleblower allegations that the FBI is padding its domestic violent extremist data cheapens actual examples of violent extremism,” said Jordan in the letter. “This information also reinforces our concerns—about which we have written to you several times—regarding the FBI’s politicization under your leadership.”
Thibault was allegedly escorted out of the FBI building Friday, a source familiar with the matter told Fox News. The former agent was allegedly part of a widespread effort within the bureau to discredit and downplay “negative Hunter Biden information” and label it “disinformation,” Republican Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley told Wray in July, citing whistleblowers.
Grassley accused Thibault in July of “improper conduct” in connection to the Hunter Biden probe after whistleblowers allegedly told the senator Thibault sought to shut the probe down. The investigation into Hunter Biden’s business dealings is still being run by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Delaware.
A senior FBI agent who has faced scrutiny from lawmakers over alleged political bias has reportedly resigned and is no longer with the bureau.
FBI Assistant Special Agent in Charge Timothy Thibault was seen being escorted out of the FBI building Friday, the Washington Times first reported. Fox News later confirmed that Thibault retired over the weekend and was walked out of the building according to standard procedure. Thibault’s departure from the FBI comes after whistleblowers have raised concerns with lawmakers over alleged political bias within the bureau. Senate Judiciary Committee ranking member Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and House Judiciary Committee ranking member Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) have come forward with allegations from sources within the bureau who said leadership, including Thibault, exerted pressure on subordinates to downplay the Hunter Biden investigation.
Thibault was one of 13 special agents assigned to the Hunter Biden laptop investigation ahead of the 2020 election. In a July 18 letter sent to FBI Director Christopher Wray and Attorney General Merrick Garland, Grassley named Thibault and detailed “highly credible” whistleblower claims that he did not follow the FBI’s strict substantial factual predication guidelines in the course of the Hunter Biden investigation.
“Based on allegations, verified and verifiable derogatory information on Hunter Biden was falsely labeled as disinformation,” Grassley wrote. “Accordingly, the allegations provided to my office appear to indicate that there was a scheme in place among certain FBI officials to undermine derogatory information connected to Hunter Biden by falsely suggesting it was disinformation.”
After noting that Thibault displayed “a pattern of active public partisanship in his then public social media content,” Grassley revealed that in October 2020, one month before the presidential election, Thibault had ordered closed “an avenue of additional derogatory Hunter Biden reporting.”
In a separate letter, Jordan disclosed whistleblower allegations that Thibault had pressured his subordinates to pad the number of reported “domestic violent extremism” cases to support the White House’s narrative about threats facing the country.
“These whistleblower allegations that the FBI is padding domestic violent extremist data cheapens actual examples of violent extremism,” Jordan wrote. “This information also reinforces our concerns — about which we have written to you several times — regarding the FBI’s politicization under your leadership,” he told FBI Director Wray.
Wray called the allegations against Thibault “deeply troubling” during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing earlier this month. Thibault was removed from his supervisory role on the Hunter Biden investigation after the whistleblower accusations became public.
President Joe Biden set off more than a few perv-o-meter alarms on Tuesday when he suddenly stopped in the middle of a speech about America being “safer” to make creepy comments to a 9-year-old (presumably a little girl) in the audience.
He taunted “brave right-wing Americans” who believe guns are an important deterrent against government overreach.
Biden: "You know what the Mexicans, Mexico, which has real problems causing us real problems? You know what their biggest complaint is? Can't we stop the gun trafficking across the southern border, into Mexico." pic.twitter.com/6EYYpHZtQ2
He claimed “the Mexicans” have “real problems” with “gun trafficking across the southern border, into Mexico.”
Biden: "You know what the Mexicans, Mexico, which has real problems causing us real problems? You know what their biggest complaint is? Can't we stop the gun trafficking across the southern border, into Mexico." pic.twitter.com/6EYYpHZtQ2
He told the most hilarious joke (you’ve heard a thousand times before) and a few complete whoppers that were almost as funny as his complete lack of knowledge about guns and ammunition, as Glenn Beck and Stu Burguiere discussed on “The Glenn Beck Program” Wednesday.
President Biden even shared a bizarre, meandering story about … well, we’re not sure what it was about, but it sounded pretty darn racist.
Joe Biden tells bizarre story:
"There's a place where I was the only white guy that worked as a lifeguard down in that area, on the East side. And you know, you could always tell where the best basketball in the state is." pic.twitter.com/xDWi7nE4KD
But the creepiest moment of the whole insufferable event came when the president suddenly stopped his super unifying speech to ask a child in the audience, “How are you, baby? How old are you? How old are you? … almost double figures!”
We all remember when he was called out for his proclivity to touch and caress young girls publicly. He promised to reform his old-fashioned “innocent” touching and inappropriate comments. He can’t control himself, even though he knows his reputation.
Constitutional law expert Jonathan Turley on Wednesday responded to the DOJ’s release of a staged photo of so-called ‘classified’ documents strewn over the floor at Mar-a-Lago.
Biden’s corrupt Justice Department late Tuesday night responded to Trump’s request for a special master to be appointed to review the documents seized by the FBI in its raid of Trump’s Florida residence.
Trump-appointed US District Judge Aileen Cannon from the southern district of Florida on Saturday announced the “preliminary intent to appoint a special master” to review all of the records seized by the FBI during its unprecedented raid on President Trump’s home at Mar-a-Lago.
Judge Cannon said the FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago “involved political calculations” to diminish the leading voice of the Republican Party just months before the midterm election.
The DOJ’s response included one photo – “Attachment F” – the alleged ‘classified’ documents Trump was supposedly hoarding at Mar-a-Lago.
The FBI made sure to include the framed Time Magazine cover showing Trump in the White House being spied on by his Democrat political opponents – including Joe Biden.
This was done on purpose – a message if you will – and further confirmation that the release of the photo was purely political.
Jonathan Turley argued that the staged photo was “clearly intended for public consumption.”
“The picture could be seen by many that secret documents were strewn over the floor when this appears the method used by the FBI to isolate classified documents. It also seems entirely superfluous in releasing this one picture. ” Jonathan Turley wrote.
“It is curious that the DOJ would release this particular picture which suggests classified material laying around on the floor. The point is to state a fact that hardly needs an optical confirmation: the possession of documents with classified cover sheets. Indeed, the top of roughly half of the documents are redacted in photo. The government could simply affirmatively state the fact of the covered pages and would not likely be challenged on that point without the inclusion of this one photo.” he added.
“For critics, the photo may appear another effort (with prior leaks) to help frame the public optics and discussion. Clearly the court did not need the visual aid of a picture of documents with covers. It seems clearly intended for public consumption.” Turley said.
Notably, this filing includes this picture which is being widely distributed. It can, however, leave an obviously misleading impression that secret documents were strewn over the floor when this appears to be the work of the FBI agents… https://t.co/3P4HZv5wBd
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 “Fox News”, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Donald Trump.
In a case of highly charged sticker shock, a Florida Chevrolet dealer admits that it offered to replace the battery in a hybrid car for more than the vehicle is worth.
As reported by the website AutoEvolution, the case of the almost-$30,000 battery was being bandied about on social media for days, with some folks believing the tale and other relegating it to the pile of urban myths. The story was based on a copy of an estimate for the battery of a 2012 Chevrolet Volt that was making the rounds. The Volt was a hybrid that was produced as Chevy was dabbling in the electric vehicle market. Its place in Chevrolet’s lineup has now been taken by the Bolt.
The estimate said that getting the battery would set the car’s owner back $26,853.99. Other costs brought the total bill to $29,842.15 — essentially $30,000.
According to the automotive site Edmunds, a 2012 Volt is estimated to go for between $7,999 and $17,590 these days. Chevrolet advertises that its new Bolt starts at $25,000.
In the end, the truth about a used car came from a car dealer – in this case Roger Dean Chevrolet in Cape Coral, which prepared the estimate.
“This is an estimate for a 12 year old vehicle out of warranty and for a battery that is extremely hard to get, due to the older technology of the 12 year old vehicle,” the dealership posted on Facebook in an attempt to set the record straight.
(Roger Dean Chevrolet / Facebook)
The dealership also used this controversy as a chance for a sales pitch on newer electric vehicles.
“The dealership does not set battery prices. In the newer EV or EUV vehicles with newer technology the batteries do cost less. Think of it like big screen TVs. Remember when the first big screen came out, they were very expensive, and as the technology advanced the prices became better. This battery is also out of warranty of 8yr/100k miles whatever hits first,” the posting stated.
By way of context, an April report in Consumer Affairs gave a ballpark range of $4,000 to $10,000 to replace a gasoline-powered engine.
When seeking to learn how electric vehicle owners felt about the tale of the big-ticket battery, WBVH-TV in Fort Myers, Florida, visited a charging station and interviewed a man the station identified only as “Ian.”
“Thirty thousand dollars is a lot to fix anything on a car, especially when the car itself could be, like, worth less than that,” the man said.
Ian, who leases a Bolt, said things have changed in the EV market.
“As far as electric cars go, they’re being made in better ways now,” he said.
“I feel like electric vehicle space is innovating a lot. It’s moving on past the initial, like, if something goes wrong with your battery, you hit a rock or something and it messes up your battery you need to spend the entire amount you spent on your car to fix it.”
“I’m like ‘well, OK that’s gotta suck for that person’,” Ian said. “I think now that might not be as much of an issue for other people with newer cars.”
Jack Davis is a freelance writer who joined The Western Journal in July 2015 and chronicled the campaign that saw President Donald Trump elected. Since then, he has written extensively for The Western Journal on the Trump administration as well as foreign policy and military issues.
The Michigan Republican state convention on August 27, 2022
The Michigan Republican Convention on Saturday was supposed to be about just one thing: confirming the Governor candidate Tudor Dixon’s choice for Lieutenant Governor. Instead, the ongoing battles between the state’s establishment and grassroots were busy starting little convention fires.
Tudor Dixon chose former State Representative Shane Hernandez to be her Lieutenant Governor on Friday August 19th, and needed the convention’s delegates to ratify her choice at the state convention on the 27th. At the end of the state convention, Hernandez won a commanding 78% of the delegates. Hernandez only needed over half to prevent other nominations from the assembled Republican delegates from being considered.
Former Michigan State Rep. Shane Hernandez, left.
The only serious hiccup in the convention was the replacement of Macomb County precinct delegates recognized for the convention, who were coming from two competing factions. The delay caused by that procedure caused a convention that was planned to be over by noon to last until nearly 5pm.
Hernandez was chosen after other names had been floated over the past two weeks, including RINO Michigan Senate Majority Leader Mike Shirkey, DeVos donation gatekeeper and former House Speaker Jace Bolger, former Congressman Mike Bishop, former Congresswoman Candice Miller, Oakland County Sheriff Mike Bouchard, among others. Left-wing protesters outside mocked Hernandez for being Dixon’s last-place choice.
A left-wing clown outside the Lansing Center holds a sign saying “Shane Hernandez – little miss last minute choice for Lt. Governor”
For Hernandez to get to 78%, it took a Trump endorsement, a week-long charm offensive by Hernandez, and a significant misrepresentation of Hernandez’s actual record to make it more palatable to the new pro-Trump America-First precinct delegates from across the state elected on August 2nd.
The Dixon team were mostly worried about the convention going off-track because of a contested Lieutenant Governor race due to former Governor candidate Ralph Rebant’s declared candidacy for the position, and rumors that two other losing candidates in the Governor’s race were interested in the position and working delegates behind the scenes: Garrett Soldano and Ryan Kelley. Also, perennial candidate Lena Epstein was considered a dark horse among potential delegate-inspired nominations for Lt. Governor. These candidates would be forcing their way onto the ticket via the delegates, a maneuver last tried by delegates pushing Wes Nakagiri over Brian Calley at the 2014 convention. Team Dixon were also concerned about the County infighting in Macomb becoming a contentious issue slowing down the convention.
About two weeks prior, on August 11, County Conventions were held in Michigan’s 83 counties. Those conventions, filled with newly-elected precinct delegates from the August 2nd primary, elected a smaller delegation of delegates from within their ranks to send to state convention, these are called ‘elevated delegates.’
But the establishment was alarmed at what they were seeing: America First candidates, many first-time precinct delegates, were filling the ranks and taking over their County parties. The establishment, through NeverTrump megafunders like Betsy DeVos, had hired staff and spent considerable funds to elect moderate and anti-Trump precinct delegates from across the state. But they couldn’t find enough moderates and people who believed the 2020 election was ‘the most secure in history’ to run and win. Even though they spent hundreds of thousands on staff and mailers to elect RINO-friendly precinct delegates, they were losing key County races.
Some of their recruited delegates were even caught on social media bragging about voting for Gretchen Whitmer and with pictures of the expensive mailers sent to recruit moderates in the 6,000 delegate races around the state. Over 2,000 voting delegates were present at the Lansing Center in the state capital for the Michigan state convention.
The establishment’s short-term goal was to unseat Attorney General nominee Matt DePerno from his April win over their preferred candidate Tom Leonard. There were several schemes for accomplishing this anti-DePerno goal, one of which was getting DePerno’s law license revoked. Failing that, they were trying to get the delegates necessary to switch out DePerno for Leonard, or in the alternative, Rep. Ryan Berman. Berman had been calling Republican District Chairs to try and get them to agree to this plan, but none would. The secondary DeVos goal was to take back state party from any resistance to their plans, and to set up a rumored U.S. Senate run for Betsy DeVos in two years.
The DeVos home base is in Grand Rapids, which is within Kent County. The DeVos family lavishly funds the Kent County GOP, so that they can afford staff and office space, a rarity among County parties. A few months earlier, their handpicked leader Rob VanHeulen narrowly survived a challenge to his leadership by a 72-66 margin. They should have known trouble was brewing but they thought they had won and beaten back the grassroots.
So when America First patriots led by Tim Walenga beat VanHeulen and took control of the Kent County GOP for the convention delegates, VanHeulen left the stage openly sobbing according to witnesses and Kent GOP staffer Mike Sullivan took a laptop with all the necessary organizational records with him, and some of the megafunders of liberal Republicans in Michigan who were present, Terri Lynn Land and Betsy DeVos, both angrily stormed out of the building. One activist who was there described Betsy DeVos leaving as though she was “Helen of Troy exiting the battlefield in disgust.”
One moderate delegate who was there said to the Gateway Pundit, “These America First insurgents are taking over in Kent, but the building is owned by the Secchia family. Terri Lynn Land and Betsy DeVos won’t keep funding this County if they keep it up. They’re going to inherit an empty shell. Just because they have the numbers doesn’t mean they have the money, and that’s what is splitting up right now in the Michigan Republican Party: the liberal money from the pro-Trump voters.”
NeverTrumper Betsy DeVos
One America First activist also present in Kent County, Mike Farage, followed Betsy DeVos into the parking structure and confronted her, according to three people who were witnesses, Farage told her that she was a “f****** b****” in a poignant comment that represents the ongoing insurgency by the grassroots against the party’s left-wing financiers. Farage at the time worked for Michigan’s Americans for Prosperity, funded by Betsy DeVos and within a week Farage’s employment there was terminated.
Farage doesn’t dispute that this happened, but at state convention says that all he desires is political “unity” with Dixon, Hernandez, and even Betsy.
Kent County America First Activist Mike Farage
The August 2nd primary was a defeat for many Trump-endorsed candidates for the legislature, and the establishment rightly thought they had prevailed by taking out Trump-endorsed candidates Jacky Eubanks, Kevin Rathbun, Mick Bricker, Jon Rocha, and Mike Detmer. The establishment routed their anti-Trump money through a variety of organizations like Freedom Fund, Americans for Prosperity, Consumers Energy, and the House Republican Campaign Committee. But the establishment’s biggest coup was getting Trump to endorse Tudor Dixon in the contested Republican primary for Governor.
RINO Mike Shirkey was even taunting pro-Trump activists afterwards telling them that “their North Star must now be lost” as a result.
Many of the new delegates said they were motivated to run by a combination of sources. Some pointed to Steve Bannon’s “War Room,” others mentioned Charlie Kirk’s “Turning Point USA” group, others like Clinton County’s new America First leader Steve Willis said Glenn Beck’s admonishment to get more involved in the party pushed him to get involved. Still others said political issues like Critical Race Theory in the schools, the stolen 2020 election, and the generally bad direction of the country motivated them to ‘do something’ and get involved by running for delegate.
Tamara Tizedes, from Brighton, pictured below, was a first-time alternate delegate with her husband. She noted that she and her husband go to the Gateway Pundit “for all their news.” They were write-in winners as delegates, motivated to do so “because we love our country and we’re God-fearing American patriots, we understand now we can’t just sit on the sidelines. We can’t do that anymore, we can feel it.” Tizedes said she was motivated by fraud in the 2020 election and CRT in the schools. She added, “this is good versus evil. This isn’t like anything we’ve ever faced, this is worse than Sodom and Gomorrah.”
New delegate Tamara Tizedes
The convention started to loud boos for Michigan Republican Party Chairman Ron Weiser. Weiser is seen by delegates as part of the old-guard megafunders of the Party. Several delegates noted concern that Weiser is on the board of the Atlantic Council, a group of globalists. Some in state party have attempted to say that this is because there’s a similarly-named wealthy Ron Weiser. The Gateway Pundit called the Atlantic Council and confirmed that, contrary to the statements by those connected to state party, it is the same Ron Weiser.
The boos for Weiser were contrasted with the entire room erupting in applause for Attorney General nominee Matt DePerno as he announced the nomination for Lieutenant Governor candidate Shane Hernandez. Kristina Karamo, the Secretary of State candidate, also received loud support from delegates and Karamo stayed noticeably quiet about the Hernandez nomination prior to his victory.
MRP General Counsel John Inhulsen, left, and Party Chairman Ron Weiser, right.
On the theme of ‘unity’, RINO Senate Majority Leader Mike Shirkey told the Gateway Pundit that “If we don’t ignore our differences, we acknowledge our differences when we subordinate them to a grander and greater cause. And if we continue to focus on our differences only and not the ultimate goals, then we’re screwed. And so my goal is to leave here today acknowledging differences and what we’re going through but we gotta have a bigger goal to achieve for the Michigan Republican Party.”
As soon as Shirkey finished this quote, America First Patriot Jon Smith, former Chairman of the Hillsdale County GOP walked up. When the Gateway Pundit asked to interview the two together, representing competing interests right now within the Party seeking unity, Shirkey then told the Pundit that he’d never be seen associating with, or talking with, “that piece of sh**” pointing to Hillsdale’s Jon Smith.
Hillsdale GOP Chair Jon Smith, in purple, center, and Smith’s antagonist Michigan Senate Majority Leader Mike Shirkey, right.
Several Counties appear to be splitting apart between the America First and more establishment forces, including Kent County, Hillsdale County, Macomb County, and Shiawassee County.
Former Michigan Governor John Engler, walking up to Shirkey, then told the Gateway Pundit, “Jockeying for position in those little county leadership races, they’re at least 100% united that the next Governor shouldn’t be Gretchen Whitmer.” Shirkey could then be overheard whispering to former Governor Engler over the noise in the convention hall not to give any more detailed quotes to the Gateway Pundit.
Former Michigan Governor John Engler then reached to either check the status of, or take away Hillsdale GOP’s Jon Smith’s credentials, and Smith swatted him back telling him that he was going to “beat his a**” if he ever touched him again.
Shirkey and establishment forces took out America First Patriot Jon Smith months earlier as the leader of the Hillsdale County GOP by having a friendly clerk invalidate all of Smith’s recruited precinct delegates on the last day of filing, ensuring that none of them would be on the ballot. The offending discrepancy was that the delegate candidate’s signature was dated, but the notary, who signed at the same time as the delegate, did not separately put a second date on the document. That technicality flaw was enough to flip control of what Engler called the ‘little county leadership races’ in Hillsdale County from America First control back to establishment control.
And it was those ‘little county leadership races’ that was, besides the Hernandez nomination, the highlight of the convention. A group of America First activists sought to seat the delegation of precinct delegates from Macomb County that were in what most called the “Forton Faction” of Macomb. Macomb is Michigan’s third-largest County. Mark Forton has been a leader among a group of generally pro-Trump activists in Macomb, but his detractors complain that he spends more time on social media than recruiting candidates, and awkwardly withdrew his endorsement of Matt DePerno for confusing reasons. Forton has also been prone to a variety of conspiracy theories and mired in personality disputes with other County and state leaders.
So when duly elected precinct delegates met in Macomb County in mid-August, some of them went to Forton’s event, and some went to Castiglia’s event. Both factions were comprised of validly elected delegates, but only Castiglia’s was granted official recognition by state party.
At the state convention, then, the Forton faction moved to replace the slate of Castiglia delegates. The pro-Forton faction was led by Phil O’Halleran, Kristen Lee, Braden Giacobazzi, among others.
Kristen Lee coordinates the floor strategy to replace the Castiglia Macomb delegates with Forton delegates, along with Phil O’Halleran, left, and Braden Giacobazzi, behind her.
The pro-Forton motion needed a major 75% to prevail, and received 80%. While this had only the limited affect of replacing the delegates for this one state convention, it signaled a rebuke of state party choosing one side over another, and inspires the Forton group to keep fighting for official recognition.
The Forton symbolic victory also showed the strength of a new group of America First delegates who took over in early August but are still figuring out how to organize and assert their numerical power.
This group had the control over convention and didn’t know how to wield it. Behind the scenes, the Dixon camp were aghast realizing that the convention could have named anyone they wanted to the Lt. Governor position. If crowd-favorite Matt DePerno had given them a name, Garrett Soldano, Ryan Kelley, anyone, they would have been the nominee. Instead, the Tudor camp insisted that DePerno play ball.
The various groups at convention wanted to first seat the Forton faction, but their second goal was to replace Chair Ron Weiser for the meeting. Their third goal was a paper ballot for the Lieutenant Governor race. When they were negotiating they didn’t know that State Party had previously decided to have a paper ballot for the Lt. Gov. race, and so they traded paper ballots for the Lt. Governor race in exchange for keeping Weiser in place. They wanted recognition for the leaders of their effort, but when they came out on stage no one in the crowd understood what was going on, so there was only scattered applause.
But DePerno was the king of the convention and everyone backstage knew it. Tudor Dixon was in a “complete panic” when they saw the delegate numbers and support for Macomb. The assembled delegates could have done anything they wanted and the DeVos-aligned consultants to Dixon knew it and were terrified of it. Tudor Dixon’s team is led by lead consultant James Blair from Virginia, formerly deputy Chief of Staff for Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. Dixon has also paid long-time Trump advisor Susie Wiles as well. The Dixon Campaign Manager is Trent Morse.
One faction of Macomb precinct delegates wait in the guest area, before they were successful in replacing another faction’s delegates.
This revolution in Michigan state party politics has been a long time coming. The warning signs have been showing in county conventions.
Just weeks earlier, at the Clinton County GOP convention right outside the Lansing capital to decide whom to send to state convention, the room was packed with America First patriots. The County party is led by Jenell Leonard, wife of former Attorney General candidate Tom Leonard who lost to Matt DePerno. The Leonard family are friends with all the major money families in Michigan, and were darlings primed for higher office. Tom Leonard was the past Speaker of the Michigan House and representative from Clinton County. Yet at his county convention it was clear that his time was up, and neither Tom or Jenell were even elevated as delegates or even alternate delegates to the state convention.
As they were counting votes at the August 11 Clinton County convention, where vote counters are called “tellers” in party nomenclature, Tom Leonard took out a laptop and offered to count all the votes on a software program he had developed. The America First tellers were aghast and loudly objected, causing Leonard not only to leave the room, but actually walk out of the convention altogether. Not only could Leonard not be elevated as a delegate, he couldn’t even be allowed to fairly count the votes.
As the Establishment lost Clinton and Kent Counties, they picked up Hillsdale County, and are fighting insurgencies in Macomb and possibly Shiawassee, among others.
Amidst these happenings at the state convention, a small group from Hillsdale sought to make an unapproved motion from the convention floor to censure RINO Michigan Senate Majority Leader Mike Shirkey. Shirkey expanded Medicaid while in office, proposed giving in to Whitmer on repeated occasions such as raising the Michigan gas tax, state COVID shutdowns, mask mandates, among other moments where Shirkey gave into liberals.
The Shirkey censure group was led by State Representative Steve Carra.
Rep. Steve Carra making the motion to censure Senator Mike Shirkey
As soon as it was clear to the staff of the Michigan Republican Party what was happening, staff went out to mollify the unruly insurgents led by Rep. Carra.
Michigan Party Executive Director Paul Cordes came out to the group and promised them that a letter would be read at the end of the convention signaling that the America First Hillsdale GOP was the legitimate and effective group for Hillsdale County. This was of interest to the group because the establishment had recently taken control of Hillsdale County by forcing America First delegates off the ballot.
MRP Executive Director Paul Cordes, wearing an MIGOP shirt, center with hands outstretched, promising a legitimacy letter to the anti-Shirkey insurgents from Hillsdale County in exchange for not making a motion to censure Sen. Shirkey.
The anti-Shirkey insurgents took the deal and awaited their letter being read to the convention, a political win according to Jon Smith that was important to their future viability in the County.
Back on the main event of the day, the Lieutenant Governor challenge by Oakland Pastor Ralph Rebant was never a serious challenge to Hernandez becoming the Lieutenant Governor nominee. The real threat came from former Governor candidate Garrett Soldano, who was running a week prior to state convention, and bowed out within two days. At one point Soldano was looking for an excuse to bow out, trying to negotiate a bargain with the Michigan megamoney families behind Dixon where Soldano would bow out in exchange for them finally donating and financially supporting Matt DePerno.
To date no funds from the major GOP donor families have gone to DePerno, and Dixon and others have yet to formally endorse DePerno or Karamo. Dixon is generally seen as the choice of the establishment forces, and DePerno and Karamo were America First Patriots who won their convention races last April despite establishment opposition. It’s a divided statewide ticket divided between the pro-Trump patriots with the numbers and the establishment forces with the dollars.
During the convention Rebant was optimistic. He was hopeful that the Macomb delegate fight would aid his ultimate vote totals. Rebant noted that he never picked on Dixon on the campaign trail, and thought he could help Dixon flip Wayne County. “Our platform should propel candidates like me, so I don’t want to tear anyone down,” when asked about what set him apart from Hernandez.
Advertisement – story continues below
Camp Lejeune Families (1953-1987) Eligible for Compensation
Camp Lejeune Lawsuit Settlemen
$34.99 Security Camera Makes Doorbell Cams Seem Ancient
Keilini
This Lightbulb Security Camera is Sweeping Anaheim Now!
Keilini.com
Pastor Ralph Rebant, who was unsuccessful in the 8/2 Republican primary for Governor with 5%, and in the 8/27 party nominating convention with 22% of the delegate vote.
A poll by Michigan super-consultant John Yob showed only Soldano with the ability to beat Hernandez at state convention among delegates a week before the convention, prior to Trump’s endorsement.
Ultimately Soldano bowed out of the race, and then Trump endorsed Hernandez. DePerno then endorsed, as did a wide variety of grassroots leaders.
Hernandez wasn’t asked by activists why he passed increasing budgets his two years as the House Appropriations Chairman, cutting virtually nothing in the $70+ Billion state budget, nor was he asked for details on fighting Governor Whitmer on COVID shutdowns or other conservative claims which insiders say weren’t true in the slightest regard. Hernandez also wasn’t asked to explain his closeness to former Speaker Lee Chatfield, currently under state and federal investigation for a wide variety of crimes including embezzlement and sexual abuse.
Advertisement – story continues below
Camp Lejeune Families (1953-1987) Eligible for Compensation
Camp Lejeune Lawsuit Settlemen
$34.99 Security Camera Makes Doorbell Cams Seem Ancient
Keilini
This Lightbulb Security Camera is Sweeping Anaheim Now!
Keilini.com
Hernandez also escaped political liability for running the House Republican Campaign Committee, an account used to both protect liberal Republicans in the State House but also discretely to pick winners in primaries across the state to ensure they are as moderate as possible. The HRCC, as its known, not only spends millions in largely DeVos money, but also uses state legislative staff to walk, call, and campaign for preferred candidates in primaries. The HRCC system is one critical, perhaps the most critical safeguard, against America First conservatives successfully winning Republican primaries.
HRCC quietly works to defeat conservatives in primaries, and then selectively spends its establishment money in general elections only preferring candidates in tight races who align best with the RINO Lansing agenda. Hernandez led and steered this effort defeating America First conservatives for the past year.
Hernandez, through the HRCC account, spent significant sums opposing, for example, America First candidate Heather Cerone in her challenge to incumbent RINO Rep. Jack O’Malley, who was known to curse out election integrity patriots at public events. Gateway Pundit Publisher Jim Hoft endorsed Patriot Heather Cerone. Hernandez denied opposing Cerone in a phone call, and Cerone endorsed Hernandez for Lieutenant Governor.
As the convention was brought to a close by Attorney General candidate Matt DePerno, delegates expressed relief that the day was finally over. Many were talking about ‘unity for November’ but there was a distinct minority up front that were yelling about reading a document. It was the Hillsdale contingent insisting that their promised letter be read to the convention prior to everyone departing.
The meeting adjourned. The promised Hillsdale resolution was never read.
Jim Hoft is the founder and editor of The Gateway Pundit, one of the top conservative news outlets in America. Jim was awarded the Reed Irvine Accuracy in Media Award in 2013 and is the proud recipient of the Breitbart Award for Excellence in Online Journalism from the Americans for Prosperity Foundation in May 2016.
Speaking at an energy conference in Stavanger, Norway, on August 29, Tesla CEO Elon Musk reiterated a claim that he made earlier this year: “I think we need to use oil and gas in the short term, because otherwise civilization will crumble.”
Amid an energy crisis in Europe — which some anticipate will get much worse in the winter — high gas prices, and a grid rendered more unstable in the U.S. by reliance on so-called sustainable energy, Musk claimed that “we actually need more oil and gas, not less.” Though he indicated that “we have a clear path to a sustainable energy future,” it is not a path that can be tread quickly. Musk said the transition “will take some decades to complete.” That transition is by no means a simple or an easy one. The Tesla CEO noted that it is one “of the biggest challenges the world has ever faced.”
Musk’s theme of civilizational collapse as a response to a premature transition off of fossil fuels is taken up in scientist and policy analyst Vaclav Smil’s recent book “How the World Really Works.” Although Smil discusses the impact more broadly, he zeroes in on our food supply’s link to fossil fuels: “Our food supply — be it staple grains, clucking birds, favorite vegetables, or seafood praised for its nutritious quality — has become increasingly dependent on fossil fuels.”
Smil, like Musk, anticipates a transition, but does not think it can be rushed. “Even if we try to change the global food system as fast as is realistically conceivable, we will be eating transformed fossil fuels, be it as loaves of bread or as fishes, for decades to come.” He is certain that the coming transition “will not be (it cannot be) a sudden abandonment of fossil carbon, nor even its rapid demise — but rather its gradual decline.”
Keeping oil and gas flowing at current or greater levels in the interim, per Musk’s suggestion, may not just keep people fed, but also serve to curb or ease massive increases in energy costs.
European politicians have set aside $278 billion to cushion the impact of the energy crisis on businesses and consumers — for whom skyrocketing energy costs have proven insurmountable in some cases. This is but one of many recent price tags and setbacks encountered as a result of an overreliance on hostile energy supply, an inability to fully pivot owing to temperamental alternatives, and more generally, on a premature transition. According to Musk, self-sufficiency as it pertains to oil and gas is important, even to a country such as Norway, which derives the majority of its electricity from hydropower and renewables.
Musk suggested that Norway, wealthy and green as the result of its oil and gas production, should continue to drill for fossil fuels, stating, “I think some additional exploration is warranted at this time.” Musk, too, extolled nuclear energy as a form of power generation worth maintaining: “If you have a well-designed nuclear plant, you should not shut it down — especially not now.”
He tweeted on August 26: “Countries should be increasing nuclear power generation! It is insane from a national security standpoint & bad for the environment to shut them down.”
Countries should be increasing nuclear power generation! It is insane from a national security standpoint & bad for the environment to shut them down.
An elite FBI agent has resigned following allegations of political bias in the probe of Hunter Biden’s laptop, a source familiar with the matter told Fox News.
Assistant Special Agent in Charge Timothy Thibault had often retweeted and responded to Twitter content attacking Republicans in 2020, with members of Congress including Republican Sens. Chuck Grassley of Iowa and John Kennedy of Louisiana recently questioning his actions. Grassley accused him of attempting to shut down the Hunter Biden laptop investigation, and he had recently been removed from the job of assistant special agent in charge of the FBI’s Washington Field Office, according to CBS News.
A representative for Grassley sent the Daily Caller News Foundation a comment following Thibault’s resignation.
“Mr. Thibault’s blatant partisanship undermined the work and reputation of the FBI,” Grassley said. “This type of bias in high-profile investigations casts a shadow over all of the bureau’s work that he was involved in, which ranged from opening an investigation into Trump based on liberal news articles to shutting down investigative activity into Hunter Biden that was based on verified information. Political bias should have no place at the FBI, and the effort to revive the FBI’s credibility can’t stop with his exit. We need accountability, which is why Congress must continue investigating and the inspector general must fully investigate as I’ve requested.”
Whistleblowers said local FBI authorities had instructed employees not to look at Hunter Biden’s laptop to avoid further influencing election results, Republican Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson claimed last week.
Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) speaks during a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on the Fiscal Year 2023 Budget at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, U.S., April 26, 2022. Bonnie Cash/Pool via REUTERS
Former President Donald Trump alleged on TruthSocial following Thibault’s departure that he had convinced the FBI to raid his Mar-A-Lago residence, but Fox News reported that Thibault was not involved.
“We do not comment on personnel matters,” the FBI’s National Press Office told Daily Caller News Foundation.
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 “Fox News”, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Donald Trump.
The search warrant affidavit unsealed on Friday confirms the Department of Justice used a bait-and-switch tactic to justify the FBI’s unprecedented raid on former President Donald Trump’s home. The unredacted portions of the affidavit further expose the Biden administration’s manipulative and tenuous basis for the search and its reliance on inapplicable federal criminal code provisions to justify the targeting of a political enemy.
At noon on Friday, the search warrant affidavit used by the DOJ to obtain a warrant to raid Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home hit the public court docket, albeit with heavy redactions. While sparse, the unredacted portions of the affidavit nonetheless proved significant, especially when read in conjunction with the previously unsealed search warrant and the leaks to the compliant media cartel.
“The government is conducting a criminal investigation concerning the improper removal and storage of classified information in unauthorized spaces, as well as the unlawful concealment or removal of government records,” the affidavit opened, before noting that “the investigation began as a result of a referral the United States National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) sent to the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) on February 9, 2022.”
The affidavit then summarized the background of the NARA referral, explaining that “on February 9, 2022, the Special Agent in Charge of NARA’s Office of Inspector General sent a referral via email to the DOJ.” The referral explained that the NARA’s White House Liaison Division director had reviewed 15 boxes NARA had retrieved from Mar-a-Lago including “newspapers, magazines, printed news articles, photos, miscellaneous print-outs, notes, presidential correspondence, personal and post-presidential records, and ‘a lot of classified records.’” “Of most significant,” the search warrant affidavit explained, was that “highly classified records were unfoldered, intermixed with other records, and otherwise unproperly [sic] identified.”
While the next nearly eight pages of the search warrant affidavit remained redacted, the disclosures that followed exposed the affidavit’s focus on “classified records” as a sham. “On or about May 6, 2021, NARA made a request for the missing PRA records and continued to make requests until approximately late December 2021 when NARA was informed twelve boxes were found and ready for retrieval at the [Mar-a-Lago],” the affidavit continued, with the abbreviation “PRA” previously noted to stand for the Presidential Records Act.
As I explained previously, to fully comprehend the Biden administration’s weaponizing of the DOJ and FBI, it is necessary to understand the Presidential Records Act, the concept of “presidential records,” and the NARA’s role, and the search warrant affidavit’s references to those concepts confirm that point. In short:
“The Presidential Records Act provides that documents created or received by the president or his immediate staff, such as memos, letters, notes, emails, and other written communications, related to a president’s official duties, constitute ‘presidential records’ and must be preserved. The act further declares that the United States shall retain complete ownership, possession, and control of Presidential records.’ And at the conclusion of a president’s term in office, the ‘Archivist of the United States’ ‘assumes responsibility for the custody, control, and preservation of, and access to, the Presidential records.’”
The Presidential Records Act, however, expressly excludes specific documents from the definition of “presidential records,” including any documentary materials that are “official records of an agency,” “personal records,” or “extra copies of documents produced only for convenience of reference, when such copies are clearly so identified.” The federal statute further defines “personal records” as “diaries, journals, or personal notes ‘not prepared or utilized for, or circulated or communicated in the course of, transacting Government business’” or “materials relating to private political associations” or “relating exclusively to the President’s own election to the office of the Presidency.”
The public (understandably) may wish to sidestep the minutia of the mandates of the Presidential Records Act, but three top-line takeaways prove imperative to understanding the scandal of the Mar-a-Lago search. First, the Presidential Records Act is not a criminal statute, and violations of that federal law do not constitute a crime. Second, the Presidential Records Act does not reach broad swathes of documents retained by a former president, including “official records of an agency,” “personal records,” and convenience copies of presidential records. And third, the courts have refused to question a former president’s conclusion that a record constitutes a “personal record” and not a “presidential record.”
Two additional legal points require expansion for the populace to fully grasp the outrageous overreach of the DOJ, which was further exposed in the partially unsealed affidavit. The first legal principle of note concerns a president’s power to declassify documents. As Trump’s attorney stressed in a May 2022 letter to the DOJ, which the government released along with the redacted version of the search warrant affidavit, “a president has absolute authority to declassify documents.”
“Under the U.S. Constitution, the President is vested with the highest level of authority when it comes to the classification and declassification of documents,” Trump’s lawyer Evan Corcoran explained in his correspondence with the DOJ. Citing both the Constitution and Navy v. Egan, 484 U.S. 518, 527 (1988), wherein the United States Supreme Court wrote, “the President’s authority to classify and control access to information bearing on national security … flows primarily from this constitutional investment of power in the President and exists quite apart from any explicit congressional grant,” Corcoran countered the DOJ’s attempt to frame NARA’s discovery of documents marked “classified” as warranting a criminal investigation.
Trump’s lawyer stressed a second significant legal principle in the same letter, writing that “presidential actions involving classified documents are not subject to criminal sanction.” Then, after noting that “any attempt to impose criminal liability on a President or former President that involves his actions with respect to documents marked classified would implicate grave constitutional separation-of-powers issues,” Corcoran wrote: “Beyond that, the primary criminal statute that governs the unauthorized removal and retention of classified documents or material does not apply to the President.”
The attorney for the former president then quoted the statute that criminalizes the removal, possession, or retention of classified materials before stressing that “an element of this offense, which the government must prove beyond a reasonable doubt, is that the accused is ‘an officer, employee, contractor, or consultant of the United States.’” “The President is none of these,” Trump’s attorney continued, before concluding, “thus, the statute does not apply to acts by a President.”
Corcoran closed his letter by reminding the DOJ of its obligation “to be candid in representations made to judges,” and requested that a copy of the lawyer’s letter be provided “to any judicial officer who is asked to rule on any motion pertaining to this investigation, or on any application made in connection with any investigative request concerning this investigation,” as well as “any grand jury considering evidence in connection with this matter, or any grand jury asked to issue a subpoena for testimony or documents in connection with this matter.”
The search warrant affidavit referenced Corcoran’s letter and provided a copy to Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart, who issued the search warrant. The DOJ also informed Reinhart of a Breitbart News article from May 5, 2022, which states that a former Trump administration official, Kash Patel, had characterized as “misleading” reports that documents retrieved by NARA included classified material; Patel alleged that the reporting was misleading because Trump had declassified the materials at issue.
The DOJ informed Reinhart of the above details and thus, in essence, that the government lacked probable cause to search Mar-a-Lago based on a violation of the statute governing the mishandling of classified documents. But what Trump’s legal team did not foresee, and what the search warrant affidavit revealed, was that the DOJ would twist the facts to find other crimes to justify the targeting of Trump.
The introductory section of the affidavit summarized three other legal theories to justify the search, stating first that “the FBI’s investigation has established that documents bearing classification markings, which appear to contain National Defense Information (NDI), were among the materials” contained in the 15 boxes retrieved by the NARA. Second, the affidavit maintained that there was “probable cause to believe that additional documents that contain classified NDI or that are Presidential records subject to record retention requirements currently remain at the Mar-a-Lago.” And third, the affidavit claimed there was “also probable cause to believe that evidence of obstruction will be found at” Mar-a-Lago. Those legal theories track the three statutes cited by the DOJ to justify the search, namely 18 U.S.C. §§ 793(e), 1519, and 2071.
As I previously explained, none of those criminal code provisions require material to be classified for there to be criminal liability. Rather, Section 793(e), also called the Espionage Act, makes it a crime for a person “having unauthorized possession of, access to, or control over” “national defense information” to “willfully” share that information with a “person not entitled to receive it” or to “willfully retain” the national defense information and fail to deliver it to an employee of the United States “entitled to receive it,” if “the possessor has reason to believe [it] could be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of any foreign nation.”
The unredacted portions of the search warrant affidavit reveal how the DOJ manipulated the facts to fit within the Espionage Act. First, for the Espionage Act to apply, the material must qualify as “national defense information.” To establish probable cause that “national defense information” remained at Mar-a-Lago, the affidavit noted that a review by FBI agents of the 15 boxes retrieved by NARA “identified documents with classification markings in fourteen of the fifteen boxes.” The FBI agent who signed the search warrant affidavit then attested that based on his “training and experience,” he “knows that documents classified at these levels typically contain NDI” or “national defense information.”
What the DOJ did here, then, was this: It highlighted that the documents retrieved by the NARA contained “classification markings” and then used the FBI agent’s expertise to establish that documents that receive a classification marking typically include “national defense information.” That Trump declassified (or may have declassified) the documents is irrelevant under this analysis because the fact that they were ever classified would mean they likely qualified as “national defense information.”
The DOJ subtly confirmed this point by dropping a footnote that explains that “§ 793(e) does not use the term ‘classified information,’ but rather criminalizes the unlawful retention of ‘information relating to the national defense.’” The footnote continues by noting that Section 793(e) does not define “information related to the national defense,” but adds that courts have construed national defense information “broadly.”
In other words, the DOJ bent the Espionage Act to fit the facts of Trump’s possession of documents at Mar-a-Lago. The Biden administration couldn’t target Trump for mishandling classified material both because he declassified it and because the statute that criminalizes such mishandling doesn’t reach a president or a former president. So instead, they tried to find a crime to get the man.
Even then, there is a second problem with the DOJ’s reliance on the Espionage Act: An Espionage Act violation only occurs if the person has “unauthorized possession of, access to, or control over,” the national defense information. But how was Trump’s possession “unauthorized”?
From the unredacted portions of the affidavit, it appears the DOJ maintained that Trump’s possession of the national defense information was “unauthorized” because the documents were “presidential records” wrongly retained by Trump. But “presidential records” do not include agency records, personal records, or convenience copies, and the documents bearing the classification markings likely originated from intelligence community agencies and/or were hard copies printed for convenience, meaning Trump’s possession of those documents would not be “unauthorized” under the Presidential Records Act.
For the same reason, the DOJ’s reliance on Section 2017, which criminalizes the removal, destruction, or concealing of government records, falters because that criminal provision protects the government’s access to its own records, and merely possessing copies of government records is not enough to constitute a crime. Yet from the search warrant affidavit and the search warrant, it appears the government sought to recover from Trump hard copies of information it already had within its possession, either through various agencies or the electronic copies maintained by the relevant authorities. And it is a stretch for the government to rely on Section 2017 to criminalize Trump’s possession of the records.
Again, what we are seeing is a bending and twisting of the law to find a crime on which to launch the Mar-a-Lago raid. Mishandling of classified materials wouldn’t work, and Trump’s attorney made sure the DOJ knew that, so the creative team working under Attorney General Merrick Garland combed the federal code and found two plausible statutes on which to rely, adding a claim of obstruction of justice to round out the search warrant affidavit. While it is unclear from the affidavit the basis for the government’s obstruction of justice allegation, the affidavit establishes that the other criminal provisions relied upon representing illicit maneuvering to manufacture a crime for the man who was their political enemy.
Americans may shrug when prosecutors use pretext to target known drug dealers or human traffickers, but manipulating the criminal code to find a basis to search the home of a former president and a political enemy represents an appalling weaponization of the criminal justice system. And while large portions of the affidavit remain under seal, the country has seen enough to know that is precisely what the Biden administration did to get Trump.
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.
Rob Schneider is a comedy legend, with a career spanning “Saturday Night Live,” films like “Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo” and “The Benchwarmers,” and a stand-up act that’s still going strong. But perhaps one of the most courageous things he’s ever done was admitting to the world that he’s not a woke leftist.
Schneider joined “The Glenn Beck Podcast” to tell his story, including how listening to Glenn helped him go from a Hollywood liberal to a conservative who would rather be ostracized than stay silent. He also detailed the sad state of comedy in the woke era, how SNL changed since he left, and the moment he knew his “old show” was officially “over.”
“I hate to crap on my old show,” Schneider told Glenn.
“But when I saw, when Hillary Clinton lost … and then when Kate McKinnon went out there on ‘Saturday Night Live,’ on a cold opening … dressed as Hillary Clinton, and she starts playing ‘Hallelujah,’ I literally prayed, please have a joke at the end. Don’t do this. Please don’t go down there. And there was no joke at the end, and I went, it’s over. It’s over. It’s not gonna come back.”
Comedy legend @RobSchneider tells me the moment he knew Saturday Night Live was "OVER": "I literally prayed, PLEASE have a joke at the end…" pic.twitter.com/Eyqh3GFnUG
Schneider was referring to the first “SNL” episode after Hillary Clinton lost the presidential election to Donald Trump in 2016, prompting an emotional McKinnon to open the show by performing Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah.”
Content warning: The following video has been known to cause nausea, gagging, or retching for some audiences. Viewer discretion is advised.
“You can take the comedic indoctrination process happening with each of the late-night hosts, and you can exchange them with each other. That’s how you know it’s not interesting anymore. There’s not an independent voice anymore,” Schneider said. “It’s all indoctrination by comedic imposition.”
Schneider goes on to tell Glenn why he believes “funny is coming back” and shares the best advice a comedian ever gave him. Watch “The Glenn Beck Podcast” below.
NOTE: Rob Schneider discussed some verboten topics, so portions of this video podcast have been edited to comply with YouTube’s “community guidelines.” For the full, uncensored version of this episode where free speech is still allowed, watch it on BlazeTV.
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 “Fox News”, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Donald Trump.
Chemical abortion is the backup plan of the abortion industry post-Roe, but it shields a ghastly history. The demand for this dangerous drug is rising in the U.S. despite its four times higher complication rate than surgical abortion and a jaw-dropping reality: the chemical abortion drug is connected to Nazi Germany. The affiliates of those who killed innocent children in the Holocaust introduced to our county the drug that is today killing innocent preborn children and numerous mothers.
Pro-life activists often argue that the dehumanization of Jews by the Nazis and the dehumanization of the preborn by the abortion industry are philosophically similar phenomena. Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger was a relentless racist. However, few know the true historical relationship between the Nazi genocide during World War II and today’s chemical abortion industry, now responsible for 54 percent of abortions nationwide.
In the early to mid-20th century, the pharmaceutical holding company I.G. Farben Chemical Company controlled much of the German chemical industry. According to Encyclopedia Britannica, the infamous Auschwitz was one of I.G. Farben’s very own chemical plants, responsible for the slavery and deaths of more than a million people in World War II.
Several of Farben’s directors were also found guilty in the U.S’s Nuernberg War Crimes Trials for slavery and mass murder. Georg von Schnitzler, a member of the managing board of directors of Farben, was even a captain in a violent division of the Nazi party that helped facilitate Hitler’s rise before WWII. I.G. Farben Chemical Company was the archetype of an industrial demon.
After the war, Western countries attempted to utterly splinter I.G. Farben industrial power, but divided the holding company into three of its own industrial members, Hoechst, Bayer, and BASF.
In 1974, the first of these three entities, Hoechst, gained a majority share of the holding company Chimio that controlled a French pharmaceutical company called Roussel Uclaf. By 1982, Roussel Uclaf had developed the RU-486 chemical abortion drug mifepristone.
Abortion Drug’s Ties to Population Council, Planned Parenthood
During the mid-1990s, Roussel Uclaf allied with the nonprofit Population Council, which led the charge for FDA approval of the abortion pill in the U.S., officially granted in 2000. During that time Hoechst acquired the remaining shares of Roussel Uclaf.
Like Hoechst, the Population Council had deeply eugenic roots.Aided by the director of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, the organization was founded by John D. Rockefeller III, son of John D. Rockefeller, Jr.
Rockefeller Jr. sponsored German eugenic research leading up to the late-1930s that influenced later Nazi policy. Through the Rockefeller Foundation, he funded multiple institutions at which Ernst Rüdin, who spearheaded Hitler’s gruesome medical research during the Holocaust, held leading roles. One such organization was the Institute for Brain Research. According to The History News Network:
Everything changed when Rockefeller money arrived in 1929. A grant of $317,000 allowed the Institute to construct a major building and take center stage in German race biology. The Institute received additional grants from the Rockefeller Foundation during the next several years. Leading the Institute, once again, was Hitler’s medical henchman Ernst Rüdin. Rüdin’s organization became a prime director and recipient of the murderous experimentation and research conducted on Jews, Gypsies and others.
Following in the footsteps of the organization his father founded, in the 1950s Rockefeller III’s Population Council supported the American Eugenics Society, eugenics-motivated sterilization of women, and the use of sex-selective abortion. It also tested, along with International Planned Parenthood Federation, population controlling IUD contraceptives in Pakistan, Taiwan, South Korea, and India in the ’60s despite knowing their dangerous side effects on women. The council itself was led for years by openly eugenicist presidents Frederick Osborn and Frank Notestein, both of whom were members of the American Eugenics Society.
Aborting Minorities
Rockefeller III acted as chairman of President Nixon’s 1969 Population and the American Future Commission just two years after receiving Planned Parenthood’s Margaret Sanger Award. The commission staff was headed by Dr. Charles F. Westoff of the American Eugenics Society and advised by eugenicist Daniel Callahan. The final report endorsed decreasing population growth through supporting the option for women to obtain contraception and/or abortion. No wonder the Population Council was such a willing candidate to spearhead FDA approval for the Hoechst/Roussel Uclaf chemical abortion drug.
Certain mid-19th century eugenicist figures such as Gunnar Myrdal in his 1944 book “An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy” schemed that “the most effective way they could advance their agenda would be to concentrate population control facilities within the targeted communities,” according to Life Dynamic’s Racial Targeting Report. Today, abortion is the leading cause of death among African Americans, having taken an estimated 19 million black lives. According to Students for Life of America, “Almost 80% of Planned Parenthood’s abortion facilities are located in minority neighborhoods. 88% of its new ‘mega facilities’ are located within walking distance of minority neighborhoods.”
Today’s abortion industry today is continuing Sanger’s racist legacy. As filmmaker Jason Jones bluntly put it, even though today’s abortion supporters generally reject eugenics, by still endorsing policies (namely abortion) that disproportionately kill black babies, they are “watering an apple tree hoping they get peaches.”
A disproportionate number of black babies are being killed by the abortion industry. This is the effect Planned Parenthood founder and eugenicist Sanger hoped for. It is no surprise that organizations like Hoechst and Population Council, who have eugenic roots too, were inclined to join the abortion bandwagon considering its ability to control populations.
Eugenic leaders laid the groundwork for today’s abortion industry. Similar to the 1969 Commission using the language of women’s choice to propagate what was possibly the eugenic dispositions of its leaders, today’s abortion industry touts the language of bodily autonomy to bolster their abortion business. Considering that nearly half of black babies are aborted in the U.S. today, abortion supporters don’t seem to care that their policies, in effect, carry on the eugenic tendencies of the Population Council, both J.D. Rockefellers, I.G. Farben Chemical Company, and Margaret Sanger.
The sad irony is that while the language of the abortion industry changed, its policies did not. Planned Parenthood still propagates a eugenic legacy through killing innocent children by chemical abortion.
Rachel Schroder is a history major at Hillsdale College. She wrote this article during her internship at the Clare Boothe Luce Center for Conservative Women.
The White House was confronted Thursday over the appearance that the Biden administration has exploited the COVID-19 pandemic to enact its political agenda.
As part of President Joe Biden’s plan to unilaterally forgive student loan debt, the Biden administration disclosed what it believes is the legal authority to take such action. That authority, according to a five-page legal memorandum from the Education Department, stems from a post-9/11 law known as the HEROES Act of 2003. The memorandum claims the nearly two-decade-old law gives the Biden administration “broad authority to grant relief from student loan requirements during specific periods (a war, other military operation, or national emergency, such as the present COVID-19 pandemic) and for specific purposes (including to address the financial harms of such a war, other military operation, or emergency).”
Thus Biden is exploiting the supposed national emergency stemming from the pandemic as the legal justification for sweeping debt forgiveness.
At the White House press briefing, Fox News reporter Jacqui Heinrich exposed a double standard apparently being used by the Biden administration, pointing out that administration officials have argued in court that the pandemic is over.
“I want to ask about the legal basis for canceling student debt,” Heinrich began. “The HEROES Act hinges on student debt cancellation being tied to the pandemic and that being a national emergency. But the administration argued in court that the pandemic is over at the southern border to lift Title 42. It’s so over that the government is going to stop buying vaccines in the fall and shift to the private sector.’
“So, how is this a national emergency? How is COVID a national emergency when it comes to student debt?” she asked.
Press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre claimed the administration is justified in now arguing the pandemic remains a national emergency because when the moratorium on student loan payments ends months from now, people will “suffer.”
“There’s gonna be some folks who are going to have a hard time,” Jean-Pierre argued.
“Because of the economy?” Heinrich fired back.
Jean-Pierre responded, “Because they’re just in a different bracket. They’ve probably had a hard time before.”
08/25/22: Press Briefing by Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre youtu.be
Heinrich then cornered Jean-Pierre over another narrative the Biden administration pushes, namely the economy is booming and in great shape because of Biden. Thus, if the economy is great, “Why are those appropriate conditions to forgive student debt?” Heinrich asked.
In response, Jean-Pierre argued that “both can be true. It’s not one or the other.”
The White House has not yet said how much Biden’s plan will cost taxpayers or how it will be financed. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimates the plan will cost roughly $500 billion.
The Department of Justice’s (DOJ) redacted affidavit relating to the raid on former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home was released on Friday. The document shows that the DOJ pointed to a number of classified materials already obtained from Trump’s home as reason for the August search warrant request.
Though much of the affidavit was redacted, unsealed portions of it revealed that the latest search came after the FBI reviewed 15 boxes that Trump turned over to the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) in January, sparking further concern about other potential documents. Fourteen of these boxes had classification markings,” according to the affidavit.
The 14 boxes contained 184 documents – 25 of the documents had “top secret” markings, 92 were labeled “secret” and 67 had a “confidential” warning, according to the affidavit.
The affidavit also notes that the DOJ requested Trump secure the storage room at Mar-a-Lago, pointing out that the department sent a letter to “FPOTUS COUNSEL 1” on June 8, 2022. This letter “reiterated that the PREMISES are not authorized to store classified information and requested the preservation of the STORAGE ROOM and boxes that had been moved from the White House to the PREMISES.”
“As I previously indicated to you, Mar-a-Lago does not include a secure location authorized for the storage of classified information,” the letter reads, according to the affidavit. “As such, it appears that since the time classified documents [redacted] were removed from the secure facilities at the White House and moved to Mar-a-Lago on or around January 20, 2021, they have not been handled in an appropriate manner or stored in au appropriate location. Accordingly, we ask that the room at Mar-a-Lago where the documents had been stored be secured and that all of the boxes that were moved from the White House to Mar-a-Lago (along with any other items in that room) be preserved in that room in their current condition until farther notice.”
FILE PHOTO: An aerial view of former U.S. President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home after Trump said that FBI agents raided it, in Palm Beach, Florida, U.S. August 15, 2022. REUTERS/Marco Bello/File Photo
Multiple media organizations, including CNN and The New York Times, pushed for the affidavit – which would shed light on the reasoning behind the unprecedented raid – to be released because of intense public interest and the unparalleled nature of the situation. Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart – who also signed off on the search warrant used in the FBI’s August 8 raid – ordered the DOJ to submit redactions to the affidavit after formally rejecting the department’s push to keep the document private. Reinhart approved the redactions on Thursday and noted the affidavit would be released by noon on Friday.
In the wake of the FBI’s search, Trump slammed the incident as being politically motivated. He encouraged the “immediate release of documents” relating to the search of his Florida home and, on August 22, filed a lawsuit asking for a “special master” to be appointed to independently oversee the review of various materials that had been taken. (RELATED: FBI Agents Remove 11 Sets Of Classified Documents From Mar-a-Lago)
The DOJ on Friday also released a document detailing its proposed redactions to the affidavit and reasons for the redactions – though notably the reasons for keeping portions of the affidavit under wraps were also redacted. In this document, the DOJ noted that the redactions are an effort to protect a “significant number of civilian witnesses.”
The Justice Department's reasons for keeping large portions of its Mar-a-Lago warrant application sealed are themselves sealed. pic.twitter.com/H86pYcnQL2
MORE: Here is "a chart identifying the government's proposed redactions as belonging to different categories of protected information," per the DOJ. But, as you can see, it's really hard to say. https://t.co/nqiAZfIWympic.twitter.com/XgaZOVFojX
The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Townhall.com, and WhatDidYouSay.org.
Source: AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews
This is a cautionary tale for all Americans, both white and black.
Last Sunday, a college couple, 22-year-old Adam Simjee and his 20-year-old girlfriend, Mikayla Paulus, were driving through Talladega National Forest when they were flagged down by a black woman having car trouble. If I tell you the good Samaritans may have been National Review readers, you can probably guess that one of them ended up dead.
As they were trying to fix the car, the woman, Yasmine Hider, pointed a gun at them and demanded they walk into the woods and hand over their phones and wallets. At some point, Simjee pulled out his own gun and started firing at Hider, wounding her. She shot back, killing him.
The reason I suspect the couple were National Review readers is that the “good Samaritan” ruse was one of the bullet points in John Derbyshire’s famous “The Talk: Nonblack Version,” which got him fired from National Review in 2012 — standing athwart history and mewling, “Please like me, liberals.”
Derbyshire hadn’t even published the piece in NR.
He was responding to a spate of lachrymose accounts of black parents describing “The Talk” they have to give their sons, instructing them to be super polite to police officers — smile and say, “Yes, sir” — lest the officer shoot them to death for no reason whatsoever. (Ask any police officer, and they will tell you black arrestees, to a man, are the politest people you will ever meet.)
In the piece, Derbyshire issued exhortations about treating black people with “the same courtesies you would extend to a nonblack citizen,” but then listed “some unusual circumstances,” requiring extra vigilance due to “considerations of personal safety.”
The “personal safety” rules concerned only complete strangers. His point was that when you have no other information to go on, you have to rely on statistics.
Derbyshire’s Rule 10 (h) was: “Do not act the Good Samaritan to blacks in apparent distress, e.g., on the highway.” He appended links to stories like the one that began this column.
Here are a few other examples from a general Nexis search for “good Samaritan w/s shoot! or kill! w/s car”:
Feel free to look them up, but I’ll save you the trouble and tell you: All the perps were black. National Review: DO NOT WARN OUR READERS ABOUT THE “CAR TROUBLE” SCAM!
Derbyshire did warn his readers, so NR editor Rich Lowry dumped him, denouncing the piece as “nasty and indefensible.”
Not good enough! Slate magazine’s William Saletan thundered, complaining that Lowry had not attacked the “ugly,” “racist” column with sufficient ferocity. He, Saletan, would proceed to explain “what Derbyshire got wrong.” Whereupon he demonstrated that he has no idea what the words “statistical” or “averages” mean — much less the phrase “[when] you have nothing to guide you but knowledge of those mean differences.”
Thus, his central complaint was: “Derbyshire thinks his data warrant his conclusions. But all his data references include the crucial term ‘mean’ or ‘average.’ They don’t tell you about the person walking toward you. They tell you what you can assess about the probability of danger when the only information you have is color.”
Yes, exactly, you complete moron. That’s the point, subtly indicated by Derbyshire stating that he was referring only to those occasions when you don’t have any other information about a person. (Do black parents giving “The Talk” remind their sons not to make assumptions about any particular cop walking toward them?)
Back in the halcyon days of Mayors Rudy Giuliani and Michael Bloomberg, we had one other fact to guide us: Criminals were in prison. Unfortunately for black people, a small percentage of their community commit a boatload of crime. But as long as criminals went to prison, New Yorkers could pass black men with little concern because if they were criminals, they’d most likely be locked up, not standing on a subway platform next to you.
Not anymore. Now, the criminals are out among us. There’s no possible way to evaluate a stranger, except the statistics. E.g.: Blacks, who make up about 20% of New York’s population, commit more than 70% of the shootings. In Los Angeles, blacks are only 8% of the population, but commit nearly half of the murders.
Suddenly, New Yorkers, Los Angelinos and anyone else living under Democratic control are behaving like the Rev. Jesse Jackson, who once remarked that when he heard footsteps on the street behind him, he would, “look around and see it’s somebody white and feel relieved.” He made that statement in 1993 — the very year Giuliani was elected mayor, before proceeding to drive down crime rates and liberate black people from dangerous neighborhoods, as well as from suspicious looks.
This is the cautionary note for black people. The Democrats’ Free All Criminals policies have hurt black people in myriad ways — mostly by getting thousands more of them robbed, assaulted and killed each year — but also in other, more subtle ways, like this.
As Senate candidate Blake Masters of Arizona said — and the media lied about — it is blacks, frankly, who suffer the most when criminals aren’t locked up. And the Democrats don’t care.
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 “Fox News”, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Donald Trump.
Bible on a school desk in a classroom. | Getty Images
A Christian school administrator in Florida says he’s received threats over media reports about a school policy that requires students to be identified by their biological sex.
Barry McKeen, an administrator for Grace Christian School, located in Valrico about 15 miles east of Tampa, announced in an email on June 6 that any students who violate the school’s stance on sexuality would “be asked to leave the school immediately.”
McKeen told The Christian Post that the email — which outlined definitions of biological sex and sexual sin with specific references to Bible verses — was sent as part of a regular series of summer emails reminding parents of school policies.
“We noticed as last year was wrapping up, some kids being more friendly with the same gender than they probably ought to be,” McKeen said. “We had a feeling we needed to clarify [the policy].”
The email read in part: “We believe that God created mankind in His image: male (man) and female (woman), sexually different but with equal dignity. Therefore, one’s biological sex must be affirmed and no attempts should be made to physically change, alter, or disagree with one’s biological gender — including, but not limited to, elective sex reassignment, transvestite, transgender, or non-binary gender fluid acts of conduct (Genesis 1:26-28). Students in school will be referred to by the gender on their birth certificate and be referenced in name in the same fashion.
“We believe that any form of homosexuality, lesbianism, bisexuality, transgender identity/lifestyle, self-identification, bestiality, incest, fornication, adultery and pornography are sinful in the sight of God and the church (Genesis 2:24; Leviticus 18:1-30; Romans 1:26-29; I Corinthians 5:1; I Corinthians 6:9; I Thessalonians 4:2-7),” the email added. “Students who are found participating in these lifestyles will be asked to leave the school immediately.”
McKeen told The Christian Post that the school of about 540 students has had a similar policy in place for years, and to date, no student has been excused or expelled over the policy.
In fact, McKeen said the policy is “literally verbatim” in the handbooks of more than a dozen other Christian schools, and aside from terminology updates, the policy is the same as it was when the school started in 1975.
“I’m not suggesting on Day One it had transgender in there, but it certainly dealt with the homosexual issue,” said McKeen. “That’s why it’s been surprising for me. Because A) it’s not a new policy, and B) we weren’t forced to enforce it yet.
“Nobody was kicked out; we didn’t approach anybody,” he added.
Since that announcement and the ensuing media coverage, McKeen said there was a law enforcement presence on campus last Friday following the NBC News story. While there weren’t any specific threats made toward the school, McKee said two separate individuals threatened him personally, including one who said they would “burn my house down.”
Not only did Grace Christian hire additional security, but McKeen said, “we have a lot of kids at the school whose parents are in law enforcement, so they began to show up anyway.”
In response, McKeen posted a video on the school’s Facebook page to refute some of what he called erroneous reporting by NBC News and other outlets.
The NBC News story also referenced a similar policy that was enforced at another Christian school in Louisiana, claiming it was “shutting its doors” to the LGBT community.
“That’s the crazy part,” he said. “The reason I made the video is because I felt like we were painted as hateful.”
McKeen said that while he had no problem with NBC News reporting on the school’s policy, he says a quote attributed to him saying “if you’re gay, you’re going to Hell” is inaccurate.
“I know I didn’t say that because it’s not my doctrine,” he said. “What I believe is any sin will send you to Hell if you don’t know Jesus.”
McKeen, who is the administrator of Grace Christian, is also the pastor of Grace Community Church, which is on the same campus as the school. He took over the church in 2004 from his father-in-law, whom McKeen said took “some stands for Christian schools” in order for them to operate free from state intervention.
“There wouldn’t be Christian schools, honestly, if it wasn’t for him. I’m not about to stand here and cave [to political pressure],” he said.
“For me, it’s like, if we waver on this, we’re just a school, kids can go learn math anywhere,” he added. “What sets us apart is we believe these values, we’re going to stick to these values.”
He says the initial feedback on the story started out as “extremely negative,” but “as the news sources changed, so did the feedback.”
“When it was NBC and ABC and MSNBC and CNN, it was all this hate mail, hate phone calls,” said McKeen, who estimated they received thousands of phone calls, including people swearing at them on the phone.
As reporters continued calling and emailing McKeen about the policy, he said he initially resisted talking to any media on the advice of his attorney. But eventually, McKeen said, he felt there was something far bigger at stake.
“I told my church, ‘I have a feeling we are about to be thrust into the center of something enormous,’” he recalled. “‘I don’t know why this small little church and this small Christian school are going to be called to take this stand, but we’re going to do it and I need you to be with me,’ and of course they are.”
Overall, McKeen said, community feedback has been mostly positive: he even received thank you notes from parents following his initial email on the policy.
Grace Christian has also received an estimated $26,000 in unsolicited giving following the initial story, according to McKeen, including $5,000 from a man in Virginia with just a note saying, “Keep the faith.”
McKeen said despite all the controversy, the trans-identified student referenced in the NBC story has a sibling who still attends Grace Christian. He met with her family last week and said they’re “appalled” at their daughter’s actions.
And after what he described as a very long week, McKeen wants to encourage other Christians who are taking a public stand for their deeply-held values.
“You’re not going to shout us down,” he said. “I’m tired of Christians being trampled and shouted down and sworn at and getting scared and crawling back into a hole.
Guadalupe Hernandez receives an ultrasound by nurse practitioner Gail Brown during a prenatal exam at the Maternity Outreach Mobile in Phoenix, Arizona October 8, 2009. The maternity outreach program helps uninsured women living in the Phoenix metropolitan area receive the proper treatment and care during and after their pregnancy. The Maternity Outreach Mobile is equipped with two exam rooms, an ultrasound machine, an external fetal monitor, a laboratory and offers pregnancy tests, referrals and immunization for children. | Reuters/Joshua Lott
A majority of Americans have a favorable view of pro-life crisis pregnancy centers even as politicians and corporations work to discourage the public from accessing them, a new poll suggests.
Polling conducted by CRC Research between Aug. 3 and Aug. 7 reviewed by The Christian Post shows that 74% of Americans surveyed support the public funding of pro-life pregnancy centers after learning about their services. Specifically, 42% of the 1,600 likely voters surveyed strongly support the public funding of pro-life pregnancy centers, and an additional 32% somewhat support the idea. By contrast, just 14% of respondents opposed the idea of providing public funding to pro-life pregnancy centers, with 8% strongly opposed and 6% somewhat opposed.
Support for publicly funding pregnancy centers cut across party lines, with 78% of Republicans, 72% of Independents and 73% of Democrats favoring the provision of taxpayer dollars to such organizations.
The poll measured support for public funding of pro-life pregnancy centers at 80% among self-described conservatives, 74% among self-identified Independents and 68% among those who categorize themselves as liberals.
Before hearing details about what pro-life pregnancy centers provide, 64% of those surveyed supported the public funding of such organizations: 70% of Democrats, 66% of liberals, 65% of moderates, 64% of conservatives, 62% of Independents and 62% of Republicans. The likely voters who participated in the survey began to change their views about pro-life pregnancy centers after learning more about them.
The survey informed respondents that pregnancy resource centers “provide resources for pregnant women in need, including prenatal care, clothing, diapers, [and] housing assistance,” “empower women to choose life for their child during pregnancy and after delivery,” “allow women to reach their goals and keep their baby” and “allow women facing unexpected pregnancies to keep their baby and give them the tools to achieve success and independence.”
The poll asked respondents if they are more or less likely to support “a candidate who supports legislation that publicly funds pregnancy centers.” Sixty-seven percent of participants classified themselves as “more likely” to vote for candidates who support the public funding of pro-life pregnancy centers. Thirty-one percent said they were “much more likely” and 35% “somewhat more likely” to do so.
Only 17% identified themselves as “less likely” to vote for such candidates, with 9% “much less likely” and 8% “somewhat less likely.” Broken down by partisan affiliation and political ideology, 73% of conservatives, 72% of Republicans, 67% of Democrats, 66% of moderates, 62% of Independents and 62% of liberals are “more likely” to vote for candidates who favor the public funding of pregnancy resource centers.
Following the leak of the U.S. Supreme Court’s draft opinion in the case of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization finding that the Constitution doesn’t contain a right to abortion, pro-life pregnancy centers found themselves subject to vandalism and violence.
The poll found overwhelming support (80%) for prosecuting those responsible for vandalism against pro-life pregnancy centers and churches and little opposition to the proposal (12%).
Eighty percent of respondents also agreed that “elected officials should publicly denounce this behavior and call for those engaging in it to be brought to justice.” Just 11% of likely voters disagreed with the aforementioned statement.
By a more than 2-1 margin, likely voters said they were “less likely” to “vote for an elected official who refuses to speak out against acts of rage, violence, and vandalism against a pregnancy resource center.”
Fifty-nine percent of voters are “less likely” to support an elected official who did not condemn violence against pro-life pregnancy centers, while 26% are “more likely” to support such a candidate: 63% of Republicans and Independents, 62% of conservatives and moderates and 53% of liberals and Democrats.
As Axios reported Tuesday, the internet directory service Yelp will begin adding disclaimers to listings about pro-life pregnancy centers, noting that “crisis pregnancy centers typically provide limited medical services and may not have licensed medical professionals onsite.”
In an email to Axios, Yelp’s Vice President of User Operations Noelle Malik defended the move as part of the company’s “efforts to provide consumers with access to reliable information about reproductive health.”
“It has always felt unjust to me that there are clinics in the U.S. that provide misleading information or conduct deceptive tactics to steer pregnant people away from abortion care if that’s the path they choose to take,” Malik wrote.
At the same time, Malik acknowledged that “Not all consumers visiting a crisis pregnancy center’s business page may be seeking out abortion services.”
Yelp’s announcement comes after a group of lawmakers sent a letter to Google urging the digital media giant to “limit the appearance of anti-abortion fake clinics or so-called ‘crisis pregnancy centers’ in Google search results, Google Ads, and on Google Maps when users search for ‘abortion clinic,’ ‘abortion pill,’ or similar terms.”
Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the pro-life group Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, issued a statement Tuesday condemning Yelp’s move.
“Shame on Big Tech companies like Yelp for colluding with the abortion lobby in their war on compassionate pregnancy help,” she said.
“Discriminatory labels are not meant to inform, but to scare women away from receiving the support and resources they need. America’s pregnancy centers exist to serve women and families, taking financial pressures and other types of coercion out of the equation. The abortion lobby meanwhile fights tooth and nail against women’s right to informed consent, including hearing their baby’s heartbeat or seeing an ultrasound.”
Dannenfelser maintained that “pregnancy centers effectively save lives, and the radical abortion lobby and their extremist Democrat allies Elizabeth Warren are desperate to ‘crack down’ on them.” She argues, “Pro-abortion lies are fueling an unprecedented rash of attacks against them.”
Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., has emerged as one of the most outspoken critics of pro-life pregnancy centers. She introduced a bill titled “The Stop Anti-Abortion Disinformation Act,” which targets such organizations and prohibits “the use of misleading statements related to the provision of abortion services.”
The California Air Resources Board is set to finalize an expansive plan to ban the sale of new gasoline-powered cars by 2035 on Thursday, which may accelerate the national transition to electric vehicles (EVs), The New York Times reported.
The state’s ban will require 100% of new cars sold in California by 2035 to be free of fossil fuel emissions, up from the current 12%. Interim targets require 35% of vehicles sold in the state by 2026 to produce zero emissions, rising to 68% by 2030, according to the NYT. The zero-emissions car mandate, which will only allow electric vehicles to be purchased, may be adopted by at least 12 additional states fairly soon, while five additional states which already adhere to California’s more comprehensive vehicle pollution reduction program are anticipated to do so in about a year. (RELATED: Most Populous State Looks To Keep Last Nuclear Plant Alive To Stave Off Blackouts)
California is the country’s largest auto market, and more than a dozen other states frequently adopt California models when establishing their own auto emissions rules.
California’s new EV mandates would be “extremely challenging” to meet, John Bozzella, president of the Alliance for Automotive Innovation, which represents large U.S. and foreign automakers, told the NYT.
“Whether or not these requirements are realistic or achievable is directly linked to external factors like inflation, charging and fuel infrastructure, supply chains, labor, critical mineral availability and pricing, and the ongoing semiconductor shortage,” he said.
Hollywood Boulevard in front of the Dolby Theatre is closes to traffic as work begins on the installation of the Oscars red carpet, on March 18, 2022, in Hollywood, California. (Photo by Robyn Beck / AFP) (Photo by ROBYN BECK/AFP via Getty Images)
The state’s decision comes after President Joe Biden signed a comprehensive new climate bill earlier this month. As part of the largest federal government effort to tackle the perceived effects of climate change, the bill will invest $369 billion in spending and tax incentives on green energy programs, including a $7,500 tax credit for the purchase of new electric cars.
California was only able to move forward with its ambitious policy because the Biden administration reinstated a Clean Air Act waiver, giving California the legal authority to impose auto emission and mileage limits that are stricter than those imposed by the federal government.
“The climate crisis is solvable if we focus on the big, bold steps necessary to stem the tide of carbon pollution,” said Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom of California in a statement.
Newsom’s office and the California Air Resources Board did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) was “swatted” early Wednesday morning after an unknown person filed a fake shooting report that led police to respond at Greene’s home, authorities said.
“Last night, I was swatted just after 1 a.m. I can’t express enough gratitude to my local law enforcement here in Rome, Floyd County,” Greene tweeted Wednesday.
Police officers are investigating after someone placed a 911 call and reported that a subject was shot multiple times at an address within city limits, the Rome Police Department said in a statement. When officers responded to the location, they discovered it was the congresswoman’s home address. Greene informed police that there was no issue, and the call was determined to be a prank commonly known as “swatting,” police said.
The Rome Police Department said it received a second 911 call from an individual who used “a computer generated voice” and stated they were upset about Greene’s political views on transgender youth rights.
“The Rome Police Department Criminal Investigation Division is working in conjunction with the United States Capital Police on this investigation,” police said.
“This is an active investigation and no further information can be released at this time,” the department added.
Greene, a firebrand lawmaker known for making highly controversial comments, has agitated the left by forcefully opposing sex-change procedures or cross-sex hormone prescriptions for gender-dysphoric minors. Last week, Greene said she will introduce legislation that would criminalize puberty blockers and sex-change surgeries for children, decrying so-called “gender-affirming care” as “child abuse” and “genital mutilation.”
A spokesman for Greene said that safety was her office’s “number one concern” after the swatting attack.
“Late last night, she was a victim of a political attack on her family and home. Whoever committed this violent crime will face the full extent of the law,” Greene spokesman Nick Dyer told the Rome News-Tribune.
Several prominent left-wing figures cast doubt on Greene’s story after she reported what happened Wednesday. Others mocked her and said she deserved to be harassed or questioned whether she staged the incident to “smear trans rights activists.”
“If you’re wondering why I don’t believe that MTG was ‘swatted’ last night, it’s because she’s actively trying to fear monger people about the FBI,” lawyer Elie Mystal tweeted.
If you're wondering why I don't believe that MTG was "swatted" last night, it's because she's actively trying to fear monger people about the FBI https://t.co/0RKKChplUV
“Not doubting that MTG got swatted,” journalist Yashar Ali said. “What I am doubting is that the person who swatted her was an actual trans rights activist and not someone trying to smear trans rights activists.”
Not doubting that MTG got swatted.
What I am doubting is that the person who swatted her was an actual trans rights activist and not someone trying to smear trans rights activists.
You’ll see what I mean when you read her tweets and quotes in the story.
Not doubting that MTG got swatted.
What I am doubting is that the person who swatted her was an actual trans rights activist and not someone trying to smear trans rights activists.
Greene told “The Charlie Kirk Show” Wednesday that the swatting situation was “dangerous” because whoever placed the 911 call said there were children in danger in her home, which put police on high alert.
“Not only did they put my life and my family’s life in danger, they also put the police officers’ lives in danger,” she said. “So whoever this person is, they deserve to be locked up.”
Former President Donald Trump celebrated the victories of Democrats and Republicans in the Tuesday primaries, many of whom he endorsed. The former president jokingly endorsed two Democratic candidates running in the New York primary, Rep. Carolyn Maloney and attorney Dan Goldman. Goldman then won the Democratic nomination to represent New York’s 10th district in Congress, while Maloney lost her bid to Democratic New York Rep. Jerry Nadler.
“Looks like a fantastic evening of ALL WINS — Great Candidates!!!” Trump wrote on a Truth Social post.
“26 and 0 tonight, turning numerous tight races into big endorsements and easy wins!” Trump said in a separate Truth Social post. “Overall for last 4 years, 98.4% on Endorsements!”
Trump-endorsed Republican New York Reps. Nicole Malliotakis, Elise Stefanik and Claudia Tenney all won their primaries Tuesday night.
(Photo by Megan Varner/Getty Images)
Trump’s preferred Republican candidates also achieved victories in the Florida primary. Republican Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz defeated his opponent, former FedEx executive Mark Lombardo, in Florida’s 1st district. His other endorsed candidates in Florida, including Republican Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, Anna Paulina Luna, Kat Cammack, and John Rutherford, swept their races. (RELATED: Trump Endorsed Candidate Kari Lake Wins GOP Arizona Gubernatorial Primary)
Other candidates who won their primaries include Democratic Florida Rep. Val Demings, who captured the Democratic nomination and will attempt to unseat Republican Sen. Marco Rubio. Democratic Florida Rep. Charlie Crist won the nomination to challenge Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in the gubernatorial race.
Meanwhile, Trump-endorsed Oklahoma Rep. Markwayne Mullin defeated T.W. Shannon, a banking executive, in the Republican senate primary run-off election.
The former president made over 40 endorsements in recent primaries taking place in Washington, Michigan, Missouri, Arizona and Kansas, where the majority of the Trump-endorsed candidates achieved victories, Politico reported.
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including “Fox News”, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Donald Trump.
One Year Later — US Team of Veterans Rescued 17,000 US Legal Permanent US Residents from Afghanistan After Joe Biden Pulled Out of Country
The Biden administration abandoned thousands of Americans and Green Card holders in Afghanistan one year ago following their surrender to the Taliban.
Joe Biden and the Woke Generals abandoned THOUSANDS of Americans in Afghanistan and as many as 14,000 during their quick escape from the terrorist-controlled country.
And then they left the Taliban with $80 billion in US military equipment.
Figures released by the State Department in November revealed as many as 14,000 Americans were left to fend for themselves when Biden and the woke generals quickly fled the country due to their artificial timeline.
Nearly 100,000 Afghans were able to flee the country in August – most of them were unvetted.
There is no way that Joe Biden should remain as president after this horrible act.
The Biden administration has continued to lie about this number to the American public.
The State Department believes as many as 14,000 U.S. legal permanent residents remain in Afghanistan, Foreign Policy has learned, as the agency faces increasing scrutiny from Congress about the status of U.S. citizens and green card holders that are still stranded in the Taliban-controlled country…
…The finding, disclosed by a congressional aide familiar with the matter, has been transmitted by the State Department to aides on Capitol Hill in private, but officials demurred on revealing the figure when questioned by Republican lawmakers on Wednesday, insisting the agency doesn’t track the figure.
“Isn’t the operating assumption about 14,000?” Republican Rep. Chris Smith asked Brian McKeon, deputy secretary of state for management and resources, at a hearing on Wednesday, referring to the figure briefed in private.
“We don’t track [legal permanent residents],” McKeon responded. “It’s a good question why we don’t,” he added, suggesting the lack of clarity might be because the State Department does not require Americans and legal permanent residents traveling abroad to report their whereabouts.
Now this… US veteran Chad Robichaux went on Newsmax today to discuss his organization Save Our Allies. According to Chad, his organization has rescued 17,000 US legal permanent residents from Afghanistan following the fall of Kabul to the Taliban. Chad tells the story of how he rescued his former interpreter who worked with him during his tour in Afghanistan.
Chad Robichaux: These guys put their lives on the line for us. Not only that but how does America ever gain confidence with a foreign force in the future when we continue to leave our allies stranded and behind and don’t keep our promises to them.
Maybe that was Joe Biden’s goal? To destroy America’s reputation in the world?
Jim Hoft is the founder and editor of The Gateway Pundit, one of the top conservative news outlets in America. Jim was awarded the Reed Irvine Accuracy in Media Award in 2013 and is the proud recipient of the Breitbart Award for Excellence in Online Journalism from the Americans for Prosperity Foundation in May 2016.
A sign sits outside the Montgomery County Public Schools Board of Education headquarters in Rockville, Maryland. | Screenshot: Google Maps
A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit filed by parents over a school district’s policy that permits school officials to withhold information about students’ gender identity from their parents in some cases, causing critics to warn of efforts to “destroy the family and capture the souls of our children.”
Judge Paul Grimm of the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland, appointed to the bench by former President Barack Obama, issued an opinion Thursday siding with Montgomery County Public Schools “Guidelines for Student Gender Identity.”
Located just outside Washington, D.C., Montgomery County Public Schools educated 158,232 students in the 2021-22 school year, making it the largest school district in the state.
A group of parents anonymously filed a lawsuit asking a federal court to prevent the school district from implementing its policies regarding trans-identified students. The guidelines state, “Prior to contacting a student’s parent/guardian, the principal or identified staff member should speak with the student to ascertain the level of support the student either receives or anticipates receiving from home.”
The guidelines repeatedly suggest that schools should hide their children’s gender transition from parents.
“In some cases, transgender and nonconforming students may not openly express their gender identity at home because of safety concerns or lack of acceptance,” the document states. “Matters of gender identity can be complex and may involve familial conflict.”
“If this is the case and support is required, Student Welfare and Compliance (SWC) should be contacted. In such cases, staff will support the development of a student-led plan that works toward inclusion of the family, if possible, taking safety concerns into consideration, as well as student privacy,” the guidance added.
The guidelines also state that “information about a student’s transgender status, legal name, or sex assigned at birth may constitute confidential medical information” and therefore, “disclosing this information to other students, their parents/guardians, or third parties may violate privacy laws, such as the federal Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA).”
“Unless the student or parent/guardian has specified otherwise, when contacting the parent/guardian of a transgender student, MCPS school staff members should use the student’s legal name and pronoun that correspond to the student’s sex assigned at birth,” the guidelines read.
The school district authorizes school officials to establish a “gender support plan” with trans-identified students, including completing an “Intake Form” by school officials with or without parental consent.
According to The Washington Post, Grimm wrote in his order that “The Guidelines carefully balance the interests of both the parents and the students” and encourages parental input “when the student consents” but avoids parental input “when the student expresses concern that the parents would not be supportive, or that disclosing their gender identity to their parents may put them in harm’s way.”
Grimm ruled the policy consistent with the Montgomery County Board of Education’s “legitimate interest in providing a safe and supportive environment for all MCPS students, including those who are transgender and gender nonconforming.”
Additionally, he maintained that the plaintiffs did not provide “specific allegations” about the impact the guidelines had on “counseling their own children.”
Rod Dreher of the American Conservative described Grimm’s ruling as a victory for the view that “the State has the right to deceive parents about whether or not their children are choosing to live as the opposite sex.”
In a blog titled “The State Hates Families,” Dreher lamented what he sees as the decision’s confirmation that “the State — in the form of the local school board — has the right to deceive parents about this fundamental aspect of their child’s life.”
“Under Communism, the State usurped the family,” he wrote. “Children are being raised by schools, and by news and entertainment media, to believe … insane lies about their bodies and their gender, and to believe that parents are the enemy, that the State is their friend and ally.”
“We are ruled by a malignant class that wants to destroy the family and capture the souls of our children,” he added. “[T]he schools — this federal judge — believes your children belong to it, and that you, as a mother or a father, are a danger to your child if you disagree with gender ideology, and that you have no right to expect public schools to tell you the truth.”
He classified this way of thinking as “Totalitarian,” stressing that “there is almost nothing more important, politically, than protecting children from the State.”
In Leon County, Florida, parents January and Jeffery Littlejohn filed a lawsuit last year against the school district and its leaders for holding a meeting with their daughter to discuss changes to her gender identity and working to hide such changes from them without their consent.
Outrage over similar policies and actions taken by school district officials to conceal information from parents prompted the passage of a “parental rights in education” bill passed in Florida earlier this year.
The bill, approved by the state’s Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis in March, requires public school districts to “adopt procedures for notifying a student’s parent if there is a change in the student’s services or monitoring related to the student’s mental, emotional, or physical health or well-being and the school’s ability to provide a safe and supportive learning environment for the student.”
The law also proclaims that “A school district may not adopt procedures or student support forms that prohibit school district personnel from notifying a parent about his or her student’s mental, emotional, or physical health or well-being, or a change in related services or monitoring, or that encourage or have the effect of encouraging a student to withhold from a parent such information.”
School districts around the world are racing to implement Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) programs in the name of improving their students’ social and emotional skills. In fact, according to the global purveyor of SEL standards, 27 states so far have adopted K-12 SEL competencies, and all 50 states have adopted SEL competencies for pre-K students. But where is this massive push for SEL coming from, and what are the motives behind it?
The answer to this question is becoming clear: The United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) is a primary force behind the SEL movement worldwide. A major way UNESCO advocates for SEL is through UNESCO’S Mahatma Gandhi Institute of Education for Peace and Sustainable Development. The Gandhi Institute produces an online publication called The Blue Dot, which features articles from SEL experts and others around the globe that highlight “the relationship between education, peace, sustainable development and global citizenship.” Invoking Gandhi’s name in the title of this United Nations entity is meant to pull at the heartstrings of anyone who hears it. But should our heartstrings be pulled?
SEL Is Key to Achieving the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals
The title of a feature article in The Blue Dot co-written by a specialist from the Gandhi Institute reveals why UNESCO is hellbent on getting SEL into every school in America and across the world: “SEL for SDGs: Why Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) is Necessary to Achieve the Sustainable Development Goals.” The “sustainable development goals” (SDGs) are noble-sounding goals that would essentially require government management of energy sources worldwide and the large-scale redistribution of wealth in the name of saving the planet. In UNESCO’s view, the endgame of SEL is not to meet the social and emotional needs of each child, but to shape all children to meet the needs of a global society by adhering to the sustainable development goals.
The article explains that the UN’s sustainable development goals will create “dissonance” in people due to the conflicting nature of some of the goals. The goals will also create dissonance in people because of the monumental sacrifices that may be necessary to achieve them — giving up fossil fuels, family values, and control of one’s own property, to name a few.
Therefore, proponents say it is necessary to reduce children’s emotional resistance to the goals through systemic SEL in the classroom: “Since dissonance is an unpleasant emotive state, subjects of dissonance require emotion-regulatory capabilities (emotional resilience) to navigate the behaviors and prerequisite antecedents to attain [the] SDGs.” The article says, “Dissonance can be caused by beliefs, attitudes, values, and feelings,” and that “interventions to reduce dissonance are required to address … the intensity of emotional response.”
In short, they believe interventions by way of SEL programs are necessary to influence young people’s “beliefs, attitudes, values, and feelings” so they will more readily think like global citizens and cooperate with the goals UNESCO has set for the world.
Another article in The Blue Dot titled, “What is Systemic Social and Emotional Learning and Why Does it Matter?” and written by two officers from the Collaborative for Academic, Social and Emotional Learning (CASEL), says CASEL’s mission is to help make “SEL an essential part of the preschool to high school education.” CASEL has positioned itself as the world leader on SEL standards and has a cooperative relationship with UNESCO. These two entities are united in their zeal to weave SEL into all school subjects and to deliver it to all children everywhere.
Raising the Next Generation of ‘Global Citizens’
But why? What is it UNESCO wants to instill in children? UNESCO’s materials make it clear that SEL is intended to foster not only kindness between students, but cooperation with a global agenda rooted in the doctrine of collectivism. Nandini Chatterjee Singh, a program specialist for the Gandhi Institute, says“SEL skills are powerful competencies” that have been shown to “instill pluralistic thinking.” The institute’s website further says it is seeking to teach children to “exhibit prosocial behavior for … a peaceful and sustainable planet.”
In short, proponents of the sustainable development goals and SEL want to instill “pluralistic thinking” in your child in the name of global peace. They want children to be taught to value the “collective good” over individual liberties, rights, and property despite the fact that the freest, most prosperous nations in the world are founded on individual liberties, rights, and property.
Richard Davidson, a writer in The Blue Dot, says UNESCO’s Gandhi Institute is poised to disseminate SEL programs “that will have the potential to influence the development of the next generation of global citizens,” and he declares, “I believe that today we have a moral obligation to incorporate SEL into our educational systems at all levels.” Similarly, CASEL says, “SEL at the classroom level needs to be embedded in coordinated, systemic, whole-child, school-wide approaches.” (For more on whole-child, whole-school approaches to education, see here.)
In another SEL article in The Blue Dot, Mahima Bhalla, learning coordinator for the Gandhi Institute, says that “in order to contribute to the goal of peaceful and sustainable societies,” his organization “recognizes the need to move beyond only academic purposes of education” and instead focus on influencing the social and emotional state of students. This indicates a clear sea change in the purpose of education.
Systemic SEL Digital Curriculum
According to Davidson, the Gandhi Institute’s digital platforms “show great promise for massive scaling” and the director of the Gandhi Institute says it has already disseminated a suite of interactive digital SEL modules that address “contemporary issues such as migration, nationalism and violence.” The scope of these digital modules appears to go well beyond teaching Johnny and Billy to get along on the playground, which is how SEL is often sold to local educators.
The intended reach of the Gandhi Institute’s advocacy is made clear in its “Recommendations to Implementing SEL” section where it says the recommendations the institute gives are “prescribed as general guidelines for education decision makers at the national level right down to school boards and schools.” It’s also telling that it notes, “There needs to be an intentional focus (such as a campaign) organized by a coalition of partners led by UNESCO to communicate a common and unified message on the importance of SEL to parents and the public at large.”
By their own admission, UNESCO and its partners are eagerly trying to sell the idea of systemic SEL to the stakeholders known as parents. So are the parents of the world lining up to demand that schools add integrated SEL programs to their children’s school curricula? No. SEL is being peddled by UNESCO from the top down under the guise of local control.
Developing the attributes of compassion, kindness, and empathy in children is a noble goal, and some of that development can appropriately happen at school. But infusing digitally connected, UNESCO-endorsed, systemic SEL curriculum into the classrooms of the world to instill pluralistic thinking in children is not the answer. Local programs, local communities, and individual families are the best ways to instill social and emotional skills in children and to maintain free societies based on individual rights and responsibilities.
Former President Donald Trump filed a lawsuit on Monday to call for a “special master” to be appointed to review the documents seized by the FBI from his residence at Mar-a-Lago in Florida.
“It is unreasonable to allow the prosecutorial team to review them without meaningful safeguards,” wrote attorneys for Trump.
“Short of returning the seized items to the movant, only a neutral review by a special master can protect the ‘great public interest’ in preserving ‘the confidentiality of conversations that take place in the president’s performance of his official duties,’” they added.
The motion filed in Florida also asked for a more detailed accounting of the documents seized by the FBI.
Trump also issued a scathing statement about the legal action and reiterated his former accusations that the search was politically motivated and illegal.
“This Mar-a-Lago Break-In, Search, and Seizure was illegal and unconstitutional, and we are taking all actions necessary to get the documents back, which we would have given to them without the necessity of the despicable raid of my home, so that I can give them to the National Archives until they are required for the future Donald J. Trump Presidential Library and Museum,” Trump wrote in the statement.
“We are demanding the appointment of a SPECIAL MASTER to oversee the handling of the materials taken in the raid,” wrote Trump. “We are demanding that all items wrongfully taken from my home be IMMEDIATELY returned.”
The motion accused the Department of Justice of going on a fishing expedition, a common claim by those defending the former president.
“Aside from demonstrating that this was an unlawful general search, it also suggests that DOJ simply wanted the camel’s nose under the tent so they could rummage for either politically helpful documents or support other efforts to thwart President Trump from running again, such as the Jan. 6 investigation,” Trump’s attorneys wrote.
Here’s more about the latest development in the FBI probe:
Trump Lawyers File Motion For ‘Special Master’ In Mar-a-Lago Search www.youtube.com
Dave Portnoy and Andrew Tate are the Al Capone and Lucky Lucciano of masculinity prohibition. Portnoy and Tate bootleg moonshine masculinity across the internet. Their wealth and fame are byproducts of America’s misguided masculinity temperance movement.
We’re living in the third wave of masculinity prohibition. Each wave popularizes and enriches a new breed of masculinity bootleggers.
Portnoy, the founder of Barstool Sports, and Tate, a kickboxing champion turned TikTok influencer, are the latest undeserving benefactors of an unholy mission Democrats and feminists devised 60 years ago to demonize manhood. Portnoy built a sports media empire pretending to be a fearless ESPN disruptor standing against the wokefication of sports and American culture. It’s now clear he’s a total fraud and sellout. His lone interests are money and access to barely legal women. He sold Barstool to a gambling company for hundreds of millions of dollars, and now Barstool is every bit as woke as ESPN.
Monday night, Portnoy engaged in a Twitter beef with comedian Alex Stein, a truly fearless internet disruptor. Stein, a contributor to BlazeTV, mocks local and national politicians – of all political parties – with viral videos. Barstool’s Twitter feed posted a hilarious video of Stein trolling members of the Las Vegas City Council. Within hours, Barstool deleted the post. Stein called out Barstool’s cowardice, tweeting:
“It’s so cute that @barstoolsports is owned by Stool Presidente who is accused of the most heinous things, but they are too afraid to keep my content up.”
Portnoy struck his tough-guy pose, responding:
“Buddy shut the fuck up. We are owned by a gambling company. We’ve had roughly 9,000 training sessions not to post shit like this cause regulators don’t like it… Go back to whatever hold you crawled out of.”
Via DM, Portnoy offered to have Stein on a podcast, but quickly changed course.
Portnoy is a fraud. He has no core values. No defined set of beliefs. He has no redeeming qualities other than his wealth. Remove his money, and he wouldn’t have a friend in this world. If we weren’t living in an era completely hostile to masculinity, Portnoy would be broke in Boston delivering pizza. The prohibition of masculinity is what made heroes and millionaires of men like Portnoy and Tate.
Tate is a former contestant on the TV show “Big Brother.” He started something called Hustler’s University on TikTok, posting relationship and life advice to young men. He’s the pornographic version of Kevin Samuels, the now-deceased popular relationship YouTuber.
Masculinity is like air and water. We need it for survival. The world was built by male energy. Thank God, Jesus was masculine. Thank God, men were willing to die in the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, and the World Wars for our freedom.
The demonization of masculinity has caused a shortage and inflated the value of it. The shortage has created a market for impostors and moonshiners.
If ESPN wasn’t hostile to masculinity, there would never have been a market for Portnoy’s brand of masculine sports talk. The out-of-control, believe-all-women #MeToo movement created the market for Andrew Tate.
Alcohol prohibition was bad. Alcohol isn’t a necessity. Masculinity is. The ramifications of the prohibition of masculinity are far worse than the repealed 18th Amendment.
We’ve lowered the standard and behavior for manhood so low that idiots believe puberty blockers and surgery can make men. We’re so desperate we’ll now accept any form of masculinity. It can be profane, stupid, obscene, criminal, and godless.
Let me walk you through a brief history of how we arrived at this level of insanity.
The masculinity temperance movement started in earnest in the 1960s, shortly after it became obvious that Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s civil rights movement would deliver full American citizenship to black people. In reaction, feminists partnered with President Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society initiative to emasculate men. White men failed to strongly object to this diabolical partnership because they mistakenly believed feminists and Democrats planned to only castrate black men.
The first wave of this prohibition primarily damaged black men, particularly black men of faith. The first wave spawned celebrity poverty pimps such as Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, the Milli Vanilli of civil rights. They pretended to be fearless freedom fighters while doing the bidding of feminists, Democrats, and the LGBT crowd.
The second wave of this prohibition popularized gangsta rappers. Tupac Shakur, Snoop Dogg, Jay Z, and N.W.A. pretended to speak truth to power while promoting degerancy, criminality, drug use, materialism, and hedonism.
The third wave has brought us Portnoy and Tate. Internet bullies posing as masculine men. Their success has spawned imitators. The next iteration will be worse.
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 “Fox News”, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Donald Trump.
Speaking with fill-in host Trace Gallagher on “Fox News Sunday,” Granholm responded to criticism that tax credits built into the Inflation Reduction Act only financially benefit Americans who can afford clean-energy items like solar panels and energy-efficient appliances.
Shockingly, Granholm claimed even low-income Americans, those with the least disposable income, also benefit — by spending imaginary money they probably do not have.
“If you are low-income, you can get your home entirely weatherized through the expansion from the bipartisan infrastructure laws, a significant expansion — you don’t have to pay for anything,” she said. “If you want heat pumps, insulation, new windows, that is covered.
“If you are moderate-income, today you can get 30% off the price of solar panels. Those solar panels can be financed, so you don’t have to have the big outlay at the front,” she added. “If you don’t qualify for the weatherization program, you will be able to, starting next year, get rebates on the appliances and equipment that will help you reduce your monthly energy bill by up to 30%. That is all about reducing costs for people.”
Sec. Granholm defends Inflation Reduction Act’s climate provisions www.youtube.com
There are several critical problems with Granholm’s response, underscoring how out of touch her comments are with the everyday realities of most, and especially poorer, Americans.
First, low-income Americans, precisely because they are stuck in poverty or cannot get better-paying jobs, are less likely to own a home. Thus, if they are renters, they probably do not have the option to significantly modify their landlord’s property by installing solar panels and other “weatherizing” features. And even if their landowner installs such items, they would not benefit — their landlord would.
Second, solar panels, for example, are not cheap. According to Consumer Affairs, installing a 6-kW system will cost most Americans between $13,000 and $17,000, depending on where they live. Windows, appliances, and other green-energy “weatherizing” features are not cheap, either.
The rebate portion of the law (“High-Efficiency Electric Home Rebate Act”) sets a maximum rebate amount at $14,000, the majority of which goes toward heat pump upgrades. The rebate for appliance upgrades, like the heat pump for a dryer or an energy-efficient stove, is set at a maximum of $840. And only those items that “meet or exceed the highest efficiency tier” as established by the Consortium for Energy Efficiency qualify for the benefit.
Meanwhile, the rebate for “weatherizing” your home by making improvements to insulation, air sealing, and ventilation maxes out at $1,600, while the credit for expensive Energy Star-approved windows maxes out at $600, and the benefit for installing energy-efficient exterior doors maxes out at $500.
Regarding solar panels, the Residential Clean Energy Credit provides a tax credit of 30% of the cost associated with installing solar energy equipment. This is only a 4% increase over the previous tax credit amount.
Finally, with an overheated economy and sky-inflation that decreases the purchasing power of every dollar, most Americans have fewer dollars to spend on energy-efficient items and electric vehicles.
Instead, they’re most concerned with paying rent or their mortgage, putting food on their tables, and making ends meet in general — not using what little extra money they have to install solar panels or expensive new windows.
Editor’s note: This story originally stated that Granholm appeared on “Fox & Friends.” In fact, she appeared on “Fox News Sunday.” We regret the error.
The New York Times announced on August 18 that Ken Bensinger is joining its politics desk and will report on right-wing media for the section’s so-called “democracy team.” Bensinger previously worked for BuzzFeed, the Los Angeles Times, and the Wall Street Journal.
David Halbfinger, the Times’ politics editor, suggested in the announcement that Bensinger is well prepared to report on right-wing media. His recent work on the Oath Keepers (an anti-statist militia group, some of whose members were present at the January 6, 2021, Capitol protests) and on the Gov. Gretchen Whitmer kidnapping case in Michigan were cited as evidence of the reporter’s understanding of “the rising threat of armed militant groups,” which Halbfinger intimated is relevant to the reporter’s new beat.
In the announcement, Halbfinger omitted any mention of Bensinger’s most impactful work.
Bensinger was the individual responsible for bringing the Steele dossier to BuzzFeed, which the organization released on January 10, 2017.
At a 2016 Fusion GPS retreat in San Francisco, Bensinger met with former Wall Street Journal reporter Glenn Simpson. Simpson, who had been hired in 2015 to dig up damaging information on former President Donald Trump, reportedly told Bensinger about a political opposition research report drafted by Christopher Steele. The report, now referred to as the Steele dossier, had been funded both by Trump’s GOP primary opponents and by Democrat entities. It contained innuendos about Trump and insinuations that the former president had been compromised by the Russian government. Bensinger took immediate interest.
Bensinger, granted the opportunity to photograph pages out of the dossier, later did so in the office of one of late Republican Senator John McCain’s aides. Even though Steele’s allegations were unverified and his sources were anonymous, BuzzFeed editor Ben Smith decided to publish Bensinger’s post, which was entitled “These Reports Allege Trump Has Deep Ties To Russia.”
Smith reasoned: “We published the dossier, which Ken Bensinger obtained through his characteristically ferocious reporting, so that, as we wrote, ‘Americans can make up their own minds about allegations about the president-elect that have circulated at the highest levels of the US government.'”
The Washington Post’s Erik Wemple criticized Smith, suggesting that for Americans to make up their minds as to the legitimacy of Bensinger’s uncorroborated, unverified findings, they would first need to “build their own intelligence agencies, with a heavy concentration of operatives in Russia and Eastern Europe.”
Margaret Sullivan, also at the Washington Post, suggested that Bensinger’s team adhered to a philosophy of “When in doubt, publish,” rather than what she regarded as the industry standard of: “When in doubt, leave it out.”
CNN’s Marshall Coen wrote in November 2021 that while the “so-called Steele dossier landed like a bombshell and sent shockwaves around the world with its salacious allegations about Trump and his supposed ties to Russia,” years later “the credibility of the dossier has significantly diminished.”
Bensinger had provided BuzzFeed with images of a dossier that, according to Coen, relied not just upon partisan sources, but upon “DC-based think tank analyst” Igor Danchenko, who was presented as a “deep-cover Kremlin insider.”
David A. Graham wrote in the Atlantic that the publication of Bensinger’s scoop tainted the press’ standing.
In covering right-wing media, Bensinger will be tasked with reporting on those who “reject mainstream narratives and question the institutions that hold up our democracy.”
Bensinger wrote on Twitter that this beat is “important and complex and (I think) requires sensitivity and nuance at a critical time for this nation.”
\u201cI have a new job: covering conservative media and ideas for the @nytimes politics desk. I’m excited about this beat, which is important and complex and (I think) requires sensitivity and nuance at a critical time for this nation.\n\nPlease send me your ideas, tips, thoughts, etc!\u201d
A New York Times spokesman told Fox News Digital that Bensinger’s beat was created “because many Americans rely solely on right wing media for their information, which often bears little resemblance to what is being reported in mainstream media. We want our readers to be informed about what is driving the political decisions of many Americans.”
A group of top lawmakers in the Senate and the House of Representatives is reportedly requesting access to the documents Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) officials seized from Mar-a-Lago.
The Gang of Eight, which includes Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Mark Warner, Senate Intelligence Committee ranking member Marco Rubio, House Intelligence Committee chairman Adam Schiff, and House Intelligence Committee ranking member Mike Turner, made the request to Biden administration officials, Politico reported Monday. Former President Donald Trump and his allies have argued that he unilaterally declassified the documents, which Trump held the authority to do.
While Democrats have almost uniformly declined to aggressively weigh in on the raid, Republicans have been split. While some officials, such as Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Colorado Rep. Lauren Boebert, have called for Congress to defund the FBI, others, like former Vice President Mike Pence and South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, have urged caution while calling for the Biden administration to make more information publicly available.
Scoop — the Gang of 8 wants in on the documents seized from Mar-a-Lagohttps://t.co/nhjXBzdccX
Attorney General Merrick Garland confirmed in a press conference three days after the raid that he personally approved the request to seek a warrant. District Court Judge Bruce Reinhart approved releasing the search warrant top sheet, although the Department of Justice is fighting to withhold the warrant affidavit. The latter document likely includes testimony from FBI agents, as well as information about witnesses.
The warrant top sheet shows that the search is related to alleged violations of the Espionage Act, as well as obstruction of justice. Agents seized eleven sets of classified documents from Mar-a-Lago. They also took 20 boxes of binders of photographs, a handwritten note, an executive grant of clemency for Roger Stone, and information about the President of France.
Rubio and Warner issued a similar request to Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines shortly after the raid, as did Schiff and House Oversight Committee chairwoman Carolyn Maloney.
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 “Fox News”, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Donald Trump.
Hardly a day goes by now that we don’t see another appalling example of transgender ideology’s aggressive intolerance in the public square. Recently, the target of that intolerance was an 80-year-old woman in the small town of Port Townsend, Washington, who was permanently banned from her local YMCA pool after she objected to a “trans woman” — a man — in the women’s locker room.
And for daring to speak out about that in public, she and her supporters were attacked this week in broad daylight by a mob of trans activists and Antifa thugs.
According a recent report in the New York Post, the woman, Julie Jaman, confronted a YMCA employee, a “trans woman” named Clementine Adams, in the locker room after Jaman observed that Adams was clearly a man. To Jaman’s credit, she did not mince words.
“I saw a man in a woman’s bathing suit watching maybe four or five little girls pulling down their suits in order to use the toilet,” Jaman told the Post. “I asked if he had a penis and he said it was none of my business. I told that man to ‘get out right now.’”
For exercising what would have been universally praised not long ago as guts and common sense — confronting a man trespassing in a women’s locker room to watch little girls undress — Jaman was accused of “being discriminatory” by the YMCA manager, threatened with the police, and ordered to leave. A member of the YMCA for 35 years, she was subsequently banned from the pool permanently.
Jaman’s ordeal wasn’t over, though. On Monday, Jaman and others gathered to speak out about the local YMCA’s dangerous policy of allowing men into the women’s locker room. As Jaman was speaking, a mob of Antifa militants, including burly, tattooed men, converged on the rally, screaming, “Trans women are women,” in an attempt to intimidate and drown her out. They ripped down the suffragette flags on display behind Jaman, who was visibly shaken and asked, “Are we going to get beat up here?” and asked supporters in the crowd to call the police.
The 80-year-old woman who was banned from her local swimming pool for raising concerns about a male in the female washroom was heckled as she gave a speech tonight.
Eventually, the Antifa mob surrounded Jaman, whose supporters, most of them middle-aged and elderly women, had to form a protective circle around her. Some women were thrown to the ground. Others had their shoes ripped off. Just as black-shirted Antifa men were beginning to tussle with Jaman’s supporters, the police showed up.
It wasn’t enough, though, simply to terrorize and physically assault women exercising their First Amendment rights. The mayor of Port Townsend, a self-described “pervert and deviant” named David J. Faber, praised the mob that went after Jaman and her supporters, calling it an “incredible night” that was “beautiful” and falsely claiming that “Trans and cis-allies alike spoke love & support.”
As copious video evidence posted on Twitter shows, they did no such thing. They engaged in the thuggish intolerance, simmering violence, and blind rage characteristic of the far left — and then they reveled in it, with the likes of Faber praising the mob for their brutality toward an 80-year-old woman who dared to speak up.
Mobs like the one in Port Townsend on Monday, however, are merely the blunt instrument, the Brown Shirts of a much larger effort on the part of the left to sever the relationship between parent and child and reshape society in a way that allows adults, especially adult men, to fulfill their every desire — often at the expense of children.
But that effort isn’t being led by black-shirted Antifa thugs, it’s being led by medical professionals at some of the most prestigious hospitals in the country. In recent weeks, Libs of TikTok, Matt Walsh, Chris Elston (Billboard Chris), and others have been posting publicly available promotional videos and other information from Boston Children’s Hospital touting so-called “gender-affirming care,” which includes chemical castration, mastectomies, hysterectomies, and genital mutilation performed on minors.
Boston Children’s Hospital responded by removing all its videos and information about “gender-affirming care” from its YouTube channel and quietly updating its website to claim (falsely) that gender-related surgeries are only for those over 18.
Meanwhile, Big Tech and the corporate press predictably came to the defense of the hospital. Facebook banned Libs of Tik Tok this week, and NBC News’s Brandy Zadrozny spread misinformation by claiming BCH doesn’t perform genital surgeries on minors. Almost all media coverage of the BCH affair has been framed as far-right activists threatening the hospital and engaging in “stochastic terrorism” when in fact all that Libs of Tik Tok and others have done is post the hospital’s own materials.
The videos are genuinely horrifying. A buttoned-up surgeon calmly explaining phalloplasty to the camera over whimsical music can’t hide the horrifying fact that what’s being described is the cutting off of forearm flesh from a healthy girl to fashion a non-functioning penis. It is barbaric in the extreme, and the attempt to make it sound mundane and palatable in these videos somehow only highlights the barbarity and cruelty of it.
And it’s not just Boston Children’s Hospital. Kaiser Permanente in Oakland, California, has amputated the breasts of a 12-year-old girl and castrated a 16-year-old boy in the name of “gender-affirming care.” Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh promotes puberty blockers for children. The pediatric gender program director at Yale has admitted on camera she believes children as young as 2 or 3 can be eligible for medical intervention and treatment on their “gender journey.”
In other words, the people and institutions behind this movement are not fringe, they are not the pink-haired youths and black-clad Antifa thugs screaming at old ladies in the streets. They occupy the elite heights of American society. They have real power and influence.
And if you object or protest in any way, they are angling to get you labeled a bigot, a threat to child safety, a terrorist. And you know what that means.
John Daniel Davidson is a senior editor at The Federalist. His writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the Claremont Review of Books, The New York Post, and elsewhere. Follow him on Twitter, @johnddavidson.
‘Gender-Affirming Care’ Is the Opposite of Gender-Affirming and Caring
People don’t like hospitals that hurt children instead of healing them. Boston Children’s Hospital has been deluged with criticism after conservative activists highlighted its own materials promoting medical transition for minors. The hospital has tried to cover up its deeds, but it cannot escape the truth that so-called gender-affirming care isn’t. The euphemistic phrase conceals the brutal realities of medical transition, but these procedures — including puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and various surgeries — do not affirm patients’ gender, let alone care for them. Gender-affirming care is a lie and we must stop it.
The tide may be turning against the transgender craze. Across the pond, the United Kingdom’s infamous Tavistock pediatric gender clinic has been shut down, and a massive medical malpractice action has begun against those responsible for rushing children into transition. Here in the U.S., Republican politicians are increasingly willing to stand up against the radical transgender agenda, as even the spineless are realizing that this is a winning issue. And it seems only a matter of time until trial lawyers target America’s aggressive and unregulated gender clinic industry.
Thus, there is hope that regulations and lawsuits will curb the craze for rushing people, especially children, into medical transition. It is even possible to imagine a quiet climb-down in which the political left, and the institutions it controls, realize that radical gender ideology is a loser and sidle away from it. There have been a few signs that this is happening, such as New York Times articles questioning transgender orthodoxy.
Will Proponents Back Down?
But there are no guarantees of victory, in large part because many people may be in too deep to back down. Democrats in general, and the Biden administration in particular, have embraced transgender ideology. They have done everything from putting men in women’s shelters to using school lunch programs for poor children as leverage to force schools to adopt the rainbow agenda, including letting males into girls’ locker rooms. And, of course, pretty much every major left-wing group has followed the LGBT lobby into pushing a radical transgender agenda.
Nor is it only politicians and activists who have staked their credibility on the trans agenda. From education to entertainment to Big Business, a lot of people have embraced transgender ideology, including medically transitioning children. The medical industry in particular has a lot to lose, both in credibility and cash, if the transition train slows down. This may explain why pro-trans research is routinely published even though the studies are mostly lowquality, with some being demonstrably terrible. The goal isn’t to publish good research, but to provide cover for an ideology that is chemically and surgically sterilizing children.
And, of course, there is pride — no, not the rainbow celebrations sponsored by big business, but actual personal pride. Will parents who bought into gender transition admit the harm they have done to their children? Will liberals admit not only that they were wrong, but that Christian conservatives were right? These and similar truths may be too hard for many to accept.
Consequently, we opponents of the transgender agenda must keep the pressure on. We must make sure that those in thrall to transgender ideology — from politicians to academia to the media to Big Tech and Big Business — either abandon it or are defeated. In doing so, it will help to show how the horrifying harms inflicted by gender transition are the result of denying the truth of sex and gender.
Gender-Affirming Care Is a Lie
Gender-affirming care is a lie because gender is not a free-floating metaphysical substance. Gender becomes nonsensical when disconnected from sex, because gender is the social expression of the biological realities of human sex. As Matt Walsh’s recent documentary “What is a Woman?” demonstrates, gender makes no sense without reference to biological sex — it either goes around in circles (e.g. a woman is anyone who identifies as a woman) or descends into crude stereotypes (e.g. a boy who likes pink must be a girl).
We are a sexually dimorphic species; the difference between male and female is essential to the continuation of humanity. Thus, though there is variation in gender expression between individuals, and gender expectations between cultures, gender always has to refer back to our embodied realities as male or female. Thus, there cannot be a gender identity that is deeper, more essential, or more immutable than our sex. And so it is impossible to have “gender-affirming” medical care that attempts to efface the reality of bodily sex.
There are people who are unhappy with their bodies and wish that they were the other sex. But they are not, nor can they become, the other sex — at most they can be chemically and surgically altered to resemble the other sex and attempt to socially live that role. These people need compassion and help in accepting their healthy natural bodies, not chemicals and surgery to contort their bodies into facsimiles of the other sex. Transition is never medically necessary, which is why activists encourage suicide threats from those who identify as transgender — they have to take themselves hostage because they are in no medical danger.
The ugly truth hidden behind the lying promises of “gender-affirming care” is that medical transition always inflicts physical harm for no physical benefit; it damages a patient’s body, rather than healing it.
Gender-affirming care isn’t, and it must be stopped.
Nathanael Blake is a senior contributor to The Federalist and a postdoctoral fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.
American Family Association
American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
NEWSMAX
News, Opinion, Interviews, Research and discussion
Opinion
American Family Association
American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
American Family Association
American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
You Version
Bible Translations, Devotional Tools and Plans, BLOG, free mobile application; notes and more
Political
American Family Association
American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
NEWSMAX
News, Opinion, Interviews, Research and discussion
Spiritual
American Family Association
American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
Bible Gateway
The Bible Gateway is a tool for reading and researching scripture online — all in the language or translation of your choice! It provides advanced searching capabilities, which allow readers to find and compare particular passages in scripture based on
What Did You Say? 
You must be logged in to post a comment.