Alabama Secretary of State Wes Allen has discovered more than 3,000 potential noncitizens registered to vote in the state. His office is now taking steps to remove noncitizens from the rolls.
“I will not tolerate the participation of noncitizens in our elections,” Allen said in an Aug. 13 press release. “We have examined the current voter file in an attempt to identify anyone who appears on that list that has been issued a noncitizen identification number.”
Allen’s office found 3,251 registered voters with noncitizen ID numbers issued by the Department of Homeland Security, according to the release. His office is telling local administrators to “inactivate and initiate steps necessary to remove all individuals who are not United States citizens” from the voter file.
Allen worked with “other state agencies that collect noncitizen identification numbers” and checked them against voter registrations, Laney Rawls, Allen’s director of communications, told The Federalist. She said Allen has made this a “priority” since taking office in January 2023.
Some of these potential noncitizen voters may have become citizens after initially getting noncitizen ID numbers, according to the release. Allen’s office will inactivate these registrations and allow those who have since become citizens to update their registration with an Alabama driver’s license number, non-driver ID, or the last four digits of their Social Security number, according to Rawls. Allen’s office is still working to determine when the noncitizen ID numbers were issued, Rawls said.
The federal government has denied “repeated requests” to help with the investigation, according to the release. Allen began contacting the DHS’s Citizenship and Immigration Services division in November 2023, requesting a list of noncitizens living in Alabama to cross-reference with the state voter file, according to Rawls.
“The Office also contacted the White House administration for assistance in getting this data and our requests have been denied,” Rawls said. The “lack of cooperation” prompted Allen to try and solve the issue on his own.
“I am hopeful that in the near future the federal government will change course and be helpful to states as we work to protect our elections,” Allen said in the release. Allen’s office is sending the registrations at issue to Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall for “further investigation and possible criminal prosecution.”
“This is not a one-time review of our voter file,” Allen said. “We will continue to conduct such reviews to do everything possible to make sure that everyone on our file is an eligible voter.”
“Unfortunately, the federal government limits the power of states to require proof of citizenship at the time of registration,” Rawls said. Still, Allen has directed local boards of registrars to require an Alabama driver’s license number, non-driver ID, or Social Security number when registering voters.
“Allen has also demanded answers from state and federal agencies conducting these expanded voter registration efforts on how they plan to keep noncitizens from registering to vote in Alabama,” Rawls said.
Allen previously warned citizens of registering to vote through Vote411, citing concerns over data privacy. The Federalist reported that Vote411, which masquerades as a nonpartisan group, uses voter registration forms to shuttle users to a left-wing data harvesting operation.
In Tennessee, Secretary of State Tre Hargett’s election coordinator Mark Goins sent letters to more than 14,000 potential noncitizens in June, telling them to either update their information or request the state remove them from voter rolls.
Doug Kufner, communications director for Hargett’s office, told The Federalist at the time that Goins found these registrations after comparing voter registrations to data from the state’s Department of Safety and Homeland Security.
“This data indicates the person may not have been a U.S. citizen at the time of the transaction. The person could have been naturalized since applying for a driver’s license,” Kufner said at the time. “Tennessee law makes it clear that only eligible voters are allowed to participate in Tennessee elections.”
The letters instructed new citizens on how to correct their records, but that didn’t stop the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation from threatening to sue, according to The Associated Press. Hargett’s office sent follow-up letters, clarifying it would not remove registered voters who did not respond to the initial mailing.
Logan Washburn is a staff writer covering election integrity. He graduated from Hillsdale College, served as Christopher Rufo’s editorial assistant, and has bylines in The Wall Street Journal, The Tennessean, and The Daily Caller. Logan is originally from Central Oregon but now lives in rural Michigan.
Democrats are finally facing their day of reckoning with black voters, and their waning support for President Joe Biden is only half the story. A recent New York Times/Sienna poll reveals that Biden barely leads among nonwhite voters under 45 in a 2024 election matchup against former President Donald Trump. The same nonwhite voters reported backing Biden by almost 40 points in the 2020 election.
The hidden story is that Trump is capturing more than 22 percent support among black voters. The NYT article said a Republican winning over so many black voters “would be unprecedented in the post-Civil Rights Act era.”
Why Are Blacks Finally Breaking Ranks?
Black Americans are beginning to understand that the years of promises of better days have resulted in decades of broken promises. A recent Wall Street Journal article tells the story of Michelle Smith, who lives in North Philadelphia. She works two jobs as a black single mother with three teenage boys. She describes her disappointment in Biden, whom she supported strongly in 2020. Despite efforts by the Democrats to spend more money on advertising, voter canvassing, and educating voters in black communities, Smith said the Democrats might not be able to convince her to vote. “I think I’m not going to vote, period,” she said.
Smith is not alone. There is a growing recognition that Democrats have duped black Americans. And as they increasingly realize it, Democrats will be left saying, “Katy, bar the door,” because their party will begin to implode.
Ironically, the modern-day Democrat Party has essentially achieved the same objectives as the Civil War-era Democrat Party. It has unfortunately taken 60 years for black Americans to realize what has happened to them and their culture. It’s hard to keep blaming Republicans when Democrats run major cities, school systems, and police departments. In many cases, black Democrats run these institutions.
Black Decline After Civil Rights
The status of black Americans today in Democrat-controlled cities and states is essentially the worst it has been since before the Civil Rights era. For example, during slavery, Democrats restricted access to opportunities that allowed slaves to obtain an education. Today, in nearly every major city controlled by Democrats, literacy rates are abysmal. Local and national Democrat Party leaders have severely restricted access to private or charter schools.
Proponents of apartheid used segregation as a cruel psychological tool. Democrats, however, are bringing segregation back in style. In Democrat Party strongholds, such as American universities, the country is witnessing the practice of segregated dorms and graduation ceremonies.
One of the most devastating changes that the Democrat Party facilitated involves the destruction of the nuclear family in black communities. During the era of slavery, masters would break up families after wives bore children. After the Civil War and for 100 years afterward, most black children grew up in traditional two-parent families.
It wasn’t until Democrats introduced and heavily marketed social welfare programs to black Americans in the 1960s that two-parent families began to erode drastically. Those programs ushered in a cultural transformation. Over 50 years, black families fell from having two parents in 80 percent of homes. Today, approximately 80 percent of black children grow up in fatherless homes.
Democrats Harm Black Americans
For the Democrats, family disruption and government dependency were the objectives from the beginning. If that wasn’t their intention, then why hasn’t there been one national initiative to reverse the trend?
In 1957, Sen. Lyndon B. Johnson, D-Texas, then the pro-segregationist Senate majority leader, knew blacks would eventually get the right to vote. When speaking to then-Sen. Richard Russell Jr., D-Ga., regarding the Civil Rights Act of 1957, Johnson said, “These Negroes, they’re getting pretty uppity these days and that’s a problem for us since they’ve got something now they never had before, the political pull to back up their uppityness. Now we’ve got to do something about this, we’ve got to give them a little something, just enough to quiet them down, not enough to make a difference.”
Democrat Party leaders and their left-wing friends in academia and the media convinced blacks (and the general public) that Republicans were the racists. They were, according to the effective narrative, indifferent to poor people. They wanted to keep blacks as second-class citizens. Ironically, Republicans voted to support the Civil Rights Act in greater numbers than Democrats.
Their goal was to have black Americans switch their votes from Republicans to Democrats.
Black Americans Coming Home to the GOP
As we look forward to the 2024 election season, the NYT/Sienna poll is not the only one raising the alarm. A recent Fox News poll revealed that 26 percent of black Americans support Trump for president in 2024 over Biden. In the past 12 months, black elected officials switched from the Democrat Party to the Republican Party in southern states such as Georgia and Texas. For the first time in 140 years, Alabama voters elected a black man to the state House of Representatives as a Republican.
In statewide elections, voters in Virginia and North Carolina elected black Americans to the No. 2 leadership position as lieutenant governors. Although Daniel Cameron did not win his bid for Kentucky governor, we should expect to see more black Republicans running for statewide and federal offices.
Even the legacy media won’t be able to spin and hide this major political shift.
Kendall Qualls is an Executive Faculty-in-Residence at the Crown College School of Business and Founder/President of the non-profit foundation TakeCharge. Qualls was a candidate for the Republican nomination for Governor of Minnesota in the 2022 election cycle.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit vacated a preliminary injunction against an Alabama law that protects minors from gender-transition hormone treatments. Pictured: the Alabama State Capitol in Montgomery. (Photo: traveler1116/Getty Images)
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit on Monday vacated a preliminary injunction against Alabama’s Vulnerable Child Compassion and Protection Act, which had blocked the section of the law protecting minors from puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones. The unanimous decision denied that the law “amounts to a sex-based classification” and found no “constitutional right to treat [one’s] children with transitioning medications subject to medically accepted standards.”
Alabama’s law protecting minors from gender-transition hormone treatments was partially blocked on May 13, 2022, days after it went into effect. In that order, U.S. District Judge Liles Burke reached the conclusion that the plaintiffs were “substantially likely to succeed” on two claims, substantive due process and equal protection—both under the 14th Amendment—and thus met the criteria for a preliminary injunction. But the appeals court disagreed on both counts.
The substantive due process count is an argument over the scope of parental rights. The lower court found a “right to treat [one’s] children with transitioning medications subject to medically accepted standards,” which it said fell “under the broader, recognized fundamental right to ‘make decisions concerning the care, custody, and control of [one’s] children.’”
The appeals court objected to this logical leap, faulting the lower court for not performing “any historical inquiry specifically tied to the particular alleged right at issue.”
“Courts must look to whether the right is ‘deeply rooted in [our] history and tradition’ and ‘essential to our Nation’s ‘scheme of ordered liberty,’” said the 11th Circuit, citing the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision. “But the use of these medications in general—let alone for children—almost certainly is not ‘deeply rooted’ in our nation’s history and tradition.”
The court pointed out that the earliest use of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones came decades after the 14th Amendment was adopted. While not denying the fundamental nature of parental rights, the court cited precedent to emphasize that “a substantive due process analysis must focus on the specific right asserted, rather than simply rely on a related general right.”
Consequently, the court applied the deferential “rational basis” test to Alabama’s law and considered the law would likely succeed in passing the test.
“First, the record evidence is undisputed that the medications at issue present some risks. As the district court recognized, these medications can cause ‘loss of fertility and sexual function,’” it noted. “Second, there is at least rational speculation that some families will not fully appreciate those risks and that some minors experiencing gender dysphoria ultimately will desist and identify with their biological sex.”
The equal protection count boiled down to whether the law discriminated based on sex or a sex-based category.
The lower court found that the law “classifies on the basis of gender nonconformity and therefore classifies on the basis of sex,” applying the Bostock decision’s redefinition of sex. But the appellate court agreed with Alabama that the law “classifies on the bases of age and procedure, not sex or gender nonconformity, and is therefore not subject to any heightened scrutiny.”
The 11th Circuit also rejected other theories raised by the plaintiffs and the U.S. Department of Justice, which intervened against Alabama’s law, to establish an equal protection violation.
Plaintiffs argued that the law “directly classifies on the basis of sex because it ‘uses explicitly sex-based terms.’” The court rejected this argument for two reasons. First, the law “establishes a rule that applies equally to both sexes.”
Second, “the statute refers to sex only because the medical procedures that it regulates—puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones as a treatment for gender dysphoria—are themselves sex-based. … For that reason, it is difficult to imagine how a state might regulate the use of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones for the relevant purposes in specific terms without referencing sex in some way.”
Meanwhile, the DOJ argued that discriminating on the basis of gender identity amounted to discriminating on the basis of sex, based upon Bostock’s reasoning. But the court pointed out that the reasoning of Bostock was specific to the text of Title VII, which prohibits discrimination in unemployment law.
“The Equal Protection Clause contains none of the text that the Court interpreted in Bostock. It provides simply that ‘[n]o State shall . . . deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws,’” it added. “Because Bostock therefore concerned a different law (with materially different language) and a different factual context, it bears minimal relevance to the instant case.”
The DOJ raised another precedent, Brumby, which “concerned gender stereotyping in the context of employment discrimination.” The court distinguished the Alabama law because it “does not further any particular gender stereotype. Insofar as [the challenged portion of Alabama’s law] involves sex, it simply reflects biological differences between males and females, not stereotypes associated with either sex.”
The DOJ also contended the law discriminates against gender-nonconforming individuals because it “restricts a specific course of medical treatment that, by the nature of things, only gender nonconforming individuals may receive.”
To counter this, the 11th Circuit again cited Dobbs, “Just last year, the Supreme Court explained that ‘[t]he regulation of a medical procedure that only one sex can undergo does not trigger heightened constitutional scrutiny unless the regulation is a “mere pretex[t] designed to effect an invidious discrimination against members of one sex or the other.”’”
The DOJ also argued that transgender individuals constituted a “quasi”-protected class under the equal protection clause, but the court responded, “‘We have grave “doubt” that transgender persons constitute a quasi-suspect class,’ distinct from sex, under the Equal Protection Clause.”
In conclusion, the 11th Circuit said the controversy at issue properly belonged in the political sphere, not the judicial sphere.
“This case revolves around an issue that is surely of the utmost importance to all of the parties involved: the safety and wellbeing of the children of Alabama,” it said. “But it is complicated by the fact that there is a strong disagreement between the parties over what is best for those children. Absent a constitutional mandate to the contrary, these types of issues are quintessentially the sort that our system of government reserves to legislative, not judicial, action.”
Then it summed up the case: On substantive due process, “the district court divined” a “right to ‘treat [one’s] children with transitioning medications subject to medically accepted standards’”—“without adequate historical support.”
On equal protection, “the district court determined that the law classifies on the basis of sex, when in reality the law simply reflects real, biological differences between males and females and equally restricts the use of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormone treatment for minors of both sexes.”
The 11th Circuit’s decision in favor of Alabama could hold major implications for the other states in its jurisdiction, Florida and Georgia.
In Florida, a federal judge issued a preliminary injunction against the state’s law protecting minors from gender-reassignment hormone treatments on June 6. In Georgia, a federal judge issued a preliminary injunction against a similar law on Sunday.
In both cases, plaintiffs raised the same constitutional questions addressed by the 11th Circuit—substantive due process and equal protection. And, in both cases, the lower court applied heightened scrutiny (the Georgia ruling only addressed the merits of the equal protection claim), instead of the rational basis test stipulated by the 11th Circuit.
The disparate outcomes could lead either the 11th Circuit or the respective district courts to revise their decision in light of the new precedent.
Alabama’s law protecting minors from gender-reassignment procedures is the third to win a preliminary victory at the circuit court level.
In July, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit overturned a lower court ruling enjoining Tennessee’s SAFE Act-style law (that decision was cited by the 11th Circuit).
Days later, a district judge in Kentucky, who had just enjoined that state’s law, lifted his injunction in light of the Tennessee precedent, and the 6th Circuit upheld his decision.
By lifting the injunction against Alabama’s law, the 11th Circuit became the second appeals court to rule on the merits in favor of laws protecting minors from gender-reassignment procedures.
Since February, Alabama Republican Tommy Tuberville has been using a “senatorial hold” to block personnel moves by the U.S. military that require Senate confirmation. The media and Democrats are very upset that Tuberville is “waging an unprecedented campaign” and embroiling our vital national defense policy in the culture war.
Joe Biden claims that Republicans are “injecting into fundamental foreign policy decisions what in fact is a domestic social debate on social issues is bizarre,” which is “totally irresponsible.” While I don’t know much about Tommy Tuberville, the president has it backward. It was Biden and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, not any Republican, who broke with 45 years of policy last year by instituting effective reimbursements for elective abortions by military and dependents. It is just as true to say, probably truer, that the president is the one holding up military promotions by unilaterally trashing policy that has been in place since 1980.
One of the implications of most stories covering the military hold debate illustrates the radically rightward shift and unprecedented fanaticism of Republican politics. This, too, is backward. Biden, who supported the Hyde Amendment, a law banning federal funds to pay for abortion, from 1976-2019, is an exemplar of the hard-left cultural lurch of the modern left. Biden had not merely gone along with the Hyde Amendment as a means of compromising with Republicans back in the ’80s and ’90s. Until the past couple of decades, the abortion debate wasn’t neatly divided by party, and Biden, purportedly a devout Catholic, had to keep conservative working-class Delawarean voters happy. In 1994, the future president wrote a letter to a constituent bragging that he had voted against abortion funding on 50 occasions.
Like most things Biden says, this was probably untrue. But he did vote to save the Hyde Amendment repeatedly over the decades. Biden also voted against allowing Medicaid to fund abortions, even for victims of rape and incest. He supported a Jesse Helms amendment that would have prohibited using federal funds for abortions and abortion research or training. Biden voted numerous times to prohibit the Federal Employees Health Benefits program from funding abortions for government workers.
Indeed, Biden was constantly “injecting into fundamental foreign policy decisions what in fact is a domestic social debate on social issues.” He didn’t merely support banning public funding for abortion in the United States; he wrote an amendment to Foreign Assistance Act — for years, referred to as the “Biden amendment” — that barred U.S. foreign aid from being used in any research related to abortions. In 1984, Biden supported the “Mexico City policy,” banning federal funding for private organizations that provide abortion, advocate to decriminalize abortion, or expand abortion services.
Even on June 5, 2019, not long after his 2020 presidential campaign kickoff, Biden publicly reaffirmed his support for the Hyde Amendment. The very next day, after some criticism from primary opponents, the spineless candidate changed his position and “denounce[d]” the Hyde Amendment. For what it’s worth, virtually every poll on the question of public funding for abortion, even ones that offer a misleading framing of the issue, find most Americans support banning taxpayer funding for abortions. Poll support doesn’t mean much in my book, but it does put to rest the idea that Tuberville is taking on some kind of fanatical position outside the mainstream.
Then again, today, Biden, the man who twice voted for partial-birth abortion bans and once supported overturning Roe v. Wade, backs state-funded abortions on demand from conception to crowning for any reason, including eugenics and sex-selective abortion. And, for the first time in history, he wants to implement that policy in the military. Bizarre, indeed.
While Democrats continue exploiting the Uvalde shooting victims to prattle on about “assault weapons” and so-called “common-sense gun control,” another school was attacked on Thursday, but it won’t make the headlines. That’s because this school — Walnut Park Elementary School in Gadsden, Alabama — didn’t have any victims except the would-be invader, who was shot dead by police after he tried and failed to bust into the building. Here’s how it all reportedly went down.
A passerby saw a man “aggressively” trying to get into the school building. When the man was unsuccessful, he tried several other doors, all of which were locked. The responsible observer called to report the man, the school principal put the building on lockdown and called in a police officer who doubles as the school resource officer, and that officer called for backup. If the reports are correct, the chain of command worked smoothly thanks to decisive action and quickly followed protocols. The resource officer reportedly engaged the would-be invader, who then also allegedly attempted to forcefully enter a marked police vehicle and to take the officer’s gun. More police officers rushed to the scene to help, and the assailant was shot and killed. According to the city’s school superintendent, the schoolchildren who were there “seemed to be unaware the incident occurred.”
In other words, a man who “aggressively” tried to break into a school and take the firearm of a police officer was stopped because doors were properly locked and police officers acted bravely and urgently.
Hmm. That’s interesting. Because according to President Joe Biden, failed presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke, rom-com celebrity Matthew McConaughey, and late-night political scold Jimmy Kimmel, the only way to end the “carnage” of schoolchildren being murdered is to pass anti-gun laws or issue executive orders that radically infringe on the Second Amendment but are slapped with an innocuous “common-sense” qualifier so they don’t sound so bad.
Nothing else would do the trick, such people say — despite the fact that the Uvalde killer had no problem passing a background check, entered through an unlocked door, and faced little resistance from law enforcement for a disgustingly long time.
When Texas Sen. Ted Cruz responded to the Uvalde murder with calls for better school security in the form of locked doors and single-point entry, which could have prevented that killing, leftists and the corporate press ridiculed him for focusing on doors. “[S]enator Ted Cruz comes out bravely against doors,”scoffed The Atlantic’s Molly Jong-Fast on Twitter. “Are they really gonna make it about ‘too many doors on the school’? They are, aren’t they?”chimed in woke comedian Patton Oswalt.
Meanwhile, nobody on the left wants to talk about the criminal failures of the Uvalde police and the Department of Public Safety. That’s in part because if they had done their jobs rather than standing outside like cowards for the better part of an hour, lives undoubtedly would have been spared. It’s also because the implication of Democrats disarming responsible citizens is that the only remaining defense will be armed government employees, who may or may not have the courage to actually help anyone.
Thankfully, in Alabama on Thursday, police did have that courage, and lives were saved because of it. But Democrats and their media lapdogs won’t speak a word of Walnut Park Elementary because it obliterates their gun “do somethingism.”
It turns out we don’t need celebrity lectures and sweeping gun control to keep schoolchildren safe. We just need locked doors and adults who do their dang jobs.
Kylee Zempel is an assistant editor at The Federalist. She previously worked as the copy editor for the Washington Examiner magazine and as an editor and producer at National Geographic. She holds a B.S. in Communication Arts/Speech and an A.S. in Criminal Justice and writes on topics including feminism and gender issues, religious liberty, and criminal justice. Follow her on Twitter @kyleezempel.
IT Support Technician Michael Hakopian (R) distributes computer devices to students at Hollywood High School on August 13, 2020, in Hollywood, California. With over 734,000 enrolled students, the Los Angeles Unified School District is the largest public school system in California and the 2nd largest public school district in the United States. | Rodin Eckenroth/Getty Images
At least 26 state school board associations have distanced themselves from the National School Board Association after it urged the Biden administration to use federal law enforcement agencies against parents who oppose the teaching of controversial curriculum in public schools by labeling them as potential “domestic terrorists.”
The national grassroots organization Parents Defending Education says the states that have distanced themselves from the NSBA’s letter include: Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, New Hampshire, New Jersey, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, Wisconsin and Wyoming.
Out of these, 12 states — Alabama, Florida, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, Montana, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina and Wisconsin — have taken further action to withdraw membership, participation or dues from the NSBA.
PDE wrote to NSBA member states for their comment on the Sept. 29 letter sent to them by NSBA Interim Executive Director Chip Slaven, which critics believe likened activism of concerned parents to “domestic terrorism.”
The letter said the NSBA had asked the U.S. Department of Justice to mobilize law enforcement agencies to respond to “threats and acts of violence against public schoolchildren, public school board members, and other public school district officials and educators” as actions of “domestic terrorism.”
While some school board members across the nation have publicly shared incidents of threats they’ve purportedly received from angry residents, critics believe the request to get federal law enforcement involved is unwarranted and an attempt to silence parents. Specific examples of concerning actions included the disruption of school board meetings “because of local directives for mask coverings to protect students and educators from COVID-19,” the incitement of “chaos” at school board meetings by “anti-mask proponents,” and the confrontation of school boards by “angry mobs” that have led boards to “end meetings abruptly.”
John Halkias, the director of the NSBA’s Central Region, wrote to Slaven the same day, on Sept. 29, sharing his belief that “the Board of Directors should have been consulted before a letter like this was sent out publicly, and no less to the President of the United States and the National Press.”
“I also agree that the letter took a stance that went beyond what many of us would consider to be reasonable and used terms that were extreme, and asked for action by the Federal Government that many of us would not request,” he added. “In fact in a recent press conference, the White House Press Secretary stated that when these incidents occur, it is a matter for local law enforcement and local authorities, and NOT the federal government.”
In an Oct. 2 email, NSBA President Viola Garcia told the organization’s board of directors that “NSBA has been engaged with the White House and the Department of Education on these and other issues related to the pandemic for several weeks now.”
Five days later, the Department of Justice published a memorandum directing “the Federal Bureau of Investigations, working with each United States Attorney, to convene meetings with federal, state, local, Tribal, and territorial leaders within 30 days” to “facilitate the discussion of strategies for addressing threats against school administrators, board members, teachers and staff.”
Republican members of Congress also criticized the memo.
“As someone who was born in the Soviet Union, I am … disturbed, very disturbed, by the use of the Department of Justice as a political tool, and its power as the police state to suppress lawful public discourse,” Rep. Victoria Spartz, R-Ind., said in a House Judiciary Committee oversight hearing. “The FBI is starting to resemble old KGB with secret warrantless … surveillance, wiretapping and intimidation of citizens.”
On Thursday, Republicans in Alabama took a key step in their quest to protect children from hormone blockers and transgender surgeries, when state senators approved a bill seeking to criminalize medical professionals prescribing or advising such drastic transgender medical intervention. According to The Washington Times, Republican Sen. Shay Shelnutt’s bill, called the Vulnerable Child Compassion and Protection Act, seeks to “make it a felony for doctors and other medical providers to prescribe hormone blockers or surgeries for minors seeking to treat gender dysphoria.”
“I just don’t think, and others don’t think, that kids should be given experimental drugs or surgeries that could have irreversible consequences for the rest of their life,” Sen. Shelnutt told local reporters.
“Kids are not fully developed until later in life,” the Republican added. “I think we can all agree that kids aren’t capable of making certain decisions until certain ages. And so we want to just stop these procedures from happening in Alabama.”
The bill, which overwhelmingly passed in the state Senate, is soon headed to Alabama’s House of Representatives.
Alabama’s Republican Governor Kay Ivey has yet to indicate her intention on signing the bill if it were to pass the House.
Ivey earned praise from conservatives and scorn from feminists last year when she signed a robust pro-life bill, the Alabama Human Life Protection Act, banning nearly all elective abortions within the state.
Today, I signed into law the Alabama Human Life Protection Act. To the bill’s many supporters, this legislation stands as a powerful testament to Alabamians’ deeply held belief that every life is precious & that every life is a sacred gift from God. https://t.co/DwKJyAjSs8pic.twitter.com/PIUQip6nmw
— Governor Kay Ivey (@GovernorKayIvey) May 15, 2019
Rep. Wes Allen, a Republican serving in the Alabama House, fumed over the reality that children are being prescribed hormone blockers within the state.
“I was shocked when I found out doctors in Alabama were prescribing these types of drugs to children,” Allen said in a statement, the Times noted. “This is something you hear about happening in California or New York but it is happening right here in Alabama and it’s time we put a stop to that practice.”
According to the Mayo Clinic’s website, giving a child hormone blockers to delay puberty is a “big step” that could effect their fertility.
“In those identified as male at birth, GnRH analogues decrease the growth of facial and body hair, prevent voice deepening, and limit the growth of genitalia,” the clinic’s site outlines, adding that the “treatment limits or stops breast development and delays or stops menstruation” for biological females.
Under “side effects” and “complications,” the site lists:
Possible side effects of GnRH analogue treatment include:
Injection site swelling
Weight gain
Hot flashes
Headaches
Use of GnRH analogues might also have long-term effects on:
Bone density
Future fertility
“If children with male genitalia begin using GnRH analogues early in puberty, they might not develop enough penile and scrotal skin for certain gender confirmation genital surgical procedures, such as penile inversion vaginoplasty,” the Mayo Clinic explains, adding that “delaying puberty beyond one’s peers can be stressful. Your child might experience lower self-esteem.”
Moreover, as highlighted by The Federalist, endocrinologist Michael Laidlaw has warned that puberty blockers “interfere with the expected increase in bone density in adolescence such that the bones are not as strong as they would be had normal pubertal development been allowed. This is due to the effect of dropping sex hormone levels to subnormal levels. These lost years of bone development cannot be regained.”
Laidlaw also emphasized the “truly terrifying”“psychological effect” hormone blockers have on children.
“Under the traditional treatment for gender dysphoria, which involves ‘watchful waiting or pursuit of family and individual psychotherapy,’ between 80 and 95 percent of adolescent patientsoutgrow their dysphoria naturally,” The Federalist added.
A church deep in Alabama has put up a controversial message on its sign calling Trump supporters either racist or mentally ill. The pastor of the church is the one behind the message.
The controversial sign put on display outside the New Era Baptist Church reads on one side, “A black vote for Trump is mental illness.” The other side of the sign displays another message: “A white vote for Trump is pure racism.”
Michael Jordan, the pastor of the local church, told WZDX that he put the sign up hoping it would encourage people to choose a name other than Trump on their ballots next year.
Daxton Kirk, a local Trump supporter, told the station that people “should not be able to come into a building and feel like you are hated or diversified just because you came here to worship the Lord.”
Kirk told the local station that he has reached out to the town’s City Hall to see if local officials can take action on the sign.
The pastor even defends his hateful and racist message saying, “God motivates me to take a stand for what’s right. Read the Bible and look in the White House. If they call me a racist, look in the White House. When you vote for Donald Trump, you are supporting institutionalized racism.”
This pastor needs to take some time to read the Bible for himself and see what Jesus said about judging. I’m not arguing that the Bible says not to judge anyone because it does numerous times. But God tells us not to judge hypocritically and to not judge by appearance but make right judgment.
When this pastor automatically calls every Trump supporter a racist, he’s violating the Lord’s prescription for judging. I’ve NEVER been able to get a solid reply from anyone who says that Trump is a racist. The most recent thing they try to claim is telling the “Squad” to go back to their countries and fix them. Which, in the full context wasn’t racist at all.
17-year-old Deangelo Parnell turned himself into police early Saturday morning after shooting and wounding ten people at a football game and injuring one other during his rampage in Alabama.
Normally a mass shooting would bring out the mainstream media screaming for gun control, but unfortunately, they could not pin this on a white supremacist because the shooter is Black. That throws their whole narrative for a loop until the next white man commits a similar atrocity.
There has been no motive for the crime released but Parnell has been charged with nine counts of attempted murder.
A 17-year-old was arrested after 10 people were shot following a high school football game in Alabama, according to police. The victims in the shooting, which happened in Mobile, ranged in age from 15 to 18. They were rushed to area hospitals, officials said.
Deangelo Parnell, 17, has been arrested and charged with nine counts of attempted murder, Mobile Police Department spokesman Laderrick Dubose told ABC News Saturday morning. Mobile Police Chief Lawrence Battiste didn’t confirm to reporters the shooting stemmed from an altercation, but he did admonish young people for “bringing their beefs that they have with each other in their neighborhoods” into public settings and “putting people in harm’s way.”
The incident “may have been a directed threat at one or two individuals and other people just happened to fall prey to their carelessness,” Battiste added.
One person had a seizure and another suffered an injured hand, but it’s unclear if those individuals were among the 10 who got shot.
American Family Association
American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
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American Family Association
American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
American Family Association
American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
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American Family Association
American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
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American Family Association
American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
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