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Posts tagged ‘domestic terrorism’

FBI Won’t Say If It’s Investigating Self-Declared ‘Hamas’ Terrorists Protesting At U.S. Universities


BY: BRIANNA LYMAN | APRIL 23, 2024

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2024/04/23/fbi-wont-say-if-its-investigating-self-declared-hamas-terrorists-protesting-at-u-s-universities/

Radical self-declared Hamas terrorist

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) would not say Tuesday whether it is investigating people identifying themselves as part of a foreign terrorist organization heard chanting “We are Hamas” outside U.S. universities including Columbia.

Video footage shows masked Islamists taunting Jewish students outside of President Barack Obama’s alma mater. One woman shouted at a pro-Israel activist, “We are Hamas” while standing outside Columbia University. “We’re all Hamas.”

Another man who covered his face was seen on video promising more mass slaughter, rape, and kidnapping: “Remember the 7th of October! That will happen not one more time, not five more times, to 10 more times, not 100 more times, not 1,000 more times, but 10,000 times!”

“Never forget the 7th of October,” another unidentifiable man donning the Palestinian flag outside the university screams in a video recording. “Are you ready? Seventh of October is about to be every day. Every day. Seventh of October is going to be every day for you.”

The Federalist asked the FBI whether they would investigate the self-proclaimed terrorists.

“Thank you for your inquiry. However, we decline comment on this matter,” the bureau replied.

The FBI designates Hamas as a terrorist organization.

Perhaps the FBI’s unwillingness to let the American people know it’s monitoring self-proclaimed terrorists is because the agency allegedly trained some of its personnel using material that “ranked people who oppose abortion, pro-life activists, as a greater threat than Islamists,” as former special agent Steve Friend told the Tennessee Informer.

Friend said he received the training material in 2014 but was unsure whether the agency still used it. The materials, he said, were produced by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), a hate group whose materials inspired a gunman to shoot up the offices of a conservative DC organization in 2012, and another gunman to attempt to murder a member of Congress in 2017.

As of 2023, the FBI still uses some SPLC materials. SPLC responded to the October 7 terrorist attack in Israel by claiming that, while “all acts of hate violence” are wrong, Israel targets Palestinian civilians. That is a Hamas propaganda refrain.

The FBI also cited SPLC in a 2023 document targeting traditional Christians for opposing abortion and holding orthodox views about the sexes. It labeled them “racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists” and even suggested cultivating FBI informants within local churches.

The FBI has also smeared Americans who support former President Donald Trump as potential terrorists by including them in their “domestic extremism” definition, a 2023 report from Newsweek found. Newsweek found “nearly two-thirds of the FBI’s current investigations” focus on Trump supporters who allegedly disregarded “anti-riot” laws.

After Jan. 6, 2021, the agency also expanded its “anti-government or anti-authority violent extremists-other” classification so it could monitor anyone who disagrees with any government action. A 2021 inspector general report found that several FBI officials lied to cover up agency errors and dinged the agency for its systemic lack of rapid investigation of later convicted child sex abuser Larry Nassar.

Brianna Lyman is an elections correspondent at The Federalist.

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This Country Cannot Afford A Weak Supreme Court Decision On Internet Censorship


BY: JOY PULLMANN | MARCH 21, 2024

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2024/03/21/this-country-cannot-afford-a-weak-supreme-court-decision-on-internet-censorship/

Murthy v. Missouri defendants

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The Biden administration attempted to distract the Supreme Court from the voluminous evidence of federal abuse of Americans’ speech rights during oral arguments in Murthy v. Missouri Monday. It sounded like several justices followed the feds’ waving red flag.

“The government may not use coercive threats to suppress speech, but it is entitled to speak for itself by informing, persuading, or criticizing private speakers,” said Biden administration lawyer Brian Fletcher in his opening remarks. He and several justices asserted government speech prerogatives that would flip the Constitution upside down.

The government doesn’t have constitutional rights. Constitutional rights belong to the people and restrain the government. The people’s right to speak may not be abridged. Government officials’ speaking, in their official capacities, may certainly be abridged. Indeed, it often must be, precisely to restrict officials from abusing the state’s monopoly on violence to bully citizens into serfdom.

It is obviously un-American and unconstitutional for the government to develop a “hit list” of citizens to mute in the public square through secret pressure on communications monopolies beholden to the government for their monopoly powers. There is simply no way it’s “protected speech” for the feds to use intermediaries to silence anyone who disagrees with them on internet forums where the majority of the nation’s political organizing and information dissemination occurs.

Bullying, Not the Bully Pulpit

What’s happening is not government expressing its views to media, or “encouraging press to suppress their own speech,” as Justice Elena Kagan put it. This is government bullying third parties to suppress Americans’ speech that officials dislike.

In the newspaper analogy, it would be like government threatening an IRS audit or Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) investigation, or pulling the business license of The Washington Post if the Post published an op-ed from Jay Bhattacharya. As Norwood v. Harrison established in 1973, that’s blatantly unconstitutional. Government cannot “induce, encourage or promote private persons to accomplish what it is constitutionally forbidden to accomplish.”

Yet, notes Matt Taibbi, some justices and Fletcher “re-framed the outing of extravagantly funded, ongoing content-flagging programs, designed by veterans of foreign counterterrorism operations and targeting the domestic population, as a debate about what Fletcher called ‘classic bully pulpit exhortations.’”

Every Fake Excuse for Censorship Is Already Illegal

We have laws against all the harms the government and several justices put forth as excuses for government censorship. Terrorism is illegal. Promoting terrorism is illegal, as an incitement to treason and violence. Inciting children to injure or murder themselves by jumping out windows — a “hypothetical” brought up by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson and discussed at length in oral arguments — is illegal.

If someone is spreading terrorist incitements to violence on Facebook, law enforcement needs to go after the terrorist plotters, not Facebook. Just like it’s unjust to punish gun, knife, and tire iron manufacturers for the people who use their products to murder, it’s unjust and unconstitutional for government to effectively commandeer Facebook under the pretext of all the evils people use it to spread. If they have a problem with those evils, they should address those evils directly, not pressure Facebook to do what they can’t get through Congress like it’s some kind of substitute legislature.

It’s also ridiculous to, as Jackson and Fletcher did in oral argument, assume that the government is the only possible solution to every social ill. Do these hypothetically window-jumping children not have parents? Teachers? Older siblings? Neighbors? Would the social media companies not have an interest in preventing their products from being used to promote death, and wouldn’t that be an easy thing to explain publicly? Apparently, Jackson couldn’t conceive of any other solution to problems like these than government censorship, when our society has handled far bigger problems like war, pandemics, and foreign invasion without government censorship for 250 years!

Voters Auditing Government Is Exactly How Our System Should Work

Fletcher described it as a “problem” that in this case, “two states and five individuals are trying to use the Article III courts to audit all of the executive branch’s communications with and about social media platforms.” That’s called transparency, and it’s only a problem if the government is trying to escape accountability to voters for its actions. The people have a fundamental right to audit what their government is doing with public positions, institutions, and funds! How do we have government by consent of the governed if the people can have no idea what their government is doing?

Under federal laws, all communications like those this lawsuit uncovered are public records. Yet these public records are really hard to get. The executive branch has been effectively nullifying open records laws by absurdly lengthening disclosure times — to as long as 636 days — increasingly forcing citizens to wage expensive lawsuits to get federal agencies to cough up records years beyond the legal deadline.

Congress should pass a law forcing the automatic disclosure of all government communications with tech monopolies that don’t concern actual classified information and “national security” designations, which the government expands unlawfully to avoid transparency. No justice should support government secrecy about its speech pressure efforts outside of legitimate national security actions.

Government Is So Big, It’s Always Coercive

Fletcher’s argument also claimed to draw a line between government persuasion and government coercion. The size and minute harassment powers of our government long ago obliterated any such line, if it ever existed. Federal agencies now have the power to try citizens in non-Article III courts, outside constitutional protections for due process. Citizens can be bankrupted long before they finally get to appeal to a real court. That’s why most of them just do whatever the agencies say, even when it’s clearly unlawful.

Federal agencies demand power over almost every facet of life, from puddles in people’s backyards to the temperature of cheese served in a tiny restaurant. If they put a target on any normal citizen’s back, he goes bankrupt after regulatory torture.

As Franklin Roosevelt’s “brain trust” planned, government is now the “senior partner” of every business, giving every “request” from government officials automatic coercion power. Federal agencies have six ways from Sunday of getting back at a noncompliant company, from the EEOC to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration to the Environmental Protection Agency to Health and Human Services to Securities and Exchange Commission investigations and more. Use an accurate pronoun? Investigation. Hire “one too many” white guys? Investigation.

TikTok legislation going through Congress right now would codify federal power to seize social media companies accused of being owned by foreign interests. Shortly after he acquired X, Elon Musk faced a regulatory shakedown costing him tens of millions, and more on the way. He has money like that, but the rest of us don’t.

Speech from a private citizen does not have the threat of violence behind it. Speech from a government official, on the other hand, absolutely does and always has. Government officials have powers that other people don’t, and those powers are easily abused, which is exactly why we have a Constitution. SCOTUS needs to take this crucial context into account, making constitutional protections stronger because the government is far, far outside its constitutional bounds.

Big tech companies’ very business model depends on government regulators and can be destroyed — or kneecapped — at the stroke of an activist president’s pen. Or, at least, that’s what the president said when Facebook and Twitter didn’t do what he wanted: Section 230 should “immediately be revoked.” This is a president who claims the executive power to unilaterally rewrite laws, ignore laws, and ignore Supreme Court decisions. It’s a president who issues orders as press releases so they go into effect months before they can even begin to be challenged in court.

Constitutionally Protected Speech Isn’t Terrorism

If justices buy the administration’s nice-guy pretenses of “concern about terrorism,” and “once in a lifetime pandemic measures,” they didn’t read the briefs in this case and see that is simply a cover for the U.S. government turning counterterrorism tools on its own citizens in an attempt to control election outcomes. This is precisely what the First Amendment was designed to check, and we Americans need our Supreme Court to understand that and act to protect us. Elections mean nothing when the government is secretly keeping voters from talking to each other.

The Supreme Court may not be able to return the country to full constitutional government by eradicating the almost entirely unconstitutional administrative state. But it should enforce as many constitutional boundaries as possible on such agencies. That clearly includes prohibiting all of government from outsourcing to allegedly “private” organizations actions that would be illegal for the government to take.

That includes not just coercive instructions to social media companies, but also developing social media censorship tools and organizations as cutouts for the rogue security state that is targeting peaceful citizens instead of actual terrorists. Even false speech is not domestic terrorism, and no clearheaded Supreme Court justice looking at the evidence could let the Biden administration weaponize antiterrorism measures to strip law-abiding Americans of our fundamental human rights.

Joy Pullmann is executive editor of The Federalist, a happy wife, and the mother of six children. Her ebooks include “Classic Books For Young Children,” and “101 Strategies For Living Well Amid Inflation.” An 18-year education and politics reporter, Joy has testified before nearly two dozen legislatures on education policy and appeared on major media from Fox News to Ben Shapiro to Dennis Prager. Joy is a grateful graduate of the Hillsdale College honors and journalism programs who identifies as native American and gender natural. Her traditionally published books include “The Education Invasion: How Common Core Fights Parents for Control of American Kids,” from Encounter Books.

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Leftists Can’t Acknowledge Real Terrorists Without Exposing ‘Terrorist’ Smears of Republicans as Ridiculous


BY: ELLE PURNELL | OCTOBER 18, 2023

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2023/10/18/leftists-cant-acknowledge-real-terrorists-without-exposing-terrorist-smears-of-republicans-as-ridiculous/

Ilhan Omar and Cori Bush

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After Hamas’ violent attacks on Israel last week, Rep. Ilhan Omar finally found someone she can condemn as a “terrorist”: Ohio Republican Jim Jordan. Omar chose this moment in world events to resurrect and post a quote from former House Speaker John Boehner describing Jordan as a “legislative terrorist” (a description Boehner apparently used to complain about Jordan’s ability to make “Boehner’s life miserable”).

Thankfully, others have stepped up to disavow the heinous behavior of Hamas. A San Francisco Board of Supervisors declaration condemned the “domestic terrorist organization” and blamed its sponsor states for putting “weapons in the hands of those who would harm and terrorize us.” Rep. Jamaal Bowman called for focusing “energy” on fighting “the Nazis” before “anything else.” The National School Boards Association wrote to the attorney general about the “immediate threat” posed by “actions of malice [and] violence,” urging a response to “terrorism and hate crimes.” Whoopi Goldberg of “The View” bravely denounced them as “terrorists.” Former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage condemned the “terrorist” at the top.

Omar, to her credit, decried the “ethnic cleansing” and “war crimes.”

Just kidding! None of these principled condemnations were directed at the terrorist attacks by Hamas against Israeli civilians last week. Issued over the past several years, they respectively referred to the National Rifle Association, Republicans in Congress, concerned parents at school board meetings, congressional Republicans (again), and Donald Trump. Omar’s “ethnic cleansing” comment was actually about Israel urging residents and others in Gaza to evacuate before incoming airstrikes against Hamas targets, while her “war crimes” remark slammed Israel for turning off electricity in Hamas-controlled territory.

Meanwhile, left-wing college students, their professors, and other congressional Democrats have found themselves unable to condemn the actual terrorists who killed, raped, and kidnapped unsuspecting Israelis and their families. Student groups and Marxist outfits like Black Lives Matter have aligned themselves with the terrorists, while others have reserved harsher words for the defending Israeli forces than for their attackers.

Why is it so hard to call a terrorist — a real one, who murders families in their homes and, yes, beheads babies — a terrorist? For a known antisemite like Omar, the answer is easy enough to discern.

For Marxists like BLM and their drones in college classrooms, it’s only slightly more complicated. Having been taught to see everything through the lens of oppressors and oppressed, they buy into the lies about Israeli “colonizers” and must therefore stand with the terrorists “freedom fighters.” Hamas, after all, is only doing to Israeli civilians what true Marxists think should be done to all “settlers.”

But there’s another hurdle to leftists admitting the terrorist acts committed by Hamas are, in fact, terrorism. To do so would invite comparison between those terrorists — of the raping, killing, and beheading variety — and the Republican “terrorists” that Democrats have assured us pose the greatest threat to the republic.

It looks pretty silly to call a potential speaker of the House of Representatives a “terrorist” when there’s so much real terrorism going on in the world. It looks equally silly to call Republicans “Nazis” while your own side cheers the deaths of hundreds of Jewish victims. No serious person could take a person like that seriously!

The Hamas attacks in Israel are inconvenient for the narrative that paints Republican congressmen, pro-life demonstrators, and concerned public school parents as terrorists who pray to Donald Trump at night, hide out in booby-trapped compounds in the Texas desert, and work to rain violent jihad on the sexually frustrated elementary school teachers exposed by Libs of TikTok. If there are terrorists actually dragging women’s battered bodies through the streets and taking toddlers hostage, Americans might realize that “terrorism” is a touch hysterical to describe voting for Trump or questioning the effectiveness of Covid lockdowns online. And then where would Democrats’ efforts to defend “democracy” be?

Anyone who honestly opposes “terrorism” should have no problem blasting Hamas’ crimes in the strongest possible terms. But to be honest about the term would also require not applying it to suburban soccer moms, Jim Jordan, and Trump-supporting grandmothers. (To be fair, some leftists do condemn Hamas’ terrorism as such. Draw your own conclusions, I guess, about what that means they think of you when they call you the same word.)

If I were given the choice of being stuck in a room with a Hamas jihadi or one of the Trump voters, parent protesters, or congressmen who have been described as “terrorists,” I’d take my chances with any of the latter three — or heck, all of them combined! I bet most of the people who casually slander American conservatives as “terrorists” would too.

Then again, when people tell you whose side, they’re on, you should probably believe them.

Elle Purnell is an assistant editor at The Federalist, and received her B.A. in government from Patrick Henry College with a minor in journalism. Follow her work on Twitter @_etreynolds.

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Imagine If Our Intel Agencies Targeted More Actual Terrorists Instead Of Conservative Americans


BY: ELLE PURNELL | OCTOBER 10, 2023

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2023/10/10/imagine-if-our-intel-agencies-targeted-more-actual-terrorists-instead-of-conservative-americans/

Hamas terrorists overrun an Israeli fence

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The barbaric attack on Israeli civilians over the weekend by Hamas terrorists has left people wondering, as we often do after mass tragedies: How did no one see this coming? As a surprisingly sophisticated, coordinated surprise attack left nearly 1,000 people dead and countless more innocents wounded or kidnapped, anyone can recognize the massive intelligence failure without calling into question who is morally culpable for the invasion. Iran-backed militants attacked civilians from multiple points of entry, hang-gliding into a music festival and dragging the bodies of murdered women through the streets, all effectively livestreamed on the internet.

It wasn’t just an intel failure on Israel’s part — as a close ally with an intelligence presence all over the world, the United States also failed to foresee the attack. A senior U.S. military official admitted to NBC News that “We were not tracking this.” CIA counterterrorism veteran Marc Polymeropoulos told the outlet he was “stunned” that American intel agencies were caught off guard.

Intelligence operatives are fallible, yes. But instead of identifying the threat from Hamas terrorists, the Biden administration was busy sending money to their state sponsors in Iran and employing Iranian conspirators at the Pentagon.

There’s another task that’s been keeping America’s so-called “counterterrorism” apparatus busy lately, though. Instead of focusing their efforts on actual terrorists — those abroad and those doubtless infiltrating our porous southern border — the Biden administration has continued, and escalated, the trend of turning our post-9/11 surveillance state against Americans, smearing them as “terrorists” for their political beliefs.

Just last week, Newsweek reported that the FBI is targeting Trump supporters as “domestic terrorists” ahead of the 2024 election. The universal line from the Biden administration is that “domestic terrorism” and its aliases — all of which are used as code for political right-wingers — are the No. 1 threat to national security. The effort to make an example out of Trump supporters who demonstrated at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, is only one of numerous instances in which Democrats within and beyond intelligence agencies are working to equate “domestic terrorism” with their political opponents.

Two years ago, Biden’s Education Department infamously planted a letter from the National School Boards Association to Attorney General Merrick Garland, urging him to target concerned parents who showed up at school board meetings to protest Democrats’ Covid policies and their racialist and sexually graphic curricula in public schools. The letter smeared those parents as domestic terror threats and urged the Department of Justice to wield counterterrorism laws against them, and Garland happily acted on the suggestion.

A few months later, the politicized Department of Justice announced a new “domestic terrorism unit” to deal with “an elevated threat from domestic violence extremists,” including “those who ascribe to extremist anti-government and anti-authority ideologies.” (Who knew the Founding Fathers were domestic terrorists?)

Taking things, a step further, disgraced former Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe claimed that targeting the “fringes of the right-wing movement” was insufficient to “catch this threat,” and instead called for federal suspicion of “mainstream” conservatives.

In June 2021, the Biden administration released a “National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism.” It proposed to “counter domestic terrorism by addressing underlying racism and bigotry” — and they weren’t talking about the racism that led Hamas militants to slaughter Israeli civilians this past weekend and has driven violence against Israel in the region for decades. A National Terrorism Advisory System bulletin issued the same year lumped “conspiracy theories on perceived election fraud” and “responses to anticipated restrictions relating to the increasing COVID cases” in the same sentence as “domestic violent extremist ideologies.”

Our intelligence apparatus expends resources on things like telling Big Tech companies which free-thinking Americans’ social media posts to censor, as we discovered via the “Twitter Files” and Missouri v. Biden. It’s actively researching how to most efficiently surveil what you say online. The FBI has been putting its resources to work targeting — and likely “infiltrating” — traditional Catholic congregations, and terrorizing peaceful pro-lifers like Mark Houck, a pastor who was dragged away in a surprise raid at his home in front of his family.

It’s not just domestic intel agencies being wielded against Americans; the CIA did its part to help Twitter censor speech, and even solicited signatures to help falsely smear damaging reporting about the Biden family as disinformation ahead of the 2020 election. (For some reason, none of those involved are being arrested for “conspiracy against voting rights.”)

Across the board, we’ve seen the people we elected, and countless bureaucrats we did not, weaponizing supposedly counterterror laws like the Patriot Act against Americans’ First and Fourth Amendment freedoms (at least).

Imagine if those resources were redirected away from targeting ordinary, law-abiding Americans for their political views and aimed at stopping actual terrorists who seek to harm us and our allies. Contrary to the pretense that surveilling Americans as walking national security threats is for our own protection, our world would be a lot safer.

Elle Purnell is an assistant editor at The Federalist, and received her B.A. in government from Patrick Henry College with a minor in journalism. Follow her work on Twitter @_etreynolds.

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Pastor ‘Exiles’ Family to Kenya to Escape Canadian Persecution of Christians


BY: JOY PULLMANN | JULY 24, 2023

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2023/07/24/pastor-exiles-family-to-kenya-to-escape-canadian-persecution-of-christians/

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A Canadian pastor has “exiled” his family to Kenya after his government invoked emergency war measures to punish citizens who attended a protest where he prayed and sang the national anthem. Harold Ristau, a decorated veteran and seminary professor, participated in the “trucker convoy” against lockdowns last February, when The Federalist interviewed him last. He is now party to a lawsuit arguing the government’s response to Covid that included treating dissent as terrorism violated Canadians’ fundamental rights.

“The fight is far from over,” said Marty Moore, a lawyer for the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms (JCCF), which is litigating Ristau’s case. More than 14 months after the protest, police arrested another convoy leader this May. Lockdown litigation will likely continue for several more years, Moore said. The same is true across the West.

For peaceably assembling to petition his government for one day last year, Ristau says, he was threatened with the removal of his security clearance and government confiscation of his retirement nest egg, kids’ college funds, and other life savings. Ristau says he’s also experienced serious damage to his reputation, career, and friendships after the government used anti-terrorism measures against peaceful protesters.

“There’s no protection, if a pandemic started tomorrow, from future mandates. So that’s why I was really open to coming here,” his wife, Elise Ristau, said, sitting beside her husband in a recent video interview from Kenya.

Besides dealing with overbearing health restrictions, their children were mocked at school for their family’s religious and political views, Elise Ristau told The Federalist. After enduring more than two years of severe social and government repression, the Ristaus moved outside Nairobi with their five children last August.

“I don’t know that I can go back and be a Christian in Canada. So that’s why we’re here in Kenya,” Harold Ristau said. There, the former chaplain with a Ph.D. in philosophy trains Kenyan pastors at the Lutheran School of Theology.

Confiscating Dissenters’ Life Savings

Government use of “debanking” to punish dissent is growing in the West. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government used it on essentially every convoy participant authorities could identify, said Moore.

“As soon as they knew your name if you were on the ground [protesting] in Ottawa, they froze your bank account,” Moore told The Federalist. “…The federal government met with the banks, they gave the [protesters’] names to the banks, and the banks were then pushed to freeze the bank accounts of anyone with that name in their banks. It was a fascist collaboration.”

Right-leaning British politicians including Brexit leader Nigel Farage recently told the public banks have closed their accounts over their political views.

In May, American whistleblowers disclosed the FBI obtained, without any warrants, “a huge list” of citizens’ private banking data in its Jan. 6, 2021 capitol riot investigation. Investigators targeted any American who legally bought a firearm using a Bank of America account all the way back to the 1990s, the whistleblower testified.

Treating a Veteran Like a Terrorist

After the Canadian government announced it would freeze the bank accounts of convoy protesters and their mostly small-dollar donors without legal due process, rumors of bank runs spread. Multiple large Canadian banks appeared to shut down online operations soon after the announcement. Elise withdrew their family’s savings that Friday, too, she and Harold said. Like thousands of Canadians, they had donated to the convoy. Yet Ristau was the only one of the four plaintiffs in his lawsuit whose accounts were not frozen. He thinks it’s because of his military record.

“Some of the measures that were at least attempted to be invoked are the kind of measures you find to freeze terrorist financing,” Moore noted. “So peaceful protesters were the equivalent of terrorists and the government leaned on banks in the guise of a national emergency to freeze their bank accounts.”

Leftist activists also filed a class-action lawsuit against every Canadian who donated to the convoy. It seeks $300 million in damages. When before the convoy Canada experienced multiple race protests that included violence against stores and police, no class action was filed.

Christians Assisting Government Persecution

Canadian lockdowns kept gyms, restaurants, and liquor stores open but closed churches. Leftist protesters were allowed to yell and sing without masks, and the prime minister kneeled to them, all while provinces banned Christians from singing and chanting in church for years.

Rev. Johannes Nieminen wasn’t allowed to cross provincial borders to perform his pastoral duties, while other Canadians could do so for work, he told The Federalist. After he was denied border entry several times, he said, police finally let him through — but told him he wasn’t allowed to meet with parishioners or hold church services.

“If I’m going to go to the grocery store for physical food, I’m going to the church for spiritual food. If I’m going to the doctor’s office for physical medicine, I’m going to church for the medicine of immortality,” Nieminen said. His denomination believes Jesus Christ’s body and blood are physically present in the wine and bread of communion, and that Christians are commanded to physically eat these — impossible without gathering in person.

Until moving to pastor in New Mexico this summer, Nieminen was clergy in the same denomination as Ristau, the Lutheran Church Canada. He said lockdowns sharply divided many churches, and even though most Covid measures are now lifted, church leaders have largely failed to seek reconciliation and repentance, as commanded in the Bible.

“We need to repent. There’s been crazy division here, and we need to actually talk about it,” he said.

State-Run Western Churches

Nieminen said pastors who obeyed the government to treat churches worse than liquor stores and gyms taught lay people church is non-essential or can be conducted online. The Bible commands keeping a day of worship, meeting in person, singing hymns and psalms, and physically receiving the bread and wine of communion. Christians have done all these every week since the time of Christ.

Communion is a “sacrament,” an action God commands that produces faith and eternal salvation. Only pastors can deliver it, a tradition going back to Christ’s commissioning of His apostles. In all the great pandemics of history, priests and pastors knowingly braved death to bring the sacrament to the dying desperate for the peace and unity with God it promises.

Nieminen said he saw Canadian Christians publicly plead for the sacrament amid lockdowns that nearly lasted three years. They received no response from their pastors, who told Nieminen the pleading parishioners didn’t use the “proper channels.”

“There’s that lack of trust in pastors and a church that they see as giving up on them and basically persecuting them,” Nieminen said. “…They’re being coerced by tyrants to do something against their conscience, and then they go to church and then they’re hearing the same thing from the church.”

Within days of him praying at the protest, says Harold Ristau’s sworn affidavit, fellow clergy began refusing to let him preach and to take communion with him. Some checked with superiors on whether to commune him. Refusing communion to a church member is tantamount to excommunication.

Praying at the protest “demonstrated I was this political insurrectionist” to some clergy whose beliefs about Covid were shaped by state-funded, anti-Christian media, Harold Ristau said: “Prior to Covid, everyone recognized the media were a bunch of liars who hated Christians, but with Covid suddenly we trust them entirely.”

A Political Decision, Not a Health Decision

So far, “none of the [legal] challenges to worship restrictions on church services have succeeded” in Canada, said John Sikkema, a lawyer at the nonprofit firm ARPA Canada.

“Culturally, people find going to the gym very important and less so going to church,” Sikkema noted. “Especially when some churches don’t seem to care and don’t think it’s necessary.”

To secular authorities, keeping the economy going easily trumps the church’s work of caring for human souls, Sikkema noted. That’s why they opened restaurants while restricting churches despite similar health risks: “That’s not really a health decision, it’s a political decision about what’s important to the health of your society.”

Police regularly showed up at churches on Sunday mornings and fined pastors whose parking lots had too many cars, he said. ARPA Canada and JCCF litigated a number of those cases and were often able to get pastors’ fines negotiated down to charitable donations.

Most churches that capitulated to government discrimination against Christians were already declining before lockdowns, and disproportionate percentages of their members didn’t go back to church afterward. Churches that kept to historic orthodoxy, on the other hand, tend to have recovered better from post-lockdown membership losses and many have even grown, Nieminen and Sikkema noted.

Religious Freedom Better in Africa

The difficulty of raising their children in rapidly apostatizing Western culture also affected the Ristaus’ decision to move across the globe.

“Things are normal here, people have traditional values,” Elise Ristau said of Kenya. “It’s inconceivable to think of transgender mutilation. As a mother and father, we do our very best to keep our kids Christian.”

In Canada, Christians are often required to lie or betray their faith to access government grants and licensing credentials, and avoid punishment in many professions, Sikkema said. Many Canadian doctors, lawyers, and teachers, for example, are required to endorse abortion and LGBT sexual acts. Canadian doctors and many other health care workers must help patients obtain an abortion or doctor-assisted suicide.

In 2018, Canada’s Supreme Court banned a Christian law school from opening over Christian sexual standards. The Canadian military is also working to eject chaplains over Christian sexual ethics. Just about every Canadian business sports a government-provided pride flag, Nieminen said. Churches that object to transgender mutilation of children have faced naked protesters as families arrive to worship, Sikkema said.

“Canadians are very aware that we don’t have freedom of religion, we don’t have freedom of speech, we don’t have the right to assemble if that’s in disagreement with the regime,” Nieminen said. “Pastors and teachers cannot speak about the morality of human sexuality. That is a reality Canadians live in, and I think that’s partly why they’re afraid to speak out.”

Christians Welcome in Kenya

The Ristaus had been invited to their current post before lockdowns, but Elise hadn’t wanted to uproot after moving the family so many times for Harold’s military career. They had bought land in Canada for their dream home and planted more than 1,000 trees on it.

“I had dreamed of this perfect life for myself in Canada,” Elise said. But then “there was a kind of turning point where I said, ‘We can go. Nothing is holding us here.’ It was a ‘shake the dust off our boots’ moment.”

From Toronto to Nairobi is approximately 7,500 miles. Flying commercially between the two takes 16 hours or more.

“In Kenya, I know it’s poor, and there’s corruption, but we’re not getting arrested for praying silently outside abortion clinics,” Elise said. “For a Christian in Canada, it’s pretty bleak.”

Joy Pullmann is executive editor of The Federalist, a happy wife, and the mother of six children. Her latest ebook is “101 Strategies For Living Well Amid Inflation.” Her bestselling ebook is “Classic Books for Young Children.” An 18-year education and politics reporter, Joy has testified before nearly two dozen legislatures on education policy and appeared on major media from Fox News to Ben Shapiro to Dennis Prager. Joy is a grateful graduate of the Hillsdale College honors and journalism programs who identifies as native American and gender natural. Her several books include “The Education Invasion: How Common Core Fights Parents for Control of American Kids,” from Encounter Books.

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NAACP Branch Targets Republican Councilwoman With 7 Kids At 6 a.m. Outside Her Home


BY: JOY PULLMANN | MAY 04, 2023

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2023/05/04/naacp-branch-targets-republican-councilwoman-with-7-kids-at-6-a-m-outside-her-home/

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Republican official Amy Drake cited the FBI’s definition of domestic terrorism: ‘Appearing to be intended to influence the policy of government by intimidation or coercion.’

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A South Bend, Indiana, branch of the NAACP held a press conference Thursday at 6:30 a.m. outside the house of Republican County Councilwoman Amy Drake to protest her criticism of Indiana’s public health bureaucracy. A May 1 press release and social media posts proclaimed the group’s intent to protest outside Drake’s home, where she lives with her husband and seven children.

South Bend NAACP Chairwoman Trina Robinson told The Federalist Wednesday that after internal pushback she decided to switch the “peaceful demonstration” to a press conference, still outside the Drakes’ home at 6:30 a.m. Drake, who has written opinion articles for The Federalist, told The Federalist that holding any demonstrations outside her home is a form of “domestic terrorism” intended to influence her votes by harassing and threatening her family.

Drake cited the FBI’s definition of domestic terrorism: “Appearing to be intended to influence the policy of government by intimidation or coercion.” She and her husband spent three days before the event calling police, fielding calls from constituents and friends, and making plans to ensure their children’s safety.

“There is no such thing as a peaceful protest in front of a person’s home. Protests in front of homes are designed to intimidate and frighten,” Drake said in a press release.

Robinson told The Federalist the goal of visiting Drake’s home was indeed to put pressure on her and express displeasure at Drake’s public record, since their public comments at city council meetings did not move Drake to vote as the group wants. “The NAACP are not here to make people uncomfortable,” she said this morning on the sidewalk across from the Drakes’ home while a school bus picked up children in the background.

Drake ran for office in 2022, motivated by Republican Gov. Eric Holcomb’s extensive lockdowns and their associated public health fiascos. She has been an integral part of increasing the fundraising and effectiveness of the local Republican Party, bringing in conservative energy, volunteers, and ideas. That has made her a top target of local Democrats and the public health bureaucracy.

South Bend is where Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg was mayor from 2012 to 2020. Buttigieg’s parents were professors at Notre Dame University.

The demonstration fits a pattern of confrontational political actions against conservatives and Republicans, including mob action in the state capitols of Tennessee, Texas, Montana, Kentucky, Kansas, Florida, Oklahoma, and Missouri. U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito told The Wall Street Journal this week that the five constitutional justices remain under constant threat of assassination.

Robinson says she considers showing up at a public official’s home a form of “free speech” and said local police told her the group could show up at Drake’s home so long as they stayed on the sidewalk. Drake says she asked for police presence to ensure everyone’s safety and was told they might send an unmarked car. On Thursday morning, Drake said she couldn’t see any police outside as the press conference commenced.

The Saint Joseph County Police Department’s communications officer did not respond to two voicemails requesting comment Wednesday. Sheriff William Redman’s official bio says he is a “Westside Democratic Club Lifetime Member.”

According to a live-streamed video on Facebook, about 10 people showed up to support the South Bend demonstration. Two were black, including Robinson, and eight were white. One appeared to be local Democrat Party Vice Chairman Don Westerhausen, according to on-site sources. The demonstrators held signs stating: “Amy Drake voted no $$$ for -behavioral crisis center -Motels4Now -Portage Manor,” “Lead Testing Protects Children,” and “We Support Opioid Crisis Relief Funding.”

Jonah Bryson, associate press secretary for the national NAACP organization, took The Federalist’s comment request at 3 p.m. ET Wednesday but failed to return comment on whether NAACP as an organization supports demonstrations outside politicians’ homes.

With her toddler grandson’s coos in the background, Robinson explained to The Federalist on Wednesday her thinking behind demonstrating outside Drake’s home.

“When you take on responsibilities to be a leader of a community, sometimes people are not going to agree with you. That pretty much comes with the territory,” Robinson said. “We’re not wanting to disrupt her children or anything, we would never disrupt her family.”

When asked whether Robinson was aware that Drake and her husband were alarmed for their children’s safety and they’d said so publicly on Facebook, Robinson said she was not: “I am not friends with her on Facebook.” Robinson also emphatically denied any desire to provoke violence, saying she was concerned the Drakes might respond to the demonstration outside their home with violence.

“Just because people disagree with you doesn’t necessarily mean they come to do bodily harm,” Robinson said.

Drake told The Federalist she and her husband decided against any kind of counter-demonstration to avoid “escalating.” They also adamantly opposed violence of any kind. But they considered the local activists’ decision to personalize politics by showing up at their home at the time their children go to school to be an act of hostility.

The Federalist asked Robinson about that several times. She said protesting on a public sidewalk is an American right, and that people in South Bend have protested at local representatives’ homes before.

“This isn’t Germany, this isn’t Russia,” she said. “We’re Americans, we can speak out. That’s a right we have.”

Robinson then directed her focus to the desperation she and others feel at many South Bend residents’ tragic conditions. Like many other American cities, South Bend has highly visible homeless, generational poverty, and drug problems. For years, visitors and residents have seen shocking scenes on the many emaciated streets of South Bend, common to cities across the United States. Trillions of taxpayer and private dollars poured into these problems since the 1950s have not improved conditions in most cities. In many cities, things are worse: dirtier, filled with even more homeless people and addicts, more violent, and uglier. Robinson equated Drake’s opposition to expanding ineffective government bureaucracy with leaving desperate citizens without the resources to make better lives.

“You can’t say you oppose a mental health crisis unit when here in South Bend a man in a mental health crisis was gunned down in front of his mom. And we don’t need a mental health crisis unit?” Robinson said. “We have homeless in this town. If you don’t have another solution for them, why are you opposing them being where they are? At least they’re not on the street downtown in tents.”

When asked if she had ever talked with Drake about these concerns one on one, Robinson replied: “No, we haven’t had a conversation. I spoke at the council meetings. She has never come up to me. I haven’t approached her either, so that goes both ways. So, we’re both to blame for that. I’ll take responsibility for that.”

Robinson said she would be willing to go out to lunch or coffee with Drake. She invited Drake to call her and said if Drake didn’t want to do that, she’d call Drake.

When The Federalist asked Drake her response, she discussed it with her husband and sent back this via text: “[Robinson] needs to admit domestic terrorism is wrong. She needs to apologize for creating fear in my family and causing us to interrupt our lives to put protective measures in place. After a month cooling off period, we can have a civil discussion.”

Joy Pullmann is executive editor of The Federalist, a happy wife, and the mother of six children. Her just-published ebook is “101 Strategies For Living Well Amid Inflation.” Her bestselling ebook is “Classic Books for Young Children.” Mrs. Pullmann identifies as native American and gender natural. Her many books include “The Education Invasion: How Common Core Fights Parents for Control of American Kids,” from Encounter Books. Joy is also a grateful graduate of the Hillsdale College honors and journalism programs.

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Loudoun County Dad Arrested For ‘Trespassing’ At Local Public School Board Meeting Found Not Guilty


BY: JORDAN BOYD | JANUARY 05, 2023

Read more at https://www.conservativereview.com/loudoun-county-dad-arrested-for-trespassing-at-local-public-school-board-meeting-found-not-guilty-2659070422.html/

John Tigges being arrested at school board meeting

A Loudoun County father, whose arrest at a June 2021 school board meeting was used by the Biden administration to justify a politicized attack on concerned parents, was found not guilty of trespassing on Wednesday.

Law enforcement arrested Jon Tigges at a Loudoun school board meeting on June 22, 2021, after he tried expressing concerns about the school district’s “moral decay.” A Virginia district judge found Tigges guilty in October of 2021. Loudoun Circuit Judge Douglas Fleming Jr., however, cleared Tigges of any wrongdoing. Fleming determined that Tigges not only had a First Amendment right to attend the heated meeting but also that the superintendent who shut down the official gathering last summer had no right to declare it an “unlawful assembly.”

“My thanks to God for justice,” Tigges wrote on Twitter on Wednesday afternoon.

Tigges was one of the more than 250 people who had signed up to speak during the public comment section of the Loudoun County School Board meeting that summer night. He intended to voice opposition to the board’s new transgender policy proposal, which mandated that employees use students’ so-called “preferred pronouns” and preferred restrooms regardless of their sex. Before Tigges could speak, School Board Chairwoman Brenda Sheridan called off the meeting, and the now-recently fired Superintendent Scott Ziegler declared the gathering an “unlawful assembly.” Ziegler ordered the hundreds of people waiting to express their outrage at the government school district to vacate the premises or risk arrest.

Tigges refused to leave.

“I just felt led to realize that we could still speak,” Tigges told The Federalist last year. “It’s a public forum, a public room. It had been scheduled until seven o’clock for people to speak. I stood up to encourage folks to stay and if they had something to say whether they were on the left or the right, didn’t matter. They’d be heard and we’d respect one another and do so and so people started doing that without any amplification at all and you could hear them fine because it was a peaceful assembly.”

Despite Tigges’ claim on the First Amendment, police officers handcuffed, arrested, and charged him with trespassing.

Tigges’ arrest in June of 2021 was used by the National School Boards Association (NSBA), in collusion with the Biden White House, to justify the smearing of concerned parents as “domestic terrorists” who required punishment from federal law enforcement. In September of 2021, the NSBA sent its infamous complaint letter, secretly solicited by Education Secretary Miguel Cardona, to the Department of Justice, which sparked a politicized attack on parents who wanted to speak out against corrupt school boards.

“Despite this victory, I have serious concerns about where we are as a country. We’ve been subverted by a darkness that is spilling out in rot at all levels and in both political parties,” Tigges tweeted after the decision. “Nothing will change until We the People value conviction over comfort.”

Jordan Boyd is a staff writer at The Federalist and co-producer of The Federalist Radio Hour. Her work has also been featured in The Daily Wire and Fox News. Jordan graduated from Baylor University where she majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow her on Twitter @jordanboydtx.

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The FBI And DOJ Criminalizing Opposition to the Regime Is How the Republic Ends


BY: JOY PULLMANN | AUGUST 08, 2022

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2022/08/08/criminalizing-opposition-to-the-regime-is-how-the-republic-ends/

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On Thursday, Barack Obama’s Attorney General Eric Holder decided it was the time to bring the subtext of the Jan. 6 show trials and related domestic security state activities into the open.

“My guess is that by the end of this process, you’re going to see indictments involving high-level people in the White House, you’re going to see indictments against people outside the White House who were advising them with regard to the attempt to steal the election, and I think ultimately you’re probably going to see the president, former president of the United States indicted as well,” Holder told SiriusXM host Joe Madison.

Holder noted that the U.S. Department of Justice he formerly headed is working with the illegally constituted Jan. 6 Commission towards this goal. We know these entities are also working with the FBI, whose head bit his thumb at congressional oversight repeatedly in a public hearing last week.

Locking Up Opposition Politicians Is What Putin Does

An indictment of former President Donald Trump would be a breathtakingly authoritarian turn. It would amount to the U.S. security state refusing to accept “no” from America’s voters yet again. An indictment would be an unelected and unaccountable federal agency overruling voters’ two-time rejection of impeachment through their elected representatives.

This is the core danger of the administrative state: Its now open propensity to go rogue. It is apparently hellbent now on turning the United States into a banana republic.

Democrats called Donald Trump a fascist, authoritarian, and wannabe dictator for chants at his rallies of “Lock her up,” referring to his opponent Hillary Clinton. At the time, leftists pointed out that imprisoning, interrogating, investigating, and otherwise using government resources to harass and prosecute one’s political opponents was the mark of tyrannical regimes such as Vladimir Putin’s and Adolf Hitler. “Democracies don’t lock up political opponents,” the Washington Post editorial board told us in 2016.

That is still true when the ones pushing the interrogations, investigations, entrapments into committing felonies, show trials in unusual venues with no cross-examination or due process, early morning home raids, excessive detainment, and asymmetrical punishments are Democrats. Democrats are trashing republican institutions, expectations, and guarantees for political purposes, most visibly now in their Jan. 6 effort to destroy the lives of protestors largely charged with misdemeanors and to expand Spygate tactics more broadly.

Spygate Is Setting Up Field Offices In Swing States

It’s not just the de facto head of the opposition party whom powerful government agencies are putting in their sights, it’s down-ballot party leaders. The FBI has gone from using its spy resources to affect the results of presidential elections with Spygate and its Hunter Biden laptop disinformation to using its police powers to affect gubernatorial elections. And these are just the operations we know about.

In Michigan, the FBI openly meddled in the upcoming election by affecting the selection of candidates, arresting and charging the formerly leading Republican candidate for governor for misdemeanors. The FBI raided Ryan Kelley’s home while polls showed him leading the primaries. In the primary election last week, he came in fourth.

The Jan. 6 Committee is now demanding documents and interviews with Republican candidate for Pennsylvania governor Doug Mastriano, who attended the Jan. 6, 2021 rally. The sole allegation against him is that he walked past “police lines,” which could mean anything, as the scene was chaotic and police were woefully understaffed.

This means Mastriano is being targeted for peacefully exercising his rights to free speech and public assembly. The Jan. 6 Committee won’t allow him to record their planned interrogation, a basic feature of legal self-defense and impartial justice. In fact, selectively excerpted video clips and quotes from these secret interrogations have been a constant feature of the commission, further reinforcing its use as a political weapon against the right rather than a pursuit of justice.

Of the 120,000 people the FBI alleges were present on Jan. 6, 2021 — perhaps 1 percent of whom entered the Capitol building — the vast majority were garden-variety Trump supporters, which include numerous state and local officials. State and local lawmakers are a party’s farm team. Subjecting them to investigation for peacefully protesting is a way to kneecap their entire party.

Asymmetric Justice Is Injustice

Put all of this against the systematic refusal of Democrat DAs, judges, and juries to prosecute people who openly engage in political violence from the left. In 2020, leftist rioters who coordinated across state lines and in far greater numbers and criminal activity than Jan. 6 attendees firebombed federal buildings, murdered people, looted, burned down downtowns, and assaulted police officers. Of course, essentially nobody involved in perpetrating the Spygate setup of an American president has been brought to justice, most recently including Michael Sussmann.

This summer, a leftist group has allegedly attacked two dozen pro-life maternal care centers in multiple states and a congressional office and promises to continue, but Wray couldn’t provide almost any information on alleged FBI investigations into it. Despite an assassination attempt on one Supreme Court justice this summer, the DOJ has still not filed charges against the people harassing and threatening justices and their families at their homes. U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland failed for weeks on end to enforce laws against such harassment of justices, creating the conditions for the aggression to intensify.

This is unacceptable, and Wray and Garland should be fired. They won’t be, though, and that’s the problem.

Amplifying pre-existing double standards of justice is far beyond troubling, it’s a destruction of the justice system. A country that harshly prosecutes people or lets them off Scot-free based on their political affiliation is a banana republic.

A two-tier justice system is not a justice system. It is a totalitarian system. Its purpose is not justice but population control. The more people see that moving into place, the more likely it is that some guy gets raided by the FBI for political reasons one morning and — God forbid — goes postal because he has no hope for a fair trial after they take him in.

Certainly even more ordinary Americans are realizing through all of this that the entire federal deck is prejudiced against them. Desperation makes people do wild things. Whatever happens, Republicans can be sure it will be wrapped around their necks with ropes of lies to further subjugate them and everyone who votes for them with the further erasure of our constitutional rights and way of life.

Equality Under the Law Is the Nonviolent Way Out

Remember, 75 million people voted for Trump in 2020. This isn’t some fringe Davidian cult, it’s half of the nation’s voters. Democrats are scaring them, for good reason. And Republicans are doing jack nothing to calm things down.

We’re watching federal agencies use their powers not to catch criminals but to criminalize peaceful political views and actions. We’re witnessing a growing campaign to lock people up for their opposition to the ruling political party, which is not only profoundly un-American but profoundly dangerous societally. This is the prosecution of a political cold civil war that could very easily heat up again in another January 6-like outburst, or worse.

As Mike Anton writes, Democrats may want that. But do Republicans? Any who thinks he might after what we’ve been through in the past seven years is either fool or quisling.

If Republicans think this is all going to blow over just because they haul in the FBI director for another no-consequences hearing, or even if they promise yet another goes-nowhere, punishes-nobody investigation of agencies we know are meddling in elections, framing elected officials, and telling elected members of Congress what to do instead of the reverse, they’re idiots. Their only hope of averting even worse political circumstances is to make damned sure they kneecap these scary federal agencies as their top priority ASAP.

We aren’t in business-as-usual Kansas anymore, Toto. We’re in crisis times that call for serious leadership, not LARPing as leaders on screens.

Sending billions to Ukraine while China grows stronger and every domestic sector is on fire isn’t serious. Lambasting Joe Biden for inflation while not pledging to pass the policies that reverse it, starting with slashing the federal government’s spending, isn’t serious. Yelling at the FBI director Republicans helped confirm isn’t serious (get better vetting staff, folks). Confirming a Supreme Court justice who obviously hates the Constitution isn’t serious. Not going on a crusade to clean out the FBI and DOJ Agean-stables-style isn’t serious. And pretending the Jan. 6 commission is anything but a miscarriage of justice is disqualifying.

We need the GOP to provide serious leadership, because Democrats are a serious threat to equal justice for all, and that’s going to destroy the country for good if it’s not stopped post-haste. Americans desperately need swift and prudent action to avert even more unthinkably dangerous events. Those who refuse to plan and take that action despite accepting from voters the responsibility to do so will be infamous to history as cowards and traitors.

Joy Pullmann is executive editor of The Federalist, a happy wife, and the mother of six children. Sign up here to get early access to her next ebook, “101 Strategies For Living Well Amid Inflation.” Her bestselling ebook is “Classic Books for Young Children.” Mrs. Pullmann identifies as native American and gender natural. She is also the author of “The Education Invasion: How Common Core Fights Parents for Control of American Kids,” from Encounter Books. In 2013-14 she won a Robert Novak journalism fellowship for in-depth reporting on Common Core national education mandates. Joy is a grateful graduate of the Hillsdale College honors and journalism programs.

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Why Violence Is An Inevitable Outcome Of Critical Race Theory

BY: J. ALLEN CARTWRIGHT | APRIL 19, 2022

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2022/04/19/why-violence-is-an-inevitable-outcome-of-critical-race-theory/

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For true believers of critical race theory, America is too steeped in racial oppression to be changed from within. Destruction is the only alternative.

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Our nation has been rocked by at least two significant acts of domestic terrorism in a five-month span. Last week, Frank James opened fire in a New York City subway, injuring 23 people. In November, Darrell Brooks drove his SUV through a Christmas parade in Waukesha, Wisconsin, killing 6 people and injuring 60 others.

Both perpetrators are black, which is a bit unusual given that mass shootings have historically been perpetrated by white men. More significantly, both Brooks and James had expressed radical views on social media advocating violence towards whites in the lead-up to their attacks, strongly suggesting race relations were a key motive for their acts of violence. (Naturally, the mainstream media has neglected to find out if it was indeed their motivation).

Ditto for Quintez Brown, a Black Lives Matter activist who was charged with the attempted assassination of Louisville mayoral candidate Craig Greenberg in February, and Micah Johnson, who killed five Dallas police officers in 2016. Meanwhile, public perceptions about the state of race relations in the country have plummeted.

These anecdotes, particularly during increasing dissemination of critical race theory (CRT), suggest CRT has been a detriment to racial progress rather than a force for good. The harmful impacts of CRT on race relations are unsurprising when considering several of its basic tenets.

CRT Teaches America Is Racist

The New York Times Magazine’s “1619 Project,” the brainchild of Nikole Hannah-Jones, expresses a historical view in which America’s true founding was in 1619, the year African slaves were first brought to the United States. American history is thus viewed and analyzed through a lens of anti-black racism.

For example, Hannah-Jones controversially asserts that the Revolutionary War was primarily fought to preserve slavery, argues that the U.S. Constitution was meticulously crafted to establish a “slavocracy,” and criticizes Abraham Lincoln’s approach to the issue of slavery and race. Similarly, a report last June from our very own National Archives argued that America’s founding documents are steeped in “systemic racism.”

Philadelphia-based attorney and radio host Michael Coard perhaps best sums up the CRT view of American history, as he decried the Fourth of July as “a celebration of kidnapping, transporting/buying/selling human beings, separating families, torture, whippings, rapes, castrations, lynchings and enslavement.” The conclusion, then, is that the history of slavery persists, impacting all aspects of American life to this very day.

CRT Teaches American Government Is Racist

The Constitution remains the law of the land, and if you believe that the Constitution is racist, then it follows that the American system of government, which is based on the Constitution, is also racist. This is a core argument of CRT: American institutions, including the Electoral College, the Senate, and the Second Amendment have all recently been attacked as systemically racist to justify their abolition.

In the words of The Nation’s Elie Mystal,“[t]he Constitution is kind of trash… It was written by slavers and colonists, and white people who were willing to make deals with slavers and colonists. They didn’t ask anybody who looked like me what they thought about the Constitution.”

Allegations of widespread government-sanctioned suppression of minority voters also continue to persist. Therefore, according to CRT, minorities are forced to live in a system designed to oppress them, and the system is too flawed to allow for any reform internally.

CRT: Non-Whites Cannot Succeed Within the System

Perhaps most important to CRT and “wokeness” is the tenet that you cannot truly be successful as a minority in America. This was most clearly illustrated in a July 2020 display at the National Museum of African American History and Culture, which accredited several objective measures of successful behavior (e.g. hard work, planning for the future, delayed gratification, the scientific method) as part of “White Culture.”

Minorities who achieve wealth and/or educational success in the United States are openly attacked as exhibiting “white characteristics” or “acting white.” Successful African-Americans who don’t adhere to every woke political or social stereotype are quickly dismissed as “cornball brothers,” “oreos,” or “Uncle Toms.”

Thus, success for minorities in America is not taken as evidence of racial progress, but as a sign of conformity with “white” values and a betrayal of racial identity.

That Leaves Violence as the Only Option

If you wholeheartedly believe in those three statements, violence inevitably becomes your only option for progress. You live in an oppressive society, with built-in systems of oppression that prevent you from altering that society, and have no way to be successful within the system while staying true to yourself. Your only alternative is to destroy that system.

That is the thought process that Brooks and James expressed. “White people and Black people should not have any contact with each other,” James argued. A June 2020 tweet by Brooks was even more direct: “[W]hen we start bakk knokkin white people TF out ion wanna hear it…the old white ppl 2, KNOKK DEM TF OUT!! PERIOD.”

Of course, the leaders of the CRT movement who craft these beliefs and pass them on to others clearly don’t believe their own teachings. Prominent CRT figures such as Ibram Kendi, Patrisse Cullors, and Robin DiAngelo have achieved tremendous financial and professional success within the very systems they rail against. They are able to live in upscale neighborhoods and run in social circles that are far removed from the violence and poverty that plague many minority neighborhoods.

The corporate, educational, and entertainment institutions that score public relationship points by peddling CRT propaganda are similarly largely insulated from the harm that their teachings cause. Unfortunately for passengers on the New York subway and parade-goers in Waukesha, some people believe in CRT wholeheartedly, and thus embrace violence as the ultimate solution to systemic racism.

J. Allen Cartwright writes about the interplay of politics with cultural and scientific institutions. He can be followed on Parler at @jallencartwright.

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New ‘Domestic Terror Unit’ Is A Way to Punish Americans for Thought Crimes


COMMENTARY BY: HUDSON CROZIER | JANUARY 17, 2022

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2022/01/17/doj-domestic-terror-unit-is-just-a-new-way-to-punish-americans-for-thought-crimes/

DOJ agents stand around on street corner

On Tuesday, Department of Justice representatives informed a Senate committee of plans to gather a group of select attorneys to form a “Domestic Terror Unit” in light of the Jan. 6, 2021 attack, noting that its number of investigations of alleged domestic terrorists have more than doubled since the spring of 2020. While admitting “there is no single federal crime labeled ‘domestic terrorism,’” a DOJ official promised to invoke a “criminal code” that allows enhanced sentences for certain crimes listed as “terror offenses.”

There are many reasons to doubt the authenticity of the federal government’s efforts against this “persistent and evolving” threat, including its conveniently blurred definitions.

The National Defense and Authorization Act’s definition of “domestic terrorism” distinctly refers to “unlawful use or threat of force of violence in furtherance of ideological agendas” in the context of political or anti-government extremism. Most other common-sense definitions clearly denote violence as an essential feature. However, federal agents have a poor track record in their use of the label, not only in the case of parents angry at school boards, but most recently in relation to Jan. 6, 2021.

In July 2021, after pleading guilty to “obstruction of an official proceeding,” non-violent Jan. 6 defendant Paul Hodgkins, who had no prior criminal record, was given a heavy eight-month sentence. Judge Randolph Moss described him as one of many “terrorists” that day, baselessly lumping him in with those who committed actual violence.

In all his insufferable rantings about an “assault on democracy” and the rebellious “symbolism” of Hodgkins raising a Trump flag, Moss could not explain how his particular crime of roaming the Senate floor for 22 minutes had enabled violence. In fact, he plainly admitted that the punishment wasn’t based entirely on individual guilt, but on a perverse idea of “balanced” justice:

The court here had to consider both what I think are the extremely damaging events that occurred that day but also who Mr. Hodgkins is as an individual. And as I think is reflected by the sentencing I imposed, I tried to strike that balance.

This implies one may be considered a terrorist by virtue of being within geographical distance of what terrorists are doing if one’s political leanings are on a similar spectrum. Despite the court’s claims, neither the prosecution nor the judge brought forth a sentencing enhancement based on the existing code of terror offenses mentioned Tuesday. Why? Because Hodgkins’ crime isn’t on it. It was terrorism because the court said it was, not by law.

More judicial malpractice occurred in the case of non-violent defendant Jacob Chansely, the infamous “Q shaman” who was held in solitary confinement for months while Judge Royce Lamberth repeatedly denied his release. In November, Chansely received an unbelievable 41-month sentence when he pleaded guilty to the same charge as Hodgkins.

While admitting Chansely committed no violent crime at the Capitol (in fact, he openly called for peace), the court cited a “need to deter others especially in cases of domestic terrorism.” By punishing a non-terrorist more harshly than necessary to “deter others,” our bloodthirsty DOJ showed a willingness to weaponize federal convictions that deplete a defendant’s civil rights just to make an example out of him.

In August, the government extended its wild accusations out of the courtrooms and into local police departments. Leading up to the anniversary of 9/11, the Department of Homeland Security issued an alert advising police and neighborhoods to be on the lookout for potential terror threats. Among them were “opposition to COVID measures,” or association with “conspiracy theories on perceived election fraud.”

Do you oppose certain COVID policies or hold a skeptical view of the 2020 election’s security but have no intent to respond violently or illegally? The DHS draws no line; to them, you may be a terrorist. Their language spreads beyond actions to include statements or beliefs that are inherently devoid of any call to action, violent or not. One could almost call it an indictment of “thought crime.”

Lastly, while the Jan. 6 Capitol attack obviously involved acts of political violence, it hasn’t been linked to any broader, organized threat to the country, raising more questions as to what exactly justifies a new Terror Unit in response. In August, after hundreds of arrests and investigations, the FBI admitted to finding no hard evidence of an elaborate political plot on Jan. 6, a confession no one in the government has retracted since. The most concerning evidence of a plot may be the FBI’s own use of provocateurs, but it’s looking doubtful the FBI or DOJ will investigate itself.

When asked by the Senate committee if any Jan. 6 defendants have been charged with “insurrection,” DOJ representatives said they were unaware of any. That’s because the answer is no. Regardless, the feds continue to ramp up their already fanatical response to a problem they haven’t clearly defined.

Our self-serving ruling class hasn’t conducted itself responsibly or transparently in the wake of the Capitol attack, and we can expect this new development to be no different. While the Biden administration would have us believe that the aimless actions of a few foolish troublemakers represent the greatest authoritarian threat to the United States, its systematic purge of political opponents indicates otherwise.

Hudson Crozier is a Texas student and contributor to Unwoke Narrative. As a news journalist, he specializes in national and international politics as well as media analysis. He also hosts the Hudson Crozier blog, which covers broad cultural issues. Follow him onInstagram @lone_star_trooper.

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


A.F. Branco Cartoon – Frail Rider

A.F. BRANCO on January 14, 2022 | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-frail-rider-2/

If you don’t agree with Biden, you’re Bull Conner, Jefferson Davis, and an evil Domestic Enemy.

Biden’s War on Conservatives
Political cartoon by A.F. Branco ©2021.

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

A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into the 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 shared by President Donald Trump.

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Disgraced FBI No. 2 Andrew McCabe Calls for Feds to Treat ‘Mainstream’ Conservatives Like Domestic Terrorists


Reported BY: EVITA DUFFY | JANUARY 10, 2022

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2022/01/10/disgraced-fbi-no-2-andrew-mccabe-calls-for-feds-to-treat-mainstream-conservatives-like-domestic-terrorists/

McCabe

Have you ever wondered what disgraced former deputy FBI directors do after trying to stage a coup and lying under oath? Apparently, they give talks about “protecting democracy” at top-rated institutions of higher learning. Indeed, this last Thursday the University of Chicago invited former deputy FBI director Andrew McCabe to join a panel of partisans to discuss the Jan 6 “insurrection.” 

McCabe was fired as the deputy FBI director for leaking sensitive information about an investigation into the Clinton Foundation and then lying about it under oath. He also took part in spying on the Donald Trump campaign through a secret warrant granted by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court.

The dossier he used to obtain the surveillance warrant was funded by Hillary Clinton’s campaign and, in an ironic twist, was itself the product of Russian disinformation. McCabe and his allies in corporate media justified all sorts of similar illegal and undemocratic tactics to discredit and attempt to unseat President Trump. 

Of course, neither the University of Chicago nor McCabe acknowledged the irony in him discussing the integrity of “democracy” in America on Thursday evening. In fact, what McCabe said at the University of Chicago event on Jan. 6, 2022 is even more shocking than his invitation to speak in the first place. Below are four of the most appalling assertions and policy proposals McCabe made at the public event.

1. Conservatives Are in The Same Category As Islamic Terrorists 

McCabe likened conservatives to members of the Islamic Caliphate: “I can tell you from my perspective of spending a lot of time focused on the radicalization of international terrorists and Islamic extremist and extremists of all stripes… is that this group shares many of the same characteristics of those groups that we’ve seen radicalized along entirely different ideological lines,” he said.

McCabe went on to describe the rise of the Islamic caliphate in Syria and how Islamic extremists were radicalized across socioeconomic, educational, and racial lines, likening it to the “mass radicalization” of the political right across demographics. That’s right, according to McCabe a grandma who shares a Federalist article on Facebook and your uncle with a “Let’s Go Brandon” coffee mug are in the same category as a jihadist who killed 49 people at an Orlando nightclub.

2. Parents at School Board Meetings Pose A ‘Threat To National Security’

“Political violence [is] not just confined to the Capitol,” McCabe asserted. “It’s going on in school boards around the country. It’s going on in local elections. It’s happening, you know, even to health-care workers.” According to this politically protected former FBI no. 2, the “political violence” occurring recently at school board meetings and during local elections is a “very diverse and challenging threat picture.” 

If you haven’t heard already, Democrats are branding parents who oppose child mask mandates and racist critical race theory indoctrination as “domestic terrorists.” 

McCabe said moms and dads who stand up for their children’s health and education at school board meetings in ways Democrats disagree with are very dangerous. So dangerous that it is actually “essential” we have a “rapid and complete response by law enforcement at the state, local and federal level to this sort of political violence…” 

Holding America’s parents “accountable” is not enough for McCabe. He wants to make sure that federal agencies also put “out that message that this sort of conduct that both horribly victimizes individuals, but also serves to undermine our democratic process” is “considered a threat to national security [that is] not tolerated.” 

3. McCabe Wants More Surveillance of ‘Mainstream’ Conservatives 

“I’m fairly confident,” McCabe said, “[that] the FBI [and other agencies] have reallocated resources and repositioned some of their counterterrorism focus to increase their focus on right-wing extremism and domestic violent extremists. And I think that’s obviously a good idea.” 

But McCabe wants more. McCabe asserted that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and FBI need to stop merely focusing on the “fringes of the right-wing movement,” in order to “catch this threat” of the “right.” 

“Are you going to catch this threat if your focus is only on the traditional, right-wing extremist, those groups that we know about, the quote-unquote, fringes of the right-wing movement?” asked McCabe. “And I think the answer to that is no.” 

“It’s entirely possible that when the intelligence community and the law enforcement community looks out across this mainstream,” McCabe continued, “they didn’t assume [on January 6] that that group of people — business owners, white people from the suburbs, educated, employed — presented a threat of violence, and now we know very clearly that they do.” 

McCabe wants to get around constitutional obstacles that restrict the abuses of federal agencies. He explained that the path to granting the feds more power to spy on and punish “extremists,” a.k.a. conservatives, is by implementing federal penalties against “domestic terrorism.”

A measure like this would grant domestic agencies the intelligence capabilities of the international terrorism-focused National Counterterrorism Center. It would, McCabe says, “give investigators the ability to begin investigating when folks are plotting or planning or organizing to use violence for the purpose of coercing the population or influencing government…” 

Joshua Geltzer, President Joe Biden’s advisor on “countering domestic violent extremism,” made the same proposal in a 2019 hearing before a subcommittee of the House Oversight Committee. In his proposal, Geltzer suggested that we need to “polic[e] [tech company] platforms to remove not just incitement to violence, but also, the ideological foundations that spawn such violence.”

McCabe claims these proposed federal laws against domestic terrorism can be implemented without infringing on Americans’ First Amendment right to free speech. That seems quite impossible, however, given Geltzer is proposing government oversight of social media, for example.  It is even more difficult to believe when you consider that Democrats are not going after real domestic terrorists and have literally defined parents speaking out at school board meetings as national security threats. As McCabe said himself, to Democrats, the extreme right is the mainstream right. 

4. McCabe Believes No One Is Above The Law (Except Himself)

Ironically, one of McCabe’s last remarks was a proclamation of equality under the law. “Whether you are a Trump supporter or a Biden supporter, right, left, or otherwise, we should all be able to agree on the principle that no one is above the law,” stated McCabe.

 “… [F]rom the lowliest trespasser on January 6, up to the highest-ranking government officials who may have been aware of a plan that would ultimately lead to violence in the Capitol––those people should be held accountable, period,” he announced. “And if we can’t do that, that is just another sign that we are becoming a non-functioning democracy.”

Ironically, McCabe’s firing for repeatedly breaking the law was expunged from the record only because he settled with a partisan Biden Department of Justice. If no one is above the law, as McCabe claims to support, then he would be in jail. Of course, McCabe is above the law. Only dissenting conservatives, in his view, deserve the suspicion and wrath of unelected federal agencies. 

Disturbingly, the University of Chicago does not care about national introspection post-January 6, 2021. If it did, it would not have invited McCabe, of all people, to speak about “protecting democracy.” 

UChicago allowed McCabe to spin lies about what truly happened one year ago and filtered student questions via Zoom, refusing to ask him any tough questions. Consequently, McCabe was given a platform to teach young, impressionable college students without question that the federal government should be weaponized against fellow Americans whom leftists brand as “extremists.”

To the elites in America — Democrats like McCabe, university administrators, and professors – January 6 is the key to labeling their political opponents as dangerous, “white supremacist extremists” and enacting new policy accordingly. America’s universities are now indoctrination machines that shape the minds of the next generation. Academia openly exploits its power and rewrite history to serve their illiberal agenda.

Sadly, McCabe’s dishonest version of January 6 is happily accepted by the academic elites who invited him Thursday night. His frighteningly despotic views and policy prescriptions will likely be accepted and implemented by his young listeners. 

This story was originally published in the Chicago Thinker. 

Evita Duffy is a senior contributor to The Federalist, co-founder of the Chicago Thinker, and a senior at the University of Chicago, where she studies American History. She loves the Midwest, lumberjack sports, writing, & her family. Follow her on Twitter at @evitaduffy_1 or contact her at evitapduffy@uchicago.edu

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Democrats To Americans: If You Disagree With Us, You’re An Insurrectionist


Reported By Jonathan S. Tobin | NOVEMBER 1, 2021

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2021/11/01/according-to-democrats-expressing-political-dissent-makes-you-an-insurrectionist/

Photo Fox5/

For Democrats, Groundhog Day came nearly a month early this year. For them, like the character in the classic Bill Murray comedy, every day is Jan. 6. For them, every challenge to leftist orthodoxy, whether in the form of Biden administration policy or local school boards attempting to impose critical race theory, unreasonable COVID precautions, or transgender policies, is another day of insurrection.

They see insurrectionists everywhere. They see them in the media, where they demand that Fox News be canceled or demonetized because of its Trumpist heresies and refusal to treat a Capitol riot — in which the only person killed was an unarmed protester gunned down in cold blood by a police officer — as a new Civil War. They see them in Congress, where anyone who challenged the 2020 results or resists the Democrats’ bills to ban voter ID laws and make permanent pandemic-based election changes that removed guardrails against cheating are seeking to steal not just the 2020 election but the ones yet to be held in 2022 and 2024. They also see insurrectionists in state capitals, where legislatures that have passed voter integrity bills that seek to prevent future fraud without taking away anyone’s right to vote as not merely advocates of a new “Jim Crow” but the moral equivalent of the Confederates who fired on Fort Sumter to save slavery.

When Everyone Is an Insurrectionist

It also explains why U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland isn’t backing down on his outrageous effort to treat school board protests as an insurrectionist terrorist conspiracy. Despite heated questioning from furious Republican senators last Wednesday, he wouldn’t concede that his directive to the FBI and the rest of the Department of Justice to investigate school board critics around the country was based on a lie. He denied that he was targeting the free speech of parents who have protested decisions by school boards on curricula and other policies. That Garland would stand by the rash directive was all the more curious because the hearing came after the National School Boards Association (NSBA) had apologized for the letter that began this shocking episode.

Garland’s doubling down at the hearing about the need for the government to crack down on opponents does make sense. Or at least it does when placed in the context of his party’s current political obsession.

For nine months the Biden administration, its congressional allies, and its media cheerleaders have treated the Jan. 6 Capitol riot as not merely a disgraceful episode but an “insurrection” and “attempted coup” that represented an ongoing threat to the government rather than just a mob that ran amuck. At this point, it’s clear the Biden team has come to view any dissent from leftist dictums — be they national or local — as not merely unwelcome criticism but the work of Trumpist insurrectionists who must be put down rather than tolerated.

Democrats are determined to go on running against former President Donald Trump and his “deplorable” band of insurrectionists indefinitely. But they have been dismayed by the turn of events in Virginia, where resistance against the radical takeover of the schools by angry parents has transformed the gubernatorial race in what the left assumed was a securely blue state. So it was hardly surprising that the administration would seek to brand those citizens outraged by what was being done to their children as just another outbreak of the same insurrection they have been inveighing against all year.

Cornered by Republican senators, Garland asserted that his memo had not ordered investigations of angry parents as “domestic terrorists.” Yet his memo characterized criticisms of officials at public meetings as “harassment, intimidation and threats of violence.” In it, he stated plainly that Department of Justice would use its authority to “identify,” “discourage” and “prosecute” these alleged threats while maintaining “coordination and partnership with local enforcement.”

Even more disingenuously, he denied that the letter from the NSBA, which had been coordinated with the White House had prompted his directive. It labeled people like a Loudoun County parent whose daughter was allegedly raped by a boy in a girl’s bathroom then covered up by the school district as “domestic terrorists.”

‘Terrorists’ Have No Rights

Garland’s willingness to jump into that mess was predictable. Tellingly, earlier this month even after the truth had come out about the alleged rape and its coverup, Loudoun County Democratic Party Chair Lissa Savaglio called the parents “Republican insurrectionists.”

Republicans asked Garland about why the attempt to intimidate Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema into going along Biden’s spending spree when she was followed, harangued, and filmed in a bathroom wasn’t as worthy of investigation as incidents in which school board members were yelled at. Similarly, the invasion of the Department of the Interior earlier this month by a leftist mob demanding Biden adopt even more radical environmental policies didn’t make it onto his radar screen.

Nor is Garland or the mainstream media willing to admit that the hundreds of Black Lives Matter “mostly peaceful” riots in cities around the nation in the summer of 2020 were far more of a threat to public order and government authority than the misguided people who illegally entered the Capitol on Jan.6. But if we have learned anything in the last year, it should be this: Democrats will never stop talking about the insurrection.

In part, that’s because they actually believe their political foes don’t deserve constitutional rights. As we saw with their reaction to the fatal police shooting of Capitol protester Ashli Babbit and the treatment of those facing prosecution over their illegal behavior on Jan. 6, they believe insurrectionists have no rights, including those that guarantee due process.

Democrats also understand that labeling conservatives as domestic terrorists is key to their political survival as Biden’s presidency unravels in the face of domestic problems like the southern border crisis, the supply chain disaster, and feckless conduct abroad. Running on Biden’s record or defending efforts to impose woke ideology on children isn’t likely to bring them success. That means they will go on labeling anyone who questions their ideological hobby horses as Trumpist “traitors” so long as they think it will help them rally their voters to turn out and preserve their power.

Jonathan S. Tobin is a senior contributor to The Federalist, editor in chief of JNS.org, and a columnist for the New York Post. Follow him on Twitter at @jonathans_tobin.

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Attorney General Merrick Garland’s Message To Concerned Parents Is Clear: Shut Up Or Else


Reported By John Daniel Davidson | OCTOBER 22, 2021

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2021/10/22/attorney-general-merrick-garlands-message-to-concerned-parents-is-clear-shut-up-or-else/

What do you call it when the country’s largest school board association secretly coordinates with the Biden White House before issuing a formal request that the administration use the FBI to investigate dissenting parents as potential “domestic terrorists,” and then, five days later, the Justice Department issues a memorandum to the FBI to do just that?

The old-fashioned word for it is corruption — corruption of our institutions, the rule of law, the administration of justice, the separation of powers. It is also an egregious abuse of power on the part of the Biden administration, which apparently has no qualms about calling on Attorney General Merrick Garland when the president’s political allies need a little muscle.

In a contentious congressional hearing on Thursday, Garland confirmed that the basis of his Oct. 4 memorandum, which directed the FBI and U.S. attorney’s offices to launch a task force to combat what Garland called a “disturbing spike in harassment, intimidation, and threats of violence against school administrators, board members, teachers, and staff,” was a letter that the National School Boards Association (NSBA) sent to the White House on Sept. 29.

That is, Garland’s evidence that there’s a “disturbing spike” in these kinds of threats is the NSBA letter itself, which was produced after weeks of collaboration with Biden’s White House. This is the same letter in which the NSBA urged the Biden administration to use tools like the Patriot Act to target parents who show up at school board meetings to complain about mask mandates and critical race theory curricula, as if they were “domestic terrorists.”

Incredibly, the news about NSBA’s collusion with the White House broke while Garland was testifying Thursday. During his testimony, Garland insisted that, the NSBA letter notwithstanding, he “can’t imagine any circumstance in which the Patriot Act would be used in the circumstances of parents complaining about their children,” nor any circumstance in which those instances “would be labeled as domestic terrorism.”

We are left to understand then, that the role Garland envisions for the DOJ in all of this is — what? His memo cites no instances of violence or threats of violence against school board members, and Garland himself admitted before Congress that the basis of his memo was the NSBA letter.

But the vast majority of incidents cited in the NSBA letter didn’t involve attacks or threats of any kind. A few cases involved local law enforcement, but nothing cited in the letter comes close to “domestic terrorism” or anything that would justify the involvement of the FBI or the DOJ. For the most part, the letter cited cases in which parents disrupted school board meetings by protesting, often because they were not given an opportunity to speak out on issues that directly affect the education of their children.

The letter of course didn’t cite instances where school board members have threatened parents, Like this one:

https://twitter.com/i/status/1451240779704328198

To be clear, the DOJ has no role whatsoever in policing the interactions of parents and local school boards. Whatever happens at those meetings, however contentious they might get, they are entirely under the purview of local and state authorities. For Garland to even suggest that federal prosecutors might get involved is itself a scandal and an egregious abuse of power.

That’s what this is really all about. Set aside the details of the machinations between the Biden White House and the NSBA and the DOJ. What it comes down to is a coordinated effort by the left — including the most powerful law enforcement official in the country, the attorney general — to intimidate parents into silence.

Want to show up and speak out at your local school board meeting? Maybe hold a protest sign in the parking lot? Well then, you might just get a knock on your door from the FBI. Better think twice about that.

These are parents who have every right, by God and the U.S. Constitution, strenuously to voice their opposition to mask mandates, critical race theory, transgender ideology, and all the other nonsense that woke school boards and teachers are trying to foist on their kids. In fact they have a duty to do so.

But instead of listening to the concerns of such parents, the top brass at the NSBA decided to call in a political favor to the White House, which in turn let loose the Justice Department. Through it all, the corporate media executed a PR campaign on behalf of Biden and the school boards.

And why are they trying to intimidate parents into silence? Because when all’s said and done, the leftist ideologues who sit on school boards, work in the White House, and push paper for Garland’s Justice Department don’t want parents to have a say in how public schools are run and what children are taught. As far as they’re concerned, your children don’t belong to you, and their education is not your concern.

The message from the left is clear: comply, stay quiet, and maybe, just maybe, we’ll leave you alone. For now.

John is the Political Editor at The Federalist. Follow him on Twitter.

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Mark Levin RIPS AG Garland for ‘weaponizing’ FBI against parents, reveals multimillion dollar motive for CRT push

LEVINTV

‘This is making the FBI into the East German Stasi’

BLAZETV STAFFOctober 07, 2021Image source: Video screenshot

Joining Fox News’ Sean Hannity, “LevinTV” host Mark Levin ripped into the Biden administration and Attorney General Merrick Garland for what he called the weaponization of the DOJ and FBI to target parents who challenge mask mandates and critical-race-theory-influenced curricula.

Is Merrick Garland creating an East German Stasi-like FBI? Why is the DOJ getting involved in school board meetings and going after moms as if they’re domestic terrorists? Levin questioned.

Levin addressed a recent memo in which the attorney general pledged to mobilize the Federal Bureau of Investigation against parents who “harass or intimidate” public school officials, citing unspecified “criminal conduct directed toward school personnel.”

“The federal government has absolutely no authority whatsoever to even go in a school board meeting, let alone a classroom. These are state and local matters. Fully,” Levin began. “And I would remind everybody that the FBI did damn little when our cities were burning, when Black Lives Matter and Antifa were brutalizing people, were committing acts of larceny, were attacking police.”

“This is a pretext about widespread violence to intimidate, threaten and suppress communities and neighborhoods all over the country to comply with the left-wing radical Marxist agenda,” he continued.

“This is making the FBI into the East German Stasi. And, you know what? Merrick Garland has a reason to do this, beyond his ideological extremism. His family makes money from pushing this crap in our school districts. … His son-in-law is a founding partner of Panorama [which has] multimillion dollar contracts with school districts. They’re pushing this agenda in 25% of schools so far, all around the country, while his family is making millions,” Levin added.

“Let me say it here tonight. A special council needs to me appointed to investigate this attorney general’s ties, and his family’s ties to Panorama, and his unleashing of the full force, unconstitutionally, of the federal government to attack the constitutional rights of citizens and parents throughout this country.”

Watch the video clip below to hear more from BlazeTV’s Mark Levin:

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Conservatives fear extremism in military debate is ‘political theater’ to target Christians


Reported by Abraham Mahshie | Washington Examiner | March 25, 2021

Read more at https://1776coalition.com/rise-up-1/conservatives-fear-extremism-in-military-debate-is-political-theater-to-target-christians/

Conservative lawmakers lambasted Democrats over a hearing on extremism in the military on Wednesday, claiming it was merely “political theater” and fearing that Catholic and evangelical service members will be targeted in a crackdown by the Left.

About 20% of the arrests related to the Jan. 6 Capitol riots were of current or former members of the military, who are frequently the targets of aggressive recruiting by extremist white nationalist groups. Regulations already exist to root out service members who espouse violent extremist behaviors. Conservative House Armed Services Committee members are now worried that lacking definitions and metrics from the Defense Department, Democrats will mount a crusade that targets some of the military’s religious members.

“We lack any concrete evidence that violent extremism is as ripe in the military as some commentators claim,” said House Armed Services Committee ranking member Mike Rogers of Alabama.

“Legislative attempts to further crack down on domestic terrorism is going to run headlong into the First Amendment rights of our service members,” he added.

Rogers noted that since fiscal year 2020, only nine soldiers have been separated from the Army for problems related to extremism.

One witness, Michael Berry, a Marine Corps veteran and attorney for the First Liberty Institute, warned that the First Amendment rights of service members, particularly Catholic and evangelical soldiers, could be at risk.

“Expanding anti-extreme efforts to punish thought or belief is risky,” he said.

“The U.S. Army produced training materials that labeled evangelical Christians and Catholics as religious extremists alongside Hamas and al Qaeda, never mind the fact that evangelicals and Catholics continue to comprise the majority of those serving in uniform today,” he said. “Labeling religious or political beliefs that are held by tens of millions of Americans as extremists is to declare them unwelcome and unfit to serve is to say, ‘Uncle Sam does not want you.’”

Texas Republican Rep. Pat Fallon made a full-throated attack on the credibility of the witnesses and implied that the hearing was launched by liberals to root out conservative ideologies in the military.

“This isn’t a hearing about the readiness of our armed forces. It’s nothing more, unfortunately, than political theater,” he said.

Following the Capitol riot, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin called for a 60-day stand-down across the force to discuss extremism in the ranks, but he did not provide guidance or ask for data to be collected. Pentagon spokesman John Kirby told the Washington Examiner on Wednesday that soldiers of all beliefs are welcome in the military and will be protected by Austin, himself a witness to extremism as a former commander.

“This isn’t about religion, and it’s not about politics,” he said.

“The suggestion that this would have anything to do with the God you worship or don’t is anathema to the whole effort,” he added. “This is about, again, ideology that inspires conduct that is prejudicial to good order and discipline and puts our teammates in harm’s way.”

Audrey Kurth Cronin, an American University professor who studies how extremist groups recruit on the internet, said a major problem within the Defense Department is the lack of a definition for extremism and metrics to measure it.

“The 2020 Capitol insurrection leaves the impression that the number of extremists in the military is increasing,” she said. “Yet DoD officials repeatedly claim that the number is small. No one truly knows. No serious plan can be built without defining the scope of the problem.”

As Austin’s 60-day deadline nears, the Pentagon has yet to disclose what it has learned, but Kirby assured that the secretary would be defending the constitutional rights of all soldiers.

“He’s well aware of First Amendment rights and free speech and freedom of religion,” he said, noting that service members are entitled to the same rights as civilians. “Part of the whole reason for the military is to defend this country and to defend the ideals upon which this country was founded.”

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


A.F. Branco Cartoon – For the Children

A.F. BRANCO | on

Minnesota teacher’s union ignores the science that says kids should go back to school.

Teacher Ignore SciencePolitical cartoon by A.F. Branco ©2021.

A.F. Branco Cartoon – Smear Job

A.F. BRANCO | on

According to Biden and the Democrats, everything to their right is considered “domestic Terrorists”.

Dem’s Domestic TerroristsPolitical cartoon by A.F. Branco ©2021.
Donations/Tips accepted and appreciated – $1.00 –  $5.00 –  $25.00 – $50.00 – $100 –  it all helps to fund this website and keep the cartoons coming. Also Venmo @AFBranco – THANK YOU!

A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into the 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 shared by President Donald Trump.

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AG Barr: We Have Evidence Antifa Participating in Violent Activity (VIDEO)


Reported By Cristina Laila | Published June 4, 2020 at 12:36pm

US Attorney General Bill Barr delivered remarks on the protests, looting and rioting taking place across the nation.

A brief tally of just a fraction of the destruction caused by far left radical groups such as Antifa and Black Lives Matter: 21 courthouses damaged, Lincoln Memorial defaced, Korean War Memorial defaced, WWII Monument defaced, buildings burned in Los Angeles, tens of millions of damage in NYC.

Barr said the Justice Department has evidence Antifa and other extremist groups have been involved in violent activity.

But how could this be? The mainstream media said Antifa doesn’t exist!

“We have evidence that Antifa and other similar extremist groups as well as actors of a variety of different political persuasions have been involved in instigating and participating in the violent activity. We are also seeing foreign actors playing all sides to exacerbate the violence,” said Barr.

WATCH:

James O’Keefe and Project Veritas released their investigative report on the domestic terrorist group Antifa on Thursday morning.

Project Veritas’s latest undercover report reveals how the leftist terror group Antifa practice eye gouging, beating their opponents and create an environment of fear and terror.

AG Barr said Antifa had hijacked the protests and warned of federal prosecutions for crossing state lines to riot.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Cristina Laila
Cristina began writing for The Gateway Pundit in 2016 and she is currently the Associate Editor.

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Law, Political, Society

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


A.F. Branco Cartoon – Blackshirts

A.F. BRANCO | on

So-called anti-fascist Antifa is acting like what they say they are against, fascist Blackshirts of Mussolini’s Italy.

Antifa are TerroristCartoon by A.F. Branco ©2020.
Donations/Tips accepted and appreciated –  $1.00 – $5.00 – $25.00 – $50.00 – $100 –  it all helps to fund this website and keep the cartoons coming. – THANK YOU!

A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into the 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 has had his toons tweeted by President Trump.

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Dear CNN: Antifa Promises ‘Bullets’ For Political Rivals – Is That ‘News?’



Written by Wes Walker on August 13, 2018

URL of the original posting site: https://clashdaily.com/2018/08/dear-cnn-antifa-promises-bullets-for-political-rivals-is-that-news/

About that ‘politically divisive’ discourse? It was impossible to ignore this enormous pro-violence banner. Unless you were willfully blind to it.

There was a GREAT BIG BANNER telling all the world what their true feelings are. The brick-chucking, bike-lock-swinging punks unveiled a new slogan. In case you needed help figuring out who has the real violent intent, here.

Watch:

Don’t worry. Leftist reporters were on the scene. Here’s The Daily Beast’s coverage. They saw the sign and even included video with it in their article…

What was their big takeaway? Was the incitement to murder banner any big deal?

If their photo essay is any clue, not at all.


Scott seemed not to think the violent rhetoric was a big deal.

Let’s have another look:

Here’s the kind of police presence that needs to be on hand whenever Antifa comes to the party.

At least some credit goes to Garrett Haake from MSNBC for being honest about what he saw:

At least he acknowledged the sign, even if the photo was, as it were, ‘submitted without comment’.

So, what does the political climate look like today? People have been harassed or assaulted. Journalists and cops were roughed up by the leftist rioters.

We’ve even seen assassination attempts. Scalise, you know about. Did you hear reporting about the mass shooting they disrupted a few months ago? One would-be gunman faces charges for plans to hit up a Trump Rally and murder the President.

All of this by political activists who think they’re doing society a favor in the process.

When will the Media(D) stop running interference for their ideological buddies, and start calling them out for their bad behavior? What possible excuse might the Media(D) have for having nothing critical to say about one American threatening to murder another?

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


Pit Stop

A.F. Branco | on

Terrorists aren’t the only ones fueled by hate these days, Democrats are counting on it to propel them to victory in the 2018 election.

Democrats Running on HatePolitical cartoon by A.F Branco ©2018.

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Left Turns Mentally Ill Shooter Into White Extremist; Democrats call for grabbing guns


waving flagInfowars.com – November 28, 2015

URL of the original posting site: http://www.infowars.com/left-turns-mentally-ill-shooter-into-white-extremist

Left Turns Mentally Ill Shooter Into White Extremist

Despite the fact the suspect is not avowedly against abortion and appears to be insane, Planned Parenthood couldn’t help itself. It portrayed the shooting as an “extremist” act of “domestic terrorism.”

The Socialist Bernie Sanders jumped on the tragic incident to attack his political enemies and demonstrate the faulty logic and shameless opportunism of liberals.

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“While we still do not know the shooter’s motive, what is clear is that Planned Parenthood has been the subject of vicious and unsubstantiated statements attacking an organization that provides critical health care for millions of Americans. I strongly support Planned Parenthood and the work it is doing and hope people realize that bitter rhetoric can have unintended consequences,” Sanders said in a statement.More Liberal Gibberish

Meanwhile the leftists over at Daily Kos want to “bomb white terrorist strongholds in US” in response to the shooting. Daily Kos does not indicate where these “strongholds” are or who the “white terrorists” might be. In hysterical knee-jerk fashion, they pander to the racist hatred espoused by the Black Lives Matter crowd because it conforms to the Marxist classist nonsense they support.

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Democrats have exploited the shooting to call for moving forward on their agenda to dismantle the Second Amendment and strip Americans of their natural rights.

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The Leftist Propagandist In God We Trust freedom combo 2

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State forbids pastors calling homosexuality ‘sinful’


waving flagPosted By Bob Unruh On 07/24/2015

Article printed from WND: http://www.wnd.com

URL to article: http://www.wnd.com/2015/07/state-forbids-pastors-calling-homosexuality-sinful

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The state of Kentucky has begun imposing a religious test on volunteer pastor counselors in its youth division, insisting that they refrain from calling homosexuality “sinful” and dismissing those who cannot bend their religious faith to accommodate the state requirements.Picture2

The policy was uncovered by Liberty Counsel, which has sent a letter to Bob Hayter, commissioner of the Kentucky Department of Juvenile Justice, demanding that the state religious test be dropped and that a dismissed counselor be reinstated. “Liberty Counsel writes regarding the blatantly unconstitutional revocation of volunteer prison minister status of ordained Christian minister David Wells, who has provided voluntary spiritual counseling and mentorship to juvenile inmates under the control of the Department of Juvenile Justice. … This revocation was issued by Warren County Regional Juvenile Detention Center on the basis of the April 4, 2014, DJJ Policy 912, which mandates full DJJ support of homosexuality and transvestism.Leftist Giant called Tyranny

“With no evidence of any violation of DJJ policy on Mr. Wells’ part, his volunteer status was revoked by the Warren RJDC superintendent because he could not sign a state-mandated statement that homosexuality was not ‘sinful,’ among other things,” the letter said.Different Free Speech Ideologies

The policy states that DJJ staff, volunteers and others “shall not imply or tell LGBTQI juveniles that they are abnormal, deviant, sinful or that they can or should change their sexual orientation or gender identity.”

WND requested a comment from the state agency, but there was no immediate response.

Get “Takedown,” and learn how the American family and marriage are being sabotaged by the ideas of extreme-left radicals, starting with Karl Marx.

The state agency was told in the letter it has until July 31 to reinstate Wells’ volunteer visitor credentials. “Many juveniles are in DJJ custody because of sexual crimes,” said Mat Staver, chairman of Liberty Counsel. “Pastor Wells must be able to discuss what the Bible says about matters of sexuality with the juveniles he is trying to help. To remove the Bible from a pastor’s hands is like removing a scalpel from a surgeon’s hands. Without it, they cannot provide healing.”

Wells had volunteered more than 10 years at the facility under the prison ministry of Pleasant View Baptist Church in McQuady

But Supt. Gene Wade dismissed him in a terse note on July 7.

He wrote, “I must terminate your involvement as a religious volunteer serving the youth in this facility per DJJ Policy 112, Section IV, Paragraph H, (8).”Big Gay Hate Machine

CP 03Liberty Counsel reported Policy 912, “Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity,” states that volunteers cannot refer to homosexuality or other alternative sexual lifestyles as “sinful.” “DJJ 912 equates the teaching of biblical morality with ‘derogatory,’ ‘biased” and ‘hateful’ speech,” added Staver. “In so doing, the DJJ policy creates an unconstitutional, religious litmus test for DJJ access. The First Amendment prohibits the government from viewpoint discrimination. This detention center may not prohibit the expression of biblical morality simply because a few DJJ policymakers object to the Bible and its teaching,” the letter saidPicture1

Liberty Counsel’s letter noted Wells was ordered to sign a form “promising to refrain from telling any juvenile inmates that homosexuality was ‘sinful.’”Free Speech Definition

But Liberty Counsel argues the Bible “explicitly prohibits any expression of sexuality outside of the confines of man-woman marriage.”

“It recognizes that every person, regardless of personal proclivities or attractions, is separated from God because of sin, whatever form that sin may take. Many juveniles are in DJJ custody because of sexual crimes, and Mr. Wells must be able to discuss the Bible and matters of sexuality with inmates, and he therefore was unable to sign the form.”

The letter says many inmates have been sexually abused and need such counseling.

“Second, at no time in more than 12 years of ministry has Mr. Wells or any of the other volunteer ministers who assist him ever used ‘derogatory language’ in a manner that ‘conveys bias towards or hatred of’ children.’

“Third, any religious services or spiritual counseling offered by Mr.Wells is always completely voluntary in attendance; and no juvenile offender is ever required to attend the services or meet with him or other volunteers,” the letter said.

Wells has dealt with cases ranging from “a young man who sexually abused his sister, and then killed her … to children who have been molested and sodomized by adults and older teens.”

“All of these children have asked Mr.Wells if there was any hope for them in this life, and in the life to come. He has told them without exception that Christ can, and would, forgive them, if they would repent and believe the gospel.”Combined

The policy even conflicts with other department policy, Liberty Counsel explained, because DJJ 345 states: “A volunteer minister, pastor or religious counselor, approved by the facility religious coordinator, shall have access to each area of the facility identified for religious programming. Clergy shall be allowed to have confidential communications with youth pursuant to clergy privilege.”

The state demand “violates the First Amendment by prescribing an official state religious ‘orthodoxy:’ now, only a religious belief that homosexuality is not ‘sinful’ may be expressed in DJJ facilities.”want_rel_liberty_r

That’s even though the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that “no official, high or petty, can prescribe that shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion and force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein.” The U.S. Supreme Court also has ruled that speech restrictions cannot be based on viewpoint. The practice also creates similar conflicts with the Kentucky Constitution, Liberty Counsel said.

“There is simply no evidence that any pastor or volunteer minister, much less Mr. Wells, has ever expressed ‘derogatory’ language toward, or ‘bias’ or ‘hatred’ of DJJ youths who have sexuality issues. For that matter, it is not ‘hatred’ or ‘bias’ to lovingly point out the harms of homosexuality,” the letter said.

The result is that the state of Kentucky “singles out a particular theological viewpoint as expressly disfavored. This the state cannot do,” the letter said.

The issue of counseling sexually confused youth has come up several other states already. In California, Oregon and New Jersey, officials already have adopted rules that prohibit people from offering help during counseling sessions to juveniles who have unwanted same-sex attractions. Several other states have rejected the idea.

Most recently, it was a judge’s “bias” toward homosexuality that prompted a jury to award about $72,000 to plaintiffs who sued under a New Jersey consumer fraud law. They claimed their counseling sessions aimed at getting rid of unwanted same-sex attractions failed, according to a licensed counselor. The verdict recently was announced in New Jersey for plaintiffs who brought their case, with the assistance of an organization that has been linked to domestic terror, against JONAH, or Jews Offering New Alternatives for Healing. The verdict was “the consequence of liberal judicial bias,” licensed professional counselor Christopher Doyle told Anglican Mainstream, a publication for orthodox Anglicans.

“Before and during the trial Judge Peter Bariso stripped JONAH of so many opportunities to really defend themselves, disqualifying five of the six expert witnesses for the defendants because their opinions contradicted the so-called mainstream view that same-sex attractions are not at all disordered, even if a client is distressed by these unwanted sexual feelings because of their sincerely held religious and spiritual beliefs,” Doyle’s report said.Picture2

A decision on whether the case will be appealed is looming, Liberty Counsel said. “The judge’s bias against religious freedom was so ruthless that he even refused to allow JONAH’s chief attorney to mention the First Amendment freedom of religion in his closing argument,” Doyle said. “This verdict sends a chilling message to anyone of faith who either offers counseling or wants to receive counseling to overcome unwanted same-sex attractions,” he said.Hate Merchants

The jury verdict ordered JONAH to pay $72,400 to five plaintiffs for the fees they paid for counseling.

The case was brought by the Southern Poverty Law Center, which opposed racism and discrimination during its early years. However, three years ago it was linked to domestic terrorism in a court case. That was when homosexual activist Floyd Lee Corkins on Aug. 15, 2012, walked into Family Research Council headquarters in Washington, D.C., armed with a semi-automatic pistol, 95 bullets and a sack of Chick-fil-A sandwiches with the intent, he later confessed, of killing “as many people as I could.” Corkins admitted he picked FRC, which promotes traditional Judeo-Christian beliefs about family and sexuality, because it was listed as an “anti-gay” hate group by SPLC on its website.

See video of the attack:

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The judge actually had pre-ordained the conclusion against JONAH, writing early in the case “the theory that homosexuality is a disorder is not novel but – like the notion that the earth is flat and the sun revolves around it – instead is outdated and refuted.” For that reason, he gutted much of the organization’s defense.More Evidence

Doyle explained that the jury probably was less convinced about consumer fraud claims but more by the actions of “a liberal judge who hamstringed the defendants while feeding the jury a steady diet of mischaracterizations on the work of JONAH.”

WND reported JONAH was defended by the Freedom of Conscience Defense Fund.

Spokeswoman Maggie Gallagher earlier told WND that SPLC’s goals are to put “out of existence” any counseling in America that helps those with unwanted same-sex attractions. Essentially, she said, it’s a campaign to “impose a new public morality” on the nation, concluding that for those who have same-sex attractions, “there’s nothing you are entitled to do except say it’s great and I want to live a gay life.”War on Christians

Alinsky Rules for Radicals

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