Reps. James Comer, R-Ky., left, and Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, confer as then-Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle testifies July 22 before the House Oversight and Accountability Committee in Washington. (Kent Nishimura/Getty Images)
Just over two months ago, former President Donald Trump narrowly survived an assassination attempt at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. On Sunday, law enforcement thwarted yet another attempt on Trump’s life. Now, lawmakers on Capitol Hill are scrambling for answers on what transpired at Trump’s West Palm Beach golf club and how to protect the former president and current Republican nominee.
The Secret Service engaged a gunman in an incident law enforcement is calling an assassination attempt while Trump was golfing Sunday afternoon.
The suspected gunman, identified by investigators as Ryan Wesley Routh, 58, fled the scene in a Nissan SUV before law enforcement tracked him down, pulled him over, and took him into custody just north of West Palm Beach. Routh allegedly left an AK-47-style rifle at the scene. He has been charged so far with two firearm counts: possession of a firearm as a convicted felon and possession of a firearm with an obliterated serial number. Routh’s political activity and background, however, are raising eyebrows on Capitol Hill.
He started a group called the International Volunteer Center that sought to coax Americans and foreign troops into fighting on behalf of Ukraine against Russia in the current war, Semafor reported.
In a phone interview with CNN, Oleksandr Shaguri, a representative of Ukraine’s foreign legion, said that Routh “was offering us large numbers of recruits from different countries but it was obvious to us his offers were not realistic.”
“We didn’t even answer, there was nothing to answer to. He was never part of the legion and didn’t cooperate with us in any way,” Shaguri told CNN, adding that Routh’s ideas were “delusional.”
The would-be assassin also self-published a nearly 300-page book titled “Ukraine’s Unwinnable War: The Fatal Flaw of Democracy, World Abandonment and the Global Citizen-Taiwan, Afghanistan, North Korea and the End of Humanity,” CNN reported, a work that makes the case for more U.S. involvement in conflicts overseas.
Routh also regularly published anti-Trump comments on what is believed to be his X account.
“I will be glad when you gone,” one post reads, CNN reported. Another proclaimed “DEMOCRACY is on the ballot and we cannot lose”—a line often uttered by Vice President Kamala Harris and her presidential campaign.
“The American people want ANSWERS!” Rep. Ralph Norman, R-S.C., told The Daily Signal in an exclusive email. “For President Trump’s life to be threatened not once but TWICE is absolutely unacceptable!”
The House task force empowered to investigate the first Trump assassination attempt on July 13 in Butler announced it would be briefed on the second assassination attempt in West Palm Beach.
“The task force is monitoring this attempted assassination of former President Trump in West Palm Beach this afternoon,” reads a statement from Chairman Mike Kelly, R-Pa., and Rep. Jason Crow, D-Colo., the ranking member. “We have requested a briefing with the U.S. Secret Service about what happened and how security responded. We are thankful that the former president was not harmed but remain deeply concerned about political violence and condemn it in all of its forms. The task force will share updates as we learn more.”
“The state of Florida will be conducting its own investigation regarding the attempted assassination at Trump International Golf Club,” DeSantis said in an X post.
Senate Minority Whip John Thune, R-S.D., wished the former president well Sunday afternoon.
“I’m glad President Trump was unharmed, and I’m grateful that law enforcement was able to identify this individual and intervene,”Thune wrote on X. “I’m continuing to pray for the former president’s safety and security.”
Trump thanked law enforcement and the Secret Service for protecting him in a Truth Social post Sunday night. But on Monday morning, Trump posted that the rhetoric of President Joe Biden, Harris, and other Democrats led to the attempts on his life.
“Because of this Communist Left Rhetoric, the bullets are flying, and it will only get worse!”Trump’s Truth Social post reads in part.
“The media’s ‘coverage’ of these two incidents is laughable,” Norman also told The Daily Signal. “It seems like everyone has already forgotten what happened in Butler, Pennsylvania.”
Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, seemed to concur with Norman’s assessment of the media’s reaction to Sunday’s assassination attempt.
“Let’s be clear what is happening: For the second time in three months, someone has tried to kill President Trump, and leftist media is blaming him for it,” Lee told The Daily Signal. “This dangerous argument ‘ad Hitlerum’ Democrats have indulged in for almost a decade is ripping our country apart, and they need to stop immediately.”
Nevertheless, Norman, referring to House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said he remains “cautiously optimistic that the speaker’s task force will get to the bottom of this horrible political violence.”
“I am very glad that my colleague and friend Rep. [Clay] Higgins is on the task force because I trust him to ask the right questions and ensure accountability and transparency for ALL that were involved with both attempts on President Trump’s life,” Norman added in the email.
Although the Secret Service succeeded in thwarting the attempt on Trump’s life Sunday, Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., said he has some pressing questions.
“A former president who was struck by an assassin’s bullet two months ago, and who Iran and others continue to plot against, deserves heightened security,” Johnson told The Daily Signal. “What doesn’t the Secret Service understand about that?”
Below is my column in the New York Post on the vicious attacks being directed at Judge Aileen Cannon as she addresses pre-trial motions in the Florida prosecution of former president Donald Trump. The sheer hypocrisy in the media is overwhelming after denouncing any criticism of Judge Juan Merchan in the Manhattan prosecution. For Cannon, it is nothing short of a press pile-on.
Here is the column:
The politicians, the press, and pundits are in a feeding frenzy around Judge Aileen Cannon, the federal judge presiding in the Florida case against former President Donald Trump. There is a torrent of hit pieces and petty attacks on virtually every media platform. What is impressive is the complete lack of self-awareness over the hypocrisy of these attacks. Just a few weeks ago, the New York Times and other media outlets went into vapors when anyone uttered criticism of Manhattan Justice Juan Merchan in another Trump case.
In 2020, Judge Cannon was confirmed in a bipartisan vote, with the support of liberals such as Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and Dianne Feinstein (D-Cal.). Now she is being denounced as a “partisan, petty prima donna, “wacko, crazy, loony, nutty, ridiculous, and outlandish,” and a “right-wing hack.” From the descriptions in the Washington Post, New York Times and virtually every mainstream media outlet, you would think that Cannon was a freak in the courtroom, raving uncontrollably at any passerby.
These critics often stress that she is an appointee of Trump, even though many Trump appointees have ruled against the former president on 2020 election issues. And these same figures denounced Trump for attacking the perceived political bias of Democratic nominees in some of his cases.
Cannon was randomly selected, as opposed to Merchan, who was hand-picked to try Trump even though he is a political donor to President Joe Biden and has a daughter who is a major Democratic operative. Yet these same figures denounced those who questioned Merchan’s refusal to step aside or criticized his rulings against Trump throughout the trial.
In reality, the “loose Cannon” spin is utterly disconnected with her actual rulings.
She has ruled for and against both parties on major issues. That includes the rejection of major motions filed by the Trump team and most recently challenged Trump counsel on their claims that the Special Counsel is part of “a shadow government.”
Notably, when Cannon recently rejected the main motion for dismissal by the Trump team, the Washington Post buried that fact in an article titled “Judge Cannon Strikes Paragraph in Trump Classified Document Indictment.” The suggestion was that the striking of a single paragraph was more newsworthy than insisting that Trump go to trial on these counts. (Also buried in the article is a recognition that the removal of this one paragraph “does not have a substantive effect on the case.”)
Most recently, the left expressed nothing short of horror that Judge Cannon allowed the Trump team to argue a point of constitutional law in a hearing. Scholars and former prosecutors (including former attorneys general) have argued that the appointment of special counsels like Smith are unconstitutional. This is a novel and intriguing constitutional objection that is based on the text of the Constitution, which requires that high-ranking executive officers like U.S. Attorneys be appointed under statute or nominated by the president (and confirmed by the Senate).
Yet after the expiration of the Independent Counsel Act in Jun 1999, the Justice Department asserts the right to take any private citizen like Smith and effectively give him greater authority than a U.S. Attorney. This glaring inconsistency has led to a number of challenges. Thus far, they have been unsuccessful, but none have gone to the Supreme Court. Cannon wanted to hear oral arguments before ruling on the question. That decision has sent the politicians and reporters into another frenzy of faux outrage and indignation.
MSNBC legal analyst and NYU law professor Melissa Murray went on with host Chris Hayes to tell Judge Cannon to “stay in her lane” and mock her consideration of constitutional claim:
“Girl, stay in your lane. Stay. In. Your. Lane. So, yes, not only has the issue of whether the special counsel comports with the structures of constitutional law, that’s been settled. That’s been addressed in multiple courts. Settled. We don’t have to rehash that … If this were an actual issue it would ultimately be decided by the Supreme Court, not by a district court judge in Fort Pierce, Florida.”
It is a baffling lecture. Cannon is precisely in her lane in hearing a claim without controlling authority. The fact is that the Supreme Court has not ruled on the issue and many lawyers have objected to the summary treatment given the claim by other courts. The point of creating a record is to allow a full review that could well end up at the Supreme Court.
Who isn’t staying in their lane? Cannon’s colleagues.
The New York Times recently reported that two judges attempted to get Cannon to hand off the case when it was randomly assigned to her. So, the suggestion is that two of her colleagues breached any sense of collegiality and confidentiality to contribute to a hit piece on Cannon.
It is worth noting that there was no reason for Cannon to decline the selection, particularly not due to her appointment by Trump. A variety of Trump appointees have ruled against Trump on matters without a hint of objection from the left.
While it is true that Cannon was just put on the bench a couple years ago, that did not seem to bother these same pundits in the Georgia case. Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee was put on the bench only shortly before being assigned the Georgia case against Trump and associates.
Cannon is a true American success story and, if she were only to rule in favor of the left, she would certainly be the subject of glowing stories of how she went from being born in Cali, Colombia to joining the federal bench. Her mother escaped Cuba after the revolution, and she grew up with a deep-seated faith in the rule of law. She graduated from Duke University and, after a stint as a journalist, graduated from Michigan Law School magna cum laude.
Yet there will be no “American dream” stories for Cannon like the ones that ran for Sonia Sotomayor after her nomination.
Cannon is a Republican and has the temerity to follow a conservative jurisprudence. For the media, that makes her unworthy (much like the lack of coverage on Justice Clarence Thomas’ incredible life story).
There is little chance that the scorched Earth campaign against Cannon will work. When your family escapes Communist Cuba and then the drug-ravaged city of Cali, partisan media hit pieces are hardly intimidating. That may be frustrating for many in the media, but she is fulfilling the purpose of Article III of the Framers. She will rule and she will not yield.
Jonathan Turley is the J.B. and Maurice C. Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at the George Washington University School of Law.He is the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage” (Simon and Schuster, 2024).
As the lawfare crusade continues, former President Donald Trump is racking up significant victories in court. Down in Florida, President Trump secured an indefinite delay in his criminal case involving alleged mishandling of classified documents. This delay was ordered following revelations that Special Counsel Jack Smith and prosecutors mishandled and misrepresented evidence, which is uniquely ironic given the subject matter of the underlying case.
In Georgia, where another criminal case is pending, the Georgia Court of Appeals agreed to hear President Trump’s attempt to remove Democrat District Attorney Fani Willis from the case. The Georgia Court of Appeals is set to consider and decide this issue in the coming weeks.
It is becoming increasingly likely that the ongoing Manhattan criminal case is the only trial that President Trump will face before the November election.
Here’s the latest information you need to know about each case.
Manhattan, New York: Prosecution by DA Alvin Bragg for NDA Payment
How we got here: In this New York state criminal case, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg — who The New York Times acknowledged had “campaigned as the best candidate to go after the former president” — charged former President Donald Trump in April 2023 with 34 felony charges for alleged falsification of business records.
Trump’s former attorney Michael Cohen paid pornographic film actress Stormy Daniels shortly before the 2016 presidential election as part of a nondisclosure agreement in which she agreed not to publicize her claims that she had an affair with Trump (who denies the allegations). Nondisclosure agreements are not illegal, but Bragg claims Trump concealed the payment to help his 2016 election chances and in doing so was concealing a “crime.”
The trial began on April 15, and jury selection was completed on April 19. Judge Merchan, a donor to Biden’s campaign and an anti-Trump cause in 2020, has issued a gag order on President Trump generally prohibiting him from publicly speaking on possible jurors, witnesses, and other personnel in this case.
Latest developments: This week, the jury heard testimony from porn performer Stormy Daniels, also known as Stephanie Clifford. Daniels and Playboy model Karen McDougal are central to this case because prosecutors allege that former President Trump paid them off and then falsified business records, to prevent negative media stories during his 2016 presidential campaign. Daniels alleges that she had a sexual encounter with President Trump in 2006, but President Trump denies the affair.
On May 8, President Trump’s attorneys cross-examined and discredited Stormy Daniels, highlighting her history of being a pornographer, her strip club tour, and her history of profiting off allegations against Trump. That same day, Judge Merchan denied a second attempt by President Trump to dismiss this case for a mistrial. President Trump’s attorneys argued that Stormy Daniels’s testimony was unfairly prejudicial against Trump due to its inconsistencies and unnecessary detail, which could improperly influence the jury.
The jury is soon expected to hear from President Trump’s former personal attorney Michael Cohen, who is the prosecutor’s star witness. Another key witness, Karen McDougal, is not expected to testify.
Judge Merchan handed the prosecution another win by ruling that former Federal Election Commission Chairman Bradley Smith, an expert on campaign finance-related issues, is limited as to what he can say in his testimony in the case. One of the defenses raised by the president’s legal team is that even if such payments were made, they were not necessarily to influence an election but rather to protect Donald Trump’s name, his brand, and his family. Chairman Smith was expected to testify in support of this theory, as he has long asserted that “almost anything a candidate does can be interpreted as intended to ‘influence an election’” but “not every expense that might benefit a candidate is an obligation that exists solely because the person is a candidate.” But after Judge Merchan’s ruling, Smith can now only testify as to the “general background as to what the Federal [Election] Commission is, background as to who makes up the FEC, what the FEC’s function is, what laws, if any, the FEC is responsible for enforcing, and general definitions and terms that relate directly to this case, such as for example ‘campaign contribution.’”
Fulton County, Georgia: Prosecution by DA Fani Willis for Questioning Election Results
How we got here: The Georgia state criminal case is helmed by District Attorney Fani Willis and her team of prosecutors — which until recently included Nathan Wade, with whom Willis had an improper romantic relationship. Willis charged Trump in August 2023 with 13 felony counts, including racketeering charges, related to his alleged attempt to challenge the 2020 election results in Georgia. President Trump is joined by 18 co-defendants, including Rudy Giuliani, Mark Meadows, Sidney Powell, and others. Some of President Trump’s co-defendants have reached plea deals; others have petitioned to have the case removed to federal court, each attempt of which has been denied. A trial date has not yet been set, though prosecutors have asked for a trial to begin on Aug. 5, just a few short weeks after the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee.
Latest developments: On May 8, the Georgia Court of Appeals agreed to hear former President Trump’s attempt to disqualify Democrat District Attorney Fani Willis from the pending criminal case in Georgia. Trial court judge Scott McAfee previously denied President Trump’s attempt to remove Willis from the case, but the Georgia Court of Appeals will now determine whether that denial was permissible.
Southern District of Florida: Prosecution by Biden DOJ for Handling of Classified Documents
How we got here: In this federal criminal case, special counsel Jack Smith and federal prosecutors with Biden’s Justice Department charged former President Trump in June 2023 with 40 federal charges related to his alleged mishandling of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago residence. The trial was set to begin on May 20, 2024, but this date has now been postponed indefinitely. Additionally, venue matters: The trial is currently set to take place in Fort Pierce, Florida, in a locality that heavily backed President Trump in the 2020 election. If that remains unchanged, the demographics of the jury pool may result in a pro-Trump courtroom.
Latest developments: On May 7, Judge Aileen Cannon postponed the trial date indefinitely in this case. In an order, Judge Cannon stated “that finalization of a trial date at this juncture … would be imprudent and inconsistent with the Court’s duty to fully and fairly consider the various pending pre-trial motions before the Court.” This delay comes after Special Counsel Jack Smith and other prosecutors admitted to tampering with evidence, stating “there are some boxes [of documents seized from Mar-a-Lago] where the order of items within that box is not the same as in the associated scans.” Prosecutors previously represented to the court that the documents were “in their original, intact form as seized.” Judge Cannon also recently unredacted documents showing the Biden administration’s involvement in this case.
As a result of this indefinite delay, it is unlikely that a trial will occur before the November election.
Washington, D.C.: Prosecution by Biden DOJ for Jan. 6 Speech
How we got here: In this federal criminal case, special counsel Jack Smith and federal prosecutors charged former President Trump in August 2023 with four counts of conspiracy and obstruction related to his actions on Jan. 6, 2021. President Trump’s lawyers have argued that immunity extends to actions taken by a president while acting in his official capacity and that, in any event, the First Amendment protects his right to raise legitimate questions about a questionable election process.
Latest developments: This case is currently stalled while awaiting a ruling from the Supreme Court on former President Trump’s immunity claim.
New York: Lawsuit by A.G. Letitia James for Inflating Net Worth
How we got here: In this New York civil fraud case, Democrat Attorney General Letitia James — who campaigned on going after Trump — sued former President Trump in September 2022 under a civil fraud statute alleging that he misled banks, insurers, and others about his net worth to obtain loans, although the loans have been paid back and none of the parties involved claimed to have been injured by the deals.
Following a no-jury trial, Judge Arthur Engoron — whom Trump’s lawyers have accused of “astonishing departures from ordinary standards of impartiality” — issued a decision on Feb. 16, 2024 ordering Trump to pay a $454 million penalty. Trump has appealed this decision and posted a required $175 million appeal bond. The appeals court plans to hold hearings on the merits of the full case in September 2024.
Latest developments: This case mostly remains on hold.
Steve Roberts is a partner and Oliver Roberts is an associate with Holtzman Vogel Baran Torchinksy & Josefiak PLLC. They can be reached at sroberts@holtzmanvogel.com and oroberts@holtzmanvogel.com.
While pundits, politicians and the press have long expressed outrage over attacks on judges by former President Donald Trump, many are now attacking any judge who delays any trial of Trump before the election. Democrats have accused Judge Aileen Cannon of being politically compromised, if not conspiratorial, in her delay of the Florida trial over the mishandling of classified documents. Yet, there is ample reason for the delay that many of us anticipated in this type of case when it was filed.
For months, many of us have said that we doubt that this type of trial could be held on the rapid schedule demanded by Special Counsel Jake Smith. Smith has repeatedly sought to curtail trial review and even appellate rights of Trump to advance his schedule.
His office has made convicting Trump before the election the overriding objective of its motion — a sharp departure from past Justice Department efforts to avoid trials to influence elections.
As a criminal defense counsel, I have handled classified material cases, and they are notoriously slow. Smith could have prosecuted this case in the shorter time frame if he simply charged obstruction. That would have also eliminated the glaring contrast with the handling of the Biden investigation into the current president’s retention and mishandling of classified material.
Smith decided to charge an array of document charges related to classified material. The defense must have access, review, and can appeal issues related to the classified procedures. Yet, Smith wanted both the array of document charges and a fast track to trial. The Supreme Court has agreed with Cannon that Smith’s desire to secure a conviction before the election is not the overriding consideration.
Judge Cannon is faced with recent admissions that the government mixed up files in the boxes and staged the famous photos of documents strewn over a floor with classified jackets. Most importantly, disputes over the relevant documents continues as expected in the case. Nevertheless, leading democrats are denouncing Cannon as a partisan hack.
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s subcommittee on federal courts and oversight, accused Cannon of “deliberately slow-walking the case.” Ignoring the fact that similar cases have taken much longer to go to trial, Whitehouse simply declared “it is hard for me not to reach the conclusion that this [judge] is deliberately slow-walking the case to put it into a position where should [Trump] be elected, he can order that the investigation and prosecution be terminated.”
His colleague Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) insisted that Cannon was “managing this case in a way that is making it highly unlikely that it will be resolved in a timely fashion.”
Coons added “Justice deferred is often justice denied.” It is a bizarre statement. Classified documents cases routinely take longer to go to trial. The alternative is to cut off the ability of the defense to fully review the documents and review objections for resolution before trial. Yet, because the defendant is Trump and these Democrats want the trial to influence the election, such defense protections are now evidence of judicial bias. They, of course, ignore that Cannon has ruled repeatedly against major Trump motions in the case.
Sen. Peter Welch (D-Vt.), a member of the Judiciary Committee, said Cannon’s “at it again, doing everything she can to delay.”
Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), offered the most telling line. He said, “I question whether this judge understands the magnitude or the legal import of this trial.”
Indeed, it is the timing as much as the charges that makes this so important to the Justice Department and the Democrats. Smith has crafted this case to impact the election and the failure of the court to support that effort is apparently grounds for recusal.
Blumenthal called for such a motion before the window is lost before the election: “It’s a classic dilemma for justice that a particular judicial officer may be conducting a trial that could be better done by somebody else.”
Despite the statement of his colleague Coons, this is a case where justice delayed is justice.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis announced Thursday that he will send members of the Florida National Guard and the Florida State Guard to assist Texas in its efforts at the southern border. Florida will offer a battalion of National Guard members to be deployed based on the needs in Texas, said DeSantis, who last month dropped his bid for the Republican presidential nomination.
The deployments join the more than 90 officers from Florida’s Highway Patrol, Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, and the Department of Law Enforcement who have already been deployed, and DeSantis noted in a statement that more law enforcement resources are coming.
“States have every right to defend their sovereignty and we are pleased to increase our support to Texas as the Lone Star State works to stop the invasion across the border,” he said. “Our reinforcements will help Texas to add additional barriers, including razor wire along the border. We don’t have a country if we don’t have a border.”
Maj. Gen. John Haas, the adjutant general of Florida, said the deployments are not a new mission, as Florida has supported border security missions in Texas, including federal and state deployments.
“Last spring the Florida National Guard was one of the first in the nation to deploy rotations of soldiers to support Operation Lone Star in Texas,” Haas said. “We have proudly and readily supported our own state’s efforts in similar roles here in Florida.”
“Florida State Guard Director Mark Thieme said his branch is prepared to stand “shoulder-to-shoulder” with its state agency partners in Texas who are “grappling with an unprecedented surge of illegal immigration along their border. The Florida State Guard is postured to deliver rapid emergency response, public safety operations, and humanitarian assistance — wherever the need arises.”
DeSantis’ office noted that since 2021, when President Joe Biden took office, the state has been providing direct law enforcement and military assistance to Texas, including with the Florida National Guard in support of the Texas Military Department in several missions, including with roving patrols, engineer assistance, and observation points.
Further, the Florida Highway Patrol has made contact with nearly 150,000 illegal aliens while conducting over 27,000 traffic stops, resulting in 2,102 human smuggling or human trafficking charges with 2,278 overall arrests, the governor’s office said.
It was also noted that the federal Customs and Border Patrol recorded 2.5 million encounters at the border in fiscal year 2023, including 169 people on the terrorism watchlist trying to come into the U.S. across the southern border.
“More than 10 million illegal immigrants have crossed the border, including more than 1.7 million known got-aways,” the statement said, adding that in December alone, “roughly 260 million lethal doses of fentanyl were seized at the border.”
When Florida became the 26th state to adopt constitutional carry, corporate media and Democrats lost their minds.
None of the requirements for how citizens obtained guns in the Sunshine State changed when Florida House Bill 543 became law July 1, 2023. That didn’t stop the anti-gun press, which were not welcome at the signing, from claiming that permitless concealed carry would exacerbate shootings.
“Following mass shootings, DeSantis signs permitless carry bill,” one NBC News headline complained. In the article, the producer of “The Rachel Maddow Show” sneered at Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis for trading what he dubbed “modest gun safeguards” for an “extreme” and “controversial” law.
Forbes also amplified rhetoric from gun control groups including Giffords claiming the pro-Second Amendment law is “dangerous” and “will drive gun violence up and further jeopardize the safety of our families and communities.”
Even President Joe Biden’s White House joined the dogpile on DeSantis and Florida Republicans for daring to reinforce their constituents’ constitutional rights.
“It is shameful that so soon after another tragic school shooting, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed into law a permit- less concealed carry bill behind closed doors, which eliminates the need to get a license to carry a concealed weapon,” White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre wrote. “This is the opposite of commonsense gun safety. The people of Florida — who have paid a steep price for state and Congressional inaction on guns from Parkland to Pulse Nightclub to Pine Hills — deserve better.”
Now, more than six months after the law’s adoption, evidence contradicts Democrats’ fearmongering that allowing law-abiding citizens to carry a loaded gun for self-defense would result in more “senseless tragedies.”
Since the legalization of constitutional carry in July 2023, Florida’s biggest cities saw a significant decrease in violent crimes, including shootings. In Jacksonville, murders and homicides dropped 6 percent in 2023 from the previous year.
The real record-breaking reduction in homicides was recorded in Miami. In 2022, the municipality recorded 49 homicides. By 2023, that number was down to 31, the fewest number of killings ever recorded in the Magic City. Miami also reported a 34 percent drop, from 151 to 100, in non-fatal shootings and 124 fewer “non-contact” shootings than in 2022. The change mirrors a national trend in less violent crime in 2023.
Florida’s constitutional carry law may not be the sole reason for those numbers, but this is the exact opposite of what Democrats claimed would happen after the law passed. Indeed, it’s fair to suspect respecting citizens’ constitutional right to self-defense played a role in the crime decline. Good guys with guns can deter, prevent, and even stop crime. The legal use of firearms helps thwart an estimated 2.5 million crimes a year.
Studies show that constitutional carry laws like the one in Florida don’t cause legal gun owners to commit crimes like mass shootings. Instead, permit-less carry emphasizes that the growing number of legal gun owners in the United States have the Second Amendment right to defend themselves and others if the need arises.
Jordan Boyd is a staff writer at The Federalist and co-producer of The Federalist Radio Hour. Her work has also been featured in The Daily Wire, Fox News, and RealClearPolitics. Jordan graduated from Baylor University where she majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow her on Twitter @jordanboydtx.
Thursday night’s debate between Florida GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis and California Democrat Gov. Gavin Newsom was a total crapshow for Newsom — literally.
When the Democrat darling wasn’t getting lambasted for violating his own Covid restrictions and allowing homelessness and human feces to plague California’s major cities, Newsom was justifying the presence of pornographic materials in school libraries and defending the surgical mutilation of minors, even without parents’ knowledge. Meanwhile, DeSantis stuck to the facts and tackled major culture war issues most Republicans are often too afraid to mention.
Things got so bad for Newsom that his wife reportedlystepped in to prevent the debate from continuing beyond the original 90-minute discussion agreed upon by the governors.
But Thursday’s back-and-forth wasn’t just a heated discussion between two high-profile politicians. It was a symbolic display of the stark spiritual divide encapsulating the country. While DeSantis represented positions of truth, logic, and common sense — like protecting kids from disfiguring transgender surgeries, for example — Newsom embodied the lies, deception, and propaganda of his fellow leftists.
Even when confronted with facts — some of which were displayed in front of him — Newsom simply lied or pivoted to launching ad hominem attacks against conservatives. Such is the way of the modern left.
In a sane world, DeSantis’ beatdown of Newsom and the Democrat Party’s extremist agenda would end the California governor’s prospects for higher office. But America doesn’t exist inside a sane world anymore, and the sad reality is that many of the leftists who watched Thursday’s debate probably came away believing Newsom’s falsehoods — or worse, knew he was lying but simply didn’t care.
If Newsom were to run for another statewide office in California today, there’s no reason to believe the vast majority of Democrats in the state wouldn’t vote for him. Even if it means having to pay higher taxes, subsidize illegal immigrants, and dodge human feces, used needles, criminals, and homeless encampments on the streets, Democrat voters will not abandon their dystopian belief that the state is almighty.
For the left, politics is religion. It’s what drives them, shapes their nonsensical worldview, and permits them to justify the most demonic policies imaginable, such as murdering innocent unborn babies and conducting irreversible surgeries on minors without parental knowledge. There is no belief in objective morality or truth on the left because Democrats’ view is that morality and truth are whatever they want them to be, facts and logic be damned.
Leftism is a heck of a drug, and no matter how much pain and suffering it causes, Democrats won’t stop taking it.
Shawn Fleetwood is a staff writer for The Federalist and a graduate of the University of Mary Washington. He previously served as a state content writer for Convention of States Action and his work has been featured in numerous outlets, including RealClearPolitics, RealClearHealth, and Conservative Review. Follow him on Twitter @ShawnFleetwood
During his debate with California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Thursday night, Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis was at his strongest on contentious culture-war issues, such as the merits of transgender medical interventions for kids and parental rights.
The governors from two of the nation’s most populous states offered Americans a preview of a 2028 White House showdown on Fox News, debating red and blue state governance. Both are popular two-term governors presiding over colossal coastal states with overwhelming control of their respective state legislatures, and both are also relatively young (Newsom is 56, DeSantis is 45) and well-funded, with presumably long careers ahead. So, while only one of the men on stage Thursday night is officially running for higher office, both eagerly capitalized on the opportunity to frame up a presidential race that’s still five years out. DeSantis was at his best when topics landed on hot-button cultural issues, from parents’ rights in education to California’s endless sexualizing of children.
Fox moderator Sean Hannity brought up Florida’s parental rights bill — which Democrats dishonestly branded as “Don’t Say Gay” — that DeSantis signed last year. The new law bans teachers from bringing mature sexual topics and transgender propaganda into kindergarten through third-grade classrooms.
“Should schools be focused on reading, writing, math, science, history, computers — and maybe leaving values, considering parents might have different values than teachers at school?” Hannity asked. “What is the role?”
“The role of the school is to educate kids, not indoctrinate kids,” DeSantis said. “It’s not to impose an agenda, it’s to do the basics.”
“What we’ve said in Florida is it’s inappropriate to tell a kindergartner that their gender is a choice, it’s inappropriate to tell a second grader that they may have been born in the wrong body,” DeSantis added. “California has that. They want to have that injected into the elementary school.”
DeSantis went on to highlight a book used to teach kids about gay sex called Gender Queer.
“Some of its blocked out,” DeSantis said with an image held up of a graphic illustrated porn scene. “You would not probably be able to put this on air.”
Gov. DeSantis (R-FL) and Gov. Newsom (D-CA) debate parental rights and book bans.
DeSantis: "This is a book that's in some of the schools in California … This is pornography, it's cartoons"
Newsom: "I don't like the way you demean and humiliate people you disagree with, Ron." pic.twitter.com/Vw63cD0OFq
Newsom sought to justify the salacious content in K-12 classrooms, calling DeSantis’ efforts to sanitize leftist activists’ curricula a “banning binge.” The West Coast governor went on to list a series of authors Democrats falsely claim are prohibited in Florida.
A moment later, DeSantis called out California’s radical efforts to become a refuge for trans-identified kids. Last year, Newsom signed a bill allowing gender-confused teens to seek irreversible medical interventions in the Golden State without parental consent.
“How in the heck is that honoring parents’ rights when you’re bringing people in from out of state to go around their parents’ backs and getting life-altering surgeries?” DeSantis asked. “It’s not for you to decide. It’s for the parents to decide.”
Ron DeSantis SKEWERS Gavin Newsom over his "radical" and "extreme" policy overriding parental rights in the name of "gender-affirming care." His bill prioritizes sterilizing drugs that will medicalize kids for the rest of their lives. #Debatehttps://t.co/PGdw9oRDSLpic.twitter.com/spEvUuGaQe
Newsom turned to emotional blackmail, citing the debunked left-wing talking point that transgender-identifying children are more prone to suicide. The data points to the contrary, however, with individuals more likely to suffer mental anguish when given easier access to transgender medical interventions.
Transgenderism and parental rights in education are winning issues for Republicans. The twin topics let the party go on offense just as the Virginia GOP did in 2021 with statewide triumphs in what had become a blue state.
Recent polls suggest more and more Americans are with Republicans on transgenderism and parental rights. A March survey from Parents Defending Education found, “75% of registered voters support legislation requiring schools to get parental consent before helping a student change their gender identity at school, while only 18% oppose this policy” (emphasis theirs).
A Gallup poll in June found that 55 percent of Americans believe it is “morally wrong” to attempt to “change” one’s sex, up from 51 percent two years ago. An overwhelming majority opposed bending sex requirements for athletic competitions.
Tristan Justice is the western correspondent for The Federalist and the author of Social Justice Redux, a conservative newsletter on culture, health, and wellness. He has also written for The Washington Examiner and The Daily Signal. His work has also been featured in Real Clear Politics and Fox News. Tristan graduated from George Washington University where he majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow him on Twitter at @JusticeTristan or contact him at Tristan@thefederalist.com. Sign up for Tristan’s email newsletter here.
The biggest loser of Thursday night’s debate between Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and California Gov. Gavin Newsom was us, the voters. For far too long party officials have had a stranglehold on how candidates are vetted, presented, and nominated. If the “Red vs. Blue State” debate was successful, it could have been the jumping-off point for other networks, third-party candidates, or donors to sponsor and create better opportunities for voters to see candidates in more diverse settings and formats. Sadly, it was unsuccessful for everyone involved.
Kudos to Sean Hannity for making it happen and kudos to Newsom for showing up to a forum he knew would be tilted toward DeSantis. Despite his actual performance, Newsom is the only person in his party that would have agreed to debate in that environment in the first place. Could you even imagine Vice President Kamala Harris in place of Newsom last night? It might have ended her political career. The reality is we know the White House would have never, ever allowed her to appear.
It’s hard to be critical of Hannity’s handling of the debate chaos because, short of cutting their mics off, there wasn’t much he could do besides appeal to both men several times to stop behaving like toddlers. It is unbecoming of governors, let alone presidential candidates, to talk over one another, and keep repeating the same statistic or practiced line. Still, Hannity deserves credit for pulling it off despite the fact that Trump and those around him aren’t thrilled he gave DeSantis the prime-time opportunity. Hannity has spoken openly about his personal relationship with Trump and his family, but he gave DeSantis airtime and a unique venue anyway.
Wearing the Hat vs. the Jersey
If you watch sports or attend games in person, you know the difference between a fan who is wearing a hat and the one who is wearing a jersey. A hat doesn’t have your favorite player’s name on it, just the team. A jersey has a specific player’s number and (with few exceptions) their last name. Fight in the stands? Most likely between fans who have jerseys on, not hats. In primary season, political pundits, donors, and early supporters have jerseys on, but regular voters who are living their lives mostly have hats on, or are willing to switch jerseys when the primary dust settles. How you think this debate went for DeSantis largely depends on whether you are wearing a DeSantis jersey or a GOP hat.
If you are wearing the DeSantis jersey, you think he crushed Newsom and embarrassed him with several references to the French Laundry incident and Newsom’s kids going to in-person private school while the rest of his state’s children were at home. You thought it was a nice touch when he talked about San Francisco police officers approaching him and thanking him for his support of law enforcement because they don’t get that in California. You were giddy when he pulled out both his paper props from his suit jacket to shame Newsom over the graphic nature of a book and a print-out of a San Francisco human feces map. If you have a DeSantis jersey on, it was a good event, even if all he got was major screen time without Nikki Haley zinging bad one-liners at him all night.
If you are wearing the GOP hat, maybe you didn’t see it the same way. You saw a presidential candidate that had some shades of Marco Rubio circa 2016 getting wrecked by Chris Christie. The repetitive talking points and stats in the face of a full-on frontal assault by Newsom is troublesome. You saw a guy who practiced all the stories he was going to tell last night (father-in-law, French Laundry, Newsom kids in person at private school) and still couldn’t tell them well.
You were thinking: if Trump told these exact same stories they would have landed with such force that Gavin’s White House dreams might have died on that stage last night. You also might be thinking that if Nikki Haley told those same stories she would have raised millions more dollars for her campaign. You saw a guy with a friendly moderator not be able to shift on the fly and bury Newsom when everything (data, history, and truth) was on his side. You also know that Donald Trump wouldn’t need to pull out crumpled paper to embarrass Newsom. He could have told those exact two stories without the props just as effectively.
A friend of mine who wears a GOP hat, not a jersey, texted me, “I don’t think he is good on his feet” during the debate, and he isn’t alone in that assessment. GOP hat-wearers are very perceptive and watched DeSantis Thursday night wondering if he has the stand-up skills to go to metaphorical war with whomever is occupying the other podium.
I am not sure last night moved the needle for DeSantis but how it’s perceived is very different by those wearing DeSantis jerseys versus those wearing GOP hats. It was a wasted opportunity for some much-needed change of the political process and for both participants.
Aaron DeCorte has worked in sales and marketing for more than 25 years. His wife is a 9-1-1 operator for their local police department.
An unsettling video shows the moment that a Florida man mowed down two deputies in an alleged “ambush” attack, according to police. The cops were critically injured, and one officer may need to have his leg amputated.
The Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office stated that officers responded to a 911 call from a mother who said she was in fear of her son being violent. The mother allegedly told police that her son, Ralph Bouzy, was suffering from a mental health crisis.
Shortly before 8 a.m. on Thursday, officers arrived at the residence in Brandon, Florida. Deputies encountered Bouzy in the driver’s seat of a car in the driveway of his home, according to a news release from the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office. Officers reportedly assured the 28-year-old Florida man that they were there to help. However, Bouzy refused to speak to the police and quickly drove away.
Bouzy drove back to the scene just minutes later in a Nissan Altima. Two deputies were standing beside a police SUV, and video shows Bouzy barrel into the deputies – pinning them to the patrol vehicle.
As the deputies were strewn on the pavement after suffering excruciating injuries, Bouzy calmly got out of his vehicle and walked toward another officer who was not hit by the vehicle. Police bodycam video shows Bouzy refusing to adhere to commands from the officers.
Police bodycam footage shows a deputy deploy a Taser on Bouzy, which causes him to fall to the pavement. Another officer apprehended the suspect while he was on the ground.
Bouzy was arrested and charged with three counts of attempted murder on a law enforcement officer.
Law enforcement noted that Bouzy has an extensive criminal history, with three felonies and 14 misdemeanors. In 2017, Bouzy was involved in a hit-and-run in which he punched a deputy in the face, according to WFLA.
“There is no other way to describe this other than an ambush,” said Sheriff Chad Chronister. “Our deputies put their lives on the line every day to protect this community and what happened today makes me absolutely sick.”
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said that he and his wife, Casey, are “praying for the deputies who were seriously injured during this ambush in Brandon.”
“We don’t tolerate attacks on our law enforcement officers in Florida,” DeSantis declared. “The coward who brutally attacked these deputies will be punished.”
Corporal Carlos Brito, 39, and Deputy Manuel Santos, 31, suffered critical injuries and are receiving medical treatment at Tampa General Hospital. Santos has a bilateral break in his leg with extensive ligament damage that will require surgery.
Brito’s injuries are so severe that his leg might have to be amputated. Brito’s leg was crushed in between the two vehicles to the point that a piece of his femur bone was stuck in the car. A surgeon requested that the bone be dislodged from the vehicle and brought to the hospital to help save his leg.
Chronister said, “Deputy Brito is awake and surrounded by his family. The surgeons are monitoring his progress and continue to do everything possible to save his leg.”
“Corporal Brito and Deputy Santos came to work today committed to making a difference in their community,” Chronister added. “Because of this man’s deliberate and intentional actions, their lives, and their family’s lives are changed forever.”
(WARNING: Graphic video)
𝐖𝐀𝐑𝐍𝐈𝐍𝐆: 𝐆𝐑𝐀𝐏𝐇𝐈𝐂 𝐕𝐈𝐃𝐄𝐎#teamHCSO is releasing surveillance and body camera footage from today's ambush of two deputies in Brandon. Both deputies are currently at Tampa General Hospital undergoing surgery for critical injuries.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis—seen here speaking In Long Beach, California, on Sunday—announced on Tuesday evening that Florida’s new law permitting the death penalty for pedophiles went into effect this week. (Photo: Luis Sinco/Los Angeles Times/Getty Images)
Florida’s new law permitting the death penalty for pedophiles went into effect this week, the state’s governor announced Tuesday evening.
“Florida’s law allowing the death penalty for child rapists is now in effect,” Gov. Ron DeSantis said in a post on social media. “The minimum sentence is life in prison without parole. In Florida, anyone who harms children in such a horrific way will never walk free.”
DeSantis signed HB 1297 in May, and the statute took effect on Sunday. The law states that “a person who commits a sexual battery upon, or in an attempt to commit sexual battery injures the sexual organs of, a person less than 12 years of age carries a great risk of death and danger to vulnerable members of this state.”
“Such crimes destroy the innocence of a young child and violate all standards of decency held by civilized society,” the statute says, noting that the Florida Legislature determined that both Buford v. State of Florida and Kennedy v. Louisiana, cases in which the Florida Supreme Court and the U.S. Supreme Court held that the death penalty for child rape was cruel and unusual, were “wrongly decided and an egregious infringement of the states’ power to punish the most heinous of crimes.”
Florida’s law allowing the death penalty for child rapists is now in effect.
The minimum sentence is life in prison without parole. In Florida, anyone who harms children in such a horrific way will never walk free.
DeSantis said in May that he thinks the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2008 ruling on capital punishment was “wrong,” suggesting that Florida’s new law may enable the justices to reconsider the ruling on the matter.
“This bill sets up a procedure to be able to challenge that precedent and to be able to say that, in Florida, we think that the worst of the worst crimes deserve the worst of the worst punishment,” he said at the time.
A full federal appeals court declined to take up Democrat groups’ challenge of Florida’s 2021 election integrity law on Thursday, marking a major win for Gov. Ron DeSantis and the GOP-controlled state legislature.
According to the Orlando Sentinel, Thursday’s decision by the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals “let stand an April ruling by a three-judge panel of the [court] that sided with the state on major issues in the case.” The 11th Circuit’s April decision effectively overturned a prior ruling issued by U.S. District Judge Mark Walker — an Obama appointee — who baselessly claimed the law in question discriminated against black voters.
“What are the supposedly racist provisions that the district judge enjoined officials from enforcing?” Chief Judge William Pryor wrote of the court’s Thursday decision. “They are unremarkable, race-neutral policies designed to bolster election security, maintain order at the polls and ensure that voter-registration forms are delivered on time.”
Signed into law in May 2021, SB 90 includes numerous provisions heavily supported by election integrity activists and American voters. According to a DeSantis press release, the statute “strengthens existing voter ID laws, bans ballot harvesting, prohibits unsolicited mass mailing of ballots, increases election transparency, and prohibits private money from administering elections.”
In his March 2022 decision, Walker claimed that Florida lawmakers demonstrated “intent to discriminate against Black voters” and that the statute is “the stark result[] of a political system that, for well over a century, has overrepresented White Floridians and underrepresented Black and Latino Floridians.” The majority of the 11th Circuit’s three-judge panel disagreed, writing in April that Walker’s allegations of “intentional racial discrimination rest on both legal errors and clearly erroneous findings of fact.”
“Under our precedent, this history cannot support a finding of discriminatory intent in this case. Florida’s more recent history does not support a finding of discriminatory intent,” Pryor wrote.
Shawn Fleetwood is a staff writer for The Federalist and a graduate of the University of Mary Washington. He previously served as a state content writer for Convention of States Action and his work has been featured in numerous outlets, including RealClearPolitics, RealClearHealth, and Conservative Review. Follow him on Twitter @ShawnFleetwood
A federal judge in Florida on Tuesday partially blocked the state from enforcing its recent ban on people under 18 receiving gender-transitioning care such as puberty blockers and hormone therapy, allowing three transgender children to continue with their treatment while he hears a lawsuit challenging the law.
The preliminary order, from U.S. District Judge Robert Hinkle in Tallahassee, applies only to three transgender children in the lawsuit and their health care providers. It will remain in effect while the judge considers a lawsuit by seven families. The other four families did not join an emergency bid to block the law because they do not expect to need gender-affirming care in the immediate future.
“Today my entire family is breathing a huge sigh of relief knowing we can now access the treatment that we know will keep Susan healthy and allow her to continue being the happy, confident child she has been,” one of the plaintiff parents said in a statement, using a pseudonym for her child.
“We obviously disagree with the judge’s ruling,” said Jeremy Redfern, a spokesperson for DeSantis, in an email. “We will continue fighting against the rogue elements in the medical establishment that push ideology over evidence and protect against mutilating our kids.”
Florida’s medical licensing boards adopted bans on gender care for minors in March, and DeSantis last month signed a similar ban passed by the state legislature. It was the latest of a slew of laws passed by Florida and other states restricting many aspects of transgender people’s lives, including medical care, participation in school sports and ability to change identifying documents.
The families said in their complaint that the bans violated their right to equal protection under the U.S. Constitution and parents’ right to make medical decisions for their children. The children in the case range in age from eight to 14. Two have already been prescribed puberty blockers, and all of their parents expect they will need puberty blockers or hormones in the future.
While Wednesday’s order is not a final judgment, Hinkle said the plaintiffs were likely to win. He harshly criticized the law as motivated by “bigotry,” noting that one state legislator had called transgender witnesses at a public hearing “demons.”
Florida GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis officially signed a trio of bills Monday to stop Chinese Communist Party influence in his state. The bills limit Chinese-tied land buys of farmland, near military bases, or critical infrastructure, protect against Chinese forced technology transfer, and prohibit funding tied to China for education institutions in the state.
“Florida is taking action to stand against the United States’ greatest geopolitical threat — the Chinese Communist Party,” DeSantis said Monday.
“I’m proud to sign this legislation to stop the purchase of our farmland and land near our military bases and critical infrastructure by Chinese agents, to stop sensitive digital data from being stored in China, and to stop CCP influence in our education system from grade school to grad school.
“We are following through on our commitment to crack down on communist China.”
In a Friday interview with Newsmax‘s John Bachman, DeSantis hailed the Florida Legislature GOP supermajorities for being able to get an aggressive agenda passed to root out Chinese influence in his state.
“This is trailblazing for the nation,” DeSantis told Bachman in an interview that aired on “Eric Bolling The Balance.” “Certainly, when you talk about CCP, they made a concerted effort to buy farmland, and so we’re very cognizant of that. We’re not going to let that happen in Florida, but we’ve gone even farther and said we don’t want them near any critical infrastructure.”
Interests of Foreign Countries (SB 264) restricts governmental entities from contracting with foreign countries and entities of concern and restricts conveyances of agricultural lands and other interests in real property to foreign principals, the People’s Republic of China, and other entities and persons that are affiliated with them. It also amends certain electronic health record statutes to ensure that health records are physically stored in the continental U.S., U.S. territories, or Canada.
“Food security is national security, and we have a responsibility to ensure Floridians have access to a safe, affordable, and abundant food supply,” Commissioner Wilton Simpson said Monday. “China and other hostile foreign nations control hundreds of thousands of acres of critical agricultural lands in the U.S., leaving our food supply and our national security interests at risk.
“Restricting China and other hostile foreign nations from controlling Florida’s agricultural land lands near critical infrastructure facilities protects our state, provides long-term stability, and preserves our economic freedom. This bill is long overdue.”
Agreements of Educational Entities with Foreign Entities (SB 846) prohibits state colleges and universities and their officials from soliciting or accepting any gift from a college or university based in a foreign country of concern. It also prohibits state colleges and universities from accepting any grant from or participating in any agreement or partnership with any college or university based in a foreign country of concern. The bill also prohibits the ownership or operation of any private school participating in the state’s school choice scholarship program by a person or entity domiciled in, owned by, or in any way controlled by a foreign country of concern.
Prohibited Applications on Government-issued Devices (SB 258) requires the Department of Management Services to create a list of prohibited applications owned by a foreign principal or foreign countries of concern, including China, which present a cybersecurity and data privacy risk.
The bill requires government and educational institution to block access to prohibited applications on all government servers and devices in Florida and requires public employers to retain the ability to remotely wipe and uninstall these dangerous applications from government issued devices.
North Carolina and Florida Republicans chalked up major wins last week after a series of court rulings upheld their respective election integrity efforts.
On Friday, the North Carolina Supreme Court overturned its previous decision banning gerrymandered districting in the state. Last year, the court’s then-Democrat majority (4-3) “threw out a state Senate map from the Republican-led state legislature and maintained congressional boundaries that had been drawn up by trial judges.” After Republicans won the state’s two Supreme Court races during the 2022 midterms, the high court’s new conservative majority (5-2) opted to rehear the case earlier this year.
“In its decision today, the Court returns to its tradition of honoring the constitutional roles assigned to each branch,” wrote Chief Justice Paul Newby in Friday’s decision. “This case is not about partisan politics but rather about realigning the proper roles of the judicial and legislative branches. Today we begin to correct course, returning the judiciary to its designated lane.”
In December, the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments in Moore v. Harper, a case pertaining to the North Carolina redistricting fiasco. As The Federalist’s Margot Cleveland reported, the justices will ultimately decide whether a state court has the ability to usurp the constitutional power of state legislatures and “impose its own map for congressional districts drawn after the decennial census.”
In addition to gerrymandering, the North Carolina Supreme Court also issued separate rulings upholding a previously passed voter ID law and overruling a trial court decision that permitted convicted felons on probation or parole to vote. In December 2018, the GOP-controlled General Assembly passed a bill mandating citizens show a form of valid ID when voting several weeks after North Carolina voters approved a photo ID constitutional ballot initiative.
In September 2021, a trial court struck down the 2018 statute, repeating the false claim that such laws discriminate against racial minorities. The then-Democrat-controlled Supreme Court affirmed the trial court’s ruling in December. Much like with its prior gerrymandering ruling, the high court’s new Republican majority decided to rehear the case.
According to The News & Observer, a local news outlet, acceptable forms of valid voter ID include a U.S. passport, an unexpired North Carolina driver’s license, a local or state government employee ID card, or a state voter identification card.
Legal Victory for Florida Republicans
Meanwhile, Florida Republicans scored a major victory for election integrity last week after a federal appeals court upheld a 2021 law aimed at enhancing security procedures regarding the use of mail-in ballots and ballot drop boxes. On Thursday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit ruled in a 2-1 decision that the March 2022 ruling by U.S. District Judge Mark Walker — an Obama appointee — was severely flawed.
In his decision, Walker alleged that Florida lawmakers demonstrated “intent to discriminate against Black voters” and asserted that the statute is “the stark result[] of a political system that, for well over a century, has overrepresented White Floridians and underrepresented Black and Latino Floridians.” The appeals court disagreed, writing that “the findings of intentional racial discrimination rest on both legal errors and clearly erroneous findings of fact.”
The court further admonished Walker’s faulty legal analysis, particularly his error in claiming that “a racist past is evidence of current intent.”
“Under our precedent, this history cannot support a finding of discriminatory intent in this case. Florida’s more recent history does not support a finding of discriminatory intent,” wrote Chief Judge William Pryor.
Notably, Walker is also the judge tasked with overseeing Disney’s ongoing lawsuit against Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.
Shawn Fleetwood is a Staff Writer for The Federalist and a graduate of the University of Mary Washington. He also serves as a state content writer for Convention of States Action and his work has been featured in numerous outlets, including RealClearPolitics, RealClearHealth, and Conservative Review. Follow him on Twitter @ShawnFleetwood
Marion County Sheriff Billy Woods on Friday slammed “society,” “school districts” and gun law rhetoric after announcing the arrests of two juveniles — one of which is just 12 years old — in connection with the recent killings of three teenagers in Florida.
A third juvenile suspect remains at large, and the attorney general’s office is weighing whether to charge all three suspects as adults, Woods said during a press conference.
“The fact is: society fails them. We do not hold our juveniles accountable. We minimize their actions,” Woods said Friday.
The suspects are accused of fatally shooting 16-year-old Layla Silvernail, 16-year-old Camille Quarles, and an unnamed 17-year-old male on or around March 30 in rural Marion County.
Marion County Sheriff Billy Woods blames society and school district failures for three juvenile suspects accused of killing three teenagers around March 30. (Fox News)
Woods told reporters he had to “look into the eyes” of the suspects’ mothers and inform them of their son’s crimes.
“Really, [the suspects’ parents] don’t have a whole lot to say. If you’re a parent, put yourself in their shoes. Holy hell. Panic. I’m scared to death as a parent. Embarrassed. Ashamed. What do you think they’re gonna say?” the sheriff said.
“I am a father, and I cannot fathom what they were going through. These mothers and the mothers across this nation need all of your help because here’s what infuriates me,” he added.
“I am a father, and I cannot fathom what they were going through. These mothers and the mothers across this nation need all of your help because here’s what infuriates me,” Marion County Sheriff Billy Woods said. (Marion County Sheriff’s Office/Facebook)
The sheriff also criticized media and others who put the blame on guns after a shooting.
“There are individuals out there viewing … who want to blame the one thing that has no ability or the capacity to commit the crime itself, and that’s the gun,” Woods said. “These individuals committed the crime.”
He added that he does not know what the solution is, but “[t]he bad guy’s going to get a gun no matter what laws you put in place.” Woods went on to blame society and schools for not holding juveniles accountable for their crimes.
Layla Silvernail, left, and Camille Quarles, along with an unidentified 17-year-old male, were shot and left for dead in Marion County, Florida, between March 30 and April 1. (Facebook/Layla Silvernail/Camille Quarles)
“I am a father,” he said. “But here’s the one thing my boys know: growing up, the freaking barber had my permission to whip their a–es.”
The suspects in the triple homicide were involved in a burglary and robbery ring and stole their firearms from cars, Woods said.
“A simple burglary, as some people would say — but I don’t consider anything ‘simple’ when it comes to a burglary — if the law allows me, I’ll plaster their face up … on my page, on media, I will hand it out if the law allows me because parents have the right to know who their kids are hanging out with and preventing this,” Woods said.
He continued, “Our school districts, not just here, across this state and across this nation need to stop minimizing the actions of their students. Hold them accountable. That’s where the failure is.”
Police first found Silvernail with a gunshot wound, lying on the side of the road in the area of Forest Lakes Park on SE 183rd Avenue Road. Authorities transported the teenager to a hospital in critical condition, and she lost brain function until she was pronounced dead.
Three teenage shooting victims were found left for dead miles apart in Marion County, Florida, between March 30 and April 1. (America’s Newsroom)
A day after finding Silvernail, Marion County Sheriff’s Office (MCSO) deputies responded to SE 94th Street and SE 188th Court and located a deceased 17-year-old male with a gunshot wound.
The next morning, on April 1, the MCSO Major Crimes Unit, Forensic Unit and Underwater Recovery Team responded to a tip and searched the area of Malauka Loop and Malauka Loop Trace and found Silvernail’s vehicle partially submerged in a body of water. The car was about 9 miles from where Silvernail was found.
The suspects were in Silvernail’s vehicle with the victims prior to their deaths, according to the sheriff. Authorities believe all three victims were shot at the same time.
“She was there of her own free will,” Woods said of Silvernail.
Layla Silvernail’s family is planning to donate the 16-year-old’s organs, according to a GoFundMe. (Facebook/Layla Silvernail)
After obtaining a search warrant and searching her vehicle, authorities found 16-year-old Quarles dead from a gunshot wound in Silvernail’s car. The arrested suspects confessed to shooting Quarles in the vehicle, Woods said.
Woods previously told Fox News Digital that he believed the suspects were part of a “wannabe” or “neighborhood” gang, and the victims likely knew them for a short time.
Police have not released the name of the male victim who was killed.
Audrey Conklin is a digital reporter for Fox News Digital and FOX Business. Email tips to audrey.conklin@fox.com or on Twitter at @audpants.
Isn’t it great to have the media complaining about what a Republican is doing, instead of what he’s tweeting?
The New York Times recently did a major investigation into Gov. Ron DeSantis’ suspension last August of a Florida prosecutor for the flimsy reason that he’d publicly announced that he would not enforce state law on abortion.
The Florida legislature had just spent nearly two months banging out a compromise bill that allowed abortions up to 15 weeks — more liberal than most European countries — and included an exception for life of the mother. An abortionist would literally have to turn himself in to get prosecuted under this law.
What kind of showboating clown would sign a public “pledge” not to prosecute a case that had about a 1 in 10 billion chance of ever landing in his office?
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Florida state attorney Andrew H. Warren.
This wasn’t Warren’s first publicity stunt. Even a fawning profile on Warren in the Tampa Bay Times noted his penchant for going “out of his way to draw attention to himself,” setting him “apart from other elected prosecutors.”
During the pandemic, Warren held a press conference to announce that he was prosecuting a church pastor for violating the county’s stay-at-home order by holding services — a misdemeanor offense.
Days later, Gov. DeSantis issued an order expressly overriding the county’s shutdown rules — and Warren held a press conference to denounce the governor’s order. People will DIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!
He held a press conference a few months later, after dismissing criminal charges against 67 BLM protesters arrested by the police for unlawful assembly. (Luckily, congregating to worship George Floyd poses none of the health risks of congregating to worship Jesus.)
So when Warren held another press conference to announce his pledge not to prosecute abortion cases, DeSantis removed him from office. (Florida constitution: “the governor may suspend from office … any county officer, for malfeasance, misfeasance, neglect of duty …”)
You wanted to be a hero, Andy? OK, you’re a hero! My conscience demands I sign this pledge. Here I stand. I can do no other. … HEY, WAIT! YOU CAN’T FIRE ME!
An accurate headline on this story would be something like, “Governor suspends public servant for refusing to do his job.” But The New York Times’ headline was: “Inside Ron DeSantis’s Politicized Removal of an Elected Prosecutor.” (My headline: “Inside The New York Times’ Politicized Report on a Republican Governor.”)
The reporters, junior psychologists, decided to go beyond the facts and reveal DeSantis’ secret motive. It seems that the real reason DeSantis fired an insolent prosecutor was because: He thought it would be popular with voters.
I know, disgusting, right?
Hey, New York Times, how about asking why firing this preening fruitcake might be well-received by voters?
[Frantically waving my hand.]
People are sick of taxpayer-supported government officials who expect standing ovations for not doing their jobs. It’s become something of a lifestyle choice for Democrats to run for office, then refuse to enforce any laws they disagree with.
President Obama announced that he would not enforce immigration laws against so-called “Dreamers,” despite passing an amnesty being Congress’ job. Obama even gave the illegals work permits, in open defiance of federal law.
Then Trump became president, and Democrats around the country announced that they, too, would refuse to abide by federal immigration laws, declaring themselves “sanctuary cities.”
In the last few years, we got a slew of George Soros-backed, BLM-supporting progressive prosecutors showily refusing to prosecute. Cook County (Illinois) State’s Attorney Kim Foxx, for example, said her goal in office was to fight “mass incarceration,” which is pretty much the exact opposite of her job description. She gave a free pass to most shoplifters, about half of drug traffickers, and gang members engaging in Wild West shootouts — which she described as “mutual combat.”
Instead of “Don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time,” how about: “Don’t run for the job if you have no intention of doing it”? (I’m still working on the rhyming part.) It would be like firemen and policemen who refused to respond to calls.
That’s why, yes, New York Times, DeSantis’ firing of Warren is probably going to be a hit with voters. He’s the first guy to take these comic book heroes at their word and remove them from the offices they openly disdain. Hiring DeSantis is a lot easier than having to keep organizing massive recall campaigns — as the residents of San Francisco recently did to get rid of their anti-prosecution prosecutor Chesa Boudin.
But isn’t it great to have the Times mad at a Republican for actually scoring a win — and not for posting obnoxious tweets? If it were Trump, they’d be criticizing him for tweeting something untoward about Andrew Warren’s face.
Everyone’s worried DeSantis won’t be as “exciting” as Trump on the campaign trail. After all-talk-no-action Trump, who cares about talk? This time, we want action.
When Disney began lobbying against a parental-rights bill in Florida that would prohibit public school teachers from discussing sex, sexual orientation, or so-called gender identity with prepubescent kids in kindergarten through third grade, Gov. Ron DeSantis proposed a special session of the legislature to review Disney World’s 50-year-old “independent special district” status to see if it was “appropriately serving the public interest.”
The popular bill — which Democrats and the media dishonestly renamed “Don’t Say Gay” despite the bill never mentioning the word gay or stopping anyone from saying it — passed both houses and was signed by DeSantis. Disney was handily beaten. Nevertheless, DeSantis ended up signing legislation that effectively stripped Disney of control of over 25,000 acres surrounding its theme park and created a new tax district.
Democrats like Jonathan Chait claimed the threat alone was “What Post-Trump Authoritarianism Looks Like,” and MSNBC’s Ja’han Jones noted that the threats showed the GOP had gone “full authoritarian,” and so on. By full authoritarian, he meant that the Florida legislature passed the bill and then the governor signed the bill. Disney, of course, has no constitutional or divine right to be a special tax district. But the notion of “democracy” is highly malleable these days.
It is probably unpopular to say I believe it’s a terribly short-sighted idea to normalize state retribution against speech. Disney should be able to stake any political position it wants without worrying about repercussions from the government — in the same way that Jack Phillips or Hobby Lobby or Chick-fil-A shouldn’t have to worry about the government punishing them for their beliefs. If Disney’s position is that state-run schools should teach kindergarteners about oral sex and celebrate gender dysphoria despite the wishes of parents, it would almost surely pay a steep economic price.
It is also true, however, that one can understand why DeSantis’ move is popular with conservatives. The entire feigned anger over the incident from leftists is laughable and transparently insincere. Contemporary Democrats have never been reluctant to punish and single out corporations that do not share their political values. Virtually the entire technocratic economic agenda of the contemporary left exists to subsidize industries that produce things they like, mandate consumers buy those things, and punish those who do not. Democrats have never been reluctant to target disfavored companies over their profit margins, to use corporations to compel vaccinations and unions, or to threaten Big Tech companies into accepting government speech codes. The committee chair in the Senate is an open Marxist. Who are they kidding?
This week we learned that Walgreens wouldn’t sell the abortifacient mifepristone in 20 red states that have laws curbing unfettered abortion. Gavin Newsom, the man who presides over a state whose economic controls are beginning to resemble an Eastern European “republic” circa 1975, promised the pharmaceutical company would face consequences and that California would no longer do any business with the chain because it “cowers to the extremists” and “puts women’s lives at risk.”
Walgreens, of course, is not standing in opposition to any California law, much less putting any women’s lives in danger. It’s not lobbying the state to overturn laws that legalize abortion into the ninth month of pregnancy nor staking a position that is at odds with most of the state’s voters — though it has every right to do all those things if it desires. Walgreens has decided not to sell abortion drugs, ones it has never sold in the past, in other states. It is not doing so for any moral reasons. It is trying to avoid legal conflict.
Many Democrats celebrated Newsom’s threat, as they’ve celebrated threats before, because they have zero qualms about compelling or hurting companies. They don’t believe it’s authoritarian. They’re just angry they no longer have a monopoly on the practice.
David Harsanyi is a senior editor at The Federalist, a nationally syndicated columnist, a Happy Warrior columnist at National Review, and author of five books—the most recent, Eurotrash: Why America Must Reject the Failed Ideas of a Dying Continent. He has appeared on Fox News, C-SPAN, CNN, MSNBC, NPR, ABC World News Tonight, NBC Nightly News and radio talk shows across the country. Follow him on Twitter, @davidharsanyi.
A massive student brutalized a teacher’s aide Tuesday in an unprovoked attack at Matanzas High School in Palm Coast, Florida, leaving the woman unconscious and severely injured. His apparent reason for jeopardizing the woman’s life: She had prevented him from playing video games in class.
The student told deputies that he was upset that the victim had taken his Nintendo Switch away from him during class. WTLV-TV reported that the student also told officials that he would “beat her up” any time she tried to take his game.
The paraprofessional’s attempt to spare the 17-year-old from the mindless distraction and to help facilitate his education evidently proved unbearable for the student, who can be seen in surveillance footage barreling toward the victim and knocking her from her feet.
Motionless and unconscious after the initial unprovoked attack, the defenseless victim can be seen in the video suffering stomps, kicks, and a flurry of punches to the back of her head from the heavyset suspect.
The 270-pound student can be seen straddling the victim during the attack, delivering blows to her sides and back before others finally intervened:
Video shows Flagler County school employee attacked by student over Nintendo Switchyoutu.be
The FCSO indicated that the victim, hit at least 15 times, was taken to AdventHealth Palm Coast for treatment of her wounds, but not before her aggressor reportedly managed to spit on her body and threaten to come back and kill her.
Restrained by multiple school staff members, the student was taken to the Sheriff Perry Hall Inmate Detention Facility. While deputies processed him after the grievous attack, the student reportedly kicked the deputy’s desk and computer. He was later handed off to the Department of Juvenile Justice.
He has been charged with felony aggravated battery with bodily harm.
“The actions of this student are absolutely horrendous and completely uncalled for,” Sheriff Rick Staly said in a statement. “We hope the victim will be able to recover, both mentally and physically, from this incident. Thankfully, students and staff members came to the victim’s aid before the SRDs could arrive. Our schools should be a safe place – for both employees and students.”
Flagler Schools Superintendent Cathy Mittelstadt said, “Creating a safe learning and working environment on our campuses is critical. Violence is never an appropriate reaction.”
President Biden has finally found a solution to address the surge in illegal crossings at the southern border: tell the tens of thousands of aliens unlawfully entering the United States from Mexico that they can come to America “legally” if they instead fly to a port-of-entry in the interior of the country.
Seriously, for all the Biden administration’s spin, that’s his plan — and it is illegal.
Of course, when Biden announced his administration’s newest policy on Thursday in advance of his midterm inaugural trip to the southern border on Sunday, the press release heralded the plan as a “new border enforcement action.” But as National Review’s Andrew McCarthy exposed in his weekend column, it’s a scam.
The scam, though, is layers thick, both legally and politically. And to reach the core truth — that Biden refuses to faithfully execute his duties as the president of the United States by defending our sovereign border — one must first unpeel the specifics of the newest plan buried in the Department of Homeland Security’s official notice of the changes, while also analyzing the relevant immigration law.
The Plan
Today’s edition of the Federal Register, which serves as “the Daily Journal of the United States Government,” contains the details of DHS’s supposed “new border enforcement action,” in four separate “notices,” titled respectively: “Implementation of a Parole Process for Cubans,” “Implementation of a Parole Process for Haitians,” “Implementation of a Parole Process for Nicaraguans,” and “Implementation of Changes to the Parole Process for Venezuelans.”
Each notice summarizes the Biden administration’s supposed “solution” to the flooding of the southern border, which in short consists of allowing, on a monthly basis, a total of 30,000 aliens to enter the United States “legally” if they are Cuban, Haitian, Nicaraguan, or Venezuelan nationals. To qualify, aliens must have a “U.S.-based supporter,” which could be “non-governmental entities or community-based organizations,” and must “provide for their own commercial travel to an air [port-of-entry] and final U.S. destination.” National security and public safety vetting are also required, as well as any additional public health requirements, such as vaccinations.
But how is it that illegal-alien border crossers can become lawful noncitizens by just jumping through a few hoops and flying to the interior of the country, rather than sneaking over the southern border? They can’t. And in crafting its latest immigration plan, the Biden administration is again acting lawlessly.
Biden’s Lawlessness
The Biden administration maintains it has the authority to allow aliens from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela to enter the United States legally under section 212(d)(5)(A) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, or INA. That section provides the secretary of homeland security the authority to “parole” noncitizens “into the United States temporarily under such reasonable conditions as [the secretary] may prescribe only on a case-by-case basis for urgent humanitarian reasons or significant public benefit.”
“parole” for purposes of the INA is a “legal fiction” in which “a paroled alien is physically allowed to enter the country,” but the alien maintains the same legal status as if he or she were held at the border waiting for an application for admission to be granted or denied. But besides obtaining the legal right to be present in the United States, an alien paroled into the United States may obtain employment authorization to work here lawfully.
As the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals recently explained, “Parole began as an administrative invention that allowed aliens in certain circumstances to remain on U.S. soil without formal admission, with Congress codifying the practice when it initially enacted the Immigration and Nationality Act (the ‘INA’) in 1952.” At that time, Congress gave the attorney general “discretion to parole into the United States temporarily under such conditions as he may prescribe … any alien applying for admission to the United States.”
However, “throughout the mid-twentieth century, the executive branch on multiple occasions purported to use the parole power to bring in large groups of immigrants,” prompting Congress twice to amend the INA “to limit the scope of the parole power and prevent the executive branch from using it as a programmatic policy tool.” First, as the Fifth Circuit explained, in 1980, Congress added a requirement that the executive branch only parole refugees where “compelling reasons in the public interest with respect to that particular alien,” exist. Then, in 1996, Congress amended the INA to provide “parole may be granted ‘only on a case-by-case basis for urgent humanitarian reasons or significant public benefit.’”
While the DHS’s just-announced parole plans claim the department is making parole decisions on a case-by-case basis, the qualifications set forth by the DHS establish that the Biden administration is illegally using parole power “as a programmatic policy tool,” rather than as designed by Congress, for example, by “paroling aliens who do not qualify for an admission category but have an urgent need for medical care in the United States and paroling aliens who qualify for a visa but are waiting for it to become available.”
The Biden administration’s lawless use of its parole power should come as no surprise, though, as since November of 2021, the president’s team has relied on Section 212(d)(5)(A) to release “family units” at the border to supposedly deal with “capacity constraints.” Florida has challenged the Biden administration’s granting of such carte blanche parole, as well as the president’s failure to detain illegal aliens as mandated under the INA, and trial is set to begin on both those claims later today in a federal court in Florida.
The ‘Standing’ Problem
A similar legal challenge to the Biden administration’s recent parole plan seems likely, although by requiring applicants to secure a vetted “supporter” who will commit to providing for the parolees’ financial needs while they are present in the United States, it will be challenging for anyone to show “standing” to challenge DHS’s plan.
For instance, in the Florida case, while the Biden administration argued the state lacked “standing,” or the right to sue, the court rejected that argument, reasoning Florida “plausibly alleged that the challenged policies already have and will continue to cost it millions of dollars, including the cost of incarcerating criminal aliens and the cost of providing a variety of public benefits, including unemployment benefits, free public education, and emergency services to aliens who settle in Florida after being ‘paroled’ into the country.”
But other than providing “free public education,” the same types of monetary harms are lacking in the case of the Biden administration’s latest parole proposal. And it is questionable whether a court will find that providing free public education to children paroled under DHS’s plans will be enough to establish standing.
Absent a plaintiff with standing to challenge DHS’s plan to parole some 30,000 aliens into the United States every month, the only way to fight the Biden administration’s latest lawless move will be politically. Here, those seeking to secure the southern border have ample ammunition, including highlighting the fact that the Biden administration’s plan does nothing to address that portion of the 200,000-some individuals crossing the southern border every month that herald from countries other than Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela.
Further, while converting 30,000 illegal border crossers into parolees at ports of entry in the interior of the country may provide a reduction to the problem on paper, it does not secure the border nor promise any reduction in the number of individuals attempting to enter via Mexico.
The parole plan presumes, though, that there will be an even greater reduction in illegal border crossings than the 30,000 who enter as part of the parole process. The parole plan, according to the Biden administration, creates a disincentive for citizens of Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela to enter illegally at the southern border because the DHS’s new policy also provides that aliens who bypass the parole process and enter the United States without authorization will be subject to an expedited removal to Mexico or their country of origin.
If so, then why not just institute a policy of expediting the removal of individuals who enter illegally at the southern border?
Biden’s Border Disaster
According to the figures included in last week’s DHS notices, prior to the surge at the southern border that followed the Biden administration’s change in enforcement policies, there weren’t even 30,000 aliens from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela crossing the border illegally on an annual basis.
For instance, the notice reported that for fiscal years 2019 and 2020 respectively, DHS encountered only 3,039 and 4,431 Haitian nationals at the southwest border, but by 2021 the number exploded to 43,484.
From 2014 to 2019, DHS encountered 589 Cubans on average every month, but by 2022, the average monthly encounter at the land border totaled 17,809, and in October and November of 2022, some 62,000-plus Cuban nationals attempted to cross the border.
From fiscal 2014 through 2019, border agents encountered a monthly average of 127 Venezuelan nationals, but by fiscal year 2022, the average number of Venezuelans crossing the border illegally on a monthly basis totaled 15,494 and rose to more than 33,000 in September of that year.
For Nicaraguan nationals, in 2022, DHS encountered an estimated 157,400 aliens, or an average of 13,113 per month, compared to an average of 316 per month from fiscal years 2014-2019.
These figures show the Biden administration does not need a parole policy: It needs an enforcement policy.
No End in Sight
There is a telling admission hidden in the DHS notice from last week that announced changes to the parole plan established for Venezuela in October of 2022. As originally established, the Venezuela plan capped the number of “parolees” at a total of 24,000 beneficiaries. But, as the DHS acknowledged in its notice modifying that plan, just two months in, “demand for the Venezuela process has far exceeded the 24,000 limit.”
“Absent immediate action,” the DHS notice explained, “there is a risk that DHS meets the 24,000 cap, which would in turn cause the [government of Mexico] to no longer accept the return of Venezuelan nationals and end the success of the parole process to date at reducing the number of Venezuelan nationals encountered at the border.” Further, should it reach the 24,000 limit, thereby making prospective migrants no longer eligible for parole, the “DHS anticipates that we would then see increased irregular migration of Venezuelans.”
In other words, the Biden administration is allowing aliens to come to America “legally” because if it doesn’t, foreign nationals will just start crossing the border illegally again.
Further, while the Biden administration’s current plan caps the number of parolees at 30,000 per month, the DHS notices indicate it may revisit that figure if necessary. What then, is there to stop the Biden administration from increasing the 30,000 cap two-fold or ten-fold? Or what is there to prevent the administration from expanding parole to aliens from countries beyond the four — maybe 14, or even 40?
While the intricacies of immigration law are detailed and often convoluted, the bottom line of the Biden administration’s parole plan should be clear to all Americans: Joe Biden has no intention of securing our border or faithfully executing his duties as the president of the United States.
Margot Cleveland is The Federalist’s senior legal correspondent. She is also a contributor to National Review Online, the Washington Examiner, Aleteia, and Townhall.com, and has been published in the Wall Street Journal and USA Today. Cleveland is a lawyer and a graduate of the Notre Dame Law School, where she earned the Hoynes Prize—the law school’s highest honor. She later served for nearly 25 years as a permanent law clerk for a federal appellate judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Cleveland is a former full-time university faculty member and now teaches as an adjunct from time to time. As a stay-at-home homeschooling mom of a young son with cystic fibrosis, Cleveland frequently writes on cultural issues related to parenting and special-needs children. Cleveland is on Twitter at @ProfMJCleveland. The views expressed here are those of Cleveland in her private capacity.
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A spokesperson for Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said his office was investigating a “Drag Queen Christmas” show for possible violations of the state’s laws against exposing children to sexually explicit themes. The Christmas drag show was held on Monday at the Broward Center of the Performing Arts in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. Chris Nelson, a local activist, recorded a video at the event where he claimed several young children were present. Nelson left the event after interrupting with a protest against the presence of children at the drag show. He was escorted off of the premises by Broward sheriff’s deputies.
On Tuesday, DeSantis spokesperson Bryan Griffin said the event would be investigated for possible legal violations.
“The Department of Business and Professional Regulation (DBPR) is aware of multiple complaints about a sexually explicit performance marketed to children held in Fort Lauderdale on December 26th,” Griffin wrote in the statement.
“The Department is actively investigating this matter, including video footage and photographs from the event. DPBR will, like in other cases, take action,” the statement read. “Exposing children to sexually explicit activity is a crime in Florida, and such action violates the Department’s licensing standards for operating a business and holding a liquor license.”
DeSantis has previously expressed his opposition to drag shows with explicit themes allowing children to be present.
One online advertisement for the Broward Center “Drag Queen Christmas” made it clear that there were “adult themes and content” in the performance and limited attendance to people over 18 years old unless the minors were accompanied by a parent.
“The Department frequently conducts investigations into these matters upon tips provided by the public, and we thank the public for continuing to bring attention to these incidents. Investigations of such allegations will remain a priority for the Department and, indeed, are ongoing,” the statement concluded.
Here’s more about the drag show controversy:
Biden Subtly Defends Drag Shows for Kids…Internet ERUPTS www.youtube.com
Florida’s Chief Financial Officer Jimmy Patronis announced Thursday that the state will begin pulling over $2 billion in assets from large investment manager BlackRock because of the firm’s environmentally and socially motivated investing standards.
Patronis said that BlackRock is choosing to use its money to pursue its ideology rather than secure profits for its clients, according to a press release. Florida’s State Treasury will begin to remove roughly $1.43 billion worth of long-term securities from BlackRock’s control as well as approximately $600 million worth of short-term investments managed by the firm. (RELATED: EXCLUSIVE: State Treasurer Who Took On BlackRock Plans Crackdown On Woke Investing As Congressman)
“Using our cash, however, to fund BlackRock’s social-engineering project isn’t something Florida ever signed up for,” Patronis said, according to the press release. “It’s got nothing to do with maximizing returns and is the opposite of what an asset manager is paid to do.”
The asset manager aims to push the world towards producing “net zero” emissions by 2050 and sees climate change as a severe financial risk, according to BlackRock CEO Larry Fink’s 2022 letter to executives. In August, 19 Republican attorneys general accused BlackRock of violating its duty to make money for its clients by allegedly boycotting fossil fuel companies.
Patronis claimed that BlackRock, which manages $8 trillion in assets, has used environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) investing practices to decide which companies receive investment as well as influence societal outcomes in an “undemocratic” manner. The Florida CFO stated that he cannot trust BlackRock with the state’s money as he doubts the firm’s dedication to seeking a return on investment.
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – NOVEMBER 30: Andrew Ross Sorkin and Larry Fink on stage at the 2022 New York Times DealBook on November 30, 2022 in New York City. (Photo by Thos Robinson/Getty Images for The New York Times)
“We are surprised by the Florida CFO’s decision given the strong returns BlackRock has delivered to Florida taxpayers over the last five years,” BlackRock said in a statement provided to the Daily Caller News Foundation. “Neither the CFO nor his staff have raised any performance concerns.”
Florida will have divested all its assets from BlackRock by the beginning of 2023 and transfer those assets to other asset managers. Missouri Treasurer Scott Fitzpatrick withdrew $500 million worth of pension funds from BlackRock’s management on Oct. 18, arguing that the firm uses its control of pension funds to push a “left-wing” agenda.
“We are disturbed by the emerging trend of political initiatives like this that sacrifice access to high-quality investments and thereby jeopardize returns, which will ultimately hurt Florida’s citizens,” BlackRock stated. “Fiduciaries should always value performance over politics.”
The Florida CFO’s office did not immediately respond to the DCNF’s request for comment.
Image source: Polk County Sheriff’s Department, YouTube Video – Screenshot
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Over the weekend, deputies from the Polk County sheriff’s office disarmed an alleged firebomber in central Florida, leaving him with a wound he won’t soon forget. Responding to a 911 call on Nov. 20, the sheriff’s office dispatched deputies to a north Lakeland neighborhood to deal with a suspected arsonist who was throwing incendiary devices at a residence.
Sheriff Grady Judd indicated that 30-year-old Luke Neely, whom he characterized as a “bad man,” had been throwing “Molotov cocktails onto a roof and at a house,” with a mother, father, and their adult daughter still inside. Deputies arrived one minute and 18 seconds after receiving the call. According to the sheriff’s office, the first deputy on the scene witnessed the suspect throwing one of seven Molotov cocktails, two of which had exploded on the house. Other incendiary devices had reportedly caught fire in the yard.
When the deputy ordered the suspect to stop, Neely reportedly got into an older-model Chevrolet pickup truck and fled the scene. The deputy attempted to pull the suspect over, but failing that, continued to give chase south down U.S. 98. On account of the arson charges, the deputy determined that a precision immobilization technique (PIT maneuver) was warranted and made two attempts, the second of which broke his wrist.
Neely managed to continue fleeing westbound on I-4. West of the county line, in the Hillsborough County area, the truck, which had sustained significant damage from the PIT maneuver, began to slow down. The deputies seized upon this deceleration as an opportunity to bring the chase to an end. Sheriff’s deputies blocked and rammed the truck, causing a vehicle crash. The arson suspect did not, however, immediately surrender.
The Lakeland resident got out of the truck allegedly brandishing an “AR-style” rifle with a fully loaded .380 handgun on his hip and 57 rounds of ammunition to spare. According to Judd, Neely began to run toward a tyrannosaurus rex statue on the perimeter of the theme park Dinosaur World. Three deputies began shooting, firing a total of 10 shots. The suspect was struck twice in the right leg, once in the left leg, and once in the groin.
Judd said, “We’ve changed the looks of his groin forever, if you know what I mean.”
The wounds are reportedly non-life-threatening, though it is unclear whether the suspect’s ego will survive.
“We’re blessed that everything turned out the way that it did. It certainly could have been a lot worse,” said Judd.
The Polk County sheriff’s office noted in a statement that the Florida Department of Law Enforcement is investigating the deputy-involved use of force because the incident occurred in Hillsborough County.
Neely’s alleged firebombing spree concerns more than the Polk and Hillsborough Counties. During his weekend press conference, Judd said that the suspect had “started early” the day of the incident, setting multiple fires in Ybor City and the Tampa area. After trying to fell a tree with flame, Neely allegedly tried to set fire to the rear of the Ritz Ybor, which had nearly 1,000 people inside at the time. Judd indicated that Neely successfully set the building’s air conditioning unit on fire.
The suspect allegedly went on to set additional fires, including a trash fire at Gaspar’s Grotto around 4 a.m., just hours before his run-in with Polk County deputies. One of the incidents can be seen in this video obtained by WFLA:
Alleged arsonist caught on surveillance video in Ybor youtu.be
Neely has been charged with three counts of attempted first-degree murder, one count of arson, seven counts of firebombing, and one count of resisting arrest. Judd said that Neely will also face other charges, such as fleeing to elude.
Neely was previously arrested by the Polk County sheriff’s office in 2016 and charged with disorderly conduct, using a firearm while intoxicated, and resisting arrest. He was psychiatrically admitted under the Baker Act in 2020.
News Conference – Luke Neely (November 20, 2022) youtu.be
Sheriff Judd has earned a reputation for taking a no-nonsense approach to crime.
During an October appearance on “Fox & Friends,” Judd told Florida homeowners, “I would highly suggest that if a looter breaks into your home, comes into your home while you’re there to steal stuff that you take your gun and you shoot him. You shoot him so he looks like grated cheese.”
\u201cPolk County Sheriff:\n\n”I would highly suggest that if a looter breaks into your home … to steal stuff, that you take your gun and you shoot him \u2026 so that he looks like grated cheese.”\u201d
— The Post Millennial (@The Post Millennial) 1665170608
In June, Polk County deputies shot and killed an “active shooter” who had threatened to kill his wife and members of law enforcement. According to Judd, when 56-year-old Michael Loman came outside with a rifle to make good on his threat, “He chose for us to shoot him and we accommodated his request.”
Judd added, “We shot him a lot … and that was the end of the gunfight.”
In December 2021, Judd extolled the quick thinking and just action taken by a homeowner who shot a home invader. Judd said that the homeowner “had a gun, he knew how to use it, it was loaded, and he shot him a lot. He gave him an early Christmas present. Only Santa Claus gets to come in your house — and Santa Claus is invited.”
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including “Fox News”, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Donald Trump.
The Florida Board of Medicine has voted to ban sex change surgeries and hormone therapy for children under the age of 18 after hours of deliberation and testimony Friday. The guidelines, first released April 20, 2022, state that anyone under 18 cannot receive hormone therapy or puberty blockers. It also bans “gender reassignment” surgery for children and adolescents. The Florida Medical Board released the guidance in response to guidance from the US Department of Health and Human Services endorsed sex change procedures for teens.
The vote came after the board heard testimony from several individuals who had DE transitioned. One such individual, Chloe Cole, said she decided to transition after being “introduced to inappropriate content, and an echo chamber of far-Left ideology, such as that sex and gender are separate, women are inherently victims, men are inherently superior, and that dysphoric children need hormones and surgery in order to live.”
BREAKING: The Florida Board of Medicine has voted to ban sex change "treatments" for underage children.
“Few medical issues are more contentious than the question of medical treatments for minors who may or may not have gender dysphoria. Those children deserve the utmost compassion, which starts by treating them as individuals, not as enlistees in a cause,” Dr. Stanley Goldfarb, Chairman of Do No Harm, an organization dedicated to depoliticizing healthcare, told the Daily Caller. “Compassion also requires basing care on rigorous scientific inquiry, not on dubious, agenda-driven studies or the demands of activists.”
"Over 2 years post-op…my nipples leak fluid and they stain my clothes. I have no breasts. I want to be a mother some day and yet I can never naturally feed my future children. My breasts were beautiful and now they have been incinerated for nothing." – @ChoooColepic.twitter.com/M4toFQc0Wx
Other detransitioners took aim at puberty blockers, which some claim are a harmless method for teenagers to explore their gender. A study released earlier this month revealed that 98% of those who receive puberty blockers go on to receive sex change treatments such as surgery or hormone therapy.
Parents of transgender youth who supported sex change treatments for children also testified at the hearing.
Chaos erupted as board members announced an end to speaker testimony, and gave attendees an email to submit testimony into the public record. As board members filed out before returning to vote, protestors screamed “Let them speak! Let them speak!”
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including “Fox News”, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Donald Trump.
Earlier this month, a Washington Post editorial acknowledged there was “no end in sight to the procession of buses inbound” to Washington, D.C., and praised Mayor Muriel Bowser for earmarking $10 million for the nearly 10,000 illegal immigrants who have arrived in the capital — about 15 percent of whom intend to remain there.
The Biden administration pretends it has the burgeoning problem of illegal immigration under control. Late last month, White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre claimed that people aren’t just walking across the border. And just last week, Vice President Kamala Harris insisted the border was “secure.”
Much of the national media are happy to play along with this deliberate deception. The same corporate media that last year blithely ignored the federal government’s mass, midnight airlifting of illegal immigrants to New York; Jacksonville, Florida; and points beyond are now obsessed when a southern governor flies 50 Venezuelans to swanky Martha’s Vineyard.
In their eyes, when the administration ships tens of thousands of illegal immigrants under cover of darkness, it’s no big deal. But if the Post spots 50 people flown into Martha’s Vineyard, somehow, it’s a “crisis.” The media never accused the administration of using migrants as pawns or being inhumane, yet the latter is doing exactly what Texas and Arizona are on a vast scale.
The Post’s editors argue that “state and local officials nationwide must accommodate a flow of migrants — in schools, shelters, streets” as if there is no alternative. They seem unaware that for 250 years, the United States had an immigration law and that, for much of that time, the executive branch did its job, enforcing the law and defending our border.
What the open-borders, sanctuary-city crowd are at last realizing is that their blank checks can be cashed. New York and Washington’s social services are drowning under a mere 10,000 arrivals each. They’re lucky not to be El Paso (population 684,000), which is dealing with 1,400 illegal migrants arriving per day, or Yuma (population 97,000), which has received 250,000 so far this year.
Mayor Bowser’s $10 million might sound like a lot but putting just 200 people in hotel rooms in Washington at $200 per night comes out to upwards of $15 million annually, and educating the “about 70” new illegal immigrant children now enrolled in D.C. public schools will cost a couple million more for the first year. What happens next year?
New York City already has 7,600 migrants in its homeless shelters, which are 99 percent full, and is struggling to find housing for 5,000 new arrivals. As if trying to put out a fire with an eye-dropper, the city has opened a $6.7 million “welcome center” in Manhattan to receive migrants arriving by bus. Cost estimates for housing the city’s noncitizens already exceed $300 million a year. To complicate things, New York requires residents to spend at least 90 days in a shelter before being eligible for housing vouchers. It also requires a background check to verify applications. This normally takes a month, but it will presumably longer to process illegal immigrants who have no records that can be checked.
Even assuming all the new arrivals actually claim asylum, the average wait for an initial hearing in New York is over three years. In the meantime, they will be public charges on the city’s schools, hospitals, and housing. How long will New York taxpayers put up with this? Well, Mayor Eric Adams has admitted that the city is reaching the end of its rope, and officials are now said to be reconsidering their “right to shelter” commitment to house unlimited foreign indigents on top of New York’s plentiful home-grown needy.
New York and Washington actually look tough compared to Chicago. Mayor Lori Lightfoot proudly signed a “Welcoming City” ordinance in February 2021 to stop city police from working with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. But when the first busloads of 50 migrants arrived in early September, she packed them off to neighboring Burr Ridge without telling its mayor.
Later, when 500 migrants arrived in Chicago, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker declared an emergency and called out the National Guard. Coincidentally, Chicago has suffered almost the same number (491) of murders this year, but that’s not considered an emergency worthy of mobilizing the guard.
How long will this game of pass-the-parcel continue? Migrants deserve to be treated with dignity and compassion. However, that does not require those who enter illegally to stay here — on the taxpayer’s dime — until our overwhelmed immigration courts can get around to hearing their cases. Under the Migrant Protection Protocols, they could be housed outside our borders while their cases are considered. Even if not, ICE has to be allowed to do its duty, and those who fail to file for asylum or whose cases are denied after due process should be quickly deported as the law requires. It’s time President Biden stopped denying the crisis at the southern border and accepted the truth. Only then can we work for a national solution to the ongoing migrant crisis.
A former State Department official, Simon Hankinson is a senior research fellow in The Heritage Foundation’s Davis Institute for National Security and Foreign Affairs.
In a case of highly charged sticker shock, a Florida Chevrolet dealer admits that it offered to replace the battery in a hybrid car for more than the vehicle is worth.
As reported by the website AutoEvolution, the case of the almost-$30,000 battery was being bandied about on social media for days, with some folks believing the tale and other relegating it to the pile of urban myths. The story was based on a copy of an estimate for the battery of a 2012 Chevrolet Volt that was making the rounds. The Volt was a hybrid that was produced as Chevy was dabbling in the electric vehicle market. Its place in Chevrolet’s lineup has now been taken by the Bolt.
The estimate said that getting the battery would set the car’s owner back $26,853.99. Other costs brought the total bill to $29,842.15 — essentially $30,000.
According to the automotive site Edmunds, a 2012 Volt is estimated to go for between $7,999 and $17,590 these days. Chevrolet advertises that its new Bolt starts at $25,000.
In the end, the truth about a used car came from a car dealer – in this case Roger Dean Chevrolet in Cape Coral, which prepared the estimate.
“This is an estimate for a 12 year old vehicle out of warranty and for a battery that is extremely hard to get, due to the older technology of the 12 year old vehicle,” the dealership posted on Facebook in an attempt to set the record straight.
(Roger Dean Chevrolet / Facebook)
The dealership also used this controversy as a chance for a sales pitch on newer electric vehicles.
“The dealership does not set battery prices. In the newer EV or EUV vehicles with newer technology the batteries do cost less. Think of it like big screen TVs. Remember when the first big screen came out, they were very expensive, and as the technology advanced the prices became better. This battery is also out of warranty of 8yr/100k miles whatever hits first,” the posting stated.
By way of context, an April report in Consumer Affairs gave a ballpark range of $4,000 to $10,000 to replace a gasoline-powered engine.
When seeking to learn how electric vehicle owners felt about the tale of the big-ticket battery, WBVH-TV in Fort Myers, Florida, visited a charging station and interviewed a man the station identified only as “Ian.”
“Thirty thousand dollars is a lot to fix anything on a car, especially when the car itself could be, like, worth less than that,” the man said.
Ian, who leases a Bolt, said things have changed in the EV market.
“I feel like electric vehicle space is innovating a lot. It’s moving on past the initial, like, if something goes wrong with your battery, you hit a rock or something and it messes up your battery you need to spend the entire amount you spent on your car to fix it.”
“I’m like ‘well, OK that’s gotta suck for that person’,” Ian said. “I think now that might not be as much of an issue for other people with newer cars.”
Jack Davis is a freelance writer who joined The Western Journal in July 2015 and chronicled the campaign that saw President Donald Trump elected. Since then, he has written extensively for The Western Journal on the Trump administration as well as foreign policy and military issues.
Former President Donald Trump celebrated the victories of Democrats and Republicans in the Tuesday primaries, many of whom he endorsed. The former president jokingly endorsed two Democratic candidates running in the New York primary, Rep. Carolyn Maloney and attorney Dan Goldman. Goldman then won the Democratic nomination to represent New York’s 10th district in Congress, while Maloney lost her bid to Democratic New York Rep. Jerry Nadler.
“Looks like a fantastic evening of ALL WINS — Great Candidates!!!” Trump wrote on a Truth Social post.
“26 and 0 tonight, turning numerous tight races into big endorsements and easy wins!” Trump said in a separate Truth Social post. “Overall for last 4 years, 98.4% on Endorsements!”
Trump-endorsed Republican New York Reps. Nicole Malliotakis, Elise Stefanik and Claudia Tenney all won their primaries Tuesday night.
(Photo by Megan Varner/Getty Images)
Trump’s preferred Republican candidates also achieved victories in the Florida primary. Republican Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz defeated his opponent, former FedEx executive Mark Lombardo, in Florida’s 1st district. His other endorsed candidates in Florida, including Republican Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, Anna Paulina Luna, Kat Cammack, and John Rutherford, swept their races. (RELATED: Trump Endorsed Candidate Kari Lake Wins GOP Arizona Gubernatorial Primary)
Other candidates who won their primaries include Democratic Florida Rep. Val Demings, who captured the Democratic nomination and will attempt to unseat Republican Sen. Marco Rubio. Democratic Florida Rep. Charlie Crist won the nomination to challenge Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in the gubernatorial race.
Meanwhile, Trump-endorsed Oklahoma Rep. Markwayne Mullin defeated T.W. Shannon, a banking executive, in the Republican senate primary run-off election.
The former president made over 40 endorsements in recent primaries taking place in Washington, Michigan, Missouri, Arizona and Kansas, where the majority of the Trump-endorsed candidates achieved victories, Politico reported.
Teacher’s unions in Florida are concerned about a new state policy which will allow veterans without a college degree to receive a five-year voucher to teach at a state public or charter school. According to reports, Florida currently has more than 4,300 teaching vacancies with a new school year fast approaching. In an effort to fill some of these essential positions, the state has adjusted the requirements for military veterans in the hopes of attracting some of them into the classroom.
Veterans who wish to apply for the teaching voucher must have:
Minimum of 48 months of active-duty military service with an honorable/medical discharge
Minimum of 60 college credits with a 2.5 grade point average
Passing score on a Florida subject area examination for bachelor’s level subjects which demonstrate mastery of subject area knowledge
Employment in a Florida school district, including charter schools
The policy went into effect on July 1 and offers fee waivers for military spouses as well, though contrary to some reports, spouses are still subject to the same requirements as other civilians.
While many teachers acknowledge that the shortage is dire and that fewer and fewer recent graduates are electing to become teachers, many Florida teachers’ union members are unhappy with the new policy for veterans, particularly the education requirements.
“We are always fighting to lift our profession up,”Carmen Ward, president of the Alachua County Education Association and a member of the Florida Education Association, said. “We have a lot of veterans that work currently in our schools. However, they have four-year degrees. Because it is an academic position, it requires that the person who is teaching the subject matter have academic experience with that subject matter.”
“And not to mention that teachers have pedagogy,” Ward added. “It is not just a science, but an art to be able to teach children to read. We do not believe that anyone, regardless of their education, can be a teacher in a classroom.”
Tina Certain agreed.
“It’s not that I’m against the service that veterans provide to our country,” Certain said. “I just think that to the education profession, we’re lowering the bar on that and minimizing the criteria of what it takes to enter the profession.”
“You can’t just throw a warm body in a classroom. That’s not the answer,” said Barry Dubin, president of the Sarasota County Teachers Association.
“We owe the freedoms we enjoy as Americans to our military veterans, and I am focused on ensuring Florida is the best state in the nation for those who have served to find great jobs, start or grow businesses and support their families,” DeSantis said in a statement. “Business is booming in Florida, and employers are looking for the leadership skills, training and teamwork military veterans bring to the workforce.”
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including “Fox News”, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Donald Trump.
A Florida mother suing her 13-year-old daughter’s school for encouraging her gender transition without parental consent recently issued a stark warning to fellow parents across the country: The same thing could happen to them under similar protocols in place at schools nationwide.
“This is happening all over the nation,” warned January Littlejohn during an interview on Fox News Monday morning. “This same protocol is in place in many, many schools across districts everywhere, and even the guides being used to dictate these transgender support plans that cut parents out even have the same language.”
The Tallahassee-based mom and mental health professional, joined by her attorney Vernadette Broyles, explained to the network that her case is not an isolated one.
“This is a very systematic way that parents are being excluded from important decisions occurring with their children, and further, social transition is a medical intervention that schools are grossly unqualified to be taking these steps without parental involvement,” she said.
Littlejohn recalled that after her daughter expressed confusion over her gender during the COVID-19 pandemic, school administrators responded by enrolling her in a “transgender support plan” — without seeking parental approval. When questioned regarding the plan, the school allegedly declined to disclose any information, claiming Littlejohn’s daughter was “protected by a non-discrimination law.”
“Eventually we did see the transgender support plan, which was a six-page document that they completed with my daughter, that was 13 at the time, behind closed doors, where they asked her questions that would have absolutely impacted her safety, such as which restroom she preferred to use and which sex she preferred to room with on overnight field trips,” Littlejohn said.
Broyles added that she filed a lawsuit, arguing that Littlejohn’s parental rights were violated, and soon discovered that her client’s situation was similar to many others playing out around the country.
“We filed a lawsuit in Massachusetts, [and] there are lawsuits in Wisconsin, Maryland, Oregon, California,” the attorney said. “This is a national agenda, and parents need to recognize they have the right to direct the upbringing, education, care, medical decisions, mental health decisions of their child and they need to assert that right with their school.”
In their lawsuit against Leon County Schools officials last October, January and her husband, Jeffrey, claimed the defendants “violated their fundamental rights” as parents by “implementing a protocol which explicitly circumvents parental notification and involvement in critical decisions affecting their children’s mental, emotional and physical health.”
In filing the suit, the Littlejohns are seeking injunctive relief, a declaratory judgment, and damages for the violations. The school filed a motion to dismiss, and the Littlejohns filed an opposition in response, Broyles said. They are now awaiting a judge’s decision.
“What the school district did is tantamount to saying children need to be protected from their parents, rather than by their parents,” Broyles told the Washington Examiner late last year. “This guidance that they had in place and their actions convey the message that parents are presumed to be dangerous to their children.”
The Littlejohns’ lawsuit is considered to have been the catalyst for Florida’s Parental Rights in Education bill, which was recently signed into law over and above frenzied backlash from progressive LGBT advocates and mainstream media outlets. The legislation bars discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity in kindergarten through third-grade classrooms and assigns scaleable guidelines for appropriate discussions on the controversial subject matter in grades thereafter.
Florida recently passed an anti-groomer law for their schools. No longer will teachers be able to push overtly sexual material to kindergarteners up to third graders. This makes the Democrats crazy! They love their school grooming exercises. How sick.
Jen Psaki is a perfect example of this warped thinking. Psaki recently sat down for an interview with podcaster Jessica Yellin. Psaki told the leftist podcaster that anti-groomer laws bring her to tears.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki broke down in tears over anti-grooming laws in an interview with podcaster Jessica Yellin on Tuesday.
“I’m going to get emotional about this issue because it’s horrible … This is an issue that makes me completely crazy,” Psaki said when she was asked about laws passing in Republican states restricting schools on transgender issues and sexual identity and giving parents more control of their child’s education.
The laws, like the one passed in Florida, prohibit discussions about sexual identity and gender in school classes with young children and prevent school officials from transitioning a child’s gender without the parent’s consent.
Psaki said the laws were “cruel” and did not represent the majority of Americans.
“It’s like kids who are bullied and all these leaders are taking steps to hurt them and hurt their lives and hurt their families,” she wept.
She scolded Republicans for using the laws as a “political wedge issue” in the ongoing culture war fights in the United States.
“The political games and harsh and cruel attempts at laws, or laws that we’re seeing in some states like Florida, … that is not a reflection of the country moving to oppose LGBTQ+ communities,” she said.
Jim Hoft is the founder and editor of The Gateway Pundit, one of the top conservative news outlets in America. Jim was awarded the Reed Irvine Accuracy in Media Award in 2013 and is the proud recipient of the Breitbart Award for Excellence in Online Journalism from the Americans for Prosperity Foundation in May 2016.
The Walt Disney Company will soon be airing an ad on all of its channels featuring the mother of a trans-identified child lambasting supporters of bills banning genital mutilation surgeries for children and the teaching of LGBT ideology in schools. The mother accuses these Americans of trying to “tear our families apart.”
The LGBT advocacy organization GLAAD released the public service announcement called “Protect Our Families” last week. The 60-second ad profiles the Briggle family, which includes Amber Briggle along with her husband and her two children. The ad focuses on her trans-identified daughter, who now identifies as a boy and goes by the name Max.
The LGBT advocacy group says the video shows that “families with transgender kids are just like any other family: they love their kids unconditionally and simply want the best for them.”
In the video, Briggle discusses Max’s interests as she narrates a background video of her daughter in an effort to persuade those watching the ad that society should support parents who want their children to be given puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones, saying a transgender child “is no different than yours.”
“There are some politicians who are trying to tear my family apart, simply because my [daughter] is transgender,” she asserts. “Trans kids don’t have a political agenda. They are just kids. They just want to be left alone.”
CNBC reports that the ad, which does not explicitly mention any legislation, in particular, will air on channels owned by The Walt Disney Company as well as channels owned by Comcast, WarnerMedia and Paramount. The Walt Disney Company has received intense criticism over its outspoken opposition to a Florida parental rights bill recently signed into law by the state’s Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis.
The legislation states that “classroom instruction by school personnel or third parties on sexual orientation and gender identity may not occur in kindergarten through grade 3 or in a manner that is not age-appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students in accordance with state standards.” While states including Alabama, Arizona and Arkansas have passed laws banning the prescription of cross-sex hormones and puberty blockers to minors, the Florida law does not include such a provision.
After initially declining to take a position on the Florida bill, Disney, which operates the popular theme park Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida, came out hard against the bill after critics derided it as the “Don’t Say Gay” bill. Disney’s opposition to the law that prevents teachers from exposing young children to LGBT ideology, motivated worship artist Sean Feucht to hold a protest in front of Disney’s headquarters in Burbank, California.
Last month, Christopher Rufo of the Manhattan Institute and City Journal released video footage of Disney officials discussing their efforts to incorporate “queerness” and other LGBT ideology into programming directed at children as part of what he described as “Disney’s all-hands meeting about the Florida parental rights bill.”
Briggle, a progressive activist who is running for city council in Denton, Texas, operates a blog titled “Love to the Max.” In an August 2019 blog post, Briggle listed “3 things your child can do to help make middle school better for my trans son.” Accompanying the blog post is a photograph of Max, which identifies the child as a member of the fifth grade graduating class of 2019. This seems to indicate that Briggle’s child is now in eighth grade and is either 13 or 14 years old.
In the blog, she noted that “my sweet [daughter], Max, socially transitioned in 1st grade — changing [her] name and pronouns, but otherwise living life exactly the same (only much, much happier).” In a speech at this year’s GLAAD Media Awards, Briggle said, “We live in Texas, where Gov. [Greg] Abbott issued a directive to investigate parents like my husband, Adam and I for child abuse because we provide Max with the gender-affirming care he needs.”
'I am angry every single day because of the way the world treats my son' — Mom Amber Briggle delivered a tearful speech at the GLAAD Media Awards after being investigated for providing gender-affirming care for her trans son in Texas pic.twitter.com/q4nc6kiP68
Briggle added that Child Protective Services recently visited their home and questioned them. She expressed relief that “a court has barred Texas from investigating parents of trans kids.”
Supporters of legislation banning what LGBT advocates refer to as “gender-affirming care,” including the American College of Pediatricians, warn that puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones can have negative side effects. Side effects of puberty blockers identified by the American College of Pediatricians include “emotional instability” as well as “osteoporosis, mood disorders, seizures, cognitive impairment and, when combined with cross-sex hormones, sterility.”
The medical organization lists “an increased risk of heart attacks, stroke, diabetes, blood clots and cancers across their lifespan” as possible complications of cross-sex hormones.
While supporters of providing puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones to youth with gender dysphoria maintain that such procedures help improve the children’s mental health, children who underwent some form of gender transition only to regret doing so later insisted that such procedures worsened their mental health.
The newsmagazine program “60 Minutes” profiled a group of “detransitioners” last year, including a male who once identified as female explaining to CBS’ Lesley Stahl that he “had never really been suicidal before until I had my breast augmentation.” He told Stahl that “about a week afterward, I wanted to actually kill myself,” adding: “I had a plan, and I was going to do it but I just kept thinking about my family to stop myself.”
Another detransitioner, who once sought to transition from female to male, developed a “really disturbing sense that, like, a part of my body was missing, almost a ghost limb feeling about being like, there’s something that should be there.”
More than 100 people were recently arrested during “Operation March Sadness 2,” a six-day undercover operation that led to the arrest of child predators and people seeking to engage prostitution, according to the Polk County Sheriff’s Office in Florida.
According to a press release, a 27-year-old man named Xavier Jackson was arrested after communicating with an undercover detective who had been pretending to be a 14-year-old girl — he “sent [the detective] sexual images and graphic descriptions of what he wanted to do,” according to the sheriff’s office.
Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd noted during a news conference that Jackson worked as a lifeguard at Disney’s Polynesian Village Resort.
Operation March Sadness II news conference youtu.be
Shannon Johnson, a 41-year-old man who thought he was communicating with a 13-year-old girl, sent a naked picture of himself and went to a home with the plan to engage in sexual activity, according to the press release, which noted that Johnson was arrested.
Also among the 108 people arrested was Daniel Peters, a retired Cook County Illinois judge who was charged with soliciting a prostitute. “He requested an attorney,” Judd said during the news conference. “Well judge, you need an attorney, you got problems.”
“The arrests of a human trafficker and four child predators alone makes this whole operation worthwhile,” Judd said, according to a statement included in the press release. “The on-line prostitution industry enables traffickers and victimizes those who are being trafficked. Our goal is to identify victims, offer them help, and find and arrest those who are profiting from the exploitation of human beings. Johns fuel the trafficking and victimization. Where there is prostitution, there is exploitation, disease, dysfunction, and broken families.”
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis talks to the media during a news conference in Miami, Fla., August 29, 2019. (Marco Bello/Reuters)
There’s some choice DeSantis Derangement Syndrome on CNN this morning. Check out this headline:
DeSantis proposes a new civilian military force in Florida that he would control
Gosh! A “civilian military force in Florida that he would control”! That sounds terrifying — especially when paired with the piece’s artwork, which, for some reason, shows both Ron DeSantis and Donald Trump.
And what would this “civilian military force in Florida” do?
St, Petersburg, Florida (CNN) Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis wants to reestablish a World War II-era civilian military force that he, not the Pentagon, would control.
DeSantis pitched the idea Thursday as a way to further support the Florida National Guard during emergencies, like hurricanes. The Florida National Guard has also played a vital role during the pandemic in administering Covid-19 tests and distributing vaccines.
Sounds . . . fine? Useful, even.
Ah, but this is unusual, right? Oh wait, no, it’s not:
States have the power to create defense forces separate from the national guard, though not all of them use it. If Florida moves ahead with DeSantis’ plan to reestablish the civilian force, it would become the 23rd active state guard in the country, DeSantis’ office said in a press release, joining California, Texas and New York.
So nearly half the states do it — including California and New York — and Florida itself used to have one before it was abandoned. Which makes the problem . . . what, exactly?
CNN continues:
But in a nod to the growing tension between Republican states and the Biden administration over the National Guard, DeSantis also said this unit, called the Florida State Guard, would be “not encumbered by the federal government.” He said this force would give him “the flexibility and the ability needed to respond to events in our state in the most effective way possible.” DeSantis is proposing bringing it back with a volunteer force of 200 civilians, and he is seeking $3.5 million from the state legislature in startup costs to train and equip them.
Ah, right. The problem is that this unit would be “not encumbered by the federal government,” and, thereby, that it would be under DeSantis’s control. Which is just absolutely horrifying — unlike, say, the massive, nuke-filled, “civilian military force” that is under Joe Biden’s control, which is completely different, for reasons that CNN will presumably arrive at next time a Republican is in the White House.
IT Support Technician Michael Hakopian (R) distributes computer devices to students at Hollywood High School on August 13, 2020, in Hollywood, California. With over 734,000 enrolled students, the Los Angeles Unified School District is the largest public school system in California and the 2nd largest public school district in the United States. | Rodin Eckenroth/Getty Images
At least 26 state school board associations have distanced themselves from the National School Board Association after it urged the Biden administration to use federal law enforcement agencies against parents who oppose the teaching of controversial curriculum in public schools by labeling them as potential “domestic terrorists.”
The national grassroots organization Parents Defending Education says the states that have distanced themselves from the NSBA’s letter include: Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, New Hampshire, New Jersey, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, Wisconsin and Wyoming.
Out of these, 12 states — Alabama, Florida, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, Montana, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina and Wisconsin — have taken further action to withdraw membership, participation or dues from the NSBA.
PDE wrote to NSBA member states for their comment on the Sept. 29 letter sent to them by NSBA Interim Executive Director Chip Slaven, which critics believe likened activism of concerned parents to “domestic terrorism.”
The letter said the NSBA had asked the U.S. Department of Justice to mobilize law enforcement agencies to respond to “threats and acts of violence against public schoolchildren, public school board members, and other public school district officials and educators” as actions of “domestic terrorism.”
While some school board members across the nation have publicly shared incidents of threats they’ve purportedly received from angry residents, critics believe the request to get federal law enforcement involved is unwarranted and an attempt to silence parents. Specific examples of concerning actions included the disruption of school board meetings “because of local directives for mask coverings to protect students and educators from COVID-19,” the incitement of “chaos” at school board meetings by “anti-mask proponents,” and the confrontation of school boards by “angry mobs” that have led boards to “end meetings abruptly.”
John Halkias, the director of the NSBA’s Central Region, wrote to Slaven the same day, on Sept. 29, sharing his belief that “the Board of Directors should have been consulted before a letter like this was sent out publicly, and no less to the President of the United States and the National Press.”
“I also agree that the letter took a stance that went beyond what many of us would consider to be reasonable and used terms that were extreme, and asked for action by the Federal Government that many of us would not request,” he added. “In fact in a recent press conference, the White House Press Secretary stated that when these incidents occur, it is a matter for local law enforcement and local authorities, and NOT the federal government.”
In an Oct. 2 email, NSBA President Viola Garcia told the organization’s board of directors that “NSBA has been engaged with the White House and the Department of Education on these and other issues related to the pandemic for several weeks now.”
Five days later, the Department of Justice published a memorandum directing “the Federal Bureau of Investigations, working with each United States Attorney, to convene meetings with federal, state, local, Tribal, and territorial leaders within 30 days” to “facilitate the discussion of strategies for addressing threats against school administrators, board members, teachers and staff.”
Republican members of Congress also criticized the memo.
“As someone who was born in the Soviet Union, I am … disturbed, very disturbed, by the use of the Department of Justice as a political tool, and its power as the police state to suppress lawful public discourse,” Rep. Victoria Spartz, R-Ind., said in a House Judiciary Committee oversight hearing. “The FBI is starting to resemble old KGB with secret warrantless … surveillance, wiretapping and intimidation of citizens.”
Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis threatened this week to bus illegal immigrants to President Joe Biden’s home state of Delaware should the administration continue to pay for “clandestine” flights carrying migrants into the Sunshine State.
“If they’re going to come here, you know, we’ll provide buses and … I will send them to Delaware,”DeSantis warned during a press conference on Wednesday.
The governor’s tough remarks came amid a lengthy polemic against the president over his handling of the ongoing immigration crisis at the U.S southern border, during which he described the secretive process that the Biden administration has reportedly used to send some 70 flights carrying illegal aliens into his state and elsewhere around the country. One of those flights carried an illegal immigrant who allegedly went on to murder a father of four in Florida, DeSantis declared earlier this week.
“There’s no notification to the state of Florida,” DeSantis complained, noting, “These are done mostly in the middle of the night, and it’s clandestine. And we really have no say into it.”
“I know when we initially got wind of this, it wasn’t through normal channels, it’s people in the federal government who are effectively leaking this to us so that we have a heads-up on it,” he continued.
The governor then argued that if the president is unwilling to secure the country’s border with Mexico, then he should open up his home state to house the illegal immigrants rather than shipping them to other places around the country.
“If he’s not going to support the border being secured, then he should be able to have everyone there. So, we will do whatever we can in that regard. And we are absolutely going to do everything we can,” DeSantis insisted.
DeSantis also took issue with separate reporting that amid rapidly rising inflation in the country, Biden is considering handing out payments to some illegal immigrant families who were separated at the border under the previous administration.
“The president has said that basically, they want to even pay reparations to people who came illegally, just think about that,” the governor said. “You as an American, you get higher gas prices, you get higher grocery bills, you get told, basically, to just grin and bear it.”
“But someone breaks the law, comes illegally, and they’re going to cut him a check for hundreds of thousands of dollars,” he continued. “That is just unbelievable. But that’s what we’re dealing with.”
Republican Florida state Rep. Webster Barnaby has filed a bill to ban abortions in the Sunshine State after a fetal heartbeat has been detected, except in the case of medical emergencies. The bill includes text that substantially mirrors the language in a Texas law which has been the subject of national attention. Like the Texas law, the bill put forward in the Sunshine State would prohibit physicians from knowingly conducting or inducing abortions if they have not tested for an unborn child’s heartbeat or if they detect such a heartbeat.
The Florida bill, like the Lone Star State’s law, would allow people to lodge a civil action against an individual who conducts or induces an abortion in breach of the law, and against those who knowingly participate in activity which “aids or abets the performance or inducement of an abortion” conducted in breach of the law, “regardless of whether the person knew or should have known that the abortion would be performed or induced” against the law. And like the Texas law, the Florida bill says that the court should award claimants who prevail in such an action with damages of at least $10,000.
The Florida bill would also alter the state’s abortion law language to swap the term “fetus” for the phrase “unborn child.”
The Orlando chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America issued a tweet decrying the bill as “evil.” Democratic state Rep. Anna Eskamani blasted the pro-life bill, issuing a statement in which she used the phrase “birthing people.”
“It’s a sad day in the Florida House when legislation like HB167 is filed. This gross excuse of a bill attacks women and birthing people who are seeking an abortion before they even know they are pregnant. It also attempts to mimic Texas by creating a process for civil action towards those that help someone in Florida end a pregnancy after 6 weeks. Extreme attacks on reproductive health are not about policy, it is about control, shame, and will negatively impact communities who already experience barriers to accessing care.”
By now, most of us have seen the horrific aftermath of the Florida condo tower collapse: A rubble heap where a 13-story tower once stood, and over 150 people still missing.
Crews are working around the clock, looking for any signs of life amidst the rubble. Specialized teams from other countries have shown up to help, and friends and family wait for news as time passes and hope dwindles.
As they wait, some are sharing stories about loved ones who still have not been located. Mike Stratton, 66, had an especially haunting last exchange with his wife, 40-year-old Cassondra “Cassie” Billedeau-Stratton.Advertisement – story continues below
The Strattons have lived on the fourth floor of the residential high-rise for the past four years. The jet-setting couple is often traveling, busy with their respective jobs that often take them to other bustling cities.
Last Monday, Mike had to leave to Washington, D.C. for work. That was the last time he saw Cassie.
Early Thursday morning, Cassie called him in a panic.Advertisement – story continues below
“I was in Washington, on the phone with her when the whole thing happened, 1:30 a.m.,” Mike told NBC News.
Cassie explained that the pool — which was normally visible from the couple’s condo — had simply disappeared. In its place, a sinkhole.
She continued to explain how the building was shaking, and with that, the call cut off. The line went dead.
“It was 1:30 a.m., I’ll never, never forget that,” Mike reiterated to the Miami Herald.
Amanda holds an MA in Rhetoric and TESOL from Cal Poly Pomona. After teaching composition and logic for several years, she’s strayed into writing full-time and especially enjoys animal-related topics.
A 14-year-old will face murder charges and will be tried as an adult after he reportedly stabbed a 13-year-old girl 114 times in a horrific attack that took her life, NBC News reported on Thursday.
The attack was so vicious that a portion of the knife purportedly used in the attack broke off in the teen’s skull and stuck in her head. Nearly half of the wounds appeared to be defensive wounds, according to the report, and were found on the girl’s hands, arms, and head as she bravely tried to fight off her attacker.
Authorities discovered the body of 13-year-old Tristyn Bailey — a cheerleader at Patriot Oaks Academy in St. Johns, Florida — on May 9 in a wooded area. The 14-year-old suspect — who remains unnamed at the time of this reporting — initially faced charges of second-degree murder. He now faces first-degree murder charges and will be tried as an adult, according to state attorney R.J. Larizza.
“It brings me no pleasure to be charging a 14-year-old as an adult with first-degree murder,” Larizza said during a Thursday news conference. “But I can tell you, also, the executive team and I reviewed all the facts, all the circumstances, the applicable law, and it was not a difficult decision to make that he should be charged as an adult. It’s a sad decision, and a sad state of affairs.”
Larizza added, “Every time that arm went back and every time that arm went down, that was premeditation.”
The suspect reportedly told friends that he “intended to kill someone,” Larizza said, and that DNA from Tristyn was found on the suspect’s clothing.
“He didn’t say who that was, but he indicated to witnesses that he was going to kill someone by taking them in the woods and stabbing them, which are certainly the facts of this case,” he added.
Authorities say that the suspect posed a selfie to social media on May 9 captioned, “Hey guys has inybody [sic] seen Tristyn lately[.]”
The report noted that the suspect took the photo “while Bailey was still missing and he was only considered a witness.”
A knife believed to belong to the suspect was discovered in a pond near Tristyn’s body, officials reported, and noted that the “tip of that blade was ‘broken off’ and ‘located by the medical examiner in the scalp of our victim.'”
In a statement, St. Johns County Sheriff’s Office Commander Howard “Skip” Cole said, “It’s difficult to hear all that. We fully support the grand jury indictment.”
An attorney for the teen suspect did not immediately respond for comment on Thursday evening, the outlet reported.
In a statement, the Bailey family said that the charges were an important “part of the initial steps to bring justice for Tristyn’s murder.”
“As we move forward, we will seek to keep Tristyn’s memory alive and the spirit of the community,” the family’s statement added.
Authorities have arrested a suspect in connection with a heinous attack on a 12-year-old Miami-area boy on Saturday. Police say that a suspect abducted the unnamed child, raped him, and shot him in the face before dumping him on the side of the road. According to WPLG-TV, bystanders discovered a bloodied child wandering around a neighborhood in Miami-Dade County duringthe early hours of Saturday morning.
He was screaming, “Help, someone, help me, please.”
A man who identified himself by only his first name, Johnny, said that he discovered the boy in the city streets and escorted him to a nearby convenience store for help.
“I bring him to the store so they can call the police for him,” he told the outlet, noting that he did not have his own phone. “He was conscious, then he fell on the sidewalk and said he had been shot.”
Surveillance video captured the moment Johnny and the young boy arrived at the store. The video showed the child collapsing while another bystander called 911. Another bystander, according to the outlet, brought the child a towel and a bottle of water while they all waited for first responders to arrive on the scene.
Authorities said that the boy was walking around the Brownsville area earlier in the evening when a man pulled up, forced the child into the vehicle, sexually assaulted him, and shot him in the face. He then forced the child out of the vehicle.
On Tuesday morning, authorities arrested 43-year-old Aliex Santiesteban in connection with the attack. He was booked into the Miami-Dade jail on charges of sexual battery with a deadly weapon, kidnapping, and attempted murder, authorities said.
In a Monday news conference, Miami-Dade police spokesperson Alvaro Zabaleta said that the child locks were activated during the attack, which prevented the child from getting out of the vehicle. Zabaleta said that the child was eventually able to fight the suspect off — but then the suspect reportedly shot him in the face and shoved him out of the vehicle.
“The young boy says he couldn’t see at the time,” Zabaleta told reporters. “He had lost his sight and he was using his touch to find his way around trying to seek help.”
As of Monday, the unnamed boy — who was hospitalized in critical condition — was stable and recovering.
“He still has a long way ahead as far as his recovery is concerned,” Zabaleta said. “It’s devastating to know that this individual, not only did he have to live the traumatic incident of being sexually assaulted, but then at the same time be shot in the face.”
The child, Zabaleta said, was out so late at night because he had reportedly snuck out of the house to visit friends without telling his parents. He left pillows stacked in his bed in case his parents decided to check on him. The child was reportedly on his way home when he was approached by the suspect.
White House senior adviser for COVID response Andy Slavitt had a hard time coming up with an answer this week when he was asked why California hasn’t fared better against the coronavirus than Florida, despite the Golden State’s lockdown policies.
“I want to start with what we just saw,” MSNBC host Stephanie Ruhle said at the outset of the Wednesday interview. “Contrast states like Florida and California. California [is] basically in a lockdown and their numbers aren’t that different from Florida.”
New numbers coming out of both states have suggested, to the surprise of many public health experts, that states with harsh lockdown policies have not been more successful at combating the virus than states that adopted more open approaches.
Slavitt, appearing confounded, responded, “Look, there’s so much of this virus that we think we understand, that we think we can predict, that’s just a little bit beyond our explanation.”
Then, without providing evidence, he claimed, “What we do know is that the more careful people are, the more they mask and social distance, and the quicker we vaccinate, the quicker it goes away and the less it spreads.”
“But, we have got to get better visibility into variants — we don’t know what role they play — umm, large events, etc.,” he continued.
“But as we all have learned by this time, this is a virus that continues to surprise us,”he added. “It’s very hard to predict. And all around the country, we’ve got to continue to do a better job, and I think we are, but we’re not done yet.”
The Biden administration, which endorses restrictive lockdown measures, has targeted Florida in recent days, floating the idea of imposing a domestic travel ban on the state to mitigate the spread of more contagious virus variants. The notion immediately drew ire from Republicans in the state of Florida, including Gov. Ron DeSantis and Sen. Marco Rubio.
DeSantis shot back, saying the potential plan “stinks to high heaven,” and blasted the Biden administration for employing a blatant double standard, contrasting the potential travel ban with Biden’s lax immigration enforcement.
“It is a huge contradiction and you can’t square wanting opening borders for illegal aliens, but then also restricting U.S. citizens from basically traveling around the country as they see fit and I think the American people see the hypocrisy in that,” he said.
Rubio wrote a letter to Biden slamming the idea as “an outrageous, authoritarian move that has no basis in law or science.”
“Instituting a travel ban, or any restriction of movement between the states, would be an outrageous, authoritarian move that has no basis in law or science. Instead, it would only serve to inflict severe and devastating economic pain on an already damaged economy,” the senator said in a statement.
Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images
Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis slammed the Biden administration during a press conference this week, warning that kids will “not go back in [this] school year” under the Biden administration’s current plans and “may not even go back in the fall.”
DeSantis specifically highlighted the newly released CDC guidelines for reopening schools. The Washington Post reported that the Biden administration’s new guidelines effectively would do away with full in-person learning for the foreseeable future, even as cases drop around the country, because to have full in-person learning the rates of community transmission would need to be “quite low,”which The Post notes does not exist almost anywhere in the U.S.
“Florida schools are open for in person instruction, every single parent in this state has a right to send their kid to in person instruction,” DeSantis said during a press conference this week. “We have done it the right way, we are not going to turn back. What the CDC put out five o’clock on a Friday afternoon, I wonder why they would do it then, was quite frankly, a disgrace. It would require if you actually followed that, closing 90% of schools in the United States.”
“We have been open, they will remain open and we are not turning back,” DeSantis continued. “We’ve been open the whole time since August. We had kids doing camps and athletics and all that over the summer. And we’ve been in person as much as anybody in the country. And yet, we’re 34 out of 50 states and DC for COVID-19 cases on a per capita basis for children. Thirty-three states have more cases per capita than than Florida, for children per capita. And many of those don’t have a lot of in person instruction in school. And so there is no evidence to suggest that kids should do anything else other than be in school. This has been clear for months and months and months, we followed the data when we worked to get the parents the option to send the kids back because we had looked at what happened in Europe, places like Sweden and all these other places.”
“And it does not require another 100 billion dollars,” DeSantis continued. “The school reopening plan that makes the most sense, if you want to open schools, open them, open the door, let them come in and let them learn. And the only reason that that is not happening across this country like it is in Florida, like it is in a handful of other states, it’s one reason and one reason only, because the Democratic Party puts the interests of education unions and special interests ahead of the well being of our children and our families. These kids have been out of school in parts of this country for almost a year. And if you follow that CDC guidance, they will not go back in this this school year and they may not even go back in the fall. That is a disgrace. That is not science. That is putting politics ahead of what’s right for kids. That is putting politics and special interests ahead of what the evidence and observed experience says.”
WATCH:
Public health experts Joseph G. Allen and Helen Jenkins wrote in The Washington Post:
The new report on schools from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention should be a wake-up call to parents everywhere: If they’re not back already, your kids are not going back to school full-time this year.
The report adds new and unnecessary demands that will ultimately keep millions of kids out of school. In particular, there are two items that will act as barriers: the use of community-spread metrics to determine whether schools should open, and the requirement of routine screening testing. …
The science is clear: Kids — especially young children — can get and transmit covid-19, but they are less likely to do so than adults. Kids can die from the disease, but the risk of that happening is one in a million; they are about 10 times as likely to die by suicide. Teachers also have lower risk than other occupations and can be kept safe through adherence to universal precautions.
The science is also clear that keeping children out of school is doing real harm: Loss in literacy progress. An exploding mental health crisis. Billions of missed meals. Women dropping out of the workforce. Hundreds of thousands of kids missing school. The effects are compounding daily.
Even CNN’s Jake Tapper grilled CDC Director Rochelle Walensky this week, saying that he had “high hopes that schools would be able to resume in person learning, because so many scientists and health officials, including you and Dr. Fauci and others, had been talking about the science supports opening the schools as much as possible.”
“I know that a lot of teachers are very concerned, and I know the teachers unions have been pushing back on this,” he continued. “But it sounds to me like you’re asking for 100 percent mask compliance and a number of measures that we’re never going to be able to achieve. And that makes me feel like, boy, I don’t know if the schools are ever going to open until everybody’s vaccinated.”
Ron DeSantis, governor of Florida, speaks during a news conference with U.S. Vice President Mike Pence, not pictured, in West Palm Beach, Florida, U.S., on Friday, Feb. 28, 2020. / Saul Martinez/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Friday morning announced that he has ordered back home Florida National Guard troops sent to Washington, D.C., to secure the inauguration of President Joe Biden, which took place on Wednesday. DeSantis called the “mission” in D.C. “half-cocked” and blasted House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) for treating troops like her “servants.”
“[Governor Ron DeSantis] says he ordered the National Guard to come home from the U.S. Capitol because ‘they’re not Nancy Pelosi’s servants’ and ‘this is a half-cocked mission at this point and I think the appropriate thing is to bring them home,’” reported Miami Herald Tallahassee Bureau Chief Mary Ellen Klas.
A stunning 25,000 troops from across the nation were ordered to D.C. to secure the inauguration of Biden. As noted by The Daily Wire, disturbing photographs circulated Thursday evening revealed our National Guard troops sleeping in cold parking garages.
“Thousands of National Guardsmen were forced to vacate congressional grounds on Thursday and have been photographed having to sleep in parking garages while temperatures in the nation’s capital were set to dip down to near-freezing temperatures,” The Daily Wire reported. “The photos of the living conditions that the National Guardsmen were forced to endure come after Democrats took complete control of the federal government this week following Joe Biden being sworn in as the nation’s 46th president.”
Republican Gov. Greg Abbott (TX) reacted quickly to the report, too, ordering on Thursday night that members of the Texas National Guard return from D.C. back to Texas, The Daily Wire reported.
“I have instructed General Norris to order the return of the Texas National Guard to our state,” Abbott said on Twitter.
Earlier in the week, the Abbott ripped into the so-called “loyalty” screening of the tens of thousands of National Guards troops sent to D.C. for the inauguration. Linking to a piece from The Washington Post concerning the excess screening of 25,000 National Guard troops, Abbott posted: “This is the most offensive thing I’ve ever heard. No one should ever question the loyalty or professionalism of the Texas National Guard.”
Notably, service members are already screened for ties to extremism or other potential flags. Thus, the latest screenings seem to be excessive and perhaps linked to suspicion directed at supporters of President Donald Trump after the Capitol riot. The Associated Press in a Monday report on the screening, for example, named supporters of the president as potential threats to a Biden inauguration.
“No one should ever question the loyalty or professionalism of the Texas National Guard,” the governor said via Twitter on Monday. “I authorized more than 1,000 to go to DC. I’ll never do it again if they are disrespected like this.”
Texas Governor orders National Guard unit stationed in DC for Biden inauguration back home after troops forced to sleep in parking garages
“I have instructed General Norris to order the return of the Texas National Guard to our state.”
This follows bi-partisan outcry at pictures of Guardsmen sleeping on the concrete floors of the garages in freezing temperatures. A Guardsman told Politico “Yesterday dozens of senators and congressmen walked down our lines taking photos, shaking our hands and thanking us for our service. Within 24 hours, they had no further use for us and banished us to the corner of a parking garage. We feel incredibly betrayed.”
Guard units had been told to leave Capitol grounds facilities where they had been staying for the two weeks leading up to the inauguration. There was reportedly only one electrical outlet and one bathroom for 5,000 troops and no internet reception.
Over 25,000 Guardsmen from around the country were ordered to Washington DC following the Jan 6 riot at the US Capitol, in order to provide additional security for the inauguration. The guard has been on station for two weeks and were seen in pictures last week before the inauguration sleeping on the floors of the Capitol before cots were brought in.
Following public outcry and pushback from many lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, Guardsmen were welcomed back to the Capitol buildings on Thursday night.
President Trump Gives Permission for US Troops to Stay at Trump Hotel in Washington DC
As reported earlier by Cristina Laila – A military source in DC told TPUSA Chief Creative Officer Benny Johnson that for the last week his battalion had been sleeping on the floor in the Senate cafeteria in preparation for Biden’s sham inauguration. One day after Biden’s inauguration, 5,000 soldiers were moved to a cold parking garage. There is one power outlet and one bathroom for 5,000 soldiers.
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More than 20,000 troops protected Joe Biden’s sham inauguration on Wednesday. Virtually no one showed up to see senile Joe slur his way through his swearing-in ceremony. The military felt completely abandoned by the DC elites.
This morning OANN reported that President Trump gave permission for the troops to stay at his lavish Trump Hotel in Washington DC. Trump loves the troops. It’s just too bad Democrats stole his military vote.
Jim Hoft is the founder and editor of The Gateway Pundit, one of the top conservative news outlets in America. Jim was awarded the Reed Irvine Accuracy in Media Award in 2013 and is the proud recipient of the Breitbart Award for Excellence in Online Journalism from the Americans for Prosperity Foundation in May 2016.
We are being told that our liberties must be suspended in order to keep hospitals from reaching apocalyptic levels. But what if those levels are just above normal and not anywhere near apocalyptic levels? And what if these lockdown measures do nothing to keep the levels down anyway?
Well, if there is anywhere we can cross-check this hypothesis, it would be in Florida, where there is no lockdown or mask mandate. In fact, people are flocking there from out of state to enjoy vacations and host conferences and even to live. Naturally, we’d expect hospital levels to be bursting at the seams if they rise and fall with lockdowns and masks, right?
Well, actually, you can barely see an increase in the hospitalization level in the Sunshine State from previous years, and the current level appears to be on par with the 2018 flu season, which was more of a pandemic flu than other flus in recent years. And in 2018, we did nothing as a nation to suspend liberties.
There is much debate over how to count a COVID hospitalization given the rampant and unprecedented testing of people relative to past flus. But one easy way to observe an apples-to-apples comparison to past flu seasons is to compare the overall average daily census of hospitalizations now to previous years and adjust those numbers per capita to existing population. In other words, if all of the COVID patients are legitimately there because of COVID, we would see an enormous excess in the total number of people in the hospital at any given moment for any ailment. Florida is simply not seeing a gigantic increase.
Here is how the math works: HHS tracks total daily hospital levels in all the states dating back to Jan. 1, 2020. If you take the average daily total hospitalization levels in Florida for the fourth quarter of 2020, you will find an average (some days are more, some are less) of 43,150.
Naturally, I wondered what the levels were in previous years, because the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration publishes quarterly data of hospital censuses for several recent years. I started with the first quarter of 2018, which included the harshest flu season we had in a decade. If you average the total hospital census over the 90 days from Jan. 1 to March 31, it works out to 41,094 people in the hospital on an average day. Adjusting for the population at the time, that would be 1,972 hospitalizations per 1 million people. That is compared to 1,998 per 1 million for this past quarter of 2020 with COVID as the predominant illness.
As you can see, although the hospital numbers for the fourth quarter of 2020 were about 6%-8% higher than in the fourth quarter of the previous two years, it was barely higher than the first quarters of every year. The reason it is fair to compare to the worst months of previous years is because it has become clear that the flu is gone for this year and that COVID-19 is this year’s version of the flu. Thus, with flu cases down 98.8%, it is reasonable to assume that the January census will not grow as it typically does during peak flu season.
In other states, lockdown proponents can theoretically suggest that the reason the hospital numbers aren’t worse is because of the measures they are taking. However, Florida serves as the perfect control group, given that there is no lockdown and there have been no statewide restrictions in place for several months.
It’s also important to remember that as a nation we have thrown hundreds of billions of dollars at hospitals to treat this virus as compared to past flu seasons. So, the level of hospitalization we are equipped to deal with is much higher than in the past.
Off the bat, the numbers for this past quarter are inflated because on Oct. 6, HHS updated its guidance requiring hospitals to include those in “observations beds” as part of the census. Any data from past years did not include observations beds, only inpatient beds where people stayed for over 24 hours.
Also, because the nation is panicked over this virus, unlike during the 2018 flu season, the threshold for people going to the hospital is likely much lower than in past flu seasons. While there are definitely some people who are gravely ill with this virus, we have decided to treat this virus in the hospital much more liberally than any other virus. Hospitals receive higher reimbursement rates for treating COVID-19 patients. However, many of the cases are not necessarily clinical level.
As I noted in November, hospitalization is required in order to treat someone with Remdesivir, the only FDA-approved drug, which was approved on Oct. 22. It’s very likely that a certain percentage of those people are not sicker than a typical flu patient who would be treated outpatient, but the Remdesivir necessitates admission to the hospital.
Taking all these factors in totality, especially in a state like Florida with no lockdown, it has become clear that the entire pretext for shutting down our liberties is built upon misinformation and lack of context. In other words, those 900,000 projected excess deaths due to unemployment from lockdowns are all for nothing.
COVID-19 cases in the United States are growing, but the media is selectively covering the states with the highest numbers.
On Tuesday, the United States reported there were at least 2,216 new COVID-19 deaths and approximately 178,200 new cases. Some states, despite strict coronavirus mandates and guidelines meant to prevent spread, are suffering from the most cases and deaths. Instead, however, big news seems to be focused on continuing to shame GOP politicians for refusing to completely shut down their states again.
Months after outlets such as CNN, NPR, the Washington Post, and others continually targeted Florida for increasing coronavirus cases, the corporate media ignored Illinois, which recorded 15,415 cases in just one day. That’s more than Florida ever reported in a single day, yet Florida is singled out for negative news attention.
“This is despite Illinois’ population being 40% lower,” Youyang Gu, creator of a COVID-19 projection website reported.
While Illinois continues to see climbing cases and deaths, outlets such as MSNBC, NPR, and CNN are choosing to hyper-focus on states with Republican leaders such as Gov. Kristi Noem of South Dakota, who have chosen different COVID-19 mitigation techniques.
While Illinois enacted mask mandates, closed restaurants, and discouraged people from holiday travel and gatherings, Gu notes that the state is still experiencing an exceptional amount of cases and deaths per capita compared to states with much higher populations such as Florida, California, and Texas.
“We hear a lot of the talk about how the deaths in Florida were ‘preventable’. What about the ones in Illinois?” Gu questioned.
“I don’t want to spark a political debate here. I just hope that more people can recognize that the news we consume online can be inherently biased. They often serve to fuel division (and clicks),” he wrote.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Jordan Davidson is a staff writer at The Federalist. She graduated from Baylor University where she majored in political science and minored in journalism.
From day one, the media has been sowing panic by comparing the coronavirus to the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918, when an estimated 675,000 Americans died, the equivalent of over 2.2 million in today’s population. Moreover, the median age of those who died was 28, which means that the cumulative years of life lost were enormous. Contrast that to this virus: The median age of death in most places is either at or above life expectancy. The latest example is out of Florida, where, according to one reporter, the median age of death for the batch of reported coronavirus deaths on September 2 was 93.
Jennifer Cabrera, who writes at the Alachua Chronicle and has been posting daily updates on Florida’s death numbers, reported an astounding finding: Out of the 149 reported deaths in Florida on Wednesday, the median age was 93.That means that half of the people who allegedly died of COVID-19 according that day’s report were older than 93. She further notes that 64% of the deaths were over age 85, still over life expectancy for both sexes.
Data points like this provide a completely different context for the severity of this virus than the panic pornography we see in the media and what was sold to us as the original justification for such dramatically destructive shutdown measures. Furthermore, they raise serious questions about the accuracy of reported causes of death, particularly in such an old population.
Hundreds of thousands of young people will likely die early from economic despair, suicide, and substance abuse as a result of our response to a virus that kills in significant numbers those above the age of life expectancy. The panic, social isolation, and destruction of life and liberty have induced a crisis of suicide and clinical depression, most evident among young people who are least likely to die from the virus. This is especially absurd given that there is zero evidence to date showing any correlation between lockdown policies and better outcomes or lives saved from coronavirus.
Aside from the J.P. Morgan analysis that showed absolutely no statistical correlation, analytics agency TrendMacro used extremely detailed anonymized cellphone monitoring knowledge supplied by Google to show zero correlation between states with low social mobility scores and better coronavirus outcomes. In a detailed op-ed for the Wall Street Journal, the CIO of TrendMacro, Donald Luskin, shows that the depth and severity of lockdowns and the timing of reopening played no role in stopping the spread, as we have also observed from many states and countries throughout the world.
Aside from the context the median age of COVID-19 death provides, moreover, it raises questions about the accuracy of the count, because while many elderly people in nursing homes clearly did die from the virus, it’s also likely that many of them died of old age or other ailments. Now that we know that there are so many false positives, that so many are asymptomatic, and that as many as 90% of those who test positive do not have clinically meaningful loads of the virus, it calls into question even more the policy of automatically recording anyone who died after having tested positive as a COVID-19 death.This is especially true given that so many of those who died were in their 80s and 90s. Remember, while this coronavirus is dangerous to advanced seniors, there is a 22% chance that any male over the age of 93 (for females, it’s 18%) will not live out the year at all, without considering coronavirus. Given the false positives and asymptomatic cases, it’s likely that many of these people who merely tested positive and died thereafter, as opposed to those closer to 60 or so, did not die from the virus.
Remember, when they report deaths from weeks ago, it means state officials are going back into death certificates and trying to match them with anyone who tested positive prior to death. We now know that up to 90% of positive tests are picking up dead or insignificant viral loads in people who already essentially recovered from the virus or never knew they had it, which means that none of those people who later died could have been taken from this world by the virus itself.
In Florida, roughly a third of the recorded deaths from the September 2 reporting occurred over a month ago. Given the median age of those deaths, the nature of the testing, and the retroactive backfilling, how many of those are completely bogus? Had we done this during past flu seasons, especially the pandemic flu of 2018, we likely could have recorded well over 100,000 deaths.
Sadly, old people will never stop dying – ever. Given the way we are counting COVID-19 deaths, the obsessive focus on it, and the insidious agenda to retroactively discover more numbers, this pseudo-epidemic could go on indefinitely – even if the virus were essentially eradicated tomorrow.
Author: Daniel Horowitz
Daniel Horowitz is a senior editor of Conservative Review. Follow him on Twitter @RMConservative.
KEY WEST, Fla. – Two residents of the Florida Keys have been jailed for failing to quarantine after testing positive for the new coronavirus.
Jose Interian, 24, and Yohana Gonzalez, 26, are facing charges of violating isolation rules for a quarantine and violating emergency management disaster preparedness rules, according to jail records. They were arrested Wednesday in Key West, officials said.
The Miami Herald reports Interian and Gonzalez had been ordered by the health department to quarantine after testing positive for COVID-19, but neighbors said they were ignoring the order. Someone videotaped the couple and gave it to Key West police, according to Greg Veliz, Key West’s city manager.
“There were complaints from the neighborhood of them continuing to be outside, going about normal life functions,” Veliz said.
There were no court records in an online docket for the Monroe County court system, so it was not immediately clear whether Interian or Gonzalez had an attorney who could comment. Jail records show the couple is being held without bond.
The Florida Keys island chain was closed to nonresidents for two months in the spring to keep outsiders from spreading the new coronavirus. It reopened to visitors in June.
A Nashville man told his local news station last week that he received at least three calls from the state about apparently testing positive for the novel coronavirus.
The problem? He was never tested.
According to News4 Investigates, Brock Ballou, a resident of the Nashville suburb of Mount Juliet, said he was anticipating a call from a contact tracer after one of his coworkers tested positive for COVID-19. However, the tracer repeatedly told Mr. Ballou that he was positive for the virus, despite the fact that he was never tested, he says.
“She specifically said – I’m looking at it right here – you tested positive – this is a follow up call to see how your symptoms are,” Ballou told the news station.
Asked if he possibly misheard the woman on the phone, Ballou said she reiterated his supposedly positive test results multiple times.
“I’m 100 percent sure that’s what she said, she was looking right at it,” he recalled, “she told me I’m in the system – looking right at it that you’re showing positive.”
Over the following days, Ballou received more calls from the state about his COVID symptoms.
“(The contact tracer) said I’m still seeing that you’re positive. Courtesy call – checking your symptoms,” he said.
News4 Investigates said all three phone numbers used to reach out to Ballou have been confirmed by the news station to have come from workers with the state health department of Tennessee. The apparent discrepancy has Ballou questioning the accuracy of the state’s COVID-19 case counts.
“I said I don’t know what’s going on, but it’s wrong. I’m just another number when I’m not.”
The Tennessee health department confirmed through a spokeswoman that they are investigating the discrepancy.
“I can also tell you there is no concern with our count of cases in regard to our reporting of those who test positive,” the spokeswoman said. “Those entries are based on lab results, not on information provided from the monitoring team.”
According to Ballou, he’s been told by the state that the calls made to him were done via a third party contracted by the health department.
As noted by The Daily Wire last week, the Florida State Health Department confirmed that some testing laboratories in the state have not been disclosing their negative novel coronavirus testing results accurately, skewing the positivity rates dramatically. At least two labs were discovered to have inflated their positivity rates of the virus by a factor of ten.
“Countless labs have reported a 100 percent positivity rate, which means every single person tested was positive. Other labs had very high positivity rates,” FOX 35 explained Tuesday.
It was uncovered that Orlando Veteran’s Medical Center’s reported positivity rate of 76% was actually around 6%, a spokesperson for the center revealed. FOX 35 added, “Orlando Health’s positivity rate is only 9.4 percent, not 98 percent as in the report.”
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Spiritual
American Family Association
American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
Bible Gateway
The Bible Gateway is a tool for reading and researching scripture online — all in the language or translation of your choice! It provides advanced searching capabilities, which allow readers to find and compare particular passages in scripture based on
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What Did You Say? 
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