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Walz Tried to Clean Up Falsehoods in Fox News Interview, But He Got Clobbered by the Facts Instead

By: Tristan Justice | October 07, 2024

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2024/10/07/walz-tried-to-clean-up-falsehoods-in-fox-news-interview-but-he-got-clobbered-by-the-facts-instead/

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Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz did the interview with Fox News his running mate never will, but instead of moving on from his record of dishonesty, he had another brutal run-in with the truth. On Sunday, Walz joined Shannon Bream for the network’s flagship Sunday political program, where Bream grilled the Democrats’ vice-presidential nominee on a range of issues from the serial falsehoods about his personal life to Iran. ABC News characterized the interview as a “cleanup” operation. It came days after the debate with Sen. J.D. Vance, R-Ohio, when Walz celebrated friendships with school shooters and struggled to explain his lie about where he was during the 1989 massacre in Tiananmen Square. Walz has also previously exaggerated his military service and wrongly claimed his own children were conceived through in vitro fertilization (IVF).

“What do you say to the American people who think, ‘I don’t know that I can trust this guy with all those modifications to be the potential commander-in-chief of this country?’” asked Bream.

“I think they heard me,” Walz said, “… and I got to be honest with you, Shannon. I don’t think people care whether I used IUI or IVF when we talk about this. What they understand is Donald Trump would resist those things.”

https://twitter.com/AlphaNewsMN/status/1843026524406210964?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1843026524406210964%7Ctwgr%5Eb299f985477bd020acd2f91ad0086bd3418f00a0%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fthefederalist.com%2F2024%2F10%2F07%2Fwalz-tried-to-clean-up-falsehoods-in-fox-news-interview-but-he-got-clobbered-by-the-facts-instead%2F

Bream, however, corrected Walz on former President Donald Trump’s platform, which explicitly endorses IVF. “If we’re going to deal in truth,” Bream said, “both the president, the former president and his nominee have said they are very supportive of IVF.”

Earlier in the interview, Bream pressed Walz about the incumbent immigration crisis that is unfolding under Vice President Harris, the administration’s “border czar.”

“She has policies that make a difference,” Walz said. “Her border policies are the most strongest, the fairest we’ve seen.”

“Governor, you know a lot of people, including your own party, would not join that statement,” Bream said, in light of the fact that more than 10 million illegals having entered the United States under President Joe Biden.

Walz pivoted to complain about Republicans in Congress rejecting a bill, negotiated by Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., that would have codified an open border. “This is a real bill that has bipartisan support. It has the experts on board, and it starts to tackle these issues,” Walz said. The bill, however, also grants asylum for all, with 5,000 crossings permitted on a daily basis.

https://twitter.com/GrageDustin/status/1842935798129442993?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1842935798129442993%7Ctwgr%5Eb299f985477bd020acd2f91ad0086bd3418f00a0%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fthefederalist.com%2F2024%2F10%2F07%2Fwalz-tried-to-clean-up-falsehoods-in-fox-news-interview-but-he-got-clobbered-by-the-facts-instead%2F

“That piece of legislation,” Bream said, “does … include the wall. … You’ve disparaged that. I mean, the vice president has as well. So, I don’t know if she really intends to move forward with that.”

In fact, here’s what Harris wrote about the border wall in her 2019 book, The Truths We Hold, when recounting the 2018 budget debate over the barrier:

A useless wall on the southern border would be nothing more than a symbol, a monument standing in opposition to not just everything I value, but to the fundamental values upon which this country was built. … How could I vote to build what would be little more than a monument, designed to send the cold, hard message “KEEP OUT”?

[LISTEN: Kamala Harris: The Machine Candidate]

Walz ran into another fact-check when he blamed the death of a Georgia woman on Republican abortion laws. “States like Georgia force women to cross the border and then we have a death of Amber Thurman,” Walz said. “Trying to cut hairs on an issue on this is not where the American public is at. They want the restoration of Roe versus Wade. Vice President Harris said she would sign it.”

https://twitter.com/CollinRugg/status/1842933624133316685?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1842933624133316685%7Ctwgr%5Eb299f985477bd020acd2f91ad0086bd3418f00a0%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fthefederalist.com%2F2024%2F10%2F07%2Fwalz-tried-to-clean-up-falsehoods-in-fox-news-interview-but-he-got-clobbered-by-the-facts-instead%2F

Bream clarified the Democrats’ support for on-demand abortion goes well beyond the precedent previously established in Roe v. Wade, and then corrected the record on Thurman’s death.

“What her family has said is it was a complication from an abortion pill that she received, and she didn’t get proper care when she went to a Georgia hospital, which had multiple opportunities to intervene there,” Bream said. “Her own attorney, the family’s attorney, says it wasn’t the Georgia law, it was the hospital.”

[RELATED: Amber Thurman Died From The Abortion Pill, Not Pro-Life Laws]

“I’m a knucklehead at times,” Walz said in last week’s CBS debate with a performance so disastrous, the writers of Saturday Night Live (SNL) mocked him this weekend.

https://twitter.com/floridanow1/status/1842885271303458873?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1842885271303458873%7Ctwgr%5Eb299f985477bd020acd2f91ad0086bd3418f00a0%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fthefederalist.com%2F2024%2F10%2F07%2Fwalz-tried-to-clean-up-falsehoods-in-fox-news-interview-but-he-got-clobbered-by-the-facts-instead%2F

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.

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Sen. James Lankford to Newsmax: Biden’s Border Policy Backward


By Brian Freeman    |   Tuesday, 18 June 2024 12:48 PM EDT

Read more at https://www.newsmax.com/newsmax-tv/james-lankford-border-law/2024/06/18/id/1169176/

Vicious lawbreakers are able to enter the United States illegally because the Biden administration has a border policy by which criminal checks are done at the end of the process rather than at the beginning, Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., told Newsmax on Tuesday. Lankford made the comments after a El Salvador man, who had been in prison in his own country for murder, and illegally fled to the U.S. was arrested over the weekend for the killing last year of a Maryland mother.

The White House announced Tuesday the Biden administration will soon permit certain spouses of U.S. citizens without legal status to apply for permanent residency and eventually, citizenship, a move that could affect some half a million people here illegally.

Lankford called the new policy “out of touch” telling “Wake Up America,” “this is something I have said all along.

“For years I’ve said we don’t know if people are fleeing from the law or if they are fleeing from poverty: We don’t know because [this administration is] not checking it, they are not evaluating it,” Lankford added.

“Any criminal checks they are doing for individuals are actually at the end of the process, years after they have been in the country rather than at the very beginning. This is one of the things I have fought for, to have a criminal check at the very beginning and turn people around immediately rather than release them into the country.”

What makes the new Biden policy even worse is he announced recently that “he is going to close down the border,” Lankford said, “but doesn’t do it, as it was just a public show [and he] is actually not enforcing that.

“And then he announces, Oh, we are also going to allow half a million people that are in the country illegally to now get a path to citizenship, which is just a big flag to everyone internationally to say, Get into the country as fast as you can, because we are going to give you citizenship.”

Biden just get worse with every move, according to Lankford.

“This has been a challenge of Biden all along,” he continued. “He has done 94, now 95 executive orders opening the border up and inviting more people to come and then announces that he is going to close the border down and actually does not.”

“Day after day they have said [in regards to illegal immigration] that basically what [former President Donald] Trump did was mean, and so now we’re going to open the border up. What I have said over and over again to this administration is following the law is not mean.”

“We are a nation of the rule of law,” he concluded, “so as crimes increase, as murders increase, as all these problems that happen are a direct result of a president saying, Well I’m going to try to do something fair for these individuals. Instead, let’s do something fair for the American people.”

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Brian Freeman, a Newsmax writer based in Israel, has more than three decades writing and editing about culture and politics for newspapers, online and television.

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Dispatch From Eagle Pass: Biden Officials Won’t Enforce Laws But ‘Don’t Want Anyone Else To’ Either


BY: M.D. KITTLE | FEBRUARY 13, 2024

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2024/02/13/dispatch-from-eagle-pass-biden-officials-wont-enforce-laws-but-dont-want-anyone-else-to-either/

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In his appearance Sunday on NBC News’ “Meet the Press,” embattled U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas did what any failed political leader possessing little integrity and less self-awareness would do: He blamed others for his mistakes. Asked whether he bears any responsibility for the nightmare the Biden administration has wrought at the U.S. southern border and beyond, Mayorkas effectively said, don’t look at us. 

“It certainly is a crisis and we don’t bear responsibility for a broken system, and we’re dealing a tremendous amount within that broken system,” he told moderator Kristen Welker. 

Maybe the secretary should talk to the people living in and around the border towns, local law enforcement, and his own U.S. Border Patrol agents. 

Ira Mehlman and the folks from FAIR — the Federation for American Immigration Reform — did just that earlier this month. 

“Ask the people at the border in Texas. They think the blame belongs squarely with [the Biden administration],” the FAIR media director told me Monday morning on “Need to Know With Jeff Angelo” on NewsRadio 1040 in Des Moines. 

Earlier this month, Mehlman and his traveling companions saw the illegal immigration crisis firsthand at Eagle Pass, a south Texas city of about 28,000 people bordering Piedras Negras, Mexico, across the Rio Grande. As the Dallas Morning News explained, “Eagle Pass, with two small international bridges, features relatively gentle Rio Grande currents that invite migrant crossings. It became a focal point of Texas action in December when the arrival of tens of thousands of migrants over multiple weeks overwhelmed Border Patrol agents and city resources.”

The border town has become a hive of humanity, as its population swells from a wave of illegal aliens pouring over the border on promises of easy entry from President Joe Biden and his nearly impeached Homeland Security chief. U.S. Customs and Border Protection still has yet to post numbers for January apprehensions at the Southwest border, but December saw a new all-time monthly record with more than 300,000 migrant apprehensions. Eagle Pass and its Del Rio sector alone have recorded a whopping 152,252 encounters in the first three months of the federal fiscal year, beginning in October, according to the agency.  

Eagle Pass is now ground zero in a standoff between the state of Texas and the Biden administration, just as it is Exhibit A in the administration’s chaotic immigration policy. Gov. Greg Abbott, backed by several states, ordered state National Guard troops to stand guard at Eagle Pass’s gates and erect razor wire to check the invasion. A divided 5-4 U.S. Supreme Court order gave the administration the go-ahead to cut the wire, but Abbott is holding firm, arguing his state is under attack and the president is doing nothing to stop it. Abbott stands on his constitutional obligation to defend and protect his state, and the United States at large, from invasion.  

“The message from the Biden administration is: Not only don’t we want to enforce immigration laws, we don’t want anyone else to do it,” Mehlman said. 

The immigration reform activist says, from what he saw on his latest trip to Eagle Pass, Abbott’s strategy is working. And, from what’s he’s heard from law enforcement officials, there have been few attempts from federal authorities to remove the deterrents Texas has put in place. Abbott has said his Operation Lone Star has reduced illegal immigration numbers, a claim backed by a new Washington Examiner analysis. 

“The numbers show how the percentage of arrests in Texas versus other border states has shifted. In 2021, 69% of illegal immigrant arrests across the southern border occurred in Texas,” the publication reported on Monday.

“As Abbott stepped up security at the start of the Biden administration in 2021, arrests of illegal crossers began to fall and dropped to just 34% last month.”

“This is a manageable problem, as Gov. Abbott has now demonstrated. If you deter people from coming across you will see the results almost immediately,” Mehlman said. 

Mehlman does acknowledge, however, that the migrants are simply rerouting to Arizona and California, border states led by leftist governors committed to Biden’s open border policies. 

Shifting blame, Mayorkas insists Congress is the “only one who can fix” the five-alarm border fire that he and Biden have dumped gasoline on. The secretary conveniently omits the many Trump-era policies the president has reversed and the orders he could sign to turn the tide of the illegal immigration flood. My colleague Tristan Justice last week detailed the dozens of times Biden has gutted border security since he took the oath of office. 

The U.S. Senate’s bad joke of a border deal that died an ignominious death last week would have essentially codified the Biden administration’s awful policy to date. Mehlman and other critics say it would have exacerbated the crisis. He said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and his top negotiator, Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., “sold out” the House’s “good” version of the bill, creating a “lose-lose situation” for lawmakers serious about border security. 

Meanwhile, last week’s failed effort by House Republicans to impeach Mayorkas is regrouping. Speaker Mike Johnson appears to believe his fellow Republicans will have the numbers —narrowly — this time around as Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., is back to political business after undergoing cancer treatment during last week’s vote. 

Mehlman said Mayorkas deserves to be impeached. 

“He has undermined the enforcement of our immigration laws, he has violated his oath of office and he’s been derelict in his duty as secretary of Homeland Security,” the Federation for American Immigration Reform official said. 

Matt Kittle is a senior elections correspondent for The Federalist. An award-winning investigative reporter and 30-year veteran of print, broadcast, and online journalism, Kittle previously served as the executive director of Empower Wisconsin.

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Senate Border Bill Is Nothing but a Democrat Propaganda Op


BY: KYLEE GRISWOLD | FEBRUARY 06, 2024

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2024/02/06/senate-border-bill-is-nothing-but-a-democrat-propaganda-op/

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After the much-anticipated “bipartisan” Ukraine and border bill finally dropped on Sunday, it took little time to confirm that all 370 pages are worse than intelligent observers predicted. The $118 billion boondoggle is dead on arrival in the House. For Democrats and their accomplice media, however, the legislation and House Republicans’ response to it are going exactly as planned.

Not only did national disgrace Sen. Mitch McConnell (feat. useful idiot James Lankford) work tirelessly with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer on this bill to keep America’s borders open, give out amnesty Oprah-style, and write more blank checks to Ukraine and Hamas sympathizers in the Middle East, they also helped the corrupt corporate media run a propaganda operation against House Republicans and the rest of the GOP. Worse, they’re deliberately running it during an election year to boost Joe Biden on the border issue — which the near-dead incumbent has aided and abetted, and voters say is top of mind next to Bidenomics.

The Republican-majority House predictably isn’t going for the bill. Why would they? It would allow nearly 2 million illegal aliens into the country in one year — as long as the numbers stay below 5,000 entries per day for seven consecutive days, or below 8,500 border encounters in a single day — before triggering “emergency authority” for the Department of Homeland Security and closing the border. Even then there are exceptions.

Worse, if Biden decides it’s in the “national interest” to beckon some more Democrat representation padding and likely future voters across the Rio Grande, he can unilaterally suspend the border closure for 45 days per year. There’s more where that came from.

If GOP members of Congress had taken the bait, Democrats would have come out on top, having

convinced their political foes not only to continue funding a no-win forever war in Eastern Europe but also to keep letting illegal aliens into the country virtually unrestricted. Bonus: A codified open border could hamstring “the fixer” Donald Trump if he wins the general election later this year, zapping his political power to rehabilitate U.S. security and sovereignty.

Yet even without the House conceding to the bill, Democrats win anyway. Now Biden and his accomplice media can simply blame Republicans for not solving the crisis this administration caused. That’s exactly what’s happening, starting with Biden pointing fingers at Republicans:

Working with my administration, the United States Senate has done the hard work it takes to reach a bipartisan agreement. Now, House Republicans have to decide. Do they want to solve the problem? Or do they want to keep playing politics with the border?

Biden’s media lapdogs dutifully advanced the narrative, which they’d already been spinning before the text of the bill was even released.

“GOP Blames Biden for Border Crisis That GOP Refuses to Solve,” blared one Daily Beast headline. “Republicans are yelling about a crisis at the border. But they’re also unwilling to do anything to address it for fear that it’d give Joe Biden a political win,” the subheading continued, taking its talking points straight from the president and Senate Democrats like Chris Murphy.

“Why Republicans Don’t Want To Solve the Border Problem — But do want to make deals to cut taxes,” read another headline in New York Magazine’s Intelligencer by Jonathan Chait.

“Republicans Who Screamed About A Crisis On The Border Now Oppose A Plan To Fix It,” said HuffPost, claiming Republicans oppose the border bill not because it’s nightmarish but because they want to hurt Biden. “Border Patrol Supports ‘Strong’ Immigration Deal. Republicans Don’t Care,” wrote Rolling Stone.

Vanity Fair claimed, “Republicans Don’t Want to Lose Their Favorite 2024 Talking Point,” with Bloomberg opting for a simple, “House Republicans Don’t Want to Fix the Border.”

Cable television has been as bad. A host of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” said the “bipartisan border deal is doomed to fail … because Republicans have turned on it.” The “Today” show framed the gridlock as Republicans “threaten[ing] to block the border bill they negotiated,” as if McConnell and his sidekick colluding with Democrats behind closed doors amounts to a good-faith bipartisan negotiation.

This run-of-the-mill propaganda is to be expected from the corporate media, but it’s just so brazen considering Republicans’ efforts to secure the border earlier in Biden’s term and Democrats’ subsequent refusal to cooperate.

We’re all old enough to remember less than a year ago when the House passed a stronger border bill that would have restarted Trump-era border wall construction, required aliens to remain in Mexico while waiting out their usually fraudulent asylum claims, restricted asylum eligibility to legal ports of entry, enacted harsher punishments for overstaying expired visas, kept Title 42-esque “expulsion authority” in place, and supplied border authorities with additional grant funding. Senate Democrats wouldn’t lift a finger.

But sure. It’s Republicans “playing politics.”

Kylee Griswold is the editorial director of The Federalist. She previously worked as the copy editor for the Washington Examiner magazine and as an editor and producer at National Geographic. She holds a B.S. in Communication Arts/Speech and an A.S. in Criminal Justice and writes on topics including feminism and gender issues, religion, and the media. Follow her on Twitter @kyleezempel.

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Mollie Hemingway Op-ed: To Win, Republicans Have To Be Smarter And Tougher Than Sen. James Lankford


BY: MOLLIE HEMINGWAY | DECEMBER 04, 2023

Read https://thefederalist.com/2023/12/04/to-win-republicans-have-to-be-smarter-and-tougher-than-sen-james-lankford/more at

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Career Democrat and ABC host George Stephanopoulos completely emasculated Sen. James Lankford of Oklahoma this weekend on his Sunday show. Right at the beginning of the interview, Stephanopoulos advanced a flurry of disinformation and lies, to which Lankford, who purports to be a conservative senator of the burgundy-red state of Oklahoma, bowed down in complete supplication:

Stephanopoulos: Your party’s leading candidate for president was on the stump yesterday repeating lies about the 2020 election. He’s called those convicted in the Jan. 6 insurrection hostages. He faces 91 separate felony counts himself. He’s raised the prospect of executing the former chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and terminating parts of the Constitution. In the face of all that and more, are you prepared to support Donald Trump if he’s your party’s nominee?  

Oh, for crying out loud. What an absolutely preposterous line of questioning. Any Republican elected official with a room-temperature IQ and even a modicum of self-respect would be livid at the propaganda and lies and immediately push back. But not Lankford. Here’s how he responded:

Lankford: Yes, we haven’t had a single vote yet, George. This is still weeks and weeks away from our first votes that are happening actually in Iowa, then New Hampshire and South Carolina. And there are a lot of people that are going to make that decision. That’s not going to be me making that decision, that’s going to be the American people that actually make that decision.  

Stephanopoulos pressed him, and Lankford remained impotent in the face of the questioning. In fact, he was so bad throughout the interview, he even quoted Alejandro Mayorkas, Biden’s controversial homeland security secretary, as a role model on immigration enforcement. The entire state of Oklahoma looked worse as it went on.

Now, Lankford is more than welcome to stay out of the Republican primary or endorse whomever he thinks is the best candidate, but what he should not feel free to do is allow the corrupt media and other Democrats to destroy the country through propaganda and lies. Americans are absolutely desperate for even the tiniest bit of Republican backbone and leadership, not mealy-mouthed kowtowing to the press.

When you claim to be a conservative senator of a state so Republican that two out of every three voters in 2020 voted for Trump, and a lifelong Democrat operative in the media asks you a completely loaded agitprop question, you should hit it out of the park. Like so:

“First off, George, your audience should know that you just regurgitated back a diatribe of lies, mistruths, and Democrat propaganda. I’m not surprised, given your professional background and track record of maliciously pushing the false and dangerous Russia-collusion scam for so many years during and after the 2016 election, but I can’t allow your lies to go uncorrected.

“The public knows full well there were major issues in how the 2020 election was conducted — from Mark Zuckerberg’s more than $400 million on partisan get-out-the-vote efforts in key swing states, to the deliberate Hunter Biden laptop suppression that the major news and tech companies along with 51 intel officials participated in, to the tens of millions of mail-in-ballots and voting changes that did not follow state laws. So drop the dishonest, holier-than-thou nonsense about 2020 being the cleanest, most perfect election with nothing allowed to be scrutinized or discussed.

“Second, the public is also wising up to the fact that what the corporate media have spun to them about Jan. 6 hasn’t exactly been the complete truth. Yes, we know your line that this was the worst moment in the history of the world, requiring our FBI to do nothing other than arrest people who were anywhere near the event. Well, that, and arrest pro-lifers who are praying and parents who are attending school board meetings.

“But most Americans know that we have not gotten good answers about why Nancy Pelosi turned down security provisions ahead of what intelligence suggested would be a very contentious day, or what exactly was being done by the federal informants and federal agents who were present for the day’s events. They’re extremely worried about how left-wing rioters and criminals seem to be able to do whatever they want with very few repercussions, even when they’re attacking the Supreme Court, federal courthouses, the White House, churches, homes, and police precincts. And now with the release of some of the videotapes from that day, we see that most of the activity that day was not in any way what was hyped up and presented by the Democrats’ Jan. 6 show trial.

“Finally, the Biden administration is at this moment doing everything in its power to put their leading political opponent in prison. They raided Mar-a-Lago, George. When other countries do things like this, when Putin does stuff like this, we say that means they don’t have free and fair elections. It seems the Democrats’ main strategy this election cycle is to attempt to put effective Republicans in prison, to bankrupt them, and to prevent them from speaking out about what is being done to destroy this country. I’ll note this isn’t working with the American people, as Trump now leads widely in almost all polls against Biden, a strong renunciation of what’s going on.

“So I ask you, George, are you prepared to start focusing on the major policy issues facing the country, or will you continue to push lies and propaganda to help put your political opponents in prison?”

You know, something like that.

To state the obvious here, using small words so that even the absolutely feckless and embarrassingly lame Senate Republicans can understand, praising Mayorkas, failing to correct lies about Republicans, and mumbling about how you’ll vote Republican if you are forced to is not a way to win elections. Yes, I’m sure it’s what Mitch McConnell told Lankford to go out and do, but it yields nothing but failure. The people of Oklahoma deserve an actual man to represent them, not whatever it is they’re getting in Lankford.

You win elections by saying truthful things, not being sad and scared like Lankford and most other Republican senators are. He should be lambasting Stephanopoulos for not covering the major issues facing the country in an even remotely evenhanded or honest way.

That’s how you go from being a party full of absolute losers who are on their back heels constantly to one that makes people want to vote for you.

Mollie Ziegler Hemingway is the Editor-in-Chief of The Federalist. She is Senior Journalism Fellow at Hillsdale College and a Fox News contributor. She is the co-author of Justice on Trial: The Kavanaugh Confirmation and the Future of the Supreme Court. She is the author of “Rigged: How the Media, Big Tech, and the Democrats Seized Our Elections.” Reach her at mzhemingway@thefederalist.com

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12 GOP Senators Help Democrats Erode Americans’ Right to Act on Religious Convictions About Marriage


BY: JORDAN BOYD | NOVEMBER 29, 2022

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2022/11/29/12-gop-senators-help-democrats-erode-americans-right-to-act-on-religious-convictions-about-marriage/

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The ‘Respect for Marriage Act’ enables LGBT activists and the DOJ to bring civil action against anyone they say violates the legislation.

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Twelve Republicans disregarded their constituents’ wishes and aided Democrats in deriding the First Amendment rights of religious Americans by passing the deceptively-named Respect For Marriage Act without including any of their colleagues’ proposed protective amendments.

Of the 12 Republicans who voted to advance the RFMA to a vote on the floor, three needed to change their minds before a final vote on the bill to keep the bill from passing. It is clear from the 61-36 vote on Tuesday night that Sens. Roy Blunt of Missouri, Richard Burr of North Carolina, Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, Susan Collins of Maine, Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming, Rob Portman of Ohio, Mitt Romney of Utah, Dan Sullivan of Alaska, Thom Tillis of North Carolina, Joni Ernst of Iowa, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, and Todd Young of Indiana did not change their minds.

Instead of using amendments as prerequisites for their support, these Republicans opened the door for their congressional colleagues to reject three separate attempts to give the bill robust legal protections for religious Americans who believe marriage is between a man and a woman.

The RFMA as it stands doesn’t just repeal the Defense of Marriage Act, which defines marriage as between male and female, by codifying the Supreme Court’s approval of same-sex marriage in Obergefell v. Hodges. It goes further by enabling LGBT activists, who have already made a habit of exploiting the legal system to target religious Americans, and the politically motivated Department of Justice to bring civil action against anyone they say violates the terms of the legislation.

Under the guise of vague language, the RFMA could allow for the legal victimization of wedding vendors, adoption agencies, bakeries, and any other entities run by people of faith who refuse to offer services condoning same-sex marriage based on religious convictions.

Despite the RFMA’s problems, the 12 GOP senators echoed their support for the legislation by once again voting in favor of it.

For their willingness to cave to the Democrats’ agenda, those Republicans were thanked by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer from the Senate floor ahead of the vote.

“I also want to acknowledge my Republican colleagues who voted in favor of advancing this legislation. Because of our work together, the rights of tens of millions of Americans will be strengthened under federal law,” he said. “That’s an accomplishment we should all be proud of.”

Other Republican senators, however, understood the risks the RFMA poses to Americans and offered solutions in the form of amendments that sought to clarify the bill’s cushioned language.

Sen. Mike Lee put forth an amendment that explicitly stated that the federal government “shall not take any discriminatory action against a person, wholly or partially on the basis that such person speaks, or acts, in accordance with a sincerely held religious belief, or moral conviction” that marriage is between one man and woman. The amendment would have also allowed anyone who is wrongfully targeted by the government over their beliefs about marriage to sue.

That amendment, which required 60 votes to be adopted, ultimately failed.

Sen. Marco Rubio and Sen. James Lankford also introduced amendments designed to clarify language and ensure religious liberty protections for all Americans.

Lankford’s amendment guaranteed that the RFMA’s obscurity would not be wielded against organizations with traditional marriage beliefs. Rubio’s amendment eliminated the private right to sue from the RFMA.

Both amendments required a simple majority but failed.

Now that the RFMA has passed the Senate, the House is expected to vote on the updated bill as soon as this week.

Rep. Kevin McCarthy, who will likely assume the position of House speaker in January, told reporters early on Tuesday that he agrees with the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) which says that the RFMA would “betray our country’s commitment to the fundamental right of religious liberty.”

“Catholic Bishops say religious protections in the Respect For Marriage Act are insufficient and far from comprehensive and treat religious liberty as a second-class right. As you know, that’s currently in the Senate. Do you agree with that assessment by the Catholic Bishops?” one reporter asked.

“I agree with them, yes,” McCarthy confirmed.

McCarthy’s willingness to signal strong opposition to the bill, which garnered support from 47 House Republicans earlier this year, shows that he is listening to conservative voters who overwhelmingly reject this legislation.

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

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The Poll Numbers on the Planned Parenthood Scandal CNN Left Out


waving flagOpinion by Genevieve Wood / / August 05, 2015

URL of the original posting site: http://dailysignal.com/2015/08/05/the-poll-numbers-on-the-planned-parenthood-scandal-cnn-left-out

Regardless of one’s point of view on an issue, you can usually find a poll that shows that a majority of people agree with you. I’d suggest that is exactly what we saw happen on CNN Wednesday, when anchor Alisyn Camerota interviewed Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., about the debate surrounding Planned Parenthood.

  • A May 2015 Gallup poll asked, “Should abortion be legal?” Here’s how the numbers broke down:
  • Twenty-nine percent said abortion should be legal under any circumstances.
  • Fifty-one percent said abortion should be legal only under certain circumstances.
  • Nineteen percent said abortion should be illegal in all circumstances.

Here’s what Camerota said:

“That’s 80 percent of respondents who believe abortion should be kept legal.” (She added together the 29 percent who said abortion should be legal in any circumstance and 51 percent who said it should be allowed only in certain circumstances.)

Here’s what Camerota could have said:

“That’s 70 percent of Americans who believe there should be limits on abortion.” (Adding together the 51 percent who said it should be legal only in certain circumstances and the 19 percent who said it should not be legal under any circumstances.)More Evidence

Those who identify as pro-choice are more inclined to report the poll the way CNN did, and those who identify as pro-life are likely to use the latter number—the point being, in this particular poll and many others, you can “interpret the data” to get the spin you want.

I also found interesting that while CNN chose to show questions from a Monmouth University Poll showing that a majority of respondents favored the use of fetal tissue for research and that 49 percent opposed cutting off federal funds to Planned Parenthood, they conveniently left out the response to this question: “Have you seen or heard recent news about videos that supposedly show Planned Parenthood employees discussing the sale of aborted fetus tissue, or not?”how many body parts

Here were the responses:

  • Only 27 percent said they had heard a lot.
  • Only 21 percent said they had heard a little.
  • But 53 percent of respondents said they had not heard about the story at all.

I wonder how different the other answers in the poll about fetal tissue research and defunding Planned Parenthood would have been if the 74 percent of people who had heard or seen little to nothing had indeed seen the videos.

Of course, as the Media Research Center points out, the death of Cecil the lion has received more than four times the coverage in one week by the network news media than the five undercover videos released over the past three weeks showing Planned Parenthood committing potentially criminal acts.

CNN didn’t mention those numbers, either.Party of Deciet and lies

Genevieve Wood advances policy priorities of The Heritage Foundation as senior contributor to The Daily Signal

In God We Trust freedom combo 2

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