Kristi Noem, the Secretary of Homeland Security, recently stepped into the limelight after reviewing the aftermath of Hurricane Helene in North Carolina. With her leadership, the Department of Homeland Security has made remarkable progress, resolving 80% of the hurricane-related cases in just five days. Noem, who was sworn in on January 25th, has already demonstrated a proactive approach to disaster management.
Under Noem’s guidance, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has swiftly addressed the needs of those affected in western North Carolina. This efficient response stands in stark contrast to the perceived inaction of previous administrations. Former South Dakota Governor Noem emphasized the collaboration with President Trump to ensure swift aid delivery.
President Trump’s involvement was crucial, as he secured over $54 million for families impacted by the hurricane. His efforts have registered 2,600 families who were previously without assistance, a testament to his commitment to those in need. The initiative reflects a broader strategy to prioritize forgotten communities.
In the past week, open cases have been reduced by almost 80%, a significant achievement for the administration. Trump has launched a major initiative connecting farmers with recovery assistance, addressing a critical sector often overlooked. Microfarmer Mark, a local resident, shared how FEMA programs have been a lifeline for him and his community.
The response from the Trump administration contrasts sharply with the perceived neglect by Democrats and left-leaning policymakers. Many in North Carolina felt abandoned until Trump’s decisive intervention. The swift action from the administration has brought hope and relief to affected families.
Via Nick Sorter and FOX News, it’s clear that Kristi Noem’s leadership has made a substantial impact. “HOLY CRAP: Kristi Noem has announced FEMA has resolved 80% of Western North Carolina cases in just FIVE DAYS,” reported Sorter. Such efficiency in disaster response has been hailed as incredible by many.
Families affected by Hurricane Helene have expressed immense gratitude for the rapid resolution of their cases. They had been left waiting for months, highlighting the difference effective leadership can make. Trump’s return to active involvement has been a game-changer for these victims. The administration’s efforts are a testament to the power of decisive action and conservative values. By focusing on efficiency and resolve, they have set a new standard for disaster response. The impact of their work is felt deeply by those who had been waiting for a helping hand.
The commitment to rebuilding and restoring communities is a cornerstone of the administration’s philosophy. Trump’s vision emphasizes not just recovery, but empowerment for those affected. The initiative to connect farmers with aid exemplifies this approach.
Kristi Noem’s actions reflect a dedication to strong, proactive governance. Her leadership has been instrumental in bringing aid and hope to those in need. The administration’s achievements are a source of inspiration and a model for future disaster response efforts.
The collaboration between Noem and Trump showcases an effective partnership focused on results. Their combined efforts have delivered tangible benefits to those affected by Hurricane Helene. This success story underscores the importance of decisive leadership in times of crisis.
The response to Hurricane Helene has been a clear demonstration of conservative principles in action. By prioritizing swift, effective aid, the administration has shown its commitment to helping those in need. The impact on North Carolina is a testament to their success.
Noem’s swift action and the administration’s focus have set a new precedent for disaster management. Their approach is characterized by a clear, results-driven strategy. The people of North Carolina have seen firsthand the benefits of this leadership.
The gratitude expressed by Helene victims is a powerful reminder of the importance of timely intervention. The administration’s efforts have brought relief and hope to those who had been left in uncertainty. The conservative approach to disaster response has proven effective and impactful.
As divided as America may be, this election showed there’s one thing most Americans agree on: Only U.S. citizens should vote in U.S. elections.
Voters this week in eight states — Idaho,Iowa,Kentucky, Missouri,North Carolina, Oklahoma,South Carolina, and Wisconsin — overwhelmingly approved constitutional amendment ballot questions seeking to ensure noncitizens cannot vote in state and local elections. Foreign nationals are already barred from voting in federal elections.
“We’re so often told about how divided we are in the United States, but on Tuesday we had Republicans, Democrats and independents come together in overwhelming numbers declaring that only citizens would be able to vote” in elections, a jubilant Will Martin, Wisconsin state director of Americans for Citizen Voting, told The Federalist in a phone interview this week.
The Badger State’s Citizen-Only Voting Amendment (COVA) was endorsed by more than 70 percent of voters in Tuesday’s election, according to unofficial tallies. Support topped 65 percent in each of the states with COVA questions on the ballot, according to unofficial results reported by state news organizations. In Iowa, the referendum passed with 76 percent support. In South Carolina, the ballot question earned the approval of a whopping 86 percent of voters.
In Missouri, the same ballot question amending the state constitution to make clear only citizens can vote in Show Me State elections also knocked out ranked-choice voting by a two-to-one margin.
Before Election Day, COVA advocates felt confident, but Wisconsin presented the biggest challenge. Jack Tomczak, vice president for Citizen Outreach for Americans for Citizen Voting, told The Federalist that the amendment faced “well-funded” opposition led by the leftist League of Women Voters. More than three dozen leftist groups lent their names and resources to an effort to defeat the referendum. Martin said opponents ran “shameful” ads falsely warning voters that military personnel wouldn’t be able to vote in Wisconsin elections if the amendment passed.
In Idaho, Democrat lawmakers claimed noncitizens could be barred from voting in private elections, including homeowner associations and parent-teacher associations elections. The amendment ballot questions had nothing to do with such races, just as they don’t involve federal election law.
‘Being Diminished’
Opponents, assisted by the accomplice media, pushed the left’s false talking point that foreign nationals voting in elections is nearly nonexistent and that the constitutions in Wisconsin and the other states already bar noncitizens from voting.
“Passage of the amendments marks the latest chapter of Republican’s [sic] ongoing efforts to put unfounded claims of noncitizen voting at the center of a broader political strategy,” Democratic Party mouthpiece NBC News reported this week.
In the words of outgoing acting President Joe Biden, malarky.
As The Federalist has reported, the vast majority of states’ constitutions include language that “every” citizen meeting age and residency requirements is eligible to vote. The amendments demand that “only” U.S. citizens meeting the requirements are electors.
Opponents of the COVA movement insist there’s no difference. The “every” phrasing opens the door to noncitizens being allowed to vote in state and local elections, as is the case in California, Maryland, Vermont and the District of Columbia.
In September, Frederick became the largest city in Maryland to allow noncitizens to vote in its elections. The Board of Aldermen voted 4-1 to give green card and illegal immigrants the right to cast ballots. Kelly Russell was the sole dissenting vote.
“I have talked to many people who worked to get their citizenship in order to vote who do not agree to that, who feel that their efforts and all the hard work that they did is being diminished by this,” she said, according to Fox45 News in Baltimore.
Takoma Park, Maryland, has allowed foreign nationals to vote in local elections for more than 30 years. All told, a dozen Maryland municipalities open the franchise to noncitizens. They can because there’s nothing in the state constitution that prevents them from doing so.
‘Common Sense’ Movement
Wisconsin legislative Democrats have voted en bloc against resolutions to take the citizen-only amendment to the voters. While they insist noncitizens illegally voting in elections isn’t an issue, it is. Noncitizens have voted in U.S. elections and thousands have shown up on state voter rolls this election cycle.
The problems are only magnified by an unprecedented 10 million U.S. Border Patrol encounters with illegal aliens in the nearly four years that Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris have been in office. While it is a felony for foreign nationals to vote in U.S. elections, incidents are difficult to track and not a priority for many prosecutors.
“There are at least 25 million non-citizens in the country according to the Census Bureau and no federal enforcement mechanism to ensure their names don’t appear on the voters rolls,” Paige Terryberry, senior research fellow at the Foundation for Government Accountability, told The Federalist in September. “Right now, the Biden-Harris administration is using welfare offices, DMVs, Public housing, healthercare.gov and more to register voters, and they aren’t verifying citizenship at these locations. States can act too, but the SAVE Act is the only thing that can fix this problem nationwide before the election.”
Each illegal vote diminishes those of eligible voters.
Since 2018, 14 states have added, or have voted to add, citizenship requirements to their constitutions, according to Ballotpedia.
Martin noted that swing state Wisconsin is a “50-50” state, as evident by former President Donald Trump’s victory in the so-called “blue wall” state by a little over 28,000 votes. Still, the ballot question scored majorities in 71 of 72 counties, Martin said.
The COVA advocate said the issue is part of a sea change in America, a return to basic guiding values.
“Theres a movement in this country toward common sense,” Martin said. “People are tired of people trying to interpret for them, people are tired of being told what to think.”
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.
Christina Lewis is a member of the Young Leaders Program at The Heritage Foundation.
In the aftermath of Hurricane Helene—even before Hurricane Milton followed in its wake—nonprofit charitable organizations such as Samaritan’s Purse and Save Our Allies stepped up to help the storm’s victims.
The president of Samaritan’s Purse, Franklin Graham, told The Daily Signal in a telephone interview that one of the positive things he has seen is neighbor helping neighbor.
“If you’re going to sit in your house or your apartment waiting for the government to come—well, good luck. You’re going to be waiting a long time,” said Graham, the son of the legendary late evangelist the Rev. Billy Graham.
Meet Dianne Messer, who, along with Doug Warden, who is 93-year-old, run Big Oak Mobile Park in Hendersonville, North Carolina.
Dianne was kind enough to show me around the property and introduce me to some of the residence, many of whom have been without power for 10 days.… pic.twitter.com/tRZuvYhqi9
Meanwhile, Save Our Allies founder Sarah Verardo said western North Carolina resembles a war zone in the wake of Helene.
“We are seeing incredible hearts of helping and service,” Verardo said. “And our volunteer team of mostly Special Operations veterans is in there, working right alongside our government and private partners to just be the somebody and be in there making a difference.”
The organization has saved lives, including that of an 11-day-old baby born prematurely, she said.
The veterans on Verardo’s team said the destruction they see in North Carolina resembles what they saw in Afghanistan.
Notice the house on the left. A giant oak tree split it in half. The owner was home at the time and survived. pic.twitter.com/RWV2EQwenx
Samaritan’s Purse, a Christian organization that provides spiritual and material aid to hurting people around the world, has deployed more than 9,000 volunteers to help families affected by the hurricane. The organization sent three water-filtration systems to hard-hit areas in western North Carolina on Oct. 4.
(Samaritan’s Purse photo)
In a statement, Graham said the systems were originally intended to be used overseas, but now they are needed here in America.
“We are airlifting supplies, mudding out homes, removing trees, and doing so much more—all in Jesus’ name—and we’re thankful for everyone who is helping make it possible,” he said. “We want to remind each person that we help that God loves and cares for them and hasn’t forgotten them.”
The organization had delivered emergency relief supplies in more than 150 helicopter operations, Graham told the Daily Signal.
Meanwhile, Sean Lee, ground team commander of Save Our Allies, said people ask him every day where the Federal Emergency Management Agency is.
“It’s the community, the community of North Carolina, the community of helpers who are here on the ground making a difference every day to try to keep these people alive until there is a bigger response,” Lee said. “We hit communities every day that are just devastated. And I keep using that word, because I can’t find another word.”
FEMA allocated $650 million of this year’s budget to the funding of its Shelters and Services Program “to provide humanitarian services to noncitizen migrants following their release from the Department of Homeland Security.”
As of Monday, FEMA had spent more than $210 million on Hurricane Helene assistance.
Spoke with a Henderson County native, Tristin, in a Waffle House just south of Asheville. He and his wife have been without power for 9 days.
He called Kamala Harris a “phony.”
I asked him what he thought about FEMA spending $1 billion to house illegal aliens:
TV personality Dr. Phil McGraw has partnered with Samaritan’s Purse and Michaels Stores, an arts and crafts retail chain, to provide supplies to hurricane victims. In a video, McGraw said, that unlike FEMA, Samaritan’s Purse puts “verbs in their sentences” and “they’re out doing things” to help the victims of Hurricane Helene.
— Merit Street | Providing Clarity & Solutions (@MeritStreet) October 8, 2024
Graham said it’s a very worrisome thing that hundreds of people in North Carolina remain missing about 10 days after Helene dissipated.
“We can replace stuff and roads and things like that, but we can’t replace people,” Graham told the Daily Signal. “And, so, I’ve just asked people to pray for the families that have lost loved ones and those that are still missing.”
Peter St. Onge is a visiting fellow at The Heritage Foundation.
Editor’s note: This is a lightly edited transcript of the accompanying video from professor Peter St. Onge.
It’s America last as the nation’s disaster relief agency, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, reports it is broke because it wasted billions on illegals, Ukraine, and other foreign aid instead of, say, the American people.
So says the Department of Homeland Security, with Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas confessing, “FEMA does not have the funds to make it through the season.”
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Note this is after Dems strong-armed $12 billion last year by holding it hostage to Ukraine aid, then House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-Ky., poured in another $20 billion just weeks ago.
FEMA’s foreigner-depleted cupboards could be part of why the White House dragged its feet declaring Title 10—which sends military resources into disaster zones to help rescue operations.
That largely left rescue to private volunteers—truck drivers, helicopter pilots, and people who have boats, dubbed the Cajun Navy. Some of whom, incidentally, have been threatened with arrest.
Of course, even if you don’t arrest them, there’s only so many private volunteers with helicopters, and they don’t have billions of dollars hijacked from taxpayers then given away to import new voters or pay military contractors.
For example, considering the 82nd Airborne is literally based in North Carolina and in hours deploys halfway around the world, it might be nice to get some help.
Ironically enough, just last week, President Joe Biden announced another $2.4 billion to Ukraine, aid that has historically included generators and transformers bought by USAID that are now desperately needed in North Carolina.
Of course, it wasn’t just Ukraine; everybody from Taiwan to Djibouti apparently has been feasting while our own people go without.
That apparently includes the millions of illegal aliens who showed up uninvited.
Thanks to X, we have the receipts for program after program shipping out FEMA money for illegals a hundred million at a time. The New York Post tallies these for a total of at least $1.4 billion in disaster relief repurposed to bribe sanctuary cities to import replacement voters—especially in swing states.
As America First Legal put it: “Over the last 4 years the Biden-Harris admin has steadily transformed FEMA into an illegal alien resettlement agency.”
So, it’s red carpets for illegals, $200 billion for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and boiling swamp water for North Carolina.
So, what’s next?
For literally millennia, disaster relief has been the touchstone of a functioning government. In China, for example, a poor response to a natural disaster was taken as a revocation of the “Mandate of Heaven”—a sovereign’s right to rule.
This is part of the reason that, even today, countries like Japan, where I am now, take natural disasters very seriously. Because the people are watching. And remembering.
In America, our federal government has long since lost that mandate.
FEMA was a disaster in Hurricane Katrina. In COVID-19. In East Palestine, Ohio. And now in North Carolina.
How did it get this bad? Easy: Because the bureaucracy took over, replacing the people via something called the Pendleton Act, which I’ll cover in an upcoming video.
This means the government’s goal is not serving the people but feathering its own nest—expanding its power and rewarding the donors and lobbyists who pay the politicians to expand that power.
One video out of North Carolina captures the shift perfectly: A police officer threatens to arrest a local couple trying to salvage their flooded store before looters get to it.
There was a time when that officer would have rolled up his sleeves and pitched in. Because his job was to protect and serve. But those days are gone: Protect and serve is now neglect and harass.
Residents in the Lake Lure area of North Carolina recounted the powerful floods that struck last week. John Payne, a volunteer firefighter who was born and raised in one of the hardest hit areas says the village ‘will bounce back.’ (AP video by Erik Verduzco and Mike Stewart/Production by Takahiro Kinoshita)
A mass of debris, including overturned pontoon boats and splintered wooden docks and tree trunks, covered the surface of Lake Lure, a picturesque spot tucked between the mountains outside Asheville.
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Debris is strewn on the lake in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, Wednesday, Oct. 2, 2024, in Lake Lure, N.C. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart)
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A home is seen in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, Wednesday, Oct. 2, 2024, in Chimney Rock Village, N.C. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart)
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Two Sheriff deputies walk on the main street in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, Wednesday, Oct. 2, 2024, in Chimney Rock Village, N.C. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart)
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Debris is seen in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, Wednesday, Oct. 2, 2024, in Chimney Rock Village, N.C. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart)
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Homes are seen in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, Wednesday, Oct. 2, 2024, in Chimney Rock Village, N.C. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart)
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Iraq War veteran Chris Canada, right, stands among debris resting on a bridge in Chimney Rock Village, N.C. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart)
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Mayor Peter O’Leary, right, and town administrator Stephen Duncan confer over papers outside the volunteer fire department in Chimney Rock Village, N.C., on Wednesday, Oct. 2, 2024. (AP Photo/Allen. G. Breed)
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Debris is seen in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, Wednesday, Oct. 2, 2024, in Chimney Rock Village, N.C. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart)
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An American flag flies half-staff on top of Chimney Rock mountain in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, Wednesday, Oct. 2, 2024, in Chimney Rock Village, N.C. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart)
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Workers survey damage where a road once existed in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, Wednesday, Oct. 2, 2024, in Chimney Rock Village, N.C. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart)
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Debris is seen in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, Wednesday, Oct. 2, 2024, in Chimney Rock Village, N.C. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart)
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A road sign sticks in the mud where a road was in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, Wednesday, Oct. 2, 2024, in Chimney Rock Village, N.C. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart)
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Homes are seen in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, Wednesday, Oct. 2, 2024, in Chimney Rock Village, N.C. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart)
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Business are seen in a debris field in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, Wednesday, Oct. 2, 2024, in Chimney Rock Village, N.C. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart)
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Debris is seen in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, Wednesday, Oct. 2, 2024, in Chimney Rock Village, N.C. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart)
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Debris is seen in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, Wednesday, Oct. 2, 2024, in Chimney Rock Village, N.C. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart)
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Businesses are seen in a debris field in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, Wednesday, Oct. 2, 2024, in Chimney Rock Village, N.C. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart)
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Debris covers a field in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, Wednesday, Oct. 2, 2024, in Chimney Rock Village, N.C. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart)
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A washed out road is seen in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, Wednesday, Oct. 2, 2024, in Chimney Rock Village, N.C. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart)
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Homes are seen in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, Wednesday, Oct. 2, 2024, in Chimney Rock Village, N.C. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart)
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The town of Chimney Rock, N.C., is seen after flash flooding in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, Wednesday, Oct. 2, 2024. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart)
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Volunteer firefighter Ric Thurlby checks messages as Hickory Nut Falls flows above and the ruined town of Chimney Rock Village, N.C., lies below on Wednesday, Oct. 2, 2024. (AP Photo/Allen G. Breed)
CHIMNEY ROCK VILLAGE, N.C. (AP) — The stone tower that gave this place its name was nearly a half billion years in the making — heated and thrust upward from deep in the Earth, then carved and eroded by wind and water. But in just a few minutes, nature undid most of what it has taken humans a century and a quarter to build in the North Carolina mountain town of Chimney Rock.
“It feels like I was deployed, like, overnight and woke up in … a combat zone,” Iraq War veteran Chris Canada said as a massive twin-propped Chinook helicopter passed over his adopted hometown. “I don’t think it’s sunk in yet.”
Nearly 400 miles (644 kilometers) from where Hurricane Helene made landfall Sept. 26 along Florida’s Big Bend, the hamlet of about 140 souls on the banks of the Broad River has been all but wiped from the map. The backs of restaurants and gift shops that boasted riverfront balconies dangle ominously in mid-air. The Hickory Nut Brewery, opened when Rutherford County went “wet” and started serving alcohol about a decade ago, collapsed on Wednesday, nearly a week after the storm.
The buildings across Main Street, while still standing, are choked with several feet of reddish-brown muck. A sign on the Chimney Sweeps souvenir shop says, “We are open during construction.”
In another section of town, the houses that weren’t swept away perch precariously near the edge of a scoured riverbank. It is where the town’s only suspected death — an elderly woman who refused entreaties to evacuate — occurred.
“Literally, this river has moved,” village administrator Stephen Duncan said as he drove an Associated Press reporter through the dust-blown wreckage of Chimney Rock Village on Wednesday. “We saw a 1,000-year event. A geological event.”
A monster wall of water strikes Chimney Rock hours after making landfall in Florida
About eight hours after Helene made landfall in Florida, Chimney Rock volunteer firefighter John Payne was responding to a possible gas leak when he noticed water spilling over US 64/74, the main road into town. It was just after 7 a.m.
“The actual hurricane hadn’t even come through and hit yet,” he said.
Payne, 32, who’s lived in this valley his entire life, aborted the call and rushed back up the hill to the fire station, which was moved to higher ground following a devastating 1996 flood. Former chief Joseph “Buck” Meliski, who worked that earlier flood, scoffed.
“There’s no way it’s hitting that early,” Payne recalled the older man saying.
But when Payne showed him a video he’d just shot — of water topping the bridge to the Hickory Nut Falls Family Campground — the former chief’s jaw dropped.
“We’re in for it, boys,” Meliski told Payne and the half dozen or so others gathered there.
Suddenly, the ground beneath them began shaking — like the temblors that sometimes rock the valley, but much stronger. By then, muddy water was seeping under the back wall of the firehouse. Payne looked down and saw what he estimated to be a 30-foot-high (nine-meter-high) wall of water, tossing car-sized boulders as it raced toward the town. It appeared as if the wave was devouring houses, then spitting them out.
“It’s not water at that point,” Payne said. “It’s mud, this thick concrete-like material, you know what I mean? And whatever it hits, it’s taking.”
A house hit the bridge from which he’d been filming not 20 minutes earlier. The span just “imploded.” Payne later found its steel beams “bent in horseshoe shapes around boulders.”
At the firehouse, some business owners among the group began “crying hysterically,” Payne said. Others just stood in mute disbelief. The volunteers lost communications during the storm. But when the winds finally began to quiet down around 11 a.m., Payne said, the radios began “blowing up with calls.”
Workers survey damage where a road once existed in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, Wednesday, Oct. 2, 2024, in Chimney Rock Village, N.C. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart)
Scenic Lake Lure becomes a wet pit of rubble
The pieces of what had been Chimney Rock Village were now on their way to the neighboring town of Lake Lure, which played a starring role as stand-in for a Catskills resort in the 1987 Patrick Swayze summer romance film, “Dirty Dancing.”
Tracy Stevens, 55, a bartender at the Hickory Nut, took refuge at the Lake Lure Inn, where she also worked. She watched as the detritus from Chimney Rock and beyond came pouring into the marina, tossing aside boats and thrusting the metal sections of the floating Town Center Walkway upward like the folds of a map.
“It looked like a toilet bowl flushing,” she said. “I could see cars, tops of houses. It was the craziest.”
A home is seen in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, Wednesday, Oct. 2, 2024, in Chimney Rock Village, N.C. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart)
Some of the debris coalesced into a massive jam between the two bridges linking the towns — a utilitarian concrete affair carrying Memorial Highway across the Broad River, and an elegant three-arched span known as the Flowering Bridge.
After 85 years carrying traffic into Chimney Rock, the 1925 viaduct was converted into a verdant walkway festooned with more than 2,000 species of plants. Now partially collapsed, the bridge’s remains are draped in a tangled mass of vines, roots and tree branches.
Some residents see signs of hope amid almost complete destruction of their town
Canada, 43, who co-owns a stage rental and event production company, was at a Charlotte music festival when the storm hit. Returning to uniformed troops and armored personnel carriers kicking up dust in the streets awakened memories of his three combat tours in the Middle East.
“I saw the whole war and I’ve been through many hurricanes,” said Canada, an Army airborne veteran. “I’ve never seen anything like this.”
Canada and his wife, Barbie, moved here with their two daughters in October 2021 from South Carolina, in part to get away from hurricanes. Barbie had vacationed here as a child, and it was close to the Veterans Administration hospital in Asheville.
As he walked the banks of the Broad on Wednesday, Chris Canada found himself sniffing at the warm air for the telltale odor of death.
And yet, all around are signs of hope.
Payne — who climbs the rock in full gear each Sept. 11 to honor first responders who died in the Twin Towers attacks — was heartened to see members of the New York City Fire Department in his town helping with door-to-door searches.
“We’re more hard-headed than these rocks are,” said Payne, whose day job is as a site coordinator for a fast-food chain. “So, it’s going to take more than this to scare us off and run us out. It’ll be a while, but we’ll be back. Don’t count us out.”
Outside the Mountain Traders shop, someone has leaned a large wooden Sasquatch cutout against a utility pole, the words “Chimney Rock Strong” painted in bright blue.
When park employees cut their way to the top of the mountain and raised the American flag on Monday, Duncan says the people below cheered, and some wept.
“It was spectacular,” he said.
Iraq War veteran Chris Canada, right, stands among debris resting on a bridge in Chimney Rock Village, N.C. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart)
Mayor says his little town has the spirit and determination necessary to rebuild
The flag is flying at half staff. But Mayor Peter O’Leary said it’s that spirit that will bring Chimney Rock Village back.
The town’s legacy of hospitality and entrepreneurial spirit dates back to the late 1800s, when a local family began charging visitors 25 cents for a horseback ride up the mountain, according to brief online history by village resident R. J. Wald. It soon became one of North Carolina’s first bona fide tourist attractions.
O’Leary came to town in 1990 to take a job as park manager, before it became part of the state parks system. Two years later, he and his wife opened Bubba O’Leary’s General Store, named for their yellow Labrador retriever.
“Most of these people here, if you look around, almost all of them are from somewhere else,” he said as he stood outside the firehouse, the waters of the 404-foot (123-meter) Hickory Nut Falls gushing forth from the ridge high above. “Why’d they come here? They came here and fell in love with it. It gets ahold of you. …
“It got ahold of me.”
The 1927 portion of the general store has caved in, but O’Leary believes the larger addition built in 2009 is salvageable. Duncan, who drafted the village charter back in 1990, sees this as an opportunity to “take advantage of the new geography” and build a better town. But for some, like innkeeper and restaurateur Nick Sottile, 35, the path forward is hard to see.
When Helene hit, Sottile and wife Kristen were vacationing in the Turks and Caicos Islands — their first break since October 2020, when they opened their Broad River Inn and Stagecoach Pizza Kitchen in what’s believed to be the village’s oldest building.
In photos taken from the street, things looked remarkably intact. But when Sottile returned home and walked around to the river side, his heart sank.
“The back of the building is, like, a whole section of it is gone,” the South Florida native said Friday. “It’s not even safe to go in there right now.”
About all that’s left of the adjacent Chimney Rock Adventure miniature golf course is the sign.
“You can’t even rebuild,” Sottile said. “Because there’s no land.”
Sottile has been hearing horror stories from fellow business owners about denied insurance claims. Without help, he said he has no money to rebuild. But for now, he’s just volunteering with the fire department and trying not to think too far into the future.
“This is a small town, but this is, this is HOME,” he said. “Everybody helps everybody, and I know we’ll get through this. I know we’ll rebuild. I’m just praying that we can rebuild with US here to see it.”
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AP National Writer Tim Sullivan contributed from Minneapolis.
Disrupting communications is a military strategy that has been deployed during wars throughout history. It’s also what the federal government has done to rural Americans as part of its war on Elon Musk, a tech billionaire whose support of free speech has put him at odds with the Biden administration and other powerful Democrats. The decision to cut rural Americans off from broadband communications had already been strongly criticized as harmful, politically motivated, and completely without merit even before Category 4 Hurricane Helene wrought destruction last week in some of the most remote areas of Georgia, Tennessee, and North Carolina.
Now the FCC’s war on Musk may have turned deadly. The death toll is already at 138 Americans across six states, with many hundreds still missing. Among the serious problems facing rural victims is an inability to communicate with potential rescuers as roads are washed out, telecommunications are down, electricity is out, and people are facing fatal flooding.
It didn’t have to be this way.
In 2020, the Federal Communications Commission awarded Musk’s Starlink an $885.5 million award to help get broadband access to 642,000 rural homes and businesses in 35 states. A subsidiary of SpaceX, Starlink is a satellite internet system delivering high-speed internet to anyone on the planet. The plan would work out to less than $1,400 per linkup, same-day delivery of the necessary hardware, and only a few hours to get up and running.
Some 19,552 households and businesses in North Carolina would have had access to Starlink if they desired. Of the 21 worst-hit counties in North Carolina, the FCC-funded Starlink program would have served all or part of 17 of them, according to multiple officials. The FCC suddenly canceled that grant in 2022, a few months before Joe Biden suggested that the federal government find ways to go after Musk, a former Democrat who began criticizing some of the Democrat Party’s support of censorship of and lawfare against political opponents. After a challenge from SpaceX, the FCC reaffirmed its decision to cancel the award in 2023.
Democrat FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel implausibly claimed to believe that Starlink couldn’t provide the service it had promised, a claim that didn’t pass the smell test for many industry observers at the time it was made. Starlink and its military counterpart were in wide use by other government programs. What’s more, at this moment Donald Trump and Elon Musk are rushing Starlink kits to remote North Carolina on their own. So are other Americans doing relief operations. And the White House is claiming it is also going to send Starlink kits to the area.
“The @FCC would rather Americans die, than approve a very inexpensive way to connect people in disaster areas. They should be ashamed,” Maye Musk, the mother of Elon Musk, said on X. “Biden, Harris and the FCC are also punishing people in disaster areas and rural areas. Shame on them,”she added.
Other agencies also joined Democrats’ anti-Musk efforts. As The Wall Street Journal reported, the Department of Justice pursued multiple attacks on Musk and his companies. The Federal Trade Commission began harassing X by making myriad questionable document demands, including requests for information on the journalists who worked on the project exposing how previous leaders of Twitter had colluded with the federal government to censor American speech and debate. The National Labor Relations Board went after Tesla over its dress code. The Securities and Exchange Commission and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service are also investigating Musk and his companies.
The FCC’s politically motivated cancellation of the contract in 2022 left rural Americans with no options.
The cancellation “is without legal justification,” FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr, who voted against canceling the award, said at the time. “[I]t will leave rural Americans waiting on the wrong side of the digital divide.”
The FCC’s political action against Musk isn’t the only Biden administration action harming Americans who were ravaged by Helene. Joe Biden named Kamala Harris the Broadband Czar in April 2021 and placed her in charge of a $100 billion slush fund for broadband projects. At the Commerce Department, a $42.5 billion subset of that program was launched in 2021, with guidance written to limit the ability of Starlink to compete for contracts. The Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program was supposed to fund programs in all 50 states. It has been a complete failure.
More than three years later, not a single rural American family or business has been connected to broadband through the program. At best the groundwork will begin four years after the launch and won’t finish until 2030 at the earliest. For that much taxpayer money, Starlink could be provided to 140 million people, and without the wait, observers noted.
The FCC’s anti-Musk efforts come at the same time that the Democrat-run agency fast-tracked a shocking application by a group backed by the Democrat Soros family to purchase more than 200 radio stations across the country. Federal law requires applicants with significant foreign ownership, as the Soros group has, to go through significant paperwork and security reviews prior to receiving licenses for radio stations. They didn’t follow the law and yet the FCC fast-tracked the approval for the first time in its history.
“Your last name should not determine how the government treats you, and very clearly that’s what is happening here,” said Carr of the FCC’s politicized actions on behalf of the Soros group and against the Musk group.
North Carolinians who didn’t present a photo ID when voting during the presidential primary last week were still permitted to cast a ballot, thanks to exceptions that Soros-backed groups supported including in the state’s voter ID law.
On March 5, more than 1.7 million North Carolina voters were asked to show a photo ID to vote in the presidential primary, in the first major election since the law went into effect. Most of those voters appeared to successfully present an ID and cast a ballot. Still, according to preliminary counts, more than 1,000 voters cast what is known as a “provisional ballot” due to “ID not provided,” according to the state’s election board (NCSBE). Of those more than 1,000 voters, 546 later returned to show their IDs. But another 607 voters never showed a photo ID, instead simply signing a form claiming that a “reasonable impediment” prevented them from presenting an ID.
The Law Doesn’t Actually Compel Voters to Show Photo ID
The North Carolina general assembly initially passed a series of election-related laws in 2013. After facing legal challenges to the voter ID requirement, the state legislature presented a revised voter ID law in 2015 that included the “reasonable impediment” exception, but the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit nevertheless struck down the voter ID requirement in 2016. Republicans spent the next several years fighting in the courts to pass some type of voter ID laws while North Carolinians voted in 2018 to approve a state constitutional amendment establishing a photo ID requirement.
Most recently, the North Carolina Supreme Court — which had flipped from a Democrat-majority to a Republican-majority — overturned a past decision by the same court and thus permitted the photo ID requirement to go into effect.
The current version says that a voter who does not present a photo ID due to a “reasonable impediment” may still cast a provisional ballot so long as he provides “a current utility bill, bank statement, government check, paycheck, or other government document,” his voter registration card, or the last four digits of his Social Security number and birth date.
If a voter still fails to present any of those documents, the law says he can simply complete a declaration stating that he is who he says he is — aka the “honor system.” He must also designate on the form that a “reasonable impediment” — such as disability or illness, lack of transportation, lack of birth certificate or other documents needed to obtain a photo ID, work schedule, or family responsibilities — has prevented him from providing an ID. Other acceptable reasons include a voter having lost his ID or simply “not know[ing] photo ID was required for voting.”
The ID exception form is also accepted for mail-in voters who cannot include a copy of their photo ID with their ballots, according to voting instructions posted by the Mecklenburg County government.
‘Nobody Will Be Turned Away’
Thirty-six other states currently mandate some form of voter ID, but Republicans who have worked on election integrity efforts say North Carolina’s law is the “weakest” of them all.
“You can literally put any kind of excuse you want on the ‘Reasonable Impediment’ form and be given a ballot. It’s not hard at all to vote,” Chairman of the Lee County Republican Party James Womack told The Federalist.
“This ‘Reasonable Impediment’ thing is really a weakness in the law, it’s the weakest voter ID law in the country when you consider almost anyone can walk in and say ‘Oh, I lost my ID’ and cast a provisional ballot,” Womack continued. “They really didn’t make an attempt this year, in Senate Bill 747, to update anything that was in the case of ‘Reasonable Impediment.’”
Executive Director of Voter Integrity Project of North Carolina Jay DeLancy wrote in 2015 after an earlier, similar version of the law was passed that it was a “stunning betrayal” to all state residents who wanted to see “real voter ID” laws. DeLancy said at the time that, while he did not believe Republicans in the legislature purposely gutted the photo ID provisions, “their inexperience in election fraud analysis leads them to believe the new loophole ‘won’t be a big deal’ in our state.”
Provisional ballots can theoretically be rejected, but those cast based on a “reasonable impediment” to providing voter ID can only be rejected if a county elections board unanimously finds that the information a voter gives in the ID exception form is false. It’s unclear, however, how a county board would be able to discern whether a person’s claimed impediment to obtaining an ID is genuine. Besides, Womack noted these voters likely wouldn’t be rejected due to a fear that lawsuits would be lodged alleging voter suppression.
“What they did, this law, neuters the ability of the board to reject those ballots no matter how ridiculous the excuse is that the voter uses,” DeLancy told The Federalist. “It defies common sense.”
DeLancy told The Federalist he believes Republicans in the legislature thought they would be “clever” and include the “reasonable impediment” provision as a way to avoid having the voter ID law tossed.
Womack speculated that then-House Rules Chairman Rep. David Lewis included the last-minute “compromise language” to help the legislation pass. He noted Republicans had to work in bipartisan fashion since, at the time, they did not hold a supermajority in either state legislature and the Reasonable Impediment provision would alleviate concerns from the left that there would be an “undue burden on people who didn’t have photo ID.”
Womack said the provision likely didn’t get much attention since the legislation got stuck in the courts for years but argued that now that it has gone into effect “people are starting to expose its weaknesses.”
“There’s all kinds of excuses you can put on the form and you’ll still be granted the right to vote, nobody will be turned away,” he added.
DeLancy said the provision should be fixed ahead of November’s election “or else” it leaves the door open for potential abuse.
Soros-Linked Group Cheered ‘Reasonable Impediment’ Exception
When North Carolina’s 2013 law was challenged in court shortly after it was signed, the leftist groups behind the legal fight included the NAACP and the Advancement Project. The Advancement Project had received nearly $4 million between 1999 and 2012 from the Soros-funded Open Society Project. The Foundation to Promote Open Society contributed more than half a million to the Advancement Project between 2009 and 2012, according to Influence Watch. Later suits targeting the law were brought by other election-interference groups like the ACLU.
When Republicans proposed a revision adding the “reasonable impediment” exception to the law in 2015, the Soros-backed group Democracy North Carolina spent weeks “encouraging hundreds of citizens to attend and speak out” at hearings regarding the legislation and celebrated the inclusion of the “reasonable impediment” provision.
Brianna Lyman is an elections correspondent at The Federalist.
The Republican National Committee (RNC) replaced its chairwoman Ronna McDaniel on Friday with the now-former North Carolina Republican Party (NCGOP) chair Michael Whatley, who was the Trump-backed frontrunner. Ever since Whatley’s name was floated, the corporate media predictably deployed the “election denier” smear they assign to any Republican who has ever shown an interest in protecting the integrity of elections.
Whatley has a track record of emphasizing election integrity — and that’s enough, in the eyes of the corporate press, to paint him as a radical election-denying extremist. But with the high stakes of the 2024 election cycle, some of Whatley’s critics say he needs to amp up his election integrity efforts to another level in his anticipated post at the RNC.
Attacks From the Corporate Media
Whatley, who had served as NCGOP chair since narrowly defeating his opponents Jim Womack and John Lewis in 2019, has been the target of hand-wringing pieces from corporate media ever since he was tapped as former President Trump’s choice to lead the RNC. In an MSNBC column, North Carolina Democratic Party Chair Anderson Clayton clutched her pearls about the “danger” Whatley poses.
“It’s clear that Trump is looking for an RNC leader who won’t hesitate to disenfranchise voters, rig elections or dismantle our democracy,” Clayton melodramatically wrote. “[Whatley] has helped lead efforts to defy the will of the people and infringe on North Carolinians’ rights.”
CNN ran a piece entitled “Likely frontrunner for RNC chair parroted Trump’s 2020 election lies.”
Multipleoutlets affiliated with States Newsroom — a network launched by a Democrat dark-money group — shuddered at the thought that Whatley teamed up with organizations like Cleta Mitchell’s Election Integrity Network that trains poll watchers, under the headline: “Trump’s pick for RNC chief worked with top election denier’s group.”
Russia hoax lawyer Marc Elias’ Democracy Docket joined in the attacks, saying Trump’s “endorsement of Whatley signals that the party is continuing down its path of pushing false election fraud narratives ahead of the November general election.”
What did Whatley do to be smeared as an election conspiracy theorist? In November 2020, he alleged that there was “massive fraud” in “places like Milwaukee and Detroit and Philadelphia.” Of course, even the Associated Press has admitted the existence of voter fraud in the 2020 election, just simply not enough for their liking to denote it as “widespread.”
As Whatley told CNN, “changes to the 2020 election process … weakened safeguards on absentee and mail-in votes in some states,” which “led to distrust by many across the country.”
Whatley’s Work on Election Integrity
Whatley’s supporters tout major wins for the state’s courts and election integrity efforts under his leadership.
“I think [election integrity] is probably [Whatley’s] greatest strength,” Nash County Republican Party Chair Mark Edwards said. “Coming out of the 2020 election there was a lot of angst and energy among Republicans about election integrity and rather than stoke some of the more outlandish and extreme and outrageous reactions to what happened in 2020, Whatley stood above it and saw that this is where the concerns of the party were.”
“He took it upon himself to grab the election integrity issue by the horns and direct that energy into productive use by setting up the Election Integrity Review Committee within the party,” Edwards added, crediting Whatley with “hiring legal staff to help head up the election integrity efforts of the party, and work very closely with Republican legislators to craft legislation that was drafted, introduced and passed and is now being implemented.”
The NCGOP established the Election Integrity Committee in 2021 to recruit, train and send out attorneys and poll watchers to observe “absentee-by-mail approval meetings, early voting polls, election day polls, county canvasses, recount meetings, and protest hearings.”
In 2022, “Whatley doubled down on his efforts to recruit and train poll observers and lawyers,” said former NCGOP legal counsel Philip Thomas. The NCGOP was unable to provide numbers for how many poll watchers were appointed over the course of Whatley’s tenure. Whatley critic Jay DeLancy, however, said it might be difficult for the NCGOP to obtain that data since individual counties appoint observers and the process is decentralized.
Senior legal fellow at the Conservative Partnership Institute Cleta Mitchell said Whatley “understands that there is more to winning elections than just turning out votes and voters.”
“He has a sense of the need to focus on the election system itself,” Mitchell added. “While sometimes he has too narrow a focus, such as thinking that volunteer lawyers on Election Day will somehow overcome the billions of dollars that the left has invested in changing the entire voting system in our country, Michael is at least aware that there is more to winning than the historic or traditional ‘If we have a good candidate and good issues and a good campaign, our side will win.’ Those days are long gone and at some level, Michael understands that.”
Whatley also created the Judicial Victory Fund, which states its goal is “raising the resources needed to support … statewide conservative judicial candidates.” NCGOP Communications Director Matt Mercer said the fund is “something that really can’t be overstated enough.”
“Whatley campaigned on ‘Reset in Raleigh’ and overturning a 6-1 Republican deficit on the Supreme Court,” Mercer said. “Whatley has been undefeated [in judicial races] in 2020 and 2022 with the Judicial Victory Fund and the partners at the county and district levels.”
Mercer also credits Whatley with helping get voter ID “past the finish line” by flipping the balance of the court, adding while the NCGOP will miss him, “it’s going to be a benefit for the RNC to have someone of his caliber there.”
The fund was particularly handy during the 2020 election for the North Carolina Supreme Court’s chief justice between Democrat incumbent Cheri Beasley and Republican Associate Justice Paul Newby. Beasley refused to concede after she lost by about 400 votes and attempted to restore thousands of ballots. Of the 2,800 of those ballots analyzed by The News & Observer at the time, 70 percent belonged to Democrats and just nine ballots belonged to Republicans.
Some of the ballots Beasley tried to force election officials to accept were ballots that had already been counted, WRAL News reported. But the NCGOP says her attempts ultimately failed after they used resources from the Judicial Victory Fund to fight back.
Republicans also managed to flip the balance of the state’s Supreme Court in 2022 after Republicans Trey Allen and Richard Dietz won their races, giving Republicans a 5-2 majority.
“If you’re a state party chairman and you don’t have critics, you probably aren’t doing your job,” former chairman of the NCGOP Tom Fetzer told The Federalist. “It’s something that anybody who has ever been a state party chairman accepts and deals with.”
GOP Critics Say Whatley Could Do More
Womack and John Kane, who tried to unseat Whatley in 2022, say he is being given too much credit and should be doing more for election integrity.
“He’s taking credit for [the Judicial Victory Fund] as a great accomplishment, but the credit needs to be shared with … the attorneys that were working on the judicial campaigns, there were different districts that were raising money,” Womack said.
And when it comes to fighting to secure elections, Womack said the real effort comes from the RNC. In October, the NCGOP and RNC intervened in a lawsuit wherein Democrats attacked a state senate bill that “prevents non-citizens from voting, protects bipartisan poll watchers, and eliminates dark money in elections.”
“The RNC is taking the lead on their lawyers so the NCGOP is just saying, ‘Me too,’” Womack told The Federalist. “We do have a general counsel who is pretty good but the RNC is the one floating all these costs for the lawsuits nationwide.” Aside from the RNC’s election integrity efforts, he added, grassroots Republicans have also worked behind the scenes to ensure the state has a fair process.
This criticism was echoed by Executive Director of Voter Integrity Project of North Carolina, Jay DeLancy, who claimed the NCGOP only addressed allegations of dead people voting in the Beasley-Newby race after his organization took the lead and began investigating.
“It wasn’t [the NCGOP] idea, it was ours,” DeLancy said, adding however that he was pleased the NCGOP helped ramp up efforts. DeLancy also argued that while he has “no complaints about [the NCGOP] lawsuits” and said he gives “credit” to the “effective” legal action that was taken, securing elections starts from the bottom up.
“Election integrity takes creativity, you have to think about how the bad guys are doing things and get into the process,” he said. “What we’re more concerned with is day-to-day ground game and where people are cheating, where the rubber meets the road at the polls.”
“When things go south at the polls, we train our poll workers to pull out the law and show the clerk where they’re wrong. [NCGOP] doesn’t, they just say, ‘call us’…and log it unless they feel they can take legal action,” DeLancy added. “I would love to have seen someone who took election integrity seriously as RNC chairman but at the end of the day, all they really care about is get out the vote efforts and they’re not serious about election integrity.”
Mitchell expressed similar thoughts, saying while recruiting volunteer lawyers and poll observers is “absolutely vital,” she hopes Whatley “will be open to hearing about and understanding” that Republicans need to “fight the left on every single issue and every inflection point regarding the election system.”
“We cannot hope to counter their massive funding and organizational advantage that has nothing to do with the DNC or the normal political campaigns,” Mitchell said. “We are in a different world now and hopefully, Michael and the new RNC leadership will want to learn and do something about it. Banking early votes or ballot harvesting as a singular strategy has the left rolling in the aisles laughing at us.”
Womack and Kane also expressed concerns about whether Whatley could actually fundraise for the party.
“The state party would be broke if it weren’t for RNC subsidies,” Womack said. Kane also attributed the state party’s funds to the RNC.
Womack acknowledged, however, that Whatley likely wouldn’t need to worry about doing all the heavy lifting when it comes to fundraising because Trump would be able to drum up most of the support himself.
“Trump’s train has left the station,” Womack said. “I think he’s gonna do well regardless of who the RNC chair is so I’m guessing it really doesn’t matter who leads the RNC.”
Brianna Lyman is an elections correspondent at The Federalist.
Democrats are finally facing their day of reckoning with black voters, and their waning support for President Joe Biden is only half the story. A recent New York Times/Sienna poll reveals that Biden barely leads among nonwhite voters under 45 in a 2024 election matchup against former President Donald Trump. The same nonwhite voters reported backing Biden by almost 40 points in the 2020 election.
The hidden story is that Trump is capturing more than 22 percent support among black voters. The NYT article said a Republican winning over so many black voters “would be unprecedented in the post-Civil Rights Act era.”
Why Are Blacks Finally Breaking Ranks?
Black Americans are beginning to understand that the years of promises of better days have resulted in decades of broken promises. A recent Wall Street Journal article tells the story of Michelle Smith, who lives in North Philadelphia. She works two jobs as a black single mother with three teenage boys. She describes her disappointment in Biden, whom she supported strongly in 2020. Despite efforts by the Democrats to spend more money on advertising, voter canvassing, and educating voters in black communities, Smith said the Democrats might not be able to convince her to vote. “I think I’m not going to vote, period,” she said.
Smith is not alone. There is a growing recognition that Democrats have duped black Americans. And as they increasingly realize it, Democrats will be left saying, “Katy, bar the door,” because their party will begin to implode.
Ironically, the modern-day Democrat Party has essentially achieved the same objectives as the Civil War-era Democrat Party. It has unfortunately taken 60 years for black Americans to realize what has happened to them and their culture. It’s hard to keep blaming Republicans when Democrats run major cities, school systems, and police departments. In many cases, black Democrats run these institutions.
Black Decline After Civil Rights
The status of black Americans today in Democrat-controlled cities and states is essentially the worst it has been since before the Civil Rights era. For example, during slavery, Democrats restricted access to opportunities that allowed slaves to obtain an education. Today, in nearly every major city controlled by Democrats, literacy rates are abysmal. Local and national Democrat Party leaders have severely restricted access to private or charter schools.
Proponents of apartheid used segregation as a cruel psychological tool. Democrats, however, are bringing segregation back in style. In Democrat Party strongholds, such as American universities, the country is witnessing the practice of segregated dorms and graduation ceremonies.
One of the most devastating changes that the Democrat Party facilitated involves the destruction of the nuclear family in black communities. During the era of slavery, masters would break up families after wives bore children. After the Civil War and for 100 years afterward, most black children grew up in traditional two-parent families.
It wasn’t until Democrats introduced and heavily marketed social welfare programs to black Americans in the 1960s that two-parent families began to erode drastically. Those programs ushered in a cultural transformation. Over 50 years, black families fell from having two parents in 80 percent of homes. Today, approximately 80 percent of black children grow up in fatherless homes.
Democrats Harm Black Americans
For the Democrats, family disruption and government dependency were the objectives from the beginning. If that wasn’t their intention, then why hasn’t there been one national initiative to reverse the trend?
In 1957, Sen. Lyndon B. Johnson, D-Texas, then the pro-segregationist Senate majority leader, knew blacks would eventually get the right to vote. When speaking to then-Sen. Richard Russell Jr., D-Ga., regarding the Civil Rights Act of 1957, Johnson said, “These Negroes, they’re getting pretty uppity these days and that’s a problem for us since they’ve got something now they never had before, the political pull to back up their uppityness. Now we’ve got to do something about this, we’ve got to give them a little something, just enough to quiet them down, not enough to make a difference.”
Democrat Party leaders and their left-wing friends in academia and the media convinced blacks (and the general public) that Republicans were the racists. They were, according to the effective narrative, indifferent to poor people. They wanted to keep blacks as second-class citizens. Ironically, Republicans voted to support the Civil Rights Act in greater numbers than Democrats.
Their goal was to have black Americans switch their votes from Republicans to Democrats.
Black Americans Coming Home to the GOP
As we look forward to the 2024 election season, the NYT/Sienna poll is not the only one raising the alarm. A recent Fox News poll revealed that 26 percent of black Americans support Trump for president in 2024 over Biden. In the past 12 months, black elected officials switched from the Democrat Party to the Republican Party in southern states such as Georgia and Texas. For the first time in 140 years, Alabama voters elected a black man to the state House of Representatives as a Republican.
In statewide elections, voters in Virginia and North Carolina elected black Americans to the No. 2 leadership position as lieutenant governors. Although Daniel Cameron did not win his bid for Kentucky governor, we should expect to see more black Republicans running for statewide and federal offices.
Even the legacy media won’t be able to spin and hide this major political shift.
Kendall Qualls is an Executive Faculty-in-Residence at the Crown College School of Business and Founder/President of the non-profit foundation TakeCharge. Qualls was a candidate for the Republican nomination for Governor of Minnesota in the 2022 election cycle.
Legislators in North Carolina overrode several vetoes by Democrat Gov. Roy Cooper on Wednesday to pass three new laws that protect children from the harmful consequences of radical gender ideology.
Thanks to the bipartisanefforts of the state’s General Assembly, men in ladyface are barred from infiltrating women’s sports, a policy decision a majority of Americans support because they know that males have an indisputable biological and physiological advantage and women have a right to privacy and safety in places like locker rooms. Teachers, under another new law, must also alert parents of their children’s gender confusion issues instead of transitioning kids secretly.
A third law, which the House and Senate also overrode a veto to pass, prohibits medical professionals from pumping kids full of neutering drugs that carry permanent consequences including sexual dysfunction, infertility, a higher risk of cancer and cardiac events, impaired vocal cords, bone density issues, and “transition” regret.
While someone can still be remotely approved to mutilate functional body parts in just 22 minutes in some American states, red states and European countries like England, Sweden, Finland, and France have significantly scaled back or completely prohibited physical transgender interventions.
Legislators and parental rights activist groups in the Tar Heel State celebrated the overturned vetoes as a victory for “women, parents, and families.”
“While Governor Cooper has tried to stand between parents and their kids, today the NC House will continue to affirm parent’s rights, protect female athletes, and advocate for the health and safety of our children,” North Carolina House Speaker Tim Moore said in a statement.
Cooper, on the other hand, appeared to have no regrets that he ignored the will of his constituents by vetoing the protective legislation. Instead, he complained that legislators were focused on keeping children away from mutilative gender experiments that will wreak irreversible damage on their bodies and minds instead of passing a budget bill.
“These are the wrong priorities, especially when they should be working nights and weekends if necessary to get a budget passed by the end of the month,” Cooper said in a statement.
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.
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
Three of the 10 counties chosen as beneficiaries of a program from the nonprofit that helped fund the private takeover of government election offices in 2020 are refusing to accept those dollars leading up to the 2024 cycle.
Election officials from Brunswick and Forsyth Counties in North Carolina and Ottawa County in Michigan have chosen not to accept funds from the U.S. Alliance for Election Excellence, a program that plans to funnel $80 million in election grants to jurisdictions across the country over the next five years. The alliance is a project of the Center for Tech and Civic Life, one of two groups that funneled over $328 million of private money from Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, known as “Zuckbucks,” to government election offices mostly in the blue counties of swing states, mobilizing Democratic get-out-the-vote efforts and swinging the race in Joe Biden’s favor.
Many of the jurisdictions chosen as recipients for the 2024 cycle lean heavily Democrat and are located in swing states, indicating CTCL is hoping to replicate its successful scheme in the next presidential election in purple states Democrats need to win, such as Michigan, Nevada, Wisconsin, and North Carolina. While CTCL might once again try to hide its efforts by claiming the alliance is also giving money to red counties, expect more than double or triple the funds to be spent on Democratic-leaning counties compared to Republican ones, just like in 2020.
Ottawa County Clerk Justin Roebuck told RealClearInvestigations he will refuse the grant money offered to his county because of transparency concerns. When Roebuck asked the alliance about its criteria for the amount of money given to each county, those running the program refused to give a clear answer.
Tim Tsujii, director of elections for the Forsyth County Board of Elections, told RealClear that Forsyth will not take any grant money because the county has adequate funds to administer its elections. Forsyth and Brunswick Counties will still be part of the alliance, but Tsujii raised concerns about members having to pay a fee for being part of the program.
“There is all this talk about the money going to elections offices and the counties, but what about the money going from the counties to the alliance?” Tsujii said.
To be a part of the alliance, election offices must pay an annual fee, $1,600 for a basic membership or $4,800 for premium, which the CTCL-created program says gives officials access to “coaching,” tutorials, consulting, and any other as-needed handholding, such as revamping voter forms and websites. The alliance also obligates members “to make non-monetary (but highly significant) contributions to the broader activities of the Alliance,” such as participating in its events and sharing election data, documents, and forms.
While the program goes to great lengths to stress its “commitment to nonpartisanship” — “We will never attempt to influence the outcome of any election. Period” — its own founding organization, the Center for Tech and Civic Life, has demonstrated the catastrophic and deeply partisan consequences of welcoming outside groups to infiltrate government election offices.
These three jurisdictions are not the only beneficiaries raising concerns about the integrity of the alliance and the problems associated with accepting its funds. The town of Greenwich, Connecticut, narrowly approved a $500,000 grant from the program after town representatives and concerned residents wrote a letter to their local newspaper signaling their opposition to accepting the grant. The letter cited outside influence by the partisan groups in Greenwich’s election process as one reason to reject the funds.
As RealClearInvestigations noted:
When [Greenwich] residents heard that its elections office was tapped to receive $500,000 in grant money from the CTCL, a member of the town’s legislative council sent an email to the center seeking more information, including audits of the group’s books, a copy of the group’s annual report, and its conflict-of-interest policy.
The CTCL declined to provide the documents, insisting that its audited financials and conflict policies “are not publicly filed documents.”
The alliance has also failed to disclose how exactly the grant money will be used, instead keeping things vague and saying it will vary depending on each office. But if CTCL’s past is prologue, that could mean working with left-wing third-party groups to create absentee ballot forms, targeting likely-Democratic voters by harvesting and curing their ballots, and crafting automatic voter registration systems. The Center for Tech and Civic Life is already hoping to do this on a much broader scale than in 2020. As The Federalist previously reported, CTCL has an elaborate plan to infiltrate more than 8,000 local election departments across the country by 2026.
That county election officials and town leaders are suspicious of the alliance and are starting to opt out of its grant money should set off alarm bells for other jurisdictions committed to conducting free and fair elections. Unless more localities reject these private funds and memberships, CTCL — under the guise of its new U.S. Alliance for Election Excellence program — will once again undermine election integrity in 2024 and beyond.
Victoria Marshall is a staff writer at The Federalist. Her writing has been featured in the New York Post, National Review, and Townhall. She graduated from Hillsdale College in May 2021 with a major in politics and a minor in journalism. Follow her on Twitter @vemrshll.
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A girls’ high school volleyball player in North Carolina recently suffered severe injuries to her head and neck after a trans opponent spiked a ball into her face.
Early last month, Hiwassee Dam High School competed against Highlands High School in a girls’ volleyball tournament. During the game, an unnamed biological male playing for Highlands spiked a ball over the net and hit an unnamed Hiwassee Dam player directly in the face. Though video of the incident is grainy, the unnamed female player can clearly be seen lying on the floor for some time before recovering enough to walk off the court on her own power. The girl is still said to be experiencing long-term concussion symptoms, such as vision problems, and has not been cleared to return to play either by a physician or a neurologist.
As a result of her injury, the Cherokee County Board of Education voted 5-1 to cancel all future volleyball games against Highlands High School, citing a “safety issue.”
One long-serving coach allegedly persuaded at least one board member to vote in favor of canceling the games. Cherokee board member Joe Wood said that “a coach of 40 years said they’d never seen a hit like this. That was really what sealed the decision, at least on my part.”
The Post Millennial claims to have confirmed that assertion from the unidentified coach.
Fellow board member Jeff Tatham added that the ball had allegedly been traveling at 70 mph when it struck the girl’s face. “I don’t know if that’s faster than normal, but it seemed like it was coming off very fast, abnormally, especially fast,” Tatham said. “It not only hit her in the face, then the ball came off of her face with enough force to then go back through the net.”
In addition to the safety concerns, the board also said it believes that male competitors have a “competitive advantage” over female opponents.
“The competitive advantage issue certainly has to come up in any scenario with that type of transgender conversion, per se,” said Jeff Martin, vice chair of the board. “I can tell you that the board wasn’t searching out this kind of thing. It was brought to our attention based on safety concerns.”
However, despite the concerns voiced by the board, some local residents have chided the decision to cancel district games against Highlands.
“All the events for one incident? It’s not right,” said Tony Graham. “There’s risk getting out of bed in the morning, crossing the street, and going to the store. I’m sure the teammate that did get hurt wants them to go out there and fight for it, right? That’s what we do.”
Board member Arnold Mathews reiterated that the decision applies only to Highlands and only to girls’ volleyball. The North Carolina High School Athletic Association confirmed that each “local school system” can decide not to play games against particular opponents or schools.
“While we would prefer that schools or teams play all games it schedules,” the NCHSAA said, “that latitude does exist.”
Though the WTVC video below does contain clips from the Hiwassee Dam/Highlands game, it does not depict the spike in question. The MaxPreps video for this particular game also appears to be unavailable.
An attorney with the voting rights division of the Department of Justice — which enforces federal laws related to voting — allegedly violated election law when she voted in the 2020 presidential election in North Carolina, a new memo by the American Accountability Foundation outlines.
Longtime DOJ attorney Janie Sitton cast a ballot in North Carolina’s 2020 general election, despite being a resident of Washington, D.C., at the time. While Donald Trump ended up carrying North Carolina by just 1.3 points, the race was a dead heat until the very end. This was not the case in the District of Columbia, however, where Trump earned only 5 percent of the vote. Perhaps this is why Sitton chose to vote in the Tar Heel State rather than D.C. — and it’s a prime example of how skirting election laws can contribute to rigged elections.
On Monday, the American Accountability Foundation (AAF) filed bar complaints in both North Carolina and D.C. over Sitton’s presumed misconduct. In the memo compiled by AAF, voter data shows Sitton as a resident and active voter in D.C. since Aug. 13, 2010, voting in five elections leading up to 2018. Since 2018, Sitton has claimed a D.C. homestead deduction on her tax filings. To claim that tax deduction, residents must declare that the property is their principal residence, according to the memo.
“Submitting a false statement on these property tax records can subject the applicant to criminal penalties, according to the fraud and false statement laws under 47-4106 of the Code of the District of Columbia,” according to AAF.
Sitton also owns a condominium in North Carolina, which she bought in 2002. Tax documents indicate Sitton’s mailing address for the condominium is her Washington, D.C., address.
In August 2020, however, Sitton registered to vote in North Carolina using the address of her condo, per the state’s Board of Elections Voter Database. Shortly after Sitton registered to vote in North Carolina, she cast a ballot in the 2020 general election as well as a municipal election in November 2021. In May 2022, Sitton abruptly restored her voter registration in Washington, per D.C. Board of Elections data.
Sitton was essentially voting in North Carolina as if that were her primary residence while claiming a homestead deduction on her apparently real primary residence in D.C. A year prior to casting her ballot in the 2020 election, Sitton even signed a mortgage agreement to keep her North Carolina condo as a second non-residence property, per AAF.
Such behavior ostensibly violates North Carolina state statute, which, according to AAF, defines “what is and is not considered residency for the purposes of registering to vote within the state.” The statute defines residency as:
(1) That place shall be considered the residence of a person in which that person’s habitation is fixed, and to which, whenever that person is absent, that person has the intention of returning….4) If a person removes to another state or county, municipality, precinct, ward, or other election district within this State, with the intention of making that state, county, municipality, precinct, ward, or other election district a permanent residence, that person shall be considered to have lost residence in the state, county, municipality, precinct, ward, or other election district from which that person has removed [emphasis added].
Presumably, Sitton never had the intention of making her North Carolina condo her primary residence when she cast her ballot in the 2020 election.
“Janie Sitton, a senior attorney in the DOJ Voting Section, lied about her residency to register to vote in North Carolina so she could vote in a competitive Presidential election,” AAF Founder Tom Jones told The Federalist. “If DOJ election attorneys are unwilling to abide by the most straightforward of election laws, how can we trust them to enforce voting laws in the upcoming election?”
Sitton’s alleged partisanship is nothing new to the DOJ, which has a history of politically motivated abuse of federal law. For example, the agency is actively involved in delaying election integrity efforts in Florida, has sued both Georgia and Texas over additional election integrity legislation, and is helping facilitate Biden’s federal takeover of elections. The DOJ’s current associate attorney general, Vanita Gupta, headed a DOJ lawsuit attempting to block voter ID laws in North Carolina in 2015.
Not to mention that the current head of the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division (which Sitton’s voting rights division falls under), Kristen Clarke, led a lawsuit against then-Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp’s election integrity policies as a private lawyer, peddled the Jussie Smollett hate crime hoax, and in college argued that blacks are the superior race. In other words, it’s not just Sitton that appears to be a politically motivated actor, it’s pretty much the entire DOJ.
“Instances like this show how sophisticated election lawyers can game the system,” former Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell told Breitbart. And ” how easily voting laws can be leveraged by those who know how those laws are written.”
The DOJ did not respond to The Federalist’s request for comment.
Victoria Marshall is a staff writer at The Federalist. Her writing has been featured in the New York Post, National Review, and Townhall. She graduated from Hillsdale College in May 2021 with a major in politics and a minor in journalism. Follow her on Twitter @vemrshll.
A devout Christian, father, and African-American, Michael Anderson didn’t feel represented by either party and until Jan. 31 of this year, remained politically unaffiliated. But a series of events has led him to align with and campaign alongside conservatives in one of North Carolina’s most liberal counties.
Anderson is an attorney for a Big Tech company in Charlotte. Headquartered just a few miles across the border in South Carolina, his company claims the fifth largest internet footprint in the United States. Higher-ups have a stated goal of widespread “influence.” They are making good on that goal.
On Nov 18, 2021, the CEO stood before an all-employee meeting at the Charlotte location and declared for the “greater good of humanity” it was no longer enough to segregate the workers who had not received a Covid-19 vaccine. They had to be removed entirely. The entire company had been working remotely for nearly two years at that point, Anderson said. The announcement came just before the holidays.
“Hundreds of people found out that day they would be fired unless they submitted to the mandate without an approved medical or religious exemption,” Anderson said.
Anderson reached out to co-workers via an internal Slack channel sharing his concerns and received a flood of responses expressing stress and fear.
“I’ve worked in some difficult places with some difficult people and that was the most difficult week of my career,” Anderson said. “I grew up in a single-parent family below the poverty level. Single mothers [were contacting me]. Pregnant women were contacting me to see whether they could receive a medical exemption. There were so many inequities and unjust consequences to this poorly thought out, draconian mandate.”
About 60 employees linked up. “All these people [losing their jobs] are super high-performing, hardworking people, some who have been in the company for 15-16 years,” Anderson said. “I asked the CEO to change the policy, the director of diversity, the General Counsel; I couldn’t change their minds.”
Anderson began using his legal expertise to assist exemption-seekers. Alongside like-minded freedom fighters, he developed a coalition, ByManyOrByFew, to inform, educate and connect voters.
“I thought we ought to do something to fight against these policies and funnel people toward politicians who were freedom-minded,” he said.
But Anderson didn’t stop there. Within weeks of the company announcement, he decided to run for a North Carolina House seat in Mecklenburg, one of the most Democratic counties in the state. Choosing a party affiliation by now was a no-brainer.
In preparation to testify before the South Carolina House and Ways subcommittee on December 7, 2021, for a workplace vaccination bill that could eventually impact the North Carolina arm of the company he works for, Anderson reached out to both political parties. Not one Democrat would respond, but many Republicans fighting for individual rights did. “Forty-four Caucasians were fighting to protect my rights,” he said.
Vaccines historically have a disparate impact on minorities. Anderson references the Tuskegee Experiment, as one horrific example. He saw history repeating itself with the Covid-19 vaccine, led by a Democratic president.
“When you had these vaccine mandates come out, I placed the blame at the feet of President Biden,” Anderson said. “Although his mandates were ultimately unsuccessful, a lot of companies were encouraged and enabled to have their own vaccine mandates and a private company has a lot more flexibility compared to the government. As a result, by their terms, that caused systemic, institutional racism because it has a disparate impact on minorities.”
That is who Anderson specifically wants to champion; and who Democrats continuously fail to support or outright harm with disastrous policies. Even with the CDC’s recently updated vaccine guidelines, Democratic leaders like Washington, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser are pursuing policies that hurt miniorities disproportionately, like a vaccine mandate that would bar 40 percent of D.C. black teenagers from in-person learning.
“My district is 60 percent African American, 20 percent Latino,” Anderson said. “The reason why I like that and that’s where I want to be is not only because I am African American, there’s no demographic flipping faster from Democrat to Republican than Latino. And if you look at the vaccine mandates, there is no race that was hurt worse than African Americans.”
Minority voters have been impacted by other far-left policies, and are expressing their discontent at the polls. A recent interview by NPR with political scientist Ruy Teixeira revealed how Democrats are driving minority voters to flip partisanship, especially in the Latino population.
“…[T]he ultra-progressive wing of the Democratic Party privileging criminal justice reform over public safety,” has become a major concern of minority voters, Teixeira said. “People want to be safe from crime, and that includes a lot of nonwhite voters. It is not a matter for them of choosing between the two, but rather above all, you’ve got to keep our community safe.”
Anderson’s opponent for NC House District 99, Democratic Rep. Nasif Majeed, supported the “ultra-progressive” defunding of the Charlotte police in his previous campaign. Charlotte now has only 1,600 police officers for a city of 1 million people. Three hundred defections or retirements are expected in the near term and salaries start as low as $40,000. A lack of manpower has resulted in unanswered 911 calls and crimes below a felony going entirely unaddressed. “Social justice warriors” are crippling police response, according to local law enforcement.
Democrats’ leftist ideologies ruin cities and Anderson wants to get his town back on track, but he knows reform isn’t possible alongside current Democrats in North Carolina’s House, who hold a majority in the legislature.
A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania Law School, Anderson grew up below the poverty level in a biracial, single-parent home. Progressive policies pressed during the pandemic are driving inequity that entrap and eliminate those the far-left claim to champion, he said. He feels there is no place for him in the Democratic Party right now.
Through door-to-door campaigning, he’s found that many registered Democrats in Charlotte agree.
“I ask people what issues they need represented and how the system is failing them,” Anderson said. “You have to have conversations with people to know.”
Empowered by a Democrat president, Democrat House, and a coalition of Democrat governors, Covid-19 tyranny has driven a new type of minority leader like Anderson to represent an increasingly diverse Republican party — one that engages in the political battle and fights for the now tenuous freedoms once taken for granted.
Ashley Bateman is a policy writer for The Heartland Institute and blogger for Ascension Press. Her work has been featured in The Washington Times, The Daily Caller, The New York Post, The American Thinker and numerous other publications. She previously worked as an adjunct scholar for The Lexington Institute and as editor, writer and photographer for The Warner Weekly, a publication for the American military community in Bamberg, Germany. Ashley is a board member at a Catholic homeschool cooperative in Virginia. She homeschools her four incredible children along with her brilliant engineer/scientist husband who lives in Virginia.
Foreigners are voting in our elections. It isn’t just in the sanctuary city of New York, where 800,000 foreigners just got the power to vote in municipal elections. Foreigners voting occurs all over the country. Over the past few years, the Public Interest Legal Foundation, of which I am president, has uncovered government records showing foreigners voting in Pennsylvania, Texas, New Jersey, and California.
Voter fraud deniers do not want to talk about the fact that foreigners are registering and voting in U.S. elections. They forget that the foreigners voting in American elections are sometimes victims of third-party voter registration drives that jeopardize their immigration status. These voter registration drives sign anyone up without regard to eligibility.
States are also victimizing these foreigners. Pennsylvania let aliens register to vote for more than two decades on a broken department of motor vehicles registration process. Unwitting aliens often don’t know they aren’t allowed to register and vote. Meanwhile, committing an election crime such as illegal voting subjects them to deportation. The only winner is the political party that reliably gets their votes.
Just this week, we uncovered more evidence of foreigners voting in our elections, this time in the swing state of North Carolina. In 2019, the North Carolina State Board of Elections denied the foundation access to documents relating to foreigners registering and voting, so the foundation sued the board. Following a ruling by the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals affirming that the National Voter Registration Act requires disclosure of these documents, the board agreed to settle the case. In the settlement, the board agreed to disclose the records relating to foreigners registering and voting. There have already been 38indictments of foreigners registering to vote and some casting ballots. These records will conclusively show how many foreigners have been voting in North Carolina elections.
Inspecting these list maintenance documents serves an important purpose by allowing one to identify how foreigners are getting registered to vote. That is a key first step to improve the system and ensure that these errors do not continue to happen.
Often, it is the fault of the government. For example, a voter registration form will have a question at the top asking if the potential registrant is an American. One may check “no” and, due to errors by local elections officials, still get registered to vote. The same mistakes can happen when the potential registrant leaves the checkbox blank. The mistake may also be on the part of the potential registrant, incorrectly checking the box attesting that he or she is a U.S. citizen. The bottom line is foreigners are registering and voting in states across the country.
Nobody should want this. Only Americans should be electing American leaders. States need to examine their voter list maintenance procedures and ensure they are keeping non-citizens off the voter rolls.
We will continue the effort to catalog and expose government mistakes and election malfeasance. Americans have a right to know about the vulnerabilities in our election system.
J. Christian Adams is the President of the Public Interest Legal Foundation, a former Justice Department attorney, and current commissioner on the United States Commission for Civil Rights.
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.”
Republican Mark Robinson, lieutenant governor of North Carolina, delivered a fiery speech at the state’s recent GOP convention and told his fellow party members that they all must battle against President Joe Biden and his administration turning America into a “socialist hellhole.”
Sounding very much like a preacher in the pulpit, he noted that on 9/11 he watched “people running away from those burning buildings, running away in horror” but that he also “saw policemen and firemen running to those buildings — basically running to their deaths to go help others because they saw trouble, and they knew that they were needed!”
Robinson told fellow Republicans “that’s got to be us on this day, right here. We’ve got to run to the trouble, folks!”
And in addition to the Biden administration’s socialist ways, he said the trouble is found in militant leftist groups.
“The trouble is Antifa that wants to roam the streets and beat you into submission,” Robinson declared. “The trouble is Black Lives Matter that claims to care about the lives of black people, but it’s turned a blind eye” to violence in black communities that’s “taking lives at a genocidal rate!”
He then explained why Republicans shouldn’t shrink from the challenge.
“And we’ve got all the right in the world on our side,” Robinson said. “And there ain’t no reason to be afraid. And there ain’t no reason to not take the challenge dead on. ‘Cuz I’m gonna tell you who we come from, folks. We don’t come from some weak, jelly-back, spineless people. That’s not who we come from — none of us! And it doesn’t matter what color you are, what nation your folks hailed from, how much money you got; we all share the same name: We are Americans!”
He then connected the heroism of soldiers from America’s past wars to the heroes of 9/11 “who ran toward those burning buildings. That is who you share your heritage with. You do not share your heritage with a weak and ineffective people who cower at the sign of trouble. You share your heritage with a strong and brave people who are determined to hold on to their freedom and for the freedom of future generations.”
In a kind of benediction, Robinson told listeners that “it’s time for us to stand up and be that generation. It’s time for us to stand strong and proud to remember who we are.” He added that “it’s time to put on our packs. It’s time to fix those bayonets. It’s time to get ready — because we got a fight on our hands” to save freedom for future generations.
Here’s the clip:
I encourage you all to take a minute to listen to this fiery speech by Lieutenant Governor of North Carolina Mark Robinson.
This story isn’t picking up the traction it deserves, though, it strikes a nerve with most parents or anyone with a pulse. A small boy was shot, execution-style, reportedly by his neighbor while the child rode his bike. A fair warning: the details of this case are disturbing and not suitable for children.
On Sunday, 25-year-old black male Darius Sessoms allegedly murdered 5-year-old Cannon Hinnant, who is white, in Wilson, North Carolina, in front of the boy’s two young sisters.
Sessoms, who lived the next house over from the victim’s father, ran across the lawn to Hinnant and shot him in the head at point-blank range as his two sisters, ages seven and eight, looked on, neighbors said, according to WRAL.com. Hinnant was in the front yard riding his bike.
The boy’s father, too distraught to speak to local news on camera, was heard screaming after the shooting, witnesses said. The man rushed out to hold his bleeding son before Hinnant was rushed to nearby medical center, where he was later pronounced dead.
Sessoms took off in a black vehicle after the shooting and was not apprehended until Monday by U.S. Marshals Service Carolinas Regional Fugitive Task Force, Goldsboro police, and the Wayne County Sheriff’s Office, according to a report from WRAL.com.
By far, one of the most horrific details noted in this case is that the small boy was shot in front of his 7 and 8 year-old siblings. A Neighbor who also witnessed what happened reportedly told officers she couldn’t believe what she saw adding that she thought, at first, the man was just playing with the kids.
Motive:
While police have not published a true motive there is a growing concern on social media that the heartless murder may have been racially motivated. It’s easy to see how some might draw that conclusion given the months of racially charged violence seen around the nation following the death of a Miniapolisis black man named George Floyd.
The other potential motive floating around is that the boy rode his bike through the neighbor’s yard or on his driveway. Though this motive seems extremely odd given the fact that the neighbor was reportedly close to the boy’s father, there may be something to this. After digging around on Facebook, following the #JusticeForCannon tag, I found the child’s aunt who shared a photo that read “Now you can ride your bike anywhere you want, sweet boy”.
The reality is this; until police have concluded their investigation we won’t know what the motive was or if there even was a motive.
The public outcry can be seen across all social media platforms. Oddly enough though, the story isn’t picking up traction with the mainstream media. It must not suit their narratives?
Because the investigation is still ongoing we will continue to follow this story- even if the mainstream media continues to ignore it. As heartbreaking as this has been to research, we equally want to see justice served.
University of North Carolina, Wilmington professor Mike Adams, a conservative who jabbed liberals with enthusiasm, was found dead inside his home Thursday.
New Hanover County Sheriff’s Office deputies went to the house where Adams lived and found his body, according to WECT-TV.
No other details about his death were released.
Adams, 55, was just days away from a negotiated parting of the ways with the university, which had faced a groundswell of opinion to sever Adams’ connection with the school after tweets Adams made regarding the coronavirus.
Although Adams was never shy about expressing conservative views on race, gender and every other polarizing topic in 21st century America, a May 29 tweet turned the buzz of criticism against him into howls of outrage.
The tweet was aimed at North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper after some restrictions were lifted from the state’s coronavirus lockdown.
“This evening, I ate pizza and drank beer with six guys at a six seat table top. I almost felt like a free man who was not living in the slave state of North Carolina. Massa Cooper, let my people go!” Adams tweeted.
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That was one of a string of tweets Adams issued supporting conservative causes and mocking liberal academia.
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Hollywood celebrities took part in a nationwide push to get Adams fired.
The university, which lost a legal battle with Adams when it tried to deny him tenure, negotiated with Adams and agreed to pay him $504,702.76 if he would retire on Aug. 1.
Many voices honored Adams for his work to push back against liberalism.
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In announcing that Adams would retire, North Carolina University Chancellor Jose Sartarelli made it clear that Adams was ousted due to his opinions.
“Over the past several weeks, many of you have inquired about the status of a UNCW faculty member, Dr. Mike Adams, in light of the public attention generated by comments he made on his personal social media channels,” Sartarelli wrote on the university’s website last month.
“We can now share the update that after a discussion with Chancellor Sartarelli, Dr. Adams has decided to retire from UNCW, effective August 1, 2020. We will have no further comment on this matter at this time, but we plan to share an update later this week regarding how we hope to move forward as a university community.”
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.
Amid a public uproar at a North Carolina school board meeting over far-left “equity training” for government-school teachers, allegations were made by furious parents that a teacher forced white and Christian students to stand up in class and apologize for their “privilege.”
According to local parent Farren Wilkinson, who testified at the Rockingham School Board on May 8, a teacher in the district, later identified as Tarsha Clarke, bullied and publicly humiliated students in her class.
“I just want to share light on a situation that happened at Western Rockingham Middle School where a teacher caused some of her students to stand up and apologize to other students based on their unequal opportunities of education,” said the mom.
Other parents quoted in media reports said white children were forced to apologize in front of the class for their “white privilege.”
“So I would like to know how our schools can allow an educator to humiliate, bully and degrade students,”Wilkinson added, noting the obvious fact that “children are not responsible or accountable for any inequalities that are believed to be present within the school system.”
“This is not a matter of race but a matter of a teacher using fear and the embarrassment of children to satisfy her own personal anger or beliefs,” continued Wilkinson.
“The actions of this educator do not provide safe, nurturing, dynamic, and integrative learning,” Wilkinson said after referring to the school district’s Orwellian mission statement.
Outraged parents who called the school were apparently informed by administrators that the scandal had been “taken care of,”Wilkinson said. “But how was it taken care of? What did happen? What was her training? What were the consequences for her actions?”
She also noted that scandals such as this one is why parents were seeking a way out of government schools and why enrollment in government schools continues to decline. “They’ve lost faith in the public school system,”Wilkinson said, drawing loud applause from attendees at the meeting.
After Wilkinson’s testimony, another parent, Robert Jeremy, who said he had a 9-year-old son, expressed outrage to the school board because of the racism, bigotry, and hate expressed by the teacher against the young child based on his “race,” Christian views, and heterosexuality.
“When did it become a good idea to attack a child at a school because they were white, or they were black, or they were straight, or they were Christian?” asked the outraged dad. “Or because they believed in something moral that they were taught at home?” “You see I teach my child and my two older daughters family values, Christian values,” he continued. “I teach not to judge somebody by the color of their skin but by the color of their heart. And my child will not be insulted, reprimanded, corrected because he has a good moral fiber.”
The scandal, first reported by the American Lens before being picked up more widely, comes as parents and taxpayers nationwide become increasingly outraged over the racist indoctrination being pushed on children in government schools.
In a false statement riddled with spelling and grammar errors, school officials essentially accused the outraged parents of lying. “In regard to your additional requests, I can not [sic] speak on any individual, however any allegations brought to our attention are investigated thoroughly and proper disciplinary action is taken if needed,”said Stephanie Wray, principal at the school involved. “Again, I can not speak regarding specific individuals due to personnel law, however the particular incident you asked about was unfounded to happen at our school.”
U.S. Parents Involved in Education (USPIE), a non-profit grassroots organization of parents, released a statement slamming the broader environment.
“This story is an example of a teacher clearly acting contradictory to the interests of the parents, apparently with support of the school leadership,”said Michigan PIE Chapter President Melanie Kurdys, who is also a member of the USPIE Rapid Response Team. “We support the teaching profession, but we are concerned that teacher preparation programs, conferences and selected curriculum condone and encourage a particular political ideology.”
“It appears some teachers believe they are empowered to indoctrinate children by whatever means necessary,”Kurdys continued. “Our public schools should focus on teaching academics free of political bias. If public school leadership does not respond quickly and engage parents of all perspectives, enrollment will continue to decline. Parents will not allow their children to be bullied by the very people entrusted to educate them. USPIE stands with parents and all public school employees who fight back to protect our children.”
Far from being an isolated phenomenon, this sort of hate, extremism, and indoctrination of children in the classroom is occurring across America. Parents must protect their children from it.
When 22-year-old college student Takiyah Thompson toppled a monument of a Confederate soldier in Durham, North Carolina, on Monday, she instantly became a hero of the liberal media — a counterbalance to the sick violence we saw in Charlottesville this past weekend. That sentiment only grew after, as WTVD-TV reports, Thompson was arrested at a news conference in which she demanded amnesty for the protesters.
Take, for instance, this headline from the liberal Huffington Post: “Takiyah Thompson, Hailed As ‘Hero,’ Showered With Support For Toppling Confederate Statue.”The media breathlessly reported everything that Thompson said at the news conference, an event put on by the Workers World Party, a group that Thompson belongs to.
Much less — in fact, next to nothing — was said about the Workers World Party, the Marxist-Leninist groupthat has taken credit for organizing the monument-toppling. There was a reason for that: For Thompson’s story to fit the narrative, the Workers World Party’s history needed to be obscured.
As The Daily Caller points out, the WWP has some very dirty secrets. It’s a pro-North Korean, anti-American organization that often espouses violence and crime to get its way. The Daily Caller describes the party, founded in 1959, as a “hard-line offshoot of the more moderate Socialist Workers Party.”
“Organizers and protesters in Durham sent a clear message: Love does not trump hate; only mobilized people’s power can tear down white supremacy,”the group said in a piece published right after the Durham incident.
The group also stuck up for North Korea’s right to nuclear weapons, saying that Pyongyang is merely “trying to keep from being crushed by the immense force deployed by U.S. ‘capitalist democracy.’”
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“It is the right of oppressed people to choose the form of their struggle,” a WWP article from this past Monday reads.
“Those who come from the oppressor nation must not dictate how it should be done … And the same is true on the international arena. If the people of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea have decided that the only way they’ll be safe from another U.S. attack is to have a nuclear deterrent, the best thing we in the U.S. can do is try to make sure that such an attack by the U.S. never happens.”
No matter how you feel about Confederate monuments, this is not the kind of person you want to “shower with support” over a decision to commit politically-motivated vandalism. This is an extremist far outside of the mainstream of American opinion.
Whether or not you agree with what she did — and we do not — that side of the story needs to be told.
A North Carolina man who plotted to kill hundreds of people in an ISIS terror plot has been sentenced to life imprisonment.
Justin Nojan Sullivan, 21, “planned to carry out his attack in the following few days at a concert, bar or club where he believed that as many as 1,000 people could be killed using the assault rifle and silencer,”according to a federal indictment.
The attack would have been similarly to the attack on the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida, which killed 49 people.
Court documents say he was planning to unveil an “Islamic State of North America” with his attack.
Justin was reported by his father in 2015, when Rich Sullivan, a retired marine, telephoned the FBI to inform them about his son’s possible Islamic State sympathies. Shortly afterwards, Justin offered money to an undercover agent he believed was an Islamic State sympathizer to kill his parents to prevent them from thwarting his plans.
Justin still faces a separate trial for the murder of 74-year-old John Bailey Clarke, his neighbor, whom he is accused of shooting. If convicted, he faces the death penalty.
Part of being the president is hosting all sorts of visitors to the White House. President Donald Trump appeared to have had a blast doing just that with a group of North Carolina students. The high-schoolers, preparing for a national rocketry competition, stopped by to show off their competition-winning rocket that they named after the president himself.
Trump and students from Victory Christian Center School in Charlotte met in the Oval Office on May 12 to discuss the Team America Rocketry Challenge.
“Guess what the name of the rocket is?”Trump said to gathered reporters. “It’s called ‘Trump.’”
“It better work well!” he joked to the students.
When Trump asked why they had named their rocket after him, one student replied, “Simply because it conquers all.”
The media did show the meeting in the Oval Office, albeit quite briefly, and most certainly didn’t dwell on it.
The media also didn’t dwell on another important fact: the students were minorities who had been saved from their wretched public schools by a special voucher program in North Carolina that helps low- and moderate-income families afford private school tuition, according toThe Charlotte Observer.
Trump has made it quite clear, both through his own words and the appointment ofBetsy DeVosto serve as Education Secretary, that he is in favor of voucher programs like the North Carolina Opportunity Scholarships and other programs like charter schools that help break up the failing public school monopolies that trap many low-income students in terrible schools that prevent them from fully realizing their full potential.
Further debunking the media narratives surrounding Trump, watch the video again and take note of how happy and excited most of the students appeared to be to meet with the president, despite constant suggestions from the media that Trump hates minorities and poor people.
This past Monday was May Day, the high holy day of the godless commie year. Normally, May 1 festivities are limited to countries where socialism is a lot bigger. However, given that Trump’s victory has led to the American left dropping any pretense of not being socialists, it was time for some antifa-ing in the streets this year.
There were plenty of May Day protests from Philly to Portland this year, although the numbers seemed to come in at well below organizers’ expectations (85 percent short in Los Angeles, for example).
But, God bless ’em, the liberals did what they could — and what they could do was block roads. The left is usually pretty good at this, but in this video posted to YouTube, one truck driver was even better.
According to the uploader, DC Statesman, this video was recorded during a May Day protest in Durham, North Carolina. To be fair, Durham isn’t exactly a hotbed of leftist sentiment, but after managing to rustle up a few politically challenged community college students and some high-visibility orange vests, they decided to block themselves a street. Unfortunately for them, the driver of the Dodge truck was having none of it. He inched through the crowd as these protesters tried to desperately assail the truck and force him to stop. Alas, it was to no avail.
Take a look:
Whoops. That doesn’t look like it ended the way these leftists were hoping.
Let me here say I don’t quite grasp this whole blocking-the-road tactic, which doesn’t seem to have any connection to what any of these people are putatively supposed to be protesting. What do they think it’s going to do?
Has any driver caught in one of these antifa-created traffic jams thought to themselves, “Oh, now I get it! They’re blocking this intersection because they want to drive home the necessity of intersectionality in a post-capitalist America! I’m going to turn around and go to that ‘revolutionary’ bookstore downtown which smells like pot, mold, and worthless postgraduate degrees, and I’m going to buy a copy of bell hooks’ ‘Teaching to Transgress!’”
You know, that’s actually a better rationalization than I’ve ever heard any of these erudite individuals give. I probably should have asked for royalties.
A bill that has passed North Carolina’s House of Representatives would shield motorists who unintentionally hit protesters blocking roads from civil liability, WFAE reported.
House Bill 330, introduced by Rep. Justin Burr, “provides that a person driving an automobile while exercising due care is immune for civil liability for any injury to another if the injured person was participating in a demonstration or protest and blocking traffic.”
It passed the House of Representatives by a 67-48 vote on Thursday, the Raleigh News & Observer reported.
“As we’ve seen, time and time again, as folks run out in the middle of the streets and the interstates in Charlotte and attempt to block traffic,”Burr said. The Republican said he wants to make sure “drivers don’t have to fear driving through Charlotte or anywhere in North Carolina.”
“This bill does not allow for the driver of a vehicle to target protesters intentionally,”he added. “It does protect individuals who are rightfully trying to drive down the road.”
Protests blocking roads and highways were common in Charlotte after the death of Keith Lamont Scott last year.
“These people are nuts to run in front of cars like they do … and say, ‘me and my buddy here are going to stop this two-and-a-half-ton vehicle,’”Rep. Michael Speciale, who supports the bill, said. “If somebody does bump somebody, why should they be held liable?”
Needless to say, Democrats pitched a fit.
“We all know this is being done to try to make a point about protests,”said Democrat Greg Meyer. “It is just going to embarrass us. There is no good reason to pass this bill.” >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Yes, apparently, protesters blocking roads for no good reason aren’t going to embarrass the state of North Carolina, but a bill protecting motorists from lawsuits will.
The bill now heads to the Senate for approval. One hopes the upper chamber acts quickly and passes this bill.
Liberals say that one reason for banning firearms is because of the accidents that happen every year involving them. We know that some education can cut those numbers astronomically.
And one state is taking the steps to do just that.
A new piece of legislation introduced in North Carolina will give high school students one more class to take: firearms education.
House Bill 612, filed this week by Representative Jay Adams, would give the state room to develop a firearms education course and allow the class, which would include “firearms safety education as recommend by law enforcement agencies or a firearms association”,to be offered as an elective to high school students.
The course, which would be developed by the North Carolina Board of Education, would not allow live ammunition in the classroom and would also cover the history and mechanics of firearms with a firm emphasis on the importance of gun safety.
This class would have something for everyone. Each student likes a certain subject, this class would not only cover safety but also teach students about the math, history and science of guns.
That’s a a lot of subjects in one class. It should keep students pretty engaged.
The bill seems to be getting a lot of positive feedback.
“I think education, first and foremost, is essential, before actually obtaining a firearm,”Allen Shaw said.
“If they have the opportunity to buy, they should have the opportunity to be educated. We’ve got too many people out there right now that are wanting to buy guns that don’t have any background with them.”
“Gives the kids a chance to learn how to work them,”said Danny Davis.
“It would be a very beneficial course,”said Tres Cobb, a gun owner and full supporter of the bill.
Of course, this hasn’t come without criticism from individuals who feel the course would encourage students to become shooters…
“I don’t even see the point in that,”Jenny Rorie said. “I don’t think they should, there’s enough violence going on without them doing that.”
“I think it would hurt and help. It’s kind of like a catch-22,” said Tanica Wilkerson.
“I think high school is a little early. I think some of those kids are not ready for that type of environment, to be exposed to something like that. I don’t feel like they’re mature enough.”
Under federal law, citizens under the age of 21 can’t purchase handguns, but 18 year-olds can purchase shotguns or rifles. These are the types of guns that would be part of the proposed high school course.
The bill says live ammunition won’t be allowed in class, but it doesn’t say whether guns can be present.
While adults argue over this bill, 6-year-old Evelyn had some of the best insight:
“If you see someone around you with a gun, you need to know how to handle it.”
Her parents did not give their opinion on the bill but did say teaching kids how to properly handle a firearm was an important lesson.
The bill has passed its first reading in the house. It’s now on its way to the House Committee on Education for debate. If passed, it will take effect at the start of the 2017-2018 school year.
What do you do when you see that there is an injustice occurring? Are you one that has been programmed to look the other way or are you one that instinctively steps up? There is no doubt that the Obama administration is seeking to force injustice down the throats of school and college administrators. But now there are some who are stepping up.
As I reported, Obama sent a mandate to every school, college, and university in the nation warning that they were to accommodate students with Gender Dysphoria. If they failed to make this accommodation, they would face losing their federal funding.
Officials from 11 U.S. states sued the Obama administration on Wednesday to overturn a directive telling schools to let transgender students use bathrooms matching their gender identity, decrying the policy as “a massive social experiment.”
Ramping up the simmering battles over contentious cultural issues in America, the states, led by Texas and most with Republican governors, accused the federal government of rewriting laws by “administrative fiat.”
What these states are saying is that the administration has spoken law into existence. They are handing down laws and requirements, once again without Congress. This is both wrong and illegal.
Many wish to make this an issue of discrimination, but one again it is an issue of law. What makes something lawful? In the United States, it is that the representatives of the people have deemed this or that is unlawful and therefore forbidden.
We have lost such ideas as the Church has left the foundation of Law. I discuss in my book the need for the Church to return to the Law of God. This is the only way that we can see such issues set right.
The one thing that our Constitution works to destroy is the idea of one man or a group of men creating law. This is why we should pray that these states along with North Carolina are given the victory.
A Christian calligraphy studio is suing the city of Phoenix over its LGBT non-discrimination ordinance, the latest dust-up in a slew of same-sex legal battles nationwide.
Lawyers for Brush & Nib, a calligraphy studio run by two Christian women who sell hand paintings and calligraphy for weddings and events, filed a lawsuit Thursday challenging the Phoenix LGBT non-discrimination ordinance. The city’s ordinance prohibits businesses from refusing service based on sexual orientation. The lawsuit claims this could be used to punish Brush & Nib by forcing them to service a same-sex ceremony, thus violating the owners’ consciences and religious freedoms. The business argues that since calligraphy is art, it should be considered free speech that cannot be censored or compelled by government.
Violations can lead to $2,500 in fines and six months of jail time for every day they violate the ordinance.
“We fully expect to have a hearing in the next few weeks on our motion for preliminary injunction and to have the Arizona superior court grant our motion and vindicate the free speech and religious liberty rights of our clients,”Jon Scruggs, an attorney working on the case with Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) — the Christian legal group representing the studio — told The Daily Caller News Foundation. “In reality, the case is pretty simple when you boil it down: no American, including artists, should have the government force them to create art against their artistic and religious beliefs.”
The lawsuit is a “pre-enforcement challenge,”which means the studio is challenging the ordinance in court even though it has not yet been directly affected by it. No one has filed a complaint against the studio — it is just getting ahead of the game.
But the city is not backing down.
“The Phoenix non-discrimination ordinance protects fundamental civil rights for everyone, and we will defend it aggressively,”Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton said in a statement.
Meanwhile, North Carolina and the federal government have filed lawsuits against each other after the state passed a law requiring people to use the bathroom that corresponds to the sex on their birth certificate. The law also prohibits local governments from making LGBT ordinances. If North Carolina loses, the state will likely be forced to comply or lose hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding.
President Barack Obama issued a decree Friday that all public schools must allow transgender students to use the bathroom of their choice.
Mississippi is also facing a lawsuit over its new LGBT law, which allows people to refuse service based on their religious beliefs.
In the state of Washington, a florist was sued for refusing to service a same-sex ceremony. The state’s Supreme Court agreed to hear the case. Scruggs told TheDCNF Brush & Nib’s case will likely go to Arizona’s Supreme Court as well.
“Artists shouldn’t be threatened with jail for disagreeing with the government,”ADF Senior Counsel Jeremy Tedesco said in a statement. “The government must allow artists the freedom to make personal decisions about what art they will create and what art they won’t create. Just because an artist creates expression that communicates one viewpoint doesn’t mean she is required to express all viewpoints. It’s unjust, unnecessary, and unlawful to force an artist to create against her will and intimidate her into silence.”
One Community, an Arizona LGBT advocacy group, called the lawsuit “baseless” and said no one should force their beliefs on anyone else.
“Businesses that are open to the public should be open to everyone on the same terms, including to customers who are gay or transgender,”Angela Hughey, president of One Community, said on Facebook. “Nobody should be turned away from a business simply because of who they are or who they love. Protecting people from discrimination, including people who are gay or transgender, is about treating others as we want to be treated.”
President Obama is opening a new front in the culture wars over gay and transgender rights — just in time for the 2016 elections.
Guidance from the Departments of Justice and Education that public schools should allow transgender students to use bathrooms that match their gender identity, and a separate civil rights lawsuit against a North Carolina transgender law, firmly put the White House and the Democratic party at the forefront of transgender rights.
The two dramatic moves provoked cries of support from the left and fury from the right, which decried the actions as further examples of executive overreach and social engineering they see as typical of Obama’s rule.
“If President Obama thinks he can bully Texas schools into allowing men to have open access to girls in bathrooms, he better prepare for yet another legal fight,” Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said.
Few saw a national fight over transgender rights emerging this summer.
Obama’s actions would have been far-fetched as recently as 2012, when he had still not formally backed same-sex marriage. But four years later, the White House and Democrats appear to be eager for the fight.
“It’s pretty clear there is a solid majority of Americans who want equal protection for trans people,”said Democratic strategist Brad Bannon. “I think [Obama] is trying to push the Republicans on the issue.”
Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders have both blasted the North Carolina law, which requires transgender people to use restrooms corresponding to the gender on their birth certificate.
“LGBT people should be protected from discrimination under the law—period,”Clinton wrote in a tweet when the measure passed in March.
Party strategists believe speaking out forcefully on the issue could aid Clinton, who has struggled to attract young voters who have flocked to her rival Sanders. They point to polls such as an April Reuters/Ipsos survey that showed twice as many Americans under 30 believe transgender people should use bathroom corresponding to their gender identity compared to people age 60 and older.
“If I was Hillary, the thing that I would be very concerned about is my position with millennials,” Bannon said. “They are very gung ho on any social issue you mention.”
GOP leaders are being forced to balance their vehement opposition to the Obama administration’s use of executive power while grappling with rapidly changing social norms surrounding LGBT rights.
Donald Trump who is known for his bombastic rhetoric against immigrants and Muslims, has taken a more measured tone. The presumptive presidential nominee declined to criticize the administration’s directive on Friday, saying the states should decide on the issue.
“I believe it should be states’ rights and I think the states should make the decision, they’re more capable of making the decision,”Trump said on ABC’s “Good Morning America.”
He said on NBC’s “Today” show in April that North Carolina should allow people to “use the bathroom they feel is appropriate”but he later walked back that statement.
LGBT-rights groups accused Trump of giving North Carolina a pass. But most Republicans went further than Trump, accusing the Obama administration of executive overreach.
North Carolina this week filed a lawsuit against the federal government, calling its stance a “radical reinterpretation”of the 1964 Civil Rights Act by suing the state over the bathroom law. Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa), who leads a House task force scrutinizing Obama’s use of executive power on issues like guns and immigration, called for hearings on its transgender directive. Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick (R) intensified the fight on Friday, when he accused Obama of “blackmail.”
He said any implied threat to withhold federal aid could hurt poor students because a majority of education funding to the Lone Star State helps pay for free or subsidized lunches.
“He says he’s going to withhold funding if school do not follow the policy,”Patrick said of the president. “Well in Texas, he can keep his 30 pieces of silver. We will not yield to blackmail from the president of the United States.”
Obama spokesman Josh Earnest shot back that Patrick’s comments “underscore the risk of a right-wing radio host to a statewide office.”
He said the guidance was not an “enforcement action,”instead framing it a way to underscore existing law and offer “practical solutions” to school administrators who are trying to ensure student safety.
“This has very little to do with politics, except for our critics, who want to make this entirely about politics,”he said.
But issue won’t disappear from the political debate any time soon.
The pro-gay rights group Human Rights Campaign (HRC) counts almost 200 bills it considers “anti-LGBT” in more than 34 states this year. The debate could resurface at the Republican convention in July. Some GOP officials want to try and extract the party from the battle over gay rights by removing any mention of same-sex marriage from the party platform. But the Republican National Committee quietly approved a resolution in February endorsing state laws that restrict access to bathrooms and locker rooms to students of the matching “anatomical sex.”
A big part of the challenge for Republicans is how quickly attitudes on LGBT acceptance have changed in the Obama era. A recent CNN/ORC poll showed that almost six in ten Americans oppose laws like North Carolina’s. Jay Brown, communications director for HRC, acknowledged that attitudes have changed rapidly.
“There has been incredible growth and visibility of transgender people, which has made a really big difference and changed people’s understanding,”said Brown, who is transgender.
Brown said his organization’s polling in 2008 showed eight percent of Americans knew a transgender person. Now, that figure is at 35 percent.
“When you personally know somebody who is LGBT, you support laws that support LGBT equality,”he said. “It’s making an enormous difference in fighting for equal rights.”
President Barack Obama’s deputies have told the North Carolina Governor that all single-sex public bathrooms — including those in K-12 schools — must be opened to people of both sexes by Monday to prevent “discrimination” against the roughly 1-in-2,400 American adults who say they’re transgender.
If the state doesn’t give up Americans’ right to decide who gets to use single-sex bathrooms and school locker rooms by Monday, then the federal government could start blocking the routine federal spending and tax transfers to the state — unless federal courts block the administration’s threat of sex-related harassment.
“The Department of Justice has determined that … you and the state of NC are in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act 0f 1964,”says the May 4 threat from Obama’s justice department to the Governor.
The state’s new HB2 sex-definition law “is facially discriminatory against transgender employees on the basis of sex because it treats transgender employees, whose gender identity does not match their biological sex, as defined by HB2, differently from similarly situated non transgender employees,”says the letter. The legal claims in the letter are based on a decision by Attorney General Eric Holder — not by Congress — in December 2014.
Republican Gov. Pat McCrory released a cautious press statement:
A claim by the Obama administration charges that one part of House Bill 2, which requires state employees in public government buildings and students in our universities to use a restroom, locker room and shower facility that match their biological sex, is now in violation of federal law. The Obama administration has not only staked out its position for North Carolina, but for all states, universities and most employers in the U.S.
The right and expectation of privacy in one of the most private areas of our personal lives is now in jeopardy. We will be reviewing to determine the next steps.
According to progressives, “transgender” people suffer illegal discrimination when their efforts to dress and live as people of the other sex face criticism and stigma from Americans, or when they face legal restrictions, such as single-sex bathrooms. A study of the 201o census concluded that roughly 1-in-2,400 adults have changed their names to the other sex.
The issue of transgender status has spiked since last year, when the Supreme Court granted progressives a huge win by declaring that all state marriage laws must be redefined to allow single-sex couples to get marriage licenses.
The North Carolina dispute began in Charlottesville when the city changed their local privacy laws to allow people to enter male or female bathrooms by simply declaring that their feelings, or their “gender expression” or “gender identity,” makes them male or female.
Cirque du Soleil Hypocrisy. They cancel in North Carolina over the transgender bathroom law, but will preform in Dubai where transgenders and homosexuality is illegal.
“Should peaceful non-participation now be made illegal also?”
– Dr. David Smith
Totalitarianism is defined as “a political system where the state recognizes no limits to its authority and strives to regulate every aspect of public and private life wherever feasible. Totalitarian regimes stay in political power through an all-encompassing propaganda campaign, which is disseminated through the state-controlled mass media, a single party that is often marked by political repression, personality cultism, control over the economy, regulation and restriction of speech, mass surveillance, and widespread use of terror.”* This definition describes the actions desired by those who want to punish Mississippi and North Carolina for wanting to let their citizens be able to decide for themselves what they want to think and do with their own lives. Liberals want a totalitarian government, not a republic, and not a democracy. They seek to force their viewpoint upon everyone.
Most of the companies that are voicing public objections to the laws passed by states, which want to allow religious freedom, are solely acting to protect their bottom line financially and will shift their actions to whichever way they think the wind blows if it will make them money. The same activists who threaten Mississippi and North Carolina also threaten large corporations if they don’t comply with their demands. If it is okay with people to demand adherence in such a totalitarian fashion, then some other questions should also be asked.
Should Teva Pharmaceutical Industries be boycotted because it refuses to allow propofol to be sold for executions? They are discriminating against what their product is used for on the basis of their belief system even though the death penalty and executions are legal. If Christians should be forced to participate in matters that conflict with their belief system and violates their conscience, then how can one argue that these companies should also not be forced to sell their products without “discriminating”? If it is okay to sue Christians who don’t want to perform a service due to religious and moral objections based on their faith, then should not the states who cannot get the medications sold to them for legal executions be able to bring lawsuits against these companies and force them to do what the law states is okay?
Should physicians who have moral objections to participating in abortions be forced to perform them since abortion is legal and physicians who refuse are “discriminating”? How about pharmacists who won’t fill a prescription for an abortifacient drug and are “discriminating”? Should all of these physicians and pharmacists be labeled as bigots and boycotted for their “discriminatory” practices?
What about the pastors who refuse to participate in a same sex “wedding”? Should they also be labeled and treated in the same way? Are these pastors to be listed on a “hate group” registry and hounded for just not wanting to participate?
What about Muslims who will not sell pork, or prepare it for sale, to others based upon their religious beliefs? Should all the pork-loving people get together and bring boycotts and lawsuits to force the discriminatory Muslims to participate in what they deem objectionable based upon their faith practices?
Should Jewish owned businesses who choose to close their doors on Saturday be forced to stay open and not “discriminate” against those who want to shop on Saturday?
It is not people of faith who are bringing lawsuits and attempting to ruin others through tactics of fear and intimidation. These are the actions of the liberal, totalitarian activists who people of faith need to be protected from. Should peaceful non-participation now be made illegal also? That is also what totalitarian governments do. No dissent is allowed without retribution.
People of all faiths should be allowed to follow their conscience and faith practices as their traditions commonly dictate and not have their belief systems trampled by totalitarian demands. The pharmaceutical companies should be allowed to follow their conscience while the states are free to pursue other options without forcing adherence. Physicians and pharmacists should be free to practice in ways that do not violate their faith while those who want something different are always free to seek to have services they legally want elsewhere. Pastors should continue to be free to choose whom they will agree to marry as they always have. Jewish people should be free to practice all aspects of their faith as there are other options for those who live under different practices. Muslims should be free to practice portions of their faith practice as they desire to do so and people who want something different can do business with others. Those who want to label these laws as hateful only reveal their own heart toward those whom they disagree. For people of faith, it is about protecting their own conscience by not participating. It is not about doing anything to hurt anyone else. It is about having respect for other people’s faith choices in their lives and giving them the freedom to live their lives with their conscience intact, unlike those within totalitarian regimes who have lost any conscience they might have had.
It was during the New Year’s Eve service just before midnight at a Fayetteville, North Carolina church that a man walked in with an unloaded semi-automatic rifle in one hand and a loaded magazine in the other. Incidentally, the pastor of the church had just been talking to his congregation about violence, particularly violence and mass shootings against churches in the recent past.
While the loaded magazine was not attached to the rifle, the pastor was concerned that there might be a round in the chamber.
The armed man approached the front of the sanctuary of Heal the Land Outreach Ministries where about 60 members were in attendance. The pastor Larry Wright – or, Bishop Wright as the members of his congregation call him – came to him and asked him, “Can I help you?” Pastor Wright, a rather stout 57-year-old military veteran at a couple inches over six feet and 230 pounds, said that he was ready to tackle him in case the armed man became aggressive. But the man asked that Pastor Wright pray for him. Wright took the rifle and magazine from him and gave them to a deacon. Wright and the other deacons each embraced him and made him feel loved.CNN continued with the story:
“And then I began to minister to him and pray with him and talk with him,”Wright said.
It was 20 minutes before midnight, and Wright wanted to finish the New Year’s Eve sermon and do an altar call. He told the man to sit in the front row and stay there.
“I finished the message, I did the altar call and he stood right up, came up to the altar, and gave his life to Christ,” Wright said. “I came down and prayed with him and we embraced. It was like a father embracing a son.”
Wright whispered in the man’s ear that police were waiting in the vestibule because he had scared a lot of people.
Then the man asked to speak to the 60 or so churchgoers. He apologized to them, telling them when he set out that evening he intended to do something terrible that night. But the Lord spoke to him, he said.
Wright described the gunman as emotionally distraught even though his life seemed to be on the upswing.
He told the pastor he had just gotten out of prison, had a new job and a new bride. The man looked to be in his late 20s or early 30s, Wright said.
Sylvester Loving, a 67-year-old deacon, told the Fayetteville newspaper that the church was talking about gun violence when the man entered.
“I think that night the spirit of God was definitely in the place,”Loving told the Observer.
Wright said he was talking about “senseless deaths” in the community.
Sometimes, using force is the only option we have. I don’t know if Pastor Wright carries a gun with him. Lots of pastors and churchgoers do. Churches have been the target of mass murders, and if someone were to come in shooting, a concealed carrier could take out the murderer.
But I think that the way this situation in Fayetteville unfolded is ideal. If the pastor were carrying a gun, he could have pulled it out and shot the guy and said that he was trying to keep his congregation safe, especially in the wake of other church shootings. He would be applauded for protecting his congregation.
But the man didn’t come in shooting. He said that he had intended on doing something terrible that evening but was convicted and wanted to come to church. The church loved him and took care of him. Pastor Wright has said that he wants to keep following up with the man and help him with whatever he needs. What this pastor and his church have done for this distraught man is far more valuable than what a gun would have done.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m in no way saying that we should never use guns in self-defense. That would be ridiculous. You know me better than that. There are plenty of times where it’s necessary.
But I do think that there are other times where we see an opportunity to show love and compassion toward someone we’d consider our enemy, and in those cases we should help that person. This man may have not intended on shooting up that particular church, but perhaps he was planning on doing something similar somewhere else. We don’t know. But what we do know is that this pastor took a situation that could have ended very badly and turned it into something good.
On Monday and into Tuesday, more than two dozen governors moved to block Syrian refugees from entering their states. (Photo: Kelsey Lucas/Visualsey)
In the aftermath of Friday’s terrorist attacks in Paris, governors across the United States are attempting to shut their doors on Syrian refugees looking to find a safe haven in the country. As of Monday evening, more than two dozen governors announced opposition to policies that would permit Syrian refugees to enter their states amid concerns they could have ties to terrorists.
KentuckyGov.-elect Matt Bevin, who will take officeDec. 8, also said he opposes resettlement efforts.
The movement, which was overwhelmingly spearheaded by Republican governors, came after French prosecutors discovered aSyrian passporton one of the suspected Islamic State suicide bombers in Paris. That finding raised concerns that terrorists are embedding with refugees to enter Europe and other nations.
The series of attacks in Paris on Friday night left more than 130 dead and hundreds others injured. French President François Hollande called the attacks an “act of war” and launched airstrikes against ISIS.
President Barack Obama sharply pushed back against the growing number of states attempting to undermine his policies surrounding Syrian refugees, saying Monday at a press conference in Antalya, Turkey, that it would be “shameful” and “not American” to close America’s doors on Syrian refugees.
“When some of those folks themselves come from families who benefited from protection when they were fleeing political persecution, that’s shameful,”he said. “That’s not American. That’s not who we are. We don’t have religious tests to our compassion.”
In September, Obamavowed to accept10,000 Syrian refugees into the United States next year.
Those issuing executive orders to block refugees pushed back on the president’s narrative while announcing their decision.
“Michigan is a welcoming state, and we are proud of our rich history of immigration,”said Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder. “But our first priority is protecting the safety of our residents.”
In a letter addressed to the president, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said, “Neither you nor any federal official can guarantee that Syrian refugees will not be part of any terroristic activity. As such, opening our door to them irresponsibly exposes our fellow Americans to unacceptable peril.”
While their responses send a clear message to the president, John Malcolm, a senior legal fellow at The Heritage Foundation, said the practical implications blocking refugees are limited.
“Governors can certainly order state agencies to stop doing anything to assist federal authorities with their resettlement efforts, but they cannot stop federal authorities from continuing those efforts, nor can they stop immigrants who are lawfully admitted to this country from moving to and settling in those states,”Malcolm said. “They can, however, ask state law enforcement authorities to keep an eye on the refugees who settle in their states, so long as those authorities do so within the bounds of the Constitution.”
“It’s abhorrent for the federal government not to consult with and consider the interests of the states,”added Jim Carafano, a foreign policy expert at The Heritage Foundation. “Particularly the views of governors, as it impacts the welfare and public safety of their citizens.”
Florida Gov. Rick Scott addressed those concernsin a lettersent to House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Leader Mitch McConnell. In that letter, dated Nov. 16, Scott wrote:
[I]t is our understanding that the state does not have the authority to prevent the federal government from funding the relocation of these Syrian refugees to Florida even without state support. Therefore, we are asking the United States Congress to take immediate and aggressive action to prevent President Obama and his administration from using any federal tax dollars to fund the relocation of up to 425 Syrian refugees (the total possible number of refugees pending for state relocation support at this time) to Florida, or anywhere in the United States, without an extensive evaluation of the risk these individuals may post to our national security.
In response, Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., introduced legislation on Monday afternoon that would suspend issuance of visas to refugees from countries with a high risk of terrorism until the U.S. Department of Homeland Security meets certain standards. Those standards include fingerprinting and screening all refugees, implement a tracking system “to catch attempted overstays,”and enhancing security measures that are already in place.
“The time has come to stop terrorists from walking in our front door. The Boston Marathon bombers were refugees, and numerous refugees from Iraq, including some living in my hometown, have attempted to commit terrorist attacks,”Paul said in a press release.
Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, also called to suspend the refugee program.
“The Syrian refugee program should be suspended until the American people are satisfied that they know exactly who the president is admitting into the country via this program,” Burr said. “There is simply too much at stake, and the security of the American people should be our top priority.”
This article and its accompanying map has been updated to reflect the growing number of governors who do not wish to permit Syrian refugees into their state.
For 45,000 benefits recipients in North Carolina, there’s a new sheriff in town, one who put forward tough new legislation that was astonishingly bipartisan. Better still, it was built on common sense.
Here’s the key point: If you’re able-bodied, and have no dependents, your Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program is about to have strings attached.
Here are a couple of the highlights affecting adults 18-49 with no dependents:
Food Stamp enrollment will no longer be open-ended.
Recertification every 6 months will be required.
Twenty (20) hours of work a week will be required to qualify
That work will be reviewed to deter fraud
If you don’t find qualifying work in 3 months, you’ll be cut off for 3 years. Valid options include::
20 hours (or more) at a regular job
20 hours or more volunteering
Work training program.
This legislation is the reinstatement of work requirements from the “Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act” of 1996 suspended by Obama back in 2008.
So what happens when 45,000 people have more rigorous demands on what must happen for them to qualify for benefits? That depends on the person.
Some, who may have simply been demoralized or discouraged could get the kick in the pants that helps them get up and face the day, maybe getting back into the workforce.
Others, having a skill set they can’t find work with might get retrained to do a job where demand is better.
And — human nature being what it is — another group will look around at the strings now attached to the program, and will scrutinize the enforcement side. If the promised standards are followed through with and enforced, another dynamic will open up. Residents of NC currently receiving aid under false pretense might see the end of the free ride approaching. If they aren’t the type to cowboy up, and pay their way through life, they might fall into that other category.
They might start looking to other nearby States with markedly less rigorous accountability. They could self-select themselves out of the population of North Carolina and show up somewhere else.
This last reason by itself (and its associated costs) is sufficient reason that other States should give this strategy some careful thought, before they find themselves the dumping ground for someone else’s white elephant.
Thanks to the NC legislature and governor, these 30-some magistrates are protected in refusing to perform same-sex weddings from losing their job. Kentucky needs to learn quickly from North Carolina:
CBN NEWS – More than 30 magistrates in North Carolina have refused to perform weddings. But thanks to a new state law, they were able to do so legally.
Right after the Supreme Court legalized gay marriage in June, the state passed a law allowing officials to opt out of performing all marriages.
The law exempts court officials with a “sincerely held religious objection”and is designed for those opposing gay marriage.
The law’s original sponsor, Senate President Pro Tem Phil Berger, said it’s probably preventing situations like the one in Kentucky.
“It’s keeping folks from having to choose between their job and their religious beliefs. I think that’s important,”he said.
Berger said so far the law hasn’t caused any problems.
There are few sexual perversions not celebrated by our media today, but I gather, from decades of flood-the-zone coverage of even the most preposterous allegations of rape, that liberals are still on record as being against rape.
So it’s worth examining the cultures we’re introducing to America for the purpose of giving the Democrats votes and businesses cheap labor:
– Seventy-seven percent of reported sexual assaults in Lima, Peru, are against child victims, according to the Latin American and Caribbean Youth Network for Sexual and Reproductive Rights (REDLAC).
– A U.N. Special Rapporteur concluded that the only explanation for “the high degree of impunity for violence against women” in Guatemala was that “at least some of the violence was committed by the authorities.”
– CNN reports that 318 10-year-old girls gave birth in Mexico in 2011.
In all of Western Europe, the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand combined, there have been eight reported births to girls aged 10 or younger. Seven of the eight involved Third World immigrants.
– The REDLAC report said that girls between the ages of 10 and 15 accounted for more than 15 percent of all births in Argentina and 17 percent of all births in Uruguay.
By contrast, less than 2 percent of births in the U.S. are to girls in that age group — and most of those are Hispanics, who are seven times more likely to give birth between the ages of 10 and 14 than whites, according to a Centers for Disease Control study.
All peasant cultures exhibit extremely non-progressive views on women and children. Mexico just happens to have the peasant culture that lives within walking distance of the United States.
– According to North Carolinians for Immigration Reform and Enforcement, illegal immigrants commit hundreds of sex crimes against children in that state every month — 350 in the month of April 2014, 299 in May, and more than 400 sex crimes against children in August and September. More than 90 percent of the perpetrators are Hispanic. I didn’t know there were that many Hispanics in North Carolina! When not providing North Carolina farmers with cheap labor, immigrant workers seem to spend all their free time raping little girls. (It’s a wonder they find the time to do all that drunk driving.)
These websites aren’t even counting legal immigrants. It’s bad enough that the government can’t stop foreign rapists from sneaking into our country. But how about the rapists the government looked over and decided to let in?
We’ll never know about their criminal predations, to say nothing of their burden on the taxpayers. The government won’t tell us, and the media would bury the information if it did. The cover-up is too relentless to be a coincidence. In February 2014, Carlos Gumercindo Crus, 42, was arrested for committing a felony sex offense on a 12-year-old girlin her home in Lexington, North Carolina. The headline was: “Man, 42, arrested for sexual offense with girl under 13.”
Two weeks later, Jose Freddy Ambrosio-Gorgonio, 32, was arrested in Vale, North Carolina, for having sex with a 12-year-old girl. Headline: “Man charged with sexual assault of a minor.”This was splashed in small, inside-the-paper items in two local newspapers, below the high school basketball scores.
In 2012, 35-year-old illegal alien Luis Perez-Valencia confessed to raping an 11-year-old girl, after she got pregnant and DNA proved he was the father. Or — as the Star-News in Wilmington, North Carolina, began the story: “Man Pleads Guilty in Child Rape Case. A Brunswick County man was sentenced to up to 20 years in prison Monday for raping and impregnating an 11-year-old girl.
This “man” has been really busy! Why doesn’t anyone arrest him?
It’s so informative being told that it was a “man” and not, say, an octopus, charged with having sex with a minor. In a surprise move, two local newspapers reported that Perez-Valencia was an illegal alien.Illegal immigrants are hard-working: One time, Perez-Valencia tried to rape the 11-year-old after taking her to work with him. (It was “Take Your Child Rape Victim to Work Day.”)
Even in Hawaii, where the population is only 2.7 percent Mexican, a Mexican child molester pops up. In 2012, 47-year-old Jose Luis Hernandez-Dominguez was sentenced to 10 years in prison for sexually molesting a 5-year-old girl over an extended period, while his wife baby-sat the girl.
But Donald Trump has come under relentless attack because he used the M-word (“Mexican”) — and it wasn’t to tell us that Mexicans work harder than Americans! He must be destroyed.
Who, exactly, is this media cover-up helping? It’s not helping American girls who have no idea they shouldn’t be cracking the door open to their parents’ landscaper. It’s not helping high school sophomores who didn’t know the risk of joining their Mexican schoolmates in a courtyard outside the homecoming dance. (See my new book Adios, America for details on these gruesome cases as well as many others.)
It’s also not helping any Latinas who immigrated to America, hoping to escape the Latino rape culture. The rapists have followed them here — and are being ferociously defended by well-heeled Americans, who strut around like they’re Martin Luther King because they want to pay their landscapers less.
Is Trump the only rich man in America who cares about rape?
First it was one church. Then a second joined. Now there’s an online presence and a campaign for people of faith across the nation to recognize that God comes first, ahead of nation, and that means the Stars and Stripes will be accorded second place, behind the Christian flag. According to a report from WBTV in Charlotte, North Carolina, pastor Rit Varriale is placing the Christian flag at the top, with the American flag below it, on the flagpole at Elizabeth Baptist Church in the town of Shelby. “Our typical flag etiquette is to have the American flag above the Christian flag. But when you stop and think about it, it should be our commitment to God first, then our commitment to country,”he told WBTV.
See video coverage of the story:
He admits he got the idea from pastor Walter Wilson, down to road, at Focus Missionary Baptist Church. And Wilson said the idea just came to him. “As I was changing the rope one day, the Lord just laid on me that He is first and when He told me that, I switched the flags around.”
Now Varriale has launched the God Before Government website, through which other pastors are encouraged to join the movement. There, he writes, “If there was ever a time when people need to stand up for traditional values and beliefs, it is now. On Sunday July 5th, Elizabeth Baptist Church in Shelby, North Carolina, took its stand with a flag raising ceremony that displayed the Christian flag over the American flag. This new approach to flag etiquette symbolizes that our service and commitment to God is greater than our service and commitment to government – especially a government that coerces us to violate our commitments to God.”
He said churches need to “start flying the flags in such a manner that it is clear we will serve God before government. If your church is willing to join ours, please take a picture of the flag pole at your church, post it on Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter using the hashtag #GodBeforeGovernment, and join the conversation about religious freedom and the role of government in modern society.”
On the site, he advises readers that silence is “no longer an option.”
He recalled a prayer offered to the North Carolina General Assembly, in which he said, “The sad truth about the church is that it often takes the path of ease, when instead it should take the path of resistance, responsibility and reform. … The American church, like the German church of the 1930s and 1940s, is free of persecution because it has done little that is worthy of persecution.”
Both pastors told WBTV they hope to spark a movement across the land – especially in light of the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent ruling that created same-sex “marriage” in all 50 states. Varriale acknowledges that some claim the move is disrespectful. And unpatriotic.
But the former Army Ranger brushes it off. “I really don’t need a lecture on patriotism. I’m willing to give my life for my country. When you think of military mottoes, for example, God and country, God first and then country,” he told WBTV.
Varriale he said the position of the flag is a symbol that congregations will serve God first.
One online commenter, Dave Higginson said, it’s a wake-up call for Americans “that God blessed us with our country and [Christians] should not, nor ever will, play ‘second fiddle.”
Wedding photos going viral are routine – thousands appear in an online search. But a viral prayer image? Not so much.
But that’s exactly what is happening with the image of U.S. Marine Corps Cpl. Caleb Earwood, 21, holding the hand of Maggie, 22, then his fiancée but now his wife.
Photographer Dwayne Schmidt captured the moment when the two wanted to pray together before their ceremony, but didn’t want to be seeing each other before their vows.
It reveals her standing next to the corner of a building, her left hand reaching out to hold his hand. He is standing at the same corner, but facing away from her, and his right hand reaches behind him to touch hers.
He is praying. She holds her right hand to her face, touched by emotion.
Schmidt posted it on Facebook, where he said it was a unique moment.
“I have photographed a lot of weddings. This has to be one of the best things I have ever got to see, much less photograph.”
Commenters joined him.
“WOW! PRECIOUS. Always put God first!” wrote Shannon Conner.
“My eyes filled with tears!!!” said Marcela Pulido.
“We were about to take our first steps in life together, and we didn’t want to take a step without it being in God’s will. I prayed to God for my beautiful and intelligent wife that he blessed me with and the amazing family I was marrying into,”he said.
Maggie added, “When I first grabbed his hand, he was shaking really bad, so I knew he was really nervous. It relieved me to know the person I was getting ready to marry felt the same way about God.”
The report said the two grew up in Asheville, North Carolina, were friends in his school, and began dating several years ago.
“We’re thankful that our picture is able to bless so many people and touch that many hearts,”Caleb told USA Today.
It already has circled the globe. TheDaily Mailexplained they “kept their eyes closed and turned away from one another as family members brought them together for a prayer on Saturday before their Memorial Day weekend wedding.”
Tens of thousands of Facebook users have “liked” the picture since it was posted.
“Beautiful picture. It brought tears to my eyes,”said Rebecca Warren Helms. “The bride is showing some raw emotion and love. You captured how affected she was by his words.”
The wedding was at a pavilion at Camp Daniel Boone in Canton, North Carolina.
The Republican-sponsored anti-sharia legislation which would ensure that Islamic and other foreign laws are kept out of consideration by South Carolina courts is being stonewalled by Democrat panderers who seek to appease Muslim supremacistspushing hard to get sharia law recognized by American courts.
Post and Courier: A vote on the anti-Sharia law bill was postponed until Tuesday at the earliest after an hours-long debate over Charleston Republican Rep. Chip Limehouse’s proposal. Limehouse has said a law is needed to prevent radical Islamic beliefs from infiltrating state courts. Democrats said the bill showed why the GOP was unfit to govern and why South Carolina is the butt of late-night television jokes. They accused Republicans of legislating off of Internet rumors.
Rep. James Smith, D-Columbia, called the bill “red meat” and “politics at its worst,” while Rep. Gilda Cobb-Hunter, D-Orangeburg, chastised Limehouse and others for having the wrong priorities.
Defenders of the measure said that events in Iraq and the growth of radical Islam in America mean that South Carolina should ensure that laws adhered to by militant groups like ISIS don’t end up in U.S. courts. Sharia law is also sometimes used in Muslim communities to settle contract disputes or family matters, although American courts are not bound by those rules. The terrorist group ISIS has used the 14th century laws to justify the beheading of prisoners in Syria and Iraq.
Limehouse has cited the Center for Security Policy, a conservative Washington, D.C.-based think tank, that has prompted states around the country to introduce laws banning the use of foreign or Sharia laws. The center has cited 146 cases in 32 states where Sharia law was used as a legal argument. Those states are Tennessee, Louisiana, Arizona, Kansas, Oklahoma, North Carolina, Washington, Alabama and Florida, according to the center.
A fear of Islamic law has grown particularly among conservative groups around the country as terrorist groups have carried out attacks and spread their message on social media. Rep. Joe Neal, D-Hopkins, said Republicans were fear-mongering. “Laws in this state ought to be based on our Constitution not on fear, not on suspicion,”he said. “We’re better than this because we don’t need to give in to fear … and the kind of low-brow politics this seems to represent.”
Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., has received a response to his letter demanding answers from Secretary of State John Kerry about the planned resettlement of dozens of foreign refugees in his state. But the answers failed to shed much light on the secrecy that surrounds the refugee program. The process by which cities and towns across the U.S. are selected to receive displaced persons from United Nations refugee camps remains largely a mystery.
As Gowdy discovered, the city of Spartanburg, South Carolina, was approved for an infusion of 60 refugees, mostly from Syria and Africa, by its own state government headed by Republican Gov. Nikki Haley.
And if the program plays out in Spartanburg as it has in communities in Minnesota, California, Texas, Ohio, Illinois, North Carolina, Georgia, Florida and other states, then the 60 refugees will blossom into hundreds and eventually thousands every year. Minnesota, for example, is now receiving more than 2,000 Muslim refugees annually, mostly from Somalia. Texas receives more than 7,000 per year, and California more than 6,000, directly from the Third World.
Here are the top 10 states for refugee resettlement based on fiscal 2014 figures from the State Department website:
Texas, 7,2011
California, 6,110
New York, 4,079
Michigan, 4,000
Florida, 3,519
Arizona, 2,963
Ohio, 2,812
Pennsylvania, 2,743
Georgia, 2,693
Illinois, 2,578
The United Nations and nine private resettlement agencies are pressuring the United States to accept at least 65,000 refugees from Syria by the end of President Obama’s term in office.
Of the 815 Syrian refugees resettled in the U.S. so far, 749, or 92 percent, have been Muslim, according to State Department data. Only 43 Syrians allowed into the U.S. have been Christians, even though the turmoil in Syria and Iraq has driven thousands of Christians from their homes under threat of death by ISIS.
The U.S. takes in more refugees than any other country, about 70,000 per year, and has absorbed 3 million since 1975. But since the early 1990s, the trend has been to accept more from Muslim countries.
Some residents of Spartanburg are upset and asking questions, not only about the security risks associated with importing refugees from a Middle East war zone but also about the numbers of refugees that will eventually end up in their county and how much it will cost to absorb them into schools, housing and health-care facilities.
Almost all refugees coming into the U.S. from war-torn countries are hand-selected by the United Nations.
The plan to send refugees from Syria and Africa to Spartanburg first surfaced in March when a story appeared in a local newspaper.
Gowdy pressed Kerry’s State Department for more information in an April 13 letter.
Kerry’s response on May 1 indicated the process of picking Spartanburg as the country’s newest refugee haven actually began back in April 2013, when World Relief, one of nine private agencies that contract with the government to provide resettlement services, was contacted by local faith groups in Spartanburg. Gowdy’s own office was notified of the plans in August 2014.
Gowdy was not happy with Kerry’s response and fired off another letter May 4 to the secretary of state.
“To begin, it is important to clarify and correct the timeline of events for the proposal. In your response you stated there were two community meetings, one in August 2014 and one in January 2015,” Gowdy wrote to Kerry. “You also stated the proposal was submitted in July 2014 and approved in November 2014. Is this correct? If so, does this mean the resettlement agency had only one community meeting, which occurred after the proposal was submitted and before the State Department’s approval?”
At the “community meetings” no media was invited and the public was not notified, WND has learned.
Gowdy said he sent his initial letter to the State Department on April 13 because he could not answer questions asked of him by constituents regarding plans for refugees in Spartanburg.
“We have provided State’s response so the public can read it. But some of the answers are inadequate and fail to provide specificity on who was consulted at the city and county level, within the public school system, and law enforcement, and if they provided input,”Gowdy said in a statement.
Gowdy is chairman of the House Judiciary Committee’s subcommittee on immigration and border security, which has oversight responsibility for the refugee program. He sent a staff member, Josh Dix, to the secret meeting in August but Dix did not raise any concerns about the resettlement plans, according to Kerry’s response to Gowdy’s letter. Gowdy’s press secretary denied WND’s request for an interview with the congressman Monday and would not answer any questions.
Baptists working to resettle refugees in S.C.
World Relief, a nonprofit evangelical organization that works to resettle refugees nationwide, opened an office earlier this year in Spartanburg. A group of 40 churches and other faith-based groups has signed on to help World Relief resettle the refugees, according to Kerry’s letter to Gowdy. One of the lead agencies working with World Relief is the Spartanburg County Baptist Network. But the plan to place refugees in Spartanburg has been brewing for more than a year, long before any local residents caught wind of it.
Kerry’s letter provides a rare window into how a small group of people in the federal government, local church groups, a federal contractor and a Governor’s state refugee coordinator conspire to plant “seedlings” of refugees into communities across the U.S.
These refugees are seen by the White House and its network of pro-immigration and refugee partners – groups like National Council for La Raza, Welcoming America, the National Partnership for New Americans and the Chamber of Commerce – as potential “new Americans.” The refugees are set up with a full plate of government benefits, placed on a fast track to citizenship and full voting rights.
The White House is also pushing to have the thousands of Central Americans who crossed the southern border last year afforded asylum status, which qualifies them for various welfare benefits and a direct track toward citizenship.
So while Spartanburg residents found out about the plan for their town in March and April, others in key leadership positions have known about it for more than a year. No public hearings have been held before the city council or local school board. Gowdy is still trying to find out exactly who in Spartanburg was made privy to the plans and who provided input.
“The initial interest in resettling refugees in Spartanburg emerged in April 2013 when World Relief was approached by Spartanburg County Baptist Network,” Kerry’s letter states. “The group, along with 25 other individuals and church organizations, expressed their support for a World Relief resettlement program in their city.”
Kerry said the State Department requires the national resettlement agency, in this case World Relief, to “thoroughly assess the local resettlement capacity and environment of any new proposed resettlement sites before determining whether to proceed with resettling refugees in that location.” The staffer Gowdy had present at the meeting in August did not raise any concerns about the program, according to Kerry’s letter.
“Two community meetings (August 2014 and January 2015) were convened to discuss refugee resettlement in the area,” Kerry wrote to Gowdy. “The August meeting, convened by World Relief, was attended by 54 members of the community including Josh Dix from your office, members of local churches, the Immigration Forum, and the Convention and Visitors Bureau for Spartanburg. Mr. Dix did not offer any concerns during the meeting or in follow-up afterward.”
George Soros involved
The National Immigration Forum, which was present at the meeting, receives funding from billionaire George Soros. It is the driving force behind the so-called “Evangelical Immigration Table,”or EIT. Breitbart called it“a front group for players on the institutional left including billionaire George Soros and the Ford Foundation.”
The Immigration Forum and EIT were involved in an advertising campaign promoting the Gang of Eight’s immigration bill in 2013, a bill seen by many right-leaning lawmakers as “amnesty.” One of the Gang of Eight members was Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. Kerry said in his response to Gowdy that Graham was also invited to attend the August meeting on refugees but no one from his staff showed up.
The South Carolina state refugee coordinator, who works for Gov. Nikki Haley, gave her approval in November for the resettlement program to move forward. Christina Jeffrey, a political science instructor at Wofford College in Spartanburg and former historian for the U.S. House of Representatives, said Kerry’s response shows the refugee program is ingrained not only in the federal bureaucracy but in state governments as well.
“It’s another grant program; it isn’t just the feds cramming this down our throats. It’s government corruption at all levels,”she said, “with a lot of money at stake flowing to these contractors.”
World Relief, as the main contractor in Spartanburg, will be awarded a grant from the State Department of $1,975 for every refugee it resettles. Federal rules require $1,125 of that to be used in providing services directly to the refugee such as cash stipends, rents for housing or other material needs during the first 30 to 90 days of the refugee’s arrival. The remaining $850 may be used for staffing and administrative costs.
Nearly 70 percent of World Relief’s budget is covered by government grants.Others among the nine contractors, such as the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, have upward of 90 percent of their refugee work covered by government grants.
Seeking a moratorium on refugees
Jeffrey said she’s happy that Gowdy has taken an interest in the program, but she believes his responsibility goes beyond fact finding. “I can do my own information gathering. I’m not looking to Trey Gowdy for that. I’m looking for him to do his job and provide oversight on whether this is a good use of taxpayers’ money,” Jeffrey told WND.
The refugee program costs the federal government about $1 billion a year, and that does not include the welfare benefits that many refugees receive. The Congressional Research Office recently put out a study that showed 74.2 percent of refugees receive food stamps.
“Rather than just gathering information on the Spartanburg resettlement, how about let’s put the whole program on hold until Congress has a chance to investigate it?” Jeffrey said.
Jeffrey and others have also voiced concerns about national security. Dozens of people from Muslim countries have come to America as refugees only to be charged with providing material support to foreign terrorist organizations, according to FBI reports. At least another 48 cases have been confirmed of Muslim immigrants leaving the U.S. to fight for ISIS in Syria and al-Shabab in Somalia.
The refugee program has flown under the radar for more than 30 years, but controversy flared in February when a top FBI counter-terrorism official, Michael Steinbach, testified before the House Homeland Security committee and said the U.S. has no way to vet the Syrian refugees for possible connections to ISIS and other terrorist organizations.
As WND reported, Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, sent a letter to the White House Jan. 28 citing “serious national security concerns” about the Syrian refugee program and imploring Obama to not let it become a “back door for jihadists.”
Transforming cities, one at a time
Jeffrey believes the Obama administration is using the refugee program, along with its broader immigration policies, for political purposes.
“Their intention is to identify, recruit, transport, whatever you have to do to get 9 million ‘new Americans’ naturalized as citizens and to the polls in November 2016 and beyond,” she said. “I’ve never seen a more blatant ballot-stuffing program in my life.”
Gowdy said in the statement on his website that Kerry’s suggestion that Gowdy had a supportive role in the assignment of refugees to Spartanburg was “patently false.”
“[T]o correct the record, the State Department’s characterization that our office was ‘critical in the process’ of establishing the refugee resettlement is patently false. Our office sent one staff member to one meeting almost one year ago, as State’s own answers to our questions indicate,” the statement said. “We were provided no follow up information on the proposal or implementation of the plan, nor did we at any point provide approval of the plan. The South Carolina Department of Social Services, not a Member of Congress, is responsible for approving proposals of this type.
“Finally, government transparency and accountability to the public is paramount. While our office does not have a role under the law in the implementation of such a plan, we are interested in providing the community with answers. To that end, we will be following up with the State Department with additional questions regarding local input.”
The response reads in part that Spartanburg would play “an integral role in ensuring that former refugees find a community which they can call home and which they in turn can enrich through their contributions. Key stakeholders such as the local churches in Spartanburg, which provided the impetus to establish this site, are a wonderful example of the support and spirit of the community.”
According to Jason Lee, director of World Relief Spartanburg, a letter signed by about 40 ministry leaders who support resettling refugees here was hand delivered to Gowdy’s district office in Greenville.
“We felt like we were able to enlighten his staff when we met on April 21st,” Lee told the Herald-Journal of Spartanburg.
“You can be a Bible-believing Christian and have one perspective. But as an elected official, you have an obligation to the people who you work for who have legitimate questions about how things will be paid for. They have legitimate questions about access to health care, security questions, educational opportunity questions,” Gowdy told the newspaper.
He said the state approves the resettlement plan, and the U.S. State Department interacts with the contractor agencies.
“Congress has no role whatsoever, but as the member of Congress, it is my job to get answers to questions,” Gowdy told the Herald-Journal.
Jeffrey hopes Gowdy will see his role as providing more than just information, but actual oversight.
“Alexander Hamilton once said that if ever two branches of government should gang up against the American people, the Republic is over,” she said.
The full text of Gowdy’s May 4 follow-up letter to Kerry is reprinted below in full:
Congressman Gowdy | May 4, 2015
The Honorable John Kerry Secretary U.S. Department of State 2201 C Street, NW Washington, DC 20520
Dear Secretary Kerry,
Thank you for your response to my April 13, 2015, letter. This issue continues to be important to my constituents, and as their representative in Congress, it remains my job to get complete answers to the legitimate questions raised.
Toward that end, parts of your Agency’s response lacked sufficient specificity. In an ongoing effort to better understand the process and public impact of the proposed resettlement of refugees in Spartanburg pursuant to the resettlement agency’s proposal, several follow-up questions are listed below. I appreciate your prompt, substantive, and specific responses.
To begin, it is important to clarify and correct the timeline of events for the proposal. In your response you stated there were two community meetings, one in August 2014 and one in January 2015. You also stated the proposal was submitted in July 2014 and approved in November 2014. Is this correct? If so, does this mean the resettlement agency had only one community meeting, which occurred after the proposal was submitted and before the State Department’s approval?
1) (a) Who, with specificity, were the “25 other individuals and church representatives”who “expressed their support for the resettlement program in Spartanburg”?
(b) Who specifically was consulted as part of the community and site assessment referenced in the timeline included in the proposal. Please include names and dates of the consultations where possible.
(c) Was anyone directly consulted in the South Carolina Governor’s office other than Dorothy Addison, the State Refugee Coordinator? Who did Ms. Addison talk with as part of the community assessment in order to validate the resettlement agency’s assessment of the community’s ability to support the influx of refugees?
2) After the August 2014 meeting, who provided feedback on the proposal? Was this feedback included in the proposal although it had already been submitted? Which of South Carolina’s United States Senators was contacted and did either provide feedback? Was Congressman Mick Mulvaney, whose district includes a portion of Spartanburg County, consulted?
3) Who were the “care providers” consulted as part of the community assessment? Please provide names and dates of consultations where possible.
4) Who were the local “public school representatives” consulted as part of the community assessment? Please provide names and dates of consultations where possible.
5) With whom did the resettlement agency meet to identify potential housing locations for the refugees? Please provide names and dates of consultations where possible.
6) (a) Is the per capita grant funding from the Department of State guaranteed for as long as there are refugees present?
(b) What happens if the local resettlement agency, World Relief in this case, can no longer offer support services for the resettled refugees? Will the Department of State relocate the refugees? How much funding must the resettlement agency provide each year?
7) According to your response, there are nine refugees who may start arriving in Spartanburg in the next few months. What is the country of origin of each of these nine refugees?
8) (a) What advanced notification will be provided to the community after the “annual proposal process is conducted by PRM” to determine how many additional refugees will be resettled in the Spartanburg area in the coming years?
(b) Must the State Refugee Coordinator sign off on any additional resettlement of refugees?
(c) What individuals will be consulted for the annual proposal?
(d) Who are the stakeholders that will be included in the ongoing community consultations? Please provide names where possible.
9) (a) Who generally will be part of the “Good Neighbor Teams”?
(b) Who will oversee the refugees’ access to public welfare benefits and/or assist them in job searches?
(c) Will this be solely World Relief’s role or will the South Carolina Department of Social Services play a role?
10) (a) What school district representatives did the resettlement agency consult with regarding the effect of minor refugees on Spartanburg’s seven (7) school systems?
(b) Were the discussions with school principals or district superintendents?
(c) Did representatives of the school districts sign off on the resettlement? If so, please provide the names of the individuals.
(d) Precisely who in the Spartanburg school systems told World Relief there is “capacity for more students” in the system’s already existing English immersion programs?
11) For what crimes, if any, can an individual be convicted and still be approved for U.S. refugee status? Do any of the nine refugees you indicated are currently slated for Spartanburg resettlement (or any who have subsequently been selected for resettlement) have such convictions?
12) How exactly are background checks performed on individuals seeking refugee resettlement in the United States? How can the background of an individual who is outside his country of origin be thoroughly investigated? Does the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP) have access to background check procedures in the countries of origin of each of the individuals proposed to be resettled in Spartanburg?
13) (a) How do the national resettlement agencies “assess the capacity and environment” to determine the number of refugees a city can resettle? How is a “strong refugee program” quantified?
(b) Who must be included in the community consultation plan? Who is typically consulted in other communities?
(c) Please provide any and all guidance provided to resettlement agencies by USRAP regarding the process that must be undertaken to get to the point of submitting a resettlement proposal, the ongoing process until the time of approval, and how a resettlement proposal should be conducted.
(d) Are local law enforcement officials part of the initial consultation and do they remain so once the resettled refugees are in the community? What, if any, efforts exist to track the refugees’ interactions with local law enforcement officials?
14) How do you ensure long-term accountability on the part of any resettlement agency so the taxpayer is not ultimately left paying for the costs of refugee resettlement proposal?
Thank you in advance for your prompt attention to this matter. This issue remains important to my constituents, and I will continue to work with you to get answers to all their questions.
LILLINGTON, N.C. — The Harnett County sheriff expressed concern Monday evening about a recent spike of violent crime, and he’s even told residents to start arming themselves.
WTVD-TV reported that more than 100 people packed the sanctuary of the Spring Hill United methodist Church Monday Night for a community meeting on crime. There has been an explosion of violence and crime in the area, especially in the last few weeks.
Sheriff Larry Rollins told the crowd that the violence is fueled by gangs and drugs. He urged everyone to protect themselves, saying he doesn’t go anywhere without a gun.
“When I am out with my family, even though I am a cop, I don’t go anywhere without a gun,” Rollins told the crowd. “I mean it’s sad we have to have that attitude, but I am going to protect myself and my family. I want my deputies at your house just as fast as they can when you got a problem, but you better be able to take care of business until we get there if you have to protect your family.”
This part of the county’s landscape of rural life is quickly giving way to a population boom, and residents are worried. Several residents said they are afraid to leave their homes — afraid of the growing violence.
One resident said she goes to church, and prays but is still afraid. It’s a sentiment shared by other families as well.
“I think they are working hard trying to get solutions, for us which comforts us a little bit, but still, knowing it’s out there and knowing it happens every day, still doesn’t make you feel safe,”said resident Jamie Salmon.
Several speakers urged the residents to call deputies if they see something suspicious, and to keep a sharp eye out for themselves and their neighbors.
Oct. 2, 2012: Voters cast their ballots at a Franklin County polling location on the first day of in-person absentee voting in Columbus, Ohio.Reuters
State elections officials in North Carolina are investigating hundreds of cases of potential voter fraud after identifying thousands of registered voters with personal information matching those of voters who voted in other states in 2012.
Elections Director Kim Strach told state lawmakers at an oversight hearing Wednesday that her staff has identified 765 registered North Carolina voters who appear to have cast ballots in two states during the 2012 presidential election.
Strach said the first names, last names, birthdates and last four digits of their Social Security numbers appear to match information for voters in another state. Each case will now be investigated to determine whether voter fraud occurred.
“Could it be voter fraud? Sure, it could be voter fraud,” Strach said. “Could it be an error on the part of a precinct person choosing the wrong person’s name in the first place? It could be. We’re looking at each of these individual cases.”
WRAL.com reported that 81 residents who died before election day were recorded as casting a ballot. While about 30 of those voters appear to have legally cast ballots before election day, Strach said “there are between 40 and 50 [voters] who had died at a time that that’s not possible.”
“We have the ‘Walking Dead,’ and now we’ve got the ‘Voting Dead,'” said state Sen. Bob Rucho, R-Mecklenburg. “I guess the reason there’s no proof of voter fraud is because we weren’t looking for it.”
Strach cautioned, however, that in several past cases, instances of so-called zombie voters turned out to be the result of clerical errors.
“We’re in the process of looking at each of these to see,” Strach said. “That means either a poll or precinct worker made a mistake and marked the wrong person, or someone voted for them. That’s something we can’t determine until we look into each case.”
A law passed last year by the Republican-dominated state legislature required elections staff to check information for North Carolina’s more than 6.5 million voters against a database containing information for 101 million voters in 28 states.
The cross-check found listings for 35,570 North Carolina voters whose first names, last names and dates of birth match those of voters who voted in other states. However, in those cases middle names and Social Security numbers were not matched.
The analysis also found 155,692 registered North Carolina voters whose information matched voters registered in other states but who most recently registered or voted elsewhere. Strach said those were most likely voters who moved out of state without notifying their local boards of elections.
Republicans leaders immediately touted the preliminary report as evidence they were justified in approving sweeping elections changes last year that include requiring voters to present photo ID at the polls, cutting days from the period for early voting and ending a popular civics program that encouraged high school students to pre-register to vote in advance of their 18th birthdays.
“That is outrageous. That is criminal. That is wrong, and it shouldn’t be allowed to go any further without substantial investigations from our local district attorneys who are the ones charged with enforcing these laws,” state Sen. Thom Goolsby, R-Wilmington, told the Charlotte Observer.
State House Speaker Thom Tillis, R-Mecklenburg, and Senate Leader Phil Berger, R-Rockingham, issued a joint statement Wednesday on what they termed as the “alarming evidence.”
“While we are alarmed to hear evidence of widespread voter error and fraud, we are encouraged to see the common-sense law passed to ensure voters are who they say they are is working,” said the statement. “These findings should put to rest ill-informed claims that problems don’t exist and help restore the integrity of our elections process.”
However, other states using the cross-check system have yielded relatively few criminal prosecutions for voter fraud once the cases were thoroughly investigated.
Only 11 people were prosecuted on allegations of double-voting as a result of the 15 states that performed similar database checks following the 2010 elections, according to data compiled by elections officials in Kansas, where the cross-check program originated.
Bob Hall, director of the non-profit group Democracy North Carolina, cautioned officials not to jump to conclusions based on the preliminary database check.
“I know there is more than one Bob Hall with my birth date who lives among the 28 states researched,” Hall said. “There may be cases of fraud, but the true scale and conspiracy involved need to be examined more closely before those with political agendas claim they’ve proven guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.”
Voting rights advocate Bob Phillips of Common Cause NC told WRAL.com that while he is concerned about the report, it still doesn’t justify requiring voters to present photo ID at the polls.
“I think a lot of [lawmakers] are saying, ‘Aha, this proves what we did,'” Phillips said. “But if I have an ID, how is that going to stop me from voting in North Carolina if I’ve already voted in Florida?”
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American Family Association
American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
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American Family Association
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Casey Harper 05/15/2016
In response, Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., introduced legislation on Monday afternoon that would suspend issuance of visas to refugees from countries with a high risk of terrorism until the U.S. Department of Homeland Security meets certain standards. Those standards include fingerprinting and screening all refugees, implement a tracking system “to catch attempted overstays,” and enhancing security measures that are already in place.
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Bob Unruh On 07/06/2015
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