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Republicans Can’t Beat Democrats’ Election-Industrial Complex By Adopting Its Strategies

BY: JOSEPH ARLINGHAUS AND WILLIAM DOYLE, PH.D. | MARCH 16, 2023

ballot box — The sudden rise of well-funded election activist nonprofits represents a paradigm shift away from persuading and motivating voters, and toward manipulating the election process to benefit Democrats.

JOSEPH ARLINGHAUS AND WILLIAM DOYLE, PH.D.

Over the last several months, a growing number of Republicans, including Donald Trump himself, seem to be having a change of heart about universal mail-in voting and ballot harvesting.

While few Republicans are ready to completely abandon policies that support election integrity and transparency, more and more seem willing to follow the old adage “if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em,” and suggest that Republicans become significantly more reliant on universal mail-in voting and ballot harvesting to win elections. There is no worse idea in politics today.

Conservatives do not have the institutional or financial support to match Democrats in election activism and ballot harvesting, nor are they likely to be able to any time in the near future. The advantages Democrats have accrued over the last 20 years in election manipulation and “lawfare” are nearly insurmountable.

But this is not necessarily a portent of gloom and doom. The growing number of ultra-left Democratic candidates are deeply unpopular and would be unelectable outside deep-blue areas under the election norms that prevailed prior to the Covid-19 lockdowns and the 2020 presidential election.

Democrats’ performance in 2020 and 2022 would almost certainly have been far worse under conditions that involved persuading voters to go to the polls on Election Day, rather than relying on a complex web of wealthy nonprofits and armies of election activists to churn out mountains of mail-in ballots, submitted by indifferent voters, during greatly extended early voting periods.

Raw Institutional Power

Republicans need to better understand the vast institutional power that is arrayed against them on the left in the form of lavishly funded 501(c)(3) nonprofits and charitable foundations, along with legions of election lawyers, data analysts, and election activists.

Consider the shadowy Arabella Advisors, a nonprofit consulting company that guides the strategy, advocacy, impact investing, and management for high-dollar, left-leaning nonprofits and individuals. Arabella provides these clients a number of services that enable them to enact policies focused on left-of-center issues such as election administration and “voting rights.”

Arabella Advisors also manages five nonprofits that serve as incubators and accelerators for a range of other left-of-center nonprofits: the New Venture Fund, the Sixteen Thirty Fund, the Hopewell Fund, the Windward Fund, and the North Fund. The New Venture Fund was the second-largest contributor, behind Mark Zuckerberg, to the Center for Tech and Civic Life in 2020. The Sixteen Thirty Fund spent $410 million during the 2020 election cycle, which was more than the Democratic National Committee spent.

These nonprofits have collectively supported hundreds of left-wing policy and advocacy organizations since the network’s creation. In 2020, Arabella’s nonprofit network boasted total revenues exceeding $1.67 billion and total expenditures of $1.26 billion and paid out $896 million in grants largely to other left-leaning and politically active nonprofits.

There is no comparable organization with anything close to this level of financial clout in the Republican world.

Beneath philanthropic foundations and holding companies such as Arabella, there is a world of left-of-center 501(c)(3) nonprofits focused on elections. The Caesar Rodney Election Research Institute has identified at least ten 501(c)(3) nonprofits that we believe played key roles in the 2020 election on behalf of the Democrat Party.

These groups were already in place and ready to implement strategies calculated to give Democrats an electoral advantage long before state-by-state legal barnstorming transformed the norms of American voting systems in the name of Covid-19.

Some of these groups are mainly policy-oriented, focused on increasing Democrat votes by promoting vote-by-mail, ballot drop box initiatives, extended early voting periods, and the relaxation of voting standards such as voter ID. These organizations ranged from local efforts such as the New Georgia Project to national projects like Democracy Works, The Voter Project, and the National Vote at Home Institute.

Another group of nonprofits sprang into action in 2020 to finance the implementation of the Democrats’ election agenda, including hiring new personnel, voter canvassing, ballot harvesting, new election infrastructure such as ballot drop boxes, targeted public relations campaigns, and expensive ballot “curing” efforts.

These organizations, which ended up spending well more than $400 million in 2020, include the now infamous Mark Zuckerberg-funded Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL), the Center for Secure and Modern Elections (CSME), and the Center for Election Innovation and Research (CEIR), among others. Once again, there is no similar complex of election-oriented institutions in the Republican world.

Democrats’ ‘Election-Industrial Complex’

These organizations are not arms of political campaigns nor “dark money” partisan advocacy groups, both of which are normal parts of the traditional electoral process. They have nothing to do with persuading voters or “getting out the vote” in the traditional sense, but are instead devoted to gaining an advantage for Democrat candidates by changing election laws, manipulating the election process, and promoting new voting technologies.

This complex web of lavishly funded nonprofits and foundations is not just large and extremely powerful: It is without comparison on the right.

The institutions that support the left’s election activism are so large and so powerful, one might refer to them as an “election-industrial complex.” Election activism is a multi-billion-dollar per year business in the world of Democratic Party politics.

“ELECTION-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX“

The Democrats’ election-industrial complex burst into full view in 2020 with CTCL’s $332 million Covid-19 Response Grant Project, funded almost entirely by Facebook founder Zuckerberg, which was aimed at gaining control of election offices in areas that were critical to Democrat campaigns in 2020 through large, “strings attached” grants.

The bulk of that money was spent in a sophisticated effort to increase turnout among a specific profile of voter in order to benefit Democrat candidates. All large CTCL grant recipients were required to “encourage and increase absentee voting” mainly through providing “assistance” in absentee ballot completion and the installation of ballot drop boxes, and to “dramatically expand strategic voter education & outreach efforts, particularly to historically disenfranchised residents.”

It has yet to sink in among many Republicans that the CTCL, and the myriad other election activist nonprofits they partnered with in 2020 to carry out their plans, represent a substantively different challenge than Democrats outspending Republicans in conventional election spending.

The sudden rise to prominence of these institutions represents a paradigm shift in the way elections are organized, away from persuading and motivating voters, and toward manipulating the election process, introducing new voting rules, and supporting voting technologies that benefit Democrats and handicap Republicans.

This is the paradigm that many Republicans now propose to embrace, with virtually no institutional or financial support.

Conservatives Must Rebuild Classic Electoral Norms

Conservatives are supposed to be involved in conserving things, and there are few things more worth conserving than the U.S. election system as it has existed throughout most of American history. U.S. elections used to be the envy of the world even 10 years ago, but since then have deteriorated to the point where a large and growing proportion of the population views election results with deep skepticism.

Viewing the grotesque Covid-19 era distortions in the present electoral landscape as an unalterable fait accompli means abandoning our election system to a vast institutional complex that seeks to make the voting booth a relic and Election Day an anachronism.

Even worse, the left’s election-industrial complex seeks to reshape voting into a private activity, to be undertaken at home at the initiative of community organizers and activists, as opposed to a public activity that takes place in a neutral public square, and which relies on the initiative of the voters. In the liberal election utopia, the sanctity of the voting booth and the secret ballot must give way to the collective intimacy of the kitchen table and the oversight of neighborhood political bosses.

For Republican activists to commit to a long-term strategy of universal mail-in voting and ballot harvesting would not only be a losing proposition from a practical standpoint, it would also contribute even further toward the transformation of our political system away from the control of civically engaged voters, and toward the consolidation of control in the hands of a small cadre of partisan activists and community organizers, as well as their numerous partners in the nonprofit world and administrative state.

There is a larger argument to be made, that universal absentee ballots and ballot harvesting must be opposed, not just from a practical standpoint, but also from a moral and philosophical point of view. We will have much more to say in the future about how universal mail-in ballots represent an objectively disordered way of deciding elections, which must therefore be unconditionally opposed.

Joseph Arlinghaus is the president and founder of Valor America, a conservative federal election SuperPAC founded in 2016 to use the latest social science research and randomized controlled election experiments that revolutionized the Democratic election world after 2005. He serves on the advisory board to the Caesar Rodney Election Research Institute. William Doyle, Ph.D., is research director at the Caesar Rodney Election Research Institute. He specializes in economic history and the private funding of American elections.

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How Sarah Sanders Is Putting Arkansas On The Map

By: Brent Scher | March 13, 2023

Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders (R.) / Getty Images

LITTLE ROCK, Ark.—Less than one month into her first term as Arkansas governor, Sarah Sanders was tapped to deliver the Republican response to President Joe Biden’s State of the Union, a speaking slot typically granted to rising stars in the party with the intent to elevate them onto the national stage. But stepping onto the national stage doesn’t appear to be Sanders’s goal—at least for now.

In her address, she used Arkansas as the example of what Republicans are doing across the country. “Here in Arkansas and across America, Republicans are working to end the policy of trapping kids in failing schools and sentencing them to a lifetime of poverty,” Sanders said.  ”We will educate, not indoctrinate our kids, and put students on a path to success.”

In an hour-long interview, the former White House press secretary dodged questions about the 2024 election, diverting the conversation back to what she’s doing in Arkansas.

She already has substantive accomplishments to point to. This past Tuesday, exactly one month after her State of the Union response, the state legislature passed Sanders’s signature legislation, an ambitious overhaul of Arkansas schools, and she has already signed it into law. Corey DeAngelis, a leading advocate for school choice, said Arkansas is now the “gold standard for educational freedom.”

The bill is a kitchen-sink approach to education reform—in addition to establishing universal school choice, it yanks obscene sexual materials and critical race theory from classrooms, sets stringent new learning standards, and raises the base teacher salary from $36,000 to $50,000.

“This is what bold conservative education legislation looks like,” Sanders said from the governor’s office, where she monitored the debate on the bill taking place on the other side of the Capitol.

And Sanders says Arkansas as a whole can be the “blueprint” for what conservative states could do.

Sanders joins a crowd of superstar Republican governors making headway by focusing on schools, and armed with a legislature of staunch conservatives, she’s charging ahead of other states. Florida’s Ron DeSantis is still fighting to get the sorts of reforms passed by Arkansas in Sanders’s first few weeks over hurdles in his legislature—his universal school choice bill, for example, faces even some Republican opposition. Sanders came out of her long campaign in Arkansas eager to establish herself as the “Education Governor” and thus far is doing just that.

Sanders’s growing profile has also made her a target of Democratic activists and politicians. Washington Post columnists are writing hit pieces questioning why anyone would move to Arkansas: “Good luck recruiting Californians for Arkansas, Sarah Sanders,” wrote Philip Bump. Shortly after Sanders’s national address, California Democratic governor Gavin Newsom took aim at Arkansas’s crime rate and last week was taking shots on Twitter about local Arkansas pieces of legislation.

Sanders acknowledges that she’s drawing more scrutiny to her state, but she doesn’t think that’s a bad thing. “We outkick our coverage, frankly, in a lot of places,” she said.

“When it comes to politicians on the national stage for a small state, we have some pretty big names out there,” the governor said. “I’m sure you’ll find people that will disagree, but my opinion is that it’s a good thing for our state, and I plan on using that platform to better us.”

Sanders says the critics are unavoidable. “I try to tune it out and stay focused on the objectives in front of us. There are people who wouldn’t care what’s in the bill, they’re gonna hate it simply because I’m associated with it. They don’t want to see me be successful. Certainly, that’s disappointing, but not surprising, and it’s not gonna slow us down from doing things that we feel like are the right thing to do.”

Sanders sharpened her ability to drown out the critics as White House press secretary. Not only was Sanders the longest-serving Trump administration press secretary—she was the only person to hold the job for more than a year—she was also the most successful, taking over as the daily briefing became a media feeding frenzy and adding a semblance of order to the chaos. She remains beloved by staff, some of whom followed her to Arkansas, and her former boss, to whom she still talks regularly.

Though Sanders is taking advantage of lessons learned at the White House, former colleagues say she’s also developed the ability to talk fluently about policy.

“We used to tell her, you need to get more detail,” said a former White House colleague. “Now the opposite is the case. She’s gone from somebody who was laser-focused on communications with a thin understanding of the policy to somebody who is a policy expert. It’s impressive to me.”

It’s not the first transformation of her career, Sanders says. When she first joined the Donald Trump campaign, she never foresaw that she’d become the lead spokeswoman for Trump’s administration.

“I was much more on the strategy and political operation side, and really didn’t see myself as a front person or the public-facing individual,” she explained.

Sanders joined the Trump campaign in 2016 to do coalition-building in the South, but after a few TV appearances, Trump called her to say he wanted to see her on television every day. And at the White House, after Sanders filled in for then-White House press secretary Sean Spicer while serving as his deputy, Trump tapped her to fill the job.

Her rise to the Arkansas governorship is a different story. Sanders announced her run in January 2021 and, as the prohibitive favorite from the outset, had two years to prepare for the job. It’s during that time that she decided she wanted to be the “Education Governor”—she not only became an expert on the issue but also gained confidence that she had to make it her trademark legislation.

“I went to all 75 counties,” Sanders said. “Everywhere I went as I traveled on the campaign for two years, every community wants their kids to do better. If we don’t have a good education system in place, then we are not setting our kids up for success.”

On the ground in Arkansas, Republicans say Sanders has brought a “new energy” to the legislature. “The whole atmosphere and mood of everything is different,” said Bart Hester, who leads the state’s upper chamber. “It’s such a fun energy, an exciting and new energy. It’s fun to come in everyday.”

Hester says the onslaught of opposition from teachers’ unions against the education bill was no match for Sanders.

“We have a governor now where members are more scared of her than they are their superintendents or the teacher union—we’ve never experienced that,” Hester said. “They don’t want to disappoint her—they know that she’s super popular, they don’t want to be the guy that was against their number-one priority.”

Sanders scoffs at suggestions that her education plan was a “copycat” of legislation championed by DeSantis, another high-profile Republican governor. “Hard to copy when ours is much bigger and goes much further,” Sanders said. But she has nothing negative to say about her Republican counterpart in Florida, and says there’s a “great sense of camaraderie and willingness to share best practices” between her and DeSantis, who has emerged as Trump’s chief competition in the Republican Party.

Sanders is yet to weigh in on who the Republican presidential nominee should be in 2024—her “focus is solely on Arkansas,” she says, in the same way every ambitious and upwardly mobile politician does. And Trump, her former boss, reportedly called Sanders in recent weeks to ask for her endorsement, which still hasn’t come.

But she also said she “maintains a great relationship” with Trump, and left the door open for an endorsement in the future.

“When the time comes, maybe, but right now, I don’t want to do anything that takes away from the huge agenda list that we have to get done here in Arkansas,” Sanders said. “I don’t intend on slowing down on that front at any point soon. And so I don’t want to do anything that takes away, not just my attention, but also the attention of what we’re accomplishing.”

A former White House colleague who remains close to Sanders doesn’t expect her 2024 neutrality to change any time soon. “Trump’s not her boss anymore,” the former colleague said. “Her boss is the people of Arkansas, and that’s where I assume her priorities will lie.”

Republicans in the state appreciate her focus on Arkansas and recognize she’s putting the work they’re doing in the Capitol first. “Everyone wants a minute with her—she can be Sarah the national celebrity, or Sarah the governor, and she only has so many minutes in a day,” Hester said. “She is spending those minutes as Sarah the governor.”

Republican state senator Matt McKee says Sanders has the whole legislature bullish on Arkansas.

“I know Florida’s been at the forefront, Texas has done things, but Arkansas can be the place,” McKee said.

Sanders says her appreciation for Arkansas has grown since moving her family back to her home state. After traveling to each county for her campaign, she has enhanced her ability to sell the state to visitors. The governor boasts that she can point to the best place to eat in any Arkansas town—this reporter was sent to CJ’s Butcher Boy Burgers in Russellville.

When it comes to dining, things are going more smoothly for Sanders in Arkansas. Thus far, she says she hasn’t been denied service, as she was in 2019 at the Red Hen restaurant in Virginia.

“You know, knock on wood, I have not been asked to leave any restaurant so far,” Sanders said. “It’s amazing to be home.”

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If Anybody Should Pay Reparations for Slavery, It’s The Democrat Party

BY: WINSTON BRADY | MARCH 06, 2023

Slave shackle — If anyone should pay reparations to black Americans for the injustices of slavery, it should be the institutions that preserved slavery’s legacy.

WINSTON BRADY

The call for reparations attracts more supporters every day. Even Disney has joined the cause, weaving the issue of monetary payments to the descendants of slaves into a storyline on the “The Proud Family” series on the company’s streaming service. But what generated the most controversy was one episode in which the show’s protagonists perform a song entitled “Slaves Built This Country” after they discover the founder of their town was a slaveholder.

Setting their frustrations over racial injustice and hardship to music, the cartoon children sing that slaves “made your families rich from the southern plantation, to the northern bankers, to the New England ship owners, the Founding Fathers, former presidents, current senators.” Catchy though the song may be, the children leave out one prominent beneficiary of slavery, one in the best position to provide the reparations called for: the Democratic Party.

One may argue for or against reparations on many different grounds. At its heart, supporters for reparations say that freed slaves never received any kind of compensation for their hardship from their owners. Thus, the descendants of slaveowners owe financial restitution to the descendants of their slaves, which would alleviate income inequality and atone for slavery, America’s “original sin.” Opponents of reparations argue one group of people, who did not commit the original wrong, should not be forced to make restitution to a group who indirectly received the wrong. From this angle, reparations seem more like “legal plunder,” a term coined by the French economist Frédéric Bastiat. Such an act “takes from some persons what belongs to them, and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong.”

But if the supporters of reparations are right and that some restitution must be made, it becomes obvious who should do it: the Democratic Party. Indeed, it is an objective fact that the Democratic Party is intimately tied to slavery and segregation. The Democratic Party was founded by Andrew Jackson of Tennessee, himself a slaveowner, and Martin Van Buren, a New Yorker who owned at least one slave and exploited enslaved labor. More importantly, Van Buren’s plan gained the support of southern politicians for his policies in exchange for his support of the “peculiar institution” of plantation slavery. Such politicians became so numerous they had a name: doughfaces, since their characters lacked all substance.

This pattern continued through the end of the Civil War and the early 20th century. After the Civil War, Democratic politicians in the southern U.S. supported segregationist policies that brutally infringed upon the rights and dignity of African-Americans.

As a result of this history, the Democratic Party should provide reparations, not the descendants of one class deemed politically expendable. Still, you may say, “that was the Democratic Party of the mid-19th century. So much has changed since then that the current officeholders and politicians could not possibly bear any blame for what their forebears did.” This is true, but it is also true of the American people.

Today, the American people are not directly responsible for slavery, segregation, Indian removal (also Van Buren), and a host of other injustices for which prominent Democrats ask for reparations. Moreover, the American people are being forced to pay for more spending programs, up to and including reparations. How is it any fairer to ask the American people to accept another raise in their taxes to fix a problem the progenitors of the Democratic Party started? Shouldn’t that be at least acknowledged?

They acknowledge institutionalized racism, but they entirely ignore the fact that they were the ones who institutionalized it. The Democratic Party, as a private institution, is in the best position to provide reparations for the evils of slavery and segregation they did so much to perpetuate. If the Democratic Party admitted its wrongdoing and offered financial compensation to the descendants of slaves, it would immediately remove reparations as a possible unwise and unreasonable expansion of government. Moreover, the Democratic Party, with its expansive network of donors and connections that includes local community and civic leaders, could far more effectively handle the distribution of reparations itself.

If the Democratic Party really wants to move the country past the legacies of slavery and segregation, it should acknowledge its role in promoting them. If there are any groups in the U.S. that should provide material assistance to black Americans to make amends for the injustices committed against them, it should be the institutions that committed those injustices. The Democrats, the self-proclaimed “party of the people,” and not the people of the United States themselves, should bear that cultural and financial responsibility.

Winston Brady is the Director of Curriculum and Thales Press at Thales Academy, a network of classical schools with campuses in North Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, and South Carolina. A graduate of the College of William & Mary, Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, and the Kenan-Flagler School of Business at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Winston writes on the intersection of history, politics, and culture, as seen through the lens of classical wisdom and virtue. He lives in Wake Forest with his wife Rachel of ten years and his three boys, Hunter, Jack, and Samuel, all of whom will one day learn Latin.

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Biden’s New ‘Equity’ Executive Order Is Systemic Racism In Disguise

BY: SHAWN FLEETWOOD | FEBRUARY 20, 2023

In a newly signed executive order designed to use federal agencies to forcibly guarantee equality of outcome instead of equality of opportunity for Americans, President Joe Biden tacitly admitted his administration is collaborating with a prominent leftist group to advance neo-Marxism throughout the U.S. government.

Signed on Thursday, the order, titled “Further Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities Through The Federal Government,” seeks to expand the administration’s so-called “equity-advancing requirements for agencies.” Equity is a term regularly employed by leftists to cover up their true goal of dismissing merit and real equality in favor of discrimination on the basis of skin color.

A prime example of “equity” in action can be seen in Virginia, where several high schools in Fairfax and Loudoun Counties admitted to withholding National Merit awards from deserving students in order to avoid hurting the feelings of those not awarded. As The Federalist reported, “Asian American students are highly represented among the recipients, and some believe withholding the awards to be an act of racially motivated biases against Asian students.”

Under Biden’s new executive order, federal departments are instructed to embrace such ideology to construct a so-called “fair” and “inclusive” economy, which would include investing in areas where the administration claims federal policies have “historically impeded equal opportunity … in ways that mitigate economic displacement.”

Buried within the order, however, is a directive for federal agencies to implement what’s called the “Justice40 Initiative.” While the document doesn’t specify what the mission of Justice40 is, a quick trip to the group’s website reveals it to be nothing more than an effort by left-wing activists to advance neo-Marxist policies under the guise of “environmental justice.”

“The Justice40 promise seeks to create an equitable recovery for Americans facing challenges created by aging infrastructure, a frayed social safety net, natural disasters, and the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic,” the organization’s website reads. “Justice40 must address inequities that hinder a sustainable, just society, and that disproportionately harm low-income and communities of color across America.”

What are they really?

They’re another neo-Marxist organization directing policy in the Biden Administration.

Plenty of clenched fists on their website to go around, but their leaders are more blatant in their commie sensibilities. 2 of them have a telling social media history. pic.twitter.com/BjvHKAQ1Ih
— Jeremy Redfern (@JeremyRedfernFL) February 19, 2023

Back in July 2021, Biden officially adopted Justice40’s stated goal of providing at least 40 percent of federal investments “in climate and clean energy” to these so-called “disadvantaged communities.” In other words, the administration is distributing taxpayer money to certain jurisdictions based on racial demographics.

The policy is eerily similar to Covid-related guidance the administration released in December 2021, in which health-care providers were advised to prioritize racial and ethnic minorities in the dissemination of Covid treatments such as monoclonal antibodies.

But it’s not just Justice40’s mission that’s tied to neo-Marixst ideology. Several of the group’s listed “movement leaders” have pushed policies and ideas embraced by radical leftist organizations such as Black Lives Matter. On her Twitter profile, Justice40 leader Cassia Herron proclaims she is a “lover” of “revolutions,” and has several posts calling to defund the police.

“We want to defund the police and distribution of wealth,” a July 7, 2020 tweet reads.

Also listed as a Justice40 “movement leader” is Jacqueline Patterson, who during Trump’s presidency in December 2020 seemingly compared the Covid jab rollout to the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, in which the U.S. government secretly conducted experiments on black American men for decades without informing them of viable treatment options. Over a year later, when Biden was in office, Patterson tweeted she was fully vaccinated “from the black batch” and boosted, adding that the risk of Covid “seemed worse with not getting vaccinated.”

The collaboration between the administration and Justice40 represents the latest nail in the coffin of legacy media’s narrative that Biden is some sort of unifying moderate who advances centrist policies. Shortly after his inauguration, for instance, Biden signed an executive order reversing the “Mexico City Policy,” which prevented nongovernmental entities receiving U.S. taxpayer money from using such funds to promote or perform abortions.

Moreover, America’s commander-in-chief has consistently issued racially divisive statements, such as comparing Republicans opposed to his party’s proposed takeover of U.S. elections to segregationists.

“So I ask every elected official in America, how do you want to be remembered? Do you want to be on the side of Dr. King or George Wallace?” Biden asked during a January 2022 speech. “Do you want to be on the side of John Lewis or Bull Connor? Do you want to be on the side of Abraham Lincoln or Jefferson Davis?”

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

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Pro-Family Conservatives Must First Be Pro-Men

BY: DELANO SQUIRES | JANUARY 05, 2023

father and son with a hula hoop — **Republicans interested in crafting pro-family policy must focus on the well-being of America’s boys and men.**

DELANO SQUIRES

Those conservatives who want to shape the nascent pro-family movement emerging on the right must be willing to embrace a controversial — and countercultural — reality: Healthy families require strong, stable, and secure men. That means Republicans interested in crafting pro-family policy must focus on the well-being of America’s boys and men.

Democrats have spent decades supporting policies that make men and fathers economically and socially obsolete. They’ve promoted the notion that families and societies flourish when women are empowered, even to the detriment of men. For instance, they see the fact that women outnumber men in the college-educated labor force as a win for gender equality.  

It’s not all progress, however, from the perspective of modern feminists. So-called access to abortion, a major plank in the women’s empowerment agenda, was dealt a serious blow when the Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision struck down Roe v. Wade and returned the issue of abortion to the states. 

This seismic shift, combined with the economic challenges brought on by Covid-19 shutdowns and parental discontent with public schools, has opened the door for some conservatives to seek to rebrand Republicans as the party of families.  

The initial push for this political pivot came from Republicans in the U.S. Senate. The most recent iteration of Utah Sen. Mitt Romney’s proposed Family Security Act would provide between $250 and $350 a month per child, based on age. Florida Sen. Marco Rubio’s Provide for Life Act would expand the child tax credit, enable parental leave, expand support for pro-life crisis pregnancy centers, and fund mentoring services for low-income mothers. Conservative social commentators have also made the case that limited government and support for families are compatible policy goals.

Whatever the merits of these efforts, the success of pro-family policies will depend on more than bipartisan support in Congress. The social and economic outcomes conservatives want to see must start with the understanding that men and women are not generic, interchangeable parts in the machinery of family life. 

Recognizing Roles

Men have played the role of provider throughout human history, though in recent decades that role has been shared. Still, no culture teaches that it’s a woman’s responsibility to take care of an adult male and the children they have together. This is why women generally seek men who earn more than they do. One analysis of U.S. Census data found that female physicians married men in the same field. Male doctors, however, often married nurses and teachers.

This is not an argument against women in the workplace. It’s an appeal for conservatives to recognize that disregarding the natural order in the name of “women’s empowerment,” whether through public policy or cultural norms, will make it harder for Americans to form strong, stable families.  

Conservative politicians and pundits need to become comfortable talking about what boys and men need in terms of education, economic opportunity, religion, social norms, and relationships. 

Their political speeches, op-eds, and podcast appearances need a renewed emphasis on vocational education that is aspirational, not framed in terms of a fallback option for young men who are unable — or unwilling — to attend college. Conservatives need to speak with a similar sense of clarity and concern when it comes to men, sex, and family formation.  

Every conservative bill, statute, policy, or regulation that directly affects families should include some version of the following statements:

Children have a right to the love and support of the man and woman who created them.
The ideal family structure for every child is to be raised by his or her married biological parents in a stable and loving home.
Men, not the state, are ultimately responsible for the children they father.

These self-evident truths should function as the “iron triangle” of social conservatism. Men need something they are willing to both live and die for. The responsibilities that come with a family give them both.  

Critics on the left — as well as some on the right — will undoubtedly accuse conservatives focusing on men of promoting a regressive return to the rigid sex roles of the 1950s. What they fail to realize is that the sexual revolution and 60 years of liberal social policy did not destroy patriarchy — they distorted it by minimizing the importance of men while maximizing the influence male-dominated institutions have in every area of American family life.  

Different Forms of Patriarchy

“Bureaucratic patriarchy” was introduced through the war on poverty’s expansion of the welfare state and policy incentives that provided aid and basic necessities for unmarried mothers. It has grown because of the symbiotic relationship between elected officials seeking votes, social service administrators overseeing the poverty economy, and single mothers who need financial support.  

Conservatives have a hard time criticizing “corporate patriarchy,” by contrast, because it promotes financial independence for women and exploits conservative deference to the private sector. A recent video from the pro-life organization Live Action satirizes an unfortunate reality brought about by the right’s allegiance to corporations: Many businesses would rather fund abortions than paid maternity leave for their female employees. Perhaps business executives are simply taking cues from Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, who said, “eliminating the right of women to make decisions about when and whether to have children would have very damaging effects on the economy and would set women back decades.” 

The advent of “trans patriarchy” further complicates the pro-life, pro-family movement because men who believe they are women are committed to erasing biological sex altogether. In addition to attacking the foundation of human existence itself, this deformed version of patriarchy also seeks to usurp the family’s role as the primary shaper of children’s values.  

Many conservatives fail to see how the daycare-to-demisexual pipeline was built over time by politicians increasing funding for childcare and schools, corporations offering generous benefits in exchange for employee loyalty, and gender ideologues who want access to shape the next generation of children.  

The actors involved in all three deformed patriarchies are cruel taskmasters because they take a utilitarian view of women and children. A man who accepts his God-given responsibilities has a completely different orientation toward his family. His relationship with his wife is a covenant, not a contract. His children are the fruit of that union and the linchpin to multi-generational prosperity. They’re not mere “consequences” of sex and burdens to be overcome for the sake of economic productivity.  

In a sense, some form of patriarchy is inevitable. The question conservative policymakers need to answer is which form they believe produces the best outcomes for men, women, and children. This is why clear thinking about families must be preceded by honest reflection on the different natures of men and women and how they can be harnessed to fortify American households. That is why now is the perfect time for conservatives to lean into the connection between strong men and stable families. 

Delano Squires is a research fellow in the Richard and Helen DeVos Center for Life, Religion, and Family at The Heritage Foundation. Follow him on Twitter @DelanoSquires.

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One Power Republicans Don’t Fully Grasp

By: Lawrence Johnson | December 22, 2022

Joy, Reid, Kevin Jackson, black, white — **Image credit: NY Post**

“Sometimes when you win, you really lose, and sometimes when you lose, you really win, and sometimes when you win or lose, you actually tie, and sometimes when you tie, you actually win or lose. Winning or losing is all one organic mechanism, from which one extracts what one needs.”

That quote from the 1992 film “White Men Can’t Jump” reminds us all that while everything is subject to interpretation, or personal exegesis, does not change its original intent or meaning.

There has been much said about the word speech. It, along with the prefixes “free” and “hate” rule most news and social media cycles, especially in recent years. More specifically, since the election of America’s 45th president. So, what exactly does it mean?

Defining Terms

Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary describes speech as the following: “the communication or expression of thoughts in spoken words.” Simply put, words are only words, speech is only speech, regardless of your personal issues.

According to an article in Business Standard, there has been a reported 500% rise in hate-speech cases in the last seven years; again ironically, since around 2017. Another article, this time in the American Library Association, states: “In the United States, hate speech is protected by the First Amendment.

Courts extend this protection on the grounds that the First Amendment requires the government to strictly protect robust debate on matters of public concern even when such debate devolves into distasteful, offensive, or hateful speech that causes others to feel grief, anger, or fear.” It also offers that, “There is no legal definition of “hate speech” under U.S. law, just as there is no legal definition for evil ideas, rudeness, unpatriotic speech, or any other kind of speech that people might condemn. Generally, however, hate speech is any form of expression
through which speakers intend to vilify, humiliate, or incite hatred against a group or a class of persons on the basis of race, religion, skin color sexual identity, gender identity, ethnicity, disability, or national origin.”

Speech, much like crime, has been nitro-fueled by many adding their own levels of toxicity personal biases. While sticks and stones can indeed break your bones and words alone can never hurt you, in the proper context words can be very powerful. Unfortunately, many of those on the right don’t realize the power of words.

Unrecognized Powers

As talk-show host and journalist Tucker Carlson once reminded his audience, “only the Left understands the importance of language.” Unfortunately, we have arrived at a time where if something is said that you’re uncomfortable with, it need not break any laws or statutes for the ‘accused offenders’ sentence to be carried out. The only requirement to fulfill my animus- filled retribution is to add “hate” as a prefix.

The organization Rights for Peace posts this on their website:

“Upholding free speech is hugely important to open societies that respect human rights. Human Rights Treaties outlaw offensive speech when it poses a risk or threat to others. Speech that is simply offensive but poses no risk to others is generally NOT considered a human rights violation.

Hate Speech becomes a human rights violation if it incites discrimination, hostility or violence towards a person or a group defined by their race, religion, ethnicity, or other factors.”

So, who determines the line between ‘speech’ and ‘hate-speech? Good question. One of the best examples of apparent purveyors of grief is of course, former president Donald Trump, who offers a never-ending supply of this type of “speech.”

In one example of such ‘speech,’ Trump tweeted this during the George Floyd riots: “Either the very weak Radical Left Mayor, Jacob Frey, get his act together and bring the City under control, or I will send in the National Guard & get the job done right. These THUGS are dishonoring the memory of George Floyd, and I won’t let that happen.”

Were those that attempted to level and burn Minneapolis to the ground not thugs? Another example considered inciteful was the following (in the same Tweet): “Just spoke to Governor Tim Walz and told him that the Military is with him all the way. Any difficulty and we will assume control but, when the looting starts, the shooting starts. Thank you!”

Inserting Common Sense

Was that hateful or incendiary? Doesn’t the shooting usually follow the looting? Regardless of never having crossed any lines or expressed guidelines, including during in his January 6th address, his Twitter account was permanently locked.

Despite the constant barrage of hate speech claims, two things irrepressibly come to mind. First, such claims have no legally defined perimeters, because making offensive, disparaging statements- regardless of the wording, crosses no legal or ethical boundaries; only moral and/or personal ones. Secondly, anti-white, and other racially
degrading statements by Blacks (regardless of context) against ANY race including Blacks are strangely ignored on both mainstream and social media platforms.

In 2021, 22-year-old Gabby Petito’s body was found in Wyoming after she was missing for several weeks. In response to the horrific discovery, Joy Reid stated the following on her MSNBC show, “The Reid Out” concerning the missing hiker: “the way the [Petito] story has captivated the nation has many wondering why not the same media attention when people of color go missing (keep in mind that Reid, as part of the media herself ignored such stories)?

Double Standards at Play

Well, the answer actually has a name: “missing white woman syndrome,” determined by the late and great Gwen Eiffel to describe the media in public fascination with missing white women like Lacey Peterson & Natalie Holloway, while ignoring cases involving missing people of color.” On yet another episode she opined, “In America, there’s a thing about both white vigilantism and white tears,” Reid said. “Particularly male, white tears. Really white tears in general, because that’s what Karens are, right? They can Karen-out and then as soon as they get caught, bring waterworks.”

Regardless of having crossed many lines and expressed guidelines, including several anti-gay statements, her
Twitter account was never locked. There are clearly double standards, especially where color and political affiliations are concerned. Truth be told, words are still merely words; speech is still merely speech- regardless of content. Like the old saying concerning “sticks and stones,” if you allow words to hurt you- it is a choice you make.

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Harvesting Low-Effort Votes Is Working Great for Democrats, So They’re Going for More

BY: VICTORIA MARSHALL | DECEMBER 28, 2022

Election 2020 — **While some congressional Republicans might think the post-2020 election integrity fight is over, that couldn’t be farther from the truth.**

Author Victoria Marshall profile

VICTORIA MARSHALL

VISIT ON TWITTER@VEMRSHLL

The dust of the 2022 midterm contests has barely settled and Democrats — invigorated by the Red Wave that evaporated under extended lax voting policies — are out to make sweeping changes to our nation’s election laws once again.

Think back to 2020, when Democratic governors and unsuspecting Republican lawmakers made unprecedented changes to state election policies in the name of Covid that included mandating universal mail-in balloting and a month of early voting. Some states have kept these changes permanently. But Democrats are not satisfied, and why should they be? With their gubernatorial power retained (they kept all but one of the governor’s offices) and newfound control of state legislatures in both Michigan and Minnesota, Democrats are keen to ram through a whole gamut of unprecedented and unconstitutional changes. It’s working, so they’re going to keep doing it.

As The New York Times reported, Democrats’ list of policy proposals for 2023 includes expanding automatic voter registration systems, preregistering teenagers to vote, granting the franchise to felons, and criminalizing what the left thinks is election “misinformation.” Of course, all these policy prescriptions have little to do with “voting rights,” but Democrats package them as such, and slander their opponents as — you guessed it — racists.

Make no mistake about what these proposals are meant to accomplish. Take automatic voter registration. The New York Times notes that such a system — already adopted by 20 states — “adds anyone whose information is on file with a government agency — such as a department of motor vehicles or a social services bureau — to [a state’s] voter rolls unless they opt out.”

During the 2020 election, Michigan’s Democratic Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson sent out automatic voter registration forms to all eligible Michigan residents. As a result of the mailer, 114,000 people were automatically added to Michigan’s voter rolls. Many were duplicate and otherwise inaccurate registrations. By padding state voter rolls with new unlikely voters, Democrats can target unsuspecting blocs of voters, harvest their ballots, and put their candidates over the top. Various leftist 501(c)(3) nonprofit organizations are solely dedicated to this.

As I’ve previously reported regarding Democratic attempts to court high school-age kids, multiple left-wing organizations are targeting young people to effectively propagandize them into future Democratic Party voters. As two-thirds of Gen Z voters backed Democrats this past midterm election cycle, Democrats are hoping to capitalize on this emerging voting bloc while also setting their sights on even younger kids. While leftist organizations have tried to couch their outreach efforts as bipartisan, Democrat politicians admit they’re going after younger voters to benefit the left.

“[Targeting young people] is something the left’s been pushing for quite a while — along with enfranchising noncitizens and automatic restoration of felon voting rights,” executive director of the Honest Elections Project Jason Snead told me earlier this month. “They’re always looking for new people to bring into the election system and calculating the targeted groups who will be more likely to vote Democratic.”

Along with making the state a key player in their efforts to pad voter rolls in their favor, Democrats are also intent on criminalizing any information that could hurt their electoral prospects. Known Democratic Party hack and Michigan Secretary of State Joycelyn Benson told the New York Times that she wants new rules and penalties for individuals peddling “misinformation” in election mailers or language on proposed ballot amendments.

“The greatest threats to our democracy right now continue to be the intentional spread of misinformation and the threats and harassment of election officials that emerge from those efforts,” Benson said.

With Democrats’ history of using Big Tech to label the New York Post’s verified story on Hunter Biden as misinformation and its subsequent censorship during the 2020 election, as well as myriad true scientific claims that countered the bureaucracy’s Covid narrative, it’s clear Benson and fellow Democrats’ desire to censor “misinformation” is code for cracking down on any information Democrats don’t like.

What’s To Be Done

Republicans must be wary of Democratic efforts to fortify elections in 2023 and beyond. While some congressional Republicans might think the post-2020 election integrity fight is over, that couldn’t be farther from the truth. Democrats have a massive ground game advantage over Republicans already, and if they pass these policy proposals — under the insufferable label of “voting rights” — in key swing states, that advantage will only grow to an insurmountable one. Republicans must realize election integrity is not a seasonal push nor a battle isolated to 2020. Rather, they must be on offense for years to come.

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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Daniel Horowitz Op-ed: Conservatives must finally break free from the stranglehold of fake Republicans

DANIEL HOROWITZ | December 12, 2022

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The problem for conservatives headed forward is not so much mail-in ballots as it is mail-in Republicans.

If Haggai the prophet were around today, he’d likely chastise conservative voters as follows: “Consider your ways: You have sown much and you bring in little. You eat without being satiated. You drink without getting your fill. You dress, and it has no warmth. And he who profits, profits into a bundle with holes.”

No matter how much the Republican Party cheats on its base – committing sins that the eyes cannot unsee – conservatives continue to slavishly genuflect to the party’s every whim and offer to carry water for Republicans. They treat Republican politicians as the masters rather than the servants. They believe we must support them at any cost rather than understanding that they need our support to even exist, because Democrats already locked up the voters they truly desire. Conservative influencers continue to view themselves as loyal Republicans and refuse to explore any blunt force trauma to this perfidious party that would force a cathartic moment when either we finally take over the party or we have a critical mass to either start a new one or use the GOP only for ballot access but form a party within a party.

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The scope of the problem is not limited to a few RINOs. In fact, we are the RINOs. With the exception of a handful of Republicans who accidentally win office, almost every elected Republican is either indifferent or downright on the other side of the issues that really matter, in the way they matter, and at the time they matter. Just consider that only one senator and only one governor are fighting the issue of our time – biomedical tyranny. Or the fact that not only did a bunch of Republicans vote with Democrats to codify gay marriage as a right against religious liberty, but not a single leadership member in either party spoke out against it and none whipped against it.

In order to secure our votes, they pretend to be with us on the issues that don’t matter, or in the way and at the time they don’t matter. Then they employ a brilliant tactic to keep us on the plantation – threaten us with the prospect of the Democrat winning, the very same Democrats they work with on the issues that matter.

Cunningly, the Republicans understand that while they have no problem working with the Democrats, their base is truly revolted by and fearful of the Democrats. Hence, the argument of “but the Democrats” resonates the most precisely with those most likely to rebel against the perfidious party leadership. Thus, they have created a never-ending zero-sum game. The more the GOP commits perfidy and works with the Democrats on the issues of the time, the farther the political landscape and Overton window shift to the left. The more disquiet and fear instilled in the base about the Democrats further winning, the more the base is hoodwinked into voting Republican without doing any much-needed political surgery.

If you take this vicious cycle to its logical conclusion … it has no conclusion – other than us inexorably becoming wards of Klaus Schwab’s AI transhumanist kingdom. Because whether the issue is COVID, Ukraine, marriage, immigration, spending, global warming, no matter how much the Republicans screw us, they can always turn around and say, “Well, it’s going to be worse if the Democrats win.” In reality, it’s the GOP that acts as the forward advance guard or the getaway car for the Democrats – it’s a one-two step in which the Democrats could not succeed in what they are doing without a veneer of bipartisanship so that they won’t own the blame or fallout of their destructive policies.

Conservative talk show hosts and news influencers need to be asked: What is their plan to stop this cycle of failure and degeneration? And is there no limit to the perfidy of the GOP or particular Republicans that will finally prompt them to stop voting for them? Until conservatives are willing to shoot the hostage, they will never wield any leverage over the Republicans. McConnell and company rightly wager that Republicans will always come back to them because they have nowhere else to go. Jared Kushner said as much to Trump in advocating that he deviate from the MAGA agenda on certain issues.

As we explore multiple ways to shake up the party, particularly at the state and local levels in solid red states first, we must be willing to make it clear that at some point there is a bridge too far. Remember, the establishment torpedoes our candidates in the rare instance that they win the primaries. They not only refuse to support them but openly undermine them. We must return the favor.

The interesting thing about the Republican Party in the way it’s currently constituted is that it not only hates its base, but it increasingly does not appeal to independent voters, despite the fact that Democrats don’t really appeal to them either. Now is the perfect time to begin running respectable candidates with new ideas on an anti-elitist message but devoid of the typical divisive labels to appeal to a broad subset of the electorate who are deeply dismayed with the status quo of the duopoly. There is no silver bullet, but here is a rough outline of things that must be done concurrently:

A pledge against elite globalist Republicans: We don’t need perfection, but when you have Republicans openly undermining us on the key issues of the time, we need a petition of hundreds of thousands of Republican voters pledging they will never vote for them – primary or general election. A good place to start are the 12 Senate Republicans who voted to force gay marriage and its accompanying rainbow jihad against the church upon our communities. Almost all those 12 Republicans are in solid red states and undermine us on many other issues too. For example, Thom Tillis, who is a liberal pretty much on every issue, is also working on an amnesty bill with Democrats. It needs to be made clear that these people will never have our support.
Run independent candidates in the general election: So does this mean you just “let the Democrat win”? That should not stop us from running truly independent candidates in the general election for statewide office who have a broader message and have not been attached so much (or at all) to the Republican Party. I offered a blueprint for this in the Pennsylvania Senate race, when it became clear that Oz was both a leftist and unelectable, that we should have run someone from the medical freedom movement and strip the labels of “conservative” and “liberal.” We need to break the paradigm of the binary uniparty, and we only need one race to break this impervious monopoly. Also, unlike an official new party, it’s fairly easy to get on the ballot as an independent in most states. And nothing appeals more to swing voters these days than the label “independent,” which is something all of us who hate the status quo – from traditional conservative to populists or disenchanted classical liberal – should embrace.
Continue to run primaries with better focus: Where possible, we should still run in Republican primaries, but focus more on governors than on the House or Senate. The federal government is lost. We need to focus on getting more governors like Ron DeSantis in red states, yet at present we have not even a single one. Our entire primary focus should be on governors for red states like Utah, West Virginia, North Dakota, Indiana, and Missouri, which are all up in 2024 but have lackluster GOP governors. There is an immediate opportunity in Kentucky, which has its election next year and is currently held by a Democrat. So far, Savannah Maddox, the most conservative member of the legislature, appears to be the best candidate. And again, when the result of the primaries is unacceptable to us, we should look for independent candidates with a broad appeal. This strategy has promise not only in solid red states but in swing states as well. As for downballot offices – from state legislature to school board and county positions – it’s hard to have a slate of independent candidates with enough money and name ID. We can probably only target this strategy of running independents initially for statewide office. So, for lower offices we will have to run Republicans; however, we need candidates who don’t consider themselves as Republicans and are merely using the party for ballot access – the same way the party uses us for our votes. For legislative bodies, we should make it clear that these candidates will form their own caucus and use their leverage against GOP leadership when needed, almost rendering it like a parliamentarian system. Once elected and having achieved notoriety, they can consider switching to independent, similar to what Kyrsten Sinema has just done after leaving the Democrat Party.
Switch from popular primaries to state conventions/caucuses: In swing states, the Republican brand is not only fraudulent but also toxic. In red states, the brand is still intact, but most red states are run by perfidious Republicans. I can write an entire book on how it’s nearly impossible to knock off Republicans in a primary without a scandal, and even most open seats are hard to win. They have all the money and use it to fool voters by running on our issues with no intent of fulfilling their promises. There is one way to change this cycle of failure. Rather than forcing candidates to raise millions of dollars, money only the bad guys have, they should go through a caucus or convention system whereby voters in precincts elect a representative to vote for them at a convention. The activists know who the frauds are. If you had a Utah-style convention in a state like Texas, Gregg Abbott would have lost his primary. This is the only way to get in a critical mass of non-Republican Republicans in one election cycle. Several years ago, I wrote an outline explaining how this would work.
Focus activism and pressure over issues, not just elections: The way to create a political environment either for primary challenges or independent runs is for conservative voters – who are busy with life, work, and family – to actually know just how bad their GOP governor and legislators are. We need a focused pressure campaign to expose the issues and personnel during legislative sessions so people realize in their deep red districts just how long their Republican representative has been faking it. Every policy opportunity in every legislative session must be exploited, and every bad policy from executive branches in red states must be pointed out and pressure brought to bear on the two-faced Republicans to “convert or die.” Getting active on the issues, especially at the state and local levels, which are less saturated with activism than Congress, is more impactful than elections.

There is a common denominator to all of these action items. They require a mindset that we are the masters of the GOP, not its servants. We must start holding Republicans’ feet to the fire, not carrying water for them. We have no obligation to them. There is a middle ground between continuing the same failed GOP game for the rest of our lives and immediately starting a new party. We make it clear that the Republican Party as it is currently constituted is dead to us, and we act in our own interests. The above ideas are just the beginning of an outline of what that practically looks like. Some of my colleagues in this business might be content to continue playing the game, but for me, I’m done. Life is too short to double down on failure.

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Republican States Move To Keep Major Trump-Era Border Policy Amid Surge In Illegal Immigration

By: JENNIE TAER, INVESTIGATIVE REPORTER | November 22, 2022

AZ AG Mark Brnovich — **Screenshot/Fox News**

Over a dozen Republican states are urging a judge to keep Title 42, a major Trump-era border policy, according to court documents filed Monday. Arizona, Louisiana, Alabama, Alaska, Kansas, Kentucky, Mississippi, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas, Virginia, West Virginia and Wyoming asked D.C. Judge Emmet Sullivan if they could intervene in the case in which Title 42, which has been used to expel over one million migrants to mitigate the COVID-19 pandemic, was overturned, according to the request. Sullivan ruled on Nov. 15 that the Biden administration must end the policy in late December, giving them time to prepare for an expected influx of illegal migrants at the southern border. (RELATED: ‘Even Worse’: Illegal Migrants Will Flood The US Border When One Major Trump-Era Policy Ends)

When Title 42 ends, that influx will directly impact the Republican states, they argued.

“Because invalidation of the Title 42 Orders will directly harm the States, they now seek to intervene to offer a defense of the Title 42 policy so that its validity can be resolved on the merits, rather than through strategic surrender,” the Republican states wrote to Sullivan.

(Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

The Republican states also argued against the Biden administration’s change of tune on the policy after it previously fought against their previous attempt to keep the police in place.

“The States have sovereign and quasi-sovereign interests in controlling their borders, limiting the persons present within those borders, excluding persons carrying communicable diseases, and the enforcement of immigration law,” the filing said.

The Department of Homeland Security declined to comment.

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While Election Results Drag On, Leftists Are Already Crying About Losing Total Control

BY: JORDAN BOYD | NOVEMBER 09, 2022

leftist meltdown — **When the GOP started off strong in Florida, blue checkmarks on Twitter, Democrats, and the propaganda press predictably lost their minds.**

JORDAN BOYD

VISIT ON TWITTER@JORDANBOYDTX

While inefficient Democrat states take eons to report election results, the corrupt corporate media and keyboard warriors everywhere are melting down over the possibility of losing total control of the government power they’ve squandered for the last two years. When word reached Americans that the GOP started off the midterms strong with a massive Senate and gubernatorial sweep in Florida, blue checkmarks on Twitter, Democrats, and the propaganda press predictably lost their minds.

After reading exit polling suggesting that skyrocketing inflation is voters’ top concern, CNN lamented that voters are more worried about the rising cost of groceries and gas than leftists’ “threat to democracy” lies. “You know what’s missing from this one, two, three, four, five, top five issues? Democracy. It’s not even here. That’s not to say it’s not an issue for people but it doesn’t even come close,” CNN’s Dana Bash whined during her network’s election night coverage.

I’m SHOCKED that voters’ #1 concern after freely taking part in the democratic process isn’t ✨democracy✨ https://t.co/4K0uV8fkhH
— Kylee Griswold (like the family vacation) (@kyleezempel) November 8, 2022

Around that same time, MSNBC’s Jason Johnson minimized the democratic process of voting by claiming that “we can’t say that whatever happens tonight is a fair and equitable election.”

“The level of voter suppression is beyond anything that we saw in 2018,” he asserted without evidence.

MSNBC's @DrJasonJohnson on Georgia: "The level of voter suppression is beyond anything that we saw in 2018 … we can’t say that whatever happens tonight is a fair and equitable election" pic.twitter.com/WxPGLH0lLA
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) November 8, 2022

MSNBC’s Joy Reid also resorted to lying to undermine GOP victories, specifically in Florida. Not only did she falsely claim Miami-Dade County “has been trending Republican for a really long time” but she also wondered when Florida will become “a normal political state and not just a far, far, far right state.”

After both Gov. Ron DeSantis and Sen. Marco Rubio were re-elected, @JoyAnnReid called Florida a "far, far, far right state."

The meltdown continues. pic.twitter.com/2uvSOsrMjB
— Tea Party Patriots (@TPPatriots) November 9, 2022

Convicted thief and viral purveyor of misinformation Rex Chapman, who lost his spot with CNN after less than one month on air, offered his complaints about the state of “our democracy” under the leadership of Republican powerhouses like the recently reelected Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis via Twitter.

In addition to the propaganda press’s meltdown, plenty of media personalities and Americans invoked the classic but overdone promises to move from certain states once it was clear Republicans were winning.

“[W]here should i move” one Buzzfeed reporter asked.

Even before results poured in on election night, the corrupt corporate media were preparing for the worst with doomsday-style prepping lists designed to pander to emotional voters who need help coping with actual democratic processes.

“Elections and anxiety often go hand in hand,” The New York Times tweeted. “Here are some evidence-based strategies that can help you cope.”

The list featured suggestions such as “breathe like a baby” and “limit your scrolling” as a way to “soothe election stress.”

The graphic was thoroughly mocked by normal people who don’t require such audacious behaviors to cope.

One kind soul on Twitter took it upon himself to “fix” the graphic to reflect more appropriate actions such as downing “five shots of hard liquor” and enduring waterboarding disguised as a “cool down.”

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

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Fox News pundit says election was ‘searing indictment’ of GOP — and Republican vote margins prove it

By CHRIS ENLOE | November 09, 2022

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Conservative writer Marc Thiessen implored the Republican Party to engage in deep introspection after failing to deliver the promised “red wave.” In a political environment unfavorable to Democrats, how could Republicans not decisively win nationwide, especially when they are generally on the favorable side of important issues like the economy and crime?

The result, according to Thiessen, is a “searing indictment” of the Republican Party.

“We had the worst inflation in four decades, the worst collapse in real wages in 40 years, the worst crime wave since the 1990s, the worst border crisis in U.S. history. We have Joe Biden, who is the least popular president since Harry Truman — since presidential polling happened — and there wasn’t a red wave,” the Fox News contributor said late Tuesday.

“That is a searing indictment of the Republican Party,” he continued. “That is a searing indictment of the message that we have been sending to the voters. They’ve looked at all of that, and looked at Republican alternative, and said no thanks.”

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Given the disappointing results, Thiessen said the GOP “needs to do a really deep introspection look in the mirror right now” to understand the “absolute disaster” of an election cycle.

GOP midterm results are an ‘absolute disaster’: Bush speechwriter www.youtube.com

Although he did not mention former President Donald Trump by name, Thiessen said the Republican Party needs to look to Republicans like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, and Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp as the future of the GOP.

Election Day seems to have proven Thiessen correct.

For instance, Kemp won reelection by 7.5%. But Republican Herschel Walker, whom Trump endorsed, trails incumbent Democrat Raphael Warnock by nearly 1%. In Ohio, DeWine won by more than 25%, but Trump-endorsed Republican J.D. Vance won by less than 7%.

This proves that many people — likely independent voters — supported proven Republican leaders but refused to support Trump-endorsed candidates.

Meanwhile, Florida has become a deep red state under DeSantis, who has proven yet again that he can win support from groups of voters Republicans have historically struggled with.

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Poll Worker Fired For Selecting Straight Democrat Ticket On Voter’s Ballot, Calling Republicans ‘Racist’

BY: VICTORIA MARSHALL | NOVEMBER 07, 2022

A Democrat poll worker in Indiana has reportedly been fired after allegations surfaced that he had pressured voters into voting against Republican candidates and selected the “straight Democrat ticket” option when helping an individual fill out their ballot.

James Zheng, a poll worker in Carmel, Indiana, is allegedly being investigated by the Hamilton County Sheriff’s Office for incidents of “electioneering and election interference.”

On Thursday, as a group of pro-parental rights education activists stood outside the Carmel polling place, Zheng allegedly told two black voters that they should not vote for the pro-parent, Republican candidates because the activists outside were “racist.” After the voters submitted their ballots, they alerted the activists to what Zheng had told them. The activists then complained to election officials.

Later, a second incident was reported. According to Hamilton County election administrator Beth Sheller, when Zheng was assisting a voter with an electronic ballot, he pressed the straight Democrat ticket option when explaining to the voter how to use the voting machine. The voter was “then confused about how to change the selection” and asked another poll worker for help. That poll worker resolved the issue and alerted the polling location’s election inspector about the incident.

Zheng had been removed from his post as of Friday.

Hamilton County GOP chairman Mario Massillamany told Fox News that Zheng’s conduct raises questions as to how many voters had been confused after he had attempted a similar maneuver but did not alert election officials.

“This should serve as a cautionary reminder that those desperate to hold onto power or gain power will do anything – including breaking the law – to thwart the efforts of parents and taxpayers to replace our school boards with officials who more accurately reflect the values of our community,” he said.

The incidents come after Democrats and their allies in the corporate media launched a nonstop propaganda campaign claiming GOP poll workers represent an existential threat to democracy (despite the fact that actual threats of violence and intimidation are extremely rare). Yet when a Democrat poll worker engages in election interference, Democrats are silent.

As Republicans are expected to make massive gains on Tuesday, expect Democrats to pull out all stops including using their minions (like Zheng) to influence voters, buying votes, interfering in the administrative process, and questioning election results. (According to the corporate media narrative, after all, it’s only acceptable to question elections if they favor GOP candidates.)

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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Here Is Everything Democrats Claim Is ‘A Threat to Democracy’

BY: THE FEDERALIST STAFF | OCTOBER 27, 2022

President Joe Biden at White House — **Meanwhile, it’s the blue party that’s working overtime to erode and replace actual democratic processes.**

THE FEDERALIST STAFF

Updated on Oct. 27.

It seems like every day Democrats and their cronies in the corrupt corporate media concoct a new, bogus “threat to democracy” that they use to intimidate Americans out of voting for their political opponents.

These “threats” aren’t just overused, they are overexaggerated in an effort to cover up Democrats’ hypocrisy, mask their incompetence, and justify the targeting of their ideological enemies. Meanwhile, it’s the blue party that’s working overtime to erode and replace the actual democratic processes responsible for keeping our nation running.

Here is a list of everything Democrats claim is “a threat to democracy.”

Donald Trump

Americans think corporate media are a bigger “threat to democracy” than former President Donald Trump yet not one day goes by without a Democrat, talking head, or corporate media outlet asserting the Republican is responsible for the downfall of the nation.

The “threat to democracy” accusations began before Trump won the 2016 election, have continued throughout his presidency, and repeatedly make headlines more than a year after the end of his first term.

Republicans

What could possibly be a bigger “threat to democracy” than Democrats’ top Trumpian foe? According to President Joe Biden, it is “MAGA Republicans.”

“Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic,” Biden said during a doom-and-gloom speech in Philadelphia earlier this year.

Whether it’s Republican voters, Republican governors, Republican members of Congress, Republican-controlled legislatures, or even Republican grandmas, Democrats and the media say anyone associated with the GOP could destroy our nation and deserves punishment.

Ted Cruz

Brookings, a left-leaning think tank, described Republican Sen. Ted Cruz as one of many “copycat candidates who parrot Trump’s moves and endorse his anti-democratic tactics” in a piece titled, “Trump is not the only threat to democracy.”

Josh Hawley

Republican Sen. Josh Hawley earned the same judgment from Brookings as Cruz. Additionally, when he objected to certifying the 2020 presidential election results, he (along with Cruz and other GOP senators) was smeared by The Washington Post as one of “the Constitution’s most dangerous domestic enemies.”

Ron DeSantis

According to Democrats, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is a raging, extreme “threat to democracy” for simply governing as a Republican.

“Ron DeSantis Would Kill Democracy Slowly and Methodically,” one article in New York Magazine warned.

Dr. Oz

“An impaired Fetterman who does not pose a threat to our democracy is better than a polished Oz who does. Remember what’s at stake here,” a senior adviser at The Lincoln Project tweeted shortly after the political opponents’ debate.

Tudor Dixon

Tudor Dixon, the Republican woman brave enough to challenge Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, was classified as “a huge threat to our democracy” by her incumbent opponent for raising questions about election irregularities.

Election deniers pose a huge threat to our democracy — and Tudor Dixon is one of them. She spreads conspiracies and won’t even commit to accepting the results of this election.

I will always accept the will of the people and protect our democracy. pic.twitter.com/Ou2Qq0mJVW
— Gretchen Whitmer (@gretchenwhitmer) October 26, 2022

Ron Johnson

For the crime of being an effective Republican lawmaker, Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson has also been deemed a “threat to democracy.”

Legitimately Conducted Elections

Speaking of Republicans, did you know that Americans choosing to elect GOP candidates is a threat to Democracy? That’s what several of the nation’s top propaganda publications want you to believe.

“American Democracy Can’t Survive Unless the Far Right Is Marginalized. Here’s How to Do It,” Time Magazine warned in 2021.

The push to classify GOP wins as threats especially expanded ahead of the 2022 midterms.

“Should [Republicans] win, they will certainly attempt to end democracy as we know it in their states,” MSNBC Opinion Columnist Ryan Cooper wrote three weeks before Election Day 2022. “The effort will probably look like an updated version of Jim Crow.”

Questioning Elections

Nevermind that Democrats are known for rejecting election results and objecting to every presidential Republican victory this century — anyone who dares mention that U.S. elections are not perfect is smeared with the ill-fitting term “election denier,” and considered a “threat to democracy.”

This “threat,” according to media, Democrats, and the ever-vague “experts,” is so big that it needs to be taught in schools. Less than two weeks before the 2022 midterms, The New York Times published a “Lesson Plan” titled “Explore How the Election Denial Movement Threatens Democracy.”

“What can happen in a representative democracy when politicians and a significant portion of the electorate question the legitimacy of elections?” the subtitle asks.

The Events of Jan. 6, 2021

Democrats say Americans’ actions on Capitol Hill on Jan. 6, 2021, proved to be as big a “threat to democracy” as Pearl Harbor or 9/11, both of which resulted in thousands more deaths than the Capitol riot.

Not only was the Capitol riot an existential threat, leftists claim, but New York Magazine says “Americans’ Indifference About January 6 Is the Real Threat to Democracy.”

Election Security Legislation

The New York Times is also one of the many corporate media outlets and others that have expressed concern with Republicans’ voter integrity measures following the chaotic 2020 election.

“Many top Republican Party officials and lawmakers have spent the last two years striking back, and drawn the most attention for their efforts to pass ‘voter integrity’ laws that aim to make voting more onerous under the guise of preventing fraud. … These are pernicious laws, and they undermine Americans’ hard-won rights to vote. But just as important is the matter of who counts the votes, and who decides which votes count and which do not,” The New York Times editorial board wrote last month.

“The real threat to America’s electoral system is not posed by ineligible voters trying to cast ballots. It is coming from inside the system,” the board concluded. “All those who value democracy have a role to play in strengthening and supporting the electoral system that powers it, whatever their party. This involves, first, taking the threat posed by election deniers seriously and talking to friends and neighbors about it. It means paying attention to local elections — not just national ones — and supporting candidates who reject conspiracy theories and unfounded claims of fraud. It means getting involved in elections as canvassers or poll watchers or precinct officers.”

Poll Watchers

It’s ironic that The New York Times wants voters to be poll watchers — especially since corporate media recently deemed those who sign up to monitor ballot boxes as “threats to democracy.”

As documented by The Federalist’s Shawn Fleetwood, the propaganda press is repeatedly “hitting the panic button over Republican poll watchers legitimately overseeing the conduction of elections, see here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.”

Elon Musk

When Tesla CEO Elon Musk announced plans to acquire Twitter and welcome free speech back to the Big Tech platform, Twitter’s pampered employees, the corporate media, and pro-censorship politicians threw a fit.

“He seems to believe that on social media anything goes. For democracy to survive, we need more content moderation, not less,” The Washington Post’s Max Boot tweeted.

Not only is Musk’s purchase considered by the left a “threat to democracy,” Salon writer Matthew Rozsa said Musk’s “attempted takeover of Twitter is a threat to the free world.”

Freedom of Speech

Some of the same media personalities whose livelihoods revolve around rights granted by the First Amendment say that free speech, especially online, is “a threat to democracy.”

‘Misinformation’

The pro-censorship party and its allies say “misinformation” and “disinformation,” which means any information about hot topics like Covid, elections, and biology that they deem inconvenient or contra the narrative they are trying to sell, is a threat to democracy.

Parents at School Board Meetings

If it wasn’t already clear that the National School Boards Association and Attorney General Merrick Garland think concerned parents are “domestic terrorists” who threaten our nation and deserve to be prosecuted, it was certainly made clear by members of the media.

“Attacks on school boards are a threat to democracy,” an opinion editorial in the Mercury News said.

Pro-Lifers

Garland also considers peaceful pro-life protesters to be a threat to the nation. That’s why his Department of Justice has publicly indicted 22 people who oppose killing babies in the womb instead of prosecuting the people responsible for the destruction, vandalism, and arson of dozens of pregnancy centers.

The U.S. Supreme Court

Democrats have long insisted that the Supreme Court’s decisions are the “law of the land” but when the court overturned Roe v. Wade earlier this year, that philosophy was quickly replaced with the left’s favorite excuse for hypocrisy.

“The US supreme court poses a real threat to Americans’ democracy,” one headline in The Guardian blared.

Even before that, media, upset with the prospect of Trump exercising his presidential power to nominate yet another justice to the court, felt the need to explain “Why the Supreme Court is one of the biggest threats to American democracy.”

At one point, New York Magazine’s Eric Levitz threatened that “If the Court’s right-wing majority finds that it can continually push the boundaries of conservative judicial activism without undermining its own popular legitimacy, then the consequences for progressivism and popular democracy could be dire.”

Clarence and Ginni Thomas

The left believes that not only is the Supreme Court a “threat to democracy,” but so are Justice Clarence Thomas and his wife.

“Ginni and Clarence Thomas are the duo we wish we didn’t have to constantly talk about, but here we are. Their actions surrounding the insurrection are a threat to our democracy and the public’s trust in our courts,” Citizens for Ethics, a leftist watchdog group, tweeted.

The Electoral College

Our nation’s Electoral College was designed to best represent Americans no matter where they lived but the left says that constitutional design is a “threat to democracy.”

The left-leaning Aspen Institute blared that “The Electoral College Is a Threat to 21st Century Democracy,” adding that while “our founders felt we needed a brake against ‘mob rule,’ it is incompatible with our current national credo that every vote counts.”

Our Bicameral Legislature

According to Vox, though, the Electoral College “poses a smaller long-term threat to American democracy than the Senate,” because “the Senate undermines principles of equal democratic representation.”

“The Senate will continue to give small states, which tend to be rural and conservative, far more clout than their size deserves. That’s not just a problem for democracy in the abstract,” the Brennan Center’s Zachary Roth agrees.

Democracy Itself

As documented by The Federalist’s Elle Purnell, Democrats and the media also consider an elected majority in the U.S. Senate a threat to democracy.

This became very apparent when West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, “determined not to pass President Joe Biden’s Build Back Bankrupt plan.”

“Manchin is killing the Biden legislative agenda, and perhaps the future of American democracy too,” tweeted MSNBC’s Mehdi Hasan.

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Flint, Mich. Clerk Resigns After Elections Group Calls Out Lopsided Number Of Democrat Poll Watchers

BY: VICTORIA MARSHALL | SEPTEMBER 23, 2022

Flint, Michigan’s longtime city clerk is retiring after an election integrity group sent a letter to her office demanding she balance out the number of Democrat and Republican election inspectors.

On Sept. 6, Pure Integrity Michigan Elections (PIME) and attorney Erick Kaardal of the Thomas More Society sent a demand letter to Flint and City Clerk Inez Brown threatening legal action if they do not balance out the number of partisan poll watchers before the November general election. As previously reported, during Flint’s Aug. 2 primary, the city hired 422 Democrats compared to just 27 Republican election inspectors — in direct violation of a Michigan state statute that requires equal representation of party election inspectors.

On Sept. 8, Brown, after serving as Flint’s city clerk for 25 years, abruptly announced her resignation effective Sept. 30 — roughly one month before the November election. Brown gave no reason for her resignation and caught city officials by surprise.

“My administrative office was taken by surprise,” Flint Mayor Sheldon Neeley told the Flint Beat. “I had no foreknowledge of this occurring this soon.” Because of Brown’s resignation, Neeley reached out to Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson’s office for help running the city’s elections. Benson is up for re-election this year, raising questions about the ethics of her involvement in Flint’s elections.

“Can her office be considered impartial in running the elections in Flint?” Patrice Johnson, chair of PIME told The Federalist. “The law states that if you are running for office, you cannot be an election inspector in the precinct in which you’re running.”

Despite such questions, Johnson sees Brown’s resignation as a step in the right direction. Brown’s tenure as Flint city clerk has led to multiple controversies, including giving mayoral candidates the wrong filing deadline in 2015 and alleged failure to process absentee ballots.

“The pressure we’ve put on the city led to this,” Johnson said. “This is a HUGE win.”

Regardless of Brown’s resignation, Johnson expects Flint to fully comply with PIME’s demand letter and balance its number of partisan election inspectors in time for the November election.

“In a state with more than 7 million registered voters, and where an election inspector need not live in the precinct in which they work, there is no excuse for an unhealthy imbalance of workers at our township and municipal elections,” she said.

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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House Passes Liz Cheney’s Trojan Horse Elections Bill Enabling Democrat Takeover Of The Ballot Box

BY: TRISTAN JUSTICE | SEPTEMBER 22, 2022

The House of Representatives passed legislation on Wednesday to overhaul the 1887 Electoral Count Act and re-write election rules to benefit Democrats in presidential contests.

The bill, proposed by GOP Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney and Rep. Zoe Lofgren, a Democrat from California who is under Cheney on the Jan. 6 Committee, reforms the 135-year-old law to narrow the grounds for objections to presidential electors and open the door to late-day voting.

Cheney’s “Presidential Election Reform Act” became the Democrats’ answer to their failed effort to override state election laws in H.R. 1, which Senate Republicans blocked last summer. The legislation carries some of the same provisions of the doomed election bill at the top of Democrats’ congressional agenda. Just nine Republicans supported the bill, all but one of whom supported President Donald Trump’s second impeachment and are either retiring or have lost their primaries.

New York Republican Rep. Claudia Tenney, who co-chairs the Election Integrity Caucus, condemned the bill as “the latest attempt from House Democrats to stack the democratic process in their favor” and complained that the proposal did not go through the proper legislative process. The text was only released days before the Wednesday vote and received no bipartisan hearing or markup in committee.

“It is nothing more than a partisan messaging bill intended to score cheap political points weeks before an election,” Tenney said in a press release outlining the legislation’s flaws.

“The bill broadly defines a ‘catastrophic event,’ which could be used to extend balloting for up to five days after the polls close in a presidential election,” Tenney said. “It also tramples on the core principle of state sovereignty and directly contradicts the United States Constitution. The legislation also creates broad private rights of action in a backdoor to empower Democrat election lawyers and partisan operatives.”

The congresswoman from central New York called on her colleagues to outlaw the private takeover of elections through “Zuckerbucks” and boost security at the ballot box.

Illinois Republican Rep. Rodney Davis similarly condemned the bill’s expedited passage through the lower chamber on the House floor and highlighted the hypocrisy over electoral objections.

“Democrats have objected to every single Republican presidential win in the 21st century,” Davis said.

In 2017, Democrats objected to more states certifying President Donald Trump’s win than Republicans did four years later for Joe Biden.

“I believe what the House Democrats and the Jan. 6 Committee are doing is irresponsible and wrong,” Davis said. “They have allowed their dislike for one man, President Trump, to cloud their judgment and guide their actions — no matter the consequences to this institution or the Constitution that they claim to want to uphold.”

According to Axios, similar legislation in the upper chamber has already drawn support from the 10 Republicans needed in the split Senate to circumvent a filibuster.

Tristan Justice is the western correspondent for The Federalist. He has also written for The Washington Examiner and The Daily Signal. His work has also been featured in Real Clear Politics and Fox News. Tristan graduated from George Washington University where he majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow him on Twitter at @JusticeTristan or contact him at Tristan@thefederalist.com.

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Youngkin’s Crusade To Get Radical Gender Theory Out Of Virginia Schools Puts Kids And Families First

BY: CASEY CHALK | SEPTEMBER 20, 2022

Author Casey Chalk profile

CASEY CHALK

Last week, Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin further delivered on his gubernatorial campaign promise to give parents more control over their children’s education. The Virginia Department of Education issued new model policies specifically directed at resisting the radical gender ideology that has become commonplace even in the Commonwealth’s elementary schools.

The New Model Policies

Virginia’s new model policies explicitly state that students’ participation in school programming and use of school facilities such as bathrooms or locker rooms should be based on their biological sex and that modifications should be offered only to the extent required under federal law. They also assert that students who are minors must be referred to by the name and pronouns in their official records unless there is explicit parental approval for the use of something else. And they also declare that schools may not conceal information about a student’s so-called gender identity from his or her parents and that parents must be given the opportunity to object before any gender-related counseling services are offered.

The document reads: “Parents have the right to instill in and nurture values and beliefs for their own children and make decisions concerning their children’s education and upbringing in accordance with their customs, faith, and family culture.” In a rebuke to those officials and administrators who have encouraged wrongly named gender-affirming “care,” it explains: “Parents are in the best position to work with their children and, where appropriate, their children’s health care providers.”

The new model policies are subject to a 30-day period for public comment that begins later this month. Following that period, in accordance with a 2020 state law, school boards across the Old Dominion must adopt policies that are “consistent with” those of the state’s Department of Education. Macaulay Porter, a spokeswoman for Youngkin, noted that the updated guidance “delivers on the governor’s commitment to preserving parental rights and upholding the dignity and respect of all public school students.”

A Personal Anecdote

I can personally speak to how widespread the promotion of gender ideology has become, at least in Fairfax County, where I attended school for 12 years and then worked as a high-school history teacher. The very day after Virginia’s Department of Education issued this new guidance, my family attended a picnic in our neighborhood. My two eldest children (ages 9 and 7) were playing a game with other neighborhood kids, including, a bit awkwardly, a teenage girl who attends the local public high school. During the game, and when my wife and I were not nearby to overhear, this teenager told my children that she identifies as both a girl and a boy and that there are “72 genders.”

My wife and I homeschool our children. It wasn’t something I was eager to do — my extended family has been attending county public schools since the 1960s, and I was proud of my experience in FCPS 20 years ago. But I knew things had changed very dramatically in the last two decades, and I wanted to shield my children from ideas and behaviors that are not commensurate with their maturity. Simply put, prepubescent children don’t need seminars in gender fluidity and sexual experimentation. But over this past weekend, an FCPS-educated teenager took it upon herself to impart those ideas to my children.

As confusing as this was for my children — and as upsetting as it was to my wife and me — I do not level much blame at this teenager for taking away part of their innocence and forcing us to have conversations with our children about gender and sex we had been hoping to delay just a few more years. I blame FCPS teachers and administrators who welcomed this gender ideology in schools. And I blame smartphones and social media for proliferating these ideas with little parental oversight.

Protecting Our Children

Left-wing corporate media and Democratic politicians, of course, have been quick to attack Youngkin over his new policy. “Virginia has moved to restrict the rights of trans students in its public schools,” reads a mid-September headline from NPR. The Department of Education’s guidance “calls for the misgendering and outing of children in schools where they’re supposed to be safe. Absolutely shameful,” tweeted Virginia Democratic Del. Mike Mullin.

Think about the fact that in my kids’ very first interaction with a public school-educated teenager, she couldn’t help but share the confused, biologically inaccurate gender ideology she has been wrongly told is the most important part of her identity. That speaks to the pervasive nature and aggressiveness of this ideology and its adherents. Think about how many kids have had their lives thrown into chaos by adults who tell them they may be a boy in a girl’s body, “gender fluid,” or some other nonsense that may very well cause them permanent physical and emotional damage.

Thankfully, our kids trust their parents enough and have a solid enough understanding of what makes boys different from girls that we could have a brief, open, and hopefully instructive conversation about what they experienced on a neighborhood playground. Youngkin’s edict aims to ensure those conversations happen in the home, guided by loving parents, and less influenced by the confused ideology of bureaucrats who don’t have your children’s best interests at heart.

Casey Chalk is a senior contributor at The Federalist and an editor and columnist at The New Oxford Review. He has a bachelor’s in history and master’s in teaching from the University of Virginia and a master’s in theology from Christendom College. He is the author of The Persecuted: True Stories of Courageous Christians Living Their Faith in Muslim Lands.

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Unintended Consequences: Vaccine Mandates Are Flipping Voter Registrations And Driving Political Change

BY: ASHLEY BATEMAN | SEPTEMBER 08, 2022

lawyer testifying before council meeting

ASHLEY BATEMAN

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.

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“MAGA REPUBLICANS WANT TO DESTROY OUR DEMOCRACY”

TERMINOLOGY

noun

ter·mi·nol·o·gy | \ ˌtər-mə-ˈnä-lə-jē \

plural terminologies

Definition of terminology

1: the technical or special terms used in a business, art, science, or special subject

2: nomenclature as a field of study

Synonyms for terminology

Source: Merriam Webster Dictionary Web Site

PROPAGANDA

noun

pro·pa·gan·da | \ ˌprä-pə-ˈgan-də , ˌprō- \

Definition of propaganda

1capitalized : a congregation of the Roman curia having jurisdiction over missionary territories and related institutions

2: the spreading of ideas, information, or rumor for the purpose of helping or injuring an institution, a cause, or a person

3: ideas, facts, or allegations spread deliberately to further one’s cause or to damage an opposing causealso : a public action having such an effect

The History of Propaganda

Propaganda is today most often used in reference to political statements, but the word comes to our language through its use in a religious context. The Congregatio de propaganda fide (“Congregation for propagating the faith”) was an organization established in 1622 by Pope Gregory XV as a means of furthering Catholic missionary activity. The word propaganda is from the ablative singular feminine of propogandus, which is the gerundive of the Latin propagare, meaning “to propagate.” The first use of the word propaganda (without the rest of the Latin title) in English was in reference to this Catholic organization. It was not until the beginning of the 19th century that it began to be used as a term denoting ideas or information that are of questionable accuracy as a means of advancing a cause.

Source: Merriam Webster Dictionary Web Site

In the hands of gifted people, terminology can be used for good purposes, as well as deceptive purposes. Of course, you already knew that. It’s part of the bases for propaganda.

Public Office speech writers are expert in these areas. The command of the English Language seems to be found more with professional speech writers that America’s general population. Sad commentary.

Left alone, the rhetoric produced by political parties begin to create a populace that believe more lies than truth. In political terms, we are called “low information voters.” More accurately, we have become deluded citizens. Deluded to what is truth. Left unchecked, tyrannical slavery is just around the corner.

These facts make what prompted this article. The terminology in question is heard daily on any news program, especially cable news. That terminology is, “MAGA Republicans want to destroy (or tear down) our democracy.”

It began around the 2016 general election, and has been amplified to overwhelming proportions. This terminology is as dangerous as it is deliberately deceiving.

First of all, we are not now, nor have we ever been, a DEMOCRACY. The framers of our Constitution were deliberate in that decision. A democracy is mob rule. 51% of the population controlling/oppressing the 49%. That is why our Forefathers gave us a REPUBLIC, more accurately, a Representative Republic in order to ensure Americans are never oppressed by anyone, any political party or force. To further enhance, and guarantee the success of the REPUBLIC, they gave us the “Electoral College” in our national elections that ensures all states, regardless of size, has equal say, insuring every vote counts and matters.

President Biden’s speech writers use the term a lot. You heard it multiple times last night in the speech. In fact, we who have a differing set of opinions, are a threat to the democracy President Biden and the Left want in America: Totalitarian rule by mob. (Reference summer of 2020 leading up to November 8^th. Multiple mobs of violent people burning down portions of America and threatening every American who disagreed with them).

I want to maintain our REPUBLIC. I want to do whatever I can, legally and morally correct, to stop all efforts to turn America into RULE BY MOB DEMOCRACY. How about you?

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The Transgender Movement Is Not Just Intolerant. It’s Barbaric and Violent, And It’s Coming for Your Children

BY: JOHN DANIEL DAVIDSON | AUGUST 19, 2022

Author John Daniel Davidson profile

JOHN DANIEL DAVIDSON

VISIT ON TWITTER@JOHNDDAVIDSON

Hardly a day goes by now that we don’t see another appalling example of transgender ideology’s aggressive intolerance in the public square. Recently, the target of that intolerance was an 80-year-old woman in the small town of Port Townsend, Washington, who was permanently banned from her local YMCA pool after she objected to a “trans woman” — a man — in the women’s locker room.

And for daring to speak out about that in public, she and her supporters were attacked this week in broad daylight by a mob of trans activists and Antifa thugs.

According a recent report in the New York Post, the woman, Julie Jaman, confronted a YMCA employee, a “trans woman” named Clementine Adams, in the locker room after Jaman observed that Adams was clearly a man. To Jaman’s credit, she did not mince words.

“I saw a man in a woman’s bathing suit watching maybe four or five little girls pulling down their suits in order to use the toilet,” Jaman told the Post. “I asked if he had a penis and he said it was none of my business. I told that man to ‘get out right now.’”

For exercising what would have been universally praised not long ago as guts and common sense — confronting a man trespassing in a women’s locker room to watch little girls undress — Jaman was accused of “being discriminatory” by the YMCA manager, threatened with the police, and ordered to leave. A member of the YMCA for 35 years, she was subsequently banned from the pool permanently.

Jaman’s ordeal wasn’t over, though. On Monday, Jaman and others gathered to speak out about the local YMCA’s dangerous policy of allowing men into the women’s locker room. As Jaman was speaking, a mob of Antifa militants, including burly, tattooed men, converged on the rally, screaming, “Trans women are women,” in an attempt to intimidate and drown her out. They ripped down the suffragette flags on display behind Jaman, who was visibly shaken and asked, “Are we going to get beat up here?” and asked supporters in the crowd to call the police.

The 80-year-old woman who was banned from her local swimming pool for raising concerns about a male in the female washroom was heckled as she gave a speech tonight.

Trans activists ripped down the suffragette flags behind her and tried to sabotage her microphone. #LetJulieSwim pic.twitter.com/LjHBFMfBHr
— REDUXX (@ReduxxMag) August 16, 2022

Eventually, the Antifa mob surrounded Jaman, whose supporters, most of them middle-aged and elderly women, had to form a protective circle around her. Some women were thrown to the ground. Others had their shoes ripped off. Just as black-shirted Antifa men were beginning to tussle with Jaman’s supporters, the police showed up.

It wasn’t enough, though, simply to terrorize and physically assault women exercising their First Amendment rights. The mayor of Port Townsend, a self-described “pervert and deviant” named David J. Faber, praised the mob that went after Jaman and her supporters, calling it an “incredible night” that was “beautiful” and falsely claiming that “Trans and cis-allies alike spoke love & support.”

As copious video evidence posted on Twitter shows, they did no such thing. They engaged in the thuggish intolerance, simmering violence, and blind rage characteristic of the far left — and then they reveled in it, with the likes of Faber praising the mob for their brutality toward an 80-year-old woman who dared to speak up.

Mobs like the one in Port Townsend on Monday, however, are merely the blunt instrument, the Brown Shirts of a much larger effort on the part of the left to sever the relationship between parent and child and reshape society in a way that allows adults, especially adult men, to fulfill their every desire — often at the expense of children.

But that effort isn’t being led by black-shirted Antifa thugs, it’s being led by medical professionals at some of the most prestigious hospitals in the country. In recent weeks, Libs of TikTok, Matt Walsh, Chris Elston (Billboard Chris), and others have been posting publicly available promotional videos and other information from Boston Children’s Hospital touting so-called “gender-affirming care,” which includes chemical castration, mastectomies, hysterectomies, and genital mutilation performed on minors.

Boston Children’s Hospital (@BostonChildrens) is now offering “gender affirming hysterectomies” for young girls pic.twitter.com/JOH5fFtGJ0
— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) August 11, 2022

Boston Children’s Hospital responded by removing all its videos and information about “gender-affirming care” from its YouTube channel and quietly updating its website to claim (falsely) that gender-related surgeries are only for those over 18.

Meanwhile, Big Tech and the corporate press predictably came to the defense of the hospital. Facebook banned Libs of Tik Tok this week, and NBC News’s Brandy Zadrozny spread misinformation by claiming BCH doesn’t perform genital surgeries on minors. Almost all media coverage of the BCH affair has been framed as far-right activists threatening the hospital and engaging in “stochastic terrorism” when in fact all that Libs of Tik Tok and others have done is post the hospital’s own materials.

The videos are genuinely horrifying. A buttoned-up surgeon calmly explaining phalloplasty to the camera over whimsical music can’t hide the horrifying fact that what’s being described is the cutting off of forearm flesh from a healthy girl to fashion a non-functioning penis. It is barbaric in the extreme, and the attempt to make it sound mundane and palatable in these videos somehow only highlights the barbarity and cruelty of it.

Boston Children’s Hospital will cut off flesh from a girl’s forearm or thigh, and remake that into a non-functioning penis.

The first step is to remove her uterus. pic.twitter.com/FyFNh4g31V
— Billboard Chris 🇨🇦🇺🇸 (@BillboardChris) August 14, 2022

And it’s not just Boston Children’s Hospital. Kaiser Permanente in Oakland, California, has amputated the breasts of a 12-year-old girl and castrated a 16-year-old boy in the name of “gender-affirming care.” Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh promotes puberty blockers for children. The pediatric gender program director at Yale has admitted on camera she believes children as young as 2 or 3 can be eligible for medical intervention and treatment on their “gender journey.”

In other words, the people and institutions behind this movement are not fringe, they are not the pink-haired youths and black-clad Antifa thugs screaming at old ladies in the streets. They occupy the elite heights of American society. They have real power and influence.

And they are not just angling to get between parents and their children, they are angling to get healthy girls and boys onto the operating table. They are angling to get grown men into women’s locker rooms, bathrooms, shelters, and dormitories. They are angling to get Child Protective Services to remove children from parents who refuse to go along with transgenderism.

And if you object or protest in any way, they are angling to get you labeled a bigot, a threat to child safety, a terrorist. And you know what that means.

John Daniel Davidson is a senior editor at The Federalist. His writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the Claremont Review of Books, The New York Post, and elsewhere. Follow him on Twitter, @johnddavidson.

‘Gender-Affirming Care’ Is the Opposite of Gender-Affirming and Caring

BY: NATHANAEL BLAKE | AUGUST 19, 2022

Author Nathanael Blake profile

NATHANAEL BLAKE

People don’t like hospitals that hurt children instead of healing them. Boston Children’s Hospital has been deluged with criticism after conservative activists highlighted its own materials promoting medical transition for minors. The hospital has tried to cover up its deeds, but it cannot escape the truth that so-called gender-affirming care isn’t. The euphemistic phrase conceals the brutal realities of medical transition, but these procedures — including puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and various surgeries — do not affirm patients’ gender, let alone care for them. Gender-affirming care is a lie and we must stop it.

The tide may be turning against the transgender craze. Across the pond, the United Kingdom’s infamous Tavistock pediatric gender clinic has been shut down, and a massive medical malpractice action has begun against those responsible for rushing children into transition. Here in the U.S., Republican politicians are increasingly willing to stand up against the radical transgender agenda, as even the spineless are realizing that this is a winning issue. And it seems only a matter of time until trial lawyers target America’s aggressive and unregulated gender clinic industry.

Thus, there is hope that regulations and lawsuits will curb the craze for rushing people, especially children, into medical transition. It is even possible to imagine a quiet climb-down in which the political left, and the institutions it controls, realize that radical gender ideology is a loser and sidle away from it. There have been a few signs that this is happening, such as New York Times articles questioning transgender orthodoxy.

Will Proponents Back Down?

But there are no guarantees of victory, in large part because many people may be in too deep to back down. Democrats in general, and the Biden administration in particular, have embraced transgender ideology. They have done everything from putting men in women’s shelters to using school lunch programs for poor children as leverage to force schools to adopt the rainbow agenda, including letting males into girls’ locker rooms. And, of course, pretty much every major left-wing group has followed the LGBT lobby into pushing a radical transgender agenda.

Nor is it only politicians and activists who have staked their credibility on the trans agenda. From education to entertainment to Big Business, a lot of people have embraced transgender ideology, including medically transitioning children. The medical industry in particular has a lot to lose, both in credibility and cash, if the transition train slows down. This may explain why pro-trans research is routinely published even though the studies are mostly low quality, with some being demonstrably terrible. The goal isn’t to publish good research, but to provide cover for an ideology that is chemically and surgically sterilizing children.

And, of course, there is pride — no, not the rainbow celebrations sponsored by big business, but actual personal pride. Will parents who bought into gender transition admit the harm they have done to their children? Will liberals admit not only that they were wrong, but that Christian conservatives were right? These and similar truths may be too hard for many to accept.

Consequently, we opponents of the transgender agenda must keep the pressure on. We must make sure that those in thrall to transgender ideology — from politicians to academia to the media to Big Tech and Big Business — either abandon it or are defeated. In doing so, it will help to show how the horrifying harms inflicted by gender transition are the result of denying the truth of sex and gender.

Gender-Affirming Care Is a Lie

Gender-affirming care is a lie because gender is not a free-floating metaphysical substance. Gender becomes nonsensical when disconnected from sex, because gender is the social expression of the biological realities of human sex. As Matt Walsh’s recent documentary “What is a Woman?” demonstrates, gender makes no sense without reference to biological sex — it either goes around in circles (e.g. a woman is anyone who identifies as a woman) or descends into crude stereotypes (e.g. a boy who likes pink must be a girl).

We are a sexually dimorphic species; the difference between male and female is essential to the continuation of humanity. Thus, though there is variation in gender expression between individuals, and gender expectations between cultures, gender always has to refer back to our embodied realities as male or female. Thus, there cannot be a gender identity that is deeper, more essential, or more immutable than our sex. And so it is impossible to have “gender-affirming” medical care that attempts to efface the reality of bodily sex.

There are people who are unhappy with their bodies and wish that they were the other sex. But they are not, nor can they become, the other sex — at most they can be chemically and surgically altered to resemble the other sex and attempt to socially live that role. These people need compassion and help in accepting their healthy natural bodies, not chemicals and surgery to contort their bodies into facsimiles of the other sex. Transition is never medically necessary, which is why activists encourage suicide threats from those who identify as transgender — they have to take themselves hostage because they are in no medical danger.

The ugly truth hidden behind the lying promises of “gender-affirming care” is that medical transition always inflicts physical harm for no physical benefit; it damages a patient’s body, rather than healing it.

Gender-affirming care isn’t, and it must be stopped.

Nathanael Blake is a senior contributor to The Federalist and a postdoctoral fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.

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Republicans Snag Over 1 Million Voters From Dems In Past Year: AP

Reported by GABE KAMINSKY, INVESTIGATIVE REPORTER | June 27, 2022

GERMANY-G7-SUMMIT — **(Photo by LUKAS BARTH / POOL / AFP) (Photo by LUKAS BARTH/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)**

Over 1 million U.S. voters in 43 states have fled the Democratic Party since 2021 and registered as Republicans, according to a new report. Republicans have gained major ground in suburban counties, according to the voter registration data examined by The Associated Press, as well as “in virtually every region of the country.” The findings come almost four months before the midterm elections in November, which a bipartisan swath of pundits has deemed a probable “red wave” in part due to messaging failures among the left.

“While Democrats may see a slight enthusiasm bump following the Supreme Court’s decision on abortion, it’s highly unlikely they’ll be able to sustain that for the next five months,” Andy Surabian, a Republican strategist, told The Daily Caller News Foundation.

Data for roughly 1.7 million voters who switched political parties was analyzed by the AP. The data, which according to the outlet comes from the political firm L2, reportedly shows that around two-thirds of the 1.7 million voters became Republicans — while only about 630,000 voters became Democrats.

Biden’s support in the suburbs has been widely credited as the reason for his success in the 2020 presidential election. While these areas “have tended to show a net advantage to Republicans,” Biden “registered a net Democratic advantage for the first time since Barack Obama’s victory in 2008,” Brookings Institution, a left-leaning think tank, said in a November 2020 report.

However, suburban counties near large cities like Denver, Atlanta and Pittsburgh, as well as near smaller cities like Harrisburg, Pennsylvania and Des Moines, Iowa, have garnered Republican support, the AP reported. (RELATED: ANALYSIS: We Just Got The Latest Indication Red Waves In Blue Cities Could Become A Reality)

CLEVELAND, OH – JULY 21: Balloons and confetti are seen at the end of the fourth day of the Republican National Convention on July 21, 2016 at the Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland, Ohio. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump received the number of votes needed to secure the party’s nomination. An estimated 50,000 people are expected in Cleveland, including hundreds of protesters and members of the media. The four-day Republican National Convention kicked off on July 18. (Photo by John Moore/Getty Images)

“Biden and Democrats are woefully out of touch with the American people, and that’s why voters are flocking to the Republican Party in droves,” Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel told the AP.

The data showing more registered Republicans comes after Democrats lost in droves across states last fall. In Virginia, Republicans swept statewide, notably taking the gubernatorial race with the election of Glenn Youngkin.

Republicans also won big recently in Texas, where Mayra Flores flipped a blue district in June with the support of Latino voters. The Democratic National Committee did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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Former Trump Officials Put Forward Plan to End The Border Crisis

REPORTED BY JENNIE TAER, INVESTIGATIVE REPORTER | May 11, 2022

Border Patrol Agents Monitor U.S. Mexico Border — **John Moore/Getty Images**

A dozen former immigration and law enforcement officials, many of whom served in the Trump administration, along with several conservative advocacy groups wrote a letter to Congress Wednesday laying out their game plan to end the border crisis.

The newly-formed coalition, which includes conservative organizations like The Heritage Foundation and groups like the national Border Patrol union, wrote a letter Wednesday addressed to lawmakers urging that no “amnesty of any type” be included in immigration legislation come the next Congress. The plan includes making migrants ineligible for asylum if they’ve already passed through a “safe third country” on their way to the U.S., completing construction of the southern border wall, and giving states the authority to enforce immigration laws, according to the letter. (RELATED: Trump Responds In Just Two Words To Claim He Wanted To Shoot Missiles At Mexican Cartels)

“Congress should be emboldened with the mandate to immediately legislate unflinchingly, ensuring that neither this nor any future administration is again able to weaponize loopholes in the immigration system—and defiantly refuse to follow plain law—to purposefully drive mass illegal immigration to the United States,” the letter stated.
“When the 118th Congress opens with new majorities in both chambers, it will be in large part because Americans have rejected the Biden Administration’s purposeful dismantling of our nation’s borders and our immigration enforcement infrastructure,” the letter stated.

New Border Security Coalition Provides Congress With Roadmap to End Biden Border Crisis, Reduce Illegal Immigration https://t.co/XwGiUGyjWZ
— Heritage Foundation (@Heritage) May 11, 2022

Assuming Republicans take the majority in Congress, the plan would provide a roadmap for their policy agenda, former acting Customs and Border Protection (CBP) commissioner Mark Morgan said in a statement.

“For far too long, Republicans have talked about ‘comprehensive immigration reform,’ which translates to amnesty, or simply advocated throwing more money at the border to solve the latest crisis. Those days are over. Those policy prescriptions are a recipe for failure. If you want to truly secure the border through reducing illegal immigration, implement policies that work. We look forward to working with members to make that happen,” Morgan said.
“The opportunity to legislate has been missed in several previous Congresses but the stakes are too high for it to be missed again,” the letter read.

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Ann Coulter Op-ed: Stop Talking About Ukraine, Republicans!

Commentary by Ann Coulter | Posted: Feb 23, 2022

The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Townhall.com, and WhatDidYouSay.org.

Stop Talking About Ukraine, Republicans!

Source: AP Photo/Andriy Dubchak

Amid the media’s 24/7 UKRAINE UPDATES, perhaps some enterprising journalist could write an article explaining how our esteem for that country’s borders benefits a single American — other than President Joe Biden.

Our own border has become a transmission belt for the third world, bringing in rapists, murderers, future welfare recipients and left-wing activists. The Democratic Party’s brilliant policy of defunding the police and emptying the prisons has, oddly enough, led to a breathtaking surge in violent crime. Our schools have been taken over by lunatics who teach white kids that they are evil — and probably transsexual. Inflation has hit a 40-year high.

U.S. media: Whither Ukraine?

Midterms must be coming!

In 2020, Democratic data scientist David Shor advised his party: “Talk about the issues [voters] are with us on, and try really hard not to talk about the issues where we disagree. Which, in practice, means not talking about immigration.” (Emphasis mine.) After the election, he said that the main way the media’s COVID hysteria hurt Donald Trump was by preventing anyone from “talking about Hunter Biden or immigration.”

Evidently, the only issue where voters don’t vehemently disagree with Democrats this year is the precise border of a country they’d never given a moment’s thought to until five minutes ago.

What Republicans should be doing: talking about the issues Democrats are trying to avoid.

What Republicans are doing: talking about Ukraine.

Whenever you see any media talking about Ukraine, your Pavlovian response should be, Oh, I see. They don’t want me to think about immigration or crime.

It’s not only the Democrats drawing benefits from the media’s sudden Ukraine obsession. There’s also the military-industrial complex.

President Dwight Eisenhower led Allied troops in World War II, but in his farewell address from the White House, he warned of the “unwarranted influence” on the government by “the military-industrial complex.” In the 60 years since, these bloodsuckers have been bleeding our country dry, solely to make themselves rich.

As Americans discovered to their dismay when the pandemic hit, we can’t make our own masks, pharmaceuticals or aspirin. We can’t make our own computer chips, razors, bicycles, toys, sneakers, Levi’s jeans and on and on and on. But boy, do we make weapons! In our ruling class’s ideal country, there will be nothing but defense contractors, Black Lives Matter activists and Latin American gardeners.

Just five companies receive the lion’s share of taxpayer money for “defense” weaponry. In 2020, the U.S taxpayer doled out $75 billion to Lockheed Martin, $28 billion to Raytheon, $22 billion to General Dynamics, $22 billion to Boeing and $20 billion to Northrop Grumman. Since 2001, these five companies alone have cost the taxpayer $2.1 trillion.

To put this in perspective, the annual budget of the State Department and U.S. Agency for International Development is a little more than $50 billion. (And we should zero-out that whole budget, too.) During the COVID pandemic, when the government ordered people not to work, the entire supplemental food budget was about $70 billion.

Ronald Reagan’s victory in the Cold War should have been a sad day at Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and Boeing. Instead, it was the beginning of endless paydays. Today, the American taxpayer spends more on “defense” than during the Reagan buildup that crushed the USSR; more than during the Vietnam War, more even than the War on Terror after 9/11.

Worse, we’ve added a “think-tank industrial complex” — an army of useless, camera-ready blowhards to explain why our incessant meddling around the globe is always in America’s “vital national security interest.”

Why does NATO still exist? This alliance was the West’s response to Soviet aggression during the Cold War. Once the USSR collapsed (thanks to Reagan) and the Warsaw Pact disbanded, that should have been the end of it. Instead, we keep adding countries to the alliance — with a requirement of admission being that they buy their weapons from American defense contractors.

Everyone acknowledges that Vladimir Putin’s main concern is that Ukraine will be asked to join NATO. How about, as a compromise, the U.S. will pull out of NATO? (Another of Trump’s broken promises.)

Nope! Can’t shut down this utterly anachronistic organization, requiring America to defend the likes of Latvia, should some other pipsqueak nation violate its precious borders. (Why isn’t Latvia down in Texas right now, defending our borders?)

Far from unwinding NATO, our country’s leaders are constantly trying to expand it, thus increasing the odds that Americans will be forced to go to war over some other country’s sacred sovereignty. Pointless wars are the lifeblood of defense contractors! We pay the price and defense contractors get the money.

(Ike should be on Mount Rushmore for his “military-industrial complex” speech.)

This year, the worshipful reverence for Ukraine’s borders has the added bonus of blocking Americans from thinking about immigration and crime. Republicans ought to be talking their heads off about the unprecedented crisis at our border, Afghan “refugees” raping little kids in our country, illegal aliens hauling meth and fentanyl into our country, rampant shoplifting, carjacking and assaults destroying neighborhoods in our country.

Luckily, the GOP is too smart to fall for the media’s latest subject-changer.

Oh, wait —

@newtgingrich: “The Biden Administration talks and Putin acts. This is such a clear replay of Chamberlain trying to deal with Hitler that it is more than a little frightening. Putin is pushing day by day and has no fear of NATO because he has no fear of the United States or its President.”

GOP 2022 Contract With America: “Putin’s like Hitler.”

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Matthew Cochran Op-ed: Amid The Parent Surge, Republicans Can Either Lead, Follow, Or Get Out Of The Way

Commentary By Matthew Cochran | NOVEMBER 9, 2021

Americans have two political parties, both of which we loathe. We take turns punishing one by rewarding the other. Our political elites depend on this vicious cycle, and it’s why the only thing both parties ever seem to agree on is screwing ordinary Americans like a two-headed weasel in heat.

It’s easy to think it’s merely that vicious cycle at work in Virginia’s recent election upset: Democrats came out hard in favor of enabling bathroom rape, teaching kids that white skin is evil, and alerting the FBI about parents who expressed concern over such things.

So they got punished for it, and now Republicans have a new opportunity to squander. After that, Americans would normally punish the GOP for failing their mandate by reelecting Democrats who finally rediscovered how to shut up about their true intentions for five minutes.

But the opportunity presented to Virginia Republicans goes beyond another chance for the GOP to suckle on a fresh serving of voters’ goodwill. The massive rightward shift in Virginia wasn’t just business as usual. It was driven by a growing number of parents choosing to reclaim their authority over their households.

Parents Awaken to Their Responsibilities

Providence has given parents the awesome responsibility to raise and provide for the well-being of their children. Like any true responsibility, it comes with the authority to carry it out. When parents are unable to fulfill those responsibilities alone, they delegate.

For example, if parents cannot reliably protect their household from murderers, rapists, and robbers, they collaborate with institutions that can. If they cannot adequately educate their children alone, they enlist the help of teachers. This delegation is ultimately why any and every government institution exists: to assist families in some way or another.

It is precisely this authority Democrat Terry McAuliffe openly tried to usurp. As a result, the election became a referendum on whether children belong to the state. Enough parents were willing to say “no” that a blue state turned red overnight.

Parents can be tricked into delegating their authority to the unfit if they can plausibly tell themselves their children will be fine. The public school system is proof enough of that.

But the past couple of years have rapidly eroded that plausibility. We’ve seen schools forcibly cover children’s faces and isolate them from friends over an illness that poses virtually no threat to them. Remote learning also exposed their curriculum to an extent most parents had never witnessed before. The promotion of sexual degeneracy by schools is likewise coming home to roost more and more often.

Justice Delayed Is Justice Denied

It’s also not just Virginia and not just the schools. Our state and federal governments have spent two years devastating our economy, stripping our stores bare, and inflating our currency, making it harder than ever to care for our children. Our media has spent even longer lying to us about all this and more, and it is only doubling down on censorship for the sake of our elites. Worst of all, the Biden-Harris administration has tried to threaten our families with destitution unless we submit to vaccines whose risks often far outstrip any potential benefit.

These are not things parents will forget—especially when committed by those to whom we delegated our authority for the sake of our children. There are also limits to how long any parent is willing to simply wait and hope for improvement before taking action for our children’s sake.

This reclamation of authority by parents is still a work in progress, certainly—McAuliffe only lost by two points, after all. But it is in progress, and it’s not easily reversible.

Once a parent realizes someone has threatened his child, he will never trust that person again. If parents cannot disassociate the people threatening them from the institutions these people run, then they will not trust the institutions either.

Nobody who’s gotten a good look at the true face of progressivism is going to forget it anytime soon. This new dynamic is not stopping. It is accelerating.

If Republicans Don’t Use Their Power, They’re Toast

That brings us to the opportunity for Republicans. I’ve seen a lot of people are calling this a seismic shift in government. But the only reason parents voted for Republicans is that they still hold out hope that the GOP might willingly serve on their behalf.

Should that hope prove false, parents won’t stop trying to reclaim their authority; they will just start doing so in even more earth-shaking ways. One way or another, America’s vicious two-party cycle is not going to persist for much longer. This is the bare minimum Republican office-holders need to do to keep that hope alive.

First, education needs to be addressed, and a few token policy changes aren’t going to cut it. Those faculty and administrators who betrayed parents’ trust need to be removed.

The person who was distributing pornography to your children in school, for example, won’t suddenly become trustworthy because someone makes a rule. The same is true of teachers and administrators who hate your child because of her skin tone. Those people need to go—some fired, some even prosecuted.

Public universities that train teachers to act this way likewise need to be addressed. No program peddling degeneracy and critical race theory to aspiring educators should receive any state funding.

To the timid who complain, “But that’s cancel culture!” I simply respond, “Yes.” If someone starts shooting at your children, you aren’t “sinking to their level” by returning fire. It is parents’ moral obligation to fight back. Leftist institutions chose to escalate to this level of aggression, and they can choke on the consequences.

Yes, this will certainly be a long and difficult battle, which is why parents should immediately be given school choice until it’s resolved. Let parents take their tax dollars away from these errant institutions so they can enlist the help of real schools instead.

Faith In Election Integrity Must Be Restored

Republicans’ second job should be to decisively end voter fraud in their municipalities so parents are guaranteed a voice in their government. There is no point in winning votes if we lose on counting votes.

Do a full forensic investigation of elections you won whether you think there was fraud or not. Prosecute every violation you find whether it made a difference in the outcome or not. And after the investigation, enact common-sense fraud control to address everything you found.

Americans deserve to have confidence in their elections, and parents need to know they still have a say. Republicans need to teach by example that any state or municipality that refuses to transparently ensure the fairness of its elections is doing so because they have something to hide.

Third, Republicans need to use their state and local offices to protect people against the corporations and the federal government that are actively attacking families. Ban corporate mask and vaccine mandates. Provide compensation and other assistance for people being fired for their consciences. Enact laws explicitly holding corporations responsible for the side-effects of any medical treatment they mandate. And, of course, prevent schools from forcing vaccines and other procedures on students—or encouraging such things behind their backs.

Sanctuary States for Right Voters

Now that federal officials are trying to classify outspoken parents as domestic terrorists, states and municipalities will also need to protect their people from those agencies. Republicans should be as diligent about creating sanctuary cities for their own people as the Democrats are about creating sanctuaries for illegal aliens.

Republicans and other conservatives have been great at making careers out of complaining about the left, but that isn’t going to cut it anymore. Parents are finally acting like parents again and taking back their God-given authority. They are offering Republicans a chance to assist them. They aren’t going to stop taking action just because Republicans fail yet again.

Neither are they going to stop because leftists call them racist for the thousandth time. Not only is everyone growing numb to such histrionics, they cease to matter when our children are under threat.

The left can complain about white women voting for white kids all they want, but mothers and fathers are almost always going to vote for their children—not because they’re white, but because they’re their children. No adequate parent really cares about someone’s motive for viciously attacking his family; parents are still going to defend their kids no matter what it takes.

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Democrats’ $3.5T spending bill creates ‘harmful penalties for marriage,’ Republicans argue

Reported By Ryan Foley, Christian Post Reporter | Friday, October 01, 2021

capitol building — U.S. Capitol | Unsplash/Joshua Sukoff

Republican senators warned this week that the U.S. House of Representatives’ $3.5 trillion budget bill championed by congressional Democrats creates “harmful penalties for marriage” that will make families more dependent on the federal government.

In a Thursday letter to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Senate Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden, 35 Republican senators, led by Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, expressed their concerns about the package.

“We were disappointed to learn that in some instances the House of Representatives’ reconciliation bill creates harmful penalties for marriage,” they wrote. “Discouraging marriage is not in our country’s best interest and sends the wrong message to our families.”

In August, the House passed a $3.5 trillion budget resolution that expands social safety net programs, including childcare, free community college, paid leave and programs that combat climate change. Meanwhile, the Senate passed a $1.2 trillion infrastructure package. On Thursday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., delayed voting on the Senate’s $1.2 trillion even though moderates sought a vote. President Joe Biden signed a continuing resolution to avoid a government shutdown and give Congress nine more weeks to negotiate 2022 appropriations bills.

The Republican senators defined a marriage penalty as “when a household’s overall tax bill increases due to a couple marrying and filing taxes jointly.” They also mentioned that federal programs such as Medicaid, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families and Section 8 housing reduce or eliminate benefits when a couple gets married.

“Federal policy should be designed to foster strong marriages, which are the foundation of strong families and strong communities,” the letter added. “Unfortunately, despite its original rollout as part of the ‘American Families Plan,’ the current draft of the reconciliation bill takes an existing marriage penalty in the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and makes it significantly worse.”

The senators provided an example of how the reconciliation bill penalizes married couples.

“For example, a couple in 2019 with two children where one parent earns $12,000 and the other $30,000 could pay $1,578 more in taxes — or nearly 4% of their yearly earnings,” the senators argued.
“The reconciliation bill could make the same family significantly worse off. It could nearly double the marriage penalty, costing the same parents $2,713 if they choose to marry.”
The lawmakers concluded that because “marriage is a vital social good,” it is “misguided and unfair for the government to build bigger barriers for couples to marry.”

The letter comes as the marriage rate in the United States has hit a new low. According to the Institute for Family Studies, 33 out of every 1,000 unmarried adults in 2019 got married. By contrast, that figure stood at 35 out of 1,000 in 2010 and a much higher 86 per 1,000 in 1970.

Republicans have consistently argued that federal programs have had an impact on the marriage rate. Last year, Republicans on the U.S. Senate Joint Economic Committee published a report titled “The Demise of the Happy Two-Parent Home,” which attributes the decline in marriages to the increased availability and use of federal welfare programs.

“Public ‘anti-poverty’ programs often exacerbated the problem of family instability by making single parenthood a more viable option and by discouraging marriage among those receiving benefits,” the report stated. “A safety net marginally reduces the costs of single parenthood, nonmarital childbearing, and divorce. It also can create a significant tax on marriage because the addition of a spouse with income typically reduces safety net benefits, and if he has only modest earnings or unsteady employment, the trade-off may not be worthwhile.”
The report argued that through the safety net, “a single mother can achieve about two-thirds of the standard of living she could get from marrying a sole breadwinner at that compensation level.”
“The safety net would put her about one-third higher, with no additional income, than the 10th percentile of male compensation,” the report reads.

Additionally, the report explained that “children raised by married parents do better on an array of outcomes.” Specifically, they have “stronger relationships with their parents, particularly with their fathers,” are “much less likely to experience physical, emotional, or sexual abuse” or “engage in delinquent behavior,” have “better health … and exhibit less aggression.”

Increased educational attainment and higher wages as adults, and a lower likelihood of living in poverty were also cited as benefits enjoyed by children of married couples.

The report provided empirical evidence attempting to demonstrate that the expansion of the social safety net in the 1960s led to a drop in the number of married people and the number of children born to unwed parents. Data found that the share of married American women dropped from 71% in 1962 to 42% in 2019. The percentage of children born to unmarried mothers rose from 5% in 1960 to 40% in 2019.

While the share of American children living in two-parent households has declined dramatically since the 1960s, one recent study from the Institute for Family Studies showed that the phenomenon of increased illegitimacy may have begun to reverse itself. The study found that in 2020, 70.4% of children under 18 lived with both parents, a slight increase from 69.1% in 2000 and 69.4% in 2010. At the same time, the percentage of American children residing in two-parent households remains far below the 87.7% recorded in 1960.

Ryan Foley is a reporter for The Christian Post. He can be reached at: ryan.foley@christianpost.com

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Hidden on Page 508 of the Infrastructure Bill Is a Plan to Make It Too Expensive to Drive a Car

Reported by Taylor Penley | August 4, 2021

The cost of living is on the rise, calls for yet another wave of pandemic restrictions have begun and now, buried deep in the so-called bipartisan infrastructure bill, the left has laid out yet another idea to bring Americans to their knees. Make no mistake: The suffering is intentional, goal-oriented and not bound to stop anytime soon. Still, one proposal in the 2,702 page infrastructure bill seems especially cruel — cruel enough to make it too expensive for many Americans to even drive a car.

Nick Short of the Claremont Institute highlighted an item on Pages 508-519 of the bill that would introduce a national per-mile motor vehicle user fee on a trial basis.

“Buried on page 508 of the 2,702 page infrastructure bill is a pilot program for a national motor vehicle per-mile user fee (MBUF) which is basically a long-term plan to make it too expensive to drive a car,” Short said Tuesday on Twitter.

The pilot program is set up “to test the design, acceptance, implementation, and financial sustainability of a national motor vehicle per-mile user fee, to address the need for additional revenue for surface transportation infrastructure and a national motor vehicle per-mile user fee” and “to provide recommendations relating to the adoption and implementation of a national motor vehicle per-mile user fee,” the bill says.

An article from The Lid Blog attached to Short’s tweet detailed the proposal even further, breaking down each component, from the program’s objectives to its proposal that “volunteers” from each state should discover different ways to collect data on miles driven by “both commercial and private vehicle operators.”

On Page 513, the proposal says that the “Secretary of the Treasury shall establish, on an annual basis, per-mile user fees for passenger motor vehicles, light trucks, and medium- and heavy-duty trucks.” In theory, these per-mile user fees would vary by vehicle contingent upon several factors, including — you guessed it — environmental impact.

To ease any apprehension about participating in the pilot program, the measure indicates that participants’ identities will be protected, perhaps, as The Lid said, to prevent ostracization “if this happens and achieves the desired result.”

The left can chalk up this test run of what eventually might turn into a full-blown measure to make owning a vehicle next-to-impossible as an effort to be “environmentally conscious,” but is it instead another way to cripple our existing ways of life?

We might dismiss it now, but imagine telling yourself five years ago that the government would order small business closures, codify when and how Americans could worship and adopt an increasingly draconian “do as I say, not as I do” policy to address a global pandemic.

From the way we work to the way we breathe, so many aspects of our lives have already changed — albeit willingly, for some. What’s so different about changing how we get to one place from another?

With $10 million dedicated to this program for each year from 2022 to 2026, it’s easy to see how the government doles out what it acquires from hardworking Americans.

Any Republican lawmakers who vote in favor of this “bipartisan” bill have no right to label themselves “conservative.”

This proposal is the antithesis of conservatism.

Taylor PenleyContributor,

Taylor Penley is a political commentator residing in Northwest Georgia. She holds a BA in English with minors in rhetoric/writing and global studies from Dalton State College. As a student, she worked in government relations and interned for Georgia’s 14th congressional district. She previously published an article with Future Female Leaders and published a rhetorical analysis of President Reagan’s Brandenburg Gate Address in a collegiate journal. She aspires to earn an MA and a PhD in journalism in the near future.

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Michael Brown Op-ed: What the IRS got remarkably right in the midst of a terribly wrong ruling

Commentary By Michael Brown, CP Op-Ed Contributor| Monday, June 21, 2021

Just type the words IRS, Christian, and Bible in your search engine and you’ll get a flood of results, most of them starting with headlines like this: “IRS denies Christian nonprofit tax exemption, saying biblical values are Republican.” Or this, “IRS denies tax-exempt status to Christian nonprofit group because ‘Bible teachings are typically affiliated with the Republican Party’.”

Naturally, there has been outrage among Christian conservatives over this ruling, pointing to this yet another example of the IRS’s anti-Christian, anti-conservative bias. That’s also why most of the commentary has focused on the egregious ruling itself, which is being appealed.

Yet, in the midst of this very wrong ruling, the IRS made a very right observation: by and large, the Republican Party is more aligned with biblical teaching than is the Democratic Party.

Of course, neither major party is fully aligned with God and His Word. And, without a doubt, the world of politics cannot be confused with the purity of the spiritual realm and the kingdom of God. We can also debate which party’s policies are closest to biblical values when it comes to helping the poor or the immigrant.

That’s why, on principle, even though I have voted for Republican candidates for years while not voting for a single Democrat, I am registered as an Independent. It’s just my way of saying that I cannot align myself fully with any political party.

At the same time, when it comes to important biblical values, in the great majority of cases, the Republican platform is more aligned with Scripture than is the Democratic platform, to the point of getting the backhanded recognition of the IRS.

As for the organization involved in this ruling, it is called Christians Engaged, and its stated purpose is: “to awaken, motivate, educate, and empower ordinary believers in Jesus Christ to.”

Their threefold emphasis is: “Pray for our nation and elected officials regularly. Vote in every election to impact our culture. Engage our hearts in some form of political education or activism for the furtherance of our nation.”

Yet when they applied for tax exempt status, they were rejected.

In the words of the official IRS ruling (I’m quoting the most relevant section), “Specifically, you educate Christians on what the Bible says in areas where they can be instrumental including the areas of sanctity of life, the definition of marriage, biblical justice, freedom of speech, defense, and borders and immigration, U.S. and Israel relations. The Bible teachings are typically affiliated with the [Republican Party] and candidates. This disqualifies you from exemption under IRC Section 501(c)(3).”

Again, the mocking headlines were well deserved, including this one, from RedState: “The IRS says if you believe in God and the Bible, you are working for the GOP.”

That’s why, for good reason, the ruling is being appealed by First Liberty Institute, which has argued that the IRS ruling “errs in three ways: 1) [it] invents a nonexistent requirement that exempt organizations be neutral on public policy issues; 2) [it] incorrectly concludes that Christians Engaged primarily serves private, nonexempt purposes rather than public, exempt purposes because he thinks its beliefs overlap with the Republican Party’s policy positions; and 3) [it] violates the First Amendment’s Free Speech, and Free Exercise, and Establishment clauses by engaging in both viewpoint discrimination and religious discrimination.”

Yet in the midst of the pushback against the IRS, many have missed the biting irony of the words of the ruling where biblical teaching is associated with the Republican Party. In large measure, the IRS got this exactly right.

As noted in RedState, “The Bible, yes, IRS, the word is capitalized, is not neutral on the sanctity of life. It is not neutral on homosexuality. It is not neutral on marriage. It is not neutral on justice.”

Let’s remember that the Democrats positioned themselves as the party of the Religious “Nones” (meaning, people with no religious affiliation).

And it is the Democrats who have become increasingly radical in their pro-abortion zeal.

And the Democrats who are pushing the Equality Act, which guts religious liberties in favor of LGBT extremism.

As I noted in September 2019, “There is no question about it. There is not even a desire to hide it. The Democrat Party continues to grow spiritually darker to the point of actually proclaiming itself the party of the religiously non-affiliated. Is it any surprise?”

Or, as I pointed out in August 2020 (with regard to the Biden-Sanders “Unity Plan”), “God is never mentioned in the document. Not once.” In contrast, “the word gender occurs 22 times.

“More importantly, ‘transgender’ occurs twice, and in very specific contexts: ‘we will act expeditiously to reinstate Department of Education guidance protecting transgender students’ rights under Title IX and make clear that schools shall not discriminate based on LGBTQ status.’”

In sum, “LGBTQ” is “mentioned 17 times in the plan” while “‘religion’ is mentioned once, ‘Christian’ and ‘Jew’ and ‘God’ are not mentioned at all, but ‘LGBTQ’ is mentioned 17 times. Need I say more?”

And what of the rising, virtually unchecked tide of anti-Zionism and antisemitism within the Democratic Party?

For good reason the IRS pointed to what “the Bible says” with regard to “U.S. and Israel relations.” Here, too, the Republican Party stands much closer to Scripture than does the Democratic Party.

So, while the IRS ruled quite wrongly in denying Christians Engaged tax-exempt status, it ironically got one thing right: if you teach the Bible accurately, by and large, you’ll end up siding with the Republicans rather than the Democrats.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Dr. Michael Brown (www.askdrbrown.org) is the host of the nationally syndicated Line of Fire radio program. He holds a Ph.D. in Near Eastern Languages and Literatures from New York University and has served as a professor at a number of seminaries. He is the author of 40 books. Connect with him on Facebook, Twitter, or YouTube.

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COMMENTARY: Lindsey Graham Says Unemployment Benefits Are So High People in His Own Family Aren’t Working

Commentary by C. Douglas Golden June 9, 2021

When the disastrous April jobs report came out, President Joe Biden was asked by a reporter whether or not the Democratic push to keep expanded $300 weekly federal unemployment checks contributed to the historic miss.

“No, nothing measurable,” Biden said during a media briefing on May 7, according to a transcript.
“I know some employers are having trouble filling jobs. But what this report shows is that there’s a much bigger problem. … It is that our economy still has 8 million fewer jobs than when this pandemic started. The data shows that more — more workers — more workers are looking for jobs, and many can’t find them. While jobs are coming back, there are still millions of people out there looking for work.”

That’s still the official administration line after two months of disappointing jobs numbers. The fact that the federal government is paying people not to work has nothing to do with the promised economic rebound falling flat, at least when it comes to jobs.

During a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing on Tuesday, GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina wasn’t having it. As he questioned Shalanda Young, acting director of the Office of Management and Budget, he said he had relatives who weren’t working because unemployment benefits were so high. Graham was arguing that the benefits should be killed before they’re set to expire in September.

“There’s a lot of jobs out there that are unfilled and will never be filled until you change the benefit structure. Does that logic make sense to you, given where we’re at in our economy?” Graham asked Young.
“I understand the logic, but I’ve also not met Americans who would prefer not to work,” Young replied. “There’s a dignity to work in this country.”

A chuckling Graham used his relatives to show why this is problematic. “I got a lot of people in my family that ain’t working because they’re getting — I’ll show you some of my family,” Graham said.

“Bottom line is I think there are people out there, they’re not bad people, but they’re not going to work for $15 an hour if they make $23 unemployed,” he added.
“That doesn’t make you a bad person. If you’re working for $15 an hour, that makes you almost a chump.”

The expanded benefits have been part of a tug-of-war between the White House and Republicans on Capitol Hill and in governor’s mansions. As part of the American Rescue Plan, Biden kept the $300-a-week checks going through Sept. 6. As The New York Times reported last week, the administration has promised not to renew them, but has no plans to cancel the additional aid early.

However, many Republicans have seen enough, with 25 states having already ended the benefits starting this month.

In a Friday media briefing, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said “that’s OK,” although the Biden administration still sees the $300 payments as an “extra helping hand.”
“Every governor is going to make their own decision,” Psaki told reporters.

That decision should become markedly easier when staring down two months of dreadful jobs reports. April is the month that sticks out; that’s when economists were expecting a million new jobs and the total was 278,000. And let’s not forget May. The 559,000 jobs added still came in below expectations of 675,000 jobs. Let’s also not forget that a roaring economy was set to be a Democratic talking point going into 2022.

Even though the Biden administration inherited a strong economy before lockdowns shuttered businesses, and even though the beginning of mass vaccinations was felicitously timed with Biden’s inauguration, the massive bounceback the White House was counting on hasn’t quite happened yet. But the weekly $300 checks have nothing to do with it, they swear. After all, who wouldn’t choose the dignity of work over getting paid to sit on the couch?

It isn’t just Shalanda Young making this argument — during the May 7 media briefing on the April jobs numbers, Biden claimed “most middle-class, working-class people that I know think the way my dad did.
“He used to say — and I know I’m repeating myself, but I’m going to continue to because I think it’s critical. ‘A job is a lot more than a paycheck,’ he’d say. ‘Joey, it’s about your respect, your dignity, your place in the community.’ More than a paycheck. It’s people’s pride. It’s about being able to look at your child in the eye and say, ‘Honey, it’s going to be OK.’”

I know, empurpled prose like that makes the tears well up in your eyes. However, if you stay at home for $23 an hour instead of working for $15 an hour, it’s a lot easier to look your child in the eye and say, “Honey, it’s going to be OK.” Yes, a job might be “people’s pride.” It’s not the kind of pride that goeth before the fall, but it’s the kind of pride that, in this case, goeth before making considerably less money for doing actual work.

Now, was Graham making a rhetorical point, throwing his family under the bus, or both? Whatever the case, one hopes they — as well as millions of other Americans — get off the dole with all due rapidity.

In a country where anyone over 12 can get a vaccine with ease and employers are desperately looking for workers, the federal government needn’t be throwing $300 a week at the unemployed in the name of recovery.

ABOUT THE COMMENTATOR:

C. Douglas Golden, Contributor,

C. Douglas Golden is a writer who splits his time between the United States and Southeast Asia. Specializing in political commentary and world affairs, he’s written for Conservative Tribune and The Western Journal since 2014.@CillianZeal

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Biden’s Campaign Manager Calls Republicans ‘A Bunch Of F**kers,’ Then Calls For Unity

Reported by VIRGINIA KRUTA, ASSOCIATE EDITOR | December 15, 2020

US President-elect Joe Biden delivers remarks at The Queen in Wilmington, Delaware, on November 10, 2020. – A week after losing the US election, President Donald Trump remained shut up in the White House on November 10, 2020, pushing an alternate reality that he is about to win and blocking Democrat Joe Biden’s ability to prepare the transition. (Photo by ANGELA WEISS / AFP) (Photo by ANGELA WEISS/AFP via Getty Images)

Jen O’Malley Dillon referred to Republicans as “a bunch of fkers” during a Glamour magazine interview that was published Tuesday. O’Malley Dillon, who managed former Democratic Texas Rep. Beto O’Rourke’s presidential campaign before taking on the same role for President-Elect Joe Biden, spoke with author Glennon Doyle about running two back-to-back campaigns with small children and what she expected as she took on her new role in the Biden administration: deputy chief of staff. (RELATED: REPORT: Biden Expected To Name 3 More Top White House Aides)**

O’Malley Dillon told Doyle that one of the ways Biden had been able to connect with American voters was his focus on unity as the ultimate goal.

“The president-elect was able to connect with people over this sense of unity. In the primary, people would mock him, like, ‘You think you can work with Republicans?’ I’m not saying they’re not a bunch of f**kers. Mitch McConnell is terrible,” she explained. “But this sense that you couldn’t wish for that, you couldn’t wish for this bipartisan ideal? He rejected that. From start to finish, he set out with this idea that unity was possible, that together we are stronger, that we, as a country, need healing, and our politics needs that too.”

O’Malley Dillon also argued for more compromise in politics, saying that she knew how difficult that was in a nation so polarized.

“I get that you’re not supposed to talk politics at the holiday dinner. Well, f**k that. It’s because we don’t do that that we are in this situation now,” she said, adding, “I also think, as in love, compromise is a good thing. The atmosphere in the world now is like, ‘Oh, if you compromise, you don’t believe in something.’ No, it’s: I believe in it so much that I’m going to work to find a path we can both go down together.”

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Watch: Black Ex-Dem Rips ‘The View’ Host for Calling Black Republicans ‘Props’

Commentary By C. Douglas Golden | Published September 13, 2020 at 7:10am

https://www.westernjournal.com/watch-black-ex-dem-rips-view-host-calling-black-republicans-props/

Frequent Fox News guest Leo Terrell isn’t particularly happy at being called a “prop.”

The civil rights lawyer used to be the reliable voice of the left on the fair and balanced network (in particular on Sean Hannity’s show) but defected to the GOP during this election cycle.

He’s taken exception with how he and other black Republicans have been treated, particularly by partisans of the left who can’t understand why any melanated individual would vote for anyone but the Democrats.

Sunny Hostin, co-host of “The View” and a lawyer, is the latest high-profile figure to register her disbelief.

Hostin and the rest of “The View” coterie were discussing Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden’s poll numbers last week, in particular his lagging support among Hispanic voters in Florida. This shouldn’t be astonishing, as Hostin alluded to; a goodly number of these voters are of Cuban or Venezuelan extraction and decided (or were forced) to extract themselves from those countries due to socialist/communist governments.

“I actually wasn’t surprised to hear it because Cubans in Florida typically do vote Republican,” Hostin said in a clip that went viral.

“That wasn’t a surprise to me. It wasn’t a surprise to me that black voters are overwhelmingly the backbone of the Democratic Party — 83 percent in favor of Biden.”

“You hear all of this coming from the Trump campaign about how black people have nothing to lose and they are going to overwhelmingly vote for Trump, and you had all the black people props all over the RNC talking about all the stuff they’ve done for the black community. You heard [former White House press secretary] Sarah Sanders yesterday talking about all the things that have been done for the black community by the Trump administration.”

Terrell, appearing Thursday on Hannity’s show, tore into Hostin’s remarks:

“Sean, you just laid out some facts, and this is the problem: See, the D

READ THE REST OF THIS COMMENTARY AT: https://www.westernjournal.com/watch-black-ex-dem-rips-view-host-calling-black-republicans-props/?utm_source=Email&utm_medium=aa-newsletter&utm_campaign=can&utm_content=firefly&ats_es=1703275f97009d3a9c3cbb1a34025de5

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Conservative Mom Who Famously Confronted Beto O’Rourke Scores Massive Election Win

Reported By Jack Davis | Published July 1, 2020 at 8:18am

URL of the originating web site: https://www.westernjournal.com/conservative-mom-famously-confronted-beto-orourke-scores-massive-election-win/

Lauren Boebert, whose forthright defense of the Second Amendment at a rally for former Democratic presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke brought her national attention, on Tuesday won a Republican congressional primary in Colorado.

President Donald Trump retweeted a post from Boebert in which she said, “I am a mother to 4 boys. My husband and I are raising them to be strong men! I refuse to send my children into a socialist nation. Their freedom IS my motivator! Threaten the liberty of Americans, and I’ll be there to hold you accountable!”

“Congratulations on a really great win!” Trump said.

The president had earlier tweeted support for incumbent Republican Rep. Scott Tipton, who drew 45 percent of the vote compared with 55 percent for the challenger.

Boebert — who operates Shooters Grill, a restaurant in Rifle, Colorado, where all of the waitresses openly carry handguns — will face Democrat Diane Mitsch Bush in the November election.

“I’m excited and eager to take this fight on to the Democrats and represent the people of the 3rd Congressional District, just like I’ve been promising them I would,” Boebert said after the polls closed, according to The Denver Post.

Her website is an unapologetic, in-your-face declaration of opposition to all that leftist Democrats stand for.

“There is a battle for the heart and soul of our country that I intend on helping win,” Boebert says on the website. “I’m running for Congress to stand up for our conservative values, address our current representatives’ failed promises, and put far-left Democrats back in their place.”

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“Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the Squad and the rest of these left-wing lunatics are taking a wrecking ball to our country while our current representative stays utterly silent,” she says. “Hard-working, patriotic Americans like you and me don’t want the Green New Deal and socialized medicine. Every time AOC and the rest of the Squad pipes up with another crazy idea, I will remind them that our belief in God, Country and Family are what built the United States of America into the greatest nation the world has ever known.”

Boebert also has taken a strong pro-police stand at a time when law enforcement is under attack across the country.

She crashed an O’Rourke rally last fall to take the former Texas congressman to task for saying he would take away Americans’ AR-15s if elected.

Boebert was wearing her Glock handgun as she confronted the Democratic candidate.

“I was one of the gun-owning Americans that heard your speech and heard what you had to say, regarding, ‘Hell yes, we’re going to take your AR-15s and your AK-47s.’ Well, I am here to say, hell no, you’re not,” she said as O’Rourke urged the crowd scolding her to allow her to speak.

Boebert said the only way citizens have to protect themselves against the evil of the world is to be ready to defend themselves.

“I would like to know how you intend to legislate evil. Because it is not the gun, it is the heart of the man that does that,” she said.

Boebert said gun confiscation would strip protection from“American citizens like myself, American mothers — I have four children, I am 5-feet-0, 100 pounds, cannot really defend myself with a fist.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Jack Davis

Contributor, News

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.

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Ann Coulter OPED: Yale Has to Go!

Commentary by Ann Coulter | Posted: Jun 17, 2020 6:00 PM

URL of the originating web site: https://townhall.com/columnists/anncoulter/2020/06/17/yale-has-to-go—p–n2570853/

Source: AP Photo/Beth J. Harpaz

The Democratic Party is being forced into taking ridiculous positions by its insane base. Defund the police! Dishonor the flag! Throw Christopher Columbus in a lake!

What a wonderful gift! All Republicans have to do is take the other side. Make themselves the alternative to madness. Instead, Trump and the Republicans have decided they’re going to be “Democrats Lite.”

I’ll let others berate Republicans for doing nothing about the rioting, the arsons, the beatings, the corporate and social media canceling. This column will address the GOP’s moronitude in response to attacks on the destruction of Confederate monuments. Works of art are being destroyed by Maoist vandals who have no idea what they’re doing.

Literally no idea.

Quick! Who was Fort Bragg named after? What did he do? Do you even know his first name? When you have to Google the guy on a statue to figure out who he is, maybe it’s not really the daily humiliation you claim it is.

At this point, the military bases are famous in their own right. No one hears “Fort Hood” and thinks of Gen. John Bell Hood. Fort Bragg, home of the 82nd Airborne, is many orders of magnitude more famous than Gen. Braxton Bragg. It would be like demanding President John F. Kennedy change his name because his namesake, John Fitzgerald, was a corrupt Boston mayor.

Most obviously, the Democratic Party is going to have to change its name. You want an institution that represents slavery? Confederate politicians were all Democrats, Democrats created Jim Crow, and the founder of the party was a slave holder. (The Republican Party was founded to end slavery.)

Speaking of repellant Democrats, Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., said on the Senate floor this week that the United States “didn’t inherit slavery from anybody. We created it.”

This is the most ignorant statement ever made on the Senate floor. (And that’s saying something!)

Every society has had slavery; it existed long before America did, including by American Indians (though they preferred torturing their captives to death, inasmuch as few of the natives farmed or built things). From 1530 to 1780, at least a million Europeans were kidnapped by African Muslims and forced into slavery. The vast majority were starved or beaten to death.

In fact, unless we’re counting the Democrats’ wearing kente cloth last week, slavery is the only African institution ever adopted by this country. Portuguese — not Americans — brought the first slaves to Jamestown in 1619 (The New York Times’ favorite episode of American history!). We, are, however, the only country that fought a war to end slavery.

Isn’t slavery bad enough? No, Kaine has to make it extra bad by calling slavery an American invention. A U.S. senator committed a blood libel against his own country.

Anything to say, Republicans? Even Obama would have corrected this boob.

The BLM fanboys complain that other countries don’t honor the losing side in their civil wars. Yes, exactly — that’s why their wars never end.

Myanmar has been in a civil war since 1948. Israel’s been fighting Palestinians since 1948. The Kurds and Turks have been fighting for half a century. At last count, there are two civil wars going on in the Philippines, and at least three in India.

America concluded its civil war by dominating and subjugating the losers, but also honoring their bravery.

Even before the war, the South was eons behind the North in industrial development. If the entire country had been the South, America never would have become the richest, most advanced nation on Earth. (And that’s how slaves built America!) After the war, it was like a third world country. On the other hand, Southerners could take justifiable pride in what everyone agrees was a better class of general and soldier.

At Appomattox, Gen. Ulysses S. Grant allowed Gen. Robert E. Lee to keep his sword. As Lee mounted his horse to leave, Grant saluted him. After announcing the South’s surrender at the White House, President Lincoln ordered the band to play “Dixie.” It was an amazing way to end a civil war.

My ancestors were abolitionists who fought for the Union, but you don’t have to be a Southerner to care about Confederate monuments. I can’t help but notice that the people trying to obliterate our history are not part of that history.

Not that long ago, nearly all Americans had pre-Civil War ancestors. Not anymore! Recent immigrants, by which I mean people who arrived after 1865, think the country started with them. They find it hilarious to destroy anything that happened before they got here.

Talk about cultural imperialism!

What about the black Revolutionary heroes, like Crispus Attucks and Phillis Wheatley? Nope, you can forget about foundational black Americans, too. The first two centuries of our nation’s history are canceled. Why would that interest someone from Pune, India, Mogadishu, Somalia, or Bangkok, Thailand? (That would be Kshama Sawant, socialist Seattle city council member, Democrat; Rep. Ilhan Omar, Democrat; U.S. Sen. Tammy Duckworth, Democrat.)

Corporate plunderers, globalists, the wolf of Wall Street, 8 million “diversity” jobs (that go to Indians, not the descendants of American slaves, as intended) — that’s the America they revere.

The new arrivals are fine with Red Guards going into cemeteries, ripping up symbols of our heritage. Just don’t dare lay a finger on their privately owned Rothkos!

What do the Republicans say? No problem! Senate Leader Mitch McConnell says he’s “OK” with changing the names of military bases. Trump tweets narcissistic bluster.

How about a bill withholding all federal funds from Yale University until it changes its name? The school’s namesake, Elihu Yale, was not only a slave owner, but a slave trader. Quite a dilemma for the little snots who attend and teach there! It will be tremendously damaging to their brand. After all, true sublimity for a Social Justice Warrior is virtue signaling and advertising their high SAT scores at the same time.

If you refuse to fight, Republicans, don’t you at least want to have some fun?

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Poll: 47% of Young Democrats Prefer Other Countries over America

Written by Alana Mastrangelo | 14 Jan 2020

URL of the original posting site: https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2020/01/14/poll-47-of-young-democrats-prefer-other-countries-over-america/

ORLANDO, FLORIDA – JUNE 18: An anti-Trump protester makes a sign during a protest against President Donald Trump outside a rally where Trump officially launched his re-election campaign on June 18, 2019 in Orlando, Florida. (Photo by Gerardo Mora/Getty Images)

Slightly more than one third — 36 percent — of Americans 18 to 29 say that other countries are better than the United States, according to a recent poll released by Pew Research.

Among Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents under the age of 30, nearly half, 47 percent, say that there are other countries that are better than the U.S. Meanwhile, just 20 percent of Democrats age 50 and over agree with this sentiment.

“Democrats have become more likely to say there are other countries that are better than the U.S.,”says Pew Research. “In telephone surveys, the share of Democrats saying this is higher than at any point since the question was first asked by Pew Research Center in 2011, and there has been a corresponding decline in the share saying the U.S. stands above other nations.” This poll demonstrates the dramatic shift in the Democrat party’s base, and the potential schism between traditional Democrat voters and young and woke progressives.

The study also noted that young Americans are “more likely to say it would be acceptable if another country became as militarily powerful as the U.S.”

According to Pew Research, a majority of adults — 61 percent — say that the United States should maintain its status as a military superpower, but that more than half — 55 percent — of Democrats under the age of 30 admit that they would find it acceptable if other nations became as militarily powerful as the United States.

Among young Republicans and Republican-leaning independents, these numbers are significantly lower, as just 19 percent of adults under the age of 30 agree with their young Democrat counterparts with regards to the idea that other countries are superior to the United States.

Among Republicans ages 50 and older, only 4 percent share agree with this sentiment.

The report added that while a majority of Republicans say that the Untied States should try to maintain its status as a military superpower, 38 percent of Republicans under the age of 30 say that it would be acceptable if another country became as militarily powerful as the U.S.

You can follow Alana Mastrangelo on Twitter at @ARmastrangelo, and on Instagram.

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Poll: Democrats Cause Patriotism to Plummet Ahead of July 4th

Written by HARIS ALIC | 2 Jul 2019

URL of the original posting site: https://www.breitbart.com/2020-election/2019/07/02/poll-democrats-cause-patriotism-to-plummet-ahead-of-july-4th/

MLADEN ANTONOV/AFP/Getty

The number of Americans who consider themselves “extremely proud” of their country is at a record low ahead of Independence Day.

A new Gallup poll released on Tuesday found that while 70 percent of all U.S. adults say they are proud to be Americans, only 45 percent say they are “extremely” proud of their country.

This was the second consecutive year in which the number of individuals identifying as extremely patriotic fell below 50 percent. Overall the share of Americans identifying as “extremely” patriotic is now at the lowest level since Gallup began asking the question in 2001.

Gallup found the decline in patriotism to be largely driven by Democrats. Of those identifying with the party, only 22 percent said they were “extremely” proud to be Americans. Similarly “subgroups that typically identify as Democrats — women, liberals and younger adults,” also expressed lower levels of patriotism, according to Gallup.

The new polling confirms trends witnessed among Democrats since President Donald Trump took office. The share of Democrats expressing patriotism plummeted by double digits from 43 percent in 2017 to 32 percent in 2018. Although Democrats have historically reported lower levels of pride in their country, this year’s total of 22 percent is the lowest on record since Gallup began measuring the question.

Republicans, on the other hand, continue to express record levels of patriotism. Gallup found that 76 percent of individuals associated with the GOP identified as “extremely” proud to be Americans—only ten percentage points less than the group’s recorded high in 2003.

Even though Gallup shows a correlation between levels of patriotism and which party controls the White House, the level of pride among Democrats since Trump took office is exponentially low. During the administration of President George W. Bush, the percent of Democrats expressing extreme pride in their country never fell under 46 percent. In comparison, during the presidency of Barack Obama the share of Republicans identifying as extremely proud to be American never dropped below 68 percent.

Gallup, however, did find that the two parties more broadly agreed about “American economic achievements,” with 89 percent of Republicans and 64 percent of Democrats expressing pride. Likewise, Republicans and Democrats showed reverence for the U.S. military, with 98 percent of Republicans and 84 percent of Democrats saying they were proud of the institution.

Gallup conducted the poll between June 3 through June 16 by surveying 1,015 adults from across the country. The poll had a margin of error of +\- 4 percentage points.

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NYT Tries To Fact Check Trump’s Tweet on Abortion, Immediately Ends Up Backfiring on Twitter

Reported By Ben Marquis | Published March 1, 2019 at 1:21am

URL of the original posting site: https://www.westernjournal.com/ct/nyt-tries-fact-check-trumps-tweet-abortion-immediately-ends-backfiring-twitter/

In light of the recent fierce discussion over late-term and even post-birth abortions, Republican Nebraska Sen. Ben Sasse introduced a bill called the Born Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act, which would require doctors and medical personnel to make all efforts to save the life of a baby that survived an attempted abortion, rather than kill it or stand idly by while it died naturally.

Incredibly, that bill failed to achieve the necessary votes for passage on Monday, according to The Daily Wire, after only three Democrats joined with Republicans to vote in favor of saving an abortion survivor’s life, while 44 other Senate Democrats heartlessly voted against the measure.

In response to that grotesque and disheartening outcome, President Donald Trump excoriated Democrats in a pair of fiery tweets Monday evening, calling the left “extreme” for being in favor of “executing babies” after they had been born.

Trump tweeted, “Senate Democrats just voted against legislation to prevent the killing of newborn infant children. The Democrat position on abortion is now so extreme that they don’t mind executing babies AFTER birth.”

He added, “This will be remembered as one of the most shocking votes in the history of Congress. If there is one thing we should all agree on, it’s protecting the lives of innocent babies.”

As if on cue, The New York Times set about the next day with an attempt to “fact check” the president’s outraged tweets, but that effort failed in rather stunning fashion — at least on social media.

Just scroll down through the overwhelmingly negative comments on the tweet from The Times.

The article from The Times glossed over what the bill would actually do — “require doctors to use all means available to save the life of a child born alive after an attempted abortion” — while highlighting criticism from opponents who falsely claimed the measure was “aimed at discouraging doctors from performing legal abortions.”

The article also argued that the bill was redundant due to a 2002 law known as the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act, though they failed to mention that prior law had no teeth for enforcement.

The Times article then quoted a couple doctors who insisted that babies surviving attempted abortions “hardly ever happens,” and provided various facts and figures about the age of infant viability to support the notion that late-term abortions are exceedingly rare — around 1 percent of all abortions — without mentioning that the 1 percent is still in the ballpark of around 10,000 such deadly procedures per year.

Yet, the Times admitted near the end of the article that aborted babies sometimes are born alive, and that doctors and patients will allow the baby to die naturally, all while being kept “comfortable” — echoing what Democratic Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam said in early February.

The article also admitted in the eighth paragraph, “The bill would force doctors to resuscitate such an infant, even if the parents did not want those measures.”

The tweet-trackers at Twitchy compiled a couple dozen of the brutal responses they received from Twitter users to highlight just how enormously the “fact check” of Trump’s tweets had backfired on The Times.

Countless users wondered why Democrats would vote against the bill if the issue the bill addressed was truly so “rare” and uncommon, as if that were indeed the case, a vote in favor of it really wouldn’t matter.

One user referenced Gov. Northam’s despicable commentary, and tweeted, “How can you work for the NYTimes and not know what Northam said, which kicked all this off? He specifically talked about newborns being born and then a discussion on what to do with them. This is why you’re fake news.”

Still another user hinted at Northam’s remarks and noted, “‘rarely born alive’ I guess that’s okay then! As long as they’re just rarely murdered after they’re already born and alive! Hopefully they’re kept comfortable!”

There isn’t near enough room here to include all of the saddened or snarky replies to The Times, but suffice it to say, the effort to “fact check” the president’s righteous and justified anger while defending Democrats voting against saving the life of newborn infants did not go over well, at all.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Ben Marquis

Contributor, Commentary

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GOP Congressional Members Introduce Constitutional Amendment To Enact Term Limits

Authored By C. Douglas Golden | January 5, 2019 at 2:13pm

URL of the original posting site: https://www.westernjournal.com/ct/gop-introduce-constitutional-amendment-enact-term-limits/

A new bill from two top Republicans would limit most people to 18 years in Congress via a constitutional amendment — something that’s bound to have career bureaucrats infuriated.

The amendment, according to CNN, is being introduced in the House and Senate by Rep. Francis Rooney of Florida and Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, respectively.

“For too long, members of Congress have abused their power and ignored the will of the American people,” Cruz said.

“Term limits on members of Congress offer a solution to the brokenness we see in Washington, D.C. It is long past time for Congress to hold itself accountable. I urge my colleagues to submit this constitutional amendment to the states for speedy ratification.”

Cruz had introduced a similar bill in 2017, but failed to gain traction.

The plan would limit House members to three terms of two years each and senators to two terms of six years each. This means that most people would be limited to 18 years in office, and only if they are elected to one office and then the other.

The language makes it technically possible to serve up to slightly less than 22 years if they’re appointed or elected to fill less than a half-term.

This, according to Rooney, is closer to what the nation’s founders envisioned.

“The founders never envisioned a professional political class,” Rooney said during an interview on Fox News Saturday.

“This is a much better way than having these entrenched politicians who are too aligned with special interests over a period of years. I would say 18 years is plenty of time to serve your country in.”

Neither Cruz nor Rooney would really be benefiting from the arrangement, should any politician be seen as having benefited personally from term limits. Rooney, 65, was first elected in 2016 and would be eligible to serve in the House until 2022. Cruz, who just won his second term, would be out of Congress in 2024.

It’s worth noting, however, that Rooney could possibly take over for Sen. Marco Rubio, who would be term-limited out if he won the Republican nomination. (Lest you think Rubio would be upset about it, consider that he’s a co-sponsor of the bill — along with Mike Lee of Utah and David Perdue of Georgia.)

And Cruz, who came to the Senate from a position as Texas’ solicitor general, could also technically run for the House if he so chose.

Incidentally, if you think that the bill can’t win bipartisan support, consider there was another major Democratic voice calling for term limits this election cycle: Beto O’Rourke, Cruz’s opponent.

“People in Texas and across the country recognize that members of Congress often focus on re-election at the expense of addressing the challenges our country faces,” O’Rourke said in a piece posted to Medium.

“We see that the longer you serve in Congress, the less connected, the less responsive, the less accountable you can become to the people you represent. And we recognize that imposing term limits on members of Congress — along with getting PAC money out of our politics and putting an end to gerrymandering — will help breathe new life and new ideas into our democracy.”

If even Ted Cruz and Beto O’Rourke can come together on something, maybe Congress can, too.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

C. Douglas Golden

Contributor, Commentary

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C. Douglas Golden is a writer who splits his time between America and Southeast Asia and believes in free speech and the Second Amendment.

@CillianZeal

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Dems AWOL as Last Week Marked 153 Years Since the GOP Outlawed Slavery Forever

Reported By Cillian Zeal | December 10, 2018 at 9:03am

URL of the original posting site: https://www.westernjournal.com/ct/dems-awol-last-week-marked-153-years-since-gop-outlawed-slavery-forever/

The Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. (KSB / Shutterstock)

A 153rd anniversary usually isn’t something that garners a lot of attention. The 13th Amendment, however, probably deserves to be mentioned every year. The 13th is a little-discussed amendment these days, if just because abolishing slavery isn’t exactly a controversial topic. Anybody in modern-day America who talked about the reinstitution of slavery would be summarily dismissed as being beyond help.

It’s a fairly short piece of law, too: “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction,” the amendment reads.

It also gives Congress the power to enforce the law.

Now, the traditional anniversary of the end of slavery, at least in the African-American community, is Juneteenth — June 19, the date in 1865 when Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger of the Union Army read the Emancipation Proclamation to slaves in Galveston, Texas. However, when the 13th Amendment celebrated its 153rd birthday on Dec. 6, it didn’t get a whole lot of mention. And what definitely didn’t get mentioned is that it wouldn’t exist if Democrats had their way.

As Ourdocuments.gov notes, “The 13th Amendment was passed at the end of the Civil War before the Southern states had been restored to the Union and should have easily passed the Congress.

“Although the Senate passed it in April 1864, the House did not. At that point, Lincoln took an active role to ensure passage through Congress. He insisted that passage of the 13th Amendment be added to the Republican Party platform for the upcoming presidential elections. His efforts met with success when the House passed the bill in January 1865 with a vote of 119–56.”

Indeed, it had to be ratified before the Southern states rejoined the union. The reason is that the Democrats considered Dixie their own personal fiefdom up until the late 1960s. Jim Crow laws, segregated schools, the KKK, massive resistance, eugenics — all of these things were brought to you by the Democratic Party and vigorously fought by the Republicans.

But, you say, what about the “great switch?” That’s when the Democrats supposedly became the party of racial justice, all put into motion to the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Well, yes, about that. The bill couldn’t have passed without Republican support.

Even the U.K. Guardian, of all sources, notes that “80 percent of Republicans in the House and Senate voted for the bill. Less than 70 percent of Democrats did. Indeed, Minority Leader Republican Everett Dirksen led the fight to end the filibuster. Meanwhile, Democrats such as Richard Russell of Georgia and Strom Thurmond of South Carolina tried as hard as they could to sustain a filibuster.”

The vote was taken during the “Solid South” era, where almost every elected official below the Mason-Dixon was a Democrat. Only eight out of 102 representatives from the former Confederacy voted for the bill in the House and one of 22 voted for it in the Senate.

Yet, the fact that the South is now pretty solidly Republican always brings a asking from Democrats, who constantly mistake the new South — the product of economic growth and migration — with the old South they provided over for so many years.

They lament the racism they so successfully fomented for years, as if their party played no role in it. They’ve washed their hands clean. As “penance,” they’ve taken on a different form of identity politics which doesn’t involve standing in the schoolhouse door but is every bit as pernicious.

That’s why the 13th Amendment ought to be celebrated a bit more, we think. Not only did it officially end slavery and passed without Democratic support, it had to be passed before the Southern Democrats could rejoin the Union, lest they continue one of the most evil practices in the history of this planet.

The Democrats have always been the party of oppression and identity politics, whether it be Dec. 6, 1865 or Dec. 6, 2018. If only America would remember that. The Democrats would certainly prefer you didn’t.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Cillian Zeal

Contributor, Commentary

Summary

Dick Morris: Trump’s Base Returns in Nick of Time

Opinion By Dick Morris | October 22, 2018 at 10:53am

URL of the original posting site: https://www.westernjournal.com/dick-morris-trumps-base-returns-nick-time/

The voters who elected Donald Trump in 2016 are returning to him just as the midterms approach. With their help, Trump has recorded his highest job approval in the WSJ/NBC poll since he took office — 47 percent.

But the real story is behind the numbers. Trump’s base — white non-college voters (38 percent of the country) is rallying to his candidates just as they did in the closing weeks of 2017. According to a Fox News poll, the only one that measures white non-college voters as a discrete group, Trump’s approval has surged among these folks.

In August 2016, his margin of approval over disapproval was only 11 points (54-43). By September, it had risen to a 17 point margin (57-40).

In their latest poll, Oct. 13-16, it surged to a 21 point margin (60-39).

These voters are coming home.

This base lives in a place that is a blind spot for the mainstream media. It doesn’t really know that these voters exist. They live away from the West Coast and outside of the Northeast. They haven’t been to college. And they are white. The failure to measure their changing opinions is responsible for the media’s error in predicting a Hillary Clinton victory in 2016 — and they haven’t changed their methodology since.

Trump’s base hides in plain sight during the bulk of the year. Estranged from the political process, they don’t follow it closely except when their man is in danger and summons them forth. That’s why the GOP did not do as well in the special elections of the past two years as Trump had hoped. But when the national fireball rings, they wake up and respond.

The controversy over the Kavanaugh nomination and the phony stories of sexual abuse energized the sleeping giant and motivated the voters to return to the Trump banner. Since, by emphasizing the immigration issue and the caravan arriving from Central America, he has held their attention.

The national polling is slow to pick them up on its radar. While their participation and increasing enthusiasm shows up quickly in the national job approval polling, it is slower to make its impact felt in the less frequent polling of the nation’s Senate races. The House polling, less frequent still, takes even longer to manifest their participation, but they are there, moving the needle.

The views expressed in this opinion article are those of their author and are not necessarily either shared or endorsed by the owner of this website.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Dick Morris

Dick Morris is a former adviser to President Bill Clinton as well as a political author, pollster and consultant. His most recent book, “Rogue Spooks,” was written with his wife, Eileen McGann.

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Scalia’s Daughter-in-Law Goes Nuclear on Democrats over Kavanaugh

Reported By Benjamin Arie | October 6, 2018 at

7:17am

URL of the original posting site: https://www.westernjournal.com/ct/scalias-daughter-law-goes-nuclear-democrats-kavanaugh/

Democrats desperately hoped that their antics surrounding the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh would keep him off the Supreme Court … but their actions seem to have seriously backfired. Instead of stopping the conservative judge, liberals appear to have unified the right.

Recent polls show that voters are re-energized to support Republicans in the upcoming midterm elections, and a majority of citizens of all backgrounds disapprove of how Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein, in particular, handled the unproven accusations against Kavanaugh.

Now, it looks like the left’s treatment of Kavanaugh may be repelling political moderates and independents. That’s the message of Adele Scalia, the daughter-in-law of late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, who died in early 2016.

The former justice may have been known as a conservative, but Adele Scalia is not.

“I’ve always considered myself politically moderate: I am unapologetically pro-life, but my views on affirmative action, Black Lives Matter, and gun control made me sympathize strongly with Democratic perspectives and occasionally led to arguments with my husband and father-in-law,” she wrote in an Op-Ed piece published by The Federalist.

Scalia checks many of the identity politics boxes revered by modern liberals. She’s a female, of course, and is also a “person of color” who immigrated from Trinidad and Tobago. As she pointed out herself in her article, she was never completely comfortable with the Republican party for a variety of reasons.

All that changed thanks to the appalling treatment of Kavanaugh by Democrats, and their rejection of evidence or presumption of innocence in favor of a political witch hunt.

“I have become a unicorn,” Scalia wrote.

“All it took was Democrats’ treatment of Brett Kavanaugh over the last few weeks to turn me into that elusive creature: a minority, immigrant woman who supports Republicans,” the former attorney and stay-at-home mother said.

Mincing no words, Scalia declared that what she saw happen over the last few weeks “convinced me that Democrats are not who they claim to be.”

“The party that established itself as a champion for the voiceless, powerless, and wrongfully accused, betrayed its values and launched a vicious attack on Kavanaugh that left him voiceless, powerless, and completely incapable of defending himself,” she wrote.

Scalia pointed out something that a few others have also noticed: Despite constantly pretending to stand for the rights of the accused when it comes to urban minorities, the left betrayed those principles when it came to a conservative white male.

“Against all logic and good faith, they released uncorroborated allegations of sexual misconduct to the public, counting on the backdrop of the ‘Me Too’ movement to make them that much harder to criticize or ignore. I still cannot reconcile these actions with the social and criminal justice reform platforms that Democrats campaign on,” she wrote.

Then she revealed something that should be a red alert to Democrats: For the first time since legally entering the country, Scalia feels compelled to officially become a full citizen so she can vote … for Republicans.

“These events opened my eyes to the hypocrisy of the Democratic Party,” Scalia declared, summarizing the problem.

The left just created a new minority, female immigrant conservative voter — and there could be many more previously undecided voters who have been motivated by the kangaroo court of last two weeks.

Well done, Democrats.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Benjamin Arie

Contributor, Commentary

Benjamin Arie has been a political junkie since the hotly contested 2000 election. Ben settled on journalism after realizing he could get paid to rant. He cut his teeth on car accidents and house fires as a small-town reporter in Michigan before becoming a full-time political writer.

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After Using Her, Feinstein Actually Threw Ford Under the Bus with Jaw-Dropping Accusation

Reported By Cillian Zeal | September 28, 2018 at

11:49am

URL of the original posting site: https://www.westernjournal.com/ct/feinstein-threw-ford-accusation/

If you had the stout constitution to sit through every moment of the Kavanaugh/Ford hearings Thursday, I’m both envious and curious. The envy stems from the fact that you could watch a room of craven politicians preen for the camera and donor-email clips and not lose interest. The curiosity stems from the fact that I get paid to do it, while most of our readership does not.

If you waited until the end, however, you got to glimpse the guiding spirit of the whole affair — or what a certain anonymous Op-Ed writer might have called the “lodestar” that directed the proceedings — in a line from Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee.

After being accused of leaking the letter that set this whole thing rolling, the California senator denied either she or her staff released it. Instead, she blamed the leak on a woman who was now utterly disposable to her — Christine Blasey Ford.

The exchange began after Texas GOP Sen. Ted Cruz questioned the leaking of the letter, which had been passed on to Sen. Feinstein.

“We also know that the Democrats on this committee engaged in a profoundly unfair process,” Cruz said.

“The ranking member had these allegations on July 30th and for sixty days, that was sixty days ago, the ranking member did not refer it to the FBI for investigation, the ranking member did not refer it to the full committee for an investigation.

“This committee could have investigated those claims in a confidential way that respected Dr. Ford’s privacy,” Cruz continued.

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“Dr. Ford told this committee that the only people to whom she gave her letter, were her attorneys, the ranking member, and her member of Congress.

“And she stated that she and her attorneys did not release the letter, which means the only people who could have released the letter were either the ranking member (Sen. Feinstein) and her staff, or the Democratic member of Congress, because Dr. Ford told this committee those are the only people who had it.

“That is not a fair process,” Cruz said.

There were two options for Sen. Feinstein in this situation: a) apologize or b) deny. If she chose option b), however, there wasn’t the obligation to take path c): throw Christine Blasey Ford under an entire Greyhound station of buses.

That’s what she decided to do, however.

“Mr. Chairman, let me be clear, I did not hide Dr. Ford’s allegations. I did not leak her story, she asked me to keep it confidential and I kept if confidential as she asked,” Feinstein said in response.

“She apparently was stalked by the press, felt that what happened, she was forced to come forward, and her greatest fear was realized,”Feinstein continued.

“She’s been harassed, she’s had death threats, and she’s had to flee her home.”

After blaming the Republicans for their investigation, which she called “a partisan practice,” she continued to talk up the possible imperilment Ford was in.

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“I was given some information by a woman who was very much afraid, who asked that it be held confidential, and I held it confidential until she decided that she would come forward,” Feinstein said.

She was then asked if her staff had leaked the letter by Sen. John Cornyn, another Texas Republican.

“I have not asked that question directly, but I do not believe — the answer is no,” Feinstein responded. “The staff, they did not.”

“Well, somebody leaked it if wasn’t you,” Cornyn said.

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“I did not, I was asked to keep it confidential, and I’m criticized for that too!” she said.

“It’s my understanding that her story was leaked before the letter became public, and she testified that she had spoken to her friends about it and it’s most likely that that’s how the story leaked, and she had been asked by press.

“But it did not leak from us,” Feinstein concluded. “I assure you of that.”

Yes, the letter leaked because this woman, who thought she was in grave jeopardy, leaked the whole thing to the press by telling her friends, who were willing to put her in that grave jeopardy by passing it on.

It had nothing — nothing — to do with the Democrats who would have benefited most from this and would have had the motivation to pass it on.

Right.

Every single problem with this entire process can be, in some way, traced back to Dianne Feinstein. She’s the one who sat on the letter, refusing to bring it up when it should have been addressed. She’s the one whose cryptic statements helped stoke the embers of curiosity. She’s the one who would call for an FBI investigation even though the FBI added the letter to Kavanaugh’s background file and moved on. She’s the one who helped oversee the circus we witnessed Thursday.

And, once Christine Blasey Ford was finally disposable to her, she was tossed to the tigers as an encore.

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Judge Jeanine Tarnishes Obama Legacy in Brutal Fashion

Reported By Lisa Payne-Naeger | September 9, 2018 at

12:58pm

URL of the original positing site: https://www.westernjournal.com/ct/judge-jeanine-tarnishes-legacy/

You’ve got to love Judge Jeanine Pirro and her common-sense plain talk. She speaks to mainstream Americans just as well as, if not better than, President Donald Trump on matters that are near and dear to their hearts, on issues that affect their lives on a daily basis.

In her latest monologue Saturday night, Pirro brilliantly outlined why Americans rebelled against the establishment of either party to elect Trump.

On Friday former President Barack Obama spoke at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and in that speech he unloaded on the current administration with countless criticisms. Not only did he try his best to cast the Trump White House in a bad light, he tried to take credit for Trump administration successes.

That gave Pirro all the ammunition she needed to so succinctly outline the current differences between the mindset of voters who elected the current president and their mindset when they elected him.

And in the “Opening Statement” segment of Fox News’ “Justice with Judge Jeanine,” she held nothing back.

She began: “All of you have a decision to make. It has never happened in the history of this country, an ex-president viciously attacking his successor, trashing our commander in chief, his party and all those Americans who put him in the Oval Office…

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“There is so much hatred and resentment over the success of this president that they simply cannot handle it. I’ve got news for you. It’s not going to stop. The haters aren’t going anywhere. But if you’re a patriot and you like the course America is on, just ignore them, get behind this president and vote.

“Yesterday, with a full-throttle savage attack on the president, Barack’s message, obstruct and resist. He pontificates about the reality of racial discrimination, slavery and the quote, ‘darker aspects of America’s story’ …”

Pirro went on to cite various instances in which Obama and his administration facilitated racial and religious division in the nation. She skillfully dissected Obama’s comments on the economy, Middle East policy, relations with Russia, money to the Clinton Foundation, antifa and the various other narratives Obama pushes to stoke his base into hatred and division.

The list is long.

Pirro addressed Obama directly and at length: “You ran the most corrupted administration since Harry Truman and you can’t stand it that every metric under Trump is better off than when you were in office.

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“And Donald Trump is one of the biggest threats to our democracy? How dare you? This man is the president of the United States, someone that we put in office and he is to be respected. Your attack on him as a racist and a fascist is not about making things better for us, its about you, your ego and your corrupt, deep-state power structure…

“You desperately tried to defeat Trump and it didn’t work. And you remain in Washington to support the resistance and obstruction of a sitting American president while you stoke your racial cop -ating narrative.”

As Pirro tied it all together, it almost seems too simple. Americans have seen through the smoke-and-mirrors version of the nation presented by the left.

“Your version of America is not the America we want,” Pirro said, still addressing Obama. “To us, social justice is about justice for American citizens, and not illegal criminals. To us, social justice is about taking care of veterans who come back to our shores with fewer limbs than when they left. To us, social justice is not about burning our flag. It is about raising it and lifting it.

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“I’m sorry to say this, but there’s one thing that you’re going to have to live with. The only reason that we have an outsider businessman president is because of you, your lies, your policies and your divisiveness. You, Barack. You elected Donald Trump and there’s nothing you can do about the fact that he’s sitting in the Oval Office now. So I guess I should say, thank you, Barack.”

Barack Obama should know better than to try to speak out against a sitting president, especially this one. Americans have woken up to the fact that they are better off under policies that support capitalism, less regulation and thriving economy rather than divisiveness, open boarders and socialism.

And Judge Jeanine delivered a perfect narrative to describe what Americans are thinking, regardless of the critical narrative presented by Obama and the left. If Obama is upset at seeing his legacy go up in smoke, he has no one to blame but himself .

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Lisa Payne-Naeger

Contributor, Commentary

An enthusiastic grassroots Tea Party activist, Lisa Payne-Naeger has spent the better part of the last decade lobbying for educational and family issues in her state legislature, and as a keyboard warrior hoping to help along the revolution that empowers the people to retake control of their, out-of-control, government.

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

Wave Goodbye

A.F. Branco | on June 6, 2018 at 7:40 am | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-wave-goodbye/

More and more, due to the booming economy and the recent May “Jobs Report”, the blue wave may be turning into a Small trickle.

More A.F. Branco cartoons at Constitution.com here.

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A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into the cartoons that have been seen all over the country, in various news outlets including “Fox News” and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as James Woods, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, and even the great El Rushbo.

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Maxine Waters Panders To Millennial Voters, Shamed When Only 10 Kids Show Up For Event

Reported By Ben Marquis | June 4, 2018 at 1:25pm

URL of the original posting site: https://www.westernjournal.com/ct/waters-panders-millenial-voters/

Largely owing to her vehement and vitriolic opposition to President Donald Trump, Democratic California Rep. Maxine “Impeach 45!” Waters has been heralded as something of a leader among liberals these days.

The media has even attempted to portray the 79-year-old Waters as some sort of guiding beacon for liberals of the millennial generation, granting her the nickname “Auntie Maxine” in a bid to further the notion that young people will flock to and follow her experienced wisdom.

But that image of Waters is little more than illusory, as was clearly revealed during a campaign event Sunday which was explicitly targeted toward young millennials but had an exceptionally low turnout among the desired audience, according to The American Mirror.

Waters promoted the June 3 event on Twitter as a “Meet & Greet Tweet-a-thon” with the elected representative and young supporters.

The event was intended to teach Waters’ young supporters how to “reclaim our time” and get them “energized and ready” to get out and vote on her behalf.

But judging by the comments on that post, Waters’ support among not just millennials, but voters of all ages in general, was simply not evident, nor was it evident in a short video from the event tweeted out by Waters later in the day.

Judging by that tweet, not many more than 10-15 actual millennials showed up to meet and greet Waters, a majority of whom ended up uncomfortably arrayed at the front with a microphone shoved in their face to speak about the issues most important to them. They mostly spoke about immigration concerns and their mounting student debt, as well as the increasingly dismal homeless problem in the state.

Waters eventually reclaimed the microphone from her young supporters and delivered a brief campaign-style speech which proclaimed that Democrats would retake control of Congress via an energized “Blue Wave” of liberal and progressive voters in the November midterm elections.

As the camera panned around during her speech, empty tables and chairs sparsely populated by a handful of older and senior supporters were on display.

At one point near the end of her monologue, Waters shifted her focus toward attacking her chief rival in the upcoming election, Republican candidate Omar Navarro, who she appeared to smear based on his alleged wrong way of thinking as a person of Latino heritage.

“He has a last name that is Latin. He’s Cuban and what a lot of our people don’t understand is, he supports the president building a wall,” Waters said of her GOP opponent.

“He’s opposed to DACA, he does not support DACA, and in addition to that, he is not worried at all, has not said a word about what is happening at the border,” Waters added, a reference to the separation of families that come across the border illegally, a policy that existed under former President Barack Obama but which has now drawn fire under Trump as it is actually being enforced.

Waters does not represent the next great hope of the Democratic party among young millennial voters, but if the liberal media wants to continue to press that ludicrous narrative in spite of evidence to the contrary, let them have at it.

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

The Orange Wave

A.F. Branco | on May 30, 2018 at 7:40 am | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-the-orange-wave/

The Democrats blue wave may be drowned out by the all of Trump’s achievements this coming midterm election.

More A.F. Branco cartoons at Constitution.com here.

A.F.Branco Coffee Table Book <—- Order Here!

Donations/Tips accepted and appreciated – $1.00 – $5.00 – $10 – $100 – it all helps to fund this website and keep the cartoons coming. – THANK YOU!

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Pollster Gets Shock Trump Results, Immediately Disavows Own Poll

Reported By Ben Marquis | May 7, 2018 at 8:24am

URL of the original posting site: https://www.westernjournal.com/ct/pollster-shock-results-disavow/

Much has been said and written about the use of polls and polling data over the past few years, particularly as it related to candidate-turned-President Donald Trump and typically in regard to how poll samples are skewed to disfavor him and marginalize his support.

According to Breitbart, a Reuters/Ipsos poll released Friday contained results that were so against the grain of that poll’s usual results that the pollsters actually added in a sort of disclaimer when the results were released, seemingly disavowing the results of their own poll.

The openly stated reason for that disavowal was that the poll showed a sudden spike in support for the president and a number of his policies over the most recent polling period.

That would be the latest weekly approval numbers compiled by the Reuters/Ipsos polling team, which placed Trump’s approval rating at 48 percent and disapproval at 49 percent among all adults — with a 49-49 tie among registered voters — for the period of April 27-May 1, a significant uptick in approval over the prior week’s results.

That sudden surge in Trump’s approval compelled the pollsters to preface their report with an explanation that cast the shocking results as an outlier they refused to accept as reality, but would report to the public nonetheless.

“This week’s Reuters/Ipsos Core Political release presents something of an outlier of our trend,” cautioned the pollsters. “Every series of polls has the occasional outlier and in our opinion this is one.

“So, while we are reporting the findings in the interest of transparency, we will not be announcing the start of a new trend until we have more data to validate this pattern.”

Interestingly, when Trump’s approval rating was broken down by party line, it showed the president received 20-79 approval versus disapproval among Democrats, 81-18 approval among Republicans and a 51-45 split in his favor among independents.

A breakdown of the issues shows where Trump’s support is strong, as he cleared the 50 percent approval threshold on a number of incredibly important issues, including the economy (57-39), employment and jobs (59-35), dealing with the Islamic State group (58-35) and taxation (52-42).

Even on the hot-button issue of immigration, Trump came out ahead with a rating of 50-47 percent in his favor.

The president was also winning support, albeit with slimmer margins, on the issues of foreign policy (48-45), dealing with Congress (47-46) and international trade (49-43).

On a separate but important note as we approach the midterm elections, the Reuters/Ipsos poll showed Democrats held only a slight five-point lead over Republicans on the generic Congressional ballot — 39-34 percent — with 14 percent undecided.

Unfortunately for Democrats, while their base was a bit more solid than Republicans in this measure, the poll showed independents leaning more toward the GOP — 22-19 percent — with 19 percent supporting a third party and 31 percent still undecided.

The poll of 1,548 Americans doesn’t appear to be as skewed toward the left as we have seen with other polls. Samples included 556 Democrats, 579 Republicans and 163 independents — though as a whole the respondents appeared to identify slightly more as Democrat than Republican.

If the Reuters/Ipsos poll is truly an outlier, we’ll know for sure in another week or two if those numbers remain reverse dramatically.

That said, there is no denying that Trump has recently been gaining steam — particularly in regard to the economy, jobs and potential peace with North Korea, to say nothing of a possible “Kanye bump” — so much so that even the pollsters have to admit that more Americans view Trump as “winning” than they would have imagined.

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Trump Poised to Use Trick Reagan Loved to Gut Parts of Omnibus Bill

Reported By Ben Marquis | April 11, 2018 at 10:59am

URL of the original posting site: https://conservativetribune.com/trump-trick-gut-parts-omnibus-bill/

When Congress recently passed — without having read — a $1.3 trillion omnibus bill that was more than 2,200 pages, fiscal conservatives were outraged by the gluttonous and wasteful spending it contained. President Donald Trump, who reluctantly signed the bill despite an initial threat to veto, expressed a similar sentiment when he made clear he would never sign another bloated spending bill like that again. And now it looks like he may be taking steps to undo some of that terrible bill.

Perhaps feeling a bit of buyer’s remorse or simply heat from their base, Trump and congressional Republican leaders recently held talks to find a way to trim some of the fat from the omnibus bill, according to Politico. The most likely way to do that would be through a process known as rescission, and Trump’s White House is reportedly working closely with House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy to put a package together that could cut billions of dollars from the recently passed spending bill, if approved by a simple majority in Congress.

In analysis for The Washington Times, Trump campaign economic adviser Steven Moore and Trump transition tax policy adviser James Carter explained some of the history and process behind the rescission budgetary maneuver, a rarely-used anti-spending tool that last saw favor under President Ronald Reagan.

Up until former President Richard Nixon, presidents had the power to “impound” and refuse to spend federal funds for projects they viewed as wasteful or unnecessary, something Nixon reportedly did with roughly 20 percent of the funds appropriated by Congress each year of his presidency until 1974.

That is when Congress passed the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act, which blocked a president’s sole authority to impound funds and offered up the congressionally-approved rescission tool to stop funding for wasteful programs in its place. The process works by a president submitting a rescission proposal to the House of Representatives, which must then be approved by simple majorities in both chambers of Congress within 45 days. If the proposal is ignored or fails to achieve majorities, the spending remains unchanged.

Reagan proposed some 596 rescissions totaling $43 billion during his two terms, though Congress only approved 213 of those rescissions totaling only $16 billion in saved funds. Unfortunately, only about $6 billion in rescission proposals have been approved since Reagan left office, the last of which occurred in 1999.

It is worth noting that the Democrats’ chief obstructionist to Trump, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, can do little to stop a rescission proposal from receiving a vote as debate on such measures are limited to only 10 hours and can’t be filibustered. However, given the slim majority held by Republicans in the Senate and the tendency of the more moderate establishment members to break away from their party and join the opposition to Trump, nothing is guaranteed.

That said, while some Republicans may not want to risk the wrath of the liberal media by revisiting and cutting some of the bloated budget deal, such a vote would really make the handful of Democrats running for reelection in red states — who are trying to convince voters they’re actually fiscal conservatives — particularly nervous, as where they come down on the issue would certainly be a hot topic during the campaign season.

Hopefully, Trump and his team of budget and economic advisers, working in conjunction with Congressional Republicans, can find a way to make use of the rescission tool to get rid of at least some of the wasteful spending that was stuffed into the omnibus bill to garner bipartisan support. If so, and if it is to be a worthwhile effort, they will need to do more than merely tinker around the edges with modest proposals and actually put forward some significant cuts. It would then be interesting to see how various members of Congress either accede to the cuts or defend the wasteful projects they have agreed to appropriate taxpayer funds.

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WH Considers Using Obscure Law To Gut Omnibus Bill, Democrats Helpless To Stop

Reported By Scott Kelnhofer | April 4, 2018 at 9:29am

URL of the original posting site: https://conservativetribune.com/wh-considers-using-obscure-law-to-gut-omnibus-bill-democrats-helpless-to-stop/

Conservatives who were angry with President Donald Trump and Republicans with some of the expenditures approved as part of the recently signed omnibus spending bill may soon be in a slightly better mood.

Joseph Lawler of the Washington Examiner reports congressional conservatives want Trump to use the 1974 Impoundment Act to rescind some spending authorized by the $1.3 trillion government appropriations bill, and White House officials are reportedly considering doing so.

The measure referred to by the Examiner is officially known as the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974. For the most part, the act established the Congressional Budget Office and gave Congress more control over the budget process.

Trump, GOP consider rarely used Impoundment Act to rescind some of the omnibus spending – Herman Cain https://t.co/RPzcwxJTZ6 pic.twitter.com/FX0Icj1UoI

— Herman Cain (@THEHermanCain) March 31, 2018

The Impoundment Control Act allows the president to ask Congress to rescind funds that have been allocated in the budget. Congress is not required to vote on the request, but if they do agree to vote, a simple majority in both chambers is all that is needed to approve cuts the president requests.

Congress has 45 days to approve any or all rescission requests from the president.

A congressional Republican aide told the Examiner that conservatives have been lobbying for Trump to use the Impoundment Act.

“It’s a good opportunity to take advantage of a law passed decades ago and that hasn’t been used recently,” the aide said.

A spokesman for House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., confirmed to The Washington Post that McCarthy’s office is working with the Trump administration on the idea. White House legislative director Marc Short also confirmed the president is looking into requesting cuts to the budget.

“The administration is certainly looking at a rescission package, and the president takes seriously his promise to be fiscally responsible.”

The Impoundment Control Act was put in place in 1974 in response to President Richard Nixon’s practice of withholding funds for programs he opposed. Instead, the act requires any requests to withhold funding to go through Congress.

The Impoundment Control Act is considered obscure because it hasn’t been used often in recent years. The Examiner report says it was never used by Presidents Barack Obama or George W. Bush, but was used frequently during the administrations of Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton.

After signing the omnibus spending bill that he originally threatened to veto, Trump called on Congress to give him line-item veto authority on spending bills. However, the Supreme Court ruled in 1998 that such authority was unconstitutional.

These measures could pass with just a majority vote, meaning Democrats could do nothing to stop them — unless, of course, they can convince enough Republicans not to support the president’s wishes. Considering the slim 51-to-49 majority Republicans hold in the Senate, it wouldn’t take many left-leaning Republicans to foil the president’s plans.But a chance to rescind some of the budget programs gives conservatives reason for hope — and if Republicans throw away that chance, it will make conservatives angry all over again.