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After Media-Brutalized Gun Freedom Law, Violent Crime Drops in Florida

BY: JORDAN BOYD | JANUARY 16, 2024

When Florida became the 26th state to adopt constitutional carry, corporate media and Democrats lost their minds.

None of the requirements for how citizens obtained guns in the Sunshine State changed when Florida House Bill 543 became law July 1, 2023. That didn’t stop the anti-gun press, which were not welcome at the signing, from claiming that permitless concealed carry would exacerbate shootings.

“Following mass shootings, DeSantis signs permitless carry bill,” one NBC News headline complained. In the article, the producer of “The Rachel Maddow Show” sneered at Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis for trading what he dubbed “modest gun safeguards” for an “extreme” and “controversial” law.

Forbes also amplified rhetoric from gun control groups including Giffords claiming the pro-Second Amendment law is “dangerous” and “will drive gun violence up and further jeopardize the safety of our families and communities.”

Even President Joe Biden’s White House joined the dogpile on DeSantis and Florida Republicans for daring to reinforce their constituents’ constitutional rights.

“It is shameful that so soon after another tragic school shooting, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed into law a permit- less concealed carry bill behind closed doors, which eliminates the need to get a license to carry a concealed weapon,” White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre wrote. “This is the opposite of commonsense gun safety. The people of Florida — who have paid a steep price for state and Congressional inaction on guns from Parkland to Pulse Nightclub to Pine Hills — deserve better.”

Now, more than six months after the law’s adoption, evidence contradicts Democrats’ fearmongering that allowing law-abiding citizens to carry a loaded gun for self-defense would result in more “senseless tragedies.”

Since the legalization of constitutional carry in July 2023, Florida’s biggest cities saw a significant decrease in violent crimes, including shootings. In Jacksonville, murders and homicides dropped 6 percent in 2023 from the previous year.

The real record-breaking reduction in homicides was recorded in Miami. In 2022, the municipality recorded 49 homicides. By 2023, that number was down to 31, the fewest number of killings ever recorded in the Magic City. Miami also reported a 34 percent drop, from 151 to 100, in non-fatal shootings and 124 fewer “non-contact” shootings than in 2022. The change mirrors a national trend in less violent crime in 2023.

Florida’s constitutional carry law may not be the sole reason for those numbers, but this is the exact opposite of what Democrats claimed would happen after the law passed. Indeed, it’s fair to suspect respecting citizens’ constitutional right to self-defense played a role in the crime decline. Good guys with guns can deter, prevent, and even stop crime. The legal use of firearms helps thwart an estimated 2.5 million crimes a year.

Studies show that constitutional carry laws like the one in Florida don’t cause legal gun owners to commit crimes like mass shootings. Instead, permit-less carry emphasizes that the growing number of legal gun owners in the United States have the Second Amendment right to defend themselves and others if the need arises.

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

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Why Trump Is Winning by Double Digits Heading into Iowa

BY: EMILY JASHINSKY | JANUARY 15, 2024

Rallygoers lined up to enter the Target Center arena for a Donald J. Trump for President rally in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

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Nobody did it. Probably, at least.

It’s the morning of the Iowa caucus and, in the words of the Des Moines Register, “Donald Trump retains a commanding lead.” This comes according to the outlet’s latest poll, which shows Trump with a staggering 28-point advantage going into the “coldest caucus” in years.

This should chill the Beltway most of all. The Des Moines Register now puts Ron DeSantis in third place at 16 percent, down four points to Nikki Haley, a number just outside the margin of error. This is a shocking failure on the part of DeSantis, a successful populist who tapped an army of Beltway pundits to put nearly all the campaign’s eggs in the Iowa basket. But add DeSantis’ 16 points together with Haley’s 20, and Trump is still up by double digits. Consider also that many millions more ad dollars were spent touting DeSantis and Haley.

Republican voters just prefer Trump. In RealClearPolitics’ polling average, Trump is at 52.5 percent in Iowa and 61.4 percent nationally. He leads by double digits in New Hampshire. Sure, Haley and even DeSantis could over-perform the polls in Iowa, head into New Hampshire and South Carolina with momentum, over-perform there, and cruise into Super Tuesday on March 5 with an influx of cash and confidence.

The odds are low but not impossible. There’s a path if you squint. Yet it requires convincing an enormous swath of the Republican electorate — which has moved further and further into Trump’s corner over the last year — to suddenly pivot.

In 2016, Trump led Iowa by about five points in RCP’s final average. He lost by about three points to Ted Cruz. Trump was polling just under 30 percent. Nationally, he hovered around 35 percent. Well over half of the Republican primary electorate preferred a candidate other than Trump as the caucus kicked off.

DeSantis, according to RCP, was at one point about 13 points behind Trump. He’s now almost 40 points behind the former president nationally.

Democrats’ lawfare coincided with a rise in the polls for Trump. Counterintuitive as it may seem, the indictments were always going to make it difficult for another GOP candidate to poll more competitively. To her credit, Nikki Haley has been steadily eating away at DeSantis’ comfortable second-place position since the fall. (DeSantis led in New Hampshire until Haley started gaining on him in mid-September.) In Iowa, nearly half of Haley’s voters say they would vote for President Biden over Trump. She likely has a ceiling in most states that’ll make it tough to compete down the line.

Ultimately, if Iowa shakes out anywhere near the polling, it will mark the beginning of the end for DeSantis’ much-anticipated political experiment: Can Trump be defeated by a candidate with all the benefits and none of the baggage?

Perhaps the most frustrating takeaway from DeSantis’ slump is that we still don’t know the answer to that question because he allowed Beltway vest aficionados and their friends in the donor class to steer his career off course. When Trump finally attacked Vivek Ramaswamy two days before Iowa, the long-shot candidate’s response was a vision of what could have been for DeSantis.

“Yes, I saw President Trump’s Truth Social post,” Ramaswamy posted on X. “It’s an unfortunate move by his campaign advisors, I don’t think friendly fire is helpful. Donald Trump was the greatest President of the 21st century, and I’m not going to criticize him in response to this late attack.”

He added, “I’m worried for Trump. I’m worried for our country. I’ve stood up against the persecutions against Trump, and I’ve defended him at every step,” later concluding, “I want to save Trump & to save this country. Let’s do it together. You won’t hear any friendly fire from me.”

Back in September, The New York Times reported on a memo from an anti-Trump PAC helmed by Club for Growth President David McIntosh. The memo, McIntosh wrote, “shares findings from our attempts to identify an effective approach to lower President Trump’s support among Republican primary voters so we can maximize an alternative candidate’s ballot share when the field begins to consolidate.”

The takeaway from their research was perhaps the most important observation of the primary cycle, though should have been obvious from the moment every candidate entered the race.

“Broadly acceptable messages against President Trump with Republican primary voters that do not produce a meaningful backlash include sharing concerns about his ability to beat President Biden, expressions of Trump fatigue due to the distractions he creates and the polarization of the country, as well as his pattern of attacking conservative leaders for self-interested reasons,” McIntosh wrote. “It is essential to disarm the viewer at the opening of the ad by establishing that the person being interviewed on camera is a Republican who previously supported President Trump, otherwise, the viewer will automatically put their guard up, assuming the messenger is just another Trump-hater whose opinion should be summarily dismissed.”

Whatever you think of Ramaswamy (he previewed a potential Iowa surprise in an interview with The Federalist here), his response to Trump captured the lesson of that memo almost effortlessly. He’s been doing it for months.

On DeSantis, a popular and successful governor with a healthy war chest, that approach to Trump would almost certainly have improved his odds. It’s why Florida voters loved him. Politically, at least, running against Trump didn’t need to mean attacking him. The governor’s approach didn’t need to change. (I say this as someone endlessly sympathetic to the merits of DeSantis’ arguments on this particular question.)

The McIntosh memo should have been understood by DeSantis’ campaign before it ever launched. Republican voters who see Democrats relentlessly trying to put Trump in prison don’t trust GOP politicians who proactively attack him, often echoing the same critiques made by the same people who pushed the Russia-collusion hoax.

It looks like DeSantis will lose Iowa and New Hampshire. As of now, at least, it looks like Nikki Haley will too. Easily. If that’s the case, it’s remarkable how much money and effort was invested in campaigns that got the biggest question wrong from the beginning, especially the one campaign that should have known better.

Emily Jashinsky is culture editor at The Federalist and host of Federalist Radio Hour. She previously covered politics as a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner. Prior to joining the Examiner, Emily was the spokeswoman for Young America’s Foundation. She’s interviewed leading politicians and entertainers and appeared regularly as a guest on major television news programs, including “Fox News Sunday,” “Media Buzz,” and “The McLaughlin Group.” Her work has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Post, Real Clear Politics, and more. Emily also serves as director of the National Journalism Center, co-host of the weekly news show “Counter Points: Friday” and a visiting fellow at Independent Women’s Forum. Originally from Wisconsin, she is a graduate of George Washington University.

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Battle-Tested Trump Brings A New And Improved Ground Game To Iowa

BY: M.D. KITTLE | JANUARY 12, 2024

M.D. KITTLE

URBANDALE, Iowa — With four days and a few hours to go before the starting gun of the presidential nominating season, Donald Trump Jr. rallied the troops in suburban Des Moines on behalf of his frontrunner father.

Motivation was a hard commodity to come by on a cold and gray January day, with the remnants of the first heavy snowstorm of the season mucking up the streets with dirty slush. But the troops — warriors for former President Donald Trump — are hearty stock, like Hawkeye Cauci veterans around the state. After all, some of these folks have been showing up to this curious exhibition of representative democracy for more than 50 years, and they take their role as first-in-the-nation ambassadors of the presidential nomination chase very seriously.

We’ll see just how serious Iowa’s Republican voters are come Monday, caucus day, when the high is expected to drop below zero. By 7 p.m. Iowa time, when this internationally watched political pageant gets underway, temperatures could plummet to as low as minus-15 degrees with a wind chill of Ouch!

But if the 2024 presidential campaign and the past eight years have taught us anything, it’s that there are people in this deeply divided republic who would crawl through broken glass, barbed wire, and solid ice to vote for the former president. Still, Trump, rolling into the caucuses with a 50-point lead over his nearest challengers nationally and up by at least 35 points in Iowa, isn’t taking anything for granted.

“That’s why this Monday is so critical. We’ve got to send a message,” Don Jr. told the gathering of some 80 Trump supporters and reporters gathered at Urbandale’s Machine Shed restaurant. The event was organized by the Des Moines Bull Moose Conservative Club.

“I understand it’s going to be minus-4, but if I can get my Florida butt back up here … everyone can get back up here,” the president’s eldest child said.

The Trump campaign, unlike eight years ago, is taking nothing for granted. Forget the polls, turnout is the thing, campaign officials say.

“We’ve got to treat Monday as if we’re 10 points back,” Trump Jr. admonished. He said the left, establishment Republicans, and the Trump-hating corporate media are counting on caucus-goer apathy to diminish expected big numbers for the former president. A smaller margin of victory, perhaps driven by Trump supporters believing the win is in the bag, is a narrative Trump’s opponents would pounce on heading into next week’s New Hampshire Republican presidential primary, the thinking goes.

In short, Trump is beatable.

His opponents point to Iowa 2016, when Trump took the political world by storm, but finished tied for second with Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas won the caucuses in a much more crowded field of candidates.

‘Night and Day’

But much has changed in eight years. Trump may be the same Trump in many ways, but he’s a much different candidate coming in. The Iowa surprise for Cruz ultimately meant little. Trump went on to claim the GOP nomination, win the presidency, and become the subject of the left’s unrelenting loathing. He’s battle-tested, with arguably more political scars than any presidential candidate in the republic’s history.

Moreover, the Trump ground game in Iowa is significantly improved, more nimble, and much better organized than it was during his first presidential run. It’s so good, in fact, Trump can’t even seem to believe it.

“I was with the president all last week and he asked me that exact question [about whether the ground game has improved since 2016], and I told him it’s the difference between night and day,” said Iowa state Sen. Brad Zaun, a Des Moines-area Republican who was the first state elected official to endorse Trump in 2016 and again this year.

Zaun may be a bit biased, but the Trump ally was a frequent witness to the campaign’s Iowa operations in 2016, as he has been this campaign cycle. The senator said there’s a professionalism and an organizational focus this go-round that wasn’t there eight years ago.

The campaign’s suburban Des Moines headquarters has been hopping for months, with an army of volunteers working extended shifts seven days a week. There’s a greater emphasis on data, and an almost manic drive to connect with grassroots conservatives in every corner of the kick-off caucus state.

“It’s vastly improved,” said John Humeston, a caucus captain for the Trump campaign in Ankeny. “They’ve got a great staff that started early.”

Trump caucus captains are charged with turning out the voters. They’re given a list of Iowans that have shown support, or even a passing interest, in the former president. Humeston said his list is six pages long. He and his fellow volunteers place plenty of calls in the evenings.

At the headquarters, it’s a little like the Frank Capra Christmas classic, “It’s a Wonderful Life”: Instead of angels getting their wings, Trump volunteers ring a call bell every time an Iowa voter commits to caucusing for the frontrunner.

“Caucus captains have to find 10 new ones to bring to the caucus,” Humeston said. “It gives everyone more of a goal.”

There’s a lot more money involved, too.

Big Money, Bigger Stakes

In 2023, Republican presidential candidates and outside groups spent nearly $105 million on ads in Iowa, NBC News reported. It’s a proverbial drop in the bucket compared to the $10.2 billion in total political advertisement expenditures that AdImpact projects for the 2023-24 election cycle.

Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley and the super PACs backing her presidential quest lead the money chase, spending a combined $30 million according to the NBC News report. Haley, who served as Trump’s United Nation’s ambassador, has helped turn Iowa’s airwaves into a blanket of campaign ads.

The campaign for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has spent $2.3 million on ads in Iowa, while pro-DeSantis super PAC Never Back Down has kicked in at least $17.6 million, according to the AdImpact figures. Trump’s campaign has spent north of $4 million, while super PAC MAGA Inc. has dropped $11.4 million in its Iowa ad campaign.

The former president has spent comparatively less time in the Hawkeye State than most of his rivals, focusing on periodic large-scale rallies and foregoing the small retail politics events at the core of the long caucus campaign season. A New York Post article recently quipped that “Trump is outsourcing his Iowa campaign to surrogates.” Prominent supporters including Arizona Republican Senate candidate Kari Lake, former HUD Secretary Ben Carson, South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, and cancel culture target Roseanne Barr have been barnstorming Iowa on behalf of their candidate in recent days.

DeSantis, meanwhile, has made campaign stops in each of Iowa’s 99 counties, fulfilling his promise to do the “Full Grassley.” Chuck Grassley, Iowa’s senior U.S. senator, has for decades made it his annual mission to pay a call on Iowans in every county.

Haley, too, has made scores of campaign stops in Iowa, and fellow GOP presidential hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy last month celebrated the “double Grassley.” The Ohio entrepreneur, who has essentially made Iowa a second home since entering the race nearly a year ago, has held at least two campaign events in each of the 99 counties. Ramaswamy is running a distant fourth in Iowa, at south of 7 percent in the latest RealClearPolitics average of polls.

DeSantis has bet heavily on Iowa, devoting a significant share of his campaign’s staff and volunteers to his Hawkeye State operations. Despite the investment and time, DeSantis is polling at 15.5 percent to Trump’s 53 percent, according to the RealClearPolitics average of Iowa Republicans. The popular Florida governor is running third in Iowa, just behind Haley, who is polling at 17.8 percent. After being seen as the strongest Republican challenger to Trump, DeSantis shook up his campaign in August as he lost traction in the polls.

‘Double Forms of Justice’

As the New York Post notes, Trump’s supporters get why he’s not been as present on the campaign trail as his rivals. The former president has had his share of distractions this campaign season, with a host of legal problems tying up much of his time. He’s been busy fending off a long list of charges across four indictments that threaten to send him to prison for the rest of his life — charges brought by Democrat President Joe Biden’s Department of Justice and his leftist prosecutor allies in a naked political quest to dispose of Biden’s No. 1 political opponent.

It’s the attack on Trump and the rule of law that has so many of his Iowa supporters ready to brave a brutally cold winter’s evening in Iowa to caucus for their candidate. Beyond their concerns about the economy, inflation, and the debacle at the Southwest border, Trump backers at the Machine Shed Thursday afternoon said they’re tired of what they see as a two-tiered system of justice under Biden.

“The politics of this current administration, the double forms of justice that are just so obvious, it just doesn’t seem like America,” said Suzanne Spooner of nearby Granger when asked about her greatest concerns this election year. “I think our country is a mess. I think President Trump did a good job of getting us in a better space than we’ve ever been in before, and I support getting things back on track again.”

Members of the Trump army, particularly the caucus captains, say they’re ready to help bring home a big victory Monday night for the former president in his latest pursuit of the White House. Trump’s son reminded them that there’s not a moment to lose.

“We have an opportunity to do something, but we have to do it now,” Trump Jr. said. “Let’s get out there on Monday. Let’s make sure everyone shows up. Let’s decide this thing early. Let’s finish this thing strong.”

M.D. Kittle is an award-winning investigative reporter and 30-year veteran of print, broadcast, and online journalism.

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California’s Record of Felonies, Feces, And Failure Should Kill Newsom’s Political Career But It Won’t

BY: SHAWN FLEETWOOD | DECEMBER 01, 2023

Thursday night’s debate between Florida GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis and California Democrat Gov. Gavin Newsom was a total crapshow for Newsom — literally.

When the Democrat darling wasn’t getting lambasted for violating his own Covid restrictions and allowing homelessness and human feces to plague California’s major cities, Newsom was justifying the presence of pornographic materials in school libraries and defending the surgical mutilation of minors, even without parents’ knowledge. Meanwhile, DeSantis stuck to the facts and tackled major culture war issues most Republicans are often too afraid to mention.

Things got so bad for Newsom that his wife reportedly stepped in to prevent the debate from continuing beyond the original 90-minute discussion agreed upon by the governors.

But Thursday’s back-and-forth wasn’t just a heated discussion between two high-profile politicians. It was a symbolic display of the stark spiritual divide encapsulating the country. While DeSantis represented positions of truth, logic, and common sense — like protecting kids from disfiguring transgender surgeries, for example — Newsom embodied the lies, deception, and propaganda of his fellow leftists.

Even when confronted with facts — some of which were displayed in front of him — Newsom simply lied or pivoted to launching ad hominem attacks against conservatives. Such is the way of the modern left.

In a sane world, DeSantis’ beatdown of Newsom and the Democrat Party’s extremist agenda would end the California governor’s prospects for higher office. But America doesn’t exist inside a sane world anymore, and the sad reality is that many of the leftists who watched Thursday’s debate probably came away believing Newsom’s falsehoods — or worse, knew he was lying but simply didn’t care.

If Newsom were to run for another statewide office in California today, there’s no reason to believe the vast majority of Democrats in the state wouldn’t vote for him. Even if it means having to pay higher taxes, subsidize illegal immigrants, and dodge human feces, used needles, criminals, and homeless encampments on the streets, Democrat voters will not abandon their dystopian belief that the state is almighty.

For the left, politics is religion. It’s what drives them, shapes their nonsensical worldview, and permits them to justify the most demonic policies imaginable, such as murdering innocent unborn babies and conducting irreversible surgeries on minors without parental knowledge. There is no belief in objective morality or truth on the left because Democrats’ view is that morality and truth are whatever they want them to be, facts and logic be damned.

Leftism is a heck of a drug, and no matter how much pain and suffering it causes, Democrats won’t stop taking it.

Shawn Fleetwood is a staff writer for The Federalist and a graduate of the University of Mary Washington. He previously served as a state content writer for Convention of States Action and his work has been featured in numerous outlets, including RealClearPolitics, RealClearHealth, and Conservative Review. Follow him on Twitter @ShawnFleetwood

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The Fight Against Sexualizing Kids Doesn’t Just Win Debates, It Wins Elections

BY: TRISTAN JUSTICE | DECEMBER 01, 2023

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TRISTAN JUSTICE

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During his debate with California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Thursday night, Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis was at his strongest on contentious culture-war issues, such as the merits of transgender medical interventions for kids and parental rights.

The governors from two of the nation’s most populous states offered Americans a preview of a 2028 White House showdown on Fox News, debating red and blue state governance. Both are popular two-term governors presiding over colossal coastal states with overwhelming control of their respective state legislatures, and both are also relatively young (Newsom is 56, DeSantis is 45) and well-funded, with presumably long careers ahead. So, while only one of the men on stage Thursday night is officially running for higher office, both eagerly capitalized on the opportunity to frame up a presidential race that’s still five years out. DeSantis was at his best when topics landed on hot-button cultural issues, from parents’ rights in education to California’s endless sexualizing of children.

Fox moderator Sean Hannity brought up Florida’s parental rights bill — which Democrats dishonestly branded as “Don’t Say Gay” — that DeSantis signed last year. The new law bans teachers from bringing mature sexual topics and transgender propaganda into kindergarten through third-grade classrooms.

“Should schools be focused on reading, writing, math, science, history, computers — and maybe leaving values, considering parents might have different values than teachers at school?” Hannity asked. “What is the role?”

“The role of the school is to educate kids, not indoctrinate kids,” DeSantis said. “It’s not to impose an agenda, it’s to do the basics.”

“What we’ve said in Florida is it’s inappropriate to tell a kindergartner that their gender is a choice, it’s inappropriate to tell a second grader that they may have been born in the wrong body,” DeSantis added. “California has that. They want to have that injected into the elementary school.”

DeSantis went on to highlight a book used to teach kids about gay sex called Gender Queer.

“Some of its blocked out,” DeSantis said with an image held up of a graphic illustrated porn scene. “You would not probably be able to put this on air.”

Gov. DeSantis (R-FL) and Gov. Newsom (D-CA) debate parental rights and book bans.

DeSantis: "This is a book that's in some of the schools in California … This is pornography, it's cartoons"

Newsom: "I don't like the way you demean and humiliate people you disagree with, Ron." pic.twitter.com/Vw63cD0OFq
— The Recount (@therecount) December 1, 2023

The demonstration was DeSantis’ second most-effective use of a visual after the poop-map moment highlighting human feces in San Francisco.

"Human feces is now a fact of life. Except when a communist dictator comes to town.”

Ron DeSantis brought a San Francisco poop map to the debate to illustrate California’s decline.

(Courtesy of Fox News Channel)

pic.twitter.com/CdTPDgqhXF
— The First (@TheFirstonTV) December 1, 2023

Newsom sought to justify the salacious content in K-12 classrooms, calling DeSantis’ efforts to sanitize leftist activists’ curricula a “banning binge.” The West Coast governor went on to list a series of authors Democrats falsely claim are prohibited in Florida.

[READ: There Are No Banned Books]

A moment later, DeSantis called out California’s radical efforts to become a refuge for trans-identified kids. Last year, Newsom signed a bill allowing gender-confused teens to seek irreversible medical interventions in the Golden State without parental consent.

“How in the heck is that honoring parents’ rights when you’re bringing people in from out of state to go around their parents’ backs and getting life-altering surgeries?” DeSantis asked. “It’s not for you to decide. It’s for the parents to decide.”

Ron DeSantis SKEWERS Gavin Newsom over his "radical" and "extreme" policy overriding parental rights in the name of "gender-affirming care." His bill prioritizes sterilizing drugs that will medicalize kids for the rest of their lives. #Debate https://t.co/PGdw9oRDSL pic.twitter.com/spEvUuGaQe
— Tyler O'Neil (@Tyler2ONeil) December 1, 2023

Newsom turned to emotional blackmail, citing the debunked left-wing talking point that transgender-identifying children are more prone to suicide. The data points to the contrary, however, with individuals more likely to suffer mental anguish when given easier access to transgender medical interventions.

Transgenderism and parental rights in education are winning issues for Republicans. The twin topics let the party go on offense just as the Virginia GOP did in 2021 with statewide triumphs in what had become a blue state.

Recent polls suggest more and more Americans are with Republicans on transgenderism and parental rights. A March survey from Parents Defending Education found, “75% of registered voters support legislation requiring schools to get parental consent before helping a student change their gender identity at school, while only 18% oppose this policy” (emphasis theirs).

A Gallup poll in June found that 55 percent of Americans believe it is “morally wrong” to attempt to “change” one’s sex, up from 51 percent two years ago. An overwhelming majority opposed bending sex requirements for athletic competitions.

Tristan Justice is the western correspondent for The Federalist and the author of Social Justice Redux, a conservative newsletter on culture, health, and wellness. He has also written for The Washington Examiner and The Daily Signal. His work has also been featured in Real Clear Politics and Fox News. Tristan graduated from George Washington University where he majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow him on Twitter at @JusticeTristan or contact him at Tristan@thefederalist.com. Sign up for Tristan’s email newsletter here.

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Why GOP Voters Saw This Week’s Debate Differently Than DeSantis Superfans

BY: AARON DECORTE | DECEMBER 01, 2023

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AARON DECORTE

The biggest loser of Thursday night’s debate between Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and California Gov. Gavin Newsom was us, the voters. For far too long party officials have had a stranglehold on how candidates are vetted, presented, and nominated. If the “Red vs. Blue State” debate was successful, it could have been the jumping-off point for other networks, third-party candidates, or donors to sponsor and create better opportunities for voters to see candidates in more diverse settings and formats. Sadly, it was unsuccessful for everyone involved.

Kudos to Sean Hannity for making it happen and kudos to Newsom for showing up to a forum he knew would be tilted toward DeSantis. Despite his actual performance, Newsom is the only person in his party that would have agreed to debate in that environment in the first place. Could you even imagine Vice President Kamala Harris in place of Newsom last night? It might have ended her political career. The reality is we know the White House would have never, ever allowed her to appear.

It’s hard to be critical of Hannity’s handling of the debate chaos because, short of cutting their mics off, there wasn’t much he could do besides appeal to both men several times to stop behaving like toddlers. It is unbecoming of governors, let alone presidential candidates, to talk over one another, and keep repeating the same statistic or practiced line. Still, Hannity deserves credit for pulling it off despite the fact that Trump and those around him aren’t thrilled he gave DeSantis the prime-time opportunity. Hannity has spoken openly about his personal relationship with Trump and his family, but he gave DeSantis airtime and a unique venue anyway.

Wearing the Hat vs. the Jersey

If you watch sports or attend games in person, you know the difference between a fan who is wearing a hat and the one who is wearing a jersey. A hat doesn’t have your favorite player’s name on it, just the team. A jersey has a specific player’s number and (with few exceptions) their last name. Fight in the stands? Most likely between fans who have jerseys on, not hats. In primary season, political pundits, donors, and early supporters have jerseys on, but regular voters who are living their lives mostly have hats on, or are willing to switch jerseys when the primary dust settles. How you think this debate went for DeSantis largely depends on whether you are wearing a DeSantis jersey or a GOP hat.

If you are wearing the DeSantis jersey, you think he crushed Newsom and embarrassed him with several references to the French Laundry incident and Newsom’s kids going to in-person private school while the rest of his state’s children were at home. You thought it was a nice touch when he talked about San Francisco police officers approaching him and thanking him for his support of law enforcement because they don’t get that in California. You were giddy when he pulled out both his paper props from his suit jacket to shame Newsom over the graphic nature of a book and a print-out of a San Francisco human feces map. If you have a DeSantis jersey on, it was a good event, even if all he got was major screen time without Nikki Haley zinging bad one-liners at him all night.

If you are wearing the GOP hat, maybe you didn’t see it the same way. You saw a presidential candidate that had some shades of Marco Rubio circa 2016 getting wrecked by Chris Christie. The repetitive talking points and stats in the face of a full-on frontal assault by Newsom is troublesome. You saw a guy who practiced all the stories he was going to tell last night (father-in-law, French Laundry, Newsom kids in person at private school) and still couldn’t tell them well.

You were thinking: if Trump told these exact same stories they would have landed with such force that Gavin’s White House dreams might have died on that stage last night. You also might be thinking that if Nikki Haley told those same stories she would have raised millions more dollars for her campaign. You saw a guy with a friendly moderator not be able to shift on the fly and bury Newsom when everything (data, history, and truth) was on his side. You also know that Donald Trump wouldn’t need to pull out crumpled paper to embarrass Newsom. He could have told those exact two stories without the props just as effectively.

A friend of mine who wears a GOP hat, not a jersey, texted me, “I don’t think he is good on his feet” during the debate, and he isn’t alone in that assessment. GOP hat-wearers are very perceptive and watched DeSantis Thursday night wondering if he has the stand-up skills to go to metaphorical war with whomever is occupying the other podium.

I am not sure last night moved the needle for DeSantis but how it’s perceived is very different by those wearing DeSantis jerseys versus those wearing GOP hats. It was a wasted opportunity for some much-needed change of the political process and for both participants.

Aaron DeCorte has worked in sales and marketing for more than 25 years. His wife is a 9-1-1 operator for their local police department.

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Why Joe Biden’s Poll Numbers Are Even Worse for Democrats Than They Think

BY: KYLEE GRISWOLD | NOVEMBER 16, 2023

Author Kylee Griswold profile

KYLEE GRISWOLD

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Democrats have one huge, unavoidable problem. And his name is Joe Biden.

According to recent polls, GOP front-runner and former President Donald Trump would beat Biden if the 2024 election were held today. A Quinnipiac poll out Wednesday shows Biden with 46 percent and Trump with 48 percent among registered voters, still within the margin of error and too close to call. However, a new Fox News poll, also out Wednesday, shows that in a head-to-head, the former president would prevail with 50 percent to Biden’s 46 — a number Trump has never garnered in a Fox poll going back to October 2015.

Do these numbers and thin margins mean anything? Maybe not. We are still a year from the election. And if 2016 taught us anything, it’s that polls are traditionally garbage and are used far more often as tools to shape public opinion than to reflect it. But there are deeper and far more meaningful insights to mine from the survey, and they don’t spell good things for the Democrat Party.

For instance, it’s worth noting that not only does Biden appear to be losing generally to Trump, but the incumbent is losing his own dependable voters to his rival. Polls show Biden is hemorrhaging black, Hispanic, suburban, and young voters — all demographics that reliably vote Democrat. It could have something to do with how Biden has handled major crises he’s either caused or exacerbated. According to Quinnipiac, voters disapprove of his response to the Hamas attack and subsequent fallout (54 percent disapproval to 37 percent approval), his economy (59 to 37 percent), his foreign policy (61 to 34 percent), his border crisis (65 to 26 percent), and his response to the Russia-Ukraine war (49 to 47 percent).

The implications are simple. Voters are confronting a rare moment in U.S. history in which they can actually compare what it’s like to live under the leadership, or lack thereof, of the two major presidential candidates. Do they want Bidenomics or the affordable grocery and gas prices of the Trump era? Do they want war in the Middle East — or Eastern Europe or the South China Sea — or peace? Do they want an open border or national security? The Trump-Biden decision is an increasingly easy calculation for voters to make.

So, Democrats are stuck. And they did this to themselves, largely by closing off the possibility of a primary and instead committing to dragging Joe’s corpse across the finish line.

And yes, that really is the strategy. It’s not that Biden is a strong candidate by any measure, save for maybe his incumbency, but again, even that’s in doubt after his disastrous first term. He’s a demonstrably weak candidate, especially compared to Trump — another reality easily extrapolated from the polls.

On the Republican side — which, in contrast to Democrats, is still choosing to slog through primary election theatrics — the second-tier candidates are a notable governor and former governor, both beloved by their states and beyond. And Trump is still leading them by some 50 points. He’s got 48 points on Ron DeSantis and 51 on Nikki Haley. If prominent leftist governors such as Gavin Newsom or Gretchen Whitmer were to challenge Biden for the Democrat nomination, there’s no way he’d have that kind of lead.

This week there have been murmurs of a potential challenger — just maybe not who you would have expected. Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson was on Capitol Hill hobnobbing with Sen. Chuck Schumer on Wednesday and refused to answer reporters’ questions about whether he’ll run for president. This after he divulged last week that the parties did approach him last year. And you can see the twinkle in Democrats’ eyes at the thought of dumping weak, old Biden for his antithesis. Here’s Schumer flirting with The Rock on X after their meeting, posting cutesy little lyrics from one of the actor’s Disney roles.

But while Democrats might view The Rock as an exit strategy, they still have a monumental problem to overcome: Voters aren’t just fed up with Biden, they’re fed up with Democrat policies both foreign and domestic.

There’s no denying Democrats have become the party of mass illegal immigration. Every town is a border town, and even urbanites are done with the Democrat policies overrunning their cities with aliens who suck resources dry. Speaking of cities, left-wing policies have destroyed them, from Portland and Seattle to Washington, D.C. Democrats’ soft-on-crime policies have caused violence in these places to skyrocket, with carjackings up more than 100 percent since last year and violent crime up 40 percent in our nation’s capitol. In fact, just this week D.C.’s disaster of a mayor declared a state of emergency because youth violent crime has gotten so bad. Meanwhile, Democrats have also become the party of inflation, war, no-limits abortion, transing kids, weaponizing the federal government, terrorist sympathizing, and every other anti-America policy position you can imagine.

That takes a strong leader to overcome. Sure, The Rock does a magnificent job at the role he plays in every movie, but he’s not that leader. And besides, would today’s Democrat Party really vote for a candidate who’s a Joe Rogan bro and friends with Trump supporters?

So, Democrats are left to lie with sleepy Joe in the bed they made for themselves. It’s hard to feel sorry for them.

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

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Gov. Ron DeSantis to Newsmax: Polls Push to Get Trump In, Biden Out

By Eric Mack | Monday, 25 September 2023 02:07 PM EDT

The Washington Post/ABC News released a poll showing former President Donald Trump leading President Joe Biden by 10 points, and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis suspects that is effectively a narrative-driven poll result.

Polls are showing a desire to push narratives to get Trump the GOP nomination and potentially drive Biden out of running for reelection, DeSantis told Newsmax‘s Addison Smith in a one-on-one interview that aired in part on “Newsline.”

“Just understand, the media — if he ends up being the nominee, they will not be putting polls out like that; it’ll be the opposite,” DeSantis said. “I mean, they use this to juice a narrative.”

DeSantis pointed to the poll results showing Trump leading Biden among voters under 35 by 20 points as begging the question about the narrative goals behind publishing a self-described “outlier” result.

“I think people were showing that that poll had Trump beating Biden with under 35 by 20 points: No Republican has even won that, so when you see that you wonder, OK, what are they trying to do?” DeSantis continued. “I think they’re trying to do two things: I think the corporate press does want Trump to be the nominee. I think you see that in the coverage of that. I think you also see that in how they attack me. But I also think they’re trying to get the Democrats to dislodge Biden.”

The “corporate press” is trying to turn Democrats away from a Biden reelection campaign to get another candidate like California Democrat Gov. Gavin Newsom in the race, according to DeSantis.

“They want to show that Biden is weak, and they would like to see a Newsom or somebody else,” he added. “So I think when the corporate press is doing this, I think people should take it with a grain of salt, absolutely.”

DeSantis has already been geared up for a Newsom run, having already committed to a Nov. 30 debate with the California Democrat at 9 p.m. ET.

“That’s why, you know, he said he would debate me, so I said, ‘Let’s do it,'” DeSantis continued. “We’re waiting for the date. Hopefully, we’ll be able to do it, you know, within the next month or two. I think it’s an important debate for the country – not like saying who’s better Florida or California, because that debate is over.”

The migration numbers away from California and to Florida has shown people have already voted in that debate “with their feet,” DeSantis said.

“They’ve left California and come to Florida not the other way around. He has lost massive amounts of population. No governor in California history has ever witnessed population loss at all on net and he’s had it and that’s because of the policies he’s driving people away.

“But what’s the future for the country? The future for the country for what the left would want to do is just double down on the California policies. And so I think it’s being important debate. I think he’s definitely angling for it.”

Biden will not just “step down willingly,” DeSantis concluded. “I think it’s harder to dislodge somebody who’s an incumbent president and people assume it would be, but I think the Democrat establishment really, really is concerned, particularly, you know, if they have to run against somebody like me.

“I think that their view on Trump is that he will help energize their base to come out in ways that maybe some other Republicans won’t. I don’t know that that’s true, per se, the way they’re thinking it.

“But they do think that, so I think they’re looking for, How do we get away from this? Because, you know, Biden is floundering on the world stage. I mean, it’s been really embarrassing to see what he’s doing.”

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Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.

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DeSantis PAC trolls Ramaswamy for constitutional history gaffe in GOP debate: Vivek ‘is mistaken’

By Brianna Herlihy Fox News | Published August 24, 2023 1:24pm EDT

Never Back Down, the political action committee supporting Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ bid for president, trolled competitor Vivek Ramaswamy after he inaccurately recalled constitutional history in the first GOP primary debate. The PAC insinuated that the newcomer might need a civics lesson a la a DeSantis presidency, which the governor says would “increase civic understanding and knowledge of our constitution.”

In the first Republican presidential primary debate on Wednesday evening, entrepreneur and author Ramaswamy stated that the Constitution is “the strongest guarantor of freedom in human history. That is what won us the American Revolution.” In a statement posted on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, the PAC said, “The U.S. Constitution did not win us the American Revolution, it came years later. Vivek Ramaswamy is mistaken.”

RAMASWAMY, PENCE CLASH AFTER FORMER VP CALLS GOP NEWCOMER A ‘ROOKIE’: ‘THIS ISN’T COMPLICATED’

l-r: Mike Pence, Ron DeSantis, Vivek Ramaswamy at debate lecterns — From left: Former Vice President Mike Pence, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Vivek Ramaswamy, chairman and co-founder of Strive Asset Management, appear during the Republican primary debate in Milwaukee on Wednesday.. (Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty)

“@RonDeSantis will fix civics education in our country!” the PAC wrote.

The Constitution was ratified in 1788. The American Revolution formally ended in 1783 with ratification of the Treaty of Paris.

https://twitter.com/NvrBackDown24/status/1694566785888948717?s=20

First-time candidate Ramaswamy took heat from several GOP contenders on the debate stage Wednesday night. In addition to the founding document faux pas, foreign policy appeared to be a liability for him after fielding attacks from multiple candidates on the issue.

Former U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley tore into Ramaswamy over his foreign policy takes, from the Russian war against Ukraine to his critical posture toward Israel, saying his inexperience “shows.”

CHINA, UKRAINE, TRUMP, FENTANYL AND MORE ON THE DEBATE STAGE AGENDA

GOP candidate Vivek Ramaswamy in white shirt, red cap, holding microphone — Entrepreneur and 2024 presidential hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy raps after doing a Fair Side Chat with Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds at the Iowa State Fair in Des Moines, Iowa, on Aug. 12, 2023. (STEFANI REYNOLDS/AFP via Getty Images)

“He wants to hand Ukraine to Russia, he wants to let China eat Taiwan, he wants to go and stop funding Israel. You don’t do that to friends, what you do instead is you have the backs of your friends,” Haley said.

Ramaswamy responded, “Our relationship with Israel would never be stronger than by the end of my first term, but it’s not a client relationship, it’s a friendship, and you know what friends do? Friends help each other stand on their own two feet.”

Ramaswamy in black shirt, white "truth" cap, speaking into microphone — Vivek Ramaswamy speaks during a SiriusXM Town Hall Meeting at the Centre Theater, in Philadelphia on June 20, 2023. (Lisa Lake/Getty Images for SiriusXM)

WATCH: HALEY CLASHES WITH RAMASWAMY OVER U.S. AID TO UKRAINE

“You know what I love about them? I love their border policies, I love their tough-on-crime policies, I love that they have a national identity and an Iron Dome to protect their homeland, so, yes, I want to learn from the friends that we’re supporting,” Ramaswamy added.

“No, you want to cut the aid off, and let me tell you, it’s not that Israel needs America, it’s that America needs Israel. They’re on the front line of defense to Iran,” Haley retorted, drawing applause form the crowd.

Fox News Digital’s Paul Steinhauser contributed to this report.

Brianna Herlihy is a politics writer for Fox News Digital.

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Liz Peek Op-ed: First Republican debate: The biggest loser and the biggest winner

By Liz Peek Fox News | Published August 24, 2023 2:28am EDT

The person who most enjoyed the first Republican debate was undoubtedly former President Donald Trump. By not participating in the forum, he stayed above the fray, and what a fray it was. The night was full of acrimony and sloppiness; verbal punches were thrown but few landed. Humor and humility took the night off. The eight candidates who gathered in Milwaukee have in common that they are massively trailing the former president; nothing that took place on the debate stage will turn that around.

Businessman Vivek Ramaswamy had substantial momentum coming into the GOP debate in Milwaukee. In just two hours, he blew that advantage, and — most probably — any chance he might have had of securing the nomination. He appeared smart-alecky and disrespectful of his fellow contestants; he interrupted constantly and displayed none of the sobriety and substance so needed by a 38-year-old eager to convince voters he belongs in the Oval Office.

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Ramaswamy on several occasions boasted of being the only political novice on the stage, derisively describing his fellow candidates as PAC-puppets; he also insulted the group by describing them as “bought and paid for.” The lack of civility was shocking, at odds with Ramaswamy’s trademark sunniness. During the first break, he must have heard his attacks were not resonating with the audience, since he subsequently toned down the hubris, but the damage was done.

REPUBLICANS REACT TO FIRST GOP DEBATE PERFORMANCES: ‘VIVEK WAS THE LIGHTNING ROD’

Nikki Haley, as expected, went after Ramaswamy on numerous fronts and especially on foreign policy. On the contest with Ukraine and on other issues too, the former U.N. ambassador and South Carolina governor summoned facts and experience to lend her credibility.

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She was passionate but not emotional — a difficult balance for female candidates. Similarly, she stood her ground but did not come across as harsh — another challenging dynamic for women in politics.

If Ramaswamy was the biggest loser of the night, Haley was the biggest winner. Tough on national security and securing the border, smart about education, she was also the only candidate to stake out a winning position on abortion.

If Ramaswamy was the biggest loser of the night, Haley was the biggest winner.

Though she declares herself proudly pro-life, she also acknowledges that Republicans must respect the deeply personal nature of the issue and find a middle path. Haley laid out an approach that includes making contraception universally available, encouraging adoption, banning late-term abortions and stopping the demonization of the issue.

NIKKI HALEY MAKES CASE FOR WHY SHE THINKS TRUMP CAN’T WIN 2024 ELECTION

It was an important night for the Haley campaign, which has failed to gain traction in recent months; it could prove a turning point.

Chris Christie also turned in a solid performance, despite being loudly booed by the audience for disparaging former President Trump. Of all the contestants, he seemed the most relaxed and drew on substantial personal achievements while serving as a federal prosecutor and as governor of New Jersey to make his case.

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Christie’s finest moment came during his final remarks when he reminded the audience of how hard — and rare — it is to unseat an incumbent Democrat, a feat he accomplished when he defeated Jon Corzine to become governor of New Jersey in 2009. As he recalled, the last Republican to beat an incumbent Democrat president was a governor of a blue state; that, of course, was Ronald Reagan, who beat Jimmy Carter in 1980. Still, the odds of Christie advancing in the race are slim. The vast majority of Republicans still support Trump, and Christie has made it clear that he is bitterly opposed to the former president’s re-election.

Indeed, with Trump now commanding a 40-point lead in the primary race, and enjoying widespread loyalty among Republicans, all candidates needed to break through and give voters a reason to choose them over the former president. No one achieved that kind of success on Wednesday night.

The candidate who most needed a leap forward was Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, whose campaign has been in free fall for weeks. Though the Florida governor made no drastic missteps, he looked awkward and uncomfortable. He failed to answer most of the questions directed to him, instead doggedly inserting pre-prepared sound-bites that rarely met the moment.

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The worst moment for DeSantis came when the moderators asked the candidates to indicate whether they would support Trump for president, should he win the nomination. Everyone but Christie and Asa Hutchinson signaled support for the former president; DeSantis raised his hand only after seeming to look left and right for reassurance. Viewers took note.

Tim Scott was unexpectedly subdued during the debate, which was unfortunate. His normal good cheer and faith in our country is a tonic in these bitter political times.

Others on the stage included North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, who had torn his Achilles tendon that morning playing basketball with his staff. Considering his recent visit to the emergency room, he can be excused for having failed to excite the crowd. Like former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, Burgum is unlikely to go far.

The other major player was former Vice President Mike Pence, who, contrasted especially with Ramaswamy, was the grown-up in the room. He had a decent night and doubtless appealed to conservatives who applaud his hard line on abortion and on national security issues, but his religiosity limits his reach.

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Viewers hoping to find a candidate capable of pushing Donald Trump out of the race were likely disappointed. Perhaps the evening will convince Virginia Gov. Glen Youngkin to throw his hat in the ring. Without a doubt, there is an opening.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM LIZ PEEK

Liz Peek is a Fox News contributor and former partner of major bracket Wall Street firm Wertheim & Company. A former columnist for the Fiscal Times, she writes for The Hill and contributes frequently to Fox News, the New York Sun and other publications. For more visit LizPeek.com. Follow her on Twitter @LizPeek.

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Biden Won In 2020 The Same Way Soviet Basketball Won Gold In 1972

BY: MOLLIE HEMINGWAY | AUGUST 10, 2023

MOLLIE HEMINGWAY

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Corporate media are returning to their favorite question to ask of any and all Republicans who care about the integrity of elections: Did Joe Biden win the 2020 election? A New York Times employee asked Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis the question in Iowa last week. NBC News correspondent Dasha Burns asked a variant of the question, to which DeSantis gave an extended reply about the proper and improper way to run elections. Completely uninterested in his substantive reply, she followed it up with: “Yes or no, did Trump lose the 2020 election?”

The question is never asked in good faith, and you can know that with certainty because none of these reporters even came close to asking it from 2016-2020 when the entirety of the Democrat Party refused to accept the legitimacy of Donald Trump’s election. In fact, they eagerly and actively participated in the Russia-collusion information operation designed to overturn the results of that election. Hillary Clinton was claiming the 2016 election was stolen throughout 2019, and the media generally cheered her on.

But if you need help understanding why the question is never asked in good faith, let’s step out of the realm of politics for a minute and consider the men’s gold medal basketball game of the 1972 Olympics.

The game is one of the most controversial events in Olympic history, with the American men’s team refusing to concede they lost to the Soviet Union. In fact, it’s been more than 50 years and the men on that team have never accepted their silver medals because they still do not believe the game was conducted in a fair fashion. Just last year, the men wanted to have the silver medals donated to the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, but the International Olympic Committee demanded the men officially accept them first before they could be donated. On principle, the men will not take the medals or recognize the legitimacy of the outcome, so the medals remain in limbo.

The team, which is the only team in Olympic history to contest an outcome, has an excellent case that the game was rigged. The Americans had dominated the Olympic sport since it first appeared in the 1936 Olympics. They had won seven gold medals and were the presumptive favorites in 1972. Their record before the final game was an astounding 63-0.

However, the Soviets were very good that year and their older and experienced team was winning the game until the final seconds, when the U.S. player Doug Collins was fouled and sank two free throws, putting the team ahead by one point with one second left on the clock.

An official demanded that an additional two seconds be put back on the clock. When that time expired, the U.S. team began to celebrate and their fans swarmed onto the court. But officials said the clock reset had not been done properly so they put three seconds back on the clock and gave the Soviets another chance. The Soviet team also managed to make an illegal substitution of a player who, with the help of a Soviet Bloc referee interfering in the play, passed to another player who scored the winning point.

The Americans were outraged at how the game was conducted and appealed to a basketball court made up of five judges. However, they lost that appeal 3-2. It is perhaps worth noting that all three judges who voted against the Americans happened to be from communist countries.

The Soviet Union men, for their part, are absolutely defiant that they won a free and fair game. Just a few years ago, Russians put out a very popular movie called “Going Vertical” — also known as “Three Seconds” — about their surprise victory over the Americans. It became “the most-successful Russian film of all time,” according to the Hollywood Reporter.

When the American press covers the Olympics issue — including a raft of coverage last year on the 50th anniversary of the game — they never hector the players to concede that they lost. They do not refer to them as “Olympics deniers.” Heck, the Olympics.com news site itself has a story headlined, “Americans refuse silver as USSR steal controversial basketball final.” The Washington Post covered the dispute generously. So did NBC. In 2012, The New York Times favorably reviewed a book that alleged the game was stolen by the Soviets. When power forward Dwight Jones died in 2016, The New York Times gave him an obituary that featured the disputed game. ESPN has filmed round table discussions about the unfair loss. Just last year, The New York Times supported the effort to have the outcome of the game overturned.

Can you imagine if reporters cornered the players or their fans and said, “Yes or no, did you lose the 1972 game?” Can you imagine if they badgered each player to utter an affirmation that the Soviets won fair and square or be called “basketball deniers”? Can you imagine how juvenile and idiotic that would sound? Real journalists wouldn’t do any of these things, particularly if they genuinely wanted to understand or accurately convey why the game was so controversial.

Similarly, there is something downright pathological in the media and other Democrat activists’ attempts to silence any and all genuine discussion about the weirdest election of our lifetimes. I researched and reported a full-length book about all of the verifiable problems with the election. These problems include the effort by the same top Democrat lawyer who ran the Russia-collusion hoax to push for the coordinated change of hundreds of election laws and processes, supposedly due to Covid. The vast majority of the significant changes were done in violation of the Constitution’s requirement that state legislatures handle such rules. The changes led to tens of millions of unsupervised ballots flooding into the system at the same time that scrutiny of said ballots was diminished. Mark Zuckerberg, one of the world’s wealthiest and most powerful men, spent more than $400 million to orchestrate the takeover of government election offices by left-wing activists. This get-out-the-vote effort was overwhelmingly focused on the Democrat areas of swing states.

There is also the issue that corporate media moved from pervasive bias into overt propaganda on behalf of Democrats and against Republicans. They invented fake news that was inserted into national debates, such as the false Aisne-Marne story claiming Trump secretly didn’t like American soldiers and the false claim that Russia was paying bounties for dead American soldiers and that Trump didn’t care. They also suppressed completely true stories about the Biden family business of paying for access to Joe Biden. In fact, a cabal of powerful figures conspired to falsely blame as Russian disinformation a laptop belonging to a key member of the Biden family pay-for-play business.

And that doesn’t even mention the fact that the U.S. government conspired with Big Tech companies to run a massive censorship-industrial complex to suppress news and information advantageous to conservative politicians and issues. This censorship-industrial complex also worked and continues to work to elevate left-wing media with a track record of running false information operations, such as the debunked Russia-collusion hoax and the Kavanaugh rape smear.

But let’s get back to the basketball game.

Did the men’s basketball team of the Soviet Union score more points than the United States in 1972? They did. Did they receive the gold medal? They did. Did Joe Biden receive more Electoral College votes than Donald Trump? He did. Was he inaugurated as the 46th president of the United States? He was.

All of those things are true. It is also true that reasonable people on the losing side of both contests believe — for very good reasons — they were not fair. It is sheer gaslighting to use the immense power of the Democrat media and corrupted Department of Justice to say that people are not allowed to oppose the way election contests were conducted or discuss how the manner in which the contests have been conducted affected the outcome.

Fans of the 1972 Soviet men’s basketball team and the 2020 Joe Biden campaign have every right to say they won a free and fair contest. They should not be jailed or persecuted for that view. Some fans and operatives of the current regime want to make it illegal or unacceptable to question or oppose the censorship-industrial complex, the plot to radically change election laws in an unconstitutional fashion, the private takeover of government election laws by left-wing billionaires, or our propaganda press. It’s something one might have expected to find in 1972 Soviet Russia more than in 2023 United States.

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

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DeSantis’ Problem Isn’t Trump, It’s That Dems Rigged the Last Election

BY: JOHN DANIEL DAVIDSON | JULY 11, 2023

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JOHN DANIEL DAVIDSON

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You might have noticed a media narrative taking shape the last few days about how Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ presidential campaign has “stalled.” A Politico Playbook item over the weekend described it as a “failure to launch,” noting that polling for DeSantis peaked in January at 40.5 percent and has since settled in the low 20s amid a barrage of attacks from former President Donald Trump.

Playbook also cited other news outlets recently casting doubt on the DeSantis operation, from fundraising struggles to lack of endorsements to difficulties distinguishing himself from Trump on policy. DeSantis super PAC official Steve Cortes added fuel to the narrative fire in an interview Sunday night, bemoaning the polls and admitting, “clearly Donald Trump is the runaway frontrunner.” One could of course object that it’s only July, that polls don’t mean much this far out from the primaries, and that corporate media want nothing more than to push a DeSantis-is-stalled narrative whether it’s true or not, because they hate and fear him just as they hate and fear Trump.

But maybe there’s something else going on here. If enthusiasm for DeSantis seems lacking, maybe it has little or nothing to do with DeSantis or his campaign. Perhaps what we’re seeing is less about him and still less about 2024 or the upcoming GOP primary scrum, and more about what happened in 2020. Put bluntly, maybe what we’re seeing now is an early sign that what Democrats, Big Tech, and corporate media did in 2020 was inject poison into our political system, and the 2024 election cycle is going to show us just how deadly that poison is.

Recall that 2020 was unlike any election in American history. One need not declare that it was “stolen” to admit that it was obviously rigged. After all, the people and institutions that rigged it have freely admitted what they did. They suppressed the Hunter Biden laptop story, censored what Americans could say on social media, introduced unprecedented changes to our voting system under the pretext of pandemic precautions, and poured hundreds of millions of dollars into putatively nonpartisan local election offices through Mark Zuckerberg-connected nonprofits for the sole purpose of turning out Democrat voters in swing states. Nothing like that has ever happened in American history. And it was all done for the singular purpose of ensuring that Trump would not serve a second term. What’s more, all of that came after four years of the permanent regime in Washington discarding every political norm, bending every rule, and breaking more than a few laws in a failed effort to oust Trump from office during his first term.

Now, maybe you think that’s all nonsense, or just water under the bridge. What’s done is done, we can’t go back, and even if the 2020 election wasn’t on the level, we all just need to move on and go about the 2024 primary season like its business as usual. There’ll be debates and a deluge of political ads and campaign shenanigans. There’ll be a chaotic, rambunctious primary full of zingers and debate moderator tomfoolery, and at the end of it, Republicans will have their nominee and we can all get on with the general election.

Sorry, but that’s not going to happen. It won’t happen because Trump supporters are understandably not willing to forget 2020 and just trundle along through 2024 like none of it happened. Plenty of them will always believe, not without reason, that 2020 was stolen outright. Many millions more believe, with even more reason, that it was rigged unfairly against Trump and that the same forces are at work now to rig it against whomever the GOP nominee turns out to be. Does that mean Trump is somehow entitled to the nomination, or even to another term in the White House? Not necessarily. To the extent that 2020 was stolen, it wasn’t strictly speaking stolen from Trump but from the American people, the voters who cast their ballots for Trump in good faith, trusting that our elections were free and fair.

Now that their faith has proved misplaced, do you think they’re going to line up for a GOP primary and consider each candidate on his or her merits, giving them all a fair hearing? Of course not. As far as they’re concerned, they were robbed of their votes in the last election by a corrupt cabal of powerful elites who are still in control.

Indeed, we know more today about the astounding level of corruption and election-rigging in 2020 than we did at the time. None of the problems have been fixed, and no reparations have been made. You can’t expect these voters to simply move on and act like 2024 is going to be a free and fair election, and accept whatever result the machine coughs up.

To win over GOP primary voters who supported Trump in the past two cycles, these candidates have to speak to the injustice that was done in 2020, they have to admit what happened, name who did it, and affirm that we cannot have a self-governing republic if that’s how our elections are going to be.

And therein lies the problem for a candidate like DeSantis — to say nothing of such winsome and meritorious gunners like Vivek Ramaswamy or Tim Scott. How can you decry what they did to Trump in one breath and in the next proclaim that you’re the best person to redress those grievances? That Trump should stand aside and let you, Nikki Haley, restore faith in American elections and put Democrats in their place.

Maybe it can be done, maybe they can come up with a rationale for their candidacies that will appeal to Trump supporters. It certainly would be a neat trick.

But if you’re trying to explain why an otherwise popular figure like DeSantis isn’t gaining traction among GOP primary voters, the answer has less to do with Trump and more to do with what Democrats did in 2020. No one should expect Trump voters to forgive and forget. Democrats and their accomplices might have thought they were getting rid of Trump once and for all, and maybe they will get rid of him in the end. But right now, it looks like they sowed the wind.

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.

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DeSantis supports abolishing the IRS, Department of Education, and more — but he also has a backup plan

By: ALEX NITZBERG | June 28, 2023

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is currently running for president, has indicated that he would support abolishing the Department of Education, the Department of Energy, the Internal Revenue Service, and the Department of Commerce. He named the four government entities after Fox News Channel’s Martha MacCallum asked him if he would support nixing any agencies.

DeSantis, who previously served in the U.S. House of Representatives, indicated that he would support eliminating those four government entities if Congress would work with him to do so. But he also said if the legislature will not support such a move, he would utilize the agencies to counter “woke ideology” and “leftism,” such as by using the Department of Education to “reverse all the transgender sports stuff.”

DeSantis said that either route would mark a “win for conservatives.”

BREAKING: Ron DeSantis was just asked if he's in favor of eliminating any federal agencies.

He says he wants to eliminate the Departments of Education, Commerce, and Energy — and the IRS. pic.twitter.com/xwdA0GiJ9Y
— More Perfect Union (@MorePerfectUS) June 28, 2023

In the Republican presidential contest, the Florida governor, who just won re-election last year, has been polling in second place, far behind former President Donald Trump. But while DeSantis is trailing Trump, he has been polling higher than the rest of the GOP presidential primary field.

The first Republican presidential primary debate will be held in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on August 23.

Earlier this week, during remarks in Texas, DeSantis said that he would support rules of engagment that allow for using deadly force against drug cartel operatives who cut through America’s border wall. “If somebody were breaking into your house to do something bad, you would respond with force. Yet why don’t we do that at the southern border?” he said. DeSantis also said he would designate the cartels as foreign terrorist organizations or transnational criminal organizations.

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Florida’s largest police union endorses DeSantis after supporting Trump in 2020: ‘Choice could not be clearer’

By Andrew Mark Miller | Fox News | Published June 26, 2023 1:15pm EDT

FIRST ON FOX: The largest police union in the state of Florida announced Monday that it is backing Gov. Ron DeSantis for president after previously supporting former President Trump. In a press release announcing the presidential endorsement, Florida Police Benevolent Association President John Kazanjian called DeSantis the “most effective governor in the nation” who will “make public safety a top priority in the White House.“

“In major cities and communities across America, many Americans are grappling with increased crime rates that not only jeopardize public safety, but also threaten the quality of life in their communities,” Kazanjian said. “The ideological experiment of defunding the police and scapegoating law enforcement for America’s social problems has failed.”

Kazanjian called DeSantis the “one candidate for president who has a proven track record in enhancing public safety and investing in the essential men and women who help maintain public safety every day.

“For the over 30,000 men and women in the Florida Police Benevolent Association, the choice for us could not be clearer,” he said.

PRO-DESANTIS SUPER PAC RAILS AGAINST ‘WOKE’ IDEOLOGY IN NEW AD: ‘EXISTENTIAL THREAT TO OUR SOCIETY’

“Governor Ron DeSantis and his administration have made Florida a law-and-order state, by investing in and supporting the thousands of law enforcement officers, who serve on the front lines in keeping our communities safe and secure.”

The press release outlined several actions taken by DeSantis to strengthen law enforcement in Florida, including investing over $100 million to increase salaries of officers and investing $20 million to support the fight against fentanyl overdoses.

“Governor DeSantis has made Florida a destination for all Americans to live safely and freely,” the release states. “He is one of the most effective Governors in the nation and he will take his proven track record to the White House, where he will continue to have the backs of law enforcement officers and make public safety a top priority.”

DESANTIS ENDORSED BY 15 SOUTH CAROLINA LAWMAKERS

Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis — Former President Trump, left, and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. (Getty Images)

The police union endorsed Trump in 2020.

Fox News Digital reached out to the Trump campaign for comment but did not immediately receive a response.

DeSantis was on the campaign trail in Eagle Pass, Texas, on Monday outlining his immigration plan and blasting the Biden administration for not doing more to address the crisis.

Former President Donald Trump — Former President Trump speaks to guests at the 2023 NRA-ILA Leadership Forum on April 14, 2023 in Indianapolis. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)

“On Jan. 20, 2025, we will be on a mission to stop the invasion at our southern border to fight the drug cartels that are poisoning our citizenry, to build the border wall, and to reestablish the sovereignty of this nation,” DeSantis said during the announcement. “We are done with promises. We are done with slogans. Now is the time for action. No excuses. We will get the job done.”

Andrew Mark Miller is a writer at Fox News. Find him on Twitter @andymarkmiller and email tips to AndrewMark.Miller@Fox.com.

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DeSantis: ‘Turn the Screws’ on Sanctuary Jurisdictions

By Eric Mack | Monday, 26 June 2023 11:18 AM EDT

Unveiling his 2024 presidential campaign border policy Monday in Eagle Pass, Texas, Florida GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis vowed to “turn the screws on sanctuary jurisdictions” and “kneecap the cartels.”

“We’re gonna turn the screws on sanctuary jurisdictions,” DeSantis said at a campaign event, which aired live on Newsmax. “They get a lot of money. All these localities and states get a lot of money from the feds. They get grants. They get all that.

“You know, we’ll make sure to turn the screws so that it pays to follow the law, and it doesn’t pay to violate the law.”

It is not just about money with the Democrat-run cities and states that are “virtue signaling” with their open immigration policies in violation of U.S. law — and in defiance of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) — it is also about public safety, according to DeSantis.

“What will happen is you’ll have somebody who’s in the country illegally, they’ll commit a serious crime, they’ll serve a prison sentence; when they’re done with their prison sentence, a state or a locality, that sanctuary will not notify ICE that they’re getting out of prison, because if they do ICE can take them and send them back,” DeSantis lamented.

“Instead they release them back into the community. How is that something that’s acceptable? It’s not.”

President Joe Biden has taken the “virtue signaling” that started by anti-Trump forces during the Trump administration to whole new depths and the open borders must be closed, DeSantis vowed.

“Joe Biden’s dereliction of duty has made our southern border a disaster zone,” DeSantis said. “The Biden administration is the critical link in an illegal transnational human smuggling syndicate.

“For decades, leaders from both parties have produced empty promises on border security, and now it is time to act to stop the invasion once and for all.

“As president, I will declare a national emergency on day one and will not rest until we build the wall, shut down illegal entry, and win the war against the drug cartels. No excuses. We will get it done.”

A key piece of DeSantis’ plan is declaring the Mexico drug and human trafficking cartels Transnational Criminal Organizations in a federal order-led effort to “kneecap the cartels.”

“We’re going to be leaning in against these drug cartels,” DeSantis said. “I think that they are killing a lot of Americans. They are effectively in control of this border to begin with, and part of the reason it’s gotten this way is they don’t get any pushback.

“They’re able to just do this with impunity, and so we will designate them either Transnational Criminal organization or foreign terrorist organization. Chip and I are talking about that.

“The bottom line is we’re going to give them a designation so that we can unleash more federal power to be able to kneecap the cartels.”

Chip refers to his early endorser Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, who once helped run the presidential campaign for Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and is currently active among the House conservatives pushing back against Biden’s open border policies.

“Washington’s status quo approach to border security is one of the biggest failures of our generation,” Roy, speaking before DeSantis, said. “This crisis has decimated ranchers, killed Americans with dangerous narcotics, placed migrants in horrific situations from sex trafficking to death, and placed American national security at risk to China and cartels.

“Texans and our courageous DPS Troopers deserve credit for standing in the breach created by Joe Biden. We need a president in the White House who is not afraid to use the full weight of his office to build the wall, stop the flow, and force Congress to send a bill to sign to fix the laws once and for all.

“Ron DeSantis not only has a strong plan to secure the border — in line with our Texas plan — he has the courage to finally deliver results.”

Notably, DeSantis has been one of the leading men in America in forcing sanctuary cities and states to take on the border crisis in their own backyards, having sent migrants to Martha’s Vineyard and California.

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Here’s The Single Most Important Question 2024 GOP Presidential Candidates Must Answer

BY: BEN WEINGARTEN | JUNE 06, 2023

Author Ben Weingarten profile

BEN WEINGARTEN

VISIT ON TWITTER@BHWEINGARTEN

There is one fundamental question that any candidate vying for the Republican nomination for president of the United States in 2024 must answer — but that as of yet has gone largely unaddressed, at least publicly, as the field spars over significant but ultimately subordinate issues. The question is this: How will you win the general election under the present voting system?

An inability to answer this question clearly, compellingly, and convincingly imperils Republican odds of retaking the White House, no matter how favorable their prospects might look come next November. It is incumbent on anyone who wants to earn the Republican presidential nomination to answer this question at the outset, and to operate accordingly.

Over the last two election cycles, Republicans lost in historically aberrant if not unprecedented ways. That, or they underachieved relative to what conditions on the ground would have suggested. Political analysts have pointed to numerous factors to explain why the results broke the way they did, but perhaps the one constant in the presidential and midterm elections was that they were both held under a radically transformed voting system.

Democrats are so well-positioned to thrive under this system that even under the most favorable political circumstances, and with a “perfect” Republican presidential candidate, it is not at all clear that such a candidate would prevail. At least that is the prudent assumption under which Republicans serious about winning the presidency should be operating.

As Americans well know, we are lightyears removed from the election days of old — singular days when people voted in person, on paper ballots, after presenting identification. Now, we have mass mail-in elections, conducted over weeks, where those voting in person often do so on electronic machines, and with lax identification standards.

New Norms

Democrats largely developed and long fought for this system, willing it into existence under the cover of Covid-19. Naturally, they have successfully manipulated and exploited the voting regime they made.

Ballot harvesting is becoming an accepted norm. Candidates not only have to earn votes but figure out how to collect as many votes as they possibly can. Are Republicans overnight going to out-harvest their opponents, or figure out some new means to identify and turn out voters otherwise sitting on the sidelines in sufficient numbers to overcome Democrats’ ballot-harvesting superiority?

“Zuckerbucks” continue to loom over our contests as well, despite bans in many states. The left is doing everything it can to steer private money toward public election administration — administration done in conjunction with left-wing nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) seemingly targeting the Democrat ballots needed to win.

Prepare for Lawfare

Lawfare is also now an integral part of our election system. Republicans have started to devote significantly greater attention and resources to the litigation game, but to catch up to Democrats will require a long-term, sustained effort, backed with real money. And filing suit over election policies and practices after votes have already been cast of course has proven a losing proposition, as demonstrated by courts’ unwillingness to grapple with fundamental issues around the 2020 election largely on technical grounds.

Meanwhile, Democrats have engaged in efforts to ruin the lives of Republican election lawyers — in their own words to “make them toxic in their communities and in their firms” — seeking to kneecap their competition before it ever reaches the courtroom.

Are Republican candidates devising comprehensive election lawfare strategies right now to both aggressively target existing election chicanery and stave off that which is to come — with the courage and intellectual heft behind it needed to win in the face of an unrelenting and calculating opposition?

Daunting Challenges

These in-built challenges exist before even discussing election fraud, and the imperative for a Republican candidate to exhaust every available means to prevent it, and in the absolute worst case to detect and mitigate it — this at a time when voting happens at further remove from the election booth than ever before, making finding and proving fraud all the more difficult.

Layer on top of these issues the broader forces any such candidate will be up against, and the prospect of winning becomes even more daunting.

Among them is a concerted ruling-class effort to stymie any Republican nominee who might challenge its power and privilege, as President Donald Trump found himself up against in 2020. As Time’s Molly Ball described it in her infamous “Secret History of the Shadow Campaign That Saved the 2020 Election” exposé, Trump faced: a well-funded cabal of powerful people, ranging across industries and ideologies, working together behind the scenes to influence perceptions, change rules and laws, steer media coverage and control the flow of information.

“They were not rigging the election,” Ball wrote, “they were fortifying it.”

This “cabal” will re-engage in 2024 and redouble its election “fortification” efforts, perhaps especially in “controlling the flow of information” — this is the working assumption Republicans must operate under. Candidates should also assume the deep state will engage in all manner of dirty tricks. The election interference has already begun in earnest. Frankly, it has been ongoing since 2016.

Given the Democrats’ advantages, it would be foolish for any Republican candidate, no matter how formidable, and against an opponent no matter how weak, to presume victory is preordained or even likely in 2024.

The two leading candidates have, to their credit, acknowledged the challenges presented by the voting system and Republicans’ failings in competing under it.

Former President Donald Trump has vowed that “we will become masters at ballot harvesting.” “We have no choice,” he has said, but to “beat Democrats at their own game.” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis also recently said, “We’re going to do ballot harvesting,” and that he won’t “fight with one hand tied behind [his] back.”

In that spirit, Republican candidates should devise and articulate a comprehensive plan to win, aimed at an electorate largely dubious of a system they see as rigged. Many are demoralized by this system, which could dampen turnout in key areas.

A Plan

In an ideal world, such a plan would begin with an effort to lobby state legislatures to pass a battery of election integrity-strengthening laws seeking to restore voting, to the greatest extent possible, to the standard of single-day, in-person, and with identification; purge voter rolls of ineligible names; provide maximum transparency and visibility into the voting process for observers, challengers, and the candidates; facilitate real-time arbitration over contested ballots and irregularities, and clear remedies for broader alleged malfeasance; empower state authorities to pursue vote fraud; and impose utterly crippling criminal penalties on anyone who engages in it.

Beyond a legislative effort to ensure end-to-end election integrity from delivery of ballot to vote-counting, candidates must lay out a realistic roadmap for success by internalizing lessons of recent election cycles and forthrightly recognizing Republicans’ strengths and weaknesses. They must determine how to optimally deploy finite resources to triumph in a bloody political war, and play on whatever advantages Republicans may have.

To prepare such a plan, candidates should seek to identify: Democrats’ most effective and decisive strategies and tactics in recent election cycles; what Democrats will do to improve upon these efforts; Republicans’ greatest strategic and tactical failures and successes in recent election cycles; Republican advantages yet to be exploited; and the most significant election integrity-eroding laws, policies, and practices on a state-by-state basis in recent election cycles.

Such an analysis would help the candidates determine which strategies and tactics to replicate, improve upon, experiment with, and totally discard. It would also help them anticipate the strategies and tactics they should combat using whatever means available, and, relatedly, discern what rules and features of the game they must relentlessly litigate over — as Democrats will no doubt be doing.

Then, candidates could develop a precinct-level plan to find and maximize turnout among voters in the most pivotal locales while building as strong and aggressive an on-the-ground poll challenging/fraud detection operation as possible to deter illegal or unethical Democrat behavior; develop a related lawfare plan; and determine how much money they must raise to implement the plans, when and where to allocate the funds, and to whom.

At minimum, this thought exercise would yield critical insights, and instill in voters and donors alike confidence there is a robust and coherent operation in place to maximize the odds for success.

The planning must begin now.

Only by competing and winning under a rotten system rewarding the kind of organizing and action historically anathema to conservatives will there ever be an opportunity to dismantle that system.

Ben Weingarten is Editor at Large for RealClearInvestigations. He is a senior contributor to The Federalist, columnist at Newsweek, and a contributor to the New York Post and Epoch Times, among other publications. Subscribe to his newsletter at weingarten.substack.com, and follow him on Twitter: @bhweingarten.

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DeSantis Campaign Ad Hits Trump for Not Firing Fauci

By Eric Mack | Monday, 05 June 2023 06:01 PM EDT

The campaign for Florida GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis is firing back at COVID-19 barbs hurled by Donald Trump, trolling the former president for refusing to fire Dr. Anthony Fauci.

“Donald Trump became a household name by firing countless people *on television*,” the DeSantis War Room campaign’s Twitter account wrote, sharing a campaign video ad.

“But when it came to Fauci…”

The ad shows scenes from the Trump-led “The Apprentice,” showing Trump repeating his famous “you’re fired” line.

The ad then cuts to then-President Trump talking about how he cannot fire Fauci during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns. Fauci was a leading voice for the Trump administration’s initial COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns in March 2020.

“Today I walk in, I hear I’m going to fire him,” Trump is shown during one of his 2020 pandemic daily press briefings. “I’m not firing him. I think he’s a wonderful guy.”

The DeSantis War Room campaign ad then turns to multiple interviews where Trump admitted he did not fire Fauci because of “a firestorm on the left,” saying he was not “allowed to,” and even Trump admitting that Fauci was a problem.

“Every time he goes on television there’s a bomb, but there’s even a bigger bomb if you fire him,” Trump says in a TV interview in the ad.

“Frankly, you can’t win that one; if I would have done it, I would have taken heat,” the ad shows Trump saying in another interview.

Fauci retired just days before the Republican Party was set to retake control of the House majority — therefore taking the speaker and committee chair gavels for oversight.

DeSantis has famously called Fauci “an elf” who needed to be “chucked across the Potomac River.”

“I’m just sick of seeing him,” DeSantis said during a 2022 midterm gubernatorial campaign speech. “I know he says he’s going to retire. Someone needs to grab that little elf and chuck him across the Potomac.”

Trump has pitched an “Agenda 47” plan — named after the next president of the U.S. being the 47th — “to dismantle the deep state and reclaim our democracy from Washington corruption once and for all, and corruption it is.”

“First, I will immediately reissue my 2020 Executive Order restoring the president’s authority to remove rogue bureaucrats, and I will wield that power very aggressively,” Trump said in his details campaign policy video, posted to Rumble this spring.

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DeSantis: I’ll Pardon Trump, Other DOJ ‘Weaponization’ Victims

By Sandy Fitzgerald | Thursday, 25 May 2023 03:33 PM EDT

New GOP presidential candidate Ron DeSantis said on Thursday that if he’s elected, he will “be aggressive” in using presidential pardons to free people charged or convicted through the weaponization of the Department of Justice, and that includes his main rival for the party’s nomination, former President Donald Trump.

“What I’m going to do is … on day one, I will have folks that will get together and look at all these cases, who people are victims of weaponization or political targeting, and we will be aggressive at issuing pardons,” the Florida governor told podcasters, Buck Sexton and Clay Travis.

DeSantis added that the DOJ and FBI have been weaponized in many ways under President Joe Biden, and he acknowledged that in some of the cases where people are charged with crimes, “people may have a technical violation of the law.”

“But if there are three other people who did the same thing, but just in a context like BLM [Black Lives Matter] and they don’t get prosecuted at all, that is uneven application of justice, and so we’re going to find ways where that did not happen,” said DeSantis. “And then we will use the pardon power — and I will do that at the front end.”

He said many presidents wait until the end of their administration, but he promised that his administration will “find examples where the government’s been weaponized against disfavored groups, and we will apply relief as appropriate.”

However, DeSantis also explained that the pardons will be considered “case by case,” meaning that a blanket pardon wouldn’t be given to Trump, who is facing several criminal probes.

“That could be from a grandma who got arrested and prosecuted too much all the way up to, potentially, Trump himself,” Travis said. He then asked the governor, “Is that fair to say when you analyze what the charges might have been brought on a federal level?”

“I would say any example of disfavored treatment based on politics or weaponization would be included in that review, no matter how small or how big,” DeSantis responded.

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Florida Gov. DeSantis Signs 3 Laws to Stop China Influence

By Eric Mack | Monday, 08 May 2023 03:11 PM EDT

Florida GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis officially signed a trio of bills Monday to stop Chinese Communist Party influence in his state. The bills limit Chinese-tied land buys of farmland, near military bases, or critical infrastructure, protect against Chinese forced technology transfer, and prohibit funding tied to China for education institutions in the state.

“Florida is taking action to stand against the United States’ greatest geopolitical threat — the Chinese Communist Party,” DeSantis said Monday.

“I’m proud to sign this legislation to stop the purchase of our farmland and land near our military bases and critical infrastructure by Chinese agents, to stop sensitive digital data from being stored in China, and to stop CCP influence in our education system from grade school to grad school.

“We are following through on our commitment to crack down on communist China.”

In a Friday interview with Newsmax‘s John Bachman, DeSantis hailed the Florida Legislature GOP supermajorities for being able to get an aggressive agenda passed to root out Chinese influence in his state.

“This is trailblazing for the nation,” DeSantis told Bachman in an interview that aired on “Eric Bolling The Balance.” “Certainly, when you talk about CCP, they made a concerted effort to buy farmland, and so we’re very cognizant of that. We’re not going to let that happen in Florida, but we’ve gone even farther and said we don’t want them near any critical infrastructure.”

Interests of Foreign Countries (SB 264) restricts governmental entities from contracting with foreign countries and entities of concern and restricts conveyances of agricultural lands and other interests in real property to foreign principals, the People’s Republic of China, and other entities and persons that are affiliated with them. It also amends certain electronic health record statutes to ensure that health records are physically stored in the continental U.S., U.S. territories, or Canada.

“Food security is national security, and we have a responsibility to ensure Floridians have access to a safe, affordable, and abundant food supply,” Commissioner Wilton Simpson said Monday. “China and other hostile foreign nations control hundreds of thousands of acres of critical agricultural lands in the U.S., leaving our food supply and our national security interests at risk.

“Restricting China and other hostile foreign nations from controlling Florida’s agricultural land lands near critical infrastructure facilities protects our state, provides long-term stability, and preserves our economic freedom. This bill is long overdue.”

Agreements of Educational Entities with Foreign Entities (SB 846) prohibits state colleges and universities and their officials from soliciting or accepting any gift from a college or university based in a foreign country of concern. It also prohibits state colleges and universities from accepting any grant from or participating in any agreement or partnership with any college or university based in a foreign country of concern. The bill also prohibits the ownership or operation of any private school participating in the state’s school choice scholarship program by a person or entity domiciled in, owned by, or in any way controlled by a foreign country of concern.

Prohibited Applications on Government-issued Devices (SB 258) requires the Department of Management Services to create a list of prohibited applications owned by a foreign principal or foreign countries of concern, including China, which present a cybersecurity and data privacy risk.

The bill requires government and educational institution to block access to prohibited applications on all government servers and devices in Florida and requires public employers to retain the ability to remotely wipe and uninstall these dangerous applications from government issued devices.

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Republicans Need To Stop Being Cowards On Abortion

BY: DAVID HARSANYI | APRIL 18, 2023

Author David Harsanyi profile

DAVID HARSANYI

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How many voters understand that the Democratic Party supports legalized abortion through all nine months of pregnancy on demand for virtually any reason? How many voters know this position aligns with only six other countries in the world — three of them, not incidentally, being North Korea, Vietnam, and China?

Indeed, Democrats want to pass a federal law overturning the democratic will of states that ban sex-selective abortions or the dismembering of the post-viable unborn or require parental or guardian notification for minors before getting abortions. Democrats want to allow non-doctors to perform abortions (probably because it’s not medical care) while at the same time stripping real medical workers of their conscience rights by compelling them to participate in the procedure or lose their jobs. Democrats want to eliminate the popular Hyde Amendment that stops the federal government from funding abortions with taxpayer dollars. They believe abortion is vital in ensuring that poorer Americans have fewer children.

Now, maybe a majority of voters aren’t aware of Democrats’ maximalist positions because the media endlessly lies and obfuscates them. And maybe pollsters rarely ask useful questions on the topic — offering absurdly vague queries like “do you support abortion access” or should “abortion be legal” rather than should it be legal until the “due date” or “for any reason” or “after the baby is viable” or “for sex selection” — because the answers are a lot more complicated than they’d like.

And, maybe, after the shock of Roe being overturned — treated by Democrats as if it had been chiseled into magical stone tablets over the past 50 years — the energy and passion of the debate will temporarily reside on the pro-abortion side. And, maybe, if every voter knew all the facts, it still wouldn’t matter. Abortion is a complex and emotional issue.

None of that excuses the inability, or aversion, of national conservatives to make a coherent and compelling pro-life case. Sometimes it feels like Republicans are more terrified by the Dobbs decision than pro-abortionists. Even if pollsters were right about the unpopularity of abortion restrictions, there is this crazy thing that politicians occasionally engage in called “persuasion.” Rather than just chasing around voters for approval, this entails convincing them with arguments.

The problem, it seems, is that too many in the GOP accept the media’s concern trolling or listen to risk-averse advice of the consulting class. Take Wisconsin. On the same day Republicans took a supermajority in the legislature, Janet Protasiewicz beat conservative Dan Kelly by 10 percentage points to flip the state’s Supreme Court. Virtually every outlet treated the race, in which 36 percent of Wisconsin voters showed up, as a national referendum on abortion. Anonymous consultants were recruited to offer off-the-record comments voicing their deep concern about the deleterious effects of the abortion issue. “The drubbing Republicans took in Wisconsin this week revealed how harmful the issue of abortion still is to the party — and will likely remain through 2024,” Politico explained. “Wisconsin Supreme Court election sends message on abortion rights,” says the Washington Post. And so on.

Weird how this dynamic only works in one direction. In 2020, Brain Kemp, who signed a heartbeat bill limiting abortion to the first six weeks a year earlier, easily defeated media darling Stacey Abrams to win the Georgia governorship (in a state that Donald Trump also lost.) Abrams made abortion, along with guns, the central issue of her campaign, carpet-bombing the state with ads. In 2018, Terry McAuliffe also attempted to make abortion the dominant issue of his campaign against Glenn Youngkin. At the time, two of the Washington Post’s most dedicated partisan flaks promised that the race was “our first big test of the new politics of abortion.” Well, Youngkin, who supports 15-week abortion limits, won. Alas, there were no four-bylined handwringing deep dives from the Post about abortion undermining Democrats.

Georgia and Virginia are swing states. Ohio, where Mike DeWine signed a six-week ban in 2019 and won the state by 10 points in 2022, was one not long ago, as well. This is the same state in which pro-life JD Vance easily beat “moderate” Tim Ryan. But Ohio and Virginia teach nothing about abortion. Only the Wisconsin Supreme Court race matters.

This week, the governor of Florida and prospective presidential candidate, Ron DeSantis, signed a six-week ban on abortion. One imagines DeSantis will be just as popular among Republicans in his state since the bill passed overwhelmingly in the Florida Assembly. Of course, conventional wisdom says this hurts his presidential chances.

Every GOP president since Ronald Reagan has taken a pro-life position. Even in a post-Dobbs world, the idea that abortion is going to be the determinative factor in the presidential race is likely wishful thinking. Now that Roe has been overturned, the president has even less say over the future of abortion. Abortion has become a state issue. That’s what irks Dems.

Whatever the case, the Republican nominee doesn’t need to impress California voters. They need to convince social conservatives in Virginia, Ohio, and Florida to go out and vote. Does anyone really think DeSantis would be better off politically if he vetoed a pro-life bill? Running from the abortion conversation, as so many Republicans seem to do, creates the impression they don’t really believe in their own stated position. Quite often, that’s probably the case. If you’re going to run as a pro-lifer, allowing the opposition to define your beliefs makes little sense. Especially when making a rational and moral case for protecting viable life, at the very least, isn’t particularly difficult — certainly not when contrasted with the left’s extremism.

Then again, if every Republican lost every race in the country over abortion, it still wouldn’t make killing human beings for convenience any less of a moral abomination or the fight to stop it any less important. A majority position isn’t, by default, moral or decent — quite the contrary. And meaningful political fights aren’t predicated on short-term gains. Overturning Roe took 50 years. The political fight over abortion might take even longer.

David Harsanyi is a senior editor at The Federalist, a nationally syndicated columnist, a Happy Warrior columnist at National Review, and author of five books—the most recent, Eurotrash: Why America Must Reject the Failed Ideas of a Dying Continent. He has appeared on Fox News, C-SPAN, CNN, MSNBC, NPR, ABC World News Tonight, NBC Nightly News and radio talk shows across the country. Follow him on Twitter, @davidharsanyi.

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DeSantis slams ‘Soros-funded’ Manhattan DA for ‘weaponizing the office’ as Trump rumors swirl

By Brooke Singman | Fox News | Published March 20, 2023 12:43pm EDT

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis slammed Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg on Monday as a “Soros-funded prosecutor” who is “pursuing a political agenda and weaponizing the office” as he reportedly considers indicting former President Donald Trump on charges related to alleged hush-money payments made to adult film star Stormy Daniels in 2016.

“I’ve seen rumors swirl, I have not seen any facts yet, and so I don’t know what’s going to happen,” DeSantis said in Florida when asked about the potential indictment of the former president.

“But I do know this,” he said. “The Manhattan district attorney is a Soros-funded prosecutor, and so he, like other Soros-funded prosecutors, they weaponize their office to impose a political agenda on society at the expense of the rule of law and public safety.”

HOUSE JUDICIARY COMMITTEE DEMANDS MANHATTAN DA ALVIN BRAGG TESTIFY ABOUT POSSIBLE TRUMP INDICTMENT

Eyes are on Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, left, and former President Donald Trump when thinking about the 2024 presidential election. (Al Drago / Bloomberg via Getty Images / File)

The potential charges against Trump stem from the $130,000 hush-money payment that then-Trump lawyer Michael Cohen made to Daniels, whose legal name is Stephanie Clifford, in the weeks leading up to the 2016 presidential election in exchange for her silence about an alleged sexual encounter with Trump in 2006.

NY PROSECUTOR EYEING TRUMP HAS FACED REPEATED CRITICISM FOR BEING SOFT ON CRIME

Federal prosecutors in the U.S. attorneys office for the Southern District of New York opted out of charging Trump related to the Stormy Daniels payment in 2019, even as Cohen implicated him as part of his plea deal. The Federal Election Commission also tossed its investigation into the matter in 2021.

“And so, you’re talking about this situation with, and like, I don’t know what goes into paying hush money to a porn star to secure silence over some type of alleged affair — I just I can’t speak to that,” DeSantis said.

COURT UPHOLDS GOV. RON DESANTIS’ SUSPENSION OF PROSECUTOR WITH ‘MILITANT AGENDA’

“But what I can speak to is that if you have a prosecutor who is ignoring crimes happening every single day in his jurisdiction, and he chooses to go back many, many years ago to try to use something about porn star hush-money payments, you know, that’s an example of pursuing a political agenda and weaponizing the office,” DeSantis said. “And I think that that’s fundamentally wrong.”

DeSantis said “Soros-funded prosecutors” may carry out “a high-profile politicized prosecution, and that’s bad.”

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg speaks during a press conference in New York on Sept. 8, 2022. (Victor J. Blue / Bloomberg via Getty Images)

“But the real victims are ordinary New Yorkers, ordinary Americans and all these different jurisdictions that they get victimized every day because of the reckless political agenda that the Soros DAs bring to their job,” DeSantis said. “They ignore crime and they empower criminals, and that hurts people, hurts a lot of people every single day.”

GRAHAM SLAMS SOFT-ON-CRIME BRAGG FOR TARGETING TRUMP WHILE NEW YORKERS ‘LUCKY’ NOT TO GET ‘MUGGED’

In 2022, during Bragg’s first year as Manhattan’s top prosecutor, he downgraded more than half of felony cases to misdemeanors. He campaigned on criminal justice reform and sent a “Day One” memo to staff upon taking office to downgrade certain felonies, such as armed robberies of commercial businesses. The move came at a time when crimes were up 27.6% in New York City, Fox News Digital previously reported.

Bragg declined to prosecute 35% more felony cases than in 2019.

George Soros (Reuters / Lisi Niesner / File)

“These Soros district attorneys are a menace to society,” DeSantis said. “And I’m just glad that I’m the only governor in the country that’s actually removed one from office during my tenure.”

TRUMP CALLS MANHATTAN DA INVESTIGATING HIM A ‘RACIST IN REVERSE’

Last year, DeSantis suspended State Attorney Andrew Warren, a Democratic prosecutor backed by liberal billionaire George Soros, for “neglecting his duties.” Warren had pledged not to bring charges against anyone who violates state abortion restrictions or bans on gender-transition procedures for minors. Warren is currently suing DeSantis.

As for a potential Trump indictment, DeSantis said, “We are not involved in this and won’t be involved in this.”

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis gives a victory speech after defeating Democrat gubernatorial candidate Rep. Charlie Crist during his election night watch party at the Tampa Convention Center on Nov. 8, 2022, in Tampa, Florida. (Octavio Jones / Getty Images)

“I have no interest in getting involved in some type of manufactured circus by some Soros DA,” he said. “He’s trying to do a political spectacle. He’s trying to virtue signal for his base. I’ve got real issues I got to deal with here in the state of Florida.”

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DeSantis said there are “so many things pending” in front of the Florida state legislature.

“I’ve got to spend my time on issues that actually matter to people,” he said. “I can’t spend my time worrying about things of that nature.”

Trump, on Monday afternoon, responded to DeSantis on his TRUTH Social.

“Ron DeSanctimonious will probably find out about FALSE ACCUSATIONS & FAKE STORIES sometime in the future, as he gets older, wiser, and better known, when he’s unfairly and illegally attacked by a woman, even classmates that are ‘underage’ (or possibly a man!),” Trump posted, seemingly referring to an unsubstantiated claim about DeSantis that has circulated in left-wing blogs.

Trump added: “I’m sure he will want to fight these misfits just like I do!”

DeSantis’ team declined to comment on the former president’s post.

Brooke Singman is a Fox News Digital politics reporter. You can reach her at Brooke.Singman@Fox.com or @BrookeSingman on Twitter.

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Sorry, Media Nerds, The War in Ukraine Is Literally A ‘Territorial Dispute’

BY: EDDIE SCARRY | MARCH 16, 2023

Ron DeSantis should say it one more time for the people in the back. The war is literally a dispute over territory.

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EDDIE SCARRY

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Apologies in advance for making you consider something uttered by David French and Jennifer Rubin, but the two work for prominent news publications that unfortunately shape our national dialogue, so bear with me.

“DeSantis actually called Russia’s grotesque, aggressive invasion of a sovereign country a ‘territorial dispute.’ … Astonishing. Dangerous.”—French, New York Times columnist

“[DeSantis] has decided that if you can’t beat the pro-Putin wing of the Republican Party, then join them. He declared that Russia’s brutal and unjustified war of aggression against a sovereign Ukraine is actually ‘a territorial dispute between Ukraine and Russia…’”—Rubin, Washington Post columnist

The “territorial dispute” quote is from Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ recently released statement about the ongoing war in Ukraine (a place our elected leaders in Washington sometimes refer to as “Our Last Great Hope.”) What he said more fully is that “becoming further entangled in a territorial dispute between Ukraine and Russia” is not a “vital interest” to the United States.

That’s a view shared by anyone who thinks yet another foreign war without clear and substantial strategic benefit to America is not something we should busy ourselves with. (It’s not like we have any pressing problems here!) But French, Rubin and the rest of the national media really hate that view. It’s “pro-Putin”! It’s “astonishing” and “dangerous”!

DeSantis should say it one more time for the people in the back. The war is literally a dispute over territory. Russian leadership claims Ukraine as its own and the Kremlin’s settlement offers are based almost solely on territory concessions (with some details related to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization).

“I believe that Russians and Ukrainians are one people … one nation, in fact,” Russian President Vladimir Putin said in 2019. In some parts of Ukraine, even Ukrainians claim that. “Many In Eastern Ukraine Want To Join Russia,” read a NPR headline in 2017.

The Washington Post last year found at least 15 percent of residents of Ukraine’s Donbas region said they wanted to join Russia. Maybe, just maybe, this has something to do with Russia and Ukraine being literally part of the same nation for more than half a century.

I know that’s not very sexy for the nerds in the media who prefer to think of the war like a Marvel movie where a corny villain can be overpowered by a united and freedom-loving Justice League, but that’s not the case.

Democracy is at stake!

*Cue Max Boot solemnly removing his little hat in reverence.*

It turns out that discussing the conflict doesn’t first require the speakers to confess their love for Ukraine and hatred for Putin while shedding a tear. It’s not the romantic affair that Rubin, French, et al. want it to be.

Eddie Scarry is the D.C. columnist at The Federalist and author of “Liberal Misery: How the Hateful Left Sucks Joy Out of Everything and Everyone.”

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When DeSantis Targets A Corporation He’s A Fascist. When Democrats Do It They’re Heroes

BY: DAVID HARSANYI | MARCH 07, 2023

When Disney began lobbying against a parental-rights bill in Florida that would prohibit public school teachers from discussing sex, sexual orientation, or so-called gender identity with prepubescent kids in kindergarten through third grade, Gov. Ron DeSantis proposed a special session of the legislature to review Disney World’s 50-year-old “independent special district” status to see if it was “appropriately serving the public interest.”

The popular bill — which Democrats and the media dishonestly renamed “Don’t Say Gay” despite the bill never mentioning the word gay or stopping anyone from saying it — passed both houses and was signed by DeSantis. Disney was handily beaten. Nevertheless, DeSantis ended up signing legislation that effectively stripped Disney of control of over 25,000 acres surrounding its theme park and created a new tax district.

Democrats like Jonathan Chait claimed the threat alone was “What Post-Trump Authoritarianism Looks Like,” and MSNBC’s Ja’han Jones noted that the threats showed the GOP had gone “full authoritarian,” and so on. By full authoritarian, he meant that the Florida legislature passed the bill and then the governor signed the bill. Disney, of course, has no constitutional or divine right to be a special tax district. But the notion of “democracy” is highly malleable these days.

It is probably unpopular to say I believe it’s a terribly short-sighted idea to normalize state retribution against speech. Disney should be able to stake any political position it wants without worrying about repercussions from the government — in the same way that Jack Phillips or Hobby Lobby or Chick-fil-A shouldn’t have to worry about the government punishing them for their beliefs. If Disney’s position is that state-run schools should teach kindergarteners about oral sex and celebrate gender dysphoria despite the wishes of parents, it would almost surely pay a steep economic price.

It is also true, however, that one can understand why DeSantis’ move is popular with conservatives. The entire feigned anger over the incident from leftists is laughable and transparently insincere. Contemporary Democrats have never been reluctant to punish and single out corporations that do not share their political values. Virtually the entire technocratic economic agenda of the contemporary left exists to subsidize industries that produce things they like, mandate consumers buy those things, and punish those who do not. Democrats have never been reluctant to target disfavored companies over their profit margins, to use corporations to compel vaccinations and unions, or to threaten Big Tech companies into accepting government speech codes. The committee chair in the Senate is an open Marxist. Who are they kidding?

This week we learned that Walgreens wouldn’t sell the abortifacient mifepristone in 20 red states that have laws curbing unfettered abortion. Gavin Newsom, the man who presides over a state whose economic controls are beginning to resemble an Eastern European “republic” circa 1975, promised the pharmaceutical company would face consequences and that California would no longer do any business with the chain because it “cowers to the extremists” and “puts women’s lives at risk.”

Walgreens, of course, is not standing in opposition to any California law, much less putting any women’s lives in danger. It’s not lobbying the state to overturn laws that legalize abortion into the ninth month of pregnancy nor staking a position that is at odds with most of the state’s voters — though it has every right to do all those things if it desires. Walgreens has decided not to sell abortion drugs, ones it has never sold in the past, in other states. It is not doing so for any moral reasons. It is trying to avoid legal conflict.

Many Democrats celebrated Newsom’s threat, as they’ve celebrated threats before, because they have zero qualms about compelling or hurting companies. They don’t believe it’s authoritarian. They’re just angry they no longer have a monopoly on the practice.

David Harsanyi is a senior editor at The Federalist, a nationally syndicated columnist, a Happy Warrior columnist at National Review, and author of five books—the most recent, Eurotrash: Why America Must Reject the Failed Ideas of a Dying Continent. He has appeared on Fox News, C-SPAN, CNN, MSNBC, NPR, ABC World News Tonight, NBC Nightly News and radio talk shows across the country. Follow him on Twitter, @davidharsanyi.

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Don’t Fall for Joe Biden’s Economic Fairy Tale

BY: DAVID HARSANYI | FEBRUARY 08, 2023

Joe Biden delivers state of the union address with Kamala Harris and Kevin McCarthy behind him — **The president’s biggest whopper? ‘I’m a capitalist.’**

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Like Nero bragging about rebuilding Circus Maximus after burning it down, Joe Biden took to the podium tonight to take credit for solving a slew of problems he helped create.

At the top of his State of the Union address, the president boasted that he had “created more jobs in two years than any president created in four years.” No president — not Joe Biden nor Donald Trump — creates jobs. But Biden’s contention was exceptionally misleading, considering he inherited an economy that had been unplugged by an artificial, state-induced shutdown. If the government compels businesses to shutter, it doesn’t “create” jobs when allowing them to open.

On more than one occasion during the night, a mercurial Biden contended that Covid-19 had shut down the economy. No, states did. Politicians did. Biden was an aggressive proponent of those shutdowns. During the 2020 presidential campaign, the president regularly attacked Republican governors for opening too early and for ignoring federal health officials. Even in August of 2021, after it was clear that shutdowns hadn’t saved any lives, Biden was still criticizing Florida’s Gov. Ron DeSantis for rejecting a new round of Covid authoritarianism, telling him to “get out of the way” of those trying to “do the right thing.”

Three years ago, the unemployment rate was at 3.5 percent. Today, Biden reminded us that it was at a historic low of 3.4 percent. More than 30 million people lost their jobs to Covid lockdowns. Biden claims to have “created” 12 million jobs during the past two years. The one big difference is that the labor participation rate still hasn’t recovered to pre-Covid numbers. It’s great that people are working again. But millions fewer are in the market for jobs.

Biden also boasted that Americans were seeing “near” historic unemployment lows for black and Hispanic workers. These historic lows were achieved before Covid lockdowns. So, if Biden deserves credit for this, doesn’t Trump? Of course, there is no specific Biden economic policy that brought us near-historic unemployment lows for minorities or an unemployment rate 0.1 percent lower than the previous administration. Washington wasted trillions of dollars propping up an economy that it previously shut down.

Speaking of spending, Biden claimed that the preposterously misnamed “Inflation Reduction Act,” which you might recall was initially called “Build Back Better,” had helped alleviate spiking prices. Only when inflation became non-transitory, and a politically problematic issue, did Biden begin arguing that more spending would mitigate inflation. And only then did Democrats rename their bill, which was crammed with the same spending, corporate welfare, price fixing, and tax hikes — all long-desired progressive wish-list items. “The Inflation Reduction Act is also the most significant investment ever in climate change,” Biden said during his address, as if this sentence made any sense.

Presidents are often unduly blamed or given credit for economic events beyond their control. But it is no accident inflation took off as Democrats pumped hundreds of billions into a hot economy (in the case of the “infrastructure” bill, with the help of Senate Republicans) and aggravated foreseeable problems with policies that disincentivize work and undercut energy production. All this led to the biggest inflation spike since 1982. We are still at historic highs. A slew of products that consumers rely on still remain atypically expensive, and fears of additional price hikes have started to seriously corrode consumer confidence.

Biden lied that “25 percent” of the national federal debt was incurred by the previous administration when most of that debt was driven by entitlement programs passed, expanded, and revered by Democrats. And he misled the nation by claiming that his administration had “cut the deficit by more than $1.7 trillion — the largest deficit reduction in American history,” when, in fact, those “cuts” were sunsetting pandemic emergency spending that Democrats had complained wasn’t enough.

Biden went into his well-worn platitudes and myths about how the rich don’t pay taxes — “[n]o billionaire should be paying a lower tax rate than a school teacher or a firefighter!” — and proposed higher rates on the wealthy and corporations. He also promised to micromanage the economy with a slew of new regulations that would interfere in voluntary contracts struck between employees and employers and consumers and businesses.

Biden implored Congress to pass the PRO Act, a bill that would empower the government to impose unions on businesses and workers who want no part of them. Biden hawked an entire menu of crude economic populism — including price controls and protectionist trade policies that would undermine growth, competition, job creation, and innovation while driving up the cost of virtually every construction project in the country.

There were numerous lies, half-truths, and deceptions. There was a slew of antiquated economic ideas and sloganeering. But, surely, the president’s biggest lie of the night was to claim, “I’m a capitalist.”

David Harsanyi is a senior editor at The Federalist, a nationally syndicated columnist, a Happy Warrior columnist at National Review, and author of five books—the most recent, Eurotrash: Why America Must Reject the Failed Ideas of a Dying Continent. He has appeared on Fox News, C-SPAN, CNN, MSNBC, NPR, ABC World News Tonight, NBC Nightly News and radio talk shows across the country. Follow him on Twitter, @davidharsanyi.

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Sorry, Gavin Newsom. Real Freedom Fighters Are Leading Conservative Southern States, Not California

BY: RICH CROMWELL

JANUARY 20, 2023

5 MIN READ

Greg Abbott — **Conservative governors in the South such as Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Glenn Youngkin, and Ron DeSantis provide hope to freedom-loving Americans.**

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RICH CROMWELL

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“Freedom is our essence, our brand name — the abiding idea that right here, anyone from anywhere can accomplish anything,” so said the stunt double for Gordon Gekko’s hair, Gavin Newsom, upon being sworn in for his second term as the governor of California. Never mind that California was the exemplar of draconian lockdown policies designed to stop Covid, nor that businesses are fleeing the state, nor that it’s using “1984” as a roadmap. If Gov. French Laundry says it’s true, as he’s taking shots at potential future presidential rivals in Florida and Texas, it must be true.

And maybe it is true on Earth-2. California was once the home of innovation and a bastion of America’s independent spirit. The expression “As goes California, so goes the nation” didn’t gain currency because it was incorrect. But as another expression says: That was then, this is now. For in the now, it’s southern states and governors who are leading the way on freedom, empowering citizens, rebuilding infrastructure, and returning to the lost ideal of just leaving people alone.

When it comes to policies that actually promote freedom, states like Florida, Texas, and, God willing, my own Arkansas are doing much more to promulgate the free expression of the American spirit than Beijing on the Bay. How do we know this? Well, while actions speak louder than words, the actions of the governors of those states show they’re not afraid to put their money where their mouths are.

When Ron DeSantis was sworn in for his second term as governor, in a previously purple state in which he won reelection by almost 19 points, his inaugural speech proclaimed Florida as a bastion of freedom, but he has the stats to back it up. From fighting indoctrination masquerading as education to battling woke corporate excess to remembering that conservation is a conservative value, he has a record.

When Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who was elected the first female governor of Arkansas by a margin of roughly 27 points, was sworn in, she immediately began issuing executive orders fighting racism masked as education while urging the legislature to enshrine the orders so that future governors could not rescind them. She repealed five executive orders left in place by her Republican predecessor, Asa Hutchinson, regarding Covid. And she instituted a promotion and hiring freeze for state workers and made it impossible for state government agencies to issue new regulations without her approval.

And when Greg Abbott, who dealt Robert Francis “Novice Air Drummer” O’Rourke his latest defeat, was sworn in for his third term as governor of Texas, the new technology and innovation hub of America, he sounded the alarms on indoctrination, public safety, and the crisis at America’s southern border as well as offering a positive vision for the future of Texas. He stressed the need to focus on infrastructure and ensuring that the state’s power grid is prepared not just for the next four years “but for the next 40 years.”

Texas’ population has grown to more than 30 million people while California’s population has declined. And it’s no wonder why; it must be reassuring to these ex-Californians that their new home is being proactive in preventing the rolling brownouts of their former state. They can also take solace in the fact that Abbott didn’t give into Covid hysteria and has helped foster a climate that has drawn more than a few businesses from the Golden State to the Lone Star State.

It’s not just Texas that’s growing, but also Florida. Being open for business during the disastrous response to Covid propelled the state to the leader of the pack for growth for the first time since 1957. (Arkansas is also growing, and being home to the world’s largest retailer — and non-governmental employer — helps, though that company may soon need to be reined in akin to how DeSantis reined in Disney.)

Factor in Glenn Youngkin’s victory in Virginia in 2021, and it really seems like these southerners are onto something. Whereas conservatives in the past just wanted to be left alone, so do conservatives in the present day. However, with regulatory and Big Business busybodies unwilling to leave us alone, we need executives who will fight back.

The future of the country isn’t found in an office, it’s found in our communities, the place closest to us that we also tend to ignore, but at this moment, we also need pugilists who are willing to stand up for normalcy and vibrancy. The freshly sworn-in trio in the South is offering us that. As California goes, so goes the nation is one possibility. But if we pay attention and keep electing leaders like these, the other possibility is that as goes the South, so goes the nation.

Freedom is neither an essence nor a slogan, it’s a way of life that must be protected.

Richard Cromwell is a writer and senior contributor at The Federalist. He lives in Northwest Arkansas with his wife, three daughters, and two crazy dogs. Co-host of the podcast Coffee & Cochon, you can find him on Facebook and Twitter, though you should probably avoid using social media.

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John Daniel Davidson Op-ed: Ordinary Americans Are Going to Have to Save the Country Themselves, One Town at a Time

BY: JOHN DANIEL DAVIDSON | DECEMBER 20, 2022

American flag close up — **What can regular people do to take back their country from woke radicals? Take over local institutions, one at a time.**

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One of the things I get asked from time to time by readers is, what can ordinary people on the right, Christians and conservatives, do to help save the country — besides voting on Election Day?

It’s a good question, and it comes from the very understandable feeling of helplessness many people feel about the direction of the country and, let’s be honest, the collapse of Western civilization that’s now well underway. It’s especially easy to get frustrated after an election cycle like the one we just had, in which Republican leaders thoroughly botched it and left things more or less where they were before the voting. Put another way, if voting doesn’t really change anything in our so-called democracy, what will?

There’s an answer to this question, but you’re not going to like it. The plain truth is this: You’re going to have to save the country yourselves. Donald Trump isn’t going to save it. Ron DeSantis isn’t going to save it. There’s not a snowball’s chance in hell that a GOP majority in Congress is going to save it.

By all means, keep voting in national elections. Keep making your voices heard at the ballot box. But salvation won’t come from Washington, D.C. If America is going to be saved, or even just parts of it are to be saved, then ordinary men and women, God-fearing patriots all across the country, are going to have to do it themselves, one town at a time. And they will have to do it the old-fashioned and unglamorous way, by taking over the local institutions of civic life, organizing and winning elections for city council and school board, finding reliable and competent people willing to be candidates and staff and volunteers.

It’s going to be a long, thankless slog, but there’s no other way. Neither is there any guarantee of success. I speak here only of towns and suburbs, not of cities, many of which have become unlivable after decades of failed Democrat governance and leftist policies. Conservatives who can manage it should move to places where they can join with other like-minded Americans to take back their communities and instill a civic culture that reflects their beliefs.

We got into this situation through passivity, and only a sustained effort at the local level will get us out. For decades, conservatives did nothing while the left marched through academia — and then kept right on marching, down from their ivory tower and into the public square, into the schools, the libraries, corporate boardrooms, local police and fire departments, even the churches. These people have radical views far outside the American mainstream but nevertheless control all our institutions. If you want them back, you’ll have to take them back, post by post.

This is not the kind of thing the right likes to hear. By temperament and principle, conservatives would rather be left alone to run their businesses, raise their families, worship in their churches, and build up their charities and local communities. Unlike liberals and leftists, they tend not to be ideologues. They are not trying to fundamentally change the country. They mostly want to be left alone.

But of course, they will never be left alone. The woke radicals will never stop — until someone stops them. A kind of conservative radicalism, or at least activism, is going to be required to accomplish that.

A good example of what I’m talking about is playing out in the small central Texas town of Taylor, population about 17,000. Taylor, some 35 miles north of Austin, is a rather conservative place of the sort you can find all over the country. It recently made national headlines over its traditional Christmas parade; a longstanding town tradition organized by a coalition of local churches. Last year, organizers accidentally approved a parade float for a group calling itself Taylor Pride, which the parade committee naively mistook for the name of a group that was just proud of their town. What they got instead was a float featuring two men dressed in drag, dancing suggestively in what paradegoers assumed was going to be a family-friendly event.

Parents and attendees were understandably perturbed. To ensure it didn’t happen again, the consortium of local churches that runs the parade sensibly decided that this year, parade floats must be consistent with traditional biblical and family values. The point wasn’t to exclude any individuals or groups from attending or even participating, but to ensure the floats were family-friendly and not — like the Taylor Pride drag queen float — contrary to Christian teachings.

The City of Taylor responded by announcing it would stage its own separate LGBT-friendly “holiday” parade, on the same night as the traditional Christmas parade, on the same route, following right behind it. The decision was made not by the elected members of the city council, who are accountable to voters, but by the municipal staff who actually run things. There was no public notice or deliberation and no consultation beforehand with members of the city council. The municipal bureaucracy acted on its own authority to use (or rather misuse) public funds and resources to sponsor a parade that was wildly out of step with the community at large.

Kevin Stuart, a Taylor resident and assistant professor of political science at the University of St. Thomas, wrote about all this recently in The Wall Street Journal, noting that the problem in Taylor has deep historical roots. The outsourcing of decision-making to so-called experts has been happening in American towns and cities for more than a century, such that professional bureaucrats now run small towns across America like “ideological colonizers.”

“There is now a yawning ideological gap between the people who live in American towns and the professionalized cadre of city staff who pass through those towns on their way up the career ladder,” writes Stuart. He goes on to argue that residents of towns like Taylor are partly to blame for ceding too much political power to an expert class whose interests and values don’t align with the people they’re supposed to serve.

He’s right about that — and also about how “communities can’t remain strong if they are unwilling to defend common sense and get involved in the political process.” The lesson of Taylor’s dueling Christmas parades is that even in small, conservative towns in deep-red states like Texas, conservatives can’t be complacent. As I wrote last month about the Taylor fracas, there’s nowhere Christians can run and hide from the left. They have to stand and fight.

In Taylor, that means residents who until now might have never been involved in local politics will have to roll up their sleeves, give up some weekday evenings, and get involved. They will have to put up their own conservative candidates and vote out of office the city councilors who empowered a woke municipal bureaucracy. They will have to fire the cadre of leftist bureaucrats who run things and replace them with their own people. They might even have to change the city charter so that elected members of the city council actually do the work of the public in City Hall, not an unelected city manager who sees the job as merely a steppingstone to a bigger city.

The same goes for the library, the school board, and every other local institution in every American town like Taylor. Conservatives have to take them over if they can. To answer the question we began with, that is what ordinary people can do. And they have to start now. No one is coming to help, and time is running out.

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.

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Dr. David Harsanyi Op-ed: ‘National Conservatism’ Is A Dead End

BY: DAVID HARSANYI | NOVEMBER 16, 2022

Pat Buchanan presidential campaign, 2000 — **A rant.**

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DAVID HARSANYI

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Since a civil war is about to break out and destroy the modern Republican Party — fingers crossed — let me tell you what grinds my gears.

Young NatCons, many of whom I know and like, seem to be under the impression that they’ve stumbled upon some fresh, electrifying governing philosophy. Really, they’re peddling ideas that already failed to take hold 30 years ago when the environment was far more socially conservative and there were far more working-class voters to draw on. If Americans want class-obsessed statists doling out family-busting welfare checks and whining about Wall Street hedge funds, there is already a party willing to scratch that itch. We don’t need two.

“National conservatism”— granted, still in an amorphous stage — offers a far too narrow agenda for any kind of enduring political consensus. It lacks idealism. It’s a movement tethered to the grievances of a shrinking demographic of rural and Rust-Belt workers with high school degrees at the expense of a growing demographic of college-educated suburbanites.

The “New Right” loves to mock “zombie Reaganism.” Well, the ’80s fusionist coalition, which stressed upward meritocratic mobility, free markets, federalism, patriotism, and autonomy from the soul-crushing federal bureaucracy, was by all historical measures more successful than the Buchananism that followed or Rockefellerism that preceded. Zombie Reaganism was a dramatic success not only in 1980 but also in 1994 and again in 2010 and 2014. The “shining city on a hill” might sound like corny boomerism, but it’s still infinitely more enticing than the bleak apocalypticism of Flight 93.

Too many conservatives misconstrued Donald Trump’s slim 2016 victory as a national realignment. It was a mirage. Trump, a uniquely positioned celebrity candidate, benefitted not only from Obama fatigue but, more than anything else, the cosmic unlikability of Hillary Clinton. Yes, the GOP needed an attitude adjustment, a stiffening of the spine. There is no denying Trump’s presidency achieved some positive results (most of them, incidentally, also on the “zombie Reaganism” front with deregulation and the judiciary), and he made inroads with working-class voters and Latinos. But Republicans have now blown three elections catering to largely incoherent NatCon populism.

There is no one reason or person culpable for the right’s failures in 2022, but there are certain types of candidates finding success. Ron DeSantis, Brain Kemp, and (in 2020) Glenn Youngkin can call out crony capitalism without sounding like Ralph Nader’s comms director. All of them have been highly critical of lawlessness of illegal immigration, but none of them come off like chauvinists. All of them supported heartbeat bills and election integrity laws, and above all, they are competent administrators of government.

The white-collar worker in Virginia or North Carolina, living in a multi-use neighborhood, probably isn’t as preoccupied with drag queen story hour or the intrigues of Big Tech or the Justice Department or Chinese tariffs — as important as those issues might be — as Josh Hawley seems to believe. The suburban voter might be more socially liberal these days, but they are still dispositional conservative. And one strongly suspects they would rather see public school reform, bigger retirement accounts, and lower property tax bills than a commissar regulating the internet or some protectionist policy killing economic dynamism.

Of course, the New Right would like to claim DeSantis as one of their own. Allie Beth Stuckey, like many on the “New Right,” maintains that the Florida governor’s impressive win tells us: “we’re done with the old, corporate tax cuts GOP. We want you to use all the power available to you to crush the entities crushing us.”

That’s a Twitter reality. In the real world, hundreds of thousands of people flock to Florida (and Texas and Arizona) to enjoy an inviting regulatory environment, low taxes, and relative freedom — not to watch the governor teach Disney a lesson. A politician who cuts taxes and opens schools and businesses, despite pressure from the federal government, isn’t “crushing” anyone, he is freeing them. A politician who insists that state-run elementary schools should teach kids math, science, and history rather than identitarianism, myths, and sexuality has a compelling story to tell parents.

DeSantis is also a politician. So he shows up at trendy NatCon conferences, in the same way he used to chase trendy Tea Party endorsements from Club For Growth and FreedomWorks. Despite the left’s claims, DeSantis doesn’t strike me as an ideologue, but rather a champion of normalcy. Maybe incumbents were successful in 2022 because people are sick of drama?

What about J.D. Vance, though, David? Different types of candidates appeal to different regions. No one is arguing that Zombie populism is without any traction. Before Vance, there was Rick Santorum, whose message also had a limited allure. Yes, Vance can win in Ohio. Mike DeWine, about the most milquetoast moderate imaginable, can also win in Ohio, and by a bigger margin. Does Vance win Arizona or Nevada? Probably not. Does Blake Masters win in Ohio? Probably. But Americans are moving to Henderson, Nevada, and Boise, Idaho, not Akron, Ohio.

In the meantime, the New Right’s intellectual movement is a Trojan horse for a bunch of corrosive authoritarian “post-liberal” ideas. If a malleable “common good” means jettisoning limiting principles, well, no thank you. Plenty of secular right-wingers like myself have been defending religious freedom on neutral, classical liberal grounds. Today, the New Right tells me those notions are dead. If that’s true, I wonder who will be left to defend them 10 years from now?

By the way, if you’re under the impression that the New Right think-tankers and technocrats who rail against “elites” and “libertarians” and romanticize lunch-pail unionism are going to send their kids to work in warehouses for minimum wage, I have news for you. That’s reserved for the plebs. It’s no surprise that Compact, the New Right magazine standing athwart the “libertine left and a libertarian right,” employs a Marxist editor or that so many anti-woke socialists feel comfortable allying with the New Right. That’s a Twitter realignment, however, not a real-world one.

Fortunately, it’s highly unlikely that the average Republican with a small business is as antagonistic to the notion of individual liberty as the average First Things editor. The average voter tends not to treat every loss as if it were the end of Rome. It’s bad out there. But people who tell you this is the worst era in history or that we’re facing insurmountable unique problems are just as hysterical as the people who tell you democracy is over. Most Americans realize politics is a grind. I’d love to live in a minarchist paradise, but I’m a realist. There are approximately 349,999 million people who think differently. That’s how it shakes out in a diverse, sprawling nation. A national party needs to broaden its message to convince — not just follow the whims — of as many voters as possible. NatCons are headed in the wrong direction.

My friends believe the Republican Party establishment is incompetent and cowardly. Maybe. Thankfully, we don’t have a binary choice. May both factions fail.

David Harsanyi is a senior editor at The Federalist. Harsanyi is a nationally syndicated columnist and author of five books—the most recent, Eurotrash: Why America Must Reject the Failed Ideas of a Dying Continent. His work has appeared in National Review, the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Reason, New York Post, and numerous other publications. Follow him on Twitter, @davidharsanyi.

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The Big Midterm Lesson: Defensive ‘Victories’ on the Right Aren’t Going to Save The Country

BY: JOHN DANIEL DAVIDSON | NOVEMBER 10, 2022

Ron DeSantis speaking into a mic onstage — **Republicans won big in places where GOP leaders leaned into the culture war and passed abortion restrictions. That’s no accident.**

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If there’s a clear lesson to come out of Tuesday night’s bizarre midterm election, it’s that Republicans can no longer be content with defensive victories or defensive politics. To win political power and do what must be done to save the country, Republicans will have to go on offense, present a compelling vision for the future, and engage culture war issues like abortion and critical race theory without apologies.

When they do that, they win. But it stands in stark contrast to the perennial advice of Beltway GOP consultants, who think it best to avoid major culture war issues like abortion. Indeed, the “official narrative” of corporate media in the wake of Tuesday’s midterms is that abortion was a big winner for Democrats, who supposedly capitalized on the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade, successfully making abortion a major electoral issue and blunting a red wave by boosting turnout among young, pro-abortion voters.

It sounds good, but it’s not quite right. Republicans who didn’t shy away from talking about abortion after Dobbs, and who signed into law abortion legislation earlier this year without flinching or apologizing, did really well — they were Tuesday night’s winners. As Marc Thiessen noted on Fox News, Republican governors in Ohio, Georgia, New Hampshire, Texas, and Florida all signed post-Dobbs abortion restrictions, and they all won reelection by comfortable margins.

That’s not to say abortion was a non-factor. Democrats squeezed every last electoral drop they could out of Dobbs, spending $320 million on abortion-related TV ads (much more than on all other issues combined) which helped motivate a voter base that might have otherwise been depressed.

Still, there was a clear contrast between Republicans who heeded the advice of Beltway consultants and tried to dodge abortion questions or take a noncommittal stance and those who defended their anti-abortion positions and pushed for post-Roe legislation. Only one of those groups fared well Tuesday.

The larger lesson here is that Republican candidates should lean into the culture war and make no apologies for their positions, even on contentious issues like abortion. Fighting back against the left, it turns out, is what a lot of voters on the right want from Republicans.

Consider what Ron DeSantis achieved in Florida, winning 60 percent of the vote after narrowly eking out a victory four years ago. He did that by not shying away from big, high-profile fights over hot-button culture war issues like critical race theory and transgender indoctrination. Glenn Youngkin did the same thing last November to pull off an upset in the Virginia governor’s race.

But DeSantis and Youngkin are, sadly, exceptions to the general rule that Republicans tend to be reactionary and defensive. Indeed, the failure of the conservative movement is largely attributable to this default defensiveness, and it needs to end. For decades, conservatives whined about just wanting to be left alone even as the radical left was marching through our institutions and transforming society, showing us at every turn they had no intention of leaving us alone. Yet some on the right still don’t seem to get it. On Tuesday morning, anticipating a red wave, Ben Shapiro tweeted: “The mandate for Republicans will be to stop Biden’s terrible agenda dead. It will not be to make very loud but tactically foolish moves.”

Shapiro didn’t specify what he meant by “very loud but tactically foolish moves,” but he followed it up with this:

The American people keep saying the same thing over and over: we want some semblance of normalcy. Stop bothering us. Leave us alone. This is not a difficult thing to achieve.
— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) November 8, 2022

Sorry, but the era of normalcy and being left alone is over. The left will never leave us alone. They want to win and wield power, and if we want to stop them, we will have to win and wield power ourselves. Conservatives who want to be left alone will simply lose, as they have been for decades now.

Those like Shapiro who long to be left alone are also apt to argue that the conservative project has been moderately successful over the years, moving slowly to notch wins. Look at Dobbs. Look at religious liberty and the Second Amendment. Look at all the good judges appointed to the federal bench during the Trump administration.

But this is a cope. Yes, there have been a few victories for conservatives. The Dobbs decision was the greatest policy victory of the conservative cause in a generation, and it was due mostly to the dogged work of the Federalist Society and the Heritage Foundation, two institutions often unfairly maligned as “Conservative, Inc.” by the New Right, and — at least before Dobbs dropped — dismissed as failures.

Yet even the Dobbs decision was a defensive victory, handed down like a gift from on high by the Supreme Court. But it didn’t end legal abortion, and indeed the ruling itself bent over backward to avoid the broader implications of its own constitutional logic, which, as Justice Clarence Thomas explained in his concurring opinion, calls into question the constitutionality of substantive due process and the long train of Supreme Court rulings that have followed its invention more than a century ago.

As Dobbs itself suggests, defensive victories delivered by the federal judiciary aren’t going to reverse what has been, with few setbacks, a relentless, decades-long march by the left through every institution of American life. Anyone who tells you things aren’t that bad because we happen to have five mostly reliable Supreme Court justices is either delusional or quietly willing to acquiesce to leftist tyranny.

They’re probably also inclined to think Republicans didn’t really do so bad in the midterms, and that what Americans really want is just some tinkering with Social Security and the welfare state. Nothing too loud and tactically foolish. That’s more or less Rep. Kevin McCarthy’s plan if he becomes speaker of the House. After all, the country just wants to heal.

No. The country does not want to heal. It does not want “some semblance of normalcy.” There are two diametrically opposed moral systems at war right now in America, and it’s not enough at this late hour to be content with the status quo, to repose in the overturning of Roe v. Wade, and hope the five good justices will somehow stop the revolutionaries.

Just look at the successful pro-abortion midterm referendums in Michigan, Vermont, and California, where the right to kill the unborn is now enshrined in those states’ constitutions. What’s true of the abortion issue is true of nearly every other major issue in American public life. Being passive and defensive is not going to cut it. If Republicans want to win, they’d better be willing to fight. Let’s hope they are. The future of the republic depends on it.

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.

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Sorry, There’s No ‘Smoking Gun’ In Martha’s Vineyard, Just A Lot Of Left-Wing Condescension

BY: JOHN DANIEL DAVIDSON

SEPTEMBER 20, 2022

6 MIN READ

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One of the most condescending and insulting responses on the left to the Martha’s Vineyard migrant imbroglio last week was the repeated insistence, by blue-check media figures and Democrat politicians alike, that the 50 migrants who voluntarily boarded a plane to Massachusetts were somehow misled or tricked into it. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, in this fevered telling, took advantage of these poor people for a political stunt, proving himself to be a cruel and heartless man, willing to exploit the misfortune of desperate migrants — weaponize them! — just to own the libs.

It’s hard to think of a more patronizing attitude toward men and women who successfully navigated a harrowing exodus from Venezuela and Columbia, trekked through Central America and Mexico, dealt with smugglers and cartels and corrupt police the entire way, and finally set foot in the United States.

Contrary to insulting left-wing stereotypes about ignorant and confused migrants, the people who show up at our southern border tend to be tough, determined, and keenly aware of what’s in their own best interest. (I know that firsthand, having interviewed hundreds of migrants over the years, most recently in Reynosa and Matamoros, Mexico. I always come away impressed by their grit and resolve and resourcefulness, which is more than I can say for Twitter blue-checks who are happy to opine about what we should do about “helpless migrants” but can’t be bothered to take a trip to the border to interview them in person.)

Now comes Judd Legum with an unintentionally hilarious story for Popular Information purporting to be a “smoking gun” proving that the Martha’s Vineyard migrants were lied to — and maybe even kidnapped! It’s probably the purest possible distillation of the condescending left-wing notion of confused and helpless migrants being led around by the nose by cynical and evil Republicans.

Legum opens his breathless reportage with this bombshell: “Popular Information has obtained documentary evidence that migrants from Venezuela were provided with false information to convince them to board flights chartered by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R). The documents suggest that the flights were not just a callous political stunt but potentially a crime.”

And what is this documentary evidence? A brochure outlining refugee and immigrant benefits and assistance available in Massachusetts, which is a sanctuary state with multiple state programs designed to assist refugees and migrants. Legum says he got the brochure from Lawyers for Civil Rights (LCR), a Boston-based legal organization that’s supposedly representing 30 of the migrants, who presumably got it from Florida officials before they boarded the flight to Martha’s Vineyard.

According to Legum, though, the benefits described in the brochure are only available to refugees who have been referred by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and authorized to live in the U.S. They’re not for illegal immigrants who have claimed asylum, like the Martha’s Vineyard migrants. Therefore, he says, they were misled. Lawyers for LCR are now asking the Massachusetts attorney general to open an investigation. “The allegation that the migrants were misled is legally significant,” writes Legum. “It would mean that the flights were not just heartless, but potentially criminal.”

But no matter how much activist reporters like Legum might wish that DeSantis had somehow committed a crime by offering illegal immigrants a voluntary free flight to Massachusetts, it just isn’t so. The 50 or so migrants who landed in Martha’s Vineyard last week were never promised employment or anything else, they were simply told that sanctuary states like Massachusetts, unlike Florida and Texas, have programs and assistance available to refugees and migrants, which is true.

The brochure in question, for example, contains a list of community services and churches that have migrant assistance programs. The first one listed is a link for the immigration page of a website called First Stop Martha’s Vineyard, which is an online reference guide to the island’s social services and programs. It includes information about the Massachusetts Office for Refugee and Immigrants, among other programs.

The flights themselves were organized and funded as part of Florida’s relocation program to transport Florida-bound illegal immigrants to sanctuary states like Massachusetts, California, and New York. The Florida legislature last year set aside $12 million for the program, which also targets human smugglers and traffickers through a law enforcement strike force. Texas has a similar program under the aegis of Gov. Greg Abbott’s $4 billion ongoing border security initiative, Operation Lone Star.

According to Florida officials, the Martha’s Vineyard migrants were identified in Texas as Florida-bound, but with no resources to travel. Some of them were sleeping in the streets, others in shelters. They were put up in hotels for a night or two and offered voluntary transport to Martha’s Vineyard. Some, after a night in a hotel, changed their minds and opted not to go. One migrant, a man named Eduardo Linares, told the Texas Tribune he declined the offer but that he’s since heard from people who went to Martha’s Vineyard, and now he’s wondering whether he made the right decision. Legum quotes Linares alleging that a mysterious blonde-haired woman named “Perla” promised him and others a job and rent assistance in Martha’s Vineyard, but left out the part about Linares second-guessing his decision to stay behind. Why? Because including that detail would disrupt the preposterous narrative that these migrants are confused and helpless, unable to make their own decisions, and totally at the mercy of duplicitous, scheming politicians like DeSantis and Abbott.

The reality of the situation is more complicated. Often, illegal immigrants who cross the southern border into the U.S. already have a job lined up and a place to stay, usually with family members. They’re bound for points all across the country, from California to Massachusetts. Some might even make their way to Martha’s Vineyard, especially if they’re offered a free ride.

That is to say, most of them have a plan. But you would never know it from the coverage of the Martha’s Vineyard saga, which didn’t just demonstrate the hypocrisy of leftists who welcome illegal immigrants so long as they don’t show up in places like Martha’s Vineyard. It also demonstrated the appalling condescension many in the corporate press have toward the very migrants they pretend to champion.

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.

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Poll: Democratic Party Has Lowest Net Favorability Rating Compared to Eight Other Political Figures and Institutions

REPORTED BY KAY SMYTHE, REPORTER | May 16, 2022

San,Francisco,,Ca,-,August,23,,2019:,Speaker,Of,The — **Shutterstock/DemocraticParty**

The Democratic Party has the lowest net favorability rating when compared to eight other political figures and institutions, according to an NBC News poll released Monday. Fifty percent of adult respondents to the NBC News poll reported having negative feelings about the Democratic Party, with only 31% saying they have positive feelings — a 19 percentage point net-negative rating. Just above the Democratic Party, with 48% total negative feelings, was Vice President Kamala Harris, according to the poll. (RELATED: Pelosi Says Biden Polls Poorly Because Americans Simply Don’t Know How Good He’s Been)

The new NBC News poll measured 9 different political figures and institutions.

The most unpopular — in terms of net fav/unfav? The Democratic Party https://t.co/oIDoPoqmyw pic.twitter.com/uGhMBFl0nA
— Mark Murray (@mmurraypolitics) May 16, 2022

Almost 80% of the poll respondents were registered voters, which NBC stated is another warning sign for the Democrats as they head into the 2022 midterm elections. The results are the highest net-negative rating the Democratic Party has seen in 30 years of the survey being conducted, NBC reported.

The Democratic Party and Harris were ranked alongside Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Disney, Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, the Supreme Court, the Republican Party, and former Presidents Joe Biden and Donald Trump, respectively. One thousand adults took part in the May poll, with 750 respondents being interviewed by cell phone. The margin of error is + or – 3.10%. The poll was conducted by Hart Research Associates/Public Opinion Strategies.

Americans Aren’t Buying Biden’s Tale Of Economic Recovery https://t.co/jOZJmn48A3
— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) April 28, 2022

The poll also revealed that cost of living, jobs and the economy are the top concerns for Americans. Another poll found in March that Latino support for the Democratic Party was failing as inflation and the economy became a core concern for the demographic.

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The Left Unmasks Its Desire To Destroy Families — And The Nation — With Sexual Chaos

REPORTED BY: CARINA BENTON | APRIL 04, 2022

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis once again led the way in protecting parental rights in education last week when he signed into law a bill that prohibits age-inappropriate “classroom instruction” on “sexual orientation and gender identity” in kindergarten through third grade. The legislation also requires parental consent for any health care services offered at school, and school districts “may not prohibit or discourage parental notification of or involvement in critical decisions affecting a student’s mental, emotional, or physical health or well-being.”

Contrary to the fear-mongering, there is nothing “controversial” about this law. Yet it certainly does throw a spanner in the works for the radicals, neurotics, and degenerates in control of corporate America, the establishment media, and Hollywood, who are evidently on board with schools serving as platforms for perverts, predators, and groomers. The obscene obsession with hypersexualizing children that exploded about two years ago needs to be understood in the context of the left’s wider agenda to promote moral relativism and sexual deviance, a campaign they have been gaslighting Americans into accepting as “progressive.” Decades ago, Marxists ditched class warfare and economics in favor of sexual politics and culture as a vehicle for executing revolution. Ever since, they have been shrewdly redefining marriage, family, sexuality, and gender, to the point where “tolerance” and “diversity” now means foisting porn, perversion, and predators on our families. Those who won’t stand for it are cunningly condemned as bigots.

Although the tactics have changed, the underlying objective is no different from the philosophy of their ideological forebears in Communist hellholes like the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe: the fundamental transformation of society by co-opting and perverting the nuclear family, the most influential societal unit, and the bedrock of Judeo-Christian values.

A Nationwide Trend

Brainwashing school-aged children as young as five into becoming transgender-affirming disruptors of the nuclear family is not just a thing happening out west in crazy California, Oregon, Colorado, and Washington State. In Virginia, Michigan, and Texas, parents have expressed disgust and outrage over sexually explicit materials in school libraries. In Connecticut, eighth graders were given a foul school assignment asking them to share their sexual desires in the form of pizza toppings. A couple in Florida accused their 12-year-old daughter’s elementary school of covertly coaching her in gender confusion, which they believe led to her suicide attempt.

After last year’s gubernatorial election in Virginia, Democrat Terry McAuliffe learned the hard way that parents don’t want this trash for their kids. It turns out white suburban women don’t take kindly to school boards covering up the brutal rape of a 14-year-old girl by a “gender-fluid” student. Then there’s the Wisconsin teacher who apparently used a link in her email signature block to redirect students to an LGBT resource site and sex toy shop, and the Missouri teacher charged with sending dozens of nude photos and videos of himself to students, including a girl under 15.

Against this stunning backdrop, the U.S. Senate is poised to confirm the catastrophic Biden administration’s Supreme Court nominee, a radical judge with a 25-year career history of leniency toward individuals convicted of possessing or distributing child pornography. The left-wing media was quick to normalize and defend this disturbing trend, while endeavoring to humanize the depraved pedophiles in question.

A recent op-ed in The Hill spelled out the horrific reality behind the euphemistic phrase “child pornography.” It is the recording of violent acts of torture committed against terrified, defenseless pre-pubescent children and even infants by adult men, and distributed for the sadistic pleasure of the sickos who consume it, perpetuating a fiendish and expanding industry.

The Shift to Cultural Marxism

From the classroom floor to the Senate floor, none of this is a coincidence. Over the course of the 20th century, cultural Marxists realized that the class warfare narrative was never going to lure enough Americans to achieve a fundamental transformation of this nation. Despite the Soviet Union directing and subsidizing communist infiltration of U.S. government agencies, trade and teachers’ unions, and even churches and seminaries beginning in the 1930s, classical Marxism proved a flop. The left’s tactical response was two-fold:

Firstly, in reimagining Marxism in terms of sex and culture, they used maneuver warfare to simply attack the hill from a more advantageous position.
Secondly, pushing the falsehood that the Red Scare was just a conspiracy of the early 1950s deluded Americans into thinking the communist threat was a hoax when, in truth, it never went away.

Meanwhile, whether the battleground is economics or culture, the greatest threat to the twisted Marxist ideology has always been the Christian family. Christians know, as St. Paul writes, that every family in heaven and on earth receives its true name, not from the state, or a party, or society, or some fanciful “village,” but from God the Father. Hence the repression of religious families, the laicization of schools, and the prohibition of religious education that began with the Bolsheviks. In the 1950s, under the Khrushchev regime, Nikolai Ilyachev, the chief ideologist for a reinvigorated antireligious propaganda blitz, summed it up well when he stated that “in Soviet society, a family is a cell of Communist education or a refuge of backward conceptions.” The left’s contempt for those who remain faithful to God’s commandments and the truth revealed by Christ has never changed.

With Your Eyes Clear, Stand Up and Fight

Resisting the soul-destroying lies being force-fed to innocent children means supporting candidates who fear God more than some punk journalist, and who are bold enough, DeSantis style, to stand up to the Marxist schemers waging this cultural revolution. The politically suicidal Republicans and moderate Democrats flirting with the idea of supporting a historically unpopular Biden administration’s pedo-lenient Supreme Court pick might want to simultaneously start researching their post-political career options.

Most importantly, we must return to Christ. He is the only remedy for the sickness and squalor rotting this country from within. So read the Bible, pray, catechize your children, go to church, and yank your kids out of the rainbow-parading, gender expansive-promoting indoctrination camps posing as schools.

Every communist who has ever haunted the earth understands that to control society, you must control the family. They ironically possess a deeper, albeit disordered, appreciation of the mustard seed principle than do many Christians. The nuclear family, the smallest societal unit, has the potential for the most profound cultural influence. As Pope Leo XIII explained, family life is “the cornerstone of all society and government.” It’s time to reinvigorate our Judeo-Christian heritage and start using the Marxists’ tactics against them.

Carina Benton is a dual citizen of Australia and Italy and a permanent resident of the United States. A recent West Coast émigré, she is now helping to repopulate the country’s interior. She holds a master’s degree in education and has taught languages, literature, and writing for many years in Catholic and Christian, as well as secular institutions. She is a practicing Catholic and a mother of two young children.

CARINA BENTON

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Utah, Indiana Republican Governors Allow Men to Dominate Women’s Sports

REPORTED BY: TRISTAN JUSTICE | MARCH 23, 2022

Utah Republican Gov. Spencer Cox became the latest GOP governor to veto legislation Tuesday aimed at protecting women’s sports with a prohibition on male participation.

“I am not an expert in transgenderism. I struggle to understand so much of it and the science is conflicting,” Cox wrote to explain the veto. “When in doubt, I always try to err on the side of kindness, mercy and compassion.”

The female swimmers who lost in a competition dominated by Lia Thomas last weekend, a transgender athlete who competed in the men’s league for years under the University of Pennsylvania, may take a different view of what constitutes “kindness, mercy and compassion.” The 22-year-old fifth-year senior took home the NCAA Women’s Swimming Championship in the 500-yard freestyle Thursday over a slate of female competitors.

Reka Gyorgy, a swimmer at Virginia Tech who came up short in the qualifier for the event, criticized the NCAA’s policy allowing biological males with years of testosterone-enhanced capability to compete in women’s leagues if they merely identify as women.

“It doesn’t promote our sport in a good way, and I think it is disrespectful against the biologically female swimmers who are competing in the NCAA,” Gyorgy wrote in an open letter to the collegiate athletic association post on Instagram. “It feels like the final spot was taken from me.”

Cox’s decision to allow men to compete in women’s sports came a day after Indiana Republican Gov. Eric Holcomb vetoed similar legislation. In his veto letter to lawmakers, Holcomb explained the bill left “too many unanswered questions,” a justification similar to one South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem gave last year when she refused to sign a bill protecting women’s sports.

Noem eventually capitulated on the issue nearly a year later, signing a bill to bar male athletes in women’s competition without a mea culpa for her intervening crusade against right-leaning outlets that exposed her dubious reasons for the initial veto. Holcomb is known for favoring big business interests over the interests of Indiana’s majority-Republican voters.

Hours before Cox vetoed the proposal to bar male competition in female leagues, Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis officially recognized Thomas’ runner-up in the 500-yard freestyle race, Emma Weyant, as the true champion.

By allowing men to compete in women's sports, the NCAA is destroying opportunities for women, making a mockery of its championships, and perpetuating a fraud.

In Florida, we reject these lies and recognize Sarasota's Emma Weyant as the best women's swimmer in the 500y freestyle. pic.twitter.com/tBmFxFE3q6
— Ron DeSantis (@GovRonDeSantis) March 22, 2022

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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Will A ‘Parental Bill Of Rights’ Finally Enforce Government School Transparency?

Reported BY: RICH CROMWELL | FEBRUARY 10, 2022

mom holding kid's hand walking into school

The response to Covid-19 has accelerated a growing divide between parents and schools, which is mostly to say between parents and teachers’ unions. From denying students the ability to learn in-person to forced masking to teaching divisive, historically inaccurate curriculum based on critical race theory (CRT), the trend has been to sideline parents from their children’s educations.

In response to this, states are taking action to ensure parents remain the primary decision-makers for their kids. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a parents’ bill of rights in June 2021. Missouri is considering a similar proposal and in Virginia, Gov. Glenn Youngkin issued 11 executive orders on his first day in office, two of which were related to education. Indiana is considering a parents’ bill of rights as part of a push to banish despicable materials that kids shouldn’t be taught.

At the national level, Sen. Josh Hawley has also proposed a Parents’ Bill of Rights, although so far it has not gained any traction. Former Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, now president of Young America’s Foundation, declared “2022 is the Year of the Parent.” In other words, there’s a growing appetite among parents to take a more active role in education, whether through supporting legislation to empower them or taking the initiative to join their local school boards.

On Thursday, January 20, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott added Texas to the list of states attempting to tackle the divide when he announced his own Parental Bill of Rights, which will be voted on and perhaps enshrined into Texas’ constitution in January 2023. The initiative consists of seven points clarifying the fact that parents, not school boards or unions, are in charge of their kids’ educations.

In announcing the proposal, Abbott said, “The role of parents is being diminished by government itself across the U.S. Parents are losing a voice when it comes to their children’s education and health matters. Many parents feel powerless to do anything about it. That must end … Under the Parental Bill of Rights, we will amend the Texas Constitution to reinforce that parents are the main decision-makers in all matters involving their children.”

A key point in Texas’ proposed amendment, which could serve as a model starting point for other states reads, “Expand parents’ rights to access course curriculum and all material that is available in any education setting for their student through online posting and other methods so parents know what topics will be taught.” While Texas parents can currently get those materials, it requires an information request rather than the click of a mouse.

Submitting an information request is an unnecessary burden, particularly in an age in which schools are teaching children to be racists, encouraging them to be climate change alarmists, and pushing ludicrous and dangerous ideas about changing your sex or being “two-spirit.” Granted, two of those occurrences are from California, a state parents should just move away from rather than attempt to reform.

Even in Texas, though, there are leftist salvos in the culture war. Just last October, a mom in Keller, who with her husband had moved their family from California to avoid such things, discovered their new town’s library was offering a book featuring graphic depictions of oral sex. Parents in Leander, a town north of Austin and part of its greater metropolitan area, also discovered books with depictions and illustrations they don’t want their children to have access to without their permission.

While all these initiatives are worthy ideas, and Abbott’s proposal is the strongest yet, the jury is still out on whether they will resolve the issues parents are seeing with schools.

For starters, parental bills of rights require parents to actually be involved, which doesn’t always happen, even in the age of Zoom schooling. As a result, these various bills, amendments, and executive orders could result in nothing more than “won’t somebody please think of the children” activity. As the great men’s basketball coach, known for also educating his players, John Wooden said, “Never mistake activity for achievement.”

Elected officials such as Abbott, DeSantis, and Youngkin may be leading the nation on this front, but they’re doing so in response to their constituents. Youngkin’s victory was likely sealed, in fact, when his opponent Terry McAuliffe said, “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.” Given that Youngkin’s implicit message is “Stop messing with our kids, you freaks!,” the tide on parents shipping their kids off to school and hoping for the best seems to be turning.

Parents’ bills of rights could still turn out to be gimmicks, an activity that doesn’t lead to achievement, but our kids’ educations are not the government’s job. But at least for those of us who do send our kids to government-run or -funded schools, such measures offer us a way to take more charge and ensure that we approve of what’s being taught in the classroom and offer recourse for times when we have legitimate criticisms.

The work is still up to us parents, but governors and legislatures can give us the tools we need to do that work more effectively.

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Ann Coulter Op-ed: Only in Florida: Crazed Woman Stalks Governor

Commentary by Ann Coulter | Posted: May 19, 2021

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

Only in Florida: Crazed Woman Stalks Governor

Source: AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee

In another Very Florida story, a woman with a colorful criminal history has spent the last year collecting media accolades and a half-million dollars in donations by accusing the Republican governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, of fudging the state’s COVID numbers.

Rebekah Jones, website designer (not “scientist,” as the media insistently claim), falsely accused DeSantis of doing what Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York actually was doing with the COVID numbers. From the extensive media coverage, I figured maybe the DeSantis administration was taking advantage of gray areas to make the state’s record look as good as possible. Not as bad as what Cuomo was doing, but something.

Nope! This whole story was the fantasy of a crazed stalker, as explained in detail by Christina Pushaw in Human Events and Charles Cook in National Review.

I forgot my own admonition that you can’t believe anything the media say.

The canonization of Rebekah Jones is only the latest example of the press latching onto any lunatic who attacks a Republican. Remember Bill Burkett? (CBS’s deranged source for the fake Bush Air National Guard story.) Jamie Leigh Jones? (Falsely claimed she was gang-raped in Iraq by Halliburton employees.) How about media star and Democratic presidential hopeful Michael Avenatti? (He was going to vanquish Donald Trump and Brett Kavanaugh with Stormy Daniels and Julie Swetnick, until his criminal past caught up with him.)

Hey, whatever happened to Haven Monahan?

Contrary to Jones’ allegations, she could not have been asked to falsify Florida COVID numbers, for the simple reason that she didn’t generate the numbers. She designed and updated the state’s website using data given to her by actual epidemiologists, but had no role in the collection of the information and no earthly idea what it should be.

On the other hand, she did:

— expose people’s private information;

— block a colleague from accessing the site;

— use the Florida emergency notification system to send out a deranged message pushing her personal conspiracy theory — something she staunchly denies despite overwhelming forensic evidence; and

— defame an accomplished black woman scientist as “the most corrupt, lying, incompetent and ignorant person that could be ever be (sic) put in charge.” (In this one instance, the media decided to give a pass to someone insulting a black person.)

As is probably true of many esteemed scientists, Jones had an illegitimate child in her junior year of college and, in 2016, as a graduate student at Louisiana State University, was charged with two counts of battery on a police officer.

But it wasn’t until she got to Florida that Jones really hit her stride. In 2017, then in her late 20s and an instructor at Florida State University, the married Jones had an affair with a student, Garrett Sweeterman.

She then penned a graphic 342-page essay on their relationship — written while she was married to the world’s most tolerant husband. Hello, honey! I’m home. I’ll be in the study for the next two hours working on that Penthouse Letter about my extramarital affair.

Jones has claimed that Sweeterman is the father of her 2-year-old child, but two days before he was to provide his DNA, her paternity suit against him was dismissed. (Only the hard-hearted would suggest she is a loon trying to entrap the kid into marriage because she prefers him to her husband.)

The manifesto reads like something a nitwit 13-year-old girl would write, giving a play-by-play description of their sexual encounters, followed by Sweeterman’s repeated attempts to break up with her, which she calls his “mind games.” Anyone reading her manifesto can see that her great love affair was nothing but a booty call for him.

In short order, Jones was stalking Sweeterman, destroying his property and posting naked photos of him online — as well as sending revenge porn to his mother and employer. Despite Sweeterman’s restraining order against her, in addition to a court order directing her to stay away from campus, Jones would show up unannounced at his classes, just to “talk.” (They always just want to “talk.”)

In Jones’ own telling, by October 2017, Sweeterman was repeatedly texting her things like, “I can’t see you … I don’t feel right about any of it. … YOU’RE MARRIED. You have a family.”

His mother blocked Jones’ texts. His sister replied to one of her texts, saying, “I don’t know who the f– you are or what the f– you want but you better stay the f- away from my family. Delete my number and delete my families number you f-ing bitch.”

After all this, Jones showed up at one of Sweeterman’s classes and they screamed at each other; then she drove to his house that night, he came out and they screamed at each other again. Sweeterman walked away from her and got in his car, saying, “I’m leaving.” She hopped into the passenger seat. He went back inside. His roommates came out and told her to leave.

Still sitting in his car, Jones asks herself: “Was I supposed to leave? Was that the end of our conversation? Was that the end of us?”

Jones’ ongoing hysterics resulted in criminal charges against her for vandalizing Sweeterman’s car, robbery and stalking. She was fired by the university, jailed at least three times and committed to a mental institution.

This is the “scientist” who was lionized by, among others, CNN, MSNBC, NPR, The Guardian and Cosmopolitan.

The smearing of DeSantis would be outrageous even if Jones were a rational human with an impeccable past, but she is not. DeSantis steered Florida through the pandemic with 30% fewer COVID deaths than New York, despite having a larger population and a lot more old people.

But journalists couldn’t be bothered to bring up Cuomo’s killing old people and cooking the books because they were too busy talking about his lats. Instead, our watchdog media attacked the governor with the best record on COVID, who was being stalked by a crazy woman.

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DeSantis Shreds Biden: Democrats Put ‘Interests Of Education Unions’ Ahead Of ‘Wellbeing Of Our Children’

Reported By Ryan Saavedra | Feb 16, 2021 | DailyWire.com

SANFORD, FL - OCTOBER 12: Florida Governor Ron DeSantis arrives before President Donald J. Trump arrives to speak during a campaign "Make America Great Again Event" at the Orlando Sanford International Airport on Monday, Oct 12, 2020 in Washington, DC. — Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images

Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis slammed the Biden administration during a press conference this week, warning that kids will “not go back in [this] school year” under the Biden administration’s current plans and “may not even go back in the fall.”

DeSantis specifically highlighted the newly released CDC guidelines for reopening schools. The Washington Post reported that the Biden administration’s new guidelines effectively would do away with full in-person learning for the foreseeable future, even as cases drop around the country, because to have full in-person learning the rates of community transmission would need to be “quite low,” which The Post notes does not exist almost anywhere in the U.S.

“Florida schools are open for in person instruction, every single parent in this state has a right to send their kid to in person instruction,” DeSantis said during a press conference this week. “We have done it the right way, we are not going to turn back. What the CDC put out five o’clock on a Friday afternoon, I wonder why they would do it then, was quite frankly, a disgrace. It would require if you actually followed that, closing 90% of schools in the United States.”

“We have been open, they will remain open and we are not turning back,” DeSantis continued. “We’ve been open the whole time since August. We had kids doing camps and athletics and all that over the summer. And we’ve been in person as much as anybody in the country. And yet, we’re 34 out of 50 states and DC for COVID-19 cases on a per capita basis for children. Thirty-three states have more cases per capita than than Florida, for children per capita. And many of those don’t have a lot of in person instruction in school. And so there is no evidence to suggest that kids should do anything else other than be in school. This has been clear for months and months and months, we followed the data when we worked to get the parents the option to send the kids back because we had looked at what happened in Europe, places like Sweden and all these other places.”

“And it does not require another 100 billion dollars,” DeSantis continued. “The school reopening plan that makes the most sense, if you want to open schools, open them, open the door, let them come in and let them learn. And the only reason that that is not happening across this country like it is in Florida, like it is in a handful of other states, it’s one reason and one reason only, because the Democratic Party puts the interests of education unions and special interests ahead of the well being of our children and our families. These kids have been out of school in parts of this country for almost a year. And if you follow that CDC guidance, they will not go back in this this school year and they may not even go back in the fall. That is a disgrace. That is not science. That is putting politics ahead of what’s right for kids. That is putting politics and special interests ahead of what the evidence and observed experience says.”

WATCH:

Public health experts Joseph G. Allen and Helen Jenkins wrote in The Washington Post:

The new report on schools from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention should be a wake-up call to parents everywhere: If they’re not back already, your kids are not going back to school full-time this year.

The report adds new and unnecessary demands that will ultimately keep millions of kids out of school. In particular, there are two items that will act as barriers: the use of community-spread metrics to determine whether schools should open, and the requirement of routine screening testing. …

The science is clear: Kids — especially young children — can get and transmit covid-19, but they are less likely to do so than adults. Kids can die from the disease, but the risk of that happening is one in a million; they are about 10 times as likely to die by suicide. Teachers also have lower risk than other occupations and can be kept safe through adherence to universal precautions.

The science is also clear that keeping children out of school is doing real harm: Loss in literacy progress. An exploding mental health crisis. Billions of missed meals. Women dropping out of the workforce. Hundreds of thousands of kids missing school. The effects are compounding daily.

Even CNN’s Jake Tapper grilled CDC Director Rochelle Walensky this week, saying that he had “high hopes that schools would be able to resume in person learning, because so many scientists and health officials, including you and Dr. Fauci and others, had been talking about the science supports opening the schools as much as possible.”

“I know that a lot of teachers are very concerned, and I know the teachers unions have been pushing back on this,” he continued. “But it sounds to me like you’re asking for 100 percent mask compliance and a number of measures that we’re never going to be able to achieve. And that makes me feel like, boy, I don’t know if the schools are ever going to open until everybody’s vaccinated.”

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UPDATE on the National Guard Troops In Washington

DeSantis Orders FL Troops In D.C. Back Home: ‘They’re Not Nancy Pelosi’s Servants’

“This is a half-cocked mission and they are not Nancy Pelosi’s servants.”

By Amanda Prestigiacomo | Jan 22, 2021 | DailyWire.com

Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Friday morning announced that he has ordered back home Florida National Guard troops sent to Washington, D.C., to secure the inauguration of President Joe Biden, which took place on Wednesday. DeSantis called the “mission” in D.C. “half-cocked” and blasted House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) for treating troops like her “servants.”

“[Governor Ron DeSantis] says he ordered the National Guard to come home from the U.S. Capitol because ‘they’re not Nancy Pelosi’s servants’ and ‘this is a half-cocked mission at this point and I think the appropriate thing is to bring them home,’” reported Miami Herald Tallahassee Bureau Chief Mary Ellen Klas.

A stunning 25,000 troops from across the nation were ordered to D.C. to secure the inauguration of Biden. As noted by The Daily Wire, disturbing photographs circulated Thursday evening revealed our National Guard troops sleeping in cold parking garages.

“Thousands of National Guardsmen were forced to vacate congressional grounds on Thursday and have been photographed having to sleep in parking garages while temperatures in the nation’s capital were set to dip down to near-freezing temperatures,” The Daily Wire reported. “The photos of the living conditions that the National Guardsmen were forced to endure come after Democrats took complete control of the federal government this week following Joe Biden being sworn in as the nation’s 46th president.”

Republican Gov. Greg Abbott (TX) reacted quickly to the report, too, ordering on Thursday night that members of the Texas National Guard return from D.C. back to Texas, The Daily Wire reported.

“I have instructed General Norris to order the return of the Texas National Guard to our state,” Abbott said on Twitter.

Earlier in the week, the Abbott ripped into the so-called “loyalty” screening of the tens of thousands of National Guards troops sent to D.C. for the inauguration. Linking to a piece from The Washington Post concerning the excess screening of 25,000 National Guard troops, Abbott posted: “This is the most offensive thing I’ve ever heard. No one should ever question the loyalty or professionalism of the Texas National Guard.”

Notably, service members are already screened for ties to extremism or other potential flags. Thus, the latest screenings seem to be excessive and perhaps linked to suspicion directed at supporters of President Donald Trump after the Capitol riot. The Associated Press in a Monday report on the screening, for example, named supporters of the president as potential threats to a Biden inauguration.

“No one should ever question the loyalty or professionalism of the Texas National Guard,” the governor said via Twitter on Monday. “I authorized more than 1,000 to go to DC. I’ll never do it again if they are disrespected like this.”

Texas Governor orders National Guard unit stationed in DC for Biden inauguration back home after troops forced to sleep in parking garages

Reported by Ari Hoffman, Seattle, WA | January 21, 2021 8:50 PM

Following the abhorrent treatment of National Guardsmen, who were forced to sleep in congressional parking garages in Washington DC after the inauguration of Joe Biden, Texas Governor Greg Abbott tweeted that he had ordered Texas Guard members back home.

“I have instructed General Norris to order the return of the Texas National Guard to our state.”

This follows bi-partisan outcry at pictures of Guardsmen sleeping on the concrete floors of the garages in freezing temperatures. A Guardsman told Politico “Yesterday dozens of senators and congressmen walked down our lines taking photos, shaking our hands and thanking us for our service. Within 24 hours, they had no further use for us and banished us to the corner of a parking garage. We feel incredibly betrayed.”

Guard units had been told to leave Capitol grounds facilities where they had been staying for the two weeks leading up to the inauguration. There was reportedly only one electrical outlet and one bathroom for 5,000 troops and no internet reception.

Over 25,000 Guardsmen from around the country were ordered to Washington DC following the Jan 6 riot at the US Capitol, in order to provide additional security for the inauguration. The guard has been on station for two weeks and were seen in pictures last week before the inauguration sleeping on the floors of the Capitol before cots were brought in.

Following public outcry and pushback from many lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, Guardsmen were welcomed back to the Capitol buildings on Thursday night.

President Trump Gives Permission for US Troops to Stay at Trump Hotel in Washington DC

Reported By Jim Hoft | Published January 22, 2021

As reported earlier by Cristina Laila – A military source in DC told TPUSA Chief Creative Officer Benny Johnson that for the last week his battalion had been sleeping on the floor in the Senate cafeteria in preparation for Biden’s sham inauguration. One day after Biden’s inauguration, 5,000 soldiers were moved to a cold parking garage. There is one power outlet and one bathroom for 5,000 soldiers.

More than 20,000 troops protected Joe Biden’s sham inauguration on Wednesday. Virtually no one showed up to see senile Joe slur his way through his swearing-in ceremony. The military felt completely abandoned by the DC elites.

This morning OANN reported that President Trump gave permission for the troops to stay at his lavish Trump Hotel in Washington DC. Trump loves the troops. It’s just too bad Democrats stole his military vote.

Via Jack Posobiec.

Jim Hoft

Jim Hoft is the founder and editor of The Gateway Pundit, one of the top conservative news outlets in America. Jim was awarded the Reed Irvine Accuracy in Media Award in 2013 and is the proud recipient of the Breitbart Award for Excellence in Online Journalism from the Americans for Prosperity Foundation in May 2016.

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Why Is Big Media Hiding That Illinois Has Far More COVID Cases Than Florida? Because Illinois Has A Democrat In Charge And Tighter Lockdowns

NOVEMBER 27, 2020 By Jordan Davidson

COVID-19 cases in the United States are growing, but the media is selectively covering the states with the highest numbers.

On Tuesday, the United States reported there were at least 2,216 new COVID-19 deaths and approximately 178,200 new cases. Some states, despite strict coronavirus mandates and guidelines meant to prevent spread, are suffering from the most cases and deaths. Instead, however, big news seems to be focused on continuing to shame GOP politicians for refusing to completely shut down their states again.

Nearly every week in June and July, mainstream media news outlets singled out and slammed Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis for rising COVID-19 numbers as the state remained largely open and unmasked. Headlines such as “Florida shatters US record for new single-day Covid-19 cases,” “Florida’s governor just can’t seem to get it right on coronavirus,” “Florida Shatters Record For New Coronavirus Cases, Orders Bars To Close,” “Florida shatters records with over 10,000 new COVID-19 cases in single day,” “Disney World reopens even as coronavirus cases soar in Florida and across U.S.,” “In Florida, COVID-19 Death Toll Keeps Rising,” “Florida invited the nation to its reopening — then it became a new coronavirus epicenter,” ran rampant across news websites and broadcast programs.

Months after outlets such as CNN, NPR, the Washington Post, and others continually targeted Florida for increasing coronavirus cases, the corporate media ignored Illinois, which recorded 15,415 cases in just one day. That’s more than Florida ever reported in a single day, yet Florida is singled out for negative news attention.

“This is despite Illinois’ population being 40% lower,” Youyang Gu, creator of a COVID-19 projection website reported.

While Illinois continues to see climbing cases and deaths, outlets such as MSNBC, NPR, and CNN are choosing to hyper-focus on states with Republican leaders such as Gov. Kristi Noem of South Dakota, who have chosen different COVID-19 mitigation techniques.

Instead of noting these significant trends in Illinois, CNN chose to publish another article on Florida, focusing on the fact that case numbers continue to rise after reopening even though daily new deaths in the state are down.

While Illinois enacted mask mandates, closed restaurants, and discouraged people from holiday travel and gatherings, Gu notes that the state is still experiencing an exceptional amount of cases and deaths per capita compared to states with much higher populations such as Florida, California, and Texas.

“We hear a lot of the talk about how the deaths in Florida were ‘preventable’. What about the ones in Illinois?” Gu questioned.

“I don’t want to spark a political debate here. I just hope that more people can recognize that the news we consume online can be inherently biased. They often serve to fuel division (and clicks),” he wrote.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Jordan Davidson is a staff writer at The Federalist. She graduated from Baylor University where she majored in political science and minored in journalism.

Photo Covid, mask, testing, coronavirus, ppe, nurse

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House committees announce probe into Russia uranium deal

Reported By Katie Bo Williams – 10/24/17 12:25 PM EDT

URL of the original posting site: http://thehill.com/policy/national-security/356885-house-committees-announce-probe-into-russia-uranium-deal

Nunes announces uranium deal investigation

Two powerful House committees on Tuesday announced a joint investigation into the 2010 sale of a uranium company with holdings in the U.S. to the Russian nuclear giant Rosatom. Lawmakers on the two panels, the House Intelligence and Oversight and Government Reform Committees, say they first want to know whether there was an FBI investigation into Russian efforts to infiltrate the U.S. energy market, which at the time included assuming shares of the uranium company, Uranium One.

“We’re not going to jump to any conclusions at this time, but one of the things we’re concerned about is whether or not there was an FBI investigation — was there a DOJ investigation — and if so, why was Congress not informed of this matter? That will be the start of the probe,” Intel head Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) told reporters in the basement of the Capitol.

The Hill reported last week that the FBI had gathered evidence that Moscow had compromised an American uranium trucking firm with bribes and kickbacks as part of an effort to grow Russian President Vladimir Putin’s atomic energy business inside the United States — an investigation that predated the approval of the Uranium One sale.

The lawmakers want to know whether the deal should have been approved in the first place.

Rep. Pete King (R-N.Y.) on Monday cited “very, very real concerns about why we would allow a Russian-owned company to get access to 20 percent of America’s uranium supply.”

“It’s important we find out why that deal went through.”

The House investigation retreads familiar ground for Republicans, who have used the issue of the sale to try to discredit former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton since it was revealed in conservative author Peter Schweitzer’s 2015 book “Clinton Cash.”

The approval for the takeover was inked by a nine-agency review board that included the State Department when Clinton was secretary.

Uranium One controlled land equal to about 20 percent of the U.S.’s uranium capacity, according to Oilprice.com — although experts note that the U.S. doesn’t actually produce a significant amount of the world’s uranium stock.

Rosatom began buying shares in the Toronto-based company in 2009 and in 2010 sought to obtain majority ownership, a deal which required the review board approval.

Republicans have long accused the former secretary of tying the State Department’s approval of the takeover to $145 million in donations to the Clinton Foundation.

The State Department did not take unilateral action but instead was one of the nine agencies on the review board, known as the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS). The Clinton campaign has maintained that the then-secretary of State was not directly involved in the process.

King raised his concerns with the Treasury Department at the time and said Tuesday that he was assured that the issue would be fully investigated.

“Obviously, we want to see what happened to that inquiry — what information caught their attention, what they knew then and why they acted or didn’t act,” King said.

Since that time, the lawmakers said, a confidential informant “who wants to talk about his role in this” has come forward to the committees.

The two panels are currently in discussions with the Justice Department to release that individual from a nondisclosure agreement.

“Look, it’s possible, maybe there was no FBI or DOJ investigation going on — that’s possible. We’re not going to jump to any conclusions,” Nunes said Tuesday.

The announcement of the investigation came within 30 minutes of the announcement of a separate investigation, by the Oversight and Judiciary Committees, into the Obama Justice Department’s handling of the Clinton email investigation.

Nunes and King, alongside Rep. Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.), did not mention Clinton by name in their announcement on Tuesday, and Nunes declined to say whether the committees expected to call her forward to testify.

“It’s a little premature. Let us first determine whether or not there was an open investigation by FBI or DOJ and then we’ll get back to you with more information,” Nunes told reporters.

Clinton told C-SPAN on Monday that renewed focus on Russian uranium deals approved during her tenure is nothing more than debunked “baloney” — and signals that Republicans are getting nervous about the federal investigation into Russia’s attempts to swing the 2016 election. That probe includes looking for any signs of collusion with the Trump campaign itself.

Other House Democrats echoed her assessment on Tuesday, calling the two new investigations a partisan exercise intended to divert attention away from the media frenzy surrounding the various Russia investigations.

“These investigations were initiated on a partisan basis and will shed no light on Russia’s interference in the 2016 election, but then again they are not intended to do so,” said Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee.

“Acting on the urging of the President who has repeatedly denied the intelligence agencies’ conclusions regarding Russian involvement in our election, they are designed to distract attention and pursue the president’s preferred goal — attacking Clinton and Obama.”

Republicans view the Uranium One probe as distinct from the broader House Intelligence Committee investigation into Russian election meddling, long stymied by partisan infighting.

Nunes, who said he would step back from leading that probe this spring, said that he has as of yet had no contact with the White House on this investigation.

The chairman in April faced accusations from Democrats of carrying water for Trump when he announced that he had briefed the White House on information that turned out to have come from staff on the president’s National Security Council.

House leadership is fully behind the Uranium One probe, DeSantis said Tuesday.

– This report was updated at 3:44 p.m. EST

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By Brianna Herlihy Fox News | Published August 24, 2023 1:24pm EDT

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BY: JOHN DANIEL DAVIDSON | JULY 11, 2023

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By Brooke Singman | Fox News | Published March 20, 2023 12:43pm EDT

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BY: EDDIE SCARRY | MARCH 16, 2023

Eddie Scarry is the D.C. columnist at The Federalist and author of “Liberal Misery: How the Hateful Left Sucks Joy Out of Everything and Everyone.”

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BY: DAVID HARSANYI | MARCH 07, 2023

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BY: DAVID HARSANYI | FEBRUARY 08, 2023

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Sorry, Gavin Newsom. Real Freedom Fighters Are Leading Conservative Southern States, Not California

Richard Cromwell is a writer and senior contributor at The Federalist. He lives in Northwest Arkansas with his wife, three daughters, and two crazy dogs. Co-host of the podcast Coffee & Cochon, you can find him on Facebook and Twitter, though you should probably avoid using social media.

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BY: JOHN DANIEL DAVIDSON | DECEMBER 20, 2022

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.

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BY: DAVID HARSANYI | NOVEMBER 16, 2022

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BY: JOHN DANIEL DAVIDSON | NOVEMBER 10, 2022

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.

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Sorry, There’s No ‘Smoking Gun’ In Martha’s Vineyard, Just A Lot Of Left-Wing Condescension