Defeating the Radical Left: Chris Rufo Talks Strategy and Resilience

Chris Rufo wrote “America’s Cultural Revolution” last year as a warning to conservatives about the radical Left‘s takeover of institutions—from business and government to education and entertainment. In addition to being an exposé, it also served as a call to action.

Now, a year later, Rufo is optimistic that Americans, including some to left of center politically, are “waking up.” He attributes the change to the gruesome and deadly Oct. 7, 2023, attack by Hamas and the Left’s unflinching (and often antisemitic) criticism of Israel that followed.

“After 10/7, when those same people who were marching for [Black Lives Matter], who were pushing trans in schools, who were ramping up DEI, when they’re out there celebrating the terrorists who butchered, raped, and murdered innocent people, I think it caused this moment of horror, but also this moment of clarity,” Rufo told The Daily Signal.

The popular writer, filmmaker, and activist—whose work is available at ChristopherRufo.com—was in Washington, D.C., last week to accept The Heritage Foundation’s prestigious Salvatori Prize.

Listen to the interview on “The Daily Signal Podcast” or read an edited and abridged transcript below.

Rob Bluey: It’s almost a year since you published “America’s Cultural Revolution.” It was a call to action for Americans to wake up to what’s going on in the Marxist ideology that’s infused so many of the institutions in this country. Do you feel that people are heeding that call today?

Chris Rufo: I think so. You always want a greater number of people to heed the call.

The story that I told in the book was certainly revealed to be true at the time, but it took on a new dimension following the Hamas terror attack on Oct. 7 of last year. That has just accelerated this waking up that is happening in the United States, and in particular on the center-left. A lot of people who would say, “Oh, woke is so overblown, it’s not so bad. DEI [diversity, equity, and inclusion] is good. Maybe it’s not perfect, but maybe we can improve it.” But those were rationalizations.

Today is the day. My book "America's Cultural Revolution" goes into publication as the #1 bestseller on Amazon. I put my whole heart into writing this book, hoping to reshape the national narrative and create a path for a conservative counter-revolution.https://t.co/u0eGLgCaRL

— Christopher F. Rufo ?? (@realchrisrufo) July 18, 2023

And after 10/7, when those same people who were marching for BLM, who were pushing trans in schools, who were ramping up DEI, when they’re out there celebrating the terrorists who butchered, raped, and murdered innocent people, I think it caused this moment of horror, but also this moment of clarity, “Oh, all of that leads to this.”

I’ve never seen anything like it. You’re seeing a lot of shift right now, not just in public opinion, but in political alliances. You’re seeing a shift in financing people pulling back from giving money to universities, including the Ivy League universities.

Bluey: Kevin Roberts, president of The Heritage Foundation, says that he’s very optimistic that the American people will take back their country from the elites that have set us down this path.

Rufo: That’s the right attitude. That’s what I love about Kevin. Maybe it’s a Texas thing, a little Alamo spirit, but I share the same conviction.

And look, a lot of people on our side are down in the dumps. They’re demoralized, they’re feeling pessimistic. We all feel that at times, of course, but we have to also have some greater historical perspective and read the history of the founding, read the history of the Civil War, read the history of the Second World War, read the history of the ’60s and ’70s. We’ve been through much more difficult challenges in the past.

The question is, can we meet the standard of the past? That’s the real question. It’s a question of our own culture, our own spirit, our own character.

I certainly feel doubts about that sometimes. Even in the pre-revolutionary period, the Patriots of the American Revolution doubted themselves the whole time. Even in January of 1776, all of the smart opinion in the Colonies was that most Americans did not want revolution. Most Americans did not want to separate from Britain. Most Americans would refuse to participate.

History is full of surprises, and I hope that we’re fortunate again, as we’ve been so many times in our past.

Bluey: You recently hosted a conversation with some individuals who go by pseudonyms who have been doxxed by what you call the left-wing smear machine that is quite coordinated in some of its activities. But you also sounded somewhat hopeful that maybe things were changing in that regard.

Rufo: Absolutely, yes. There’s a whole range of reputational destruction mechanisms and some of them are formalized, like the SPLC [Southern Poverty Law Center], for example, which is kind of a sham organization that would try to put you on a list and refer you to law enforcement for protesting a school career. They’ve run out of actual true hate groups. So, they have now labeled everything a hate group. It’s absurd.

But then down to the doxxing. A lot of people online want to maintain pseudonyms. Again, America has a long tradition of pseudonyms. The Founders wrote under pseudonyms for many of their works. Thomas Paine wrote anonymously “Common Sense,” which is the kind of literary work that helps spark the revolution. And then, as now, unmasking people as a way to put them toward reputational destruction. There are even more personal tactics to intimidate you, harass you, whatever.

Two things are happening, though. Those tactics have lost their steam. Those tactics have lost their effectiveness. Conservatives are getting much tougher and much smarter and much more courageous and much more sophisticated and adept at responding to those reputational attacks. Our audience, our supporters, our people automatically discount them: “Oh, OK, another person on the so-and-so list.” “Oh, OK, another person gets a smear piece and the X, Y, and Z, The Guardian, whatever publication.”

It was so overused for a period that it lost its rhetorical force, and conservatives have successfully adapted.

It can still be damaging to people who are in a vulnerable position—if you’re an employee at a big corporation, yeah, maintaining your anonymity is probably smart. But if you’re in politics or in the political world, we now have the tools, and we have now the support where some of these reputational attacks can be successfully countered.

Bluey: What keeps you going? You are sometimes outgunned 100 to 1, 500 to 1, maybe more, and yet it doesn’t seem to deter you.

Rufo: I love it. I enjoy it. I love the challenge. I enjoy the fight. I savor victories when they come and then I try to learn from defeats, which are inevitable. But I love the process and I enjoy the drama. I enjoy the conflict. All the things that you’re supposed to not like about politics.

The longer that I’ve been studying it and then participating in it, I realized that, actually, that is kind of the core of political life. And for whatever reason, I’m suited to it. And I find it to be an intellectual challenge, emotionally challenging, professionally challenging. It’s challenging from a business perspective. Of course, I run my own little shop as well as partnerships with these great institutions. And so, every day is an immense challenge, and the odds are often stacked against you. And that, for me, is an ideal environment.

It’s an environment that I love and I hope that it also inspires others. And I know that it has inspired many others to kind of follow suit and to try to really get in the fray.

The other thing that has been helpful is understanding that politics hasn’t really changed in a long time. And so, I’m realizing over the last few years, it’s like, all right, I have many flaws and many limitations, but I maybe have one gift. And it’s in the art of rhetoric, broadly speaking.

And so, I’ve been reading a lot of the old works from Greece and Rome about rhetoric, and it could have been written yesterday. It’s amazing. You’re reading Aristotle’s Treatise on Rhetoric and you say, “This is incredible.” It’s like nothing has changed. These guys were going down and they were duking it out intellectually in the Agora or in Rome, in the senate.

And, of course, they have grandeur that we don’t have. We live in a different era, but you get a sense in participating in something greater, you’re participating in a tradition that we’ve had in the West. For me, that is also a source of joy, a source of sustenance.

Bluey: With that being said, is there a particular goal that you have for 2024 or something that you’re working on, an objective that our audience may be able to support what you’re doing?

Rufo: I’m still finishing up this campaign to abolish DEI, which we launched last year. That’ll take me through the summer. The 18-month campaign cycle is probably the max, where after that, you start to lose effectiveness.

My goal is always to launch campaigns, entrepreneurial, from scratch, and then hand them off to others once they’re well developed. Launching critical race theory, launching trans ideology in schools, launching abolish DEI, launching this campaign against Harvard. Now others have taken up the mantle on many of those campaigns.

I feel like almost like a venture capital investor, startup operator. The startup phase is exciting. I like it. And then I hand it over when these campaigns are mature.

I’ll tell you, though, I don’t know what’s next. I know that we’re going to wind down abolish DEI. I do know that I’ll be hiring some additional staff in the coming months, but coming up with a campaign is not a work of mathematics. It’s a work of art. And so, part of the artistic process is the mystery of inspiration. I know that is maybe contrary to some other organizations that are a bit more logical, a bit more rational.

I tell my funders and supporters, like, “Alright, supporters want to support the work.” And I say, “Well, what’s the next thing?” It’s like, I don’t know, we’ll figure it out. But something will happen. And part of the success in political activism is sensing opportunity. Some of the best campaigns kind of emerged spontaneously or emerged by accident. Like a novelist or writer, sometimes you’re just waiting for that moment of inspiration.

There’s no end point to politics. I know that as long as I’m alive, there will be something to think about, something to fight about, something to work on. It’s just a matter of time before the next thing comes up.

Bluey: What are some of the ways that you would encourage people to follow your work or financially support you?

Rufo: Follow @realChrisRufo on X. Follow christopherrufo.com. On Substack, small supporters can become paid subscribers, $8 a month or $80 a year. We have a huge and growing audience there. And philanthropic donors can reach out to me. There’s a contact form on my site.

On the support side, it’s been really unreal. We have incredible people in our country that want to see success. And I actually don’t do any outbound fundraising. I don’t do any solicitation. I don’t do any calls. But people have just come out of the woodwork saying, “Hey, I love what you’re doing. I want to support it.” That’s a very encouraging sign because what it shows is that there are people around the country that have the sophistication, the means, the inspiration, the capacity. They want to see something better.

P.S. If you want to support further investigations into plagiarism at America's Ivy League universities, become a paid subscriber to my Substack. I have already committed $10,000 to this project, with the potential for more: https://t.co/etKtrVPEmL

— Christopher F. Rufo ?? (@realchrisrufo) February 22, 2024

The voting public, if you measure public opinion, has the right idea on many, many issues, if not most issues. The limitation is not the public. The limitation is not the funders or the philanthropists.

I’m sure anyone in this world can grumble about specifics, but actually, limitation is us as political leaders, as intellectual leaders, as movement leaders. I’m more and more convinced that the raw materials are there. It’s really up to us to shape them, to direct them, to point them in the right place, and to mobilize people in the most effective way possible. And so that, to me, is the big limitation right now. And a limitation is just another word for a challenge.

There’s a rich vein of opportunity there. It really is truly a rich vein. How do we get these? I mean, Hillsdale College is incredible, the Manhattan Institute, The Heritage Foundation, a whole range of other groups. We have brilliant people, we have great supporters, and now it’s time for action. And that’s really what I’m hoping that we’re driving toward.

Bluey: What’s holding us back then? Do you think that there’s an impediment, or is there a challenge that you want to leave us with and our audience?

Rufo: Yes, there are many challenges. Conservative institutions have to radically modernize the way they approach politics. They have to have an understanding of how media works in the 21st century. They have to have an understanding of how politics works.

We have to reconnect with the essence of political life, and we have to understand politics for what it is. We have to really refine our rhetorical sensibilities. … And then, of course, translate into administrative success. We’re actually fairly well there. But the rhetorical part is really the missing element on the Right.

If you actually look at the great political leaders in history—from the Greeks and Romans to the American Founders, to [Abraham] Lincoln, to, I mean, even in a less classical way, but of course, [Ronald] Reagan—they were very serious about rhetoric.

I actually think that that is the missing link. And rhetoric in a postmodern environment means media activism, mass persuasion, elite influence, digital communications, all of those five areas are how modern rhetoric plays out. If we can really radically modernize on those five practices, everything that we do could be much more successful.

The post Defeating the Radical Left: Chris Rufo Talks Strategy and Resilience appeared first on The Daily Signal.

WHAT ARE THEY HIDING? Biden Admin Redacts Its Justification for Altering the Definition of ‘Recession’

As Americans struggle to keep up with the rising tide of prices and feel the squeeze of high interest rates on housing, President Joe Biden continues to claim that the economy is good. “Bidenomics” is working, there’s no recession to see here, so shut up and enjoy the drag queen performances at the White House.

That narrative took a hit back in 2022, however, when America experienced two consecutive quarters of decline in gross domestic product—the traditional definition of a recession. In the first quarter of 2022, inflation-adjusted GDP declined in the U.S. by 1.6%, and it declined by an additional 0.6% in the second quarter of that year.

The Biden administration responded by simply redefining the word “recession.” The move made a bizarre kind of sense coming from a bureaucracy that has redefined what it means to be a woman.

The White House stated in July 2022 that “it is unlikely that the decline of the GDP in the first quarter of this year—even if followed by another GDP decline in the second quarter—indicates a recession.”

The Heritage Foundation, a stick-in-the-mud organization that doesn’t support willy-nilly redefining words to suit the woke movement, decided to get to the bottom of this whole redefining-a-recession nonsense. Heritage’s Oversight Project filed a Freedom of Information Act request in July 2023, asking the Treasury Department for internal communications regarding recessions. (Heritage created The Daily Signal in 2014.)

Treasury asked Heritage to narrow the parameters of the request. It did so. Treasury refused to hand over the documents by the time required by law. Heritage sued. Late last month, Treasury handed over some documents.

The catch? Most of the conversations in those documents have been redacted.

To be sure, we do get little gems like “I’d be glad to discuss tomorrow or Monday,” and “Thank you for forwarding.” These largely meaningless pleasantries are among the few words Treasury apparently deems nonthreatening enough to reveal to the public.

Many pages simply feature a large black box redacting the entire page.

One email shows Treasury staff discussing a quote from the International Monetary Fund stating that a “technical recession” consists of two quarters of economic decline.

“For the United States, some indicators, such as the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta’s GDPNow forecasting model, suggest that a technical recession (defined as two consecutive quarters of negative growth) may already have started,” Gene Sperling, a senior adviser to Biden, quoted the IMF in an email on July 26, 2022.

Treasury redacted Sperling’s own words in his email, along with the substance of every email responding to him.

So, Heritage plans to sue again.

“The Oversight Project sued the Treasury Department to seek answers on why the Biden administration gaslit the American people into changing the definition of recession,” Kyle Brosnan, chief counsel at the Oversight Project, told The Daily Signal. “We have received multiple document productions from our lawsuit showing that there were a lot of communications about this change, but excessive redactions have hampered our ability to determine the truth.  We intend to challenge these redactions as we progress in the case.” 

The Biden administration’s apparent attempt, yet again, to hide the substance of internal discussions about the definition of a recession raises more questions than answers.

Did Treasury officials intentionally twist the definition in order to politically protect Biden in a midterm election year? Did they develop strategies for hiding negative economic news that might interfere with the 2024 election? If they weren’t trying to monkey with the definition of recession, why are they so insistent on hiding that fact?

Perhaps the Biden administration merely wishes to redefine “transparency,” as well.

The post WHAT ARE THEY HIDING? Biden Admin Redacts Its Justification for Altering the Definition of ‘Recession’ appeared first on The Daily Signal.

At WNBA Ceremony, Biden Urges America to Support the Women’s Sports He’s Destroying

In previous years, people might have missed the irony. But not now—not after the meteoric rise of women’s basketball.

When the WNBA champs visited the White House last week, reporters didn’t cover it out of obligation. They covered it because it was a real story. And President Joe Biden’s betrayal of girls sports only made it more of one.

The timing of the photo op couldn’t have been more politically inconvenient for the president, whose administration has been lit up by lawsuits over the dismantling of the very thing the team was there to celebrate—women.

While Biden was applauding the champs for “showing that the future of women’s sports is brighter than the Vegas lights,” most people couldn’t help but notice how utterly disingenuous he was being. After all, Biden is the one trying to eradicate 52 years of women’s progress. He’s the one insisting biological men make better girls than our daughters. And it was his idea—not Congress’—to turn Title IX into a manifesto of transgender rights.

Yet, he stood at the podium and with a straight face declared, “It matters to girls and women, finally seeing themselves represented—and it matters to all of America.”

“That’s why,” Biden insisted, “as a nation, we need to support women’s sports … .” Not just during the championships, he tweeted later. “But all year-round. Let’s grow women’s sports and continue inspiring the nation.”

As a nation, we need to support women’s sports by showing up in person and watching on TV – with more sponsorships and programming.

Not just during championships. But all year round.

Let's grow women’s sports and continue inspiring the nation.

— President Biden (@POTUS) May 10, 2024

The reaction was instantaneous. After three years of this administration, most parents, coaches, and teachers understand exactly what this president wants to do to women’s sports—and it isn’t growing them. It’s erasing them.

“Here’s something @POTUS could do to support women,” Alliance Defending Freedom’s Kristen Waggoner fired back: “ … Keep men out of women’s sports.”

Here’s something @POTUS could do to support women instead of watching TV:

Keep men out of women’s sports. pic.twitter.com/FZ7FP4bELn

— Kristen Waggoner (@KWaggonerADF) May 10, 2024

The Family Research Council’s Meg Kilgannon was equally incensed by the president’s hypocrisy. “President Biden wants to ‘grow’ women’s sports by allowing men who ‘identify’ as women to play. Forcing women to accept men in our locker rooms, sports teams, and even prisons IS NOT supporting women,” she argued. “Protecting women’s sports and female athletes would be truly inspirational for the nation’s women and girls, and the men who love us.”

Former NCAA All-American Riley Gaines was just as appalled, saying on her “Gaines on Girls” podcast that the “easiest way to support women’s sports is to keep men out of them.” And frankly, the Independent Women’s Forum pointed out, it’s difficult to believe the “audacity” of Biden’s comments considering that he “just mandated that girls surrender their sports opportunities to boys.”

Members of Congress, who just took turns grilling Education Secretary Miguel Cardona on this absurd rewrite of Title IX, were appalled that Biden would try to play both sides of this debate based on the harm he’s already done. The rule Biden’s team released has already triggered a number of lawsuits from more than 20 states—a fact not lost on the House Education and the Workforce Committee.

After the president’s phony hype for girls sports, Republicans tweeted, “Three weeks ago, the Biden admin finalized a radical rewrite of #TitleIX that would ERASE women’s sports by allowing biological males to compete in female sports. The guy doing the most to harm women’s sports should sit this one out.”

In one of those hearings, Cardona’s refusal to even protect his own daughter prompted a passionate response from Rep. Burgess Owens, R-Utah. When Biden’s top education official couldn’t answer whether he’d step in if his daughter was uncomfortable dressing in front a biological boy, the dad of girls couldn’t believe his ears.

“I’ll say this, Mr. Secretary, before I go on to the next topic,” Owens paused. “With all due respect, I pray that our country will never, ever have the vision that your policies are driving us toward in terms of manhood. It’s a vision that teaches our boys that harming girls is no big deal. I pray that we remain a country that produces overwhelmingly massive majorities of men who feel the way I do about my girls.

I will give my life in a heartbeat for my girls. And the blessing I have is that they have no doubts about that. There are millions of men and women across this country that do not have faith, do not have trust in you protecting our girls because of policies you can’t say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to.

By the way, those are not very hard questions as a father.

He repeated that sentiment with Family Research Council President Tony Perkins on Saturday’s edition of “This Week on the Hill.” Asked why he took Cardona to task, Owens replied simply, “I have five girls—and I grew up in an age where we were taught, very simply, [to be] a very proud young man, have a good legacy, a good name, be happy when it’s all said and done. Learn to love God, country, family. Respect women … particularly motherhood and womanhood. We all know that’s what makes our country what it is—how we think of our ladies and what they bring to our culture.”

But right now, Owens pointed out, “We have an administration that could care less about our ladies.” Equally as frustrating, he said, they don’t care what their transgender agenda is doing to our sons. “Young men have no idea what it is to respect ladies. They have no idea what it is to not be bullies. And they don’t mind harming ladies in any way they can.”

The reason he put Cardona on the spot, he explained, is that leftists may have a way of dealing with the fallout of this rule in theory, “but when it comes down to their kids, they think quite differently. They use their common sense. Well, not [being] able to answer commonsense questions about putting his daughter in harm’s way shows the American people cannot trust him. He needs to leave,” Owens insisted, adding:

He needs to do something else. We cannot trust this guy to take care of protecting our kids or educating our kids standing up for our culture.

It’s all backward, Owens argued. “The upside is that we now know what they’re all about. And [the] American people will not stand for it.”

This past Friday, former President Donald Trump illustrated the stark difference between the two men’s policies when he vowed to roll back Biden’s extreme new Title IX immediately.

“We’re going to end it on Day One,” he promised.

“Don’t forget, that came down as an executive order. And we’re going to change it. … Tell your people not to worry about it,” he said, calling Biden’s idea of letting boys in the girls’ locker rooms “crazy.”

“It’ll be signed on Day One,” Trump repeated. “It’ll be terminated.”

A slightly modified version of this article was originally published at WashingtonStand.com

The Daily Signal publishes a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Heritage Foundation.

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18 States Fight Federal Trans Agenda on Pronouns, Bathrooms

In response to new federal rules on pronouns and bathrooms based on gender identity, 18 state attorneys general are suing the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. 

The lawsuit, led by Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti, a Republican, was filed Monday in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Tennessee.  

“This end-run around our constitutional institutions misuses federal power to eliminate women’s private spaces and punish the use of biologically accurate pronouns, all at the expense of Tennessee employers,” Skrmetti said in a public statement. 

The Daily Signal first reported last month that the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission published guidance determining that an employer would be guilty of harassment for requiring someone to use a restroom that comports with his or her biological sex, or for referring to someone by a personal pronoun that the person doesn’t want used.

The guidance, which the EEOC adopted on a party-line vote of 3-2, would determine how the commission would handle an employee complaint on the matter and also could affect other employee litigation as the formal federal policy. 

EEOC has 2,331 employees, according to its 2023 annual report. 

Joining Tennessee in the lawsuit are Republican attorneys general from the states of Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, Ohio, South Carolina, South Dakota, Utah, Virginia, and West Virginia. 

“In America, the Constitution gives the power to make laws to the people’s elected representatives, not to unaccountable commissioners, and this EEOC guidance is an attack on our constitutional separation of powers,” Skrmetti, Tennessee’s attorney general, said. “When, as here, a federal agency engages in government over the people instead of government by the people, it undermines the legitimacy of our laws and alienates Americans from our legal system.”

The EEOC issued new sexual harassment guidance that extends Title VII’s prohibition of sex-based discrimination to cover gender identity. Title VII forbids employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, and national origin. It applies to any employer, public or private, with more than 15 employees.

Under this guidance, an employer may be responsible under Title VII if the employer, or another employee, uses a name or personal pronoun other than the one an employee prefers for his or her gender identity, or limits access to a restroom or other sex-segregated facility that isn’t consistent with what the employee prefers to use. 

This rule prevails regardless of the biological sex of the employee in question.

“Harassing conduct based on sexual orientation or gender identity includes … repeated and intentional use of a name or pronoun inconsistent with the individual’s known gender identity (misgendering) or the denial of access to a bathroom or other sex-segregated facility consistent with the individual’s gender identity,” EEOC’s new enforcement guidance says.

An EEOC spokesperson referred The Daily Signal to the Justice Department for comment on this report. A Justice Department spokesperson didn’t respond by publication time. 

In a previous public statement, EEOC Chairwoman Charlotte Burrows, a Democrat, praised the enforcement guidance. 

“Harassment, both in-person and online, remains a serious issue in America’s workplaces,” Burrows said shortly after the commission announced the guidelines. “The EEOC’s updated guidance on harassment is a comprehensive resource that brings together best practices for preventing and remedying harassment and clarifies recent developments in the law.”

Joining Burrows to vote in favor of the updated harassment guidance were two other Democrats, Vice Chair Jocelyn Samuels and Commissioner Kalpana Kotagal. The commission’s two Republican members, Keith Sonderling and Andrea Lucas, voted against the guidance.

In 2021, Burrows attempted to unilaterally include such actions under what constitutes harassment through a press release, without public comment or a vote by the full commission. 

However, a federal court in Tennessee enjoined the guidance from going forward in 2022. Another federal court in Texas vacated Burrows’ guidance altogether. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission did not appeal the rulings.

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These States Withhold Voter Registration From Public That Most States Are Federally Mandated to Disclose

Wisconsin is one of the most fiercely contested battleground states in this election cycle, but it lacks federal transparency requirements for voter registration imposed on most states, according to a lawsuit by an election watchdog. 

Minnesota, generally a solidly blue state although it saw a razor-thin margin in the results of the 2016 presidential race, also doesn’t make its voter rolls available to the public, the lawsuit contends. 

Public Interest Legal Foundation, an election integrity advocacy organization, announced the litigation last week, alleging that the exemption of six states from a provision in the National Voter Registration Act violates the principle of equal state sovereignty. 

“No state should be exempt from transparency,” J. Christian Adams, president of Public Interest Legal Foundation, said in a written statement. “All states should be treated equally under the law and no exemption should allow certain election officials to hide documents relating to voter list maintenance activities.”

In 1993, Congress passed the National Voter Registration Act, better known as the “Motor Voter Law,” which allows Americans to register to vote when they get a driver’s license. 

The federal law also requires states to update voter registration lists to ensure that dead people or those who have left a jurisdiction no longer are listed. 

For accountability, the law says that states must “make available for public inspection and, where available photocopying at a reasonable cost, all records concerning the implementation of programs and activities conducted for the purpose of ensuring the accuracy and currency of official lists of eligible voters.”

However, Congress carved out an exception to the transparency requirement for seven states: Minnesota, Wisconsin, Idaho, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Maine, and Wyoming. 

The reason was that the seven states offered same-day voter registration or, in the case of North Dakota, didn’t require voter registration. 

After briefly stopping same-day voter registration, Maine lost its exemption from the disclosure provision of the federal law. 

The new complaints, filed in two federal courts, contend that the exemptions from U.S. law violate the principle of equal state sovereignty by treating the remaining states differently.

Public Interest Legal Foundation is suing Minnesota and Wisconsin first. 

“This lawsuit is the first step to bringing the National Voter Registration Act’s transparency requirements to all 50 states,” Adams said. 

The Wisconsin lawsuit names Wisconsin Election Commission Administrator Meagan Wolfe as the defendant. The Minnesota litigation names Secretary of State Steve Simon as the defendant. 

A Wisconsin Election Commission spokesperson declined comment for this report, but pointed to the applicable portion of state law, which says the commission and local governments can decide the cost of obtaining voter information.

“The commission shall establish by rule the fee for obtaining a copy of the official registration list, or a portion of the list. … The amount of the fee shall be set, after consultation with county and municipal election officials,” a portion of the law says. 

The Minnesota Secretary of State’s Office didn’t respond to a request for comment from The Daily Signal. 

The litigation cites the Supreme Court case of Shelby County v. Holder, in which the high court reaffirmed that all states enjoy equal sovereignty and determined that if Congress treats states differently, it must be “sufficiently related to the problem [the statute] targets” and must “make sense in light of current conditions.”

Public Interest Legal Foundation’s complaints argue that Minnesota and Wisconsin grant and remove voting rights through voter registration and maintenance of that voter list. So, they argue, Congress’ goal of making the process transparent should apply to both states. 

Thirteen of the 20 states that offer same-day voter registration are still subject to the federal transparency requirements, the litigation notes.

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‘Harassment’: Feds Impose Trans Agenda on Employers for Pronouns, Bathrooms

FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL—Under new federal guidelines, an employer would be guilty of harassment for requiring someone to use a restroom that comports with his or her biological sex, or for referring to someone by a pronoun the person doesn’t want used.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission published the guidance on Monday. The guidance passed on a 3-2 vote, along party lines on Friday, a source familiar with the EEOC confirmed.

“Harassing conduct based on sexual orientation or gender identity includes … repeated and intentional use of a name or pronoun inconsistent with the individual’s known gender identity (misgendering) or the denial of access to a bathroom or other sex-segregated facility consistent with the individual’s gender identity,” the new enforcement guidance says. 

The guidelines would affect most employers, private or public.

The EEOC announced last fall a proposed update of its harassment policy affecting to include sexual orientation and gender identity rules. This prompted opposition from 20 state attorneys general, led by Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti.

In November, the attorneys general contended what was then the proposed “Enforcement Guidance on Harassment in the Workplace” updates would threaten the First Amendment rights of employers, employees, and possibly customers. 

“Here, the proposed guidance would require employers to affirm or convey to employees and customers—often against religious conviction or deeply held personal belief—messages that a person can be a gender different from his or her biological sex, that gender has no correlation to biology, or that they endorse the use of pronouns like ‘they/them,’ ‘xe/xym/xyrs,’ or ‘bun/bunself,” the letter from the attorneys general says.

“This mandate flouts First Amendment freedoms of religion and speech—yet EEOC rejects any role for accommodation of contrary religious beliefs or speech,” the attorneys general add. “Further, EEOC’s for-cause insulation from direct presidential supervision unconstitutionally blurs the lines of accountability for this overhaul of workplaces nationwide.”

In 2021, EEOC Chairwoman Charlotte Burrows attempted, in a statement, to unilaterally include these actions under harassment without public comment or a vote by the full commission. However, a federal court in Tennessee enjoined the guidance from going forward in 2022. A separate federal court in Texas
vacated Burrows’ guidance altogether. The commission did not appeal the rulings.

Title VII prohibits employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, and national origin. It applies to any employer with more than 15 employees.

“Harassment, both in-person and online, remains a serious issue in America’s workplaces,” said Burrows, a Democrat, of the new guidelines in a public statement issued Monday afternoon. “The EEOC’s updated guidance on harassment is a comprehensive resource that brings together best practices for preventing and remedying harassment and clarifies recent developments in the law.” 

Joining Burrows to vote in favor of the updated harassment guidance were two other Democrat commissioners, Jocelyn Samuels and Kalpana Kotagal. The two Republican members, Keith Sonderling and Andrea Lucas, voted against the guidance.

Women’s rights are under attack by the EEOC, said Lucas in a statement issued Monday. 

“Biological sex is real, and it matters. Sex is binary (male and female) and is immutable,” Lucas said in a public statement. She added, “It is not harassment to acknowledge these truths—or to use language like pronouns that flow from these realities, even repeatedly. Relatedly, each sex has its own, unique privacy interests, and women have additional safety interests that warrant certain single-sex facilities at work and other spaces outside the home. It is neither harassment nor discrimination for a business to draw distinctions between the sexes in providing single-sex bathrooms or other similar facilities which implicate these significant privacy and safety interests.” 

In 2020, the Supreme Court held in the case of Bostock v. Clayton County that a firm violates Title VII if it fires an employee “simply for being … transgender.” But, the Republican state attorneys general argued in the November letter, “Bostock gives no license to these and other of EEOC’s novel proposals.”

“Nor, in all events, can EEOC permissibly require these deeply controversial gender-identity accommodations without express congressional authorization—authorization not found in Title VII,” the letter continued.

The guidance does not carry the same weight as a law passed by Congress or a regulation imposed by an agency. However, the guidance essentially states the position of the EEOC. This means an employee inclined to claim harassment regarding a restroom or pronoun dispute would have the guidance to refer to. Also, under private litigation, a plaintiff could refer to the formal position of a federal agency.

“If you still believed that the Biden administration’s pedal-to-the-metal advancing of gender ideology is all about freedom and individual rights, this new EEOC ‘guidance’ should dispel that myth,” Jay Richards, director of the Richard and Helen DeVos Center for Life, Religion, and Family at The Heritage Foundation, told The Daily Signal. (The Heritage Foundation founded The Daily Signal.)

“Employers may now find themselves in legal hot water if they prefer to use language, including pronouns, and preserve private spaces that comport with biological reality rather than the bizarre canons of gender ideology,” Richards continued. “We’re dealing with a totalitarian ideology that wants to destroy the present order. The sooner normal people understand that, the sooner we can dispatch this ideology to the history books.”

The EEOC website describes guidance as “official agency policy and explains how the laws and regulations apply to specific workplace situations.”

“The Biden administration is no stranger to twisting federal law to suit its aims, and the publication of the EEOC’s final rule on workplace harassment is a prime example,” Sarah??? Parshall Perry, a senior legal fellow for The Heritage Foundation, told The Daily Signal. 

Perry added:

According to the Biden administration, gender identity and expression are tantamount to ‘sex’ in federal law and require an employer to facilitate an employee’s ‘preferred pronoun’ use and requested bathroom use or face a possible complaint for sexual harassment. 

This is both an untenable conclusion, and not supported by the underlying Supreme Court decision on which the Administration so greatly relies: Bostock v. Clayton County. What’s more, biological women are again rendered to second-class citizens under the EEOC rule and forced to give up any vestige of privacy and security they previously enjoyed. 

And as if that wasn’t enough, the mandatory use of an employee’s requested name and pronouns—those which differ from that employee’s biological sex—is a patent violation of the 1^st Amendment, and creates an unavoidable conflict between gender ideology, and freedom of speech and religion. I expect the swift filing of multiple legal challenges against the new rule.

This story was updated to include comments from commission members of the Equal Opportunity Employment Commission.

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Arabella Network’s Leftist ‘Dark Money’ Influence Expanding, Author Reveals

The left-wing Arabella Advisors network has raked in more money than either of the two major political parties and affects almost every element of public policy and elections, argues Scott Walter, president of the Capital Research Center, a Washington-based investigative think tank. 

Walter’s new book “Arabella: The Dark Money Network of Leftist Billionaires Secretly Transforming America” shows that in the 2020 election cycle, Arabella Advisors’ nonprofits took in $2.4 billion. That’s $1 billion more than the combined fundraising of the Democratic National Committee and the Republican National Committee.

That amount rose to $3 billion in the 2022 election cycle, Walter says. Moreover, he adds, nothing on the Right comes close to competing. 

“Arabella does not discriminate. It is working on arcane regulatory issues … but it also is running Facebook ads, attacking certain congressional candidates and boosting others. It plays in environmental issues. It plays in abortion issues. It plays in election policy,” Walter says on “The Daily Signal Podcast.”

Walter is set to testify Tuesday before the House Natural Resources Committee about what he calls “left-wing dark money [used] to influence environmental policy.”

“Arabella also continues to be very active in the environmental policy area in all sorts of ways,” he adds.

Arabella-backed organizations have been involved in battles over abortion and Supreme Court nominations and advocated that biological males compete in women’s sports. 

Walter’s book details how two Arabella-aligned groups, the Center for Secure and Modern Elections and the Institute for Responsive Government, are involved in shaping election policy at the local level. 

He notes that an Arabella-sponsored group funded by billionaire financier George Soros helped formulate the Biden administration’s recent change in Title IX policy to make it easier for biological males to compete in girls’ scholastic sports. 

“That was plotted through a highly secretive group in the Arabella network, funded entirely with Soros money,” Walter said. “Governing for Impact, which they started in 2019, two years before the Biden administration was even sworn in. And they worked with Harvard Law School folks to do very sophisticated legal strategy memos of how to overturn dozens of regulations in the federal government, the most famous being Title IX.”

What’s differentiates Arabella from other major donors on the Left is the level of secrecy, Walter says. The network is more secretive than most nonprofits financed by Soros and his family, he says. 

“We have tracked the institutional donors, and we can tell you that for almost all of the Arabella nonprofits, Fidelity Charitable Gift Fund, which provides donor-advised funds to wealthy people, is the largest,” Walter said. He added, “Other really big donors to the Arabella network have [included Microsoft co-founder] Bill Gates. He is one of the largest, mostly through his foundation. [Facebook founder] Mark Zuckerberg has given tens of millions, mostly for criminal justice reform—quote unquote—[that results in] letting criminals back on the streets.”

A spokesperson for Arabella Advisors didn’t respond to The Daily Signal’s request for comment for this report.  

Listen to Walter outline Arabella’s reach in a discussion of his book in the podcast below: 

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