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Early voting is starting in many states, both in-person and through the absentee balloting process, which makes resolving the issue of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. remaining on state ballots an immediate problem.
Wherever practical, election officials have a solemn obligation to their voters to remove a candidate from the ballot when that candidate has dropped out of the race so their votes aren’t inadvertently wasted if they are unaware of that fact.
That is why the refusal of election officials in Michigan and Wisconsin to remove Kennedy from the ballot is so troubling. A state court judge in Michigan also refused to force the secretary of state to remove Kennedy, bizarrely claiming that “elections are not just games” and that the secretary is “not obligated to honor the whims of candidates for public office.”
“Whims”?! Kennedy has ended his candidacy and is no longer running for president. Voters have a right to be fully informed of this when they are voting. That includes not being given the opportunity to waste their ballot by voting for a candidate who remains on the ballot due to the “games” the partisan secretary of state in Michigan is playing, even though that candidate is no longer in the race.
But even in states that claim it is “too late” to remove a candidate from the ballot and that it will be too expensive to redesign and print new ballots, election officials have a duty to inform their voters that a vote for a candidate like Kennedy, whose name remains on the ballot, will be a waste of their valuable franchise. And there is an easy and relatively inexpensive way to do that, which can be accomplished quickly and without any delay.
States that are not going to reprint their ballots with Kennedy’s name removed should immediately do two things.
First, election officials should prepare a one-page, short notice on their official letterhead that says something like:
IMPORTANT NOTICE TO VOTERS: Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is listed on the ballot as a candidate for the office of President of the United States, has dropped out of the race and is no longer a candidate. Due to the late notice of his ending his candidacy, we were unable to prepare new ballots without his name. All voters should be aware that a vote for Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will be a vote for a candidate who is no longer running for office.
A copy of this one-page, simple, easy-to-understand notification should be enclosed with every absentee ballot that is mailed out to every voter in the state who has requested one or is otherwise being sent one.
How quickly could this be done? It took me about five minutes to compose this message, and I could easily have thousands of copies printed by any commercial photocopying or printing company in one day. And those same companies could continue printing this notice as needed for each day that absentee ballots are being sent out.
Second, election officials should create signs with this very same notification for posting prominently inside every polling location used in a state for both early voting and in-person voting on Election Day. Designing and creating such a sign can be easily and quickly done; and getting copies printed, again, by any commercial concern (or in-house in counties with printing facilities), could obviously be done with almost no delay.
That is particularly true because only a small number of such signs will initially be needed since only a very limited number of polling locations are open for early voting in all of the states that allow early voting. Election officials will then have two months to prepare such signs for all of the polling places that will be open for in-person voting on Election Day.
Sending notices to absentee voters and preparing signs for in-person voting should be a secondary plan, however. Election officials should make every effort to reprint new ballots that correctly list the candidates actually running for office. But there is an obvious solution that can be used to adequately inform voters even if that is not possible.
Any refusal by election officials to, at a minimum, prepare such notices will be a violation of their duty as public officials to fairly and honestly administer the upcoming election. Given the ease of this solution, it will be hard to imagine any refusal to implement it that is based on anything other than election officials engaging in partisan misbehavior that is intended to misinform voters and manipulate the results of the presidential election.
Election officials who engage in that type of misconduct are betraying the public trust and should not be in office.
The post The Easy, Cheap, Quick Solution to the RFK Jr. Ballot Issue appeared first on The Daily Signal.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s endorsement of former President Donald Trump is a marvel to behold. It’s astonishing that such a prominent member of America’s quintessential Democratic family embraced the most conservative Republican nominee since President Ronald Reagan.
If a majority of Kennedy’s roughly 6% of likely voters support Trump on Nov. 5, they could compose the 3.1% that he might need to edge Vice President Kamala Harris in a photo finish.
But Kennedy should add value beyond Election Day. If reelected, Trump should ask him to chair a new Presidential Commission to Make Free Speech Great Again.
Kennedy and his fellow commissioners should investigate federal assaults on the First Amendment, most notoriously Washington, D.C.’s election-interference campaign to censor news coverage of Hunter Biden’s “Laptop from Hell.”
“The FBI warned us about a potential Russian disinformation operation about the Biden family and [Ukrainian energy giant] Burisma,” Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg wrote House Judiciary Committee Chairman Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, on Monday.
After the Oct. 14, 2020, New York Post exposé of Hunter Biden’s laptop and its evidence of the Bidens’ dodgy international deals, “we sent that story to fact-checkers for review and temporarily demoted it while waiting for a reply. It’s since been made clear that the reporting was not Russian disinformation, and in retrospect, we shouldn’t have demoted the story.”
After conferring with Biden-Harris campaign aide Antony Blinken (now secretary of state), former acting CIA chief Michael Morrell recruited 50 other former intelligence officers. They signed an open letter that dismissed the Post’s exclusive for containing “all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.”
Biden-Harris’ allies and other deep state denizens used the ex-spies’ communiqué to dragoon Facebook, Twitter (now X), and other social-media giants into censoring the Hunter Biden story. In fact, Twitter (pre-Elon Musk) padlocked the Post’s account for 15 days!
Meanwhile, during his final debate against Trump that Oct. 22, Joe Biden used the ex-spies’ bogus letter to denounce the Post’s true story as “a bunch of garbage.”
Mission accomplished! Millions of voters never learned about the Biden family’s corruption that haunted Hunter Biden’s laptop. Within days, Crooked Joe captured the Oval Office.
“In 2021,” Zuckerberg added, “senior officials from the Biden Administration, including the White House, repeatedly pressured our teams for months to censor certain COVID-19 content, including humor and satire, and expressed a lot of frustration with our teams when we didn’t agree.”
The Biden-Harris Justice Department sicced the FBI on “domestic terrorists”—specifically, parents who complained to school boards about critical race theory and transgender practices. The administration proposed that a Disinformation Governance Board patrol the internet for undesirable “misinformation” and then deplatform and punish Biden and Harris’ detractors.
While public ridicule doomed the Disinformation Governance Board, Biden and Harris reportedly still coerce tech giants to silence the administration’s critics. The Biden-Harris FBI also spied on “violent extremists,” namely Latin Mass Catholics.
These unconstitutional policies also oppressed Kennedy. As the pandemic roared on, his concerns about COVID-19 vaccines got buried.
“What alarms me is the resort to censorship, media control, and weaponization of the federal agencies,” Kennedy said in Phoenix on Aug. 23, as he suspended his campaign. “When a U.S. president colludes with, or outright coerces, media companies to censor political speech, it’s an attack on our most sacred right of free expression.”
As a victim of Biden-Harris censorship, Kennedy is ideally suited to investigate their War on the First Amendment. The Kennedy Commission should identify every federal employee who perpetrated these unconstitutional outrages. Trump then should tell these totalitarians: “You’re fired!”
The attorneys among them should be disbarred and their law licenses shredded. Those who violated federal law should be prosecuted, convicted, and imprisoned.
And on Day One, Trump should revoke the security clearances of those 51 lying ex-spies. This would signal—big league—that censorship is dead, and free speech is alive and well.
What a beautiful, bipartisan victory that would be for America, courtesy of Democrat Kennedy and Republican Trump.
We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal.
The post How RFK Jr. Can Be an Asset in a Future Trump Administration appeared first on The Daily Signal.
Presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. suspended his campaign last week and endorsed former President Donald Trump.
I disagree with Kennedy about a lot. But at least he was willing to talk to people who disagree with him.
In my newest video, we debate.
Kennedy complains that mainstream media won’t have him on—even to argue with him.
“Nobody will. None of them. They won’t have me on any of their networks.”
“I see why,” I reply. “You get into the weeds of vaccine science, and we feel not all of it’s true.”
“If it’s not true,” Kennedy responds, “then argue with me, or post something afterward.”
OK.
Here are three incorrect things Kennedy says:
No. 1: “I was in Dimock, Pennsylvania, watching fire come out of a faucet from fracking. Every home in that neighborhood, they can light up a cigarette lighter under their faucet, turn their faucet on, and it’ll flame like a lighter. That’s from fracking.”
No, it isn’t. A leftist documentary, “Gasland,” publicized flaming faucets and claimed fracking is the cause. But it’s not.
Water is flammable in many places in America where no fracking is done. It happens because of naturally occurring gas, already in the ground.
Even the director of the Environmental Protection Agency during Barack Obama’s presidency said, “In no case have we made a definitive determination that the fracking process has caused chemicals to enter groundwater.”
No. 2: Kennedy claims many vaccines do more harm than good.
I ask, “If your kids were young now, would you give them the measles, mumps, rubella vaccine?”
“No,” he says, “Studies show that kids who get measles as a child are much healthier when they grow up … resistant to cancers, atopic diseases … ”
I tell Kennedy, “You convinced people not to get the measles vaccine. An outbreak resulted in 83 deaths in Samoa.”
“That story is not true,” he says. “Nobody died in Samoa from measles.”
But the Samoan government and the Lancet medical journal report there were 83 deaths.
Kennedy blames the deaths on bad vaccines, and two babies did die after being given incorrectly mixed vaccines.
But Samoa’s response, after years of anti-vax messages, was worse: They pulled the measles vaccine.
That’s what caused the 83 deaths. Now, Samoa vaccinates kids again.
No. 3: Kennedy ties vaccines to autism.
“You still say that autism is caused by vaccines?” I ask.
“Yeah,” he replies firmly. “Autism is caused by vaccines.”
He points to unpublished data presented decades ago by a researcher named Verstraeten.
“They looked at children who got the hepatitis B vaccine during their first 30 days and compared those to kids who got it later or didn’t get it at all. There was a 1,350% elevated risk for autism!”
That was true, about the preliminary raw data. But in later analyses of the same data, Verstraeten made adjustments, and the vaccine-autism correlation went away. RFK doesn’t trust the adjustments. Even if he were right, the chemical in the vaccines (thimerosal) that Verstraeten looked at was discontinued in vaccines, except flu shots, decades ago.
More thorough researchers have now studied the effects of modern vaccines and found no connection to autism.
One study even looked at every child born in Denmark over 10 years and concluded that the MMR vaccine “does not increase the risk for autism.”
“You ignore the big studies,” I tell him.
“You have this wrong,” he insists.
Finally, Kennedy’s critics claim he makes things up.
One told me, “Studies he cites won’t show what he says they show. The web is full of detailed explanations of why nearly every study he has cited is bogus or wildly misinterpreted by him.”
I didn’t find that. I found that when Kennedy cites studies, he cites them accurately. But he misleads by ignoring bigger, better, more reliable studies. This does a grave disservice to his followers. Vaccines (most of them, anyway) reduce misery and save lives.
Although Kennedy and I disagree about a lot, I’m grateful that he will debate.
All my career, I’ve debated people for my TV shows. Debate is one of the best ways to get closer to the truth. But today, activists and politicians hide from skeptical inquiry. Trump, Vivek Ramaswamy and Kennedy are rare exceptions.
Good for them.
COPYRIGHT 2024 BY JFS PRODUCTIONS INC.
We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal.
The post Fact-Checking RFK Jr. appeared first on The Daily Signal.
DAILY CALLER NEWS FOUNDATION—Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s exit from the Democratic Party (or was he booted out?) is only the latest sign that there are no more JFK Democrats left in positions of power in the Democratic Party.
President John F. Kennedy was a staunch anti-communist who fought against union and government corruption. He was a pro-life Catholic. He was laser-focused on faster growth (“we can do bettah”) and saw sweeping tax-rate reductions as a step toward achieving 4% to 5% annual growth.
Democrats are now for higher taxes. They ignore and excuse union and government corruption, and they don’t even talk about growth. It is all income redistribution.
They should listen to the words of wisdom of Kennedy circa 1960 to 1963. In 1962, he famously declared, “It is a paradoxical truth that tax rates are too high and tax revenues are too low, and the soundest way to raise the revenues in the long run is to cut the rates now.”
Sadly, today you could count on one hand the number of Democrats in Washington who believe that. JFK called for a reduction in income taxes and capital gains taxes. Vice President Kamala Harris wants to raise these taxes—including doubling capital gains taxes.
Which brings me to RFK Jr. I don’t agree with many of the positions that he takes. But he is right that the Democratic Party undemocratically excised him from the ballot in states. He is right about the incestuous relationship between big government and big business.
At a dinner party, I recently asked him about tax policy. He replied: “I learned from my uncle [JFK] that cutting taxes increases prosperity.”
Harris has never learned that lesson. She should take a history lesson. After the JFK tax cuts—from as high as 90% to 70% and a capital gains tax reduction of 30%—the economy boomed and tax revenues soared.
Kamala and my Democratic friends should educate themselves by reading Larry Kudlow and Brian Domitrovic’s wonderful book “JFK and the Reagan Revolution.”
That book also shows that tax revenues rose after the Reagan tax cuts—which were modeled after the JFK plan. What was remarkable about both these historical events is that the share of taxes paid by the rich rose after tax rates were cut. That was the “paradoxical truth” that JFK foresaw.
JFK was also famous for talking about “a rising tide lifts all boats.” That’s far different from the “soak the rich” message of Democrats today.
RFK Jr. was right that he has not left the Democratic Party. The party has left him. And it has sadly left behind the policy legacy of his famous uncle—who also would likely be a Republican today.
Originally published by the Daily Caller News Foundation.
We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal.
The post A Kennedy Endorses Trump. Goodbye, JFK Democrats. appeared first on The Daily Signal.
Editor’s note: This is a lightly edited transcript of the accompanying video from professor Peter St. Onge.
Presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has effectively quit the race and endorsed former President Donald Trump, popping media heads across America.
This is obviously great news for Trump’s odds of winning come November.
But it’s even more significant for what it says about the Democratic Party, which has been the effective ruling party of America—the Lord of the Deep State—since FDR.
Kennedy made his announcement at a Trump rally Friday. He noted how back in his childhood, Democrats were the “party of the Constitution” who championed civil rights, stood against authoritarianism and censorship, fought against imperialist wars, and against corporate power.
He said that party has now transformed into the party of war, censorship, corruption, Big Pharma, Big Tech, big agriculture, and big money.
It’s a party that has abandoned democracy—referring to the undemocratic coronation of Kamala Harris as well as lawfare to kick RFK off the ballot and throw Trump in jail.
RFK noted that given the censorship, the weaponization of federal agencies, and collusion with left-wing media, he had no path to victory and staying in the race would risk handing victory to Democrats “with whom I disagree on the most existential issues: censorship, war, and chronic disease.”
And so he’s effectively dropping out and backing Trump, adding that those original principles of the Democratic Party now lead him back to Trump.
Note that RFK is formally suspending his campaign, not ending it, but that’s normally what people do when they tap out. In RFK’s case, it also means he’ll stay on the ballot in deep-blue states and deep-red states, where he won’t affect the outcome.
But he’ll drop out in battleground states where it will help Trump.
Kennedy had been polling consistently around 5%, which is a big deal, given that five of the last six elections were decided by less than 5%.
Beyond the tactical benefit for Trump is the wider moral point. People like RFK Jr., Jordan Peterson, or even Elon Musk were passionate, lifelong liberals before switching sides.
Musk spelled it out last year, saying he didn’t leave the Democratic Party; it left him—left him on radical social issues, economic issues, and wars.
As for the race itself, five of the last six elections have been decided by under five points. So, RFK could absolutely make the difference in a second Trump term. Indeed, Trump got a boost in the betting markets with RFK’s endorsement, making it a very tight race, even with the cheating. Meaning, it’s all hands on board.
So, what’s next? In theory, democracies self-correct when one party goes off the rails. It pulls back to the center to try and pick up more voters, something academics call the “median voter theorem.”
But in fact, that doesn’t seem to be happening with Dems. As RFK says, they’re instead ignoring the voters and doubling-down on censorship and authoritarianism extending all the way to imprisoning the opposition.
This has happened before, of course, even in democracies. In 1930s Germany, the ruling Social Democrats did not moderate. They, too, doubled down, extending to political executions by regime allies.
We know how that ended, and it’s not good.
We’re in a dark place at the moment, and the most famous Kennedy effectively flipping parties is a mile marker for the history books.
We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal.
The post RFK Jr. Didn’t Leave Democratic Party. It Left Him. appeared first on The Daily Signal.
On the latest episode of “The Tony Kinnett Cast,” we examine the fallout from the the Democratic National Convention and the Robert F. Kennedy Jr. endorsement of former President Donald Trump. Every pollster has his or her own take—and, as usual, no one is using their common sense. With former Democrat Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard joining the Trump endorsement crew, what differences, if any, should we expect?
With Jerome Powell, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, announcing rate cuts just in time for the election, what accountability is there for all those falsified jobs numbers from the Biden administration? Does your wallet have what it takes to survive yet another round of inflation?
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, who legacy media have been championing as America’s “sitcom dad” for the last month after he became the Democratic vice presidential hopeful, is embroiled in even more scandals over embellishing his record. From dogs and Army ranks to Nebraskan awards and in vitro fertilization, he certainly picked the weirdest things to lie about.
And Savanna Deretich joins us from Students for Life to bring an eyewitness analysis of the gubernatorial record of Walz and what it meant for her as a Minnesota resident. She claims the soft, friendly words from Walz did little to soothe the radical policy and violent riots which plagued his administration.
Catch the live radio show and livestream weeknights at 7 p.m. EDT on The Daily Signal’s YouTube, X, or Facebook channels.
The post WATCH: Gabbard, RFK Jr. Declare ‘All Hands on Deck’ for Trump appeared first on The Daily Signal.
On the latest episode of “The Tony Kinnett Cast,” back from our live coverage of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, we discuss Robert F. Kennedy’s endorsement of Donald Trump for the presidency as he drops out of the race, sort of. Are we really going to see any difference in the polls nationally? What about the swing states?
Get out the popcorn, because the legacy media’s reaction to Vice President Kamala Harris and the DNC this week is a spectacle to behold. Get ready to laugh and cry (from secondhand embarrassment) as “hard-hitting journalists” cover serious and important issues such as the number of balloons falling from the ceiling at United after Harris’ acceptance speech Thursday night—as opposed to the riots outside.
What are the results of those riots? Did the socialists, pro-Palestinians, and other far-left actors get all of their anger out of their systems? Is a unified base ready to support the wondrous JOY of Kamala Harris and Minnesota Gov. (and stolen valor champion) Tim Walz?
Finally, in Mail Time, we dig into an avalanche of questions sent straight from your phones and computers into our inbox. We take the best and worst and answer them live on air to the amusement and bemusement of our syndicated audience.
Catch the live radio show and livestream weeknights at 7 p.m. EDT on The Daily Signal’s YouTube, X, or Facebook.
The post WATCH: RFK Jr. Turns Harris-Walz Sugar High Into Caffeine Crash appeared first on The Daily Signal.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. suspended his 2024 presidential campaign and endorsed Republican nominee former President Donald Trump. He announced that while he will remain on the ballot in “safe” states where Democratic nominee Vice President Kamala Harris or Trump are likely to prevail, he will remove his name from 10 “battleground” states and he urged his voters to support Trump in those states.
“In the name of saving democracy, the Democratic Party has set itself to dismantling it,” Kennedy, 70 said at a press conference in Phoenix, Arizona, Friday.
He claimed the DNC engaged in “continual legal warfare against both President Trump and myself.”
Kennedy condemned the Democrats’ 2024 primary as a “sham primary” that was “rigged.” He also condemned President Joe Biden’s decision to drop out of the presidential race last month as a “palace coup.”
“The same shadowy DNC operatives appointed his successor, also without an election,”” Kennedy said.
“In my heart, I no longer believe that I have a realistic path to victory,” he added, saying that he “cannot in good conscience” ask for his volunteers and donors to support him.
RFK also said he disagrees with Democrats on “most existential issues.” He further encouraged supporters in blue states to vote for him. In ten battleground states, however, he announced he will remove his name and encouraged voters not to vote for him.
Kennedy said he’s supporting Trump due to his concern for “free speech, war in Ukraine, and war on our children.”
Kennedy, who was running as an independent candidate, withdrew from the ballot in Arizona late Thursday, which many said signaled his impending exit from the race.
The nephew of former President John F. Kennedy, RFK is an environmental activist and vaccine skeptic. He has vowed to end the war in Ukraine war and slash the military budget.
Kennedy launched a campaign for the Democratic nomination in April and switched to run as an Independent candidate in October, garnering attacks from the Trump campaign that he is a member of the “radical left.” Trump told CNN Tuesday he would “love” a Kennedy endorsement and is open to Kennedy working in his administration if he drops out and endorses him.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Address to the Nation https://t.co/Wf4xt12GSX
— Robert F. Kennedy Jr (@RobertKennedyJr) August 23, 2024
The post BREAKING: RFK Suspends His Campaign, Endorses Trump appeared first on The Daily Signal.
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