Login
In our modern political dumpster fire, there has never been an art so refined and illustrious as pointless pearl-clutching.
In this, the ninth year of 2016, most everyone is fairly desensitized to the political drama emanating from the Left’s ardent claims that any conservative policy or protest is an appeal to fascism as their own organizations and protesters set fire to cities (and sometimes themselves).
Republicans pass a bill banning sexually explicit content in public schools from kindergarten to third grade? Florida Democrats and media labeled it fascism.
A U.S. Supreme Court justice’s wife flies a Revolutionary War flag commissioned by George Washington? Salon’s senior writer described Justice Samuel Alito and his wife as “extremely invested in the semiotics of American fascism.”
The New Republic, The Guardian, taxpayer-funded PBS—any time a Republican so much as upholds parliamentary procedure, defends former President Donald Trump, or questions the surge of gang and cartel members amid waves of illegal immigrants—these outlets are ready in the wings to call any to the right of Chairman Mao a fascist.
The latest banner of fascism to be shouted down in a “Two Minutes Hate” session out of George Orwell’s “1984”: flying the flag of the United States upside down. The horror!
As ridiculous as it might sound—the group that has spent the past eight years defending those who burn, shred, and desecrate the U.S. flag is suddenly outraged over many in the nation who have flown the U.S. flag upside down in a symbol of distress over Trump’s political prosecution and conviction.
Many on the Left and precious few on the Right have taken to social media to lambast those who would fly the U.S. flag upside down as “disrespectful,” “treasonous,” and “idol-worshipers.”
Is this the case? Are those who reacted to Trump’s felony convictions in New York City simply bowing at his feet in a brutal backstabbing of the United States? Is this heinous, unspeakable act the very hallmark of fascism and the alleged “cult of personality” that the Left has predicted for almost a century?
Of course not, and you know that.
We needn’t walk down the halls of easily accessible history to discern how this wrist-shattering pearl clutch is both hypocritical and ignorant. But we’ll do so, not out of necessity but because heaping good data en masse against poorly constructed arguments is entertaining.
First and foremost: Flying the flag of the United States upside down is not disrespectful, illegal, treasonous, or even unprecedented.
Although 4 U.S. Code § 8, commonly referred to as the “Flag Code,” isn’t legally enforceable (because U.S. citizens retain First Amendment rights to do with their own flags whatever they wish), flying the flag upside down under appropriate circumstances wouldn’t violate the law.
The law clearly states: “The flag should never be displayed with the union down, except as a signal of dire distress in instances of extreme danger to life or property.” (The “union” refers to the patch of blue with 50 stars.)
Thousands in the U.S. have flown our flag upside down to express their “dire distress” in such instances over the past century.
Leftists consistently flew the U.S. flag upside down throughout Trump’s presidency to signal their deep disquiet and fear, from Washington state to Louisiana. Democrats in New Jersey resolutely flew the flag upside down in protest of Trump’s inauguration in January 2017. Some Republicans flew their flags upside down when Barack Obama was reelected in 2012.
The American flag has been flown upside down as “a tribute to veterans’ sacrifice,” and was one of the many symbols of protest against the Vietnam War used by leftist demonstrators in the 1960s.
The Flag Code doesn’t specify what “extreme danger to life or property” entails, nor does it restrict such interpretation to a physical danger or a political one. Might there be a situation today in which many Americans feel in deep distress over a perceived danger to the life and property of their republic?
Never before in American history has a former president, much less one running for office again, been charged and convicted in such a kangaroo-court fashion that even his political adversaries note the insanity of the circumstances.
In an extremely heated presidential election campaign, indicting one of the two frontrunners would be considered enough of an anathema—but the case of New York v. Trump was more than precarious, it was a circus.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, a Democrat, ran on the promise of doing anything he could to find something to indict Trump with. Outside his jurisdiction, Bragg used a federal election statute—which the Federal Election Commission already had stated Trump didn’t violate—as a convoluted lever to turn 34 counts of “falsifying business records,” misdemeanors that by this point were outside New York’s statute of limitations, into felonies.
As if that weren’t enough, Judge Juan Merchan refused to allow a former chairman of the Federal Election Commission to testify, refused to allow the defense to speak to the jury before deliberation, and informed jurors that to convict they didn’t have to reach a unanimous decision on what crime was committed.
Such actions by Merchan set a nation on fire even as trust in institutions already was wavering.
Elie Honig, a former federal and state prosecutor, wrote for New York magazine, an extremely liberal publication: “Prosecutors got Trump—but they contorted the law.” Honig pointed out that never before in U.S. history has there been a state prosecution using federal election law.
You’ll notice that I haven’t mentioned Trump’s sex life, his character, or his business decisions—in fact, many of those expressing extreme distress at this forded Rubicon aren’t being protective of Trump like he was some kind of nonsensical religious idol.
Sens. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky, and Mitt Romney, R-Utah, who have spent the past few years as Trump’s chief opposition within the GOP, both called this case and conviction despicable.
When a reporter asks President Joe Biden whether he used this case to politically persecute Trump and he casts a wicked grin in her direction, how is the nation supposed to respond?
Reporter: "President Trump refers to himself as a political prisoner and blames you directly. What's your response to that, sir?"
— Michael Knowles (@michaeljknowles) May 31, 2024
Biden: *smiles*pic.twitter.com/CZY8JUMvKO
Why is the left side of the aisle afforded the right to ride through towns and cities shouting about the impending doom of the republic like some bastardized caricature of Paul Revere, and the right side isn’t allowed to call out the very sham John Adams unpopularly fought in court to prevent?
Spare me your clutched pearls, neoconservatives. Your faux dignity and condescension at the concerns of Americans whose carcass of a justice system is paraded openly don’t move me.
I don’t have to defend Trump’s personal life and sign onto a “cult of personality” to recognize that each of us has a right to be free from political persecution and election interference.
Commentator Alyssa Farah’s silly claims that flying the flag upside down signals “selling out” are as pathetic and hypocritical as the rest of the cast of “The View” with whom she clucks and quacks about abortion rights, gun confiscation, and anti-Catholicism.
Whistling past the graveyard and sending a “strongly worded letter” have only mired us further in the muck of Third World antics.
I reserve the right to fly my flag upside down to signal my extreme distress at this danger to the life and property of the republic I love, and I’ll do so whenever I find it appropriate.
The post To the Condescending Cranks Faking Outrage Over Upside-Down Flags appeared first on The Daily Signal.
Many things human come in pairs. Eyes, ears, hands, feet, and lungs appear in twos. Even a single nose features two nostrils.
In this context, America’s new, two-track justice system might be perfectly natural: One for the Left—in which they suffer few consequences, if any, for their misdeeds—and one for the Right, in which arrests, trials, and prison sentences are routine.
After the Supreme Court’s current term ends later this month, masons should spend this summer re-chiseling the marble above its columns. Out with “Equal Justice Under Law.” In with “Bipolar Justice for All!”
Black Lives Matter and Antifa thugs on the Left spent the summer of 2020 yanking statues from pedestals, torching police precincts, and otherwise unleashing total mayhem. Then-Sen. Kamala Harris promoted a legal-defense fund to free arrestees. Few paid any price for the “fiery but mostly peaceful” George Floyd riots.
A peaceful demonstrator shares his opinion at a Black Lives Matter march on June 14, 2020, in Los Angeles. Few, if any, of his more violent BLM compatriots suffered any legal consequences for their anything but “mostly peaceful” actions after the killing of George Floyd less than three weeks earlier. (Photo: Rodin Eckenroth/Getty Images)
The Jan. 6 hoodlums on the Right who shattered windows and smashed doors to breach the U.S. Capitol deserve serious prison time. But other protesters naively entered after Capitol Police waved them in.
“Hey, look. It’s open house!” some might have thought.
Many of these accidental tourists are in huge trouble. Arkansas’ Daniel Hatcher entered the Capitol, snapped some photos for two minutes, and walked out. The FBI arrested Hatcher in Little Rock last Feb. 13. He now faces federal charges.
Left-wing Deep State functionaries John Brennan, James Clapper, James Comey, Peter Strzok, and Andrew Weissmann advanced the Russia Hoax, which bedeviled the Trump administration and divided America for three years. Each of these men scored a book contract and a TV deal. Literally.
On the Right, Russiagate ensnared Trump aides Paul Manafort, Rick Gates, George Papadopoulos, Gen. Michael Flynn, and Roger Stone. All were sentenced to prison. Trump pardoned Flynn and Stone. Gates served house arrest. Manafort and Papadopoulos went to the slammer.
The quintessence of these two systems involves 2016’s presidential nominees and how they separately tried to influence that election.
On the Left, Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign paid $175,000 to Democratic law firm Perkins Coie, which engaged opposition-research shop Fusion GPS. It hired former British spy Christopher Steele. He wrote a baseless “Dirty Dossier” that hallucinated ties between Trump and the Kremlin. Team Clinton leaked this fraudulent report, which BuzzFeed published. And the Russia Hoax was off to the races.
On the Right, Trump was accused of reimbursing his then-attorney, Michael Cohen, for paying porn star Stormy Daniels $130,000 to clam up about an alleged affair with Trump that both of them have denied.
As former Justice Department official John B. Daukas wrote in the American Spectator: “So, Hillary Clinton is found to be liable for mislabeling payments for the Steele Dossier as legal fees and gets an $8,000 civil fine; Trump has been found guilty of mislabeling nondisclosure payments as legal fees and is a convicted felon.”
As Yogi Berra might have said: “Only in America.”
Clinton went on to write books, deliver lectures, and whine loudly about why she lost to a real-estate magnate and TV personality on his first political campaign. Notwithstanding emotional scars, she is out a whopping eight grand.
Trump, meanwhile, endured a six-week trial that kept him off the campaign trail for four days each week, cost him undisclosed millions in—not to coin a phrase—legal expenses, and added abundant stress to his already high-pressure life. He awaits sentencing on July 11 and could receive four years for each of the 34 counts on which he was convicted. Total: 136 years in the big house.
But is this really so wrong?
If good things come in pairs, perhaps this applies to justice.
Rather than complain about two paths to justice, one Left and one Right, maybe conservatives should celebrate this development. After all, the truth about pectoral muscles also might apply to justice systems: “One is not enough, and three are too many.”
We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal.
The post When Lady Justice Lifts Blindfold From Over Her Left Eye Only appeared first on The Daily Signal.
Two more Republican senators are joining the effort to stop the Senate Democrats’ agenda Wednesday in response to former President Donald Trump’s guilty verdict in a New York trial.
Sens. Steve Daines, R-Mont., and Rand Paul, R-Ky., are signing on to a Senate Republican letter vowing to oppose Democratic legislative priorities, a spokeswoman told The Daily Signal.
Eleven Republican senators vowed to oppose Democrats’ legislative priorities and nominations in a letter released Friday.
“Enough is enough,” Daines said in an emailed statement to The Daily Signal Wednesday. “Joe Biden and his Democrat allies weaponized our judicial system and undermined the American people’s trust in our government. I will not stand by as the Left’s radical agenda tears apart the fabric of our nation and threatens our Montana way of life.”
Paul’s office did not respond to The Daily Signal’s request for comment by time of publication.
The senators’ letter accuses the White House of making “a mockery of the rule of law and fundamentally alter[ing] our politics in un-American ways.”
“As a Senate Republican conference, we are unwilling to aid and abet this White House in its project to tear this country apart,” the letter reads. “To that end, we will not 1) allow any increase to non-security related funding for this administration, or any appropriations bill which funds partisan lawfare; 2) vote to confirm this administration’s political and judicial appointees; and 3) allow expedited consideration and passage of Democrat legislation or authorities that are not directly relevant to the safety of the American people.”
With Daines and Paul, the letter now has 13 signatories:
In a press conference Tuesday, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell indicated that he would not be signing on.
“The solution is to have a Republican majority and then we be in a position to determine what the agenda was going to be,” he said. “There are opportunities when you’re in the minority, but not to set the agenda.”
Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, is still deciding if he will join on, a spokesperson told the Cedar Rapids Gazette.
“Sen. Grassley is reviewing the letter and will confer with colleagues about its potential impacts on the legislative and appropriations process,” Grassley’s office said.
Rob Bluey contributed to this report.
The post Sens. Daines, Paul Join Republican Effort to Stop Democrat Agenda Post-Trump Verdict appeared first on The Daily Signal.
“I’ll be damned if I’m going to let Donald Trump turn America into a place that is filled with anger, resentment, and hate,” President Joe Biden said May 29 in Philadelphia.
So, why did America’s self-styled uniter-in-chief decide to “stop the shouting and lower the temperature”—as he promised in his inaugural address—by recruiting Robert De Niro, one of Hollywood’s loudest hotheads?
“Trump wants revenge, and he’ll stop at nothing to get it,” the veteran actor said as narrator of a Biden campaign ad released May 24. De Niro’s overheated audio track continues: “Now, he’s running again, this time threatening to be a dictator. To terminate the Constitution.”
Biden could have tapped the suave and even-keeled George Clooney or the widely admired Julia Roberts, both talented supporters. Instead, Biden picked the boisterous, unhinged De Niro, whose comments about Trump slide from the vulgar to the violent.
On May 28, the Biden campaign staged a press conference outside the Manhattan Criminal Courts Building. Inside Room 1530 that morning, I was among those witnessing closing arguments in New York State vs. Donald J. Trump. Confirming suspicions that this bookkeeping-entry trial was a Democratic election-interference operation, like Trump’s other persecutions, De Niro and Biden-Harris 2024 Communications Director Michael Tyler stood before microphones and taunted Trump on one of the toughest days of his life.
“I don’t mean to scare you. No, wait, maybe I do mean to scare you,” De Niro said. “If Trump returns to the White House, you can kiss these freedoms goodbye that we all take for granted … And elections. Forget about it. That’s over. That’s done. If he gets in. I can tell you right now. He will never leave.”
De Niro added, “Donald Trump wants to destroy not only the city, but the country, and, eventually, he could destroy the world.” (Funny: After Trump left office in January 2021, Americans’ freedoms and elections remained, and the rest of the Earth is still there.)
This disastrously misconceived stunt then melted down as local Trump fans defended the presumptive GOP presidential nominee and swapped insults with the two-time Academy Award winner, whose screen credits include “Goodfellas” and “Raging Bull.”
“You’re trash! You’re done!” one man yelled at De Niro. Another screamed: “You ruined Leo DiCaprio!”
“You are gangsters,” De Niro hollered back. “You are gangsters!”
This was not the first time that Biden’s new spokesman devolved into what the president decries as “anger, resentment, and hate.”
But De Niro and Biden are not so far apart.
The warm, lovable Grandpa Lunchbucket Joe from Scranton, Pennsylvania, who Democrats showcased in 2020 was a mirage. Americans have learned the hard way that Biden is a nasty, vindictive man who lusts to imprison the leader of the opposition. Asked Friday at the White House about Trump’s charge that Biden had made him a political prisoner, Biden displayed an Arctic smile that seemed chilled by ice water in his arteries.
???Exclusive !!! The face of corruption. pic.twitter.com/IAvDv7X5ie
— Chris LaCivita (@LaCivitaC) May 31, 2024
Really?
Biden, 81, and De Niro, 80, deserve each other. They are a pair of mean, cranky, decaying leftists who gush anger, resentment, and hate at their political opponents.
In a word: Badfellas.
We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal.
The post ‘Badfellas’: Joe Biden and Robert De Niro, 2 Raging Peas in a Pod appeared first on The Daily Signal.
It’s been said that the greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world that he didn’t exist.
Most of us remember the national election of 2020: The COVID-19 pandemic, sudden changes to election procedures, mysterious mail-in ballots, allegedly hacked voting systems, and legions of lawyers filing scores of lawsuits.
I think we all remember the aftermath in 2021, as well. Thousands of angry conservative voters traveled to Washington, D.C., and entered the Capitol to protest the certification of the election after a surprise upset led to Joe Biden becoming the president.
Then came the speculation: Did the Chinese hack voting machines to flip the vote in favor of Biden? Were countless mail-in ballots shoved into voting machines in the dead of night?
Was Joseph R. Biden really the most popular presidential candidate in United States history even after running his entire campaign from a basement in Delaware?
I’ve prosecuted election fraud cases, but I do not know the answer to any of those questions. That’s not what this article is about. It is about why you should never be afraid to question the results of an election.
Having been in the Texas Attorney General’s Election Integrity Division, I have had more than a few conversations with people who almost seem to feel guilty about talking to me about election concerns. They usually start out with the other person saying, “Well, I’m not a conspiracy theorist but …”
That additional qualifier has never surprised me, considering how many risks there are associated with questioning the results of elections.
The moment anyone is in the vicinity of someone who claims an election was stolen, they risk becoming an “election denier.”
A few notable attorneys who filed election contests have been threatened with losing their license to practice law and even imprisonment. More than 500 of the 1,265 people who were arrested after marching on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 are—more than three years later—still awaiting trial for what may ultimately amount to a misdemeanor conviction.
The rest of us are constantly told by “experts” that there was nothing wrong with the 2020 election.
But what if those experts were wrong?
Recently, the Georgia State Elections Board voted 2-1 to reprimand Fulton County after finding significant issues with the vote tally in the 2020 presidential election. The board’s investigation concluded there had been over 140 separate violations of election laws and rules not only related to how Fulton County tallied the initial vote, but also how it conducted its recount.
It should be noted that the only vote against reprimanding Fulton County was from board member Janice Johnston and that was only because she felt the reprimand didn’t go far enough. She wanted a more comprehensive investigation conducted by the Georgia Attorney General’s Office.
Out of a plethora of issues in how the election was conducted, the investigation also found that there were more than 3,000 duplicate ballots scanned during the recount. The Georgia Secretary of State’s general counsel declared that it’s inconclusive whether or how many of the 3,000 duplicates were included in the tabulated results.
There were also more than 17,000 ballot images that are allegedly missing from the recount.
Keep in mind that Fulton County’s initial hand recount shortly after the election awarded 1,300 additional votes to Trump, and while the current numbers would not change the outcome of the election, an open question of whether there are potentially more than 4,000 votes not properly accounted for in a swing state election that was decided by only 11,000 votes is—to say the least—problematic.
The Georgia secretary of state’s position appears to be that the initial count, the hand recount, and the machine recount are all relatively similar and therefore not a cause for alarm. When Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger was asked directly about allegations of election fraud, he said, “No, the numbers are the numbers … . The numbers don’t lie.”
That seems like a difficult conclusion to reach when his organization seems to not be sure what the numbers are.
It also somehow seems worse to imply that more than 140 violations of election laws were committed by the election administrator’s office for the state’s most populated county by incompetence rather than malfeasance.
Compare Raffensperger’s lack of enthusiasm with the efforts to remove Sidney Powell’s law license, or the criminal indictment of former President Donald Trump currently pending in Fulton County, both of which stem from the actions they took (or are alleged to have taken) in response to issues arising out of the way Fulton County ran the 2020 presidential election.
In fact, the results of Georgia’s inquiry stand in contrast to the popular talking point that Trump’s allegations were so spurious that even individuals in his own administration refuted his claims of election irregularity.
For example, Christopher Krebs, the former director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency of the Department of Homeland Security, who claimed on CBS’ “60 Minutes” that the 2020 election was “the most secure in American history.”
Not only does it now seem that Krebs was wrong, but less than a month after making that statement, it was publicly reported that Krebs and his agency had been unaware of what could be one of the largest cyberattacks of our national infrastructure in history.
There was also then-Attorney General Bill Barr publicly declaring on Dec. 1, 2020, that the Department of Justice and the FBI had not uncovered evidence of “widespread voter fraud that would change the outcome of the election”—after an investigation he had called for only three weeks prior.
In Texas, after we received an allegation of election fraud, our team of investigators and attorneys—who are already familiar with Texas election law—would seek to contact the election administrator for the county the allegation originated from to obtain their records of the election. Those records were often voluminous and would take time to review.
We would then make attempts to speak to witnesses, including the voters, to determine whether there had been fraud or irregularities in the voting process. We would investigate whether those who cast suspicious ballots were qualified to vote, whether they typically voted by mail or in person, whether their vote in that election came from their listed home address or somewhere else, whether they are even aware a vote was cast in their name, and sometimes even whether they are alive or deceased.
Consider that there were 81,139 votes—in Nevada, Wisconsin, Georgia, and Arizona, combined—which separated Trump from Biden in the election. Among those four states, there were approximately 12,883,742 total ballots cast. Neither of those numbers would include instances where ballots had been destroyed.
The time it took for Georgia to issue its findings on Fulton County alone took three years. At the time of Barr’s statement, the FBI only had a total of 13,245 special agents in the entire bureau, spread out across the United States and other parts of the world. Even if the Justice Department devoted all its resources and limited the scope of their investigations to the largest counties of those four states, it would have taken several weeks just to compile evidence, much less come to a definitive conclusion just for one of those states.
There is also the question whether Barr even wanted the Department of Justice to be involved. The U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, William McSwain, claimed that Barr told him to stand down on investigating election fraud allegations, instead ordering him to refer any complaints to the state of Pennsylvania.
While Barr disputes McSwain’s account, other witnesses testified under oath to receiving the same guidance.
In December 2020 an “irate” Bill Barr called investigators looking into Jesse Morgan’s claim of hundreds of thousands of completed mail-in ballots hauled across state lines to “STAND DOWN”
— Liz Harrington (@realLizUSA) April 4, 2024
“‘I told you you need to stand down on this.’
“[He was] agitated, to say the least.” pic.twitter.com/orzqQFL245
So, when Barr said he had not seen evidence sufficient to conclude that fraud would have changed the results of the election, it seems that is exactly what he meant. He hadn’t seen fraud that would change the outcome. That would be difficult to find for someone unfamiliar with election fraud—and not interested in looking for it.
Nevertheless, Barr’s statements are a common talking point for media “fact-checkers,” who are adamant that election fraud is a myth.
Take for example how fact-checkers handled allegations of Jesse Morgan. Morgan was a post office contractor who claimed that 288,000 pre-filled ballots had been shipped into the state of Pennsylvania in trailer that somehow mysteriously vanished after being delivered to a post office.
As a former prosecutor, the fact that the investigation by the U.S. Postal Service and the FBI only concluded that Morgan’s claims could not be corroborated, while Morgan himself was never charged with making a false statement to a federal agent seems to me to mean that the investigation was inconclusive. That is, neither confirming, nor denying his account.
If that’s the case, then we are left with the notion there is no security camera footage, records, manifests, receipts or explanation for a missing post-office trailer allegedly containing 288,000 ballots that was left inside a secured post-office motor pool, or that it was just a shoddy investigation.
That didn’t stop the Dispatch and PolitiFact from concluding that Morgan’s allegations were false in their entirety based on the aforementioned sound bite from Barr, and the Postal Service’s largely redacted report.
More dubious fact-checks come from The New York Times. It fact-checked 15 separate statements from Trump about the 2020 election. In the interest of brevity, I’d like to go summarize what I personally took from just a few:
Other popular rebuttals stem from the 2020 election contests. The 2020 general election was easily the most litigated in my lifetime. According to some news outlets, Trump and Republicans filed over 60 election challenges, losing almost all of them.
The results of the 2020 election cases always seem to be the easy way out of any debate over the election results. Why wouldn’t they be? The judges found there was no election fraud. Case closed.
Except they kind of didn’t.
For background, a large bulk of the work against the 2020 presidential election contests was done by the law firm of Marc Elias. Formerly of Perkins-Coie, Elias is notably famous (or infamous) for his involvement with the entirely debunked opposition research against Trump known as the Steele Dossier. Ironically, Elias also thinks Russians intervened in the 2016 election to defeat Hillary Rodham Clinton.
In addition to being at the forefront of litigating election lawsuits on behalf of Democrats, Elias’ law firm also seeks “favorable advisory opinions” from the Federal Election Commission on behalf of Democratic candidates. They are unashamedly pro-Democrat, and to put it mildly, they are very committed to what they do.
Elias’ win record speaks for itself, and I’m not discounting his firm’s successes, but the 2020 general election was an easy playing field. In election contests, “the tie goes to the runner,” and all he and his team have to do to win is make sure that none of the allegations of fraud in any of the election contests are considered sufficient to warrant discounting the results.
This was made all the easier because judges have a hard time with any case involving an election.
Take for example Trump v. Biden, where the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled Trump’s suit was barred by the legal doctrine of laches. That is to say that Trump’s allegations were reasonable, but the case had been brought too late for courts to act.
To quote the court, “the time to challenge election policies such as these is not after all ballots have been cast and the votes tallied.”
Essentially, a candidate shouldn’t wait to get cheated out of an election before they sue over it.
A similar result occurred in Kistner v. Simon in Minnesota. In that case, the petitioners filed their lawsuit within days of the postelection review, but the court concluded two claims were barred as they should have been brought before the election, and for the third claim, the court found the petitioners failed to provide service to the other county officials required by Minnesota election laws.
In Arizona’s Ward v. Jackson, the Arizona Supreme Court classified instances where a “duplicate ballot did not accurately reflect the voter’s apparent intent as reflected in the original ballot” as a mere error, and held that it did not believe there were enough of these “errors” to overturn the results of the election.
Also stated by the court: “Where an election is contested on the ground of illegal voting, the contestant has the burden of showing sufficient illegal votes were cast to change the result.” It is not enough to prove there was fraud, you must prove there was enough fraud to change the outcome.
In Donald J. Trump for President v. Way, the New Jersey federal district court declined to hear a challenge to the New Jersey governor’s executive order No. 177, which directed the state to send mail-in ballots to all registered voters and extended ballot counting to all ballots received up to 48 hours after the polls closed on Election Day.
After the suit was filed, the Democrat-controlled state legislature passed a bill codifying the governor’s decree, thereby making it law. One of the bill’s co-sponsors allegedly claimed that the bill’s purpose was to “undermine the Trump campaign’s lawsuit.”
The court’s ruling in that case was that it would defer to the state on whether to suddenly change election rules in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Sidney Powell’s suit in Wisconsin, Feehan v. Wisconsin Elections Commission, was dismissed after the court ruled a Wisconsin voter and potential elector lacked standing to contest the election process in Wisconsin. The federal District Court of the Middle District of Pennsylvania came to the same conclusion in Donald J. Trump for President Inc. v. Boockvar. The result was the same in Nevada in Donald J. Trump for President Inc. v. Cegavske.
Also from Nevada is my favorite postelection opinion by far, Law, et al. v. Whitmer, et. al. In that case, the judge stated that he considered witness declarations—typically statements submitted under the penalty of perjury—to be “hearsay of little or no evidentiary value,” citing that per Nevada’s election code, election contests “shall be tried and submitted so far as may be possible upon depositions … .”
At the time of this suit, America was still reeling from the COVID-19 pandemic and many courts were not even permitting contested hearings out of fear that several people in an enclosed space listening to live testimony could spread the virus.
That prohibition often extended to requests to take someone’s deposition, which was a hurdle I ran into in some of my own cases. Before reading this opinion, I would have thought that “so far as may be possible” under those circumstances would be broad enough to increase the viability of sworn statements to be presented as evidence. I would have been wrong.
Considering the court’s order only gave the contestants from Nov. 17 to Dec. 3 to gather their evidence and granted only 15 depositions to both sides, it’s not clear what evidence the judge expected them to be able to marshal.
I’m not insinuating there was bias, but it feels that way, reading the 10 paragraphs devoted to just bolstering the credibility of the defense expert compared to the five paragraphs the judge spends on the why he felt the entirety of the evidence presented by the other side was inadequate.
The bottom line is, a significant number of the election challenges brought in 2020 appear to have been thrown out for procedural reasons, rather than evidentiary ones. In the few cases where election fraud was discussed, the courts seemed to consistently hold that those bringing the case hadn’t shown enough fraud. Just don’t tell the fact-checkers at Reuters that.
Going into the election of 2024, it’s not even clear who will be able to successfully contest a national election. Neither voters nor electors appear to have standing to contest an election in their own state, and at least a state attorney general and House Representatives do not have standing to challenge elections in other states.
Those who do make it past the standing requirement only have weeks to depose as many witnesses as it takes to prove that enough fraudulent ballots were counted to change the result of the election.
If you’re unfamiliar with an election case, that could potentially mean finding thousands of fraudulent ballots in less time than it would take to contest a speeding ticket. Good luck with that.
The silver lining in all of this is that a byproduct of the controversies surrounding the 2020 presidential election is that we are at least talking about it. And the public outcry has been substantial.
Once a niche topic, election integrity is now at the forefront of public discourse, and several states—including Georgia—are engaged in massive undertakings to identify vulnerabilities in their electoral process and have already taken steps to pass new laws seeking to prevent election integrity issues.
When Texas ran into hurdles with its high criminal court declaring it was unconstitutional for Attorney General Ken Paxton to unilaterally prosecute election fraud, the voters responded by voting out three of the eight justices who signed on to the opinion, and they were the only three up for reelection.
I do not know what happened in 2020, and I don’t know what’s going to happen in 2024. But I do know election fraud exists, and it has been around for a long time. So long as there are ways to cheat the system to obtain power, there will be people seeking to take advantage of them.
I also know that behind every successful election challenge, investigation, prosecution, and legislation are individuals courageous enough to come forward and question the results when something seems off.
That courage is becoming less and less rare after 2020, and it will be a force to be reckoned with in 2024.
That’s why I encourage everyone to never be afraid to question the results of an election when they see something suspicious, and act on those suspicions.
Maybe you win, maybe you lose, but the only way it will change is if you’re not afraid to talk about it.
We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal.
The post The Many Reasons You Shouldn’t Be Afraid to Question Election Results appeared first on The Daily Signal.
FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL—A new lawsuit alleges that Vermont blocked two families from fostering children, despite the state’s foster care system crisis, because the families held traditional, religious views on gender and sexuality.
Brian and Kaitlyn Wuoti and Michael and Rebecca Gantt accused the Vermont Department for Children and Families of mandating an “ideological position at the expense of children” in a lawsuit filed Tuesday. Both Brian Wuoti and Michael Gantt are pastors, and both families hold traditional, Christian religious views.
The Daily Signal is first reporting the existence of the lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Vermont, Windham Division. The Daily Signal also exclusively sat down with both the Gantt family and the Wuoti family for interviews in Vermont, where they described how they were prevented from adopting or fostering needy children due to their religious beliefs.
“Although the Wuotis and Gantts have adopted five children between them, the Department has determined they are unfit to foster or adopt any child solely due to their religiously inspired and widely held belief that girls cannot become boys or vice versa,” the filing states.
“And Vermont applies this policy categorically—whether applicants want to adopt their grandchild, provide respite care for an infant for just a few hours, or foster a child who shares all of their religious views,” the complaint continues. “Vermont would prefer children have no home than to place them with families of faith with these views.”
Vermont foster officials have described a “desperate need for emergency foster homes” as recently as Dec. 19. In an email obtained by The Daily Signal, Foster/Kin Care Manager Carrie Deem told foster families that she was “reaching out for help,” describing an “urgent” need.
“The raw honesty behind this message is that of desperation,” she wrote in the email, sent shortly before Christmas. “We need you! Family Services is in a crisis beyond what we have seen before.”
Vermont’s own Department for Children and Families website notes that “we always need more foster families in Vermont.” The crisis has become so extreme, particularly due to the opioid endemic, that some children in need of homes have been forced to stay in hospital emergency rooms or police departments.
Typically, there are about 1,060 children in state custody, the Vermont Department for Children and Families told a local outlet in May 2023, and approximately 900 licensed foster families.
The Wuoti parents, inspired by their Christian faith, decided to answer the state’s call to help vulnerable children and first became foster parents in 2014. The lawsuit describes how they “adopted two precious brothers who have become an integral part of their family.”
The Gantt parents, who have four biological children, began fostering in 2016. They have since adopted three “beautiful children,” as the lawsuit says, noting that they “have a heart for children with fetal alcohol syndrome and those born addicted to drugs.”
When the Wuotis sought to renew their license in 2022, the lawsuit says, one caseworker described them as “AMAZING” and said she “probably could not hand pick a more wonderful foster family,” while their licenser said he had “no doubt” they would gladly welcome any child into their home.
“But when the Wuotis politely shared that they were Christian,” the lawsuit states, “and that they could not say or do anything that went against faith-informed views about human sexuality, Vermont revoked their license anyway.”
Similarly, the Department for Children and Families asked the Gantts to take in an emergency placement that involved a baby about to be born to a homeless woman who was addicted to drugs. Before the Gantts could agree to do so, the department sent out an email letting families know that they must accept the State’s views on gender ideology “even if the foster parents hold divergent personal opinions or beliefs,” according to the lawsuit.
“The Gantts responded that they would unconditionally love and support any children placed with them, but they would not forsake their religious beliefs that people should value their God-given bodies,” the lawsuit states. “The Department refused to let the Gantts take the baby in need and instead revoked their license.”
The Gantt and Wuoti lawsuit argues that Vermont Department for Children and Families’ policy not only harms children and “hinders their chance to find forever homes,” it also violates the First Amendment.
“It requires parents to speak the State’s controversial views, while restricting parents’ ability to politely share their commonsense beliefs to any child in any context—categorically excluding disfavored viewpoints from the foster-parent pool entirely,” the filing states. “Vermont’s regulations also target particular religious views for unequal treatment through an exemption-riddled system of individualized assessments.”
The Vermont Department for Children and Families, reached for comment by The Daily Signal, shared some of the segments on gender from its website. Section 200 of the licensing rules states that “all foster parents are prohibited from engaging in any form of discrimination against a foster child based on race, religion, color, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, or disability.”
Section 201.10 calls for applicants and foster parents to show “respect for the worth of all individuals regardless of race, color, national origin, ancestry, culture, religion, sex, gender identity, sexual identity, and physical or mental ability.”
The licensing rules specifically order foster parents to “support children in wearing” any items affirming their racial, cultural, tribal, religious, or gender identity.
Both the Wuotis and the Gantts told The Daily Signal that they would have loved and cherished any children put in their care by the state. But the Department for Children and Families had asked them if they would be open to taking their foster children to pride parades or using preferred pronouns to refer to the children. The Wuotis and the Gantts both said no.
“We were surprised, because they are typically always trying to match children with families as best they can, and so we assumed maybe they would say, ‘Ok, maybe we won’t place an LGBT child with this family,’” said Brian Wuoti.
“We were offered to be reeducated and given the choice that they could either revoke our foster license or we could take some education materials, and they could give us up to a year to change our faith,” added Michael Gantt. “And I said, ‘No, we are not going to change our faith in the next year; absolutely not.’”
Kaitlyn Wuoti said that she herself had experienced gender dysphoria at a young age, saying that she “desperately wanted to be a boy.” Her father affirmed to her that she was, in fact, a girl, but encouraged her to be interested in tomboy pursuits like model cars.
“My parents loved me, let me like the things I liked, never lied to me about who I was, and never encouraged me to hate my own body,” she explained.
The Wuotis believe that background gives them special insight into helping a child struggling with gender dysphoria.
“They … genuinely think that this is the care of these children that are in need, so I understand, in a way, where they are coming from,” Brian Wuoti added. “But we also know, in the way that Katie had been loved and cared for by her parents, that there can be wonderful, flourishing outcomes for children even in a home that doesn’t agree with the state on these issues.”
Watch The Daily Signal’s interviews with the Wuoti and Gantt families here:
The post EXCLUSIVE: Vermont Blocked Christian Families From Fostering Over Gender Ideology, Lawsuit Alleges appeared first on The Daily Signal.
Dr. Anthony Fauci testified Monday before the House panel investigating the origins of COVID-19, defending pandemic-era restrictions and again sharply denying financial support for gain-of-function research with coronaviruses.
Fauci, the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, took questions under oath before the House Oversight and Accountability Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic.
Here are seven highlights of the panel’s hearing.
Fauci fielded questions from several lawmakers on National Institutes of Health grants to the EcoHealth Alliance, a New York-based organization that in turn funded research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in Wuhan, China. NIH includes the agency directed by Fauci for nearly 40 years, until his retirement at the end of 2022.
Last month, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced a suspension of funding to the EcoHealth Alliance.
COVID-19 first emerged in Wuhan. The FBI and other U.S. intelligence agencies reached a consensus that the virus that causes COVID-19 emerged from a lab leak there.
Before taking questions from the House panel, Fauci affirmed in his opening remarks that “according to the regulatory and operative definition, … the NIH did not fund gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.”
However, NIH Deputy Director Lawrence Tabak had told the House panel that under the generic definition of gain-of-function research, NIH indeed funded such research at the Wuhan lab.
Critics of Fauci have said the NIH used EcoHealth to fund gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which is suspected to have led to the initial spread of COVID-19.
The term “gain of function” describes a risky process of making a pathogen more dangerous or contagious for the purpose of studying a response.
During the hearing, Rep. Debbie Lesko, R-Ariz., asked: “Dr. Fauci, did the National Institutes of Health fund the potentially dangerous enhanced potential pandemic pathogens gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology?”
Fauci replied: “I would not categorize it the way you did.”
“The National Institutes of Health gave a sub-award to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, funded research on the surveillance on the possibility of emerging infections. I would not characterize it as dangerous gain-of-function research,” he explained.
Rep. Michael Cloud, R-Texas, pressed Fauci about accountability for COVID-19.
“Your name is on every single grant,” Cloud told Fauci. “Yet, you absolve yourself of every single responsibility by saying it goes to this committee that has a number of people on it and it’s approved in block. So, there is no accountability for anything, any of the taxpayer dollars that are going forth.”
Fauci objected.
“We fund thousands of grants,” Fauci said. “It would be physically impossible for me to go through every single grant in a detailed way to understand it.”
Cloud followed up by asking, “Why does your signature go on it?”
Fauci replied: “Because someone has to sign off on it and you trust the expertise and the competence of the staff that go over it.”
Fauci said some of his top staff, mainly Dr. David Morens, for years a senior adviser at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, violated NIH policy on public records.
Morens last month admitted to Congress that he used private email to dodge disclosure of public information about NIH grants to the EcoHealth Alliance, the organization that worked and helped fund the Wuhan lab.
House Oversight and Accountability Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., pressed Fauci on the issue of his longtime senior adviser.
“Did you ever delete an official record?
Fauci replied, “No.”
Comer asked, “Dr. Fauci, did you ever conduct official business via [personal] email?”
Fauci replied: “To the best of my recollection and knowledge, I have never conducted official business via my private email.”
Comer later said there was a “troubling pattern” among Fauci’s inner circle.
Fauci said, “Using a personal email for official business violates NIH policy.”
Comer asked: “On April 28, 2020, Dr. Morens edited an EcoHealth press release regarding the grant termination. Does that violate policy?”
Fauci replied: “That was inappropriate for him to be doing that for a grantee, as a conflict of interest among other things.”
Rep. Nicole Malliotakis, R-N.Y., pressed Fauci on whether he tried to suppress the lab leak theory, quoting him.
“You have said, ‘I’ve heard these conspiracy theories and like all conspiracy theories, they’re just conspiracy theories.’ That’s what you told the American people,” Malliotakis said. “So would you like to clarify what science were you following then versus now?”
Fauci said he didn’t mean everyone was a conspiracy theorist, before launching into a scenario comparing himself to a fictional movie character played by actor Matt Damon.
“I don’t think the concept of there being a lab leak is inherently a conspiracy theory,” Fauci said. “What is conspiracy is a kind of distortion of that particular subject, like it was a lab leak and I was parachuted into the CIA like Jason Bourne and told the CIA that they should really not be talking about a lab leak.”
Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, read aloud communications from Meta executives, including Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, noting that the Biden administration suppressed posts about a leak from a Chinese lab.
“Why was it so important that the virus not have started in a lab?” Jordan said.
Fauci replied: “It wasn’t so important that the virus not [have started in a lab]. We don’t know.”
Jordan followed up.
“Well, it was important to someone in the Biden administration. So much so that the top people at Meta, the top people at Facebook, are asking, ‘Why are we getting all this pressure to downplay the lab leak theory?’” the Ohio Republican said.
Fauci protested, “What does that got to do with me?”
“I’m asking you because you’re the expert on the coronavirus. Why was the administration so pushing not to have the lab leak theory?” Jordan asked.
Fauci replied, “I can’t answer that. I’ve kept an open mind.”
“Kept an open mind,” Jordan said, using a skeptical tone.
Speaking about COVID-19 vaccines, Fauci seemed to admit to Cloud, a Texas Republican, that they had limited capacity to stop the spread of the disease.
“It is very, very clear that [COVID-19] vaccines have saved hundreds of thousands of Americans,” Fauci said.
“Did the vaccines stop anyone from getting COVID?” Cloud asked.
“Early on, it became clear that—,” Fauci began.
Cloud interrupted: “They didn’t.”
“Actually no,” Fauci said. “In the beginning, it clearly prevented infection in a certain percentage of people but the durability of its ability to prevent infection was not long. It was measured in months.”
Cloud asked: “And it didn’t stop you from spreading [COVID-19], either?”
Faudi answered: “Early on, it prevented infection, but it became clear that it did not prevent transmission when the ability to prevent infection waned.”
Cloud listed COVID-19 mitigation efforts and asked whether Fauci would do anything differently if given another chance.
Fauci doubled down on his recommendations at the time.
“Business closures?” Cloud asked.
Fauci: “Early on, when 5,000 people were dying a day, yes.”
Cloud: “Church closures?”
Fauci: “Same thing.”
Through several questions, Cloud also asked about school closures, stay-at-home orders, and mask mandates for children and adults.
“These were important when we were trying to stop the tsunami of deaths that were occurring early on,” Fauci responded. “How long you kept them going is debatable.”
However, early in the hearing, subcommittee Chairman Brad Wenstrup, R-Ohio, listed the negative effects of many pandemic measures.
“Any dissent from your chosen position was immediately labeled as anti-science,” Wenstrup said. “Anything less than complete submission to the mandates could cost you your livelihood, your ability to go into public, your child’s ability to attend school.”
Wenstrup continued:
Families were thrown off planes and shamed when their 2-year-olds struggled to wear a mask. Children with disabilities lost access to therapies that they and their families depended on. Students were out of the classroom and told to attend school remotely even when the science clearly demonstrated it was safe for them to go back in the classroom.
This harmed low-income students the most. How were single-parent households supposed to teach their own children and work at the same time? Dr. Fauci, you oversaw one of the most invasive regimes of domestic policy the U.S. has ever seen, including mask mandates, school closures, coerced vaccinations, social distancing of 6 feet, and more.
Rep. Robert Garcia, D-Calif., gave Fauci an opening to defend his COVID-19 policies.
“Do you think the American public should listen to America’s brightest and best doctors and scientists, or instead listen to podcasters, conspiracy theorists, and unhinged Facebook memes?” Garcia asked the immunologist.
Fauci replied: “Listening to the people who you just described is going to do nothing but harm people because they will deprive themselves of lifesaving interventions, which has happened.”
Fauci said research has shown this to be the case.
“People that refuse to get vaccinated for any variety of reasons [were] probably responsible for an additional 200,000 to 300,000 deaths in this country,” Fauci said.
The post 7 Highlights as Fauci Testifies Under Oath on COVID-19 appeared first on The Daily Signal.
The United States of America, a few years short of its 250th birthday, is at war.
This is not a war with Russia or China. It is not an amorphous war on terror or a war on drugs. This is a war from within. It is an unconventional war. It is a systems-level attack on the foundations of this nation. It is an insidious, sophisticated attack built on decades of a sustained, strategic decay of our nation’s infrastructure: our legal system, our election system, our culture, our commonality, our civic intelligence, and our institutions.
This is not an insurrection, a series of race riots, or even a police riot at a protest over a stolen election.
It will be the last war in which the United States participates if it’s not won by Americans.
You are not living in the same country you were born in.
Right now, a president, who record numbers of Americans don’t think even won the last election—and for good reason—has ordered the legal, intelligence, and law enforcement services of this country to arrest and detain his chief political rival. It is the product of a sustained, nearly decade-long covert and overt operation using every tool at the government’s disposal and their command of the propaganda machine of the legacy media to destroy Donald J. Trump.
Joe Biden is not the head of this lynching, however. He is a senile patsy serving as a prop figurehead. Even on his best day, he could not have orchestrated and overseen this project. His very presence as the source of authority from which the domestic terrorists draw their appeal to legitimacy is proof positive of the enemy’s success in overtaking the apparatuses of governmental power. Joe Biden is merely the tragic comedy illustration of how much real power the enemy has taken. That he can be the puppet shows how little effort needs to be expended to fake legitimacy for this takedown operation.
As the enemy actually utilizes the power of the systems that it has corrupted, the professional organizational apparatus of the opposition party meekly and pathetically appeals to those same structures for its salvation. Such weak acts are playacting. The con is based on a fundamental miscalculation that the American people believe such acts constitute a legitimate effort to protect and save this country.
In no place is this more clear that in the halls of the United States Congress. Take, for example, the one institution in which the American people are alleged to have access to actual power right now: the House of Representatives. The 2022 midterm elections, once billed as an incoming “Red Wave,” were supposedly an opportunity for Americans to provide a check on the lawless occupation of the U.S. government.
Instead, the enemy was unfazed. They had fundamentally changed the structure of the U.S. government two short years before, in 2020, in a way that protected their power. The election system itself had been conquered with illegitimate changes to the very way in which people are meant to realize the promises of a constitutional republic.
The election system, much like the legal system, is no longer a neutral instrument. In 2020, there was a dramatic and hostile transformation of the election system from a voting system into a contest of one party’s political machinery and its ability to distribute and collect unaccountable mail-in ballots.
Only one side has a machine. The professional Right—the politicians and their consultants—fails to understand that the rules changes themselves were designed to ensure a permanent advantage to the Left. The best knockoff imitation of the Left’s illegal voting operation on the Right only gives legitimacy to this new government structure where ballots are collected instead of votes to select our leaders.
The professional Right was willfully clueless about this point on the night of the midterm elections. In fact, the vipers instead used it to support the Left and its attack on Trump.
I sat in my living room watching Fox News on the evening of the midterms and watched talking head after talking head attempt to spin the results as a referendum on the man who wasn’t even on the ballot. And just like that, the 2024 Republican Primary was off in full swing. The result was Trump-hating Republicans paying parasitic consultants and pollsters hundreds of millions of dollars to distract and detract resources and protection away from Trump.
The professional Right on Capitol Hill has been spectacularly useless in its ability to protect America from the damage being wrought by the Left. It has settled into a pretzeled rhetorical defense of Trump while leaving every resource on the table that could be used to protect this country, like withholding funding and releasing an avalanche of actually enforced subpoenas.
While the Jan. 6 committee proved the damage that such committees could cause, this recent Congress also has proved their uselessness. Take, for example, the House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government and its chairman, Jim Jordan, R-Ohio. That subcommittee was the pound of flesh extracted for Kevin McCarthy to become speaker of the House and was supposed to be a supercharged committee aimed at de-weaponizing the attacks on Trump and all Americans.
It has been none of that. As I write this, the subcommittee is on pace at the end of this Congress to return nearly two-thirds of the $15 million supplemental budget it was given. Members are literally “tipping” the Biden administration for election interference while pretending to be fighting it in their cable news appearances and their fundraising letters.
Part of the problem is that the elected Right is too busy fighting itself to fight the Left. The biggest fight comes from a class of elected politicians trying to resist the fundamental transformation of the conservative movement that Trump created. They are content to give lip service to “America First” appeals if it means that they can get back to the business of funding foreign wars and serving as lobbyists for special interests.
And House members are still fighting over who gets to be in charge of this mess. Any limitation that Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., has politically imposed on himself to gain the support of the furthest Left elements of the Republican caucus has also been accepted by Jordan, who is desirous of Johnson’s job. That kind of capitulation does not create the type of environment in which a hard-charging legal process and investigations can be conducted—elements that are critical to see any positive results out of the weaponization subcommittee.
Perhaps the only bright spot is the work of House Oversight and Accountability Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., and his staff. Unlike his counterparts, Comer’s team has meticulously proved the corruption of the Biden family with ample evidence, to include the literal receipts.
Legacy media and establishment politicians will never give him the credit he deserves. But the truth can be seen in the data. Since Comer got to work, poll after poll shows that a majority of Americans now accept that the Bidens engaged in corrupt activity.
So, what the hell do we do about all of this? We do everything at the same time—now.
Congress must immediately hire a congressional special counsel and equip that individual with all constitutional authority to do the job. In other words, the weaponization subcommittee should give its unused budget to someone else. This work includes a record-setting number of forced depositions and subpoenas backed by the enforcement authority of holding people in contempt of Congress. And no more requiring votes for every minor investigative change. Have one vote now and let the special counsel get to work. And nothing done by the special counsel gets referred to Biden’s Department of Justice. Instead, it is delivered to relevant state and local prosecutors for action.
On the election, we must first admit that the 2024 election has already been interfered with in a substantial and incurable way. The basic demographics of this country have been altered by an illegal invasion of illegal aliens organized by Biden. Simultaneously, every reasonable preventive mechanism to keep them from voting is forcefully opposed by the Regime. The basic fundamental structure of flooding the country with unaccountable mail-in-ballots exists.
The Right has made incremental and positive gains in some areas, only to be outdone by a matter of degrees because of the Left’s control of the basic election machinery. The country is flooded with propaganda from regime media, creating conspiracies to try to keep Trump off the campaign trail and out of office by subjecting him to a series of kangaroo court cases—and finally, a conviction. There is no chance of a free and fair election. That ship has sailed. The only question is if we will have a certifiable election.
What can happen is that Trump can win by a margin bigger than the other side’s capacity for cheating. Every step must be taken to mitigate the ability of the Left to illegitimately alter the election. This includes mass litigation, of course, but also immediate overt action by state and local officials to protect the integrity of their elections.
One area to immediately begin with is kneecapping Biden’s ongoing efforts to use the whole-of-federal-government approach he has created as his get-out-the-vote operation, where agencies that deal with members of the public who most likely lean Democratic are used to help them register to vote. States have the ability to kick this activity out of their jurisdictions.
Members of the general public need to demand the change they wish to see. There is a war happening right now, and only one side is fighting it. The other side maintains its limited hold on power by providing rhetorical mentions of Americans’ concerns but in every real sense, does nothing to fix them.
Politicians on both sides are able to survive in this political landscape by the entrenched power of party politics, obscene amounts of money in politics, and the support of the dying power of traditional media, who—in a search for content—is willing to provide pomp and circumstance to the doldrums of fundraising letter-sending and low-budget government hearings.
We don’t have to live this way. There is still time to turn the ship around. The real damage is made permanent if the Left is able to finalize its takeover of the election and judicial systems in a way that makes elections and prosecutions pro forma. That day could come very soon, but for now, it is not today, and there is still time to fight.
The post America Is Under Attack appeared first on The Daily Signal.
Ten years after its creation, The Daily Signal enters a new era Monday as its own independent organization.
Today, its dedicated team of reporters and editors serve an audience of millions of Americans who rely on The Daily Signal to produce high-quality news stories and publish insightful commentary and analysis.
The team consists of 12 full-time staff, two fellows, two interns, and many contributors. Learn more about them below and see other Daily Signal authors.
Senior News Producer and Podcast Host
After interning at The Heritage Foundation in the spring of 2018, Allen began her career as a communications department administrative assistant. After two years, she moved into a position with The Daily Signal in spring of 2020. Allen says she will never forget the experiences she has had reporting from the U.S. southern border. She deeply respects NewsNation reporter Ali Bradley for her bold and honest coverage of the southern border situation. Allen’s goal for The Daily Signal in 2024 is to increase podcast quality with even stronger coverage of the daily news and major policy issues facing the nation.
President and Executive Editor
As the founding editor-in-chief of The Daily Signal, Bluey always dreamed of building a news outlet at Heritage from the moment he started his job in 2007. Having previously covered Congress as a reporter, he saw an opportunity to marry Heritage’s policy expertise with rich storytelling. He models his own approach to journalism on the work of the now-deceased syndicated columnist Robert Novak. He has big hopes for The Daily Signal’s future by putting a stronger emphasis on video, pursuing investigative reporting, and expanding its Capitol Hill coverage and political commentary.
News Intern
Crozier was selected to be a summer 2024 intern at The Daily Signal. He continues to build his writing portfolio and learn from The Daily Signal’s talented, experienced staff as he advances his own budding journalism career. One of his biggest inspirations in conservative media is The Daily Signal’s Mary Margaret Olohan for her fearless reporting on important cultural issues. Crozier hopes to become a more productive writer and reporter through the internship.
Senior Editor and Writing Adviser
After working as the official writer for Heritage’s previous president, Gottstein became a writing adviser. In that role, he helps policy analysts to write more compelling op-eds geared toward educating policymakers and the general public. The role also includes editing for The Daily Signal and managing the other editors. Gottstein enjoys the entertaining and useful writings of John Stossel. This year, Gottstein wants to help grow The Daily Signal audience significantly because he thinks Americans often cannot get the unique news, commentary, policy analysis, and solutions to some of America’s biggest issues anywhere else.
News Producer
Kennedy recently moved to The Daily Signal from digital production at Heritage to help improve video content while furthering the outlet’s investigative ambitions. Previously, he oversaw the day-to-day production of digital content. Kennedy is proud of his work with colleagues Virginia Allen and Christian Lasval to report exclusively on illegal aliens driving unlicensed mopeds and motorcycles in Washington, D.C. His favorite memory on the job is traveling to Maui to cover Hawaii’s wildfires. Kennedy admires Dutch historian Frank Dikötter’s books that document the now-deceased Chinese communist dictator Mao Zedong’s reign of terror. This year, he wants to see The Daily Signal’s social channels reach No. 1 in Forbes’ annual social media ranking of free-market organizations.
Investigative Columnist
Since Heritage’s Lindsey Burke recruited Kinnett for investigative column writing in 2022, he has written The Daily Signal’s most-read article of 2023, “California Bill Would Charge Any Parent Who Doesn’t Affirm Transgenderism With ‘Child Abuse.’” It resulted in backlash so intense that California Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed the legislation. Flying to Maui to cover the wildfires with Tim Kennedy is Kinnett’s favorite memory at The Daily Signal. This year, he hopes to help create The Daily Signal’s first Instagram video with more than 5 million views or to syndicate his radio show to three stations. His top two media role models are Ben Shapiro and Chris Rufo.
Chief News Correspondent
Lucas is an accomplished journalist, veteran White House correspondent, and author with extensive experience in political reporting. As The Daily Signal’s chief news correspondent, he covers a wide range of topics and uses his investigative skills to uncover the truth. He has a keen ability to distill complex issues into clear, compelling stories. He is also the author of several books, including “The Myth of Voter Suppression: The Left’s Assault on Clean Elections” and “Tainted by Suspicion: The Secret Deals and Electoral Chaos of Disputed Presidential Elections.” Lucas previously reported from state capitals in Kentucky and Connecticut and is a graduate of Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism.
Digital Fellow
McCue was a Daily Signal intern during the summer 2023 session. She is proud of the breadth of topics she covered during her internship. One of McCue’s favorite memories at The Daily Signal was joining the staff at a Turning Point USA conference in Florida to promote the outlet. Emily Jashinsky, director of the National Journalism Center, is McCue’s journalism role model because she has made a name for herself by speaking boldly and unapologetically while still practicing thoughtful journalism. As the digital media fellow, McCue hopes to help make The Daily Signal a household name for conservative news.
Senior Editor
Along with Rob Bluey and Katrina Trinko, McIntyre helped found The Daily Signal in 2014. At the time, he was in his seventh year as an editor in Heritage’s communications department following a 30-year career as a reporter and editor at weekly and daily newspapers. McIntyre is proud of his work helping Daily Signal reporters and other contributors to capture the importance and consequences of public policy challenges and solutions in their news stories and commentaries. During his time with The Daily Signal, his favorite memory is when he helped interview, hire, and develop The Daily Signal’s first three full-time reporters.
Mooney came to work at The Daily Signal after reporting for the State Policy Network, a nonprofit organization, on how the IRS was targeting tea party activists during the Obama administration. The Daily Signal became the ideal platform for Mooney to expand on that coverage when a Virginia farmer, in a long-standing legal dispute with environmental activists, became caught up in the IRS controversy. Mooney admires the work Ken McIntyre and Peter Parisi do as editors on his articles. He aims to investigate new topics this year, such as election integrity, the border crisis, and cultural disputes involving radical public school curriculums.
Managing Editor
O’Neil came to The Daily Signal after working as a Fox News Digital editor and as a PJ Media editor. His passion for conservative journalism and the truth led O’Neil to write his book, “Making Hate Pay: The Corruption of the Southern Poverty Law Center.” O’Neil loves bringing his family to Capitol Hill events and connecting with people at The Daily Signal. In journalism, he most looks up to G.K. Chesterton. O’Neil hopes to increase The Daily Signal’s website traffic, get himself and his colleagues on TV more often, and help develop the original and exclusive reporting that drives conversation.
Senior Reporter
Olohan came to work at The Daily Signal after working at the Daily Caller News Foundation. Her most influential Daily Signal project to date was coverage of high school girls in Vermont who pushed back against a boy identifying as a girl who was using their locker room. One of Olohan’s favorite memories at The Daily Signal was going to the Big Board, a bar in Washington, D.C., to report on the stripping of its liquor license for refusal to enforce COVID-19 mask mandates. This year, she would like to identify the leaker of the Supreme Court draft opinion for Roe v. Wade. Olohan’s journalism role model is Mollie Hemingway, editor-in-chief of The Federalist.
Editor
Parisi joined The Daily Signal after responding to a posting on a journalism jobs board. He had previously worked at The Washington Times for 10 years with Ken McIntyre. Parisi enjoys sharing the benefit of his many years of writing and editing experience with interns, adding that getting thank-you notes from departing interns after each semester makes it all worthwhile. He relishes the challenge of compiling and editing policy analysts’ and reporters’ analyses of presidential State of the Union addresses and presidential candidates’ debates under intense deadline pressure. His journalistic role models include the now-deceased talk-radio host Rush Limbaugh and current talk-radio host Chris Plante. This year, Parisi hopes to write a column that makes the top 10 in that month’s tally of The Daily Signal’s most-read pieces.
News Intern
Pero is a summer 2024 Daily Signal intern. A rising senior at Hillsdale College, she is a staff member of the college’s newspaper, The Collegian. Having interned with The Daily Caller’s video production department in the summer of 2023, Pero is eager to develop her writing and reporting skills this summer. She looks up to the journalistic work of John J. Miller, director of the journalism program at Hillsdale. During her time at The Daily Signal, Pero hopes to become a sharper thinker and stronger writer, and one day to decide on a beat topic to specialize in.
Sleem has worked at The Daily Signal since graduating from Christopher Newport University in 2014. Her greatest accomplishment with the outlet has been taking on various roles and working with people who have helped her to sharpen her journalism skills. Sleem’s favorite memory at The Daily Signal is covering the 2016 election results with the team. Everyone worked together very quickly to get information out to the public. One of her favorite journalists is Virginia Allen, who she says is a natural at reporting and interviewing. Sleem hopes to help The Daily Signal team out in whatever way she can this year in order to keep people informed about what’s going on in Washington, D.C., and how it affects them.
Columnist
Stepman previously worked at Human Events and Breitbart News. He describes his book “The War on History: The Conspiracy to Rewrite America’s Past” as his top accomplishment. A memory that sticks out to Stepman is when he covered a socialist conference in Chicago that foreshadowed the Left’s embrace of transgenderism. As a columnist, he looks up to Victor Davis Hanson for combining clear, concise thought with factual depth and history. Stepman plans to have a second book in the works by the end of the year.
Editor-in-Chief
Trinko joined The Daily Signal in 2014 to help develop the strategy for a new news outlet focused on quality reporting of issues that interest conservatives. She is grateful to lead a team that has fearlessly reported on hot-button topics, such as detransitioners, Obamacare, the border, and more. Trinko fondly remembers fast-paced nights when the team worked on election coverage, brainstorming and reacting together in real time, pizza in hand, while working to provide the best journalism it could for The Daily Signal’s audience.
Reporting Fellow
Troutman joins The Daily Signal as a reporting fellow after interning at the media outlet in the spring of 2023. As an intern, she covered Tucker Carlson’s speech at Heritage’s 50th Anniversary Gala. The article blew up a few days after the announcement that Carlson was no longer with Fox News. Troutman’s journalism role model is Mary Margaret Olohan, because she admires Olohan’s bravery in covering controversial stories, her drive, and her constant ability to get amazing news scoops. With this being Troutman’s first full-time job in journalism, she hopes to write a lot and break many untold stories.
The post Meet The Daily Signal’s Team of Journalists appeared first on The Daily Signal.
For the past 18 years, Senate Republicans have had one leader: Mitch McConnell took the job in 2006 and has retained it ever since. But with his decision to step down from the post after November’s elections, there are three Republicans vying to replace him.
One of them is Sen. Rick Scott of Florida. He was first elected to the Senate in 2018 and ran against McConnell two years ago.
He’s now competing with Sens. John Cornyn of Texas and John Thune of South Dakota to win the support of his Senate Republican colleagues.
The Daily Signal invited all three senators to discuss their plans, and Scott was the first to accept our request. Listen to our interview on “The Daily Signal Podcast” or read a lightly edited transcript below.
Rob Bluey: Senator, why did you decide to enter the race for Republican leader?
Sen. Rick Scott: First off, we’ve got to have big change. Let’s think about just the citizens we represent. They’re fed up with a budget that’s not balanced. They’re fed up with an open border. They’re fed up with all this wasteful spending. They’re fed up, basically, with the federal government that’s out of control.
If you want change, you’re going to have to change your way the Senate is run. We need to go back to represent our states. We need to be fighting over issues. The bill shouldn’t be decided by McConnell and [Senate Majority Leader Chuck] Schumer. We should go through a committee process. There’s so many things we’ve got to do to get this country back where it needs to go.
We need to have a Republican leader that has a relationship with President [Donald] Trump. He’s going to win. He’s going to have an agenda. We got to do everything we can to help him get his agenda done.
Republican Senators Pledge to Block Democrat Agenda Following Trump Verdict
— The Daily Signal (@DailySignal) June 1, 2024
Via Rob Bluey:https://t.co/eW5hAc59Ld
Bluey: When you talk about those big changes, in some ways, it seems that you’re suggesting the Senate is broken right now and needs fixing. What are some of the ways that you would go about making sure those reforms are put into place?
Scott: No. 1, I don’t think a leader should have a term of more than six years. No. 2 is the bill shouldn’t be done by McConnell and Schumer. They should be done at the committee level where everybody has the opportunity to have input that are on those committees.
And then after that, we ought to have a robust amendment process on the Senate floor. So, if I would like an amendment that’s going to represent my state better, I ought to be able to do that.
If I can’t talk people into it, that’s my problem. If I don’t even have a chance because the bill never went through a committee or we never had any amendment votes, I have the opportunity to say yes or no. That’s not the way the Senate is supposed to represent work. I’m supposed to be able to represent my state and fight for the issues that are important to my state. That’s not how the Senate works right now.
Bluey: As you’ve observed Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s approach to running the Senate, what you see as some of his biggest or most glaring failures?
Scott: He wants to, and he does a lot of this with McConnell, but they want to write the bills. It’s not written out of a committee. It doesn’t come up through a committee.
There’s one or two people who have input and then if they put them on the Senate floor where you just have an up-or-down vote, you don’t even have a chance to improve it. We all have ways we could improve these bills and we don’t even have a shot at trying to improve the bills.
That’s not the way the Senate is supposed to work. I’m supposed to be able to fight like hell for my state. Every senator should have the opportunity to fight for their state, but if you don’t go through a committee, you have no input on the bill, and you don’t have any amendment votes, it’s pretty hard to represent your state.
Bluey: Some of the early chatter in Washington seems to revolve around a leader’s role in raising money for members of his party. I’m curious to know your thoughts on that and perhaps why that shouldn’t be the sole qualification for somebody to get the job as leader?
Scott: Any leader is going to be able to raise money. A lot of the money flows through PACs that the leader might be or is tied to. Anybody is going to be able to raise the money as long as you’re willing to do the job.
As you know, I’m from a big state, so for my governor’s race I had to raise a lot of money and my Senate race. But the real job of the Senate leader is to represent the conference. Our bylaws, Republican bylaws, require us to have a legislative agenda. We haven’t had a legislative agenda since I’ve been up here for five years.
We need to come together as a group and say, “What do we want to get done the next two years?” And then let’s say, “OK, so now this is what we want to get done. How do we get it done? What’s going to be our strategy? What do we have to do to get these things done?”
That’s what we ought to be doing every day. We shouldn’t be sitting there and be reactive to what Chuck Schumer does.
And then, if we can get the majority, which I’m very optimistic, then let’s lead. Let’s focus on how do we secure the border? How do we balance the budget? How do we improve our foreign policy and have a positive agenda to solve the problems that the American public has sent us all to D.C. to do?
Bluey: Conservatives were clamoring for that legislative agenda back in 2022 for the midterm elections. You offered one, Sen. McConnell rejected your idea, instead said he wanted to merely run against President [Joe] Biden. Looking back in retrospect, why was McConnell’s strategy a mistake?
Scott: He has the belief that you shouldn’t stand for anything. You should just talk about how bad the Democrats are. And the Democrats are bad, there’s no question about it.
But my experience as a business guy is I was able to attract talent to work with me on my management teams because I had an agenda to get done and they bought into the agenda. If they didn’t like my agenda, they wouldn’t come to work with me. The public wants a plan. The public wants a plan. I had a plan when I ran in 2010 to be governor to turn the economics of our state around, give people a job. When I came to D.C., I had a plan for how to make Washington work for you.
The public is clamoring for a plan. The public is clamoring for somebody that’s going to fight like hell to defeat the policies and the ideology of the radical Left, which we all know is destroying this country. That’s what the public wants. That’s what we all talk about when we run. While we ought to do it when we’re here.
Bluey: You’ve mentioned your role as a successful businessman. You have served as Florida’s governor. You have also worn the hat of being chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee. In all three of those roles that you’ve had, what is your leadership style? What can people expect from you as somebody who is aspiring for this job?
Scott: First off, I’m very goal-oriented. I want to accomplish something. I became the governor, I built businesses because I wanted to accomplish something. I ran to the Senate because I wanted to accomplish something.
I’ve been very clear with my Senate role, we’ve got to change the way Washington works. It’s not working the American public right now. What they’re going to see is somebody that’s very focused on getting a result. That’s No. 1.
No. 2, if you look at my business career, my government career, this is a team event. You’ve got to bring people together to find a common goal to get anything done. And it’s not going to be just your ideas. You have to have a consensus. And so, you’ve got to figure out what it is and then you have to work and have a strategy to accomplish it.
If you look at any successful business, if you look at successful governors, that’s what they do. They have a plan and they work their plan. They surround themselves with people that believe in what they’re trying to accomplish.
That’s what they’ll see. If I can become the Republican leader, hopefully the majority leader, you’ll have a Republican conference that is very results-oriented and the goals will be very clear.
We will solve the problems that the country believes are the most important problems today. Those are securing the border, making sure that we get inflation under control, balancing the budget, making sure we fix our foreign policies so we don’t have wars going all around the world.
Bluey: On that specific note, what are some steps that you would like to take to empower those individual Republican senators to have a greater role in the legislative process?
Scott: The biggest thing is ask for their opinion, ask for their advice to get them in the middle of everything.
We have very talented Republican senators. And we are to say, “OK, with your background, would you like to be involved in this?” And you get people in the middle of it, of the issues.
And guess what? You bring out new ideas, you bring out new energy, and you get a lot of things done. But the biggest thing is, you get people in the middle of the problem. Republican senators, they want to solve problems, so let them do it, get them in the middle of it.
Bluey: What is your vision for reducing this reliance that it seems that Washington has year after year for omnibus spending bills and emergency supplementals?
Scott: Not having a budget to me is foolish. It’s not fair to the American public. Not having a budget is just basically having spending bills. What that means is we’re going to have more inflation.
That’s wrong. We should do everything we can to help all of our families by getting inflation under control. You cannot do it with a balanced budget, so we now have almost $35 trillion worth the debt. We have interest expense that exceeds our national defense budget. We have a Federal Reserve whose balance sheet is out of control.
What’s going to happen is, in that environment, interest rates can’t come down. That means that if you think you’re going to get a lower interest rate for a house, you’re foolish. Your credit card rate, interest rates are not going to come down. On top of that, we’re not going to see a reduction in gas prices and food prices and these things. So, spending matters.
I’ve always, my business life, I balanced the budget. The governor’s job, we balanced the budget every year. We actually paid off a third of the state debt in my years as governor. We can do this at the federal level.
The way you do it, is you say, this is my anticipated federal revenue, so that’s how much money we’re going to spend. You can do it, but if you just always say to yourself, “I don’t think I can get that done,” that’s going to be reality, you will not get it done.
Bluey: Will there be any backroom deals with a Leader Rick Scott in charge of things?
Scott: No, no. We all are part of this. You need to be transparent, you need to tell everybody what’s happening. If you want people to support what you’re doing, you don’t do it behind closed doors. You do it by talking to people, by getting their information, by getting them involved in what you’re trying to accomplish.
Bluey: You challenged Mitch McConnell for this job in 2022. What lessons did you learn from that race that you hope to apply this time?
Scott: Unfortunately, in that race, they rushed the vote to the next day, so we didn’t have time to actually go and sit down with everybody.
What I’m hoping to do is sit down with every Republican senator and say, “What do you want to accomplish?” And then my role will be if I can win is to say, “How do I help you accomplish your goals? How do I help you represent your state?”
The Republican leader’s responsibility is to help each senator be successful. A successful senator is somebody that is successfully representing their individual state.
Bluey: Sen. McConnell has served 18 years as leader. You would like to have a six-year term limit for this position. Why is that change important to you?
Scott: I’ve always believed in term limits because, No. 1, nobody consolidates power for a long time that way. No 2 is everybody realizes that you only have six years to get what you want to accomplish, so everybody gets more results-focused.
We have term limits for the governor, we have term limits for our legislature, and what that means is you’re going to get new leadership with new energy every few years, you’re going to have people very focused on what they can get done in their time in leadership or their time in office.
Bluey: Two of your colleagues, Sens. John Thune and John Cornyn, are also in the mix for Republican leader. What distinguishes you from each of them?
Scott: First off, they work hard to represent their state. Probably the difference to what I bring to the table is my business background. I built the largest hospital company; I built a variety of manufacturing companies. I’ve been involved in a variety of businesses. My first business was a donut shop when I was 22 and I got out of the Navy, so my mom could have a job. I had the opportunity to serve in the military. I had the opportunity to be the governor.
Those are the types of things I bring to the table, but the biggest thing is, and I tell people, I’m a turnaround guy. If you think the country’s headed in the right direction and you don’t think there has to be dramatic change, no one should vote for me. I believe the country’s in trouble. I believe there’s so many people in the American public who are struggling. The only way we’re going to make their lives better is if we have dramatic change. And that’s what I bring to the table.
Bluey: Have you seen examples of your entry into the race or even just the chatter about you potentially entering the race before you formally did that has moved either of them in your direction when it comes to some of the reforms that maybe Mitch McConnell has not necessarily endorsed in the past?
Scott: One thing everyone has started talking about is term limits. Most people who are elected don’t really believe in term limits, but the average person believes in it. I know the public believes in it. Now we’re having a real conversation about. Should there be a six-year term?
We have a six-year term for every other leadership position in the Republican Senate. We ought to have one for the leader. There’s no reason it should be different. I think that’s No. 1.
No. 2, we’re starting to have conversation about it. How should we be managed? Because the leader’s role is not to be a dictator. The leader’s role is to be a leader of a group of individuals that get to represent their individual states.
Bluey: I recently had the opportunity to talk to Sen. Roger Marshall about the Republican-wide discussion that took place. It seems that those types of events may occur more frequently in the future, should this play out the way you hope.
Scott: I believe in it. I believe we ought to have real conversations and then have real discussions and let everybody bring their ideas to the table without any negative ramifications.
I don’t get why I was kicked off and [Sen.] Mike Lee was kicked off the Commerce Committee just because I ran against McConnell. It doesn’t make any sense to me. I think I’ve run the biggest company of any person ever in the history of the Senate that’s served. And then Mike and I got kicked off because Mike nominated me to be the Republican leader. That stuff is wrong.
>>> Sen. Roger Marshall Prescribes Solutions for Congress’ Budget Woes
We ought to say, “Hey, Rick, you bring this to the table. Mike, you bring this to the table.” Whoever it is, “This is what you bring to the table. You ought to be really active in those ideas. And let’s fight over who’s got the best idea and then let’s come together with the goal that we get a result.”
I know that we have to secure the border. I know that we have to get inflation under control. These are things that are so simple to me that the public needs and deserves.
Bluey: Those, of course, are big priorities of former President Donald Trump as well. You sound confident that he’s going to be victorious in November. Why are you the one who’s best positioned to not only advance his agenda, but also those critical votes on the nominees he puts forward to serve in his administration.
Scott: I knew President Trump before either of us ran for office. I’ve known him for a long time. I believe in what he’s trying to accomplish. He’s in the same position I am, that we have to have a dramatic change. We can’t nibble at the edges. There has to be a significant change in how our federal government is run. The public realizes that, that’s why he’s going to win.
What he’s going to need is a partner in the Senate who wants that to happen and help to make sure that’s exactly what happens in the Senate, not just in the White House.
Bluey: And finally, what kind of reaction have you received either from your constituents in Florida or some of your colleagues in the Republican conference since making the announcement?
Scott: I’ve had a lot of positive feedback. No. 1, my colleagues that want to sit down and talk about where we go, so that’s a positive. No. 2, in the state of Florida, people are excited that there’s a possibility of a Republican leader and hopefully the majority of their leaders are coming from our state.
The post Battle for Senate GOP Leader: Rick Scott Aims to Shake Up Status Quo appeared first on The Daily Signal.
Democrats might control the Senate, but they’ll have a hard time getting things done if 10 of their Republican counterparts have anything to say about it.
Following a New York jury’s guilty verdict against former President Donald Trump—and President Joe Biden’s subsequent cheerleading of the decision—10 Republican senators vowed to oppose Democrats’ legislative priorities and nominations.
“The White House has made a mockery of the rule of law and fundamentally altered our politics in un-American ways. As a Senate Republican conference, we are unwilling to aid and abet this White House in its project to tear this country apart,” the Republican senators said in a statement released Friday.
It currently has 10 signatories:
Notably missing from the list is Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., whose milquetoast response Thursday—about four hours after the jury’s decision—drew scorn from conservatives.
These charges never should have been brought in the first place. I expect the conviction to be overturned on appeal.
— Leader McConnell (@LeaderMcConnell) May 31, 2024
The statement signed by the 10 Republicans outlines three areas where they plan to stymie Democrats:
Democrats currently control 48 seats with three independent senators who caucus with them. Their narrow majority gives Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., little room to navigate, particularly on matters requiring a 60-vote threshold.
Now, with 10 Republican senators promising to make things even more difficult for Schumer, Democrats face the prospect of a Senate stuck in a stalemate.
Lee spearheaded the effort and wants to recruit more senators to the cause.
I hope to have every Republican senator sign this.
— Mike Lee (@BasedMikeLee) May 31, 2024
This is a call for Senate Republican Conference unity.
Now is a time for choosing.
Will we let the Republic fall or are we going to do something about it? https://t.co/QcYQwsYv4E
“We are no longer cooperating with any Democrat legislative priorities or nominations, and we invite all concerned Senators to join our stand,” Lee wrote on X.
Scott, who is running to for GOP leader in the next Congress, endorsed the effort Friday.
“Our country is in real trouble,” Scott said. “Republicans must stand together and end this madness.”
PRIMETIME EXCLUSIVE: @SenRickScott is vowing legislative retaliation against the Democrats who supported Trump’s prosecution. pic.twitter.com/s95CJXmE8u
— Jesse Watters (@JesseBWatters) June 1, 2024
Marshall put the blame on Biden’s “partisan hack judges,” accusing them of weaponizing the judicial system against the president’s political opponent.
The jury found Trump guilty Thursday on all 34 charges of falsifying business records to hide “hush money” payments in 2016 to former pornographic movie actress Stormy Daniels.
Upon leaving the courthouse, Trump called the trial a disgrace and said, “This was a rigged trial by a conflicted judge who is corrupt.” He continued: “The real verdict is going to be Nov. 5 by the people.”
His sentencing hearing will take place July 11, just days before the Republican National Convention convenes in Milwaukee.
Business as usual is no longer an option—Biden and his leftist regime have, by their actions, decreed it’s no longer “politics as usual.”
— Kevin Roberts (@KevinRobertsTX) May 31, 2024
They’re trying to steal the election—which is why they are already weaponizing the full power of the federal government against President… https://t.co/9Vi62Esreg
“The White House’s weaponization of our government to target President Trump for political gain represents the pinnacle of two tiers of justice,” Blackburn wrote on X. “We cannot allow this grave injustice to prevail in the United States of America.
Tuberville, who last year delayed the promotions of military officers over a dispute with the Biden administration, signaled he was once again willing to engage in a similar tactic.
Just one of those military officers remains in limbo today: Air Force Col. Ben Jonsson, whose controversial statements endorsing critical race theory in 2020 prompted an outcry. Schmitt is blocking his promotion to brigadier general.
“Democrats have destroyed the integrity of our justice system, and made a mockery of the Constitution—all in the name of maintaining political power,” Schmitt wrote on X. “My colleagues and I aren’t going to go along with the status quo. Enough is enough.”
The post How Republicans Plan to Stymie Democrats After Controversial Trump Verdict appeared first on The Daily Signal.
Shortly after 5 p.m. Thursday, a New York jury brought the country to an unprecedented brink by finding Donald Trump guilty of financial fraud, making the former president a convicted felon for now (unless or until the conviction is overturned on appeal) and making the upcoming election a referendum, he now hopes, not just on his record against Joe Biden’s but the entire political system.
Republicans call it a miscarriage of justice; for Democrats, it’s proof that no one is above the law.
History will remember it as a new chapter: Donald J. Trump is the first former president to be convicted of a crime.
“We didn’t do anything wrong. I am a very innocent man,” Trump told reporters after the verdict, dressed in his trademark blue suit and too-long tie at Manhattan Criminal Court in New York.
Then a familiar script as the former president embraced martyrdom, arguing that his conviction was part of a larger war for the soul of a nation.
“I’m fighting for our country. I’m fighting for our Constitution,” he said. “Our whole country is being rigged right now.”
Trump was found guilty on all 34 counts of falsifying business records in a case stemming from “hush money” payments to porn star Stormy Daniels in the waning days of the 2016 presidential campaign. Each count carries a maximum prison term of four years.
Sentencing is scheduled for July 11, just four days before Trump is slated to accept the Republican presidential nomination for a third consecutive time.
Although questions abound about the fate of the former president and the nation, there is little to no chance Trump will end up behind bars before the end of the year. He is expected to remain free on bail pending appeal, a process that is not likely to be exhausted until well after Election Day.
The case now shifts to the appellate courts—as well as the proverbial court of public opinion.
Democrats have been desperate to cast the election as a rematch of Biden v. Trump with an emphasis on character, not a judgment on President Joe Biden’s first term in office. They may have gotten what they wanted.
“Donald Trump is a racist, a homophobe, a grifter, and a threat to this country,” said Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker. “He can now add one more title to his list—a felon.”
Sources close to the former president prefer a different description.
A senior Trump campaign official predicted weeks before the decision that a conviction would “make him the Nelson Mandela of America,” comparing Biden to Russian President Vladimir Putin for his imprisonment of political rival and late dissident Alexei Navalny.
The framework suits Trump, who blasted out an email fundraiser shortly after his conviction calling himself “a political prisoner,” arguing both that “justice is dead in America” and “our country has fallen.”
This kind of rhetoric, complete with comparisons of the U.S. to the Third World, is likely to accelerate in the weeks and months ahead. Both major presidential campaigns now argue that the other could end democracy.
“These people would do anything and everything to hold onto political power. They don’t care if they destroy our country in the process,” said the former president’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr.
Martyrdom has been a central theme of Trump’s return to politics. After his indictment in New York last year, the GOP nomination was practically a fait accompli and his campaign nearly told RealClearPolitics as much at the time. It is unclear whether that phenomenon will translate to a general election.
Court has not crippled Trump so far, however, and Biden has not surpassed his rival a single time this year in the RealClearPolitics Average of polls. Well aware of those numbers, the Biden campaign attempted to tamp down jubilation on the left over the bad legal news consuming the right. They warned that Trump still could win.
“There is still only one way to keep Donald Trump out of the Oval Office: at the ballot box,” said Biden-Harris communications director Michael Tyler.
Ian Sams, spokesman for the White House counsel’s office reacted to the news by saying only, “We respect the rule of law, and have no additional comment.” By remaining silent, however, he ceded the spotlight to Trump, allowing his rival to shape the first 24 hours of the narrative.
[Biden didn’t comment until early Friday afternoon, when he noted before turning to the Israel-Hamas war that, “just like everyone else,” Trump will have an opportunity to appeal the verdict. The president added: “That’s how the American system of justice works. And it’s reckless, it’s dangerous, and it’s irresponsible for anyone to say this was rigged just because they don’t like the verdict.”]
Nothing bars Trump from running for president as a felon. It is unclear, however, if he will be able to cast a vote for himself while his case goes through the appeal process.
A more immediate consequence of the trial ending: Trump’s schedule just opened up, and Trump can return to the campaign trail in earnest.
Sources in regular contact with the former president report that the prospect of prison has not cast a shadow over Trump personally. One told RealClearPolitics that Trump “sincerely believes” that divine providence now guides his steps and “that he has been chosen for a time such as this.”
Trump has six months to convince the country to return him to the White House, and in the most extreme circumstance, to preserve his freedom. Republicans were as bullish over those odds as they were angry.
“Today’s verdict from this partisan, corrupt, and rigged trial just guaranteed Trump’s landslide victory on Nov. 5, 2024,” Mike Davis, founder and president of the pro-Trump Article III Project, told RealClearPolitics.
Former Rep. Peter Meijer, a Michigan Republican who voted to impeach Trump, echoed that sentiment, warning that a conviction would backfire on Democrats. “The chain reaction will cause infinitely more damage than whatever they think they are preventing,” he told RCP.
The conviction created a tidal wave of donations as Trump began fundraising almost immediately after leaving court. The Trump campaign buckled briefly at the surge. The fundraising website, WinRed, temporarily crashed under the strain of heavy traffic.
“I’ll lose friends for this,” wrote Shaun Maguire in a lengthy post on X announcing his $300,000 donation to Trump. A partner at Sequoia Capital and a former Democratic donor, Maguire said that “lawfare” in part inspired his donation:
“Fairness is one of my guiding principles in life,” he said, “and simply, these cases haven’t been fair for Trump.”
Following the conviction, there was a discernable shift on the right among conservatives who normally argue that the judicial system ought to remain apolitical. Some Trump allies described the guilty verdict as “the Rubicon.”
Asked about the new Republican appetite to use the courts to go after political opponents, Trump senior adviser Stephen Miller told RCP that “the good guys must be as tough as the villains or freedom is doomed.”
The field of potential vice presidential candidates snapped to attention in their immediate condemnation of the conviction.
Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., said the verdict was “a complete travesty that makes a mockery of our system of justice.” Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, called it “election interference.” Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., said it was an “absolute injustice” that “erodes our justice system.”
“From the start, the weaponized scales of justice were stacked against President Trump. Joe Biden, far left Democrats, and their stenographers in the mainstream media have made it clear they will stop at nothing to prevent President Trump from returning to the White House,” said Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., in a lengthy statement to reporters.
“This lawfare should scare every American,” said a more succinct North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, a Republican. “The American people will have their say in November.”
The safest thing for any Republican elected official anywhere Thursday night was to attack the judicial system. Defending that institution, meanwhile, was verboten.
Former Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, a frequent Trump critic now running for Senate, appeared to miss the memo when he shared a statement calling for GOP leaders to “reaffirm what has made this nation great: the rule of law.”
Replied Chris LaCivita, a senior Trump adviser dispatched to oversee the Republican National Conventio: “You just ended your campaign.”
The most common sentiment among Trump’s close circle of advisers and friends was that something had changed permanently, not in the former president personally but in the country.
“Today marks a turning point,” said Brooke Rollins, who led Trump’s Domestic Policy Council before launching the America First Policy Institute, a nonprofit think tank often described as a Trump White House in waiting. “I see it as a fire that has been lit. I see the sleeping giant of the American people awakened.”
On the second day of jury deliberations, Trump had kept up appearances with a smile. A verdict was not expected Thursday, and by the afternoon, Judge Juan Merchan was preparing to dismiss the jury for the day.
The foreman replied instead that the jury had reached a verdict. He read each of the 34 charges and followed by a one-word pronouncement: “guilty.”
A smile turned to a grimace, and Trump, surrounded by his defense team, stared forward stone-faced as he listened to the verdict and American history. He vowed in brief remarks to reporters afterward that he would “fight till the end and we’ll win because our country’s gone to hell.”
It was like so many of the pronouncements he has made after so many of the other controversies that have defined his political life. It was also different. A loss, if the conviction stands, could mean prison.
Rollins predicted that Trump would persevere, as he has before.
“From my perspective,” she said, “it is almost biblical to see this sort of courage and leadership and unwillingness to back down even in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds.”
The post Trump Vows to Fight On Despite Conviction appeared first on The Daily Signal.
Former President Donald Trump’s campaign donation page crashed Thursday within minutes of the jury returning a guilty verdict.
Shortly after the verdict, the page displayed a 500 error stating “something went wrong.” Trump also received massive influxes of cash from major donors after the verdict, including $300,000 from Sequoia Capital partner Shaun Maguire.
“The timing isn’t a coincidence,” Maguire wrote on X. In the past, Sequoia Capital employees have donated to both the Democratic National Committee and Republican National Committee, as well as the anti-Trump group The Lincoln Project, according to Open Secrets.
Trump’s campaign wrote on X that “the American people see through Crooked Joe Biden’s rigged show trial.”
“So many Americans were moved to donate to President Trump’s campaign that the WinRed pages went down,” the campaign said.
I just donated $300k to President Trump
— Shaun Maguire (@shaunmmaguire) May 30, 2024
The timing isn't a coincidence https://t.co/LDU4nJ8FBx
The jury convicted Trump on all 34 counts of falsifying business records charged in the indictment brought by Democratic District Attorney Alvin Bragg. Trump is set to be sentenced on July 11.
WEBSITE IS BACK ONLINE!https://t.co/KojPKxsxaD https://t.co/LylEZV7zJb
— Team Trump (Text TRUMP to 88022) (@TeamTrump) May 30, 2024
New York gubernatorial candidate Lee Zeldin also wrote on X after the verdict that he just “secured a $800k donation from someone for President Trump’s Joint Fundraising Committee.”
“Never experienced a massive ask that easy,” he wrote.
The Trump campaign and WinRed did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Originally published by the Daily Caller News Foundation.
The post Trump Campaign Gets Immediate Avalanche of Cash After Guilty Verdict appeared first on The Daily Signal.
A Manhattan jury found former President Donald Trump guilty Thursday on all 34 charges of falsifying business records to hide “hush money” payments in 2016 to former pornographic movie actress Stormy Daniels.
Upon leaving the courthouse, Trump called the trial a disgrace and said, “This was a rigged trial by a conflicted judge who is corrupt.” He continued: “The real verdict is going to be Nov. 5 by the people.”
Trump faces up to four years in prison.
BREAKING: Donald Trump says the "real verdict" will be decided on election day November 5th, 2024, calls out George Soros after being found guilty.
— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) May 30, 2024
"It's okay, I'm fighting for our country… I'm fighting for our constitution."
Trump also called out President Biden, saying the… pic.twitter.com/3QibqBSCrt
Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts issued a statement on the conviction:
This verdict is a travesty to our republic. This was a bogus prosecution engineered by President Biden and his weaponized DOJ that has made the New York justice system look like that of a third-world country where government officials engage in partisan prosecutions against their political opponents.
(Read the rest of Roberts’ statement here.)
The Heritage Foundation launched The Daily Signal in 2014.
The Biden campaign put out a statement saying that “no one is above the law.”
Biden-Harris Campaign Statement on Today’s Verdict pic.twitter.com/TEmdNsPmzP
— Biden-Harris HQ (@BidenHQ) May 30, 2024
Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, said in a statement that the verdict represents a “dark day” in America:
This is a dark day for America. This entire trial has been a sham, and it is nothing more than political persecution. The only reason they prosecuted Donald Trump is because Democrats are terrified that he will win reelection. This disgraceful decision is legally baseless and should be overturned promptly on appeal. Any judge with a modicum of integrity would recognize that this entire trial has been utterly fraudulent.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, said in a statement on X that a guilty verdict never would have been reached if Trump wasn’t the person being charged.
Today’s verdict represents the culmination of a legal process that has been bent to the political will of the actors involved: a leftist prosecutor, a partisan judge and a jury reflective of one of the most liberal enclaves in America—all in an effort to “get” Donald Trump.
— Ron DeSantis (@GovRonDeSantis) May 30, 2024
That…
MoveOn.org, a liberal advocacy organization, called the verdict a “small degree of justice” in a statement:
Today, a jury concluded that Donald Trump broke the law. This verdict represents a small degree of justice against Trump and his enablers and now millions of MoveOn members will keep up their work to guarantee he loses at the ballot box, too.
Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., the No. 4 Republican in the House, said the verdict demonstrates that the nation’s legal system under President Joe Biden is “rigged.”
My statement on the rigged verdict in the New York City Biden Trial against President Trump:
— Elise Stefanik (@EliseStefanik) May 30, 2024
“Today’s verdict shows how corrupt, rigged, and unAmerican the weaponized justice system has become under Joe Biden and Democrats. I fully support President Trump appealing this decision…
Before beginning to deliberate on a verdict Wednesday, the 12-member jury received unusual instructions in Manhattan Criminal Court from Judge Juan Merchan, as Fox News’ John Roberts reported on X.
Judge Merchan just told the jury that they do not need unanimity to convict. 4 could agree on one crime, 4 on a different one, and the other 4 on another. He said he would treat 4-4-4 as a unanimous verdict.
— John Roberts (@johnrobertsFox) May 29, 2024
The former president spoke to reporters and onlookers Tuesday outside the court before closing arguments in his trial.
Tiffany Trump makes her first appearance at the sham Trump trial.
— Citizen Free Press (@CitizenFreePres) May 28, 2024
Don Jr, Eric, Lara, Michael Boulos (Tiffany's husband), Steve Witkoff, Will Scharf, and Deroy Murdock are also in attendance.pic.twitter.com/mrn6aDNThV
Also before those closing arguments, actor and liberal activist Robert De Niro showed up at the courthouse to denounce Trump and his supporters and express his own support for Biden.
The Democrats parade a washed up actor, Robert De Niro, outside of Trump's trial, a man who has spewed vile, pejorative-filled poison at Trump multiple times, and now he's upset Trump supporters are shouting at him in protest?!
— Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) May 28, 2024
De Niro is a unhinged, entitled maniac. pic.twitter.com/Ar9A0f60dS
Inside the courtroom during closing arguments, Trump’s lawyer argued that the prosecution had failed to come up with any evidence that Trump committed a crime.
“President Trump is innocent,” defense attorney Todd Blanche said. “He did not commit any crimes, and the district attorney has not met their burden of proof, period.”
Blanche was referring to Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, an elected Democrat.
Trump’s attorney also pointed to the prosecution’s star witness, former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, as an unreliable witness with a history of lying.
“You cannot send someone to prison based on the words of Michael Cohen,” Blanche told the jury.
Merchan, the judge, reprimanded Blanche for this remark, calling it “outrageous” and “highly inappropriate.”
The prosecutor, Joshua Steinglass, rested his case by arguing that Trump’s defense was built on deception.
“The name of the game was concealment and all roads lead to the man who benefited most, the defendant, Donald Trump,” Steinglass said.
This is a breaking news story and will be updated.
The post Political World Erupts After Jury Declares Trump Guilty on All 34 Counts appeared first on The Daily Signal.
“You can’t lead America with ancient ideas.”
That was the claim—shouted, not spoken—by the president of the United States in what was considered by many to be the most divisive State of the Union address ever given before a joint session of Congress.
President Joe Biden’s March 7 lecture seemed to punctuate what has become a brutally disheartening term in office, with liberals demanding Americans throw aside traditional values and institutions for a “liberating” future of hedonistic affirmation in the pursuit of an ambiguous “equity.”
This bastardized system of values—promoted by the Left to usurp the traditional American institutions of faith, family, and community—are now in the sights of Florida’s senior senator.
“Faith, family, community—teach us who we are and what we’re here for,” Sen. Marco Rubio, R.-Fla., calls out in a new video, juxtaposing some of the most stark contrasts ever seen between the American Left and Right. Older video clips of Americans from every background singing, marching, and praying are contrasted with those of more recent LGBTQ+ parades, pro-abortion rallies, and news coverage of violent pro-Hamas protests.
Unlike many political videos delivered amid the presidential election season that we observe every four years, making bland statements about the economy and the border, Rubio appears to be throwing a spotlight from his office on the stark divide between the two opposing political movements and ideological foundations beckoning to an exhausted and weary country battered by calls to abandon “ancient ideas.”
These classic institutions “are the ones who teach us who we are and what we’re here for,” Rubio intoned, “but ties like these pose a threat to the Left, which insists that relationships exist only to affirm fleeting feelings and identities.”
That charge isn’t without warrant, as public school officials and liberal activists around the country have spent the past several years and millions of dollars attempting to separate children from their parents, encouraging children to confide in those outside their “unsupportive” families.
Rubio asserted that “the Left claims the only idea worth believing is its changing definition of ‘equity.’” That contrasts sharply with an image of Vice President Kamala Harris, who in a January 2023 speech created her own definitions for the words “equality” and “equity,” drawing wide criticism.
Equality is when the teacher gives every student the same test
— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) January 20, 2023
Equity is when the teacher gives every student the same mark
Here’s our VP explaining that: pic.twitter.com/GC0xe7pK08
“Faith in woke ideology cannot replace faith in the Almighty God,” Rubio said. “Government programs and bureaucrats cannot stand in for family, and political echo chambers on social media are no match for real community.”
Rubio’s assertion is not only correct, it’s a timely message Americans have shown they are drawn to. Favorability toward the Biden administration has plummeted sharply as a country that was told it was going to experience “unity” and “a return to normal” received instead crisis and devastation in the economy, at the border, and on the world stage.
If other conservatives continue pushing messages like those in Rubio’s video, this could be a turning point for American society. A return to celebrating faith, family, and community as essential to the success of the United States would provide a far better foundation for growth as the Left’s fearmongering and guilt trips over these institutions no longer appear to hold voters in their sway.
The post EXCLUSIVE: Sen. Rubio’s Killer Video Blow to the Left’s Depressive Values appeared first on The Daily Signal.
President Joe Biden makes no speech without mentioning the importance of democracy in our nation.
We would like to believe this comes from deep ideals about human liberty lodged within our president.
But more accurate is that Biden, a politician all his adult life, is defined by just that—politics. No word, no act emanates from our president that does not emerge from some political calculation.
In the case of the ongoing reminders about the importance of democracy, the subliminal message Biden wishes to convey is to always remind us of the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol and to brand Donald Trump as an anti-democratic autocrat.
But let’s go beyond this and examine Biden’s premise about democracy itself.
In Biden’s latest speech, on Memorial Day, he said, “Our democracy is more than just a system of government. It is the very soul of America.”
Hanging on a wall in my offices in Washington, D.C., is a picture of Booker T. Washington, with his quote saying, “A lie doesn’t become truth, wrong doesn’t become right, and evil doesn’t become good just because it is accepted by the majority.”
An important reminder from Booker T. Washington, founder of Tuskegee University, is that there is good and evil in this world, and they are transmitted to us through the Bible and our faith.
Democracy can only be the means through which a nation accepts or does not accept these eternal truths. But democracy does not invent them.
We should recall, again, the words of President George Washington in his farewell speech in 1796.
“Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. … Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.”
In the 1850s, Sen. Stephen Douglas of Illinois proposed to use democracy to solve the problem of whether slavery would be permitted in new states entering the union.
The Kansas-Nebraska Act provided that new states would determine by the vote whether it would be a slave state.
Abraham Lincoln rejected this proposition.
Per Lincoln, “Judge Douglas interrupted me to say that the principle of the Nebraska bill was very old, that it originated when God made man and placed good and evil before him, allowing him to choose for himself, being responsible for the choice he should make.”
“The facts of this proposition are not true as stated,” said Lincoln. “God did not place good and evil before man, telling him to make his choice. On the contrary, he did tell him that there was one tree, of the fruit of which he should not eat, upon pain of certain death.”
What really interests Biden is growing government to advance his left-wing agenda, thereby diminishing individual freedom.
In 1950, shortly after World War II, federal government spending accounted for 14.1% of gross domestic product.
Per the Congressional Budget Office, in 2024, federal government spending will consume 23.1% of GDP; in 2034, 24.1%; in 2044, 25.7%; and in 2054, 27.3%.
Social Security trustees now project bankruptcy of the system by 2033. Revenues will fall short by 21%. Why doesn’t Biden support letting every American choose to opt out and instead invest in their own private retirement account?
Why doesn’t Biden support the right of parents to send their child to whatever K-12 school they choose?
The only place where Biden wants more choice is to hide behind his religion and give women the right to destroy their unborn child until the final moments of her pregnancy.
The founders of our country conceived of a nation rooted in core truths, which, by limiting government, would enable individual liberty.
They would not recognize our politicized nation today under Joe Biden.
Distributed by Creators.com
The Daily Signal publishes a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Heritage Foundation.
The post Biden’s Democracy Smoke Screen appeared first on The Daily Signal.
Former President Donald Trump has put the issue of world government at the forefront of the 2024 presidential race, vowing to “protect American sovereignty” and the U.S. Constitution from the designs of unelected global bureaucrats.
Trump took aim at global governance institutions in general, and the World Health Organization specifically, on Saturday, promising to shred and annul the WHO Pandemic Agreement unless President Joe Biden submits the document to the U.S. Senate for ratification, as required for treaties.
“As we speak, Joe Biden’s minions are in Geneva, secretly negotiating to surrender more of our liberty to the World Health Organization,” Trump told the Libertarian National Convention, eliciting a fulsome chorus of boos. “Drafts of the agreement show that they want to subjugate America to foreign nations, attack free speech, [and] empower the World Health Organization to redistribute American resources.”
Multiple drafts of the proposed accord show the WHO limiting national sovereignty by demanding nations follow its regulations on “routine immunization” and “social measures,” turn over 20% of all vaccines for global redistribution, and abide by the agreement’s terms even after they withdraw.
“They’re going to take our money and send it all over the world to other countries that we need for our own citizens,” in the event of a pandemic, Trump told the crowd in Washington on Saturday, warning that a pandemic “could happen again” in the United States.
His comments came just days after the Department of Health and Human Services took the first steps to deny future federal grants to the EcoHealth Alliance, a U.S.-based nongovernmental organization that funded gain-of-function research at China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology before the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I will protect American sovereignty from the creeping hands of global government,” promised Trump.
By contrast, the Biden administration has signaled its desire to sign the agreement, which WHO downgraded from a “legally-binding treaty” after Biden realized the U.S. Senate would never ratify the controversial document.
“I am hereby demanding that Joe Biden submit these monstrosities to the Senate as treaties,” declared Trump on Saturday. “If he does not, I will rip them up and throw them out on Day One of the Trump administration.”
Opposition to the WHO pandemic treaty-turned-agreement has spread throughout America, including all 49 Republican U.S. senators, two dozen Republican governors, and 22 state attorneys general.
“The globalists are making a run over American sovereignty,” said Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, R-La., on the most recent episode of “This Week on the Hill,” hosted by Tony Perkins. “We can’t allow these global organizations to dictate to us what our policy is going to be.”
Although the body tasked with drawing up the agreement, the Intergovernmental Negotiating Body, failed to finalize its text before the World Health Assembly commenced its annual meeting in Geneva on Monday, WHO Director-General Tedros Ghebreyesus insisted the globalists would eventually prevail. “I remain confident that you still will” complete the global power transfer and have it adopted, he told delegates Monday. “Where there is a will, there is a way.”
But the internationalists compiling the sovereignty-destroying agreement will proceed from a radically government-centered philosophy alien to the American founding, experts say.
“Some of these nations come from a very different governance perspective than the United States,” one which “says it’s normal to look to the federal government to deal with these problems,” Travis Weber, vice president for policy and government affairs at Family Research Council—who is currently in Geneva monitoring the World Health Assembly proceedings—told guest host and former Rep. Jody Hice on “Washington Watch” Tuesday.
“Constitutionally, there are areas enumerated to the federal government under our Constitution. If they’re not, the issue in theory should be left to the states,” Weber told Hice. “We have a philosophy of government going back to our founding which depends on a self-governing, moral, and religious people. So, this really sets the stage for people in the United States to say, ‘Why should the federal government be tackling [this] issue in the first place?’”
Trump also cited constitutionalist themes in his pitch for libertarians to endorse his candidacy at Saturday’s convention.
“I unbound the United States from globalist agreements that surrendered our sovereignty. I withdrew from the Paris accord. I withdrew from the anti-gun U.N. arms treaty. And I withdrew from the corrupt and very expensive World Health Organization,” said Trump, emphasizing that any institution of global governance is “not a good thing, not a good thing.”
Trump delivered a message precision-targeted to libertarian concerns. “Marxism is an evil doctrine straight from the ashes of hell,” said Trump. “We believe that the job of the United States military is not to wage endless regime change wars around the globe.”
“We will shut down our out-of-control federal Department of Education and give it back to the states and local governments. I will return power to the states, local governments, and to the American people. I am a believer in the 10th Amendment,” said Trump. “I will always defend religious liberty and the right to keep and bear arms. And I will secure our elections.”
Trump also pledged to put a libertarian in his Cabinet and in senior posts of his administration.
“What you’re witnessing under Biden is a toxic fusion of the Marxist Left, the deep state, the military-industrial complex, the government security and surveillance service, and their partners all merging together into a hideous perversion of the American system,” he said.
Libertarian Party Chair Angela McArdle also invited Biden and independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to address the convention. RFK Jr., who has said the WHO Pandemic Agreement “should be dead in the water,” delivered extended remarks to the delegates Friday afternoon. Biden demurred. Former Republican presidential hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy, former Rep. Ron Paul, and Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, also spoke at the convention.
Trump vied for the party’s backing, quoting at length a Deroy Murdock article, “The Libertarian Case for Donald J. Trump,” and encouraging delegates to nominate him—but only “if you want to win. If you want to lose, don’t do that. Keep getting your 3% every four years.”
The 3.3% of the 2016 vote, won by former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson, a Republican, actually represented an outlier for the Libertarian Party, which typically claims to 0.5%-1% of the presidential electorate.
Ultimately, the collected Libertarian Party delegates nominated Chase Oliver, an Atlanta-based activist who describes himself as “pro-police reform, pro-choice,” as well as “armed and gay.”
Oliver supported COVID-19 lockdowns and mask mandates, opposed bills protecting minors from transgender injections and surgeries, and posed with a drag queen. The Georgian, who forced a runoff in the 2022 Senate race that saw Democrat Raphael Warnock defeat Republican Herschel Walker, plans to gear his campaign toward young people, “in particular those who are upset with the war going on in Gaza.”
Some hope liberty-minded voters will ignore the Libertarian Party’s official endorsement and support Trump out of prudence. Walter Block, an economics professor and prolific libertarian author, urged libertarians in swing states to vote for the 45th president this November. “In Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, we could make the difference,” wrote Block in a Wall Street Journal op-ed Tuesday.
He reminded readers that “Libertarian nominee Jo Jorgensen received roughly 50,000 votes in Arizona in 2020, when Mr. Trump lost the state by about 10,000 ballots.”
Absent a more conservative government, America may be yoked to the WHO Pandemic Agreement without Senate ratification, circumventing the democratic process.
“It only breeds more public distrust when people are not able to fully share their concerns and air their grievances,” Weber told Hice. “The people of the United States need to be heard in terms of their concerns about the WHO, about the way the COVID-19 pandemic was handled, about the way their health information might be distributed or shared, or given over to some government program.”
Originally published by The Washington Stand
The post Trump Vows: I Will Rip Up, Throw Away WHO Pandemic Agreement appeared first on The Daily Signal.
Rep. Rashida Tlaib spoke over Memorial Day weekend at a conference endorsed by individuals associated with a U.S.-designated terrorist organization.
The Michigan Democrat spoke at the People’s Conference for Palestine on Saturday, where she chided President Joe Biden for not doing enough to stop Israel from conducting a “genocide,” according to a video posted to Instagram by the Palestinian Youth Movement, one of the event’s organizers.
Salah Salah, a founding member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, endorsed the conference, and Wisam Rafeedie, another individual who produced literature for the PFLP, spoke to attendees about how “movements achieve transformation.”
The State Department designated the PFLP as a terrorist organization in 1997. The organization has conducted “suicide operations,” hijacked planes, and launched rockets at civilians, according to the U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
The PFLP also reportedly participated in the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks and held Israeli hostages, according to NGO Monitor, an Israeli nonprofit. The terrorist group posted multiple images and videos of their fighters infiltrating Israeli military installations to its Telegram channel on and after Oct. 7, according to NGO Monitor.
A message from the Palestinian intellectual and revolutionary Salah Salah in support of the People’s Conference for Palestine, May 24-26 in Detroit, Michigan. We’ll see you soon at the conference — link to register in our bio! ?? pic.twitter.com/y8T3LJTgI1
— Palestinian Youth Movement (@palyouthmvmt) May 19, 2024
“I extend to you my thanks and regards for these efforts that are a continuation of your achievements organizing unprecedented protests across North America and other capitals and cities around the world,” Salah said in a May 19 translated video posted by the Palestinian Youth Movement. “This is an initiative of extreme importance, I call on members of the Palestinian and Arab communities and friends and supporters of our cause to participate in this People’s Conference.”
Salah compared the actions of “Zionist forces” to Nazis in his endorsement of the conference, according to the translated video.
“Participation in this People’s Conference is crucial on a large scale and on the highest level to set a plan that offers further coordination and an agreement on a strategy for unified action that guarantees continuity and consistency to achieve the goals and tasks posed by the conference,” he continued.
Rafeedie ran an underground publishing operation for the PFLP in the 1980s and was detained by the Israeli government for involvement with the organization in 1991, according to Amnesty International. He also endorsed the conference before it started, according to a post on X.
Yesterday, I saw that PFLP member Wisam Rafeedie, who is set to speak later today (presumably virtually), also endorsed it pic.twitter.com/FQFyx7wEVz
— Eitan Fischberger (@EFischberger) May 26, 2024
Rafeedie participated in a panel at the conference that explored how pro-Palestinian activists in America can “utilize this moment of heightened contradictions to advance our struggle for liberation from within the imperial core,” according to the event’s website.
“These Zionists lie like they breathe,” Rafeedie said during his appearance, according to the Palestinian Youth Movement.
“These Zionists lie like they breathe.” – Wisam Rafeedie pic.twitter.com/PTuRClVtzp
— Palestinian Youth Movement (@palyouthmvmt) May 26, 2024
Tlaib called Biden an “enabler” during her speech at the conference, according to video posted by the Palestinian Youth Movement.
“The International Court of Justice just ruled that the Israeli government must stop its invasion of Rafah. But President Biden says what’s happening in Gaza is not a genocide,” she said. “Where’s your red line, President Biden?”
The United Nations International Court of Justice ruled on May 24 that Israel must end its military operations in Rafah, a city in the southern region of Gaza, due to the impact the continued assault would have on the civilian population. Biden previously vowed to restrict aid to Israel if the Jewish state invaded Rafah, with Secretary of State Antony Blinken later confirming that the United States is holding back some of its aid.
Tlaib and the Palestinian Youth Movement did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s requests for comment. Rafeedie and Salah could not be reached for comment.
Originally published by the Daily Caller News Foundation
The post Rep. Tlaib Addresses Conference Endorsed by Founding Member of Palestinian Terrorist Group appeared first on The Daily Signal.
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.
Counterrevolution #3: The Left-Wing Smear Machine by Christopher F. Rufo
Pseudonymity, doxing, and the dissident Right.
Read on SubstackTwo 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.
Four years after the 2020 census and the redistricting that occurred across the nation, the U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday held that a lower court in South Carolina failed to distinguish between political and racial motivations by that state’s Republican-controlled Legislature when lawmakers made slight revisions in the boundary lines of the state’s seven congressional districts to improve GOP election prospects in one in particular, the 1st Congressional District.
That was a very important holding, because it pushed back on a recurring tactic now being used by Democrats to attack redistricting plans that disadvantage their party politically; namely, falsely claiming that partisan redistricting is tantamount to racial discrimination that violates the Voting Rights Act.
And if you can believe it, this entire case that went all the way to the highest court in the land was over a district in which the Legislature increased the projected Republican vote by 1.36% to 54.39% and the black voting-age population from 16.56% to 16.72%.
No, really.
The NAACP, which acts as an arm of the Democratic Party, made a federal case out of a change in voting percentages of 1.36% and 0.16%!
In Alexander v. South Carolina State Conference of the NAACP, Justice Samuel Alito wrote the majority opinion, joined by five of his colleagues, concluding that the district court’s finding that race dominated the design of the 1st District was clearly erroneous.
South Carolina’s 1st Congressional District had been a reliably Republican district until a Democrat, Joe Cunningham, was barely elected in 2018 with just 50.7% of the vote. Republican Nancy Mace took the district back in the 2020 election by another slim margin, just 50.6% of the vote.
Republicans in the state Legislature issued guidance after the 2020 census explaining that they would follow “traditional districting principles, such as respect for contiguity and incumbent protection.” However, they “also made it clear that [they] would aim to create a stronger Republican tilt in District 1.”
The GOP-dominated Legislature maintained and protected incumbent Democratic Rep. James Clyburn, who has represented the single majority-minority congressional district in South Carolina since 1993, the 6th, because, as Republican state Sen. George “Chip” Campsen said, Clyburn “has more influence with the Biden administration perhaps than anyone in the nation.”
The Supreme Court reiterated that courts must distinguish between partisan and racial motivations in redistricting since, as the court previously held in 2019 in Rucho v. Common Cause, partisan motivations are not justiciable in federal court, while racial motivations may be unconstitutional if they were a predominant factor in the redistricting.
The majority chastised the lower court for only paying “lip service” to the rules the court has set out for evaluating this issue in a redistricting case.
In fact, the district court’s “misguided approach infected” that court’s findings, which “were clearly erroneous under the appropriate legal standard.” In other words, the lower court committed clear error because it failed to disentangle race from politics.
Moreover, Alito wrote, the NAACP did not provide any direct evidence of a racial gerrymander by state legislators and the NAACP’s circumstantial evidence was very weak.
Instead, the NAACP relied on deeply flawed reports by four “experts” who ignored traditional districting criteria such as geographical constraints and the Legislature’s partisan interests in strengthening Republican districts.
The NAACP also failed to offer a single alternative map to show that the Legislature’s partisan goal could be achieved while raising the black voting population in the challenged district, a requirement that the Supreme Court has laid out in previous redistricting cases.
The NAACP separately claimed that the slight change in the percentage of GOP voters in District 1 diluted the vote of black residents, violating Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. But the majority found that the district court made the same mistakes in evaluating the vote-dilution claims that it made in evaluating the first claim.
That is, the NAACP failed to show that the state’s redistricting plan had the purpose and effect of diluting the minority vote. In light of these errors, the Supreme Court reversed the lower court decision and remanded the case for further proceedings.
It is probably no surprise that the three liberal justices disagreed.
In a dissent that was joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson, Justice Elena Kagan urged the court not to second-guess the district court’s factual findings on whether partisanship or race was the predominant factor in the redistricting process by the state Legislature.
In her view, the court should have given the district court’s view of events “significant deference” and upheld it as long as it is “plausible.”
At the end of his majority opinion, Alito criticized that dissent, concluding that none of the points raised by Kagan was “valid.” That includes her bald assertion—with no evidence to back it up—that the legislators must have used racial data, rather than political data because, the dissenters claim, racial data “is more accurate than political data in predicting future votes” and not using racial data would have required the “self-restraint of a monk.”
But as Alito pointed out, “this jaded view is inconsistent with our case law’s long-standing instruction that the ‘good faith of [the] state Legislature must be presumed’ in redistricting cases.” That is particularly true since “the political data, unlike the racial data that the dissent prefers, took into account voter turnout.”
Alito concluded by saying that “there is no substance to the dissent’s attacks.”
The South Carolina opinion serves as a warning shot across the bows of district court judges who presume bad faith on the part of state legislators and who fail to distinguish between political motivations and racial motivations in the redistricting process.
The Voting Rights Act prohibits racial discrimination in voting, not partisanship, and its provisions should not be abused to achieve political goals.
The post Supreme Court Rebuffs Claim of Partisan South Carolina Redistricting as Race Bias appeared first on The Daily Signal.
Pro-life activist Heather Idoni received a sentence of 24 months in prison on Wednesday, convicted of federal conspiracy against rights and Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act charges brought by the Justice Department.
Idoni, 59, will spend two years in prison for trying to stop abortions from taking place at a Washington, D.C., area abortion clinic on Oct. 20, 2020. She is mother to 15 children, according to LifeSite news, five of whom are her biological children and 10 of whom she and her husband reportedly adopted from Ukraine.
She told The Epoch Times that she expects to die in prison.
Her sentencing is part of the DOJ’s focus on enforcing the FACE Act against pro-life activists since the June 2022 overturn of Roe v. Wade. Led by Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, the DOJ has charged dozens of pro-life activists for attempting to stop women from aborting their unborn babies.
Idoni is one of several pro-life activists sentenced to prison time in connection to the 2020 incident: pro-life activist Lauren Handy received 57 months in prison, John Hinshaw 21 months, WIlliam Goodman 27 months, Jonathan Darnel 34 months, Herb Geraghty 27 months, and Joan Bell 27 months .
“Federal law is clear: using force, threatening to use force or physically obstructing access to reproductive health care is unlawful,” Clarke said in a release announcing Idoni’s sentence. “People have a First Amendment right to communicate their views but they do not have the right to use chains, locks and obstruction to prevent access to reproductive health care facilities.”
“The Justice Department will continue to protect both patients seeking reproductive health services and providers of those services,” she added.
The DOJ releases on the topic do not include the word “abortion,” but rather use the phrasing “reproductive health.”
BREAKING? Heather Idoni has been sentenced to 24 months in federal prison despite her lawyer begging for home detention due to Heather’s serious health issues.
— PAAU (@PAAUNOW) May 22, 2024
Justice was NOT served today. Free Heather Idoni!
Earlier this month, Republican New Jersey Rep. Chris Smith called on the U.S. Marshals and the Bureau of Prisons to provide proper care to Idoni and fellow pro-life activist Jean Marshall following reports that Idoni had not received proper medical treatment while in the custody of the U.S. Marshals following a stroke.
?Rep Chris Smith has written a letter to the directors of the US Marshals and the BOP demanding proper medical care for Rescuers Jean Marshall and Heather Idonihttps://t.co/VZhFLjpiBj pic.twitter.com/KOQJlVapTT
— PAAU (@PAAUNOW) May 16, 2024
Critics have accused President Joe Biden and the DOJ of weaponizing the FACE Act against pro-lifers while failing to charge pro-abortion criminals for the hundreds of attacks on pregnancy resource centers since the May 2022 leak of the draft Supreme Court opinion indicating Roe would soon be overturned.
Some, among them Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, and Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, have called for the repeal of the FACE Act, arguing that it serves no purpose but to target pro-life activists.
“The Biden administration is using the FACE Act to give pro-life activists and senior citizens lengthy prison terms for nonviolent offenses and protests—all while turning a blind eye to the violence, arson, and riots conducted on behalf of ‘approved’ leftist causes,” Lee told The Daily Signal earlier this month.
“Unequal enforcement of the law is a violation of the law,” he added, “and men and women who try to expose the horrors of abortion are being unjustly persecuted for their motivations.”
The enforcement of the FACE Act is led by Clarke, who, following a report from The Daily Signal, recently admitted that she hid an arrest for a violent incident, and its subsequent expungement, from investigators when she was confirmed to her Justice Department post.
On Monday, the Department of Justice filed a lawsuit on Monday against seven pro-life activists and two pro-life organizations alleging that the pro-life organizations, Citizens for a Pro Life Society and Red Rose Rescue, as well as activists Laura Gies, Lauren Handy, Clara McDonald, Monica Miller, Christopher Moscinski, Jay Smith, and Audrey Whipple violated the FACE Act when they sought to stop abortions from taking place at Ohio abortion clinics.
The DOJ’s complaint seeks “compensatory damages, monetary penalties and injunctive relief as provided by the FACE Act.”
Martin Cannon, senior counsel with the Thomas More Society, said in a statement this week that “hardly one week has passed since Lauren Handy was sentenced to 57 months in federal prison, and the Biden Department of Justice is already coming after her again using the FACE Act.”
“‘Red Rose Rescues’ are peaceful events where participants counsel outside the abortion business or walk in and sit with pregnant mothers in abortionists’ waiting rooms, giving them red roses and offering them the help and assistance they need to choose life—in the exact moment when they’re in dire need of compassionate support,” he explained. “These are not threatening or intimidating actions that violate the FACE Act, despite the caricature that the DOJ would like the public to believe.”
The post DOJ Puts Pro-Life Grandmother Behind Bars for Trying to Stop Abortions appeared first on The Daily Signal.
Vermont’s Bernie Sanders is a relative conservative in the Democrat-controlled U.S. Senate. And self-styled socialist Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York is hardly the hardest-Left House member.
The Washington, D.C.-based Institute for Legislative Analysis made these and other discoveries after reviewing 58 Senate votes and 133 House tallies in 2023. It then rated lawmakers from zero (most liberal) to 100 (most conservative). ILA figures confirm that Capitol Hill Democrats are almost uniformly left-wing radicals while Republicans are more moderate than even GOP voters imagine.
For starters, 26 Senate Democrats—a majority—scored lower than the 7.14% rating for Sanders, the one-man gold standard for American socialism. Such reputedly “middle of the road” lawmakers as Virginia’s Mark Warner (5.56%), Pennsylvania’s Bob Casey (5.45%), and Maryland’s Ben Cardin (3.57%) are all Left of Sanders.
At 7.14%, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat, has the same score as … Bernie Sanders! So does alleged “centrist” Democrat and former astronaut Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona. Schumer is just seven points from the Left’s 0% “wall.”
Meanwhile, Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky’s 66.04% score puts him fully 33 points from the Right’s end zone and that much nearer the center. Indeed, while 26 senators are Left of Schumer, 40 are Right of McConnell.
Many conservatives, not least moi, slam McConnell mercilessly and justifiably for sacrificing the Right’s principles an exquisite one-third of the time and more so when it really matters. McConnell ate out of Schumer’s hand on omnibus spending bills, a hike in the debt limit, and April’s betrayal on border security. Still, if McConnell votes Left 33.96% of the time, Democrats should stop calling him an extremist.
The Senate’s ideological anchors are Connecticut’s hard-Left Chris Murphy (1.79%); its most conservative Democrat, Joe Manchin of West Virginia (35.19%); the most-liberal Republican, Susan Collins of Maine (a severely centrist 50.00%); and the most-stalwart conservative, Mike Lee of Utah (100.00% pro-individual liberty, limited government, and free enterprise).
Across the Capitol, Rep. Jasmine Crockett, D-Texas, earned a 1.61% rating and the House’s farthest-Left trophy. The whole world was watching on May 16, when she participated in a juvenile, verbal melee with AOC and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga. The House’s most conservative Democrat is Maine’s Jared Golden (33.33%), and its most liberal Republican is Pennsylvania’s Brian Fitzpatrick (36.51%). Pennsylvania’s Scott Perry, Texas’ Chip Roy, and Virginia’s Robert Good—Republicans all—share 100% ratings and the House’s Top Conservative award.
An 87.06% rating puts House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., closer to the center than Democrat Leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York’s 7.14%. Shamefully, Johnson’s McConnell-style white flags likely will lower his numbers even further in next year’s ILA scorecard.
Meanwhile, 33 House Democrats are Left of “Squad” leader and proud socialist AOC. Nearly three dozen of her colleagues must wish that she would stop voting so often with Republicans.
In both chambers, Democrats march with North Korean conformity while Republicans are more diverse. Senate Democrats range from 1.79% to 35.19%. Republicans stretch more widely from 50.00% to 100%. House Democrats run from 1.67% to 33.33%. Republicans even more broadly span 36.51% to 100%.
Most fascinating is how the parties address two key issue areas. On cultural questions like abortion, gender, and race, Senate and House Republicans jointly score 97.57% versus 0.87% for Democrats. On tax-and-spend fiscal matters, congressional Republicans earn 50.66%, Democrats: 1.04%.
“On cultural issues, Republicans have become very hardcore, while trending much more moderate on fiscal affairs,” says ILA President Fred McGrath. “Democrats, conversely, are extreme on cultural, fiscal, and every other issue.”
“Nearly 95% of Democrats score below 15%,” McGrath adds. “By contrast, fewer than 33% of Republicans score above 85%.”
Next time President Joe Biden and his Democrat comrades foam at their mouths about “extreme, mega-MAGA Republicans,” they should study ILA’s irrefutable statistics and buy mirrors, so they can stare at Capitol Hill’s genuine extremists.
The Daily Signal publishes a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Heritage Foundation.
The post Democrats, Not Republicans, Are Capitol Hill’s True Extremists appeared first on The Daily Signal.
This is the last in my series on “Three Reasons the Left Wants Open Borders.” I’ve covered ideology and electoral politics; now, let’s turn to extortion.
By turning on the taps of illegal immigration, open-borders proponents hope to create bargaining chips to negotiate amnesties and increased immigration flows. Since he took office, Joe Biden has paroled a million and a half inadmissible aliens under bogus premises, caught and quickly released into the U.S. the better part of 7 million more, and allowed at least 1.8 million more to evade Border Patrol—the “gotaways.”
As Jason Riley wrote in The Wall Street Journal last year, “The White House knows that an overwhelming majority of the people coming aren’t fleeing persecution but are economic migrants gaming our asylum laws. They know that there will be no serious effort to deport people whose claims are denied.”
Nonetheless, the roughly 10 million inadmissible foreign nationals who the White House calls “newcomers” will be new leverage to push immigration “reform,” which means massive amnesties and new “pathways” into the U.S. outside and on top of the legal immigration system authorized and numerically limited by Congress. Biden’s threat is to leave the taps wide open.
Under this pressure, wavering conservatives might concede to ineffective or even counterproductive legislation like Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s, D-N.Y., bill that claimed to be a solution but did nothing to reduce the illegal flow. Fortunately, it failed on Thursday.
It was a trap—House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., correctly stated that the bill “would actually codify many of the disastrous Biden open-border policies that created this crisis in the first place,” making it difficult for a future conservative president to reverse.
“Once bitten, twice shy” sums up why conservatives aren’t going to fall easily for this round of extortion. The relevant lesson is the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act. The deal was that about 3 million illegal aliens would be amnestied, but that the government would work to stop the flow of illegal immigrants and keep another amnesty from happening again. To achieve this, employers would have to confirm the legal status of people before hiring them or face penalties.
The first part of the bargain (the amnesty) happened, but the second part did not in any comprehensive manner. Almost 40 years later, the number of illegal aliens present in the country is perhaps five times as great as in 1986.
Until recently, Democrats believed in enforcing immigration laws, even if they might want them eased. Listen to President Bill Clinton talking here in 1995. He endorsed the conclusions of the bipartisan Commission on Immigration Reform chaired at the time by Texas Democratic Rep. Barbara Jordan, which in its final 1997 report urged “immediate reforms to ensure that aliens with final orders of deportation, exclusion, or removal are indeed removed from the United States.”
Today, there are over 1.2 million such aliens with final orders, including 400,000 convicted criminals, and the Biden administration plans to remove barely 30,000.
Clinton also proudly stated that his administration had “moved aggressively,” hiring more Border Patrol, deporting “twice as many criminal aliens as ever before,” “cracking down on illegal hiring,” and “barring welfare benefits to illegal aliens.”
Today, no elected Democrat would even dare call an alien present in the U.S. illegally an “illegal alien.” In fact, Immigration and Customs Enforcement is required to use the nonsensical term “undocumented noncitizens,” and Biden apologized recently for calling Laken Riley’s accused alien murderer “illegal.”
In 2024, after three years of mass release, mass parole, and lax enforcement, “Democrats appear to be panicking about this fall’s election, to the point that they are feigning doing something about the invasion at our southern border,” as Teresa Mull put it in the Spectator. Their strategy is to try and convince the American people that the real obstacle to securing the border is unreasonable Republicans. To sell this message would be to pull a giant rabbit out of a very small hat, as the open border is the clear work of the president and his hand-picked secretary of homeland security, Alejandro Mayorkas.
Schumer brought up the supposedly “bipartisan” Senate border bill for another vote Thursday, but it failed again, with even less support than in February. Biden may claim that he had “proposed and negotiated and agreed to the strongest border security bill this country has ever, ever, ever seen,” but senators who read it no doubt quickly reached the same conclusion as Johnson did in a few hours. The bill would have turned Biden’s welcome mat policies from overreaching executive whim into hardlaw. The Schumer bill was electioneering in the guise of legislating.
Last week, Sen. Chris Murphy, D-N.J., claimed the bill “gives the president new tools to better manage the border.” In fact, Biden has had the tools, including under Section 212(f) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, since January 2021.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre unwittingly admitted this week that Biden could “unilaterally” limit how many illegal aliens are allowed to enter the country. Biden has also considered ordering expedited processing for newly caught illegals rather than just releasing them. Inaction on the border is the president’s choice.
In a May 19 letter to fellow senators, Schumer wrote “the American people … want bipartisan action to secure our border.” Indeed, a May 21 nationwide poll by the University of South Florida found that 77% wanted more Border Patrol agents at the southern border, and 60% actually supported “increasing physical barriers.” In a March poll, The Wall Street Journal reported that “at least 72% of respondents in each of the [seven swing] states saying the country’s immigration policy and border security were headed in the wrong direction.” Schumer somehow discovered this six months before the national elections.
Jean-Pierre has echoed her boss many times over the past three years in claiming that the border was “not open”—even as it leaked 10,000 or more illegal aliens a day. On May 20, she told senators to set “partisan politics aside and vote to secure the border.” But even Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., opposes using the bill he drafted for purely political messaging, and Johnson has called it “dead on arrival” if it were to pass the Senate.
“Bipartisan” should mean just that, like the Jordan Commission report, not a one-party position enforced through the extortionary means of doubling the illegal alien population via mass release, parole, and negligence.
The BorderLine is a weekly Daily Signal feature examining everything from the unprecedented illegal immigration crisis at the border to immigration’s impact on cities and states throughout the land. We will also shed light on other critical border-related issues like human trafficking, drug smuggling, terrorism, and more.
Unprecedented Surge in Chinese Illegal Immigration Raises Security Concerns
The Ways the Left Exploits Illegal Immigration for Electoral Gain
The Ideological Roots of the Open Borders Push
US Should Adopt UK’s ‘Rwanda Plan’ to Address Illegal Immigration
Biden’s Precarious Parole Programs for Illegal Immigrants
The post Reason No. 3 the Left Wants Open Borders—Extortion for Amnesty: The BorderLine appeared first on The Daily Signal.
Reflect on the words of Rep. Bill Pascrell, D-N.J., in his Washington Post article titled “Why Is Congress So Dumb?” Thereby hangs a tale of congressional anemia and languor.
The veteran congressman laments, “our available resources and our policy staff, the brains of Congress, have been so depleted that we can’t do our jobs properly. … Congress is increasingly unable to comprehend a world growing more socially, economically and technologically multifaceted—and we did this to ourselves.”
While the size of the federal government was mushrooming, staff levels in House member offices ticked down from 6,556 in 1977 to 6,329 in 2021. Congress’ annual budget is $5.3 billion, a tiny fraction of the $1.5 trillion spent on the military-industrial-security complex. And only 10% of the $5.3 billion is spent on human capital as opposed to buildings, the Capitol Police, and maintenance.
“For every $3,000 the United States spends per American on government programs,” Pascrell writes, “[Congress] allocates only $6 to oversee them.”
The congressman’s diagnosis is spot-on. It deserves further amplification.
Congress is largely run by rookies paid miserly wages who then move on after a few years to lucrative lobbying on K Street as a financial necessity. Congress is starved of institutional memory and expertise. Members and staff are constitutionally clueless, political tyros. The executive branch runs circles around them, stiff-arms oversight, and typically originates major legislation for Congress to entertain.
Congressional staff commonly parachute into high-level, well-paid executive branch positions. The reverse—executive branch talent coming to work for Congress—is as rare as unicorns.
This is a disaster for Congress as a coequal branch of government and for the Constitution’s separation of powers. It is also a break in history, tracing back to former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., who in 1995 seized the lion’s share of legislative powers from committees and member offices by shrinking their budgets and prerogatives and enfeebling their intellectual infrastructures.
Gingrich also defunded the Office of Technology Assessment, tantamount to a congressional lobotomy. His objective was to handcuff any challenges by members or committees to his personal policy predilections and compromises with the White House. None of Gingrich’s Republican and Democratic successors—Dennis Hastert, Nancy Pelosi, John Boehner, Paul Ryan, Kevin McCarthy, and Mike Johnson—have undone his dumbing down of Congress.
The typical chief of staff or chief counsel in the House is a recent university or law school graduate in their mid-20s hired primarily because of their loyalty and campaign work. They are awed by the White House and ignorant of the vast powers the Constitution entrusts to the legislative branch: the war power, the power of the purse, the power to supersede treaties or executive orders, and the inherent power of contempt to sanction summarily any executive official for withholding documents or testimony from Congress.
The result, among other things, is secret government and a reliance on whistleblowers, who commonly have ulterior motives, to disclose executive branch crimes or wrongdoing in lieu of Congress.
In the pre-Gingrich era, the Watergate crimes were exposed by the Senate Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities, and the Church Committee disclosed the crimes and wrongdoing of the intelligence community. In the post-Gingrich era, Congress goes on its hands and knees, like Henry IV at Canossa, pleading for the White House voluntarily to share information.
The House and Senate Armed Services committees need vastly greater manpower and experts to oversee the nearly trillion-dollar annual, unaudited Pentagon spending. On 9/11, former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld shared that $3 trillion in Pentagon funds accumulated over an unknown number of years could not be accounted for.
Congress retains the power to return to the pre-Gingrich era. Under the Constitution, the House and Senate decide their respective budgets with no outside interference. Congress can and should raise salaries and retain experts to attract talent and make serving as congressional staff a financially viable professional career. Congress should institutionalize the recruitment of staff and experts from universities and the private sector based more on competence in discharging constitutional responsibilities and less on personal loyalty or nepotism.
Overseeing and reforming a federal government that spends more than $6.5 trillion annually, regulates every nook and cranny of economic life, and groans under a national debt exceeding $34 trillion is too important to do anything less.
President John Quincy Adams left the presidency in 1829. He served in the House of Representatives from 1831 to 1848, acquiring fame in opposing the gag rule, which forbid discussion of slavery in the House, and the Mexican-American War, fueled by presidential lies.
Adams’ congressional service was not a demotion but a professional and constitutional step up. Today, it is inconceivable that a president would follow in his footsteps. That needs to change fast, or the executive branch will continue to run roughshod over the Constitution, Congress, and the American people.
COPYRIGHT 2024 CREATORS.COM
The Daily Signal publishes a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Heritage Foundation.
The post Who Is Running Congress? appeared first on The Daily Signal.
A new study has revealed that roughly 10% to 27% of noncitizens living in the U.S. are illicitly registered to vote, which could result in up to 2.7 million illegal votes being cast in the November elections.
Experts say the significant amount of potential illegal votes could be enough to alter election results.
The study, released last week by the research institute Just Facts, notes that the 2022 U.S. census recorded approximately 19 million adult noncitizens living in the country. “Given their voter registration rates, this means that about 2 million to 5 million of them are illegally registered to vote,” the report observes. “These figures are potentially high enough to overturn the will of the American people in major elections, including congressional seats and the presidency.”
On Tuesday, James Agresti, president of Just Facts, joined “Washington Watch” to discuss the scope of noncitizens casting ballots and the implications of the study’s findings.
“[T]here are very broad openings for noncitizens to vote,” he explained, adding:
In no state in the nation are they required to provide proof of U.S. citizenship in order to register to vote. Now, a couple of states like Arizona tried to enact that requirement, but they were blocked by a court ruling supported by the Obama administration.
And if you look at the federal voter-registration form, it says you can submit all different forms of ID to register. That could be a Social Security number; it could be a driver’s license number; or it could just be a utility bill.
I mean, these are things that anyone can get by living here. They do not prove you’re a U.S. citizen.
And more than that, a lot of noncitizens have faked Social Security numbers, especially illegal immigrants. That’s what they do to work. A recent estimate by the Social Security Administration tallied 2.5 million noncitizens who had Social Security numbers gained by using fake birth certificates or stealing those numbers from somebody else.
Hans von Spakovsky, a senior legal fellow at The Heritage Foundation and board member of the Public Interest Legal Foundation, concurred. (Heritage founded The Daily Signal in 2014.)
“[T]he problem is, states aren’t doing very much to verify citizenship, so it’s extremely easy for someone who’s not a citizen to register to vote and to vote in elections,” he remarked during Monday’s edition of “Washington Watch.”
“And when that is discovered, oftentimes nothing is done about it.”
Agresti went on to point out the effect that lax enforcement of citizen verification could have in November. “[B]ased on the latest available data, approximately 1 million to 2.7 million noncitizens are going to vote in the upcoming presidential election unless something changes. And that is more than enough to tip the results of congressional races, Senate races, and yes, the U.S. presidency.”
Von Spakovsky echoed Agresti’s concerns. “[I]t doesn’t matter whether they’re black or white, Asian or Hispanic. It doesn’t matter which political party they support. Every time an alien illegally votes, that alien is voiding, negating the vote of a citizen, no matter which political party they support,” he contended. “And the Democrats just don’t seem to want to understand that or to basically ignore it.”
Agresti further reflected on the motivations behind the Democrats’ opposition to efforts to improve election integrity.
“[I]t’s always hard to read people’s minds, but I can tell you this: The vast bulk of these noncitizens are voting for Democrats. According to the best data we have, about 80% of them will vote for Democrats when they vote illegally. And Democrats are fighting tooth and nail to prevent any kind of checking of people’s citizenship. It does benefit them. Is that their reasoning? It’s an obvious incentive, but I can’t read their minds.”
Earlier this month, House Republicans attempted to address the issue by introducing a bill that would require proof of citizenship to register to vote and would remove noncitizens from existing voter rolls. But Agresti expressed doubt about the bill’s chances of passage. “My guess is it will move in the House and die in the Senate, but that’s just an educated guess. And again, even if somehow it got through the Senate, there’s no way [President] Joe Biden’s signing that bill.”
“However,” he added, “I do think in the aftermath of the election, and we hate to have a repeat of 2020, that there should be some accountability, some lawsuits that demand proof that people are who they say they are in tight races. None of that was secured in the last round of election lawsuits, and it needs to be there.”
Agresti concluded by urging candidates involved in tight elections to demand verification that only citizens voted. “A candidate has to make a plea and say, ‘Hey, I want this data to prove that these people who are registered and voted actually are citizens.’”
Originally published at WashingtonStand.com
The post Up to 2.7 Million Noncitizens Could Vote Illegally in November, Study Warns appeared first on The Daily Signal.
The bipartisan border bill failed in the U.S. Senate Thursday, even losing the support of two key negotiators who helped craft the legislation. This marked the second time the Senate voted against moving forward with the bill.
The vote on the border bill “is not an effort to actually make law, it is an effort to do political messaging,” Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., said Thursday ahead of the vote. Lankford worked to negotiate the bill with Sens. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., and Kyrsten Sinema, I-Ariz., but he and Sinema voted against the bill Thursday, criticizing the reintroduction of the bill as being politically motivated.
Sen. Lankford helped to craft the border bill, but voted against it today.
— Virginia Allen (@Virginia_Allen5) May 23, 2024
"Everyone sees this for what it is. It is not an effort to actually make law, it is an effort to do political messaging." pic.twitter.com/0Ab0M2l2fe
The bill, which needed 60 votes to pass, failed with 50 senators voting against it and 43 voting in favor.
The vote broke largely along party lines with Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska being the only Republican to vote for the bill. Six Democrats joined Republicans in voting against the bill.
WATCH: Border bill fails in the Senate a second time. pic.twitter.com/bM9PfY3UZl
— Virginia Allen (@Virginia_Allen5) May 23, 2024
During the first vote in February, Lankford voted in favor of advancing the border bill, along with Murkowski, Susan Collins of Maine, and Mitt Romney of Utah.
Analysts expected the latest vote on the bill to fail following Republicans’ outspoken criticism of the measure.
The bill “spends $20 billion to not secure the border, but to more efficiently encounter, process, and disperse illegal migrants,” Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., said during a news conference Wednesday.
Johnson and other GOP senators bashed the bill for allowing up to 5,000 illegal aliens to enter daily in a seven-day period.
The bill directs the Department of Homeland Security to close the southern border “during a period of seven consecutive calendar days, [if] there is an average of 5,000 or more aliens who are encountered each day.”
Over 1.8 million illegal aliens a year still would be permitted to enter the United States under the now twice failed legislation.
Republicans bashed the bill as an election year stunt.
Sen. Cynthia Lummis, R-Wyo., said Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and the Democrats are promoting the bill because “poll numbers are showing [Democrats] that, after months and months of throwing the border open to anyone who wants to come in, that the public doesn’t like the policy.”
Gallup reports that immigration is the No. 1 issue not specifically related to the economy on the minds of American voters right now.
“And now, all of a sudden, six months before an election, Chuck Schumer and the Democrats have got religion on border security,” Sen. J.D. Vance, R-Ohio., said ahead of the vote.
Under the Biden administration, Customs and Border Protection has encountered over 9.5 million illegal aliens on America’s border and at ports of entry. With five months remaining in fiscal year 2024, CBP encounters of illegal immigrants under President Joe Biden’s leadership are expected to far surpass 10 million before the start of the new fiscal year.
An additional nearly 1.8 million illegal aliens have crossed the border managing to evade Border Patrol. Authorities refer to them as “known gotaways.” It is impossible to know how many unknown gotaways have entered the country in recent years.
Senate Republicans continue to advocate for the passage of the border security bill known as H.R. 2, which the House passed in May 2023. If passed into law, H.R. 2 would end “catch and release,” restart construction of the border wall, and reinstate the Trump-era “Remain in Mexico” policy, among other things.
“The Democrats don’t want border security,” Sen Ted Cruz, R-Texas, said in a statement. “Every single Democrat in the Senate supports these open borders. And I can say that because every single time we push to implement real border security to stop this invasion—to stop Joe Biden from releasing criminal illegal aliens that are threatening our families—every single Democrat votes no.”
On Tuesday night, Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kan., and Cruz, spoke on the Senate floor and called for the Senate to pass H.R. 2 by unanimous consent. Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin, D-Ill., reserved the right to object and blocked the bill.
The post Border Bill Goes Down in Flames on Senate Floor appeared first on The Daily Signal.
President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump are scheduled to debate on June 27, but the debate will be unlike those held between presidential candidates in the recent past.
Trump told Biden he would debate him “Anytime. Anywhere. Anyplace,” and Biden accepted, but with stipulations. The Biden campaign said it would only agree to a debate if there was no live audience, hearkening back to the first televised presidential debate in 1960 between Democratic Sen. John F. Kennedy and Republican Vice President Richard Nixon, which was telecast live from a TV studio without a studio audience.
Fox News reports that the Biden campaign also stipulated that the debate should be hosted by a “broadcast organization that hosted a Republican primary debate in 2016 in which Donald Trump participated, and a Democratic primary debate in 2020 in which President Biden participated—so neither campaign can assert that the sponsoring organization is obviously unacceptable: if both candidates have previously debated on their airwaves, then neither could object to such venue.”
Those stipulations limited the hosting networks to a handful of outlets, including CNN. The outlet’s Jake Tapper and Dana Bash will co-host the debate at CNN’s studios in Atlanta. The debate gives CNN the opportunity, amid low ratings, to appeal to Americans who have come to view CNN as little more than a mouthpiece for the Left.
During prime time in March, Deadline reports, CNN averaged 601,000 views, falling far behind MSNBC’s 1.31 million-viewer average during the same time of day, and Fox News’ 2.14 million. CNN’s prime-time viewership is up 5% for the first quarter of 2024, compared with the previous year.
With additional Biden campaign stipulations requiring that a “candidate’s microphone should only be active when it is his turn to speak,” viewers will be watching whether CNN adheres to this rule equally between both candidates.
Perhaps most importantly, CNN’s Tapper and Bash will be judged by the questions they do or don’t ask.
Apart from questions related to the economy, which are bound to be asked, given Republican and Democratic voters’ shared concerns over inflation, CNN should take the opportunity to show U.S. voters it will hold Biden’s feet to the fire on the president’s border and immigration policies and his handling of foreign policy, with regard to China, Russia, and Iran, and support for Israel.
If CNN fails to conduct a substantive debate between the two candidates, ABC News will have the opportunity to do so on Sept. 10, but CNN will have missed a golden opportunity to show Americans it can do more than pander to the Biden administration.
On this week’s edition of the “Problematic Women” podcast, we discuss what to expect during the upcoming presidential debates.
Also on today’s show: A Target store’s tough anti-shoplifting measures in California show how far blue cities have fallen. Plus, ahead of Memorial Day, we honor those who made the ultimate sacrifice for our nation. And as always, we’ll be crowning our “Problematic Woman of the Week.”
Listen to the podcast below:
The post Trump, Biden, and CNN: What to Know About the First Presidential Debate appeared first on The Daily Signal.
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.
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, the Georgia prosecutor who brought racketeering charges against former President Donald Trump and his political allies, won her Democratic primary Tuesday in the face of scandal.
Meanwhile, Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee, presiding over the Fulton County case against Trump, also won his race—just two months after his ruling allowed Willis to continue with the case, despite the fact that she was in an undisclosed relationship with the lawyer she had hired to prosecute Trump.
These local races gained national attention not only because of the Trump case, but because of personal and professional scandal surrounding Willis over the revelations of her affair with Nathan Wade, the man she hired as special prosecutor to go after Trump for trying to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election in Georgia.
The judge made what was considered a mixed ruling in March that the Trump case could go forward only if Willis or Wade recused themselves. So, Wade left the case.
On Tuesday, Willis defeated Christian Wise Smith, a former county prosecutor who previously unsuccessfully sought the Democratic nomination for Georgia attorney general in 2022. He also previously lost to Willis in the Fulton County Democrat primary for district attorney in 2020.
The Associated Press called the race at 7:31 p.m.
BREAKING: Fani Willis wins the Democratic Party primary in Georgia for District Attorney, Atlanta Judicial Circuit. #APRaceCall at 7:31 p.m. EDT.
— AP Politics (@AP_Politics) May 21, 2024
In the upcoming November general election, Willis now faces Courtney Kramer, a lawyer who didn’t have a challenger in the Republican primary for district attorney in the heavily Democratic jurisdiction made up primarily of Atlanta.
Willis was first elected in 2020. She has faced controversies beyond the Trump case that include the prosecution of rapper Young Thug and complaints by the liberal American Civil Liberties Union about living conditions in the Fulton County Jail.
The Associated Press called the race for McAfee shortly before 8 p.m.
McAfee faced Robert Patillo II, a Georgia civil rights lawyer and radio host. One candidate for the judgeship, defense attorney Tiffani Johnson, was disqualified but was fighting the disqualification, according to The New York Times.
Judicial races in Georgia are nonpartisan. McAfee is a former state inspector general appointed to the bench by Gov. Brian Kemp in December 2022 to fill a vacancy.
The Willis-Wade controversy came up after one of the defendants—former Trump White House and campaign aide Michael Roman—filed a legal motion asking for both to be disqualified from the case.
Willis hired Wade in November 2021 for $250 per hour. Wade has billed Willis’ office for more than $650,000 in legal work. Wade and Willis went on several vacations, cruises, and flights to destinations that included Belize, Aruba, and the Bahamas, which raised accusations that Willis personally benefited from the financial arrangement.
Trump and Roman were among 19 people charged under the state’s Racketeering Influencing and Corrupt Organizations Act, or RICO, in August 2023 by a Fulton County grand jury for challenging the 2020 presidential election results in Georgia.
McAfee determined in March that the Trump allies hadn’t shown an actual conflict of interest with Willis employing Wade but said, “the established record “highlights a significant appearance of impropriety that infect the current structure of the prosecution team.”
The post Georgia’s Democratic Voters Render Their Verdict on Fani Willis appeared first on The Daily Signal.
Following the announcement of prison sentences for pro-life activists last week, the Department of Justice filed a lawsuit on Monday against seven pro-life activists and two pro-life organizations.
The DOJ’s lawsuit alleges that the pro-life organizations, Citizens for a Pro Life Society and Red Rose Rescue, as well as activists Laura Gies, Lauren Handy, Clara McDonald, Monica Miller, Christopher Moscinski, Jay Smith, and Audrey Whipple, violated the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act when they sought to stop abortions from taking place at Ohio abortion clinics.
Notably, the DOJ does not use the word “abortion,” but rather “reproductive health services”—except in a statement from U.S. Attorney Rebecca C. Lutzko for the Northern District of Ohio.
“Obstructing people from accessing reproductive health care and physically obstructing providers from offering it are unlawful,” Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke, the head of the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, said in a statement.
“Congress passed the FACE Act 30 years ago this month in response to acts of violence, threats of violence and physical obstruction at reproductive health clinics in our country,” she added. “The Civil Rights Division is committed to enforcing federal law to protect the rights of those who seek and those who provide access to reproductive health services.”
The DOJ’s complaint seeks “compensatory damages, monetary penalties and injunctive relief as provided by the FACE Act.”
Handy, one of the activists mentioned in the release, was sentenced to 57 months in prison for trying to stop abortions at a Washington, D.C., abortion clinic. Clarke similarly issued a statement last week celebrating news that Handy and six other pro-life activists would spend time in prison for attempting to stop abortions from taking place.
The FACE Act is a 1994 law that supposedly protects both abortion clinics and pregnancy resource centers, but has been heavily enforced by President Joe Biden’s DOJ against pro-lifers since the June 2022 overturning of Roe v. Wade.
The enforcement of the FACE Act is led by Clarke, who, following a report from The Daily Signal, recently admitted that she hid an arrest and its subsequent expungement from investigators when she was confirmed to her Justice Department post.
The president’s critics have accused Biden and the DOJ of weaponizing the FACE Act against pro-lifers while failing to charge pro-abortion criminals for the hundreds of attacks on pregnancy resource centers since the May 2022 leak of the draft Supreme Court opinion indicating that Roe would soon thereafter be overturned.
Some, among them Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, and Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, have called for the repeal of the FACE Act, arguing that it serves no purpose but to target pro-life activists.
“The Biden administration is using the FACE Act to give pro-life activists and senior citizens lengthy prison terms for nonviolent offenses and protests—all while turning a blind eye to the violence, arson, and riots conducted on behalf of ‘approved’ leftist causes,” Lee told The Daily Signal in a Tuesday statement.
“Unequal enforcement of the law is a violation of the law,” he added, “and men and women who try to expose the horrors of abortion are being unjustly persecuted for their motivations.”
The post Biden DOJ Ramps Up War on Pro-Lifers With Lawsuit appeared first on The Daily Signal.
FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL—Is it antisemitic to point out that the massive, left-wing funding apparatus set up by Hungarian American hedge-fund billionaire George Soros has bankrolled many of the organizations behind anti-Israel protests and riots on college campuses? The Southern Poverty Law Center says that it is, and it smeared Sen. Ted Cruz for citing a Politico report on Soros funding.
Cruz, a Texas Republican, isn’t letting it stand.
“Leftists cannot defend their ideas on the merits, so they instead resort to censorship and cancel culture,” Cruz told The Daily Signal in a written statement Tuesday.
“The SPLC is a chief smear apparatus of the modern Left, and it dutifully attacked me for citing Politico’s investigative report linking George Soros’s money to the antisemitic riots at college campuses across the country,” he noted. “Instead of attacking people for speaking the truth, the SPLC should investigate why George Soros was financially supporting rioters who used horrific antisemitic slurs and attacked Jewish students.”
Two weeks ago, Politico’s Shia Kapos wrote an article revealing that “some of the biggest names in Democratic circles”—specifically Soros, the Rockefeller family, and Hyatt Hotel heirs Susan and Nick Pritzker—have been funding the groups that support anti-Israel protests. Many of the protesters have reportedly harassed Jewish students, shouting antisemitic slogans.
Two groups, Jewish Voice for Peace and IfNotNow, receive funding from the Tides Foundation. That organization gets hefty funding from Soros’ charitable groups Foundation to Promote Open Society (which gave more than $10 million to Tides from 1998 to 2018) and Open Society Foundations (which gave more than $12 million to Tides during that same period).
Soros declined to comment to Politico, but a spokesperson for the Open Society Foundations said the charity has “funded a broad spectrum of US groups that have advocated for the rights of Palestinians and Israelis and for peaceful resolution to the conflict in Israel.”
A few days after Politico published the report, Cruz highlighted it during a news conference on Capitol Hill.
“I want to finally underscore a very important story that broke last week came from Politico, and it was a story [about] the funding for the anti-Israel, antisemitic, anti-American protests occurring at universities across the country,” Cruz said. “Much of the funding came from Joe Biden and the Democrats’ biggest donors.”
“Here’s who Politico identified: George Soros, the Rockefeller brothers, Bill and Melinda Gates, and the Pritzker family,” the Texas Republican added.
The SPLC published an “analysis” Thursday condemning the “far right” for using “decades-old antisemitic tropes to denounce the protests as inherently antisemitic.”
The SPLC claimed that Soros “is not only a Holocaust survivor but also an outspoken critic of governments and administrations that stifle the free exchange of ideas.” Conservatives often portray him “as a boogeyman” and “a puppet master behind the scenes,” the organization noted.
The SPLC quotes author Emily Tamkin to suggest that any criticism of Soros’ funding is an antisemitic trope.
“We have moved past the point where it can even be called out as antisemitic because it’s now so baked into” American sociopolitics, Tamkin told the SPLC. People may even criticize Soros funding “not realizing it is an antisemitic trope,” she argued.
The Southern Poverty Law Center claimed Politico’s article merely “hinted at a supposed connection between Soros and the campus protests for a cease-fire in Gaza,” claiming that the fact-checking organization PolitiFact had “thoroughly debunked” any such connection. The SPLC added: “Politico has had to attach a long series of corrections to the piece.”
So how did PolitiFact supposedly “debunk” the connection? The outlet acknowledged that “Soros’ grant-making organization, Open Society Foundations, has awarded grants to some groups … linked to the demonstrations.” Yet PolitiFact downplayed this link, stating that “connections between Soros’ money and specific campus protesters involved several degrees of separation.”
Soros critics such as Ted Cruz don’t believe that the 93-year-old philanthropist is personally handing out checks to rioters on the front lines. Rather, they note that the financier’s massive funds contribute money to groups that help organize the anti-Israel protests. PolitiFact didn’t even try to “debunk” this, because it is simply true.
As for Politico’s corrections to its article, none directly involved Soros. Politico corrected the record on the Gates Foundation and the year in which the Rockefeller Brothers Fund contributed to the Tides Foundation.
Noting that Soros funding is behind the antisemitic riots is not itself antisemitic—it also is simply true. Soros himself may not support protesters’ harassment of Jews on college campuses, but it is completely fair to point out that his money, going through intermediaries, has helped the protests.
The Southern Poverty Law Center’s tactics here should not be surprising.
As I explain in my book “Making Hate Pay: The Corruption of the Southern Poverty Law Center,” the SPLC rightly sued Ku Klux Klan groups into bankruptcy. It then took the program it used to monitor the KKK and weaponized it against mainstream conservative and Christian organizations, branding them “hate groups” and “antigovernment extremists.”
The SPLC also has benefited from Soros. The Foundation to Promote Open Society gave the SPLC a $75,000 grant in 2016, “to convene an ‘Anti-Hate Table’ of national anti-bias and Muslim, Arab, and South Asian community organizations.”
According to my analysis of IRS records, the Tides Foundation—one of the funds at the center of Politico’s article—gave the SPLC more than $1 million between 2018 and 2022.
The SPLC just might have a vested interest in responding to attacks on Soros funding and the Tides Foundation.
The post EXCLUSIVE: Ted Cruz Sets the Record Straight After SPLC Claims He Spread ‘Antisemitic Trope’ appeared first on The Daily Signal.
The Defense Department undercounted the number of abortions that it authorized between 2016 and 2020, new data shows.
Following a lawsuit from the Oversight Project, a division of The Heritage Foundation, the Department of Defense said that it had identified a total of 77 abortions performed in military medical treatment facilities (MTFs) during the four-year period between 2016 and 2020. (Heritage founded The Daily Signal in 2014.)
That number includes 17 abortions that had previously not been included in the DOD’s figures.
The babies aborted were either the children of a service member or of the service member’s dependents. Eighteen of the abortions were tied to the Air Force, 28 to the Army, four to the Marines, and 27 to the Navy.
In 2021, the DOD authorized 14 abortions of unborn babies throughout the military—bringing the total number of abortions that the DOD authorized between 2016 and 2021 up to 91.
The Defense Department explained the undercounting by saying in a report shared with the Oversight Project that it began updating its methodology counting the abortions it authorizes in 2021.
“As a result, a yearlong effort, involving data analysts and women’s health subject matter experts, began in early 2021 to review and update the methodology for collection of data related to performance of abortions in military medical treatment facilities (MTFs),” the DOD explained. “The updated methodology identified, and corrected, inadvertent underreporting of authorized abortions.”
Some of the DOD’s methodology updates include developing a new definition of abortion: the “termination” of an unborn baby’s life “that would otherwise result in a live birth.” This new definition does not include the removal of ectopic or molar pregnancies, both of which are nonviable pregnancies. It also does not include miscarriages.
The new methodology also included both active-duty members and their dependents (such as their daughters) who aborted their babies at a military medical treatment facility.
“The methodology utilized for this updated report will be the standard for future reports, in order to ensure consistent methodology and understanding, and will be annually reviewed for new medical or coding updates for processes or procedures,” the report noted. “Additional actions will be identified as necessary to ensure accurate reporting consistent with this methodology.”
The Oversight Project initially sent a Freedom of Information Act request to the DOD a few weeks after the U.S. Supreme Court’s June 2022 decision to overturn Roe v. Wade in the Dobbs vs. Jackson Women’s Health Organization ruling.
The lawsuit sought information on whether the abortions DOD was authorizing were “Hyde Amendment-compliant ‘covered’ abortions, meaning if they were performed if the life of the mother was at risk or if the unborn child is result of rape or incest,” Oversight senior investigative counsel Roman Jankowski told The Daily Signal.
“We also requested all records regarding the number of ‘covered’ abortions that are the result of an act of rape and incest that resulted in some type of prosecution under the Uniform Code of Military Justice,” he added. “The DOD did not respond to our FOIA request, forcing the Oversight Project to sue in federal court. These records only provide a partial picture of abortions covered by the DOD, and the Oversight Project will continue to update this as additional records are released.”
The DOD did not immediately respond to requests for comment for this article.
In October 2022, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin released a memorandum for senior Pentagon leadership on “ensuring access to reproductive health care.” That memorandum announced that the Defense Department would establish “travel and transportation allowances for service members and their dependents … to facilitate official travel to access non-covered reproductive health care that is unavailable within the local area of a service member’s permanent duty station.”
The move was a direct response to the overturning of Roe v. Wade, the memo said. It claimed that funding abortion travel would be done in accordance with federal law, but Republicans noted at the time that funding travel and transportation to get abortions through the DOD would “in and of itself violate federal law” and contradict the Defense Department’s “past recognition, interpretation, and implementation of this law.”
“Congress has clearly and consistently acted to prevent the U.S. military from funding elective abortion procedures and services necessitated by those procedures, and DOD has acknowledged and complied with the law,” the Republicans said in 2022 in a letter first reported by The Daily Signal. “We are appalled by the flagrant disregard for the law expressed by the Department in this memorandum.”
And DOD spokesman Charlie Dietz confirmed to The Daily Signal in October 2022 that “if the dependent of a service member lives in a state where abortion access is restricted, the DOD will cover their travel and transportation costs to a location where they can legally receive the care.”
Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., blocked hundreds of military promotions for more than 10 months as pushback to the Pentagon policy promoting abortion, saying that until the policy was changed, he would not approve any military promotions, arguing that the policy is illegal and violates the Hyde Amendment. The Hyde Amendment is a measure dating back to the 1970s that prohibits federal taxpayer funding of most abortions.
The Alabama lawmaker, who received heavy criticism from his Democratic colleagues, ended his holds in December. Tuberville had also come under fire from some GOP senators, who called on him to give up his effort and allow the promotions to move forward despite the Pentagon’s unchanged pro-abortion policy.
But other leaders, including Ryan Williams, president and publisher of The Claremont Review of Books and of The American Mind; Terry Schilling, president of the American Principles Project; and Kevin Roberts, president of The Heritage Foundation, praised Tuberville for his commitment to stand against the Pentagon’s pro-abortion policy, saying that his hold “on military promotions over the Pentagon’s unjust decision to fund abortion tourism is a righteous manifestation of the Senate’s responsibility to scrutinize military leadership.”
The post EXCLUSIVE: Defense Department Admits to Undercounting Abortions It Authorized appeared first on The Daily Signal.
FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL—Aides to Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra routinely inquired about how at least one agency under his control was putting President Joe Biden’s executive order on elections into action.
At least one message suggested that Becerra’s office and the agency within HHS wanted to know whether private organizations that received government grants were working to get out the vote through public service announcements or other means.
On Nov. 30, 2021, two months after the White House announced a vague description of how federal agencies would implement Biden’s executive order on turning out the vote, Anna Perng, a special assistant in HHS’ Administration for Community Living, emailed colleagues to say that the department’s Immediate Office of the Secretary wanted monthly updates.
“IOS [Immediate Office of the Secretary] gently reminded me to update EO 14019 Promoting Voting Access milestones this Friday, 12/3. I had thought tha[t] [REDACTED].”
The Administration for Community Living focuses on issues important to senior citizens and disabled Americans. The White House previously announced that the agency would be a “voting access hub.”
On Dec. 15, 2021, Perng sent another email to ACL staff.
“It is our favorite time of the month: IOS is looking for updates on these milestones by this Friday. Are there any changes to the following?” Perng wrote in part.
Perng emailed ACL colleagues on March 3, 2022, with another reminder.
“IOS is requesting a status update on the EO Promoting Voting Access milestones by tomorrow COB,” Perng wrote. She continued: “For example, I know that there are primaries underway. ACL had said we would share/retweet/repost promote grantees’ voting resources. Have grantees created any voting materials, PSAs, etc.?”
The Daily Signal obtained 159 pages of heavily redacted documents from the Administration for Community Living through a request submitted under the Freedom of Information Act, shedding some light on how the HHS agency is implementing Biden’s election order.
About three dozen pages of the records are from ACL’s “Administrative Priority Overview” and are almost entirely blacked out.
Because of the excessive redactions to the released documents, it’s not clear how “milestones” may be defined or whether any were accomplished.
Biden issued Executive Order 14019 in March 2021, requiring federal agencies to work on voter turnout.
Since that time, public records trickling out through requests under the Freedom of Information Act show that federal agencies partnered or met with numerous left-leaning nonprofit advocacy groups on the subject of getting out the vote. The groups include Demos, the Brennan Center for Justice, the Southern Poverty Law Center, the American Civil Liberties Union, the AFL-CIO, the Al Sharpton-founded National Action Network, and the George Soros-backed Open Society Policy Center.
In September 2021, the White House issued a press release explaining how federal agencies would boost voting.
“The Department of Health and Human Services’ Administration for Community Living will launch a new voting access hub to connect older adults and people with disabilities to information, tools and resources to help them understand and exercise their right to vote,” the press release says.
The only other HHS agency specified by the White House as implementing Biden’s order is the Indian Health Service, which The Daily Signal first reported is partnering with Demos and the ACLU.
It’s not clear from the unredacted information whether the Administration for Community Living is teaming with any overtly political groups.
The newly obtained records include correspondence dated March 11, 2022, from Michelle Bishop, voter access and engagement manager for the National Disability Rights Network, which advocates on behalf of the disabled.
Bishop’s email was to Ophelia McLain, program manager with ACL’s Administration on Disabilities, who was active in implementing the president’s order.
“As requested, I am sending an updated summary of trainings and resources planned for 2022,” Bishop told McClain.
Bishop wrote that the National Disability Rights Network was partnering with other groups—including Self Advocates Becoming Empowered, the National Association of the Deaf, and the National Federation for the Blind—on activities such as making videos and “providing plain language explanations of complicated election topics” such as primaries, the differences between open and closed primaries, and how ranked choice voting works.
Spokespersons for neither the HHS nor the ACL responded to The Daily Signal by publication.
Editor’s note: This piece has been updated to reflect that the Department of Health and Human Services was contacted for comment before publication.
The post EXCLUSIVE: HHS Chief Routinely Checked Progress of Biden Election-Meddling Directive, Records Show appeared first on The Daily Signal.
The top House Republican is warning that the Democratic Party is trying to jail its chief political rival before November’s election.
Appearing with Family Research Council President Tony Perkins on Saturday morning’s episode of “This Week on the Hill,” House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., declared, “Donald Trump is being targeted because of who he is. If he was not running for president again, I don’t think you’d see any of this barrage of prosecutions, these local district attorneys and state attorneys who are after him … .”
Referring to the myriad state and federal indictments leveled against former President Donald Trump over the past 15 months, Johnson added, “They have targeted him because he is soon to be officially the nominee of the Republican Party for president, and this is their only way to stop him.”
“Everybody around the country can see this for what it is, anybody who looks at what is happening objectively has to reach the same conclusion. They are targeting him because of who he is,” Johnson explained.
He continued, “And the real threat to this … is it is the weaponization of our system of justice itself. … You have to understand this is something that would undermine a very foundational principle of our country. The people have to trust that the justice system is fair, that there really is equal justice under law. And if we don’t have that, we lose something very important to maintain a constitutional republic.”
Perkins added, “The former president says it’s not just about him, but it’s what he represents, the people that he represents, the fact that he has stood up to the Left, to the media. That’s the reason he is the target.”
Johnson agreed: “I think he symbolizes a pushing back against that federal corruption and the Deep State and the bureaucracy and all the things that frustrate the American people. They see in Donald Trump someone who is unafraid to sort of crash through those barriers in a certain respect.”
He further noted, “I think that’s why he is such a threat to them, and that’s why they pulled out all the stops.”
Over the course of 2023, four criminal indictments, amounting to a total of 88 felony charges, were issued against Trump. The first, consisting of New York state charges, alleged that the former president had falsified business records. That trial is currently underway in Manhattan.
The Department of Justice indicted Trump last June for allegedly illegally keeping classified documents pertaining to national security—after having left the White House in 2021. A federal grand jury in Washington, D.C., then indicted Trump for allegedly attempting to “defraud the United States” by overturning the 2020 election results. Almost immediately afterward, Trump was indicted in Fulton County, Georgia, for alleged racketeering related to the 2020 election results.
“What they’re doing here really is a travesty of justice,” Johnson said of the Democrats’ campaign against Trump, which critics have characterized as “lawfare.”
“Very practically speaking, this was [Trump’s] fifth week of trial in Manhattan on this charge, a crime that they can’t even adequately define. Prosecutors passed on bringing these charges eight years ago. They did it now for political reasons, and they kept him off the campaign trail.”
Perkins noted that left-wing lawfare extends far beyond just Trump, pointing to the 57-month prison sentence handed down to pro-life activist Lauren Handy for blockading the entrance to a Washington, D.C., abortion facility in 2020.
Handy is reportedly the first person to be sentenced to prison under the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act, although the Biden administration’s Justice Department is actively prosecuting other pro-lifers, too. Johnson said that the Biden administration’s targeting of pro-lifers is an “instance of priorities being exactly in the wrong place.”
“They’re aggressively prosecuting people who are exercising their First Amendment freedom to talk about the sanctity of human life on a public sidewalk. And meanwhile, they catch and release dangerous criminals, persons who come across the border illegally, and people who are violent offenders multiple times over,” Johnson stated. “And yet they’re targeting people that have a different political viewpoint. I just think it’s such a blatant example of exactly what we’re talking about. And the people see this. They see a two-tiered system of justice, and that’s a real threat to us.”
“If you lose the rule of law, if you lose the foundational underpinnings of a constitutional republic, what you ultimately result with, again, is a return to tyranny, because the people who are in charge have abused their authority,” the speaker explained. “And we know that power corrupts, and as Lord Acton observed, absolute power corrupts absolutely. You have to have all these checks and balances. You have to have the separation of powers, and you have to have the maintenance of law and order.”
Recent polling suggests that a supermajority of Americans agree that the Biden administration is carrying out a lawfare campaign against the former president.
A March survey from McLaughlin and Associates found that nearly 70% of voters believe the slew of indictments against Trump are politically motivated, and almost 60% of voters (including close to 40% of Democrats) think [President Joe] Biden has played a role in the crusade against Trump. Additionally, 56% of voters (including a third of Democrats) said they believe that “Joe Biden wants to stop President Trump from winning the election by putting him in jail.”
The monthly Harvard CAPS/Harris polls have found some shifting over the past few months on whether voters would still support Trump if he were convicted on various charges, with voters typically being split 50-50 with a slight advantage in Trump’s favor, but the latest poll’s findings demonstrated that the flurry of lawsuits against the former president isn’t helping Biden’s popularity.
Originally published at WashingtonStand.com
The post ‘A Travesty of Justice’: House Speaker Dissects the Left’s ‘Lawfare’ Campaign Against Trump appeared first on The Daily Signal.
Biden administration officials circulated and discussed a memo authored by a coalition of liberal groups aimed at getting more college students to participate in elections as part of the Education Department’s presidentially ordered voter-registration efforts, newly surfaced emails show.
Groups that donated millions to elect Democrats and are funded by major liberal donors submitted a list of recommendations to the Education Department in 2021 outlining ways the department could get college students, a historically liberal demographic, to vote more, according to emails obtained by The Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project. [Heritage founded The Daily Signal in 2014.]
The memo recommended that the Education Department include a voter registration option on its college financial aid application, use resources to make students aware of vote-by-mail opportunities, and allow universities to use federal work-study to pay students for nonpartisan election work.
The coalition of groups sent its memo in response to President Joe Biden’s 2021 executive order directing federal agencies to promote voter registration, education, and participation, offering recommendations on how to implement it.
Nick Lee, deputy assistant secretary for higher education, shared the memo with Annmarie Weisman, another deputy assistant secretary, and Gregory Martin, another department official, emails show. Lee explained to Weisman and Martin that he had been discussing ways to implement Biden’s executive order with an Education Department policy director and that he was willing to speak further on the topic.
Lee also shared the memo with members of the Education Department’s Office of the General Counsel, again explaining that the department was in the process of finalizing responses to Biden’s voting executive order, emails show.
The Biden administration may have been receptive to at least one of the recommendations the coalition of left-of-center groups offered.
In April 2022, the Education Department clarified that universities could pay students with federal work-study funds to engage in election-related work. Although students may be compensated for voter registration work, they cannot be paid using federal funds “for work involving partisan or nonpartisan political activity, including party-affiliated voter registration activities, as this is expressly prohibited,” the department said.
In February, the Education Department expanded on the specific work that federal funds could cover, stating that “supporting broad-based get-out-the-vote activities, voter registration, providing voter assistance at a polling place or through a voter hotline or serving as a poll worker” were all acceptable.
Although Biden’s executive order stresses that agencies should tap “nonpartisan third-party organizations” to aid with voter registration efforts, the effects of registering more college students to vote could be a boon for the Democratic Party.
A September 2020 poll found that 70% of college students said they would vote for Biden in that year’s election, compared to just 18% who said they would vote for then-President Donald Trump. Strong turnout among college students in 2022 helped Democrats pull off a better-than-expected midterm election performance, NPR reported.
Heading into the November presidential election, Biden’s reelection campaign is seeking to mobilize college students.
The president held a 23-point lead over Trump among college students heading into the election, according to a Harvard Institute of Politics poll conducted in March.
The groups that sought to push the Education Department to mobilize more college voters themselves have ties to the Democratic Party.
The American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association, for instance, are both signatories of the memo and have spent millions of dollars to help elect Democrats through their political action committees, Federal Election Commission records show. Both groups endorsed Biden in the 2024 Democratic primary season and historically have supported the Democratic Party.
New America Foundation, which signed on to the memo through its education program, has received extensive support from the Soros family’s philanthropic network, pulling in millions since 2016, according to a grant database. George Soros himself has donated massive sums to Democrats and is one of the largest figures in the left-of-center philanthropic world.
The Voter Participation Center, another group that signed on to the memo, has received over $1 million from nonprofits managed by Arabella Advisors, tax filings show.
Arabella Advisors is a consultancy firm that manages a network of nonprofits that spend millions every year on efforts to help liberal groups and Democrats.
The Voter Participation Center on its website claims to work diligently to mobilize members of the “New American Majority,” which includes people of color and unmarried women, to register to vote and cast ballots.
Republicans have taken issue with the Biden administration’s approach to using federal resources to juice voter participation.
“We have concerns about the lack of constitutional and statutory authority for federal agencies to engage in any activity outside the agency’s authorized mission, including federal voting access and registration activities,” a May 13 letter from the House Oversight Committee sent to Office of Management and Budget Director Shalanda Young reads.
The Education Department, New America, the Voter Participation Center, the National Education Association, and the American Federation of Teachers didn’t immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s requests for comment.
Originally published by the Daily Caller News Foundation
The post Biden Education Department Shared Activists’ Memo on Mobilizing Dem-Leaning Voters appeared first on The Daily Signal.
Will we see a repeat this summer of the infamous 1968 Chicago Democratic National Convention that devolved into chaos and anarchy? This year’s convention is, like 1968, set to take place in Chicago and social unrest is percolating on the Left, to say the least.
In a recent interview on Fox News, Rep. Dean Phillips, D-Minn.—who challenged President Joe Biden in the Democratic Party presidential primary—said that given our current course of events, history is likely to repeat itself.
“I’m afraid this is looking awfully like 1968 with a lot of anger and angst and disenfranchisement that I think are going to play out on TV this summer, and it’s going to be awfully contentious,” Phillips said on Wednesday.
In 1968, anti-Vietnam War and various other far-left protesters descended on the Windy City to protest the party’s presidential nominating convention.
Illinois delegates hold a banner touting Chicago Mayor Richard Daley on the convention floor on Aug. 29, 1968, the final day of the 1968 Democratic National Convention, held at the International Amphitheatre in Chicago. (Photo: Pictorial Parade/Archive Photos/Getty Images)
The situation escalated when then-Chicago Mayor Richard Daley, a Democrat, had enough and unleashed the Chicago Police Department on the protesters.
The media at the time strongly criticized the Chicago Police Department, but many Americans strongly sympathized with the authorities, who desperately sought to restore order. The events of the convention likely swayed a lot of voters concerned about violent radicals taking over their cities. Many in the media sided with the protesters, while the American people largely sided with the police.
Democratic Party delegates hold placards at the 1968 Democratic National Convention, held at the International Amphitheatre in Chicago in August of that year. (Photo: Archive Photos/Getty Images)
The chaos was likely one of the reasons Republican Richard Nixon defeated Democrat Hubert Humphrey in November 1968. Preelection chaos created by the Left led to the “silent majority” delivering Nixon a resounding victory.
Given the protests we’ve seen across the country in recent months and the pressure the Left is putting on Democrats over Israel’s war in Gaza, it’s hard not to think that this year’s Democratic convention could see similar protests.
Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson has said that safety is a “top priority” for the convention, but he’s hardly the law-and-order mayor that Daley was. In fact, Johnson has supported defunding the police, has openly sympathized with the anti-Israel protesters, and even made it clear that he’s nothing like Daley.
As my colleague Tony Kinnett noted, Johnson has said he’s a different kind of Democrat. In a certain sense, Johnson’s attitude is a sign that in the long-term, the New Left factions that protested in Chicago in 1968 “won.” (More on that later.)
While prominent Democrats and members of the media insist that 2024 won’t be like 1968, it’s difficult not to see that a storm is potentially brewing.
There have already been significant protests at Chicago universities, pro-Palestine groups have sprung up around the city (some spouting chants like “Death to America!”), and a large group of anti-Israel protesters raised a Palestinian flag near where the Democratic convention is set to take place Aug. 19-22.
There’s no question that Democrats are already getting nervous about what might happen.
The 1968 convention was a seminal moment in both the history of the Democratic Party and the United States. It signaled a long-term takeover of the party and various other institutions by the New Left.
Given that the comparisons will continue to be made, it’s worth looking back at what happened 56 years ago.
In 1968, President Lyndon Johnson had elected not to seek a second term despite winning a landslide in 1964. Even though the Vietnam War had been conducted by Democratic presidents, the party had turned in an antiwar direction. This became a flashpoint for a party that had become increasingly divided.
The common narrative of the Chicago Democratic National Convention in the years that followed was that it was a “mostly peaceful” protest of the Vietnam War, broken up by a brutish and out-of-control Chicago police force.
That’s not exactly accurate.
The reality is that the well-organized protesters were looking to pick a fight to bolster their cause, as historian Stephen F. Hayward described in his book, “The Age of Reagan: The Fall of the Old Liberal Order, 1964-1980.”
“The Chicago police reacted to a calculated provocation,” Hayward wrote. “And, like the case of fighting schoolchildren, where the second child to strike a blow is the one usually caught by the teacher, the media caught the police reaction and attributed it as the cause of the violence.”
Hayward explained how plans to disrupt the convention began as early as December 1967 and were the product of three main groups.
Those groups were the Youth International Party, or the “Yippies”; the National Mobilization to End the War in Vietnam, or “Mobe”; and the Students for a Democratic Society, the SDS. The factions had slightly different agendas for what they wanted to pull off in Chicago.
The Mobe generally wanted a peaceful protest to take place, though it wasn’t exactly averse to causing mayhem—and potentially, violence.
“It would be a mistake to think that the fight against the war can be won in the ballot box,” said Mobe leader David Dellinger. “It still has to be won on the streets.”
The Yippies wanted something more like a giant street festival. They announced a plan to put LSD in the Chicago water supply. Chlorine treatment of the water would have neutralized any threat to the Chicago population, but the Chicago police took the threat seriously enough to put officers in front of the city’s filtration plants.
The Students for a Democratic Society were looking for a fight. Hayward noted that the reasons the SDS was looking to ratchet up violence is that they saw liberal antiwar presidential candidates like Robert F. Kennedy and Eugene McCarthy as a threat.
For leaders of this movement and others on the far Left, the entire American system needed to be overthrown. They weren’t looking for peace in Vietnam; they were looking to overturn the American way of life and government.
While the three factions plotted different tactics to achieve their goals, they were nevertheless united behind a larger agenda.
They wanted to sow chaos as much as possible so that they could eventually shove their more moderate cohorts on the Left aside and take the reins of power. They wanted to agitate, disrupt, and put the most pressure possible on Democrats to bend to their will.
Humphrey frequently mentioned on the campaign trail that he wanted to bring the “politics of joy” to the country. The activists were having none of it.
“We are coming to Chicago to vomit on the ‘politics of joy,’” SDS leader Tom Hayden wrote before the convention, “to expose the secret decisions, upset the nightclub orgies, and face the Democratic Party with its illegitimacy and criminality.”
Given the other events of 1968, it isn’t hard to see why the Democratic convention became a mess in hindsight.
Two riots had already taken place in Chicago earlier in the year. Civil rights leader the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was fatally shot in April and Robert Kennedy was assassinated in June.
Many college campuses had been in turmoil in the spring. Student protesters had practically shut down Columbia University and occupied Hamilton Hall before being cleared out by the New York Police Department in late April. Yes, I’m still talking about 1968 here, not 2024.
By August, the mood was still deeply unsettled. The Democratic race came down to Vice President Hubert Humphrey and Sen. Edmund Muskie of Maine. While the party had conceded a great deal to the antiwar wing, it wasn’t nearly enough to appease the activists.
There were late attempts to move the convention to Miami, but they didn’t come to fruition. Johnson, who remained a powerful influence in the party, was alleged to have said that “Miami is not an American city.” The show went on.
The 1968 convention was set to take place for four days in Chicago’s International Amphitheater, starting on Aug. 26. Before the events kicked off, protesters began gathering in the city.
Daley was hesitant to issue permits to the protesters, but consented to let them gather miles from the convention in Lincoln Park. He then changed his mind and ordered Chicago police to implement an 11 p.m. curfew.
Again, while many of the about 12,000 protesters who showed up in the city likely wanted to conduct a peaceful protest, the organizers knew that it would be easy to manipulate the situation to initiate violence.
More from Hayward:
[H]ard-core leaders of the Left knew it would be easy to manipulate the situation into a violent confrontation with police—and be able to blame the police.
Chicago’s police were notoriously aggressive toward protesters and rioters. [Daley] had famously ordered his police to “shoot to kill” arsonists and looters during the riots that followed King’s assassination in April. (It should be noted, however, that no one was shot during the convention riots.)
Once the protesters had been pushed out of Lincoln Park, all hell began to break loose as the protesters violently clashed with police, who used tear gas and billy clubs to disperse the crowd.
It wasn’t just police clashing with the protesters. Daley brought thousands of National Guardsmen into the city, too, with the governor’s consent.
Violence continued to ramp up around the city as the protesters continued to clash with police, and members of the media got caught up in the melee.
Aug. 28 saw the most significant day of violence at the so-called “Battle of Michigan Avenue,” which was televised live. That night, Humphrey secured the nomination as police clashed with protesters who had attempted to march on the convention.
Authorities put up barricades around the convention site and tightened up security even further for the final day of the convention, where protesters twice tried to get into the convention hall, but were rebuffed.
Hundreds of protesters and police officers suffered injuries during the scrums and authorities arrested more than 650 people.
Though many prominent Democrats blamed Daley for the violence that took place, Daley naturally disagreed.
He argued that calling on the police and National Guard was necessary to suppress people who were intentionally creating violence and disorder.
Daley gave a speech addressing what had happened.
“In the heat of emotion and riot, some policemen may have overreacted,” he said. “But to judge the entire police department by the alleged action of a few would be just as unfair as to judge our entire young generation by the action of this mob.”
Daley further said that while he didn’t condone any violent actions, he also would not permit a “group of violent terrorists to menace the lives of millions of people, destroy the purpose of this national convention, or take over the streets of Chicago.”
Chicago Mayor Richard Daley confers with President John F. Kennedy, a fellow Democrat, in the Oval Office of the White House on July 11, 1962. Daley was still mayor six years later during the 1968 Democratic National Convention. (Photo: Arnie Sachs/CNP/Getty Images)
SDS leader Hayden said that the result of the Chicago protests was “100% victory in propaganda” and said he hoped that what happened in Chicago would be repeated around the country whenever Humphrey showed up at a campaign stop.
From the perspective of the New Left activists, the chaos was seen as a victory. The fact that several prominent members of the media were injured in the events was a bonus that would lead to sympathy and positive coverage for their cause, or so they said.
But attitudes around the country were hardly universal. Most Americans sided with Daley and the police over the activists, and many thought the police should have been even more proactive.
“A poll taken shortly after the riots found that 71 percent of Americans thought Chicago’s security measures were justified; 57 percent thought the police had not used excessive force, while 25 percent thought the police had not used enough force,” Hayward wrote.
In a sense, both the activists and their most stalwart opponents benefited politically from the Chicago convention.
The moderate wing of the Democratic Party continued to lose power and influence. The party was forever changed by what had transpired, and popular narratives took hold that the activists were on the right side of history, while the authorities were simply reactionaries.
On the flip side, a rising coalition on the Right—fed up with the urban chaos and intentional agitation—would deliver the White House in a landslide to Nixon.
The post The Truth About the 1968 Democrat Convention appeared first on The Daily Signal.
President Joe Biden, who wears bespoke sneakers to prevent embarrassing collapses and whose command of the English language rivals that of most kindergartners, is in bad political shape.
It is unsurprising that Democrats have resorted to some of the slimiest tactics imaginable to derail President Donald Trump’s comeback bid and push their senile octogenarian across the November finish line. Properly skeptical of their chances to topple Trump in a fair mano-a-mano, the Democrat-lawfare complex in 2023 conjured up four separate criminal prosecutions—two federal probes and two state probes—targeting the 45th president. After all, if you can’t beat him, then … prosecute and incarcerate him! All in the name of “our democracy,” naturally.
Suffice it to say that the Democrat-lawfare complex’s brazen, cynical attempt to subvert our constitutional order in the name of saving it has not gone according to plan.
In Washington, D.C., Special Counsel Jack Smith’s crown-jewel case against Trump, pertaining to the 2020 presidential election and the Jan. 6 jamboree at the U.S. Capitol, has been interrupted by the U.S. Supreme Court. The justices stepped in to assess the thorny constitutional question of the scope of immunity from criminal prosecution for former presidents, and a decision is not expected until late June.
The most likely result is a mixed opinion that holds some “core” Article II presidential functions are immune from post-presidency prosecution, but other acts are not. This would require a remand to the trial court for fact-finding to determine which legal category the acts in Smith’s indictment fall into. That trial court finding could then be appealed, too. There is virtually no chance Smith can wrap this all up before November.
In Florida, Smith’s other federal case has not been more successful. The Florida prosecution, pertaining to Trump’s post-presidency handling of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate, had at least some potential on the legal merits. But Smith wildly overplayed his hand by charging Trump with violating the controversial World War I-era Espionage Act, and the proceedings have frequently been set back due to the strenuous demands of the Classified Information Procedures Act—a 1980 statute first introduced in the Senate, ironically, by then-Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del.
Recently, Judge Aileen Cannon indefinitely postponed the trial start date, which had initially been scheduled for May 20. There is again little to no chance Smith can reach a jury before November.
The case in Fulton County, Georgia, which once seemed the most perilous of them all due to Georgia’s sprawling Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, the far-left Atlanta jury pool, and the potential for high-profile prosecution witnesses, has gone totally off the rails. Ever since January, the only questions in the case have not been substantive legal issues such as whether Trump oversaw a grand conspiracy to “overturn an election,” but tabloid fodder such as whether Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis and her illicit extramarital lover and appointed special prosecutor, Nathan Wade, are too compromised to bring the case.
The trial court’s finding that only one of them must recuse is now pending before a Georgia appellate court, and it is likely the Supreme Court of Georgia will weigh in, too. This case isn’t reaching a jury before November, either.
That leaves the ongoing drama in New York City, where a literal porn “star” (Stormy Daniels) and a convicted felon (Michael Cohen) are aiding the George Soros-funded prosecutor’s case of … well, he hasn’t exactly told us what it is. We surmise the case entails alleged New York State fraudulent bookkeeping charges in furtherance of a federal campaign finance law violation—which doesn’t even fall into the local district attorney’s jurisdiction.
The prosecution is about to rest its case, and we don’t even know for sure what the actual black-letter legal case is. On Thursday, the “star witness” convicted felon’s testimony was so bad that far-left CNN anchor Anderson Cooper remarked: “I think if I was a juror in this case watching that, I would think this guy is making it up as he’s going along.”
Brutal.
The Democrats’ strategy is failing. But it is up to the American people to make them pay for it.
COPYRIGHT 2024 CREATORS.COM
The Daily Signal publishes a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Heritage Foundation.
The post Will Democrats Pay a Price for Their Crumbling Lawfare Strategy Against Trump? appeared first on The Daily Signal.
The Department of Justice under President Joe Biden failed to comply with federal protections when suspending whistleblowers’ security clearances, according to a memo released Tuesday by the Office of the Inspector General.
The inspector general found that the Justice Department doesn’t give employees a way to appeal suspended security clearances, which does not align with a federal regulation updated in 2022, according to its memo. Additionally, the inspector general found that the DOJ under Biden failed to provide employees a reasonable opportunity to stay on the federal payroll if they think the department suspended their clearance to retaliate against them for protected whistleblower activity.
“Existing DOJ practice is inconsistent with the intent of the federal statute,” the inspector general’s office announced in a news release.
House Republicans accused the FBI in a May 18, 2023, report of retaliating against FBI special agent Stephen Friend, FBI special agent Garret O’Boyle, and FBI staff operations specialist Marcus Allen for speaking out against the agency. O’Boyle said being placed on unpaid suspension by the FBI left his family effectively homeless.
The Office of Inspector General said it unearthed these concerns after receiving complaints from “employees alleging that their security clearances were suspended in retaliation for protected whistleblowing activity.”
Empower Oversight President Tristan Leavitt, who represents Allen through his organization, stated on social media that the memo was prompted in part by Allen’s complaint.
? This morning @JusticeOIG released a memo citing concerns about DOJ's compliance with whistleblower protections for employees with a security clearance. The review was in part prompted by the whistleblower complaint of @EMPOWR_us's client, Marcus Allen. https://t.co/Xg0u8bSCGM
— Tristan Leavitt (@tristanleavitt) May 14, 2024
Though the DOJ provides employees with an appeals channel if their security clearance is revoked, no such path exists for employees whose clearance is suspended pending a final decision on whether or not to revoke it, according to the Office of Inspector General. The inspector general identifies this as a problem because the law requires the DOJ to provide a path for whistleblowers to challenge suspensions lasting longer than a year as retaliatory.
Since the DOJ lacks a way for employees who suspect retaliation to contest suspensions if they go on for longer than a year, the agency “does not meet the requirements” required by law, according to the inspector general’s memo.
Losing security clearance often means DOJ employees can no longer do their jobs, seeing as jobs in the department can require that employees have clearance in order to perform their duties, according to the memo. This means, in addition to having their clearance suspended, these employees are often suspended from their jobs without pay.
Federal law mandates that individuals who believe the DOJ suspended their security clearance in retaliation for whistleblowing must be permitted, as far as it is practical, “to retain their government employment status” during the course of the suspension, according to the inspector general.
The Office of Inspector General also found that the DOJ’s existing policies create “the risk that the security process could be misused, as part of an inappropriate effort to encourage an employee to resign.”
The DOJ did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
Originally published by the Daily Caller News Foundation
The post Inspector General: Biden DOJ Broke Law on FBI Whistleblower Protection appeared first on The Daily Signal.
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.
— President Biden (@POTUS) May 10, 2024
Not just during championships. But all year round.
Let's grow women’s sports and continue inspiring the nation.
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:
— Kristen Waggoner (@KWaggonerADF) May 10, 2024
Keep men out of women’s sports. pic.twitter.com/FZ7FP4bELn
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.
The post At WNBA Ceremony, Biden Urges America to Support the Women’s Sports He’s Destroying appeared first on The Daily Signal.
An agency of the District of Columbia held a training session last month to teach illegal immigrants and other noncitizens how to vote, according to documents obtained by the watchdog group Judicial Watch.
News of the training session held by the local government in the nation’s capital comes as House Republicans push a bill—with the backing of Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La.—to require proof of U.S. citizenship to register to vote.
The D.C. Board of Elections conducted the April 10 event, called “Non-Citizen Voting Education Virtual Training.”
Judicial Watch obtained 13 pages of the training session’s PowerPoint presentation through a request under the Freedom of Information Act. On one slide, the presentation says:
Non-U.S. citizen residents can vote in District elections for the offices of Mayor, Attorney General, Chairman or member(s) of the D.C. Council, member(s) of the State Board of Education, or Advisory Neighborhood Commissioner(s) Non-U.S. citizen residents cannot vote for Federal Offices.
The Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project previously raised concerns about noncitizen voting in the District of Columbia. (Heritage established The Daily Signal in 2014.)
Washington, DC’s Voter Guide for Illegal Aliens is up! pic.twitter.com/COeIpOba5w
— Oversight Project (@OversightPR) May 1, 2024
The District of Columbia is joined by local governments in California, Maryland, and Vermont in allowing foreign citizens to vote in local elections. Federal law allows only U.S. citizens to vote in federal elections.
State courts blocked New York City from allowing noncitizen voting there.
“Illegal aliens and noncitizens should not vote in any elections,” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said. “That Congress allows the votes of citizens to be legally stolen by illegal aliens in our nation’s capital is inexcusable.”
The District of Columbia amended its election code last year to allow noncitizens, including illegal immigrants, to vote for local D.C. offices.
As noted in my book “The Myth of Voter Suppression,” Democrats long have sought to change election laws to gain a political advantage. These noncitizen voting laws mimic a tactic used by New York City’s legendary Tammany Hall and other political machines that controlled big city politics.
The District’s presentation explains the qualifications for registering to vote when someone isn’t a U.S. citizen.
“To register to vote in the District of Columbia as a non-citizen, you must: Be at least 17 years old and 18 years old by the next General Election; Maintain residency in the District of Columbia for at least 30 days prior to the election in which you intend to vote; Not claim voting residence or the right to vote in any state, territory, or country; Not been found by a court to be legally incompetent to vote,” the presentation says.
Neither the D.C. Board of Elections nor the office of D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser, a Democrat, responded to The Daily Signal’s request for comment on this report.
The post DC Holds Training Sessions for Noncitizens to Vote appeared first on The Daily Signal.
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.
The post 18 States Fight Federal Trans Agenda on Pronouns, Bathrooms appeared first on The Daily Signal.
The House Oversight and Accountability Committee is probing a controversial Biden administration executive order tasking the federal government with mobilizing voting groups it says are underrepresented.
In a letter obtained by RealClearPolitics, Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., has requested that Office of Management and Budget Director Shalanda Young produce a slew of documents and information concerning the development and implementation of President Joe Biden’s sweeping “Executive Order on Promoting Accessing to Voting” no later than May 28 and a staff-level briefing by May 20.
The demand by the chairman of the House Oversight Committee signals an escalation in Republican lawmakers’ efforts to combat an effort they say may be unlawful, if not unconstitutional.
The administration characterizes its efforts as a remedy to “discriminatory policies and other obstacles … disproportionally affect[ing]” black, non-English-speaking, handicapped, and other minority voters. Executive Order 14019 calls on all federal agencies to develop and execute corrective plans to “promote voter registration and voter participation.”
It instructs officials government-wide to consider “soliciting and facilitating approved, nonpartisan third-party organizations … to provide voter registration services on agency premises.”
Seeing the order as potentially enabling “the executive branch to circumvent the legislative process,” Comer is asking Young to clarify the “constitutional or statutory authority the President relied on,” as well as all “White House and OMB documents and communications” pertaining to the drafting of it.
In past oversight letters, including ones delivered in June 2022 by then-ranking Republicans on various committees, including Comer, members have also raised concerns that officials could violate the Hatch Act prohibiting their engagement in political activities in carrying out the order.
Senate Republicans have also questioned whether the act violates the Antideficiency Act, which precludes federal agencies from using funds “for a purpose that Congress did not explicitly authorize,” namely “voter mobilization.”
“Overreach by the federal government often leads to confusion and inconsistencies,” Comer also stated. He cites a recent letter from Mississippi Secretary of State Michael Watson to Attorney General Merrick Garland to illustrate this issue.
The order mandates that relevant agencies seek to ensure “access to voter registration for eligible individuals in federal custody.”
To satisfy that charge, the Magnolia State official notes that the U.S. Marshals Service is modifying contracts and/or intergovernmental agreements with jails “to provide voter registration materials and facilitate voting by mail,” and likewise that the Justice Department is working to “facilitate voter registration and mail voting for individuals in the custody of the Bureau of Prisons.”
He says these efforts create “numerous opportunities for ineligible prisoners to be registered to vote in Mississippi.” Illegal aliens, Watson warns, may be among those receiving information on how to register to vote.
The Biden administration issued Executive Order 14019 in March 2021. Despite a raft of oversight requests from House Republicans of agencies within their respective committee jurisdictions, those agencies have largely withheld the strategic plans they were tasked with crafting and implementing, and information regarding the putatively nonpartisan groups with which they have coordinated.
The White House has rebuffed RealClearInvestigations in its efforts to solicit details about an order that Republicans characterize as little more than a taxpayer-funded Democrat get-out-the-vote effort.
As RealClearInvestigations has previously reported, the Biden administration has sought to drive voter registration through agencies as diverse as the departments of Labor and Housing and Urban Development via job training centers, public housing authorities, and child nutrition programs. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services has issued guidance calling for the agency to register voters at naturalization ceremonies.
The Department of Education has blessed the use of “federal work-study funds to pay students for “supporting broad-based get-out-the-vote activities, voter registration,” and other activities.
In January, over two dozen Pennsylvania legislators filed a federal lawsuit challenging the executive order. The Foundation for Government Accountability—which has litigated with the Biden administration to pry loose documents concerning the order—submitted an amicus brief supportive of the suit, asserting that the agencies’ efforts have one thing in common: “They provide government welfare benefits and other services to groups of voters the vast majority of which have historically voted Democrat.”
Republicans’ concerns over the order extend to the involvement of the third-party groups with which agencies were to consider coordinating. The order itself was built on a blueprint from progressive think-tank Democrats. In a since-deleted but still archived analysis, the outfit estimates that if fully implemented, the order could generate 3.5 million new or updated voter registrations annually—a significant figure given that recent presidential elections have been determined by thousands of votes across a few states.
Democrats as well as the American Civil Liberties Union have reportedly worked to implement the directive. Documents obtained by The Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project and released earlier this month show that at a July 2021 listening session convened by the Biden administration, left-leaning activist groups encouraged some of the practices federal agencies would ultimately implement to carry out the directive, for example, in targeting prospective voters in prisons and at naturalization ceremonies. (The Daily Signal was foundation by The Heritage Foundation in 2014.)
“Every participant whose party affiliation or political donation history could be identified by the Oversight Project was identified as a Democrat except for one Green Party member,” the report noted.
While the participants suggested efforts to target constituencies—including criminals, immigrants, low-income families, including those in public housing, and Native Americans—the Oversight Project observed that “There is no corresponding evidence of efforts [to] increase voter access and education in likely Republican constituencies.”
As RealClearInvestigations has also recently reported, Democrats have made purportedly nonpartisan voter registration targeting groups that vote disproportionately Democrat a linchpin of their plans to prevail in recent election cycles.
“If the Biden Administration wants to use taxpayer-funded buildings to allow ‘nonpartisan third-party organizations’ to engage in voter registration,” Comer writes, “then the American people deserve to know who these organizations are.”
The Oversight Committee’s pursuit of information regarding the order comes in the wake of the House Small Business Committee’s recent escalation of its own probe of the order.
It recently subpoenaed two members of the Small Business Administration who refused to sit for transcribed interviews regarding an unprecedented partnership the agency inked with the Michigan Department of State. Under the relevant memorandum of understanding, among other things, state officials may conduct in-person voter registration at administration small business outreach events.
Fox News reported that the Small Business Committee found that nearly all, “22 out of 25 such outreach events, have taken place in counties with the highest population of Democratic National Committee target demographics.”
In March, a federal judge dismissed the Pennsylvania legislators’ case challenging the executive order on grounds of standing.
In late April, the legislators took their case to the Supreme Court, filing a petition for writ of certiorari and motioning for expedited consideration of their request in hopes the nation’s highest court will rule favorably on the matter of standing prior to the 2024 election.
This article was originally published by RealClearPolitics and made available via RealClearWire.
The post House Oversight Committee Probing Biden Voter Mobilization Order appeared first on The Daily Signal.
Having served on three Manhattan juries, I would not be surprised if the 12 men and women hearing New York v. Donald J. Trump acquit him of all charges.
During two civil actions and one criminal case, my fellow jurors were serious, professional, and movingly civic-minded. A quiet, solemn patriotism infused our deliberations. Several jurors said that we should respect the justice system because, someday, we might need it to respect us.
My first case was a medical-malpractice lawsuit involving a botched abortion. We empathized with a woman wounded by her doctors, but her lawyer did not prove negligence. So, we backed her physicians.
“But we’ve got to give her something,” one juror insisted.
Others instantly rebuked him.
“That’s not how it works!” one said. “I feel sorry for her, too,” another admitted. “But her lawyer never made her case.”
So, we sent the plaintiff home without a penny.
Next, we deliberated intensely for almost three days before concluding that a Harlem drug counselor never demonstrated his defamation-of-character claim against his employers. My sympathetic pleas went unheeded, and he left empty-handed.
Finally, in her closing argument, a criminal prosecutor displayed a CD-ROM of a police dispatcher’s “Be on the lookout” announcement after an armed robbery. When we asked the judge to play that recording, he told us that it was not in evidence.
Disgusted by this prosecutorial deception, we instantly and angrily acquitted the defendants. Minutes later, as foreman, I proudly announced our verdict in court.
These three cases confirm that Manhattan juries are sober and perfectly capable of fairness.
That is good news for Trump.
A jury of levelheaded Manhattanites would appreciate these facts that verify the profound vacuity and fundamental unfairness of District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s “case” against Trump:
“The Commission has exclusive jurisdiction over civil enforcement,” the memo says.
Nowhere does this federal rule grant local prosecutors authority to enforce federal election laws. Thus, Bragg’s case is a shack built atop a cloud of helium.
With 48% of registered voters telling Reuters-Ipsos last month that Trump’s Kafkaesque cases are “excessive and politically motivated” (41% disagree) even a Manhattan jury could scrap Bragg’s contraption.
My memories of jury duty, including within the Stalinesque building in which Trump is being persecuted, tell me that deliberating jurors could think, “I won’t vote for Trump. But I cannot convict him beyond a reasonable doubt in a shaky case about actions that are lurid, but legal.”
If just one juror agrees, this case will end with a hung jury. A second trial would be unlikely before Election Day.
And if “lurid, but legal” reflects the opinions of 12 of my fellow Manhattanites—who tend to be tough, but fair—then Trump will be acquitted on all charges and go back to where he belongs: The campaign trail.
The Daily Signal publishes a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Heritage Foundation.
The post Could a Manhattan Jury Acquit Trump? appeared first on The Daily Signal.
FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL—A foreign national named Paul registered to vote at a local office of the Massachusetts Registry of Motor Vehicles and records show that he voted, although he says his American wife voted after being accidentally checked in under his name.
Another noncitizen, Najib, also was registered to vote at a motor vehicles office, and his name was discovered on the voter rolls after a year, but he hadn’t voted in that time.
In these and other cases, the city of Boston flagged the noncitizens and removed them from voter registration lists.
In fact, the largest city in New England—although commonly viewed as a liberal bastion—could serve as a national model on this aspect of election integrity, according to new findings by Public Interest Legal Foundation, a conservative watchdog group.
“In Boston, voter registration records disclosed to PILF demonstrate that Boston and other Massachusetts municipal systems—although not perfect—are a good example for how other states could tackle the noncitizen voting question,” says the report, first provided to The Daily Signal.
Public Interest Legal Foundation’s findings come as Congress considers requiring proof of citizenship for voting in federal elections and another bill to restore a citizenship question to the U.S. census form.
“We are not looking at this through an ideological lens so much as a data lens,” J. Christian Adams, president of the Public Interest Legal Foundation, told The Daily Signal. “This illustrates how this population data can be used by states to help in election administration.”
Adams noted that Massachusetts is among a few states that conduct their own census, or population tally, outside the census conducted by the U.S. government every 10 years.
The proof-of-citizenship legislation is not likely to pass the Democrat-led Senate, but at least in this narrow area, Massachusetts provides an example for other states on the issue of foreign citizens listed on U.S. voter registration rolls, Adams said.
“Rather than reimagining the future, states should take this data tool that Massachusetts uses and apply it,” he said.
Although every Democrat in the House recently voted against restoring a citizenship question to the census, Massachusetts law requires an annual census, or “annual resident listing,” that includes questions about citizenship status and voter registration and is used by local governments.
“Any registered voter who fails to complete the annual survey is warned that their voting status will be changed to INACTIVE until they comply,” says the report by Public Interest Legal Foundation, which is narrowly focused on tracking citizenship.
Overall, The Heritage Foundation’s Election Integrity Scorecard ranks Massachusetts as 45th out of 50 states. (The Heritage Foundation launched The Daily Signal in 2014.)
The study by Public Interest Legal Foundation concludes that Boston’s voter registration system manages to “catch and cancel foreign nationals listed throughout the roll on a roughly two-year churn.”
“Unfortunately, a significant percentage of these disclosed records show that votes are still cast and counted within those years before discovery,” the report says.
The Boston city government this year provided information to Public Interest Legal Foundation that showed the city canceled voter registrations of 70 noncitizens. Most canceled registrations occurred in 2016 and 2017, with 13 in each year.
On average, foreign citizens were registered to vote for two years before being discovered and dropped from the rolls. But the longest known period was 24 years, and the earliest known year it occurred was 1995.
“Roughly 18% of Boston registrants were mailed confirmation notices prior to a reclassification to inactive status during the period,” the foundation’s report says. “Also, during this time, about 13% of Boston registrants were shed from the voter roll for reasons such as relocation, inactivity, and death.”
The report also points to other specific examples, such as a noncitizen named Hai who was registered to vote for a year and a half before Boston removed him, and Fred, who was registered for two years before being removed. Neither voted and both were registered at a local motor vehicles office.
A pattern of ineligible voters being registered at motor vehicle offices is a national problem that can be traced back to the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, popularly known as the “motor voter law,” which allows someone to register to vote while getting a driver’s license.
“Foreign nationals are reflexively offered applications to vote and they unwittingly accept,” Public Interest Legal Foundation’s report says, adding:
The 24 states plus D.C. that have automatic motor voter [registration], meaning they are not giving the immigrant a chance to decline registration, exacerbate the problem. States giving driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants increase traffic to DMVs. States with higher amounts of legal immigration mean even more driver’s licenses or state IDs are needed for daily life (and increases the risk of screening immigrants for voter registration).
The post EXCLUSIVE: Here’s Where This Blue State Could Be a National Model for Election Integrity appeared first on The Daily Signal.
In just nine years, the oldest Gen Xers will reach Social Security’s normal retirement age of 67. But they will have a rude awakening when they learn that the program’s trust fund is empty, leaving it able to pay out only as much in benefits as it takes from the paychecks of those then working.
That’s straight from the Social Security trustees 2024 report. It also notes that without congressional action, benefits will have to be cut by 21% across the board—including for those already retired—beginning in 2033.
For the average beneficiary, who receives about $22,000 a year from Social Security, that 21% cut will translate into a loss of $4,600 per year. As Social Security benefits will grow faster than payroll taxes for the foreseeable future, benefit cuts will reach 31% at the end of the trustees’ 75-year projections.
Simply maintaining currently scheduled Social Security benefits would require large tax increases. The program’s trustees estimate that payroll taxes would have to rise immediately from 12.4% to 15.7%, adding $2,500 to the median household’s annual Social Security taxes.
Even that projected hike may be too conservative. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that a 17.5% tax, or an extra $3,800 per year for the median family, is necessary to maintain current Social Security benefits.
Such high tax rates are a far cry from Social Security’s original intent. The program started out as a 2% tax, and its founders promised it would never take more than 6% of workers’ paychecks.
And for a program that currently replaces about 40% of workers’ earnings during retirement (and will decline to 32% beginning in 2033), the current 12.4% tax is a hefty price to pay. If workers invested that amount in a conservative mix of stocks and bonds, they should have enough at retirement to replace at least 75% of their earnings.
Even as Social Security was never intended to be the sole source of income in retirement, its rising taxes have made it increasingly difficult, particularly for lower- and middle-income workers, to save for retirement.
In fact, Social Security’s growing size and scope could be exacerbating wealth inequality because the hard truth is that Social Security is not a savings program, and workers have no ownership of the Social Security taxes they pay.
Despite Social Security’s original intent to be a predominantly prefunded and effectively a forced-savings program, it now functions as a pure intergenerational transfer program. That happened because Social Security’s benefits increased more than its tax hikes.
In every year since 2011, Social Security has paid out more in benefits than it has received in tax revenues. This means that workers’ payroll tax “contributions” aren’t saved and don’t earn a positive rate of return over time.
Although the formula that determines retirees’ benefits is based on what they paid in Social Security taxes, their actual benefits come directly from younger workers’ paychecks. After 2033, retirees’ benefits will be entirely dependent on how much future lawmakers are willing to extract from workers’ paychecks.
The fact that Social Security taxes aren’t saved makes the program a bad deal for most Americans. It can also exacerbate wealth inequality among low-income and minority Americans who have lower life expectancies.
One out of every four black men dies between the ages of 45 and 64, having paid tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars in Social Security taxes. But because they have no ownership of their contributions, they and their family members receive little or nothing in return.
What could have been a $350,000 retirement account that a low-income worker would have to pass on to his family is often just a $255 death payment instead.
With less than a decade left before Social Security runs out of money and automatic 21% benefit cuts ensue, lawmakers must act now to prevent insolvency and to improve the program for future generations.
Some commonsense solutions include gradually shifting to a universal benefit based on years of work instead of total earnings, automatically updating the program’s eligibility age to align with changes in life expectancy, and using more accurate statistics to adjust benefits.
These reforms would translate into bigger paychecks for all Americans by allowing Social Security’s tax rate to decline over time.
Moreover, if coupled with a personal ownership option, Social Security reform could help more Americans build wealth that could increase their retirement incomes and provide a leg up to help their children and grandchildren pursue goals like education, homeownership, or starting a small business.
Whatever lawmakers do, they must act soon. Time isn’t on our side.
Distributed by Tribune News Service
The post Someone’s Going to Have to Pay a Lot for Your Social Security appeared first on The Daily Signal.
FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL—The White House and its Office of Management and Budget instructed federal agencies to use a “template” for determining the cost of implementing President Joe Biden’s executive order to encourage voter participation, according to government emails obtained by The Daily Signal.
Critics use the term “Bidenbucks” to refer to the president’s controversial order from 2021, which directs federal agencies such as the U.S. Department of Agriculture to get involved in elections.
Several members of Congress contend that Biden’s order on turning out the vote for elections could violate the Antideficiency Act, a law that has three parts. It prohibits federal employees from obligating tax dollars not authorized by Congress, prohibits officials from not spending money as appropriated by Congress, and prohibits agencies from accepting voluntary service from individuals.
Biden’s controversial Executive Order 14019 requires federal agencies to participate in voter registration activities and help third-party organizations perform those activities on agency premises.
Potentially, this could involve spending government funds, contracting with third parties for the payment of those funds, or accepting voluntary services by these “approved” third-party organizations such as Demos.
Biden’s order appears to violate at least two provisions of the Antidefieicncy Act, said Stewart Whitson, senior director of federal affairs at the Foundation for Government Accountability, a conservative watchdog group, told The Daily Signal.
But, Whitson added, to determine whether the Biden administration is violating that law, it’s necessary to know where the money is coming from, where it’s going, and what it’s being used for.
Existing pots of money, for example, could be distributed by the Department of Agriculture to state agencies to help carry out voter registration activities, he suggested.
“Even if the Biden administration were to claim that no public funds are spent to carry out EO 14019—a dubious and laughable claim—this effort would still violate the Antideficiency Act because it would mean federal agencies were accepting voluntary services from these third-party organizations to help carry out EO 14019, who also happen to be politically aligned with the current administration,” Whitson said.
Neither the Agriculture Department nor the Office of Management and Budget responded to The Daily Signal’s request for comment for this report.
OMB “created a template for budget requests for the Voting EO [executive order] within their equity template in case any funding is needed for implementation,” says a Sept. 23, 2021, email among Department of Agriculture officials.
Biden’s executive order also directed agencies to team with private organizations to boost voting. Chief among those groups is the liberal think tank Demos, which drafted the executive action before Biden took office on Jan. 20, 2021.
Akhil Rajan, then an assistant to Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsak, sent the September 2021 email message about the OMB’s template to USDA senior adviser Kumar Chandran, now the department’s acting undersecretary. Rajan is now a senior policy adviser to the White House’s deputy chief of staff.
Rajan’s email to Chandran noted, “Contact K. Sabeel Rahman,” apparently meaning he was the one to contact with any questions.
By that fall, Rahman, who was president of Demos when the liberal think tank drafted the executive order on voting, had joined the Biden administration’s OMB as part of its Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. (Rahman is now a professor at Cornell Law School.)
The Daily Signal obtained 73 pages of emails from the Department of Agriculture through a request for public records under the Freedom of Information Act.
The documents were USDA’s second interim response to a request from The Daily Signal regarding Biden’s executive order on encouraging voter registration and voting. Some pages are heavily redacted.
The documents also prominently mention meetings and guidance from Demos, which is based in New York. The left-wing think tank drafted Biden’s executive order to agencies about voter registration in December 2020, the month after Biden defeated Donald Trump before he took office.
Although describing it as “minimal,” USDA acknowledges some budgetary impact from Biden’s order. Any amount, however, could mean obligating tax dollars without congressional authorization, in violation of the Antideficiency Act.
In an email dated Sept. 21, 2021, Anne DeCesaro, chief of staff for the USDA’s Food, Nutrition and Consumer Services, wrote to Chandran about several issues, including “assessment of budgetary impact.”
“For all actions, we expect minimal budgetary impact as providing memos and letters and regular interactions with states are part of our normal business practices,” DeCesaro wrote.
In that same email, DeCesaro explained to Chandran how other agencies within USDA could participate: The National School Lunch Program could promote voter registration in high schools, for example, and the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program, better known as food stamps, could register its beneficiaries to vote.
Ten days earlier, on Sept. 10, 2021, Chandran emailed several senior USDA staff about Biden’s executive order on increasing voter participation.
“Thank you for your past work to complete our interim strategic plan for the voting rights executive order,” Chandran wrote in the email. “We are now being asked to submit a final strategic plan, based on what we provided in our interim plan.”
He later added: “The WH [White House] team leading this effort has put together a template for the final strategic plan. This template largely follows the same format as that for the interim [plan], except it also includes instructions for how to flesh out each proposed action.”
The second interim response from the USDA to The Daily Signal’s FOIA requests didn’t include the department’s strategic plan or the template provided by the White House or its Office of Management and Budget.
An email dated Aug. 3, 2021, refers to a meeting between USDA officials and Demos executives to discuss Biden’s order on voting.
The Agriculture Department and Demos communicated again about the president’s executive order in November 2021.
“We’d love to reconnect soon to learn about your plans and see how Demos and the ACLU [the American Civil Liberties Union] may be able to support you in their continued development and implementation,” Demos senior policy analyst Lauren Williamson wrote Nov. 5 to senior USDA officials.
“When we met last, we talked about wanting to explore additional programs in more detail to ensure maximal impact of the EO for the communities the USDA serves and we’re eager to continue that conversation,” Williamson said.
Four days later, Rajan, assistant to the secretary of agriculture, wrote to Chandan, saying: “[D]emos has been extremely helpful in thinking about ways to expand opportunities for voting, and the coalition they assembled for our last call was rich in the types of groups that have assembled rigorously-tested best practices. So from that perspective it may be helpful to hear from them but understand that REDACTED.”
Because USDA redacted Rajan’s next words, it is impossible to know what Vilsak’s assistant wanted Chandran to understand.
The post EXCLUSIVE: White House Issued ‘Template’ to Impose Biden’s Voter Mobilization Executive Order appeared first on The Daily Signal.
The following is an updated version of a column originally published in December 2022.
One of the bestselling books of the 1970s was “The Peter Principle,” a business management book by Laurence J. Peter and Raymond Hull.
The book’s premise was that employees get promoted based on their performance in their previous jobs until they are ultimately elevated to a position in which they’re incompetent, since skills and success in one position don’t necessarily ensure success in the next. “In a hierarchy,” Peter explained, “every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence.”
If “The Peter Principle” were published today, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre would be a case study in the phenomenon, now called “failing upward.” In Jean-Pierre’s case, that’s reflected in her work for the short-lived Democratic presidential campaigns of John Edwards in 2004 and Martin O’Malley in 2016, and now as the chief spokeswoman for the Biden administration. On Monday, she will mark her second anniversary in that role.
In recent weeks, however, with the 2024 election campaign shifting into high gear, there have been well-sourced reports that high-ranking figures in the Biden administration are not-so-subtly seeking to push Jean-Pierre out of the role—for which she was never qualified to begin with. Many of the same administration figures reportedly behind those efforts to oust her are, not surprisingly, denying the accuracy of the reports.
The New York Post quoted a source as saying the high-ranking administration figures “‘were trying to find Karine a graceful exit’ because of the ugly optics of removing her against her will,” especially because she thinks she’s doing a good job. (One face-saving exit strategy was to offer her the presidency of EMILY’s List, an abortion rights group.)
But as a textbook example of an affirmative-action hire, Jean-Pierre appears not to be going anywhere. An administration so thoroughly wedded to so-called diversity, equity, and inclusion is, in this case, now finding it difficult to divorce itself from DEI. (More on that below.)
The most glaring evidence that Jean-Pierre, 49, has been promoted to her level of incompetence as White House press secretary is her near-total dependence on a binder full of administration talking points, which she often reads from directly at her daily news briefings to the White House press corps.
It’s so bad that Fox News commentator Jesse Watters has taken to referring to her derisively as “Binder,” and it’s so, well, cringeworthy that other critics deliberately mispronounce “Karine” as “Cringe.”
Just as an aside, recall how 2012 Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney was ridiculed mercilessly in the liberal media for saying during the second presidential debate that he had “binders full of women.” That was his awkward way of referring to files of résumés of women he would consider for staffing his administration were he to win the election. Many of the talking heads’ “binder” jokes snarkily suggested that the squeaky-clean Romney was engaged in some form of BDSM with those women.
It’s standard operating procedure for a press secretary to have notes for ready reference. It’s quite another thing to stare down at them and read those notes all but verbatim.
As far as we know, none of the talking heads who ridiculed Romney has ever mentioned—much less made fun of—Jean-Pierre’s near-complete dependence on her press-briefing binders. Nor have they satirized her oft-repeated deflection—“I don’t have anything”—when she doesn’t have answers to questions for which she’s unprepared.
Nor have the liberal media (or the late-night TV comics) noted, much less lampooned, how Jean-Pierre has mispronounced or mangled words and phrases in the course of her press briefings.
On Dec. 13, 2022, Jean-Pierre touted “bicarmel” support in Congress for the so-called Respect for Marriage Act. “Bicarmel, bipartisan support was had for this piece of legislation,” she said.
But this was no one-off slip of the tongue: She used the term “bicarmel” three times to describe it in the course of the half-hour press briefing. It should have been “bicameral,” of course; meaning, support in both chambers of Congress.
The official White House transcript of the briefing was dishonestly corrected in all three instances to “bicameral” with no indication that it was not an accurate reflection of what was actually said.
On Nov. 28, 2022, in congratulating three Americans who had won Nobel Prizes in chemistry, physics, and economics, she mispronounced “Nobel” five times in 40 seconds as “noble.”
Two months to the day earlier, on Sept. 28, Jean-Pierre said that as part of Vice President Kamala Harris’ then-pending trip to South Korea, the veep would visit the Demilitarized Zone between the two Koreas. Jean-Pierre helpfully noted that it had been “nearly 70 years since the Korean ‘armtis’”—not to be confused with the Korean armistice.
Three weeks before that, on Sept. 6, Jean-Pierre conflated a Russian natural gas pipeline with an upscale American department store chain. She accused Russia of causing an energy crisis in Europe by shutting down its Nord Stream 1 pipeline, which she referred to as the “Nordstrom 1” pipeline.
One can only imagine how former President Donald Trump’s press secretaries, Sarah Huckabee Sanders and later Kayleigh McEnany, would have been pilloried by the liberal White House press corps had they made those sorts of repeated verbal gaffes.
One reason Jean-Pierre still has the high-visibility press secretary’s job, to which she was elevated on May 13, 2022, despite all of the gaffes, is because President Joe Biden is legendary for his own innumerable flubs and miscues.
“White House communications staff has had to correct President Joe Biden’s public remarks at least 148 times since the beginning of 2024, a review of official White House transcripts shows,” the Daily Caller reported April 29. Biden couldn’t very well hold Jean-Pierre to a higher standard, could he?
But the real reason Jean-Pierre remains in her post today is because of the identity politics to which the Biden administration and the Democratic Party have sworn undying allegiance. She is immune from criticism—and from reassignment to a less high-profile post—only because she checks all of the boxes of identity-politics “intersectionality” as the first black, first LGBTQ, and first immigrant White House press secretary.
In the Biden administration, Jean-Pierre demonstrates daily that meritocracy is an afterthought—if it’s thought of at all. The moral of this story: Live by DEI, die by it.
The post Biden Admin in a DEI Bind(er) of Its Own Making, Stuck With Incompetent Jean-Pierre appeared first on The Daily Signal.
It is a presidential election year, and a leading candidate for president of the United States, who also happens to be a former president of the United States, is currently a criminal defendant chained to a dingy courtroom four days of the week—time that he should be spending interacting with voters out on the campaign trail.
That’s terrible. But it’s only the beginning.
The daughter of the presiding judge is a professional political operative for the presidential candidate’s opposition party, and the candidate himself is subject to an over-inclusive and unconstitutional gag order.
The George Soros-funded district attorney, who campaigned on a platform of prosecuting that candidate, only pressed charges after his own left-wing predecessor opted not to do so due to the frivolous nature of the charges. One of the Soros-funded district attorney’s subordinates curiously joined his team—just in time to prosecute the candidate—from a high-ranking perch in the Department of Justice that is headed by the candidate’s chief political rival.
And this week, the candidate was subjected to tawdry and salacious testimony from a discredited former porn star, who spoke openly in court about how she “blacked out” during their alleged 2006 sexual encounter. Due to the sprawling gag order, the candidate was not—and is not—legally permitted to defend his honor and contest her lurid, legally irrelevant claims.
Welcome to our American banana republic.
America has many real, glaring problems on its hands. Inflation remains stubborn, and Americans widely report feeling pessimistic about the economy, despite nominal low unemployment metrics. Our wide-open southern border is disastrous, leading to artificially suppressed working-class wages and the most rampant illegal alien crime in the nation’s history. Violent and property crime rates remain too high, especially in large urban corridors. Energy prices should be considerably lower, and they would be if our moronic leaders allowed producers to tap into America’s great natural wellspring of hydrocarbons.
Around the world, hostile regimes act against our interests in unrestrained and revanchist fashion. At home, childlessness, godlessness, anxiety, and depression are all rising, symptomatic of a broader civilizational rot and a society that has lost confidence in what it claims to stand for.
Amidst all this, it would be ideal to have a normal, competitive presidential race in which the flailing incumbent is directly confronted and his record is challenged for all to see. But Americans are now being deprived of anything remotely resembling a normal presidential race. Donald Trump is physically chained down to Judge Juan Merchan’s New York courtroom, unable to get out on the campaign trail and deliver his signature rallies to adoring fans across the heartland.
These often-forgotten Americans are, in a quite literal sense, denied the opportunity to hear the full argument against the Biden Regime due to these insidious workings of the Democrat-lawfare complex.
Instead of permitting the Regime’s challenger, Trump, to campaign for votes in Wisconsin, he is forced to silently endure the unhinged courtroom musings of a literal porn star and a convicted felon (Michael Cohen)—all in furtherance of a case that suffers from insuperable statute of limitations problems in addition to the structural absurdity of a local district attorney (the Soros-funded Alvin Bragg) prosecuting and attempting to prove a federal crime (a campaign finance violation).
Oh, and if Trump doesn’t shut up and keep quiet, Merchan might throw him in jail—as he has repeatedly threatened to do, if Trump keeps violating his unconstitutional gag order.
What a sick, cruel joke it all is.
Democrats seem not to have given any thought to what happens if they lose. If Trump wins, do Democrats seriously not expect him to respond in kind? Now that the Rubicon has been crossed and we have entered a world in which politicians attempt to not merely defeat their opposition at the ballot box but also prosecute and incarcerate them, there is no going back.
Just as Senate Democrats’ November 2013 invocation of the “nuclear option” to end the filibuster for lower-court nominees directly led to Republicans doing the same for Supreme Court nominees just a few years later, so, too, is it impossible to know what may ultimately come from the lawfare precedent Democrats are setting today.
The new rules have been established. Many of us didn’t want these rules, but here we are anyway. So, game on.
COPYRIGHT 2024 CREATORS.COM
The Daily Signal publishes a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Heritage Foundation.
The post The Making of an American Banana Republic appeared first on The Daily Signal.
The war between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza strip is the most morally clear conflict in modern history.
It pits an actual terrorist group that just engaged in the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust against a democratic country that protects citizens—Jewish, Muslim, and Christian. It pits a monstrously evil tentacle of Iran—handed control of the Gaza strip by Israel in 2005 when Israel pulled out of that area and forced 8,000 Jews out of their homes—against a democratic ally of the United States.
It pits an army of atrocity-seeking villains—who are attempting to maximize Palestinian casualties by locating themselves among civilians, stealing humanitarian aid, and literally murdering anyone who gets in their way—against an actual professional army risking the lives of its own soldiers in order to protect Palestinian civilians.
And yet Joe Biden can’t quite make up his mind.
On the one hand, Biden mouths platitudinous support for Israel in its battle against Hamas. On the other, he continues to grant the central premise Hamas promotes, which is that Israel is a human rights violator and indiscriminate killer of Palestinians—even as Hamas holds Americans hostage in Gaza.
Biden has spent the last several weeks pressuring Israel not to go into Rafah, the sole major repository of the Hamas terror apparatus, where some four brigades of terrorists are digging in. Instead, he has deployed his head of the CIA, his secretary of state, and a wide variety of other officials to promote “negotiations” between Israel and Hamas.
In fact, he’s done more than that for Hamas. While fully articulating his understanding that Hamas seeks a permanent end to the conflict in Gaza, which would leave them in control and hand them a victory they could never earn on the battlefield, Biden has pushed just that: a permanent end to the conflict leaving Hamas in place. Biden has not explained just how this would benefit the United States, Israel, the Palestinians themselves, or the region more broadly. He has simply calculated that an end to conflict is an end in and of itself.
To that end, Biden has been slow-walking aid to the Israelis—including ammunition that allows for better targeting, which would minimize civilian casualties. He has deployed his negotiators to play both sides of the table, even going so far as to allow his CIA head, William Burns, to negotiate with Egypt and Qatar a series of terms without submitting them to the Israelis—and then allowing Hamas itself to declare its acceptance of such nonsensical and irrelevant terms, presumably in an effort to humiliate the Israelis into accepting their own quasi-surrender.
Biden has trotted out spokespeople to claim that America continues to back Israel, while simultaneously claiming—falsely—that Israel is engaging in human rights abuses.
The result is the worst of all possible worlds for Biden: a dissatisfied radical base convinced that Biden is behind the war in Gaza; an angry pro-Israel citizenry bewildered by Biden’s inability to call evil by its name; and a stalemate in Gaza, which means that radical protesters will undoubtedly descend on the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in order to harass Biden as he receives his renomination.
It’s all stupid.
But it does raise an obvious question: Why?
Why is this so seemingly tough for Joe Biden? Is it all just a misread of the political moment—adherence to a stunningly imbecilic belief that if Biden appeases extremists within his party, he’ll be able to win the 2024 election?
Or is it something deeper—a moral malaise that has taken root in the upper echelons of our politics, in which Western powers, including Israel, are seen as inherently problematic while the West’s enemies, including Hamas, are seen as inherently victimized?
If the tens of thousands of protesters on America’s streets are any indicator, the latter seems more likely than the former. Which spells doom for a West that cannot see the difference between decency and barbarity.
COPYRIGHT 2024 CREATORS.COM
The Daily Signal publishes a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Heritage Foundation.
The post If You Can’t Tell the Bad Guy in Israel Vs. Hamas, You’re the Problem appeared first on The Daily Signal.
Why does the Biden administration want open borders so badly? For three very big reasons. One is ideology, which I covered in last week’s BorderLine column. Another is extortion, which I will cover in next week’s column. But this week, I look at how the Left uses illegal immigration to give itself an unfair electoral advantage.
First, illegal immigration affects congressional representation because the apportionment of members of Congress by state is based on U.S. census data.
As Heritage Foundation Border Security and Immigration Center Director Lora Ries writes, the census currently counts all noncitizens—from green card holders to illegal aliens—in addition to U.S. citizens for the purposes of apportioning congressional districts among the states.
The more citizens in a state, the more congressional districts—i.e., seats in Congress—a state gets. In turn, the number of congressional districts in a state determines how many Electoral College votes that state receives. (Heritage founded The Daily Signal in 2014.)
While president, Donald Trump tried to restore the U.S. citizenship question on the 2020 census and exclude all noncitizens from apportionment calculations. Yet court challenges prevented him from doing so prior to the deadline for getting a new census form printed and distributed. Joe Biden then immediately terminated the effort when he took office. That should tell you which states and party benefit most from the population overcount.
The second way mass illegal immigration undermines U.S. elections is through negligence and fraud. Only American citizens can legally vote; it is a crime for a noncitizen to vote. Yet, in many states, noncitizens can easily register and vote with little chance of detection.
The 1993 National Voter Registration Act, known as “Motor Voter,” was intended to make it easier for U.S. citizens to register to vote when they applied for or renewed a driver’s license. However, Motor Voter also made it easier for noncitizens to accidentally or purposefully get on voter rolls.
In December 2022, the Reno Gazette Journal reported that if applicants applying for a Nevada driver’s license check the online box saying they are eligible to vote, their information is sent to Nevada’s secretary of state for registration. The Washoe County Registrar’s Office told the Gazette Journal that it is possible for a noncitizen to register by falsely claiming citizenship (though this is a felony).
Moreover, Nevada accepts alien work authorization cards as proof of identity. Millions of aliens the Biden administration has released into the country are eligible for such cards and could register to vote in Nevada and other states with similar registration processes with little risk of detection.
It would seem to be common sense for all states to want to close loopholes and maintain confidence in their electoral systems. Yet, one of the biggest canards in American politics today is to equate election integrity efforts—like ensuring proper identification or limiting mail-in and early voting—with voter suppression.
There was real and shameful voter suppression in our nation’s past. Efforts in the post-Civil War South to deter blacks from registering included discriminatory literacy tests and poll taxes; police intimidation at polling places; and at the extreme, cross-burnings, bombings, and even killings. But the civil rights movement, strong new laws, and voter-registration drives ended the “Jim Crow” era by the 1960s. Poll taxes and literacy tests were banned.
In 2022, 98.9% of voters in Georgia “felt safe in their polling location” and “98.9% reported no issues casting a ballot,” according to a University of Georgia postelection poll. Nonetheless, legitimate efforts to ensure that voters are legally entitled to vote, that they do so in accordance with the law, and that their votes are properly counted are falsely labeled as voter suppression.
“Americans need and deserve a system in which it is easy to vote and hard to cheat,” says The Heritage Foundation, which publishes a state-by-state Election Integrity Scorecard to encourage best practices from electoral officials and vigilance by voters.
As Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger recently wrote in The Wall Street Journal, “Ensuring that only American citizens vote in American elections is a straightforward requirement for maintaining election security and public trust.”
And yet, progressive groups seem intent on fighting efforts to ensure that voter rolls contain only eligible voters. The logical inference is that they believe ineligible noncitizens would be more likely to vote for their candidates. As Raffensperger writes, these activists want states “to rely on a person’s word” when registering to vote and oppose all efforts to verify citizenship. Unfortunately, in the real world, people sometimes lie—especially when there are no consequences.
A Heritage database currently records 1,500 cases of proven election fraud nationwide—and that is merely a sampling. When it comes to abusing absentee ballots, most of the perpetrators in the database are Americans. But on just the first page (of five) for one state (North Carolina) are cases of noncitizens from the Congo, Guatemala, Mexico, and Nigeria convicted of falsely claiming American citizenship to register to vote. They committed a fundamental offense against our democracy, and yet most of them got a one-year pretrial “diversion program,” after completion of which, charges were dropped.
Some states are better than others regarding voter integrity. Virginia cross-references Motor Voter data with the Department of Homeland Security’s Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements system, and “since 2014, has removed 11,000 ‘declared non-citizen[s]’” from the voter rolls, according to the Public Interest Legal Foundation. Meanwhile, the foundation is suing Wisconsin and Minnesota for lack of transparency with their voter rolls.
Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, recently introduced the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act to require states to obtain proof of citizenship—in person—when registering an individual to vote. Further, the bill requires states to remove noncitizens from existing voter rolls.
Meanwhile, this week, the House passed the Equal Representation Act, a bill that would restore the U.S. citizenship question to the census and exclude noncitizens from congressional apportionment. The bill passed 206-202 by a completely party-line vote. Sen. Bill Hagerty, R-Tenn., forced a vote on a similar bill in the Senate in March, but it failed 51-45. All of the Democrats and one Republican voted against it.
Election integrity shouldn’t be a liberal versus conservative issue, and maintaining accurate voter rolls is a national, not a political, goal. Impartial legislation to ensure both integrity and accuracy ahead of our next election and census should receive bipartisan support.
The BorderLine is a weekly Daily Signal feature examining everything from the unprecedented illegal immigration crisis at the border to immigration’s impact on cities and states throughout the land. We will also shed light on other critical border-related issues like human trafficking, drug smuggling, terrorism, and more.
The Ideological Roots of the Open Borders Push
US Should Adopt UK’s ‘Rwanda Plan’ to Address Illegal Immigration
Biden’s Precarious Parole Programs for Illegal Immigrants
My Look Inside Biden’s Illegal Immigrant Catch-and-Release Craziness
What I Saw on My Latest Visit to the Border
The post The Ways the Left Exploits Illegal Immigration for Electoral Gain: The BorderLine appeared first on The Daily Signal.
An influential left-of-center donor’s charity has launched an initiative compelling other philanthropies to pour money into voter-mobilization efforts for this fall’s elections.
Democracy Fund, founded and funded by liberal philanthropist Pierre Omidyar, has rallied 174 organizations and individuals pledging to expedite disbursement of grants related to get-out-the-vote operations and other efforts.
The pledge called on signatories either to make the bulk of their election-related donations by the end of April, to “move up” disbursements scheduled for later in the year, or to streamline grant approval processes.
Alex Soros’ Open Society Foundations, the liberal dark money giant Arabella Advisors, Tides, and Democrat megadonor Susan Pritzker are among the major left-of-center philanthropic players to sign the pledge.
Omidyar, who founded eBay and has become a prolific investor, is worth over $10.9 billion, according to Bloomberg. Omidyar gave roughly $1.2 billion through various charitable arms to an array of primarily left-of-center causes between 2004 and 2020, according to a Capital Research Center report.
In 2020, Omidyar gave the Sixteen Thirty Fund, a sprawling Democrat-aligned political outfit, $45 million to support its Civic Action Fund project, a now-defunct voter-turnout initiative that focused on “empower[ing] those typically underrepresented in our democratic process” by ensuring they voted in 2020. The group collaborated with liberal politicians and activists to organize local get-out-the-vote efforts targeting low-propensity voters, according to Influence Watch.
In explaining his donation to Civic Action Fund, Omidyar cited the importance of “supporting local voter outreach and engagement of young people and people of color.” Young people and minority voters favor the Democratic Party by considerable margins, with voters 18 to 29 and all nonwhite constituencies favoring President Joe Biden by double digits in 2020, according to a CNN exit poll.
Civic Action Fund was active in 14 states, including the key states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, during the 2020 election season, according to its website. The group had staffers with ties to notable Democrats such as former President Barack Obama and former Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid, according to Influence Watch.
Many of the signatories of Democracy Fund’s “All by April” pledge have clear ideological slants.
Alex Soros, son of influential liberal financier George Soros, has described himself as “more political” than his father.
Arabella manages a network of nonprofits that pours tens of millions into liberal causes every year.
Tides comprises a variety of organizational arms, including one of the largest pass-through organizations for liberal philanthropists. And Pritzker has donated millions to Democratic and otherwise left-of-center political committees.
Arabella’s nonprofit network and the Soros family’s philanthropic ventures have dropped large sums on election spending.
Arabella’s nonprofits spent more than $62 million on voter registration and mobilization efforts during 2022, a midterm election year.
Much of the Arabella network’s spending also focused on getting Democrat-friendly demographics to the polls. New Venture Fund, one of Arabella’s arms, gave millions to the Voter Registration Project, a group “commissioned” by veteran Democratic operative John Podesta that, according to Influence Watch, “targets African-American, Latino, Native American, low-income, and other voter groups likely to lean left-of-center.”
The Soros philanthropic empire also gave millions to the Voter Registration Project between 2016 and 2022. The project’s efforts in 2020 netted Biden between 1 million and 2.7 million votes, according to a Capital Research Center report.
Open Society Policy Center, part of the broader Soros network, gave $1.4 million to the Voto Latino Action Fund in 2022. The organization focuses on registering Latino voters and loosening voting laws, according to its website.
High voter turnout among Latinos was among the reasons Democrats outperformed expectations during the 2022 midterm elections, according to Politico.
“Voter registration nonprofits are nothing more than a cost-effective way to achieve partisan electioneering results for Democrats while keeping the donors totally anonymous and giving them a tax write-off for their troubles,” Parker Thayer, an investigative researcher at Capital Research Center, previously told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Democracy Fund, Arabella, Tides, and Open Society Foundations did not immediately respond to the DCNF’s requests for comment.
Originally published by the Daily Caller News Foundation
The post This Liberal Donor Pushes Left-Leaning Groups to Fund Efforts to Turn Out Voters appeared first on The Daily Signal.
Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., can breathe a little easier now that more than 80% of his House colleagues put an end to the latest drama gripping Capitol Hill.
Six months after ascending to the speakership, a bipartisan coalition of Democrats and Republicans overwhelmingly voted to table a motion to vacate the chair—the House’s terminology for removing its leader. The final vote was 359-43; seven voted present and 21 others didn’t cast a vote. (See how your representative voted.)
“Hopefully, this is the end of the personality politics and the frivolous character assassination that has defined the 118th Congress,” Johnson said after Wednesday’s vote. “It’s regrettable. It’s not who we are as Americans and we’re better than this. We need to get beyond it.”
Don’t count on it.
Johnson may have survived the vote, but the anger toward him among some Republicans likely won’t subside anytime soon.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., who offered the motion to vacate, bemoaned the “uniparty” that saved the speaker.
Tonight, you saw the Uniparty in action.
— Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene?? (@RepMTG) May 8, 2024
Nancy Pelosi, Hakeem Jeffries, and the rest of the Democrats saved Mike Johnson. pic.twitter.com/67ZOn76yDN
Petty squabbles and personal recriminations are nothing new for the House of Representatives. History offers many lessons. But today’s divisions—among the majority party, nonetheless—seem irreparable.
The GOP’s narrow House majority after the November 2022 election emboldened rank-and-file conservatives to demand much-needed changes. After multiple rounds of voting in January 2023, then-Rep. Kevin McCarthy acquiesced to their requests and secured the votes needed to be speaker.
>>> 20 Lawmakers Stood Up to the Washington Establishment. This is Their Story.
With any member of the narrowly divided House able to initiate the process of removing the speaker, it was perhaps inventible that Johnson would eventually face the same scenario as McCarthy. And when Johnson opted to rely on Democrats to pass bills, that’s precisely what happened.
To avoid a showdown, Johnson reportedly spent hours meeting with Greene this week, only to have her deliver a fiery floor speech that was met by a chorus of boos and jeers. When she wasn’t being interrupted, Greene accused the speaker of selling out his party and turning over House control to Democrats.
? I just called up my Motion to Vacate Nancy Pelosi-endorsed Uniparty Speaker Mike Johnson.
— Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene?? (@RepMTG) May 8, 2024
WATCH: pic.twitter.com/LaTu76QSLR
Sitting by her side, Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., repeatedly came to Greene’s aid.
Their grievances against Johnson include his decision to pass government spending bills with Democrat support, expel embattled New York Republican George Santos from the House, and advance a $95 billion foreign aid bill over the objections of conservatives.
Greene even managed to work in a defense of ousted Speaker McCarthy, whom both she and Massie considered an ally. Hours later, Massie doubled down on their defense of McCarthy by contrasting him as a favorable option to Johnson.
Vacating Kevin McCarthy was a huge mistake. Every Democrat voted to vacate him because he fought them tooth and nail.
— Thomas Massie (@RepThomasMassie) May 8, 2024
Keeping Mike Johnson is an even bigger mistake. An overwhelming majority of democrats voted to keep him because he’s given them everything they want.
Sorry, Mr. Speaker, personality politics reign supreme.
In reality, Johnson will never know just how many Republicans want to see him gone beyond Greene, Massie, and Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz. That’s because before Greene’s motion to vacate came to vote, the House opted to table it.
Of the 11 Republicans against motion to table, only a few explained their vote. But it’s safe to say not all were aligned with Greene, despite what Massie suggested.
It’s a new paradigm in Congress.
— Thomas Massie (@RepThomasMassie) May 8, 2024
Nancy Pelosi, and most republicans voted to keep Uniparty Speaker Mike Johnson. These are the eleven, including myself, who voted NOT to save him. pic.twitter.com/8HnfDQ7lBe
At least three said not to interpret their opposition as an indication of their feelings toward Johnson.
Rep. Warren Davidson, R-Ohio, opposed Greene’s motion to vacate even though he joined her on the procedural vote. “One should not be viewed as a proxy for the other,” he said.
New Speaker, same vote.
— Warren Davidson ?? (@WarrenDavidson) May 8, 2024
To be clear, the motion to table and the motion to vacate are separate questions. One should not be viewed as a proxy for the other.
As I did when Speaker McCarthy was ultimately vacated, I opposed the passive-aggressive motion to table which neuters…
Rep. Victoria Spartz, R-Ind., declared her opposition to Green’s motion to vacate but opposed the effort to table it. “I fought a lot to change Pelosi rules and have more accountability on the speaker in Congress,” she explained.
I am not happy with where we are now, but would not vote to vacate the speaker at this time. However, I fought a lot to change Pelosi rules and have more accountability on the speaker in Congress, so I voted not to table the motion consistent with my vote on McCarthy last fall.
— Rep. Victoria Spartz (@RepSpartz) May 8, 2024
And finally, Rep. Eric Burlison, R-Mo., put it bluntly when he said that “joining Democrats in a motion to table was more than I could stomach.”
While I may not agree with the timing of a MTV, joining Democrats in a motion to table was more than I could stomach. That is why I voted against the motion to table.
— Rep. Eric Burlison (@RepEricBurlison) May 8, 2024
While Johnson’s critics will continue to complain that Democrats helped save him, more Republicans had his back Wednesday.
So where does Johnson go from here?
He most certainly shouldn’t let Democrat Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., dictate the chamber’s agenda for the next six month. Across the halls of the Capitol, Senate Democrats are already plotting to change the narrative on border security, one of President Joe Biden’s greatest vulnerabilities.
A sustained effort by the House to elevate the issue of illegal immigration is needed now more than ever. Republicans took an important step Wednesday to pass the Equal Representation Act, which prevents illegal aliens from influencing congressional representation and the Electoral College.
>>> House Passes Bill to Restore Citizenship Question to Census
Those same lawmakers must redouble their efforts on other fronts, including the strong measures already adopted in the Secure the Border Act (HR 2).
With only a few must-pass pieces of legislation remaining this Congress, there’s precious little time to squander the opportunity.
The post House of Drama: Speaker Johnson Survives Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Ouster Attempt appeared first on The Daily Signal.
Pointing to the combination of an open border and declining confidence in elections, congressional Republicans are backing legislation to require proof of U.S. citizenship to register to vote.
“Due to the wide-open border that the Biden administration has refused to close, practically engineered to open, we now have so many noncitizens in the country that if only one out of 100 voted, they would cast hundreds of thousands of votes,” House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said Wednesday during a press conference in front of the Capitol.
Because America’s borders are wide open and Democrats want to turn noncitizens into voters, Congress must act to protect our federal elections.
— Speaker Mike Johnson (@SpeakerJohnson) May 8, 2024
Today, we introduced the SAVE Act to ensure that only Americans get to decide American elections.
Thank you to @RepChipRoy and… pic.twitter.com/dXANdzUuoC
“Since our elections are so razor thin these days—just a few precincts in a few states decide the makeup of Congress and who is elected to the White House—this is a dangerously high number and it is a great concern to millions and millions of Americans. It could actually change the outcome of our elections,” Johnson said.
The Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, or SAVE Act, is sponsored in the House by Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, and by Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, in the Senate.
The House speaker noted that about 16 million illegal aliens have entered the United States since Joe Biden took office as president.
Although it’s already illegal for these illegal immigrants to vote in federal elections, Johnson said, election officials have no mechanism to deter them from registering to vote.
“If a nefarious actor wants to intervene in our elections, all they have to do is check a box on a form and sign their name. That’s it,” Johnson said.
The legislation would amend the 1993 National Voter Registration Act, better known as the “motor voter law,” to require that states obtain documentary proof of citizenship from someone before he or she may register to vote. It also would require states to remove noncitizens from existing voter rolls.
“The most fundamental thing you can do to destroy the rule of law and to destroy our republic is to undermine faith in elections and undermine integrity of elections by making it unclear as to who is voting and limiting our ability to know that only citizens are voting,” Roy told reporters, adding:
We are here for the proposition supported by the vast majority of the American people: that only citizens of the United States should vote, that we should have documentary proof, that we should have a system to guarantee that only citizens of the United States vote in federal elections where we have the clear authority under the Constitution of the United States, under our laws as Congress, to set the terms of those elections.
For his part, Lee argued that the one-citizen-one-vote measure should have lawmakers’ unanimous support.
“When federal law has been interpreted as precluding in many ways the voter registration officials in various states from even inquiring into someone’s citizenship when addressing voter roll issues, we have a problem,” Lee said.
“It’s legislation that really ought to pass unanimously in both houses of Congress because the only reason to oppose this—that I can think of—would be if you are comfortable with or somehow want noncitizens to vote and noncitizens in some instances to influence the outcome of elections,” the Utah Republican continued.
However, there is opposition. It’s “not true” that noncitizens are voting, Michael Waldman, president of the Brennan Center for Justice, a liberal advocacy group that opposes voter ID and other election security measures, posted on X.
Speaker Johnson, explaining bill to require passport or birth certificate to register to vote: "We ll know, intuitively, that a lot of illegals are voting in federal elections. But it's not been something that is easily provable." That's because … it's not true! (Intuitively?)
— Michael Waldman (@mawaldman) May 8, 2024
Johnson announced the legislation last month while visiting former President Donald Trump at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida.
The press conference featuring Johnson, Lee, and Roy came one day after House Administration Chairman Bryan Steil, R-Wis., sent a letter demanding answers from the District of Columbia Board of Elections, which allows noncitizen voting in local races. Steil’s letter inquires how the District will ensure that noncitizens can’t vote in federal elections.
“Not only is D.C. allowing noncitizens to vote, but the board is actively encouraging it,” Steil writes. “In addition to board staff hosting a virtual town hall focused on the ability of noncitizen D.C. residents to vote, the committee has received notice regarding a postcard mailed by the board to ‘residential customers’ advocating for noncitizens to register to vote in D.C. elections.”
During his remarks Wednesday, Johnson also raised the issue of jurisdictions that allow noncitizens to vote in local elections.
“A growing number of localities are blurring the lines by allowing noncitizens to vote in municipal local elections,” the House speaker said. “In cities and towns in California, Maryland, and Vermont, and even right here in D.C., you might not know this, but noncitizens are voting.”
But Jenny Beth Martin, honorary chairwoman of Tea Party Patriots Action, said at the Capitol press conference that just because it’s already illegal doesn’t mean it isn’t happening.
“It’s already illegal for noncitizens to vote, but just because something is illegal doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen. If you’re not a citizen, it’s illegal to enter our country without authorization. but that happens multiple millions of times every year,” Martin said. “We’re trying to get ahead of the curve here.”
The post Roy, Lee Introduce Bill to Require Citizenship Proof to Vote appeared first on The Daily Signal.
Vaunce News