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FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL—A prominent Catholic organization is calling on the Department of Justice to defend Catholic churches from anticipated pro-abortion attacks, pointing to the disparities in the DOJ’s enforcement of a law protecting both abortion clinics and churches.
In a letter first obtained by The Daily Signal, CatholicVote President Brian Burch calls on Attorney General Merrick Garland to detail what steps the DOJ plans to take to “combat the incessant attacks against Catholic churches.”
“How much more violence needs to happen before you will act?” he asks Garland. “Why is the FACE Act being enforced against Holocaust survivors, but not [against] those who attempt to destroy churches or even kill Catholics?”
The letter references President Joe Biden’s administration’s focus on prosecuting pro-life activists through the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act. As recently as April 3, the DOJ announced that a federal judge found four pro-life activists guilty of violating the FACE Act—including an 87-year-old Holocaust survivor, Eva Edl.
“We have had enough of the Biden administration prosecuting pro-lifers while ignoring attacks against Catholic churches across the country,” Burch told The Daily Signal on Tuesday.
“Attorney General Garland’s silence on these hate crimes is deafening,” he added. “Many more attacks are expected this year if he continues to turn a blind eye. It is well past time for the Biden administration to act.”
CatholicVote points out to the DOJ that a man in Verona, New Jersey, set a Catholic Church on fire on April 4. This was the third time since 2018 that this individual, named Elliot Bennett, 42, had “engaged in violence and vandalism against the church,” Burch said. Bennett had been charged with criminal mischief and a hate crime related to prior incidents.
“The Verona incident was the 21st attack on a Catholic church in 2024, the 247th attack since Catholic churches across the country were put under organized siege by pro-abortion domestic terrorists after the Supreme Court leak [of a pending ruling overturning Roe v. Wade] in May 2022, and the 412th attack since general civil unrest swept the nation in May 2020,” Burch wrote. “We have found evidence of arrests in only about 25% of these cases, and zero federal prosecutions.”
The FACE Act protects churches in the same way that it protects abortion clinics, Burch emphasized.
“And yet under your leadership, the Biden administration has refused to prosecute a single act of violence against a Catholic church despite many other cases of arson and firebombing; pro-abortion protesters blocking church entrances and disrupting Masses; and even physical assaults on priests and parishioners, among many other types of violence,” the CatholicVote leader said.
“These attacks have caused at least $25 million in quantifiable damage to churches and instilled fear into hundreds of Catholic communities,” he added.
Though the DOJ promised CatholicVote in December 2021 that it would conduct a 15-day review to ensure that appropriate resources are being deployed to protect houses of worship, this review apparently has not occurred. And according to Burch, the violence has not only continued, but “increased, unabated.”
“This problem is taking on new urgency this year,” he wrote. “Up to a dozen states will be voting on abortion-related ballot initiatives. We have seen surges of attacks against Catholic churches during voting on abortion ballot initiatives in Kansas, Michigan, and Ohio, which had signs expressing their opposition to abortion.”
CatholicVote argues that Catholic churches and individuals have an absolute right to practice their faith, and that these attacks against churches that stand for the right to life are “textbook examples of voter intimidation and voter suppression.”
He added: “You have sued multiple states which you allege are engaging in voter suppression, comparing their laws to those of the Jim Crow era, yet you have not devoted a single minute of federal time to addressing the intimidation and suppression of Catholic voters, which bears striking similarities to the prejudice and violence against African Americans during the Jim Crow era.”
The DOJ did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Daily Signal.
Since the May 2022 leak of the draft Supreme Court opinion indicating that Roe v. Wade would soon thereafter be overturned, there have been at least 236 attacks on Catholic churches and at least 90 attacks on pro-life pregnancy resource centers, according to CatholicVote trackers.
Yet the Biden DOJ charged only pro-life activists with FACE Act violations in 2022, and has since charged only five individuals with violating the FACE Act for targeting pregnancy centers.
In February, conservative leaders called on House Judiciary Committee Chairman Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, and Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, R-La., to pass the FACE Act Repeal Act of 2023 “as soon as possible.”
“In the aftermath of additional pro-life activists being convicted by the Biden administration under the FACE Act for peacefully protesting outside an abortion business, we respectfully urge you to take immediate legislative action to protect peaceful pro-life activists from the Biden administration’s weaponized Department of Justice and an unconstitutional law,” the leaders said in a letter first obtained by The Daily Signal.
“The Biden administration has weaponized the FACE Act against peaceful pro-life sidewalk counselors and activists who want to save lives and change hearts and minds,” Advancing American Freedom Executive Director Paul Teller told The Daily Signal at the time.
The failure to prosecute attacks on Catholic churches under the FACE Act has drawn particular attention in light of the fact that Biden is the nation’s second Catholic president and is often described by the media as a “devout Catholic”—though the president heads the most pro-abortion administration in U.S. history; promotes transgender surgeries, hormones, and puberty blockers, even for children; and celebrates transgender ideology.
The Catholic Church teaches that abortion is a crime against human life, that marriage should be between a man and a woman, and that homosexual acts are “contrary to the natural law” and “close the sexual act to the gift of life.”
In an Easter weekend interview, the left-leaning archbishop of Washington, D.C., Cardinal Wilton Gregory, described the president as a “cafeteria Catholic” who “picks and chooses” which parts of Catholicism to adhere to.
“I would say there are things, especially in terms of the life issues, there are things that he chooses to ignore,” Gregory said.
“The issues of life begin at the very beginning. And they conclude at natural death,” the cardinal said. “And you can’t pick and choose. You’re either one who respects life in all of its dimensions, or you have to step aside and say, ‘I’m not pro-life.’”
The post EXCLUSIVE: DOJ Must Defend Catholic Churches From More Expected Pro-Abortion Attacks, Leader Says appeared first on The Daily Signal.
Staffers at a pro-life pregnancy resource center in Rochester, New York, are criticizing the FBI for failing to provide any kind of status update of investigations into pro-abortion vandals’ attacks on the pregnancy center.
Nearly two years after the initial June 2022 attack, CompassCare pregnancy medical center says that the FBI has put up billboards offering a $25,000 reward for any information leading to the arrest of the criminals who firebombed the pregnancy center.
The billboard is placed about a mile away from the center, CompassCare said in a release. The group added that the billboard appeared shortly before the sentencing of a separate pro-abortion arsonist, Hridindu Sankar Roychowdhury, who in December pleaded guilty to attacking a pro-life organization in Madison, Wisconsin.
CompassCare says that the FBI won’t communicate with them about the billboard, first noticed by the organization on April 1, and won’t provide a status update on its investigation into the attack.
“Supporters have asked if CompassCare paid for this expensive billboard,” said the Rev. Jim Harden, CompassCare CEO, in a statement provided to The Daily Signal. “We did not. The FBI refuses to communicate.”
“The erratic nature of [Department of Justice] and FBI behavior around cases of violence against pro-life groups appears to be PR related, bolstering their reputation when under pressure to produce results by media and congressional judiciary committees,” Harden speculated.
“Perhaps they anticipate more violence against Christian pro-lifers ahead of the next big Supreme Court ruling in June and want to make it look like they care?” he questioned.
The FBI and DOJ did not immediately respond to requests for comment for this article.
CompassCare was attacked a second time in March 2023. The Daily Signal’s Virginia Allen reported at the time that surveillance footage from the attack showed an individual wearing a hoodie walk up to the front of the pregnancy center, spray paint the word “Liars” over the CompassCare sign, then walk away back down the street.
The radical pro-abortion group Jane’s Revenge took responsibility for the June 2022 firebombing of the pro-life center. Pro-abortion activists also spray-painted the words “Jane was here” on the side of the building.
Since the May 2022 leak of the draft Supreme Court opinion indicating that Roe v. Wade would soon thereafter be overturned, there have been at least 236 attacks on Catholic churches and at least 90 attacks on pro-life pregnancy centers, according to Catholic Vote trackers.
The Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act (FACE Act) prohibits the intentional destruction or damage of reproductive health care facilities, theoretically protecting not only abortion clinics, but also pro-life churches and pregnancy centers.
But President Joe Biden’s DOJ charged only pro-life activists with FACE Act violations in 2022, and has since charged only five individuals with violating the FACE Act by targeting pregnancy centers.
In February, conservative leaders called on House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan and Speaker of the House Mike Johnson to pass the FACE Act Repeal Act of 2023 “as soon as possible.”
“In the aftermath of additional pro-life activists being convicted by the Biden administration under the FACE Act for peacefully protesting outside an abortion business, we respectfully urge you to take immediate legislative action to protect peaceful pro-life activists from the Biden administration’s weaponized Department of Justice and an unconstitutional law,” the leaders said in a letter first obtained by The Daily Signal.
“The Biden administration has weaponized the FACE Act against peaceful pro-life sidewalk counselors and activists who want to save lives and change hearts and minds,” Advancing American Freedom Executive Director Paul Teller told The Daily Signal at the time.
Virginia Allen contributed to this report.
The post Pregnancy Center Slams FBI For Failure to Arrest Pro-Abortion Firebombers appeared first on The Daily Signal.
President Joe Biden’s Justice Department announced Wednesday that it had filed a lawsuit accusing the state of Utah, and its Department of Corrections, of violating the Americans with Disabilities Act in failing to give a man hormones for his gender dysphoria.
The prisoner, who identifies as a transgender woman, is said to have requested to purchase women’s clothing and “personal items in the commissary,” such as women’s underwear and makeup.
He also wanted to be housed with female prisoners, the DOJ said. The Utah Department of Corrections assigns prison accommodations based upon sex at “commitment,” when staffers conduct a visual search of genitals, according to the Justice Department.
The Utah Department of Corrections did not grant those requests, the DOJ said, accusing the Utah agency of causing the man’s gender dysphoria to worsen.
“Twenty-two months after entering custody,” the DOJ said, the trans-identifying prisoner “performed dangerous self-surgery and removed [his] own testicles.”
“People with gender dysphoria, including those held in jails and prisons, are protected by the Americans with Disabilities Act and are entitled to equal access to medical care, just like anyone else with a disability,” Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division said in a statement.
“Delays or refusals to provide medical treatment for people with gender dysphoria can cause irreparable harm, including debilitating distress, depression, attempts at self-treatment and even death by suicide,” Clarke added. “The Civil Rights Division is committed to protecting the rights of all people with disabilities in our country, including those who experience gender dysphoria—and those rights are not given up at the jailhouse door.”
The DOJ also accused the Utah Department of Corrections of “imposing unnecessary eligibility criteria for assessment and treatment for gender dysphoria that it does not require for other conditions.” A letter of findings to the Utah agency states that the prison system routes requests for “medical care” for gender dysphoria through its gender dysphoria committee.
If a man in the Utah Department of Corrections self-identifies as a transgender woman, he will have to request an evaluation by the agency’s mental health staff, and these staffers then present their findings to the gender dysphoria committee. The committee will decide whether or not to refer the man to a health care provider for a diagnostic evaluation for gender dysphoria, and if the committee approves the evaluation, the Department of Corrections will refer the individual to its contract psychologist, according to the letter of findings.
“If the committee denies the evaluation, the incarcerated person must wait one year before they are eligible to request diagnostic services again,” the letter said. “After a diagnostic assessment, [the Utah Department of Corrections] medical staff will consider the psychologist’s recommendations and may order treatment with hormones, but not ‘[c]osmetic or elective surgical procedures for the purpose of sex reassignment.’”
The Justice Department claims that the committee included people who were reluctant to prescribe hormones for gender dysphoria, calling that “overt bias against the individuals seeking care.”
When the Department of Corrections finally allowed the prisoner identified in the Justice Department’s lawsuit to start hormonal medication, the DOJ claimed, the prisoner’s Department of Corrections doctor tried to talk him out of taking hormones. The DOJ claims that the doctor then failed to take “basic steps to ensure that it was provided safely and effectively,” such as conducting routine laboratory testing.
The Justice Department is calling on the Utah agency to adopt, revise, and implement new policies that let men who think they are women or women who think they are men to obtain “health care services” for gender dysphoria, and to “reasonably modify UDOC policies, practices, and procedures when necessary to ensure that individuals with gender dysphoria have equal access to all UDOC services, programs, and activities including commissary, pat and visual searches, housing, and required and optional programming.”
The Utah Department of Corrections said in a March 12 statement that it is working to address the “complex” issue and described itself as “blindsided” by the DOJ’s announcement regarding its findings in March.
“We have also taken steps on our own, and as a state, to address the needs of inmates while maintaining the highest safety standards,” Executive Director Brian Redd said in a statement. “We fundamentally disagree with the DOJ on key issues, and are disappointed with their approach.”
The post Biden DOJ Targets Utah Prisons After Trans Prisoner Removes His Own Testicles appeared first on The Daily Signal.
Miranda Devine addresses “The Smirnov turnoff” in today’s New York Post column “New election year means another Russiagate as Biden, Dems try to smear impeachment probe.” Devine is of course the invaluable historian of The Laptop From Hell and the Biden family business. Here is the opening of her column:
For the 2016 election, Democrats launched Russiagate 1.0: the Trump-Russia collusion hoax proven groundless by the Mueller investigation.
For the 2020 election, it was Russiagate 2.0. Biden campaign adviser Antony Blinken prompted former CIA Acting Director Mike Morell to concoct the “Dirty 51” letter falsely claiming that Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop was Russian disinformation.
That lie justified censorship of The Post’s accurate stories from the laptop of Joe Biden’s involvement in his son’s international influence peddling schemes.
Now that we’re heading into the 2024 election, we have Russiagate 3.0. Democrats pretend the impeachment inquiry has “utterly collapsed” because of the curious indictment last week of trusted FBI informant Alexander Smirnov on false statement charges after he allegedly told his FBI handler that Hunter and Joe each had received a $5 million bribe from the Ukrainians.
In a frantic effort to keep Smirnov in jail pre-trial, prosecutors for notorious Biden protector David Weiss, the Delaware US attorney, used language ripped straight out of the Russiagate textbook: “Smirnov’s efforts to spread misinformation about a candidate of one of the two major parties [Joe] continues.”
Now Smirnov is being used as make-believe vindication of the 51 former intelligence officials who signed the fake laptop letter to help Biden win the 2020 election.
Marc Polymeropoulos, a former CIA operations officer who claims to be a victim of the dubious “Havana syndrome,” pounced on the Smirnov story.
“It validates exactly what we were warning about,” he told NBC News. “The Russians were going to push this narrative of Hunter Biden and corruption, to hurt Joe Biden.”
No. Hunter’s “laptop from hell” was not Russian disinformation. It still isn’t. The FBI has had it in its possession since December 2019 and has authenticated it as real and valid for use in court.
The Dirty 51 are grasping at straws to try to justify their interference in the 2020 election. It wasn’t the Russians. It was Trump-deranged former CIA management who felt any means justified the ends if they could stop Trump winning a second term.
But now, as the laptop is augmented by whistleblower receipts and witness testimony, and as House Oversight Committee chairman James Comer unravels the complex web of corrupt foreign payments to the Biden family, the president’s praetorian guard is desperate. They are drowning in evidence of corruption while burbling, “There is no evidence!” Russia is all they have.
The joke is on Biden’s media handmaidens still pushing Joe Biden’s absurd lies.
No, the laptop is not a “Russian plant,” as he claimed. And, yes, Joe did talk to Hunter about his “overseas business dealings.”
Heck, he did a lot more than talk.
He made himself available for breakfasts, lunches, dinners, coffees, and pleasant chit chat on the speakerphone with Hunter’s foreign benefactors, all to oil the wheels of the family business — which was selling access to him, as he well knew.
“Look after my boy,” he told Kremlin-backed oligarch Elena Baturina and her husband, Yuri Luzhkov, the corrupt former mayor of Moscow, when Hunter activated the speakerphone at a Russian restaurant in Brooklyn called Romanoff on May 4, 2014.
They sure did. Just three months earlier, Baturina had wired $3.5 million to Rosemont Seneca Thornton LLC, the firm cofounded by Hunter, his “best friend in business” Devon Archer, John Kerry’s stepson Chris Heinz, and Jimmy Bulger, nephew of mobster “Whitey” Bulger.
Devine has much more here.
Vaunce News 