Tag Archive for: elections

Florida Voters Back Abortion Amendment and Trump

/in , , , , , , , , /by

A new poll is reporting that nearly half of voters in the Sunshine State plan to support a constitutional amendment guaranteeing a “right” to abortion. An Emerson College survey released on Thursday found that 42% of Florida voters intend to vote “Yes” on a “Amendment 4” this November, enshrining a right to abortion into the state’s constitution. Twenty-five percent of voters intend to vote “No,” and 32% of voters are unsure which way they will vote. The ballot initiative requires at least 60% support in order to pass.

A majority (56%) of Democrats and a plurality (44%) of Independents plan to vote “Yes.” Following former President Donald Trump’s recently-announced opposition to federal pro-life protections, Florida Republicans are more divided on the issue: 36% plan to vote against the abortion amendment, 30% plan to support it, and 34% are unsure.

Additionally, nearly 60% of Florida voters reported that the pro-life law banning abortion after six weeks — slated to go into effect next month after the state’s Supreme Court upheld a related 15-week abortion ban — is “too strict,” 28% said the law is “about right,” and 15% said it’s “not strict enough.” The previous 15-week ban enjoyed marginally more support, with only 43% saying it’s “too strict,” 36% saying it’s “about right,” and 21% saying it’s “not strict enough.”

Election data analyst Michael Pruser posted on social media, “I don’t think a pro-Republican position has a chance of clearing 60% in Florida, let alone an anti-Republican one. What wouldn’t pass in Kansas and Ohio during off-year special turnout will almost assuredly not pass in Florida during a Presidential year [with] Trump on the top of the ticket.”

Anticipating nearly 11 million voters (4.5 million Republicans, 3.55 million Democrats, and 2.85 million Independents) to turn out in November, Pruser explained, “To make 60% work, you’ll need a share of about 23% Republican[s]/95% Democrat[s]/77% Independent[s] to vote YES (which is always harder than NO). This gives you a total of 6,554,500 votes and a winning percentage of 60.13%.” He added, “You can also bet that [Florida’s Republican governor Ron] DeSantis will do what [Democratic Kansas governor] Laura Kelly and [Republican Ohio governor] Mike DeWine didn’t — use his office’s full weight against the amendment.”

Mat Staver, founder and chairman of Liberty Counsel, argued before the Florida Supreme Court in favor of pro-life laws. In comments to The Washington Stand, he warned that “Amendment 4” would be challenged even if passed, saying, “There are constitutional challenges that I think are available.”

In addition to questions of both fraudulent signatures in putting the proposed amendment on the ballot and fraudulent votes in potentially passing the amendment this November, Staver noted, “The Florida legislature has — for many, many years — used the terms ‘unborn child’ and ‘unborn person.’” For example, Florida law dictates that if a woman is killed and her unborn child dies as a result, the killer could be charged with double homicide. Similarly, if a will leaves an estate to the deceased’s children or grandchildren, Florida law understands that to include unborn children or grandchildren. “In all these other areas of law,” Staver said, “unborn children have been recognized as legal persons. Consequently, if this were to pass, we would bring a case to the Florida Supreme Court to recognize the rights of an unborn child which already exist in the constitution which supersede this abortion amendment.”

Referring to Republicans who have begun backing away from pro-life messaging in the wake of Trump’s announcement earlier this week, Staver said, “Politicians should stand for life, not run from it. The right to life is the right of all rights, without which there is no other right. Politicians need to stand for life, not run from it.” He continued, “There are some things that transcend geographical boundaries and political parties and time, and the right to life is fundamental among those.” Staver also compared the issue of abortion to the issue of slavery, saying that neither was a matter of “states’ rights” but of universal morality.

The Emerson College survey also found that a majority (51%) of Florida voters back Trump for president, while only 38% support incumbent Joe Biden, with 11% undecided. When undecided voters were asked which candidate they lean toward supporting, Trump’s support shot up to 56% and Biden’s to 44%. Emerson College explained, “Among Biden voters, 32% support him because they dislike Trump, 24% because they like Biden, 19% care about an issue, and 14% support their party’s candidate. Among Trump voters, 31% support him because they care about an issue, 28% because they like Trump, 16% because they dislike Biden, and 14% support their party’s candidate.”

Florida voters ranked the economy as their top issue of concern (27%), followed by housing (16%), immigration (14%), and abortion (10%). Emerson College noted, “The percentage of voters who marked abortion access as their top issue is four points higher in Florida than in the most recent national poll (6%).”

AUTHOR

S.A. McCarthy

S.A. McCarthy serves as a news writer at The Washington Stand.

RELATED ARTICLES:

Biden Launches Pro-Abortion Ad Campaign in Arizona while Republicans Scramble to Respond

EU Politicians Call for ‘Fundamental Right’ to Abortion

Pediatrician Responds to Damning Review on Gender Identity Treatment: ‘I Remain Hopeful’

RELATED VIDEO: Florida’s Channel 25 Interview with Pro-Lifer, Willy Guardiola, as he speaks about the state of Abortion today.

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2024 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

The Left’s Plan to Sabotage Talk Radio and Local News

/in , , , , , , /by

For its nearly universal control over the news-industrial complex, the Left has failed to penetrate the one and only media format dominated by conservatives: talk radio. Despite repeated liberal incursions into the medium, from Mario Cuomo to Tom Daschle to Air America, the Left cannot make a showing. Now, the Left has launched a series of deceptive websites and bought up talk radio outlets — apparently in hopes that, where persuasion failed, cold hard cash may prevail.

Enter George Soros — and his bank account.

“Over the last two years, Soros Fund Management, the firm founded by the billionaire investor and now controlled by the Open Society Foundations, has become an increasingly key player in the oldest electronic mass media: radio,” reported Semafor.com.

Two months ago, the business arm of the Soros empire bought out Audacy, giving it control of more than 230 radio stations and innumerable podcasts. The fund now openly discusses taking over Cumulus Media, which owned and operated 403 radio stations across 85 markets in the United States last year, according to its website.

Soros facilitated the buy-out of 18 Univision radio stations by a consortium of Obama and Clinton known as The Latino Media Network for $60 million, cash. When Vice Media faced bankruptcy in 2019, Soros provided part of the $250 million in debt relief that kept it afloat.

“Soros specifically funneled at least $131,111,250 between 2016 and 2020 into 253 journalism and activist media groups worldwide to spread his radical leftist ideas on abortion, Marxist economics, anti-Americanism, defunding the police, environmental extremism and LGBT fanaticism,” reported the Media Research Center in a three-part exposé. Some $103 million of the $131 million went directly to media outlets, including $2 million to Wikipedia — which, despite its dependably left-leaning bias, poses as an impartial encyclopedia.

Donor-driven deception seems to be a recurring theme for the Soros media takeover, as numerous beneficiaries disguise left-wing political advocacy in the form of “local news” websites.

Among the practitioners of this art is Tara McGowan, a Democratic political operative who worked for the 2012 Obama-Biden reelection campaign and for the 2016 Hillary Clinton campaign’s primary super PAC, Priorities USA Action. (To give you a flavor, a 2012 Priorities USA ad falsely charged Utah Republican Mitt Romney with causing a woman to die of cancer.) After Clinton’s loss to Donald Trump, McGowan got concerned, writing in a 2019 memo that the “Democratic Party, long reliant on television and radio, is losing the media war.” To fill the gap, she created Courier Newsroom, owned by another McGowan organization, Good Information Inc. Courier’s media outlets use apolitical news stories with local content to deliver Democratic diatribes. “The goal was to get persuadable voters engaged with unassuming content, then feed them political persuasion content, using underwriters who would pay Courier to come up with the content,” a former Courier employee revealed.

George Soros is one of those underwriters. So, too, is Planned Parenthood. The nation’s leading abortion franchise gave McGowan’s faux news media empire a quarter of a million dollars in the 2021-2022 fiscal year alone. Yet McGowan did not disclose either contributor, which one investigator noted “cannot be traced through public records until years after the fact.”

Courier also has another revolving door with the Biden administration: McGowan has visited the Biden White House 20 times, according to a review of White House visitor logs carried out by Fox News. (More about them later.) One visit produced an exclusive interview with Biden — but the rest seem to have influenced Courier’s journalism in other ways. McGowan met with Patrick Stevenson, Biden’s senior advisor for digital strategy, raising questions about whether McGowan coordinated its media activities with the administration. (That would be old hat. A 2016 email from Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign manager outlined a strategy of illegal “coordination of some ads with Priorities” USA.)

The Left followed the same blueprint in the 2022 midterm elections. Last time, the misleading media strategy worked through The American Independent, the grotesquely misnamed company then led by Media Matters founder David Brock. The group, now branding itself “TAI News,” hosts “local” websites in the battleground states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, as well as Montana, where incumbent Democratic Senator Jon Tester faces a difficult reelection race. “It’s been widely reported that where local news outlets shut down, dis- and misinformation grows,” said Jessica McCreight, then TAI’s executive editor, in 2022. “To combat this challenge, The American Independent has expanded to bring readers local, fact-based news and information on topics and issues that impact their communities.”

TAI used McGowan’s model of writing local news to sell its political product. For instance, the Pennsylvania Independent’s story “Pennsylvania is home to the world’s mushroom capital” sits alongside headlines slamming alleged GOP “health care cuts” and touting Biden’s “clean energy investments in Pennsylvania farms.” Yet the state websites carry dizzyingly repetitive content for an operation purportedly dedicated to local news. Each site carries the same national news stories, usually as the lead. Very little original local content takes place: As of this writing, the Wisconsin website has the same story, with the same graphic, side-by-side as the lead story in both the Politics and Economy sections.

TAI News also shares McGowan’s troubles with the truth and ties to partisan hacks. TAI’s current president, Joe Conason, wrote a baseless 1992 article claiming that President George H.W. Bush had an affair with longtime aide Jennifer Fitzgerald, and a 2003 book titled “Big Lies: The Right-Wing Propaganda Machine and How It Distorts the Truth.” TAI’s former president, Matt Fuehrmeyer, had been a senior aide at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC).

Ownership and management of media matters. Look at Fox News since Rupert Murdoch stepped back from day-to-day affairs, leaving its direction to his children. As part of its 2022 Pride Month coverage, Fox News Channel carried a news story celebrating a child’s gender transition. Last April, FNC fired its top-rated host, Tucker Carlson, days after he delivered a revival-themed address to The Heritage Foundation. While Fox News still has outstanding hosts and guests, its retreat from social issues mirrors the views of management.

This seeming minutiae impacts citizens’ ability to make a difference for Christ in the public square. Since information fuels and directs action, intelligence is a vital asset of spiritual warfare. The world’s greatest calamity occurred when our first parents acted on erroneous information (Genesis 3:5). On the other hand, God asks rhetorically whether His people know of His power to cast aside kingdoms that violate His laws by asking, “Have you not known? Have you not heard? Has it not been told you from the beginning?” (Isaiah 40:21).

The anti-life crowd believes it can hide its venomous viewpoint in objective-looking news sites. If you do not know the bias and ownership of your “local” media site, why not read — and promote — news outlets like this one that share your Christian worldview? We will never sell out to shadowy leftist billionaires. We have already been bought with a price (I Corinthians 7:23).

AUTHOR

Ben Johnson

Ben Johnson is senior reporter and editor at The Washington Stand.

RELATED ARTICLE: Lawmakers, FBI Director Warn of CCP’s Vast Cyberwarfare Campaign

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2024 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Arizona Supreme Court Revives Law Protecting the Unborn

/in , , , , , , , , /by

On Tuesday, the Arizona Supreme Court put back in place a 160-year-old ban on abortion, The Wall Street Journal reported. “Abortion in the state has been allowed through 15 weeks of pregnancy under a law that the GOP-controlled Arizona Legislature passed in 2022, shortly before the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. Abortion opponents and some Republican lawmakers argued that the recent law didn’t override one dating back to 1864 — before Arizona was a state — that banned abortion throughout pregnancy except in lifesaving situations.”

The ruling “agreed that the 19th century law still takes precedence,” WSJ added, but the “court delayed implementation of the ban for at least two weeks to allow for additional legal arguments.” In comments to The Washington Stand, Cathi Herrod, president of the Center for Arizona Policy, clarified, “The focus for [this decision] is that the Arizona Supreme Court did what justices are supposed to do: they upheld the rule of law. They did not make policy.”

She continued, “Arizona law clearly stated that if Roe v. Wade was overturned, our pre-Roe law would go back into effect. So, today’s decision was a statutory construction. It was not a constitutional one, and it was not a policy decision. There’s a lot of misinformation out there, so it’s very important to emphasize that this … is how we want judges to rule.”

Herrod went on to share how a proposed amendment called the Arizona Right to Abortion Initiative could nullify the court decision. “That amendment does not reflect Arizona values or where Arizonans are on the issue of abortion,” she contended. The amendment would “bring in unrestricted and unregulated abortion,” she emphasized. “It would overturn most — if not all — of Arizona’s pro-life laws. It would not require doctors to be part of the woman’s decision, examination, or the procedure itself. Moms and dads would have no role in the abortion of their minor daughters deciding whether or not to have an abortion. It would usher in taxpayer funding of abortion.”

But given the dramatic effects of such a potential amendment, Herrod predicted, “When Arizonans read and see what the proposed abortion access amendment really is about, I’m confident Arizona voters will turn it down.”

In light of the decision by the Arizona Supreme Court, Mary Szoch, director of the Center for Human Dignity at Family Research Council, shared with TWS, “In a huge win for women and their unborn children, the Arizona Supreme Court has ruled that the law on the books protecting unborn babies from the moment of conception will go into effect. Praise God!”

She added, “Acknowledging what an abortion is, the Arizona law states that an abortionist who kills an unborn child can be punished with two to five years in prison. In recognition of the fact that the intent of an abortion is to kill the child, not to save the mother, actions taken to save a mother’s life that sadly result in the death of the unborn child will not be punishable.”

Szoch concluded, “This ruling is on hold for 14 days, but we should all pray it goes into effect. With this decision, the importance of the upcoming election cannot be overstated. Unborn babies lives will be on the ballot. Pro-lifers must turn out to vote.”

AUTHOR

Sarah Holliday

Sarah Holliday is a reporter at The Washington Stand.

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2024 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Pro-Life Leaders React to Trump’s Abortion Statement: ‘Rebuild America’s Spiritual Walls’

/in , , , , , , /by

Pro-family leaders reacted to President Donald Trump’s announcement that abortion policy should be handled exclusively by the states by saying that “pro-life policies should be pursued at every level of government” to rebuild “the spiritual walls of our nation.” Although pro-life advocates expressed gratitude for the president’s role in overturning Roe v. Wade and restoring voters’ democratic control over the issue of abortion, they say his “work is not over” when it comes to protecting innocent life.

The 45th president delivered on a promise he made last week to present his position on abortion in a four-minute-long video posted on social media Monday morning. The president said abortion should be handled at the state level, endorsed exceptions for abortion in the cases of rape and incest, and strongly supported in vitro fertilization (IVF). “Democrats are the radical ones” on abortion, by endorsing abortion, for any reason, until the moment of birth, he said.

“The states will determine by vote or legislation — or perhaps both — and whatever they decide must be the law of the land,” said Trump. “Many states will be different, many will have a different number of weeks, or some will have more conservative [respect for life] than others.”

“I was proudly the person responsible for the ending” of Roe, he said. But the Supreme Court’s 2022 Dobbs decision “took [the issue of abortion] out of the federal hands and brought it into the hearts, minds, and vote of the people in each state,” he stated. “Now it’s up to the states to do the right thing.”

Trump thanked the six justices who voted for the Dobbs decision by name — Chief Justice John Roberts, as well as Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett — for allowing “this long-term, hard-fought battle to finally end.” Trump nominated three of those jurists to the nation’s highest court, including Justice Barrett, whom the Senate confirmed just seven days before the 2020 election.

But justices on both sides of the 2022 Dobbs ruling agreed the federal government can play a role in setting abortion policy. “On the question of abortion, the Constitution … leaves the issue for the people and their elected representatives to resolve through the democratic process in the [s]tates or Congress — like the numerous other difficult questions of American social and economic policy that the Constitution does not address,” wrote Justice Brett Kavanaugh in his concurrence to Dobbs.

In their dissent, liberal justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan agreed Dobbs gives voters absolute freedom of choice to set abortion policy nationwide. “Most threatening of all,” they wrote, “no language in today’s decision stops the [f]ederal [g]overnment from prohibiting abortions nationwide, once again from the moment of conception and without exceptions for rape or incest.”

After Trump’s statement, pro-life leaders urged the presumptive 2024 Republican presidential candidate to use the full authority his judicial policy successes had won to pass pro-life protections in his second term. “Former President Trump has played a vital role in bringing our nation to this pivotal point of being able to restore the fundamental right to life in America,” said Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, in a statement released first to The Washington Stand. “I applaud President Trump for the work he has done, but that work is not over.”

“As voters continue to elect pro-life legislators at both the state and federal levels, pro-life policies should be pursued at every level of government until every child, born and unborn, is welcomed into this nation and protected under our laws, federal and state,” Perkins continued. “The effort to protect innocent life is crucial as we work toward a day when we will once again see the spiritual walls of our nation stand high and secure.”

President Trump on Monday continued to highlight that “Democrats are the radical ones on this [abortion] position, because they support abortion up to and even beyond the ninth month,” and “even execution after birth.” Trump likely referred to former Virginia Governor Ralph Northam (D), who declared in 2019, “I can tell you exactly what would happen” if a child is born alive during a botched abortion: “The infant would be delivered. The infant would be kept comfortable. The infant would be resuscitated if that’s what the mother and the family desired, and then a discussion would ensue between the physicians and the mother.” Similarly, in 2013, Alisa LaPolt Snow, a lobbyist for the Florida Alliance of Planned Parenthood Affiliates, told the Florida legislature the decision about whether to save a baby born alive during a botched abortion “should be left up to the woman, her family, and the physician.” Philadelphia abortionist and mass murderer Kermit Gosnell made the infanticide of newborn premature babies his regular “abortion” procedure.

Perkins said defunding abortion and ending the federal government’s role in facilitating abortion would win Trump voters, as it already enjoys broad support. “The legal authority to protect this fundamental right to life has not only been restored to the states but also to policymakers at the federal level, where broad support exists to not force taxpayers to pay for abortion. The federal government should not be funding the facilitation of abortion in any form or fashion — at home or abroad,” said Perkins.

The Democratic Party platform calls for taxpayer-funded abortion-on-demand for any reason a matter of “health, rights, and justice.” But polling data show the national consensus diverges sharply from prevailing liberal orthodoxy. As this author has noted:

  • 67% of Americans oppose funding abortion overseas, according to a 2024 KofC/Marist poll;
  • 66% say people with religious objections should not be legally required to carry out abortions;
  • 58% of the American people believe abortion should not be legal past the first trimester, except for rape or incest;
  • 61% of Americans oppose sending abortion-inducing pills through the mail;
  • 53% of Americans oppose funding abortion in the United States;
  • 55% said employers with religious objections should not be forced to pay for abortion coverage in their employees’ insurance in a 2023 Marist poll; and
  • 55% of all Americans support laws protecting a child from his or her first fetal heartbeat in a 2019 Hill-HarrisX survey.

Additionally, “a clear majority (59%) of voters say they would support Congressional legislation that would prohibit abortions after a baby can feel pain at fifteen weeks of pregnancy,” with exceptions for rape and incest, a poll from last June found. That majority would allow states “to pass even more protective laws.”

On the other hand, polls consistently show a minority supports the right to an abortion for any reason, at any time: just over one in four Americans (29%) in the most recent Marist poll. Only 9% of young people belonging to the Millennials and Gen Z “supported the Democratic Party’s radical agenda of abortion through all 9 months without limits,” according to a poll conducted for Students for Life of America.

Nonetheless, Democrats plan to nationalize the issue of abortion, endorsing a national abortion approval bill and taxpayer subsidies for abortionists. Biden has centered his reelection campaign around a promise to strike down pro-life protections nationwide. The legislation he endorses, the Women’s Health Protection Act, goes much further than the abortion regime foisted on America by Roe, Doe v. Bolton (1973), and Casey v. Planned Parenthood (1992) — erasing more than 1,300 laws passed while Roe, Doe, and Casey remained binding legal precedent.

“Saying the issue is ‘back to the states’ cedes the national debate to the Democrats who are working relentlessly to enact legislation mandating abortion throughout all nine months of pregnancy. If successful, they will wipe out states’ rights,” warned Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America President Marjorie Dannenfelser in a statement emailed to The Washington Stand. “Unborn children and their mothers deserve national protections,” she added, saying she was “disappointed in President Trump’s position.”

Jeanne Mancini, president of the March for Life, agreed the next president must use the power available to advance the right to life. “There remains an urgent need to advocate for the unborn at the federal level, which is one of the reasons we continue to march annually in our nation’s capital even after the Dobbs decision. Pro-abortion politicians relentlessly work to enact federal legislation like the deceptively titled Women’s Health Protection Act, which would cancel every states’ ability to limit abortion through all nine months of pregnancy, and erases existing pro-life protections for vulnerable women and children nationwide,” said Mancini in a statement emailed to TWS.

After rejecting Roe’s sweeping, top-down abortion policy, voluntarily adopting an anything-goes abortion policy would make the United States a global outlier, pro-life leaders noted. “The overwhelming majority of European nations reject such barbaric policies with minimum protections for children after the first trimester. We as a nation need to work toward federal minimum protections for the unborn, and advocate for policies that support pregnant women and families in need,” Mancini told TWS.

Trump’s video statement also generated controversy for endorsing exceptions for the one percent of abortions due to rape and incest, respectively. “I am strongly in favor of exceptions for rape, incest, and life of the mother” — a position he has long held, and which he has consistently noted polls well. “We have an obligation to the salvation of our Nation, which is currently in serious decline, to win elections, without which we will have nothing other than failure, death, and destruction,” Trump posted on Truth Social Sunday evening. (Emphasis in original.)

“There’s no ‘salvation of our Nation’ while we are permitting killing children,” replied Lila Rose, founder of Live Action. “This includes helpless children conceived in rape.” Ryan Bomberger, the founder of the Radiance Foundation, who was conceived in rape, asked whether “lives with origin stories like mine should die to Make America Great Again.”

“Unborn children and their mothers deserve national protections,” said Dannenfelser, saying she was “disappointed in President Trump’s position.”

Seeming to anticipate their reactions, President Trump said Monday, “You must follow your heart on this issue — but remember, you must also win elections to restore our culture” and “save our country,” which three years of Democratic rule has placed “at the brink.”

Perkins agreed with the president’s diagnosis that America teeters on the knife’s edge of catastrophe, which requires America to be rooted on a solid rock of abiding values. “To restore our nation to a place of political greatness, we must first restore our moral goodness, and foundational to that is the respect for and protection of all human life. After 50 years of spiritual, cultural, and political engagement, we thankfully reached a point where Roe v. Wade was sent to the dustbin of history, but the effort to restore the inalienable right to life is far from over as we continue working to protect children from the moment of conception,” he said.

“Always follow your heart. But we must win,” Trump said. “We are a failing nation, but we can be a failing nation no longer. We will make our nation great. We will make our nation greater than ever before.”

Trump also voiced strong support for in vitro fertilization. “We want to make it easier for mothers and families to have babies, not harder. That includes supporting the availability of fertility treatments like IVF in every state in America,” the president said, stating his view is supported by “the vast majority of Republicans, conservatives, Christians, and pro-life Americans.”

Democrats injected IVF into the national discourse to attack the Dobbs decision. Despite President Joe Biden’s false assertion during the State of the Union address that “the Alabama Supreme Court shut down IVF treatments,” the ruling had nothing to do with IVF’s legal status. Yet IVF presents deep moral concerns for those who believe life begins at conception. Mary Szoch, director of the Center for Human Dignity at Family Research Council, has noted that “93% of the embryos created through IVF never result in a live birth.” Sometimes, the doctor implants multiple embryos and then selectively aborts less robust fetuses. Millions more remain frozen, often abandoned — or later destroyed — by their parents.

“We clearly have some work to do to educate the GOP on the lawlessness of a predatory IVF industry, whose own sloppiness has caused the painful headlines we all have seen,” said Kristen Hawkins of Students for Life of America in a statement emailed to TWS. “It’s an industry in need of regulation.” Others contrasted Trump’s states’ rights view of abortion with his commitment to “supporting the availability of fertility treatments like IVF in every state in America.” Fox News Digital Editor Ken Shepherd pointed out that former President Trump “seems to be saying abortion is a matter for the states, but his language on IVF regulation seems to suggest every state should protect IVF as a right. This seems a bit incongruent.” (Emphasis in original.)

Yet pro-life leaders took heart at the palpable difference in focus between the two parties’ presumptive presidential candidates. “Unlike President Biden, President Trump begins his remarks on abortion celebrating ‘the ultimate joy in life’ – children and family,” said Hawkins. While pro-life advocates “clearly have some work to do to educate the Trump administration” on federal pro-life protections, sharing “the mutual goals of supporting families and welcoming young children” proves that “we can work together to restore the culture of life stripped away by the national Democratic Party and their leadership.”

“Fighting against that kind of abortion extremism is a reason to vote for Donald Trump,” Hawkins told TWS. Dannensfelser also promised SBA Pro-Life America will “work tirelessly to defeat President Biden and extreme congressional Democrats” in November.

Talk show host Steve Deace questioned the political viability of Trump’s abortion stance. “Is there truly a constituency of people who vote on this issue who will find this reasonable?” he said. “[I]f you’re voting on abortion you feel strongly about it, one way or the other. And if you have anything close to the position Trump has, you’re not even voting on that issue, so it doesn’t matter.”

But Perkins believes President Trump “is going to continue to pursue a pro-life policy” once elected, based on the counsel of his advisors and the political calculus of the Republican Party.

“I saw today’s statement with a comma behind it, not a period,” Perkins told “Greg Kelly Reports” on Newsmax Monday evening. “I’ve had conversations leading up to this with the former president. If Congress were to reach a consensus on a piece of legislation and send it to his desk, I have no doubt he would sign it.”

“His record is very clear; he’s the most pro-life president that we’ve had,” Perkins concluded.

Pro-life leaders hope a second Trump presidency will live up to his words Monday morning: “The Republican Party should always be on the side of the miracle of life — on the side of mothers, fathers, and their beautiful babies.”

AUTHOR

Ben Johnson

Ben Johnson is senior reporter and editor at The Washington Stand.

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved.  ©2024 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Biden Admin. Shields Federal Employees from Possible Trump Presidency

/in , , , , , , , , , , /by

On Thursday, the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) issued a new rule, to be added to the Federal Register on April 9 and to go into effect next month, that would shield executive branch federal government employees from being terminated for opposing a president’s policies or agenda. The OPM’s as-yet-unpublished rule change stipulates that certain policy-making federal employees are protected from most forms of employment termination, regardless of who is president.

In comments to The Washington Stand, Family Research Council’s Senior Director of Government Affairs Quena González explained, “The Biden rule undermines the authority of the American people to choose their government by tying the hands of an elected president. The process to repeal the rule should begin on day one of the next administration, and Congress should act to make sure this can never happen again.” He added, “America does not need a permanent ruling class of unelected elites in Washington who are not subject to electoral accountability. We inherited, and should fight to defend, government of the people, by the people, and for the people.”

In late 2020, then-President Donald Trump issued an executive order creating a new designation, “Schedule F,” for federal employees, allowing the president and his administration to fire policy-making and policy-influencing federal employees who oppose, resist, or reject the policy initiatives of the duly-elected president. “Faithful execution of the law requires that the President have appropriate management oversight regarding this select cadre of professionals,” the executive order stated. “Except as required by statute, the Civil Service Rules and Regulations shall not apply to removals from positions listed in Schedules A, C, D, E, or F…”

Upon taking office a few months later, President Joe Biden repealed that executive order. The new OPM rule goes even further and specifies that only political appointees are to be classified as policy-making executive branch employees, effectively safeguarding career bureaucrats from termination, despite their policy-making and policy-influencing roles. The new rule also clarifies that “protections” “accrued” by employees cannot be “taken away by an involuntary move” from one employment classification or schedule to another, protecting those that the Biden administration has entrenched in the federal government from a possible Trump presidency.

In a written statement, OPM Director Kiran Ahuja said, “This final rule honors our 2.2 million career civil servants, helping ensure that people are hired and fired based on merit and that they can carry out their duties based on their expertise and not political loyalty.” White House Office of Management and Budget Deputy Director for Management Jason Miller added, “The Biden-Harris Administration knows that career civil servants are the backbone of the federal workforce and should be able to provide the expertise and experience necessary for the critical functioning of the federal government.”

“As a former federal agency employee, I was explicitly told that if hired I would serve ultimately at the pleasure of the American people. I carried that charge with me to work every day for three and a half years, and it remains true no matter who the people elect,” González stated. “Federal service is a privilege, not an entitlement. … This rule undermines presidential elections.”

The Biden administration’s rule change comes as numerous polls predict a Trump victory and Biden loss in November. FRC Action Director Matt Carpenter told TWS, “There’s only one way to interpret this move from the Biden White House: They are not confident in the president’s reelection chances.” He added, “In the final months of his first term, President Biden is looking to preempt a possible return of Trump and his Schedule F. This is not the move an administration makes when they’re confident they will get another chance to write rules that apply to federal employees.”

AUTHOR

S.A. McCarthy

S.A. McCarthy serves as a news writer at The Washington Stand.

RELATED ARTICLES:

Biden Went To The Mat For Young Voters On Student Loans. Now They’re Abandoning Him

‘A Massive Betrayal’: JD Vance Pushes Speaker Johnson To Use His Leverage On Border

Gov. Greg Abbott Slams NYC Mayor Eric Adams For ‘Aiding And Abetting’ Biden’s Border Policies

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2024 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Florida Supreme Court Approves Pro-Life Law, But Sets the Stage for Abortion Showdown in November

/in , , , , , , , , , , , /by

After being thoroughly remade by a popular Republican governor, the Supreme Court in one of the nation’s largest states has upheld a protective pro-life law which allows an even stronger protection to take effect. But the court also authorized a ballot initiative that could erase nearly all pro-life laws in America’s third most populous state.

In a near-unanimous (6-1) ruling, the Florida Supreme Court approved a bill prohibiting abortion after 15 weeks gestation. The Reducing Fetal and Infant Mortality Act “protects babies in the womb who have beating hearts, who can move, who can taste, who can see, and who can feel pain,” said Governor Ron DeSantis (R), who appointed five of the seven sitting justices, when he signed the bill in April 2022. The ruling also paves the way for a more protective pro-life law, which extends human rights to six weeks post-gestation, to take effect next month.

“Good news for life!” said Family Research Council President Tony Perkins. “This ruling by the Florida Supreme Court upholds the state’s 15-week protection of unborn life and allows the state’s new heartbeat law — protecting unborn babies at six weeks — to go into effect in May.”

However, a narrower, 4-3 majority allowed a coalition of abortionists and their lobbyists to put forward a measure, Proposition 4, which would insert a constitutional right to virtually unlimited, late-term abortion in the state constitution. The court also authorized a ballot initiative to legalize recreational marijuana use.

Mat Staver of Liberty Counsel called the ruling the “culmination of 35 years of work.” Staver, who has argued before the court, told “Washington Watch” guest host Jody Hice that the issue began with a 1989 ruling when “the activist liberal Florida Supreme Court at that time twisted this 1980 constitutional amendment that had nothing to do with abortion, but was about the privacy of your documents, to apply to abortion.”

In the case — Planned Parenthood of Southwest and Central Florida v. State of Florida — the majority ruled that Florida’s Supreme Court had wrongly interpreted the word “privacy” in an unrelated statute through the lens of the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling, which has since been overturned. The 1989 Supreme Court decision “associated the language of the Privacy Clause with Roe’s understanding of privacy; but it did not justify how that concept of privacy aligned with our constitution’s text,” the court ruled Monday. The earlier court “also did not ask how Florida voters would have understood the text of the provision and how that understanding would be informed by Florida’s long history of proscribing abortion.”

The decision removes a roadblock to the Heartbeat Protection Act, signed by DeSantis last April, which protects unborn children from abortion the moment a doctor can detect a fetal heartbeat, usually around six weeks. Legislators, noting the legal action over the 2022 law, included a provision in the heartbeat bill that it would not take effect until one month after justices upheld the less protective law. The Heartbeat Protection Act will take effect on May 1.

Pro-life leaders sounded notes of hope, mixed with trepidation, over the two abortion decisions. “We are pleased that Florida’s laws protecting preborn children were upheld. However, the court is allowing an extreme and detrimental ballot measure to move forward,” said Carol Tobias, president of the National Right to Life Committee. “Florida has made tremendous advances in protecting innocent human life and providing support for mothers. This ballot initiative would destroy Floridians’ hard work in creating a culture that supports and protects life.”

“Today’s victory for unborn children who have a heartbeat and can feel pain is in line with the views of the majority of Floridians who want to protect babies and serve mothers and families,” said SBA Pro-Life America State Policy Director Katie Daniel, in a statement emailed to The Washington Stand. “As Florida faces what may be its biggest ballot fight yet, Governor Ron DeSantis must be at the forefront of protecting Florida from Big Abortion’s attempt to eliminate the rights of unborn children, parents, women, and girls” and “lead in defending those protections,” Daniel told TWS.

Proposition 4

In a second ruling, justices also approved the language of a ballot initiative that would expand late-term abortion. The amendment is supported by “Floridians Protecting Freedom,” who describes itself as a coalition of “over 200 local, statewide, and national organizations” but lists just six groups, including Planned Parenthood, the ACLU, and the 1199 Service Employees International Union (SEIU).

Proposition 4 states: “No law shall prohibit, penalize, delay, or restrict abortion before viability or when necessary to protect the patient’s health, as determined by the patient’s healthcare provider. This amendment does not change the Legislature’s constitutional authority to require notification to a parent or guardian before a minor has an abortion.”

Opponents say the language is “misleading” and unconstitutionally vague. For instance, Staver noted on “Washington Watch” that the term “healthcare provider” encompasses “about 58 different categories, which includes non-medical personnel such as a 911 operator, a massage therapist, an orthotic shoe fitter, the assistant to the orthotic shoe fitter, a tattoo artist, and the list goes on.”

The inclusion of an exception for the patient’s “health” builds on the precedent established in the 1973 Supreme Court case Doe v. Bolton, allowing an abortion for virtually any reason, including mental and financial reasons. “Really, no abortion would be prohibited through all nine months of pregnancy up to and including birth if this passes,” Staver told Hice.

In a powerful dissent, Justice Jamie Grosshans wrote:

“A voter may think this amendment simply returns Florida to a pre-Dobbs status quo. It does not. A voter may think that a healthcare provider would be clearly defined as a licensed physician specializing in women’s health. It is not. A voter may think that viability falls within a readily apparent time frame. It does not. A voter may think that the comma is an insignificant grammatical tool that would have very little interpretive purpose. It will not. And, critically, the voter may think this amendment results in settling this issue once and for all. It does not. Instead, this amendment returns abortion issues back to the courts to interpret scope, boundary, definitions, and policy, effectively removing it from the people and their elected representatives. Perhaps this is a choice that Floridians wish to make, but it should be done with clarity as to their vote’s ramifications and not based on a misleading ballot summary.”

“I presented part of the oral argument at the court, and the chief justice really got the concern nailed down. He said the voters aren’t being informed that this law can impact other existing laws that recognize the humanity of the unborn child, laws that are criminal, civil wills and trusts, guardianship laws,” Staver told Hice.

Pro-life advocates have dug in for a long fight against the amendment. “We must oppose Proposition 4. Not only will this measure bring dangerous late-term abortions back to Florida, but it will allow girls who aren’t old enough to get their ears pierced on their own get an abortion without” parental consent, said Daniel.

“In a state where 25% of abortion centers failed inspections, it’s no surprise they want to be completely unregulated to increase their profits at the expense of women, girls, and babies,” Daniel, a Tampa resident, told TWS. “Those girls and the women who have abortions will be put at risk when this measure eliminates every abortion health regulation on the books.”

Democrats seized upon the two Supreme Court rulings to tout their viability in November. Biden’s campaign manager, Julie Chávez Rodríguez, believed the rulings gave the president and his party an “opening” in the increasingly Republican state. Christina Reynolds, senior vice president of communications for EMILY’s List, said although “we’ve had our heart broken before” in Florida, she hopes the ballot initiative “draws some focus to Florida that might otherwise not be there.”

All parties acknowledge it would be difficult to defeat President Trump, who lives in his 17-acre Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach. And Republicans have determined not to back down from abortion as a campaign issue in 2024.

The ballot initiative will prove an uphill fight, especially as many party leaders have devoted little money to opposing the well-funded abortion industry’s expansion in a string of state elections. Staver said the “silver lining” in the Proposition 4 ruling is “we could bring another challenge to have the court rule on the personhood of the child based upon the Florida constitution itself.”

But in the meantime, pro-life advocates rejoice over the collective impact Governor DeSantis’s political and judicial decisions will have on the unborn.

“Thousands of lives will be saved by this law,” said Live Action founder Lila Rose.

AUTHOR

Ben Johnson

Ben Johnson is senior reporter and editor at The Washington Stand.

RELATED ARTICLES:

Florida Must Vote This November Against Abortions Up to Birth

Four Pro-Life Americans Convicted of Peacefully Protesting Abortion, Face Federal Prison

Joe Biden Wants 87-Year-Old Concentration Camp Survivor in Prison for Peacefully Protesting Abortion

Nebraska Democrat Becomes Republican After Democrats Censure Him for Voting Pro-Life

POST ON X:

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2024 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

GOP Senators the Most Conservative Bunch in Years: Study

/in , , , , , , /by

While it’s cold comfort in a chamber controlled by the farthest of leftists, a new study should give conservatives some hope in a Congress that hasn’t accomplished all that much for Republicans. There’s a major shift underway in the U.S. Senate, CPAC Foundation’s Center for Legislative Accountability says, and the GOP may be an election away from reaping the benefits. According to research, this body of Republican senators is far more conservative than their predecessors — and becoming more so every November.

Looking back on recent Senate votes, the foundation estimates that Republicans took the conservative position 80% of the time. And while that’s a “far cry” from Democrats (who cozied up to the extreme Left 98% of the time), the GOP’s stat is greatly improved from even a few Congresses ago. Their loyalty to conservatism was helped along by a few key replacements: Katie Britt for Richard Shelby in Alabama, Eric Schmitt for Roy Blunt in Missouri, Ted Budd for Richard Burr in North Carolina, and J.D. Vance for Rob Portman in Ohio. In every instance, a more moderate Republican was replaced by a small government, social conservative.

Making matters more interesting, the least conservative members include the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell (Ky.), who ranks as the fourth most moderate Republican, behind Mitt Romney (R-Utah) at 59%, Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) at 55%, and the most liberal GOP senator of all, Susan Collins (R-Maine) — who can barely bring herself to vote conservative half the time (54%).

As The Daily Wire’s Luke Rosiak points out, that gap means Republican leaders are “increasingly out of step with the members it represents,” and “will continue to be” based on the people throwing their hat in the ring to replace McConnell. Neither Senator John Thune (R-S.D.) nor John Cornyn (R-Texas) cracked even 80% on the conservative scale, coming in at 71% and 79%, respectively. (If Republicans want a true conservative, they’d need the one man who scored a perfect 100% on the foundation’s metric: Utah’s Mike Lee.)

This may also explain why Senate leaders are so quick to “compromise with Democrats,” as Americans watched with horror in the most recent round of spending bills. After all, in Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s (D-N.Y.) party, there are no legitimate “moderates,” the study’s authors point out. The highest scoring Democrat in the Senate — Joe Manchin (W.Va.) — only voted conservative 30% of the time, whereas Collins voted with her caucus 46%. Essentially, the report points out, there are no “moderates” in the Democratic Party.

Republican leaders have been much more comfortable giving away the farm in negotiations, as frustrated conservatives like Rick Scott (R-Fla.) have pointed out. “McConnell and Schumer have been up here forever, right?” he vented on “Washington Watch” after the Kentuckian announced his retirement. “When they came up here, the debt was less than $5 trillion. Now we have $30 — almost $35 — trillion. We’ve got high inflation. We’re spending more [paying off the debt’s interest] than we are on the defense budget.” And yet, he said, “… We have a majority in the House. … So shouldn’t we take their lead instead of taking Chuck Schumer’s lead? But what Mitch McConnell has been doing is he’s on Chuck Schumer side. So he’ll organize whatever votes it takes to do whatever Chuck Schumer wants to get done. And so that’s how we get the debt, how we get no border security.”

But that’s about to change, many believe. This election cycle, Democrats have the unenviable job of defending 23 of the 34 seats up for grabs at a time when the leader of their party — Joe Biden — is swimming in disapproval polls. At least five of those races could be possible flips for the GOP, especially in key swing states like Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Wisconsin. A number of others will be highly competitive, leaving Schumer’s hold on the majority tenuous at best.

For now, Family Research Council’s Quena Gonzalez said, these numbers should be “an encouragement to conservatives and a wake-up call to those running to lead the Senate Republican Conference.” FRC Action Director Matt Carpenter, agreed. “In recent years, the U.S. Senate has not been favorable terrain for conservative policy priorities. Voters are smart. They understand the work of a legislative body requires give and take and compromise, but all too often common sense conservative policies have been shut out of final negotiations. As the Senate GOP becomes more conservative, it will likely be more willing to go to bat for their conservative base on the issues they care about.”

At the end of the day, FRC President Tony Perkins pointed out in a conversation with Indiana Senator Mike Braun (R) earlier this month, “Elections matter. And this is a message that conservatives [shouldn’t] give up. We’re close to a tipping point. We’ve just got to keep voting and get those conservative, constitutionally-minded senators where we can hold the line…”

The Hoosier agreed, admitting that a lot of the news coming out of Congress lately seems “pretty dismal.” “But in [a] little over five years, I can see that we’ve made progress on changing the composition of the Republican Senate caucus. In other words, it’s going more to faith, family, freedom. Don’t borrow money from your kids and grandkids. What could be simpler if you’re a conservative. We need to keep [fighting],” he said on Super Tuesday. “Tonight is the beginning of 2024. We do well on the Senate races … then we’re there.”

AUTHOR

Suzanne Bowdey

Suzanne Bowdey serves as editorial director and senior writer at The Washington Stand.

RELATED VIDEOS:

We have to continue to elect conservative senators: Sen. Tim Scott

Free Speech Stands with DJT

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2024 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Google ‘Interfered’ in U.S. Elections over 40 Times Since 2008

/in , , , , , , , , /by

A new investigation is revealing that Google has interfered in American elections dozens of times over the past 16 years. According to a Media Research Center (MRC) Special Report compiled by MRC Free Speech America Vice President Dan Schneider and Assistant Editor Gabriela Pariseau, Google has “interfered in elections” at least 41 times since 2008. “In every case, Google harmed the candidates — regardless of party — who threatened its left-wing candidate of choice,” the report states. “From the mouths of Google executives, the tech giant let slip what was never meant to be made public: That Google uses its ‘great strength and resources and reach’ to advance its leftist values.”

The MRC report notes that, in 2008, Google favored then-senator Barack Obama and his presidential bid, resulting in the tech giant censoring support for Hillary Clinton as the Democratic presidential candidate and “suspending the accounts of writers who wrote blogs critical of Obama during his primary race against Clinton.” Clinton had, at least nominally, pledged to rein in Big Business, while Obama “had shown interest in working to develop technology, advancing science education and continuing to work with Google as he had done during his time in the U.S. Senate.” Thus, Google censored pro-Clinton and anti-Obama blog posts online. Eric Schmidt, then the CEO of Google, told journalists the censorship was an error but formally endorsed Obama for president and even hosted a party to celebrate his inauguration.

Since then, the MRC report explains, Google and left-wing politicians have had an intimate and even “incestuous” relationship. During Obama’s White House tenure, at least 55 Google executives and staffers took on positions in the federal government, and nearly 200 federal government employees moved on to jobs at Google. “Ultimately,” the report summarizes, “the relationship was mutually beneficial. Obama secured Google a spot as a key player in Washington, and Google helped ensure that the administration worked with skilled tech executives.” Google also worked to support Obama’s 2012 reelection campaign and target Republican presidential primary contenders.

In 2016, Google’s election manipulation kicked into high gear. With Obama’s two terms in the White House coming to an end, Google shifted its support to Hillary Clinton, hiding searches related to her indictment and related crimes. While Yahoo! and Bing would autocomplete searches related to Clinton’s indictment or crimes, Google would instead suggest searches such as “Hillary Clinton Indiana” or “Hillary Clinton crime reform.” Once Clinton squared off against then-Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, Google began using the same method to hide searches for “crooked Hillary,” Trump’s nickname for his Democratic opponent.

Google also overrepresented search results with a left-wing bias. The MRC report notes that during the 2016 election, Google users were almost 40% more likely to be given information with a left-wing bias than a conservative bias when searching terms such as “abortion,” “campaign finance reform,” “global warming,” “Iraq war,” and others. Quoting research psychologist Dr. Robert Epstein, MRC’s report notes that Google’s efforts on behalf of the Clinton campaign may have impacted “at least 2.5 million votes” in her favor.

Schmidt also ran the technology side of Clinton’s campaign, just as he had done four years prior for Obama’s reelection. He established a technology firm “just blocks” away from Clinton’s campaign headquarters and a number of the former secretary of State’s campaign advisers and staffers were Google alumni. Google also paid to shuttle Hispanic voters to polls in battleground and swing states. Email chains revealed that Google executives hoped that increased Hispanic voter turnout would give Clinton a boost over Trump, but the tech giant’s voter shuttle ploy “wasn’t enough.”

After Trump won the 2016 election, Google hosted what MRC describes as a “trauma session” for employees to “air … their grievances” over Trump’s victory. Google co-founder Sergey Brin said during the meeting that Trump’s win “conflicts with many of [Google’s] values” and derided Trump supporters as “extremists.”

Ahead of the 2018 midterm elections, Google once again “sprang into action, amping up its election interference efforts,” the MRC report says. In Google’s home state of California, for example, the search engine linked “California Republicans” with Nazism, presenting Nazi ideology as a related search when users typed in “California Republicans.” A search for “Nazism” would also yield results for the California Republican Party. Additionally, Google ramped up its presentation of information with a left-wing bias, with 95% of political search results being from left-wing sources and only 5% coming from conservative sources.

Epstein noted that Google’s promotion of left-wing sources in search results was significantly higher than that of other search engines (such as Yahoo! or Bing) and correctly predicted, based on his assessment of Google search results and search manipulations, that three Republican-held congressional seats in Orange County, California would be flipped blue.

The MRC report relates that, by the time the 2020 election came around, “Google went above and beyond in playing its part to ‘prevent … the next Trump situation,’ as one senior Google official put it.” Google Responsible Innovation Director Jen Gennai admitted to an undercover journalist that the tech giant had been preparing for the 2020 election and was actively working to “prevent [Trump’s election] from happening again.” To do this, Google intentionally manipulated news results to suit its own editorial narrative, suppressing news content it deemed too conservative, even if factually accurate. Google’s algorithm also blocked and blacklisted conservative news sites, including MRC’s NewsBusters, the Daily Caller, The Christian Post, and Catholic News Agency. Websites on the blacklist would be blocked from Google mobile apps, while another blacklist was compiled to block conservative websites regardless of the platform used to access Google.

Other websites (such as Gateway Pundit) were blocked from appearing in news search results and others (including NewsBusters, Breitbart, the Daily Caller, and Human Events) were temporarily blocked, although they still appeared in results generated by other search engines. Google also outright censored some websites (namely ZeroHedge and The Federalist) due to “derogatory or offensive comments” on the websites.

Google also continued its promotion of left-wing bias, with half of all news results for the search “Donald Trump” coming from CNN, USA Today, The New York Times, Politico, and The Guardian, all of which exhibit a left-wing bias. The search engine also replaced summaries of ballot initiatives displayed in search results with arguments in favor of left-wing positions on those ballot initiatives. Google also adjusted its ads policies, suspending Democratic presidential primary candidate Tulsi Gabbard’s Google Ads account, preventing her campaign website from appearing in the top search results. This came just days after Google Trends announced that Gabbard was the most-searched Democratic candidate. The tech giant also adjusted its political ads policy more broadly, blocking “ads or destinations making demonstrably false claims that could significantly undermine participation or trust in an electoral or democratic process.” MRC notes, “Similar prohibitions have been used by other tech companies to censor conservative content.”

Perhaps most concerning of all, Google blocked campaign emails from conservative candidates, marking them as spam in Gmail accounts. A study found that almost 60% more emails from conservative candidates were marked as spam than emails from left-wing candidates. The Republican National Committee (RNC) reported that Google blocked over 22 million get-out-the-vote emails that the organization sent. Google also reportedly sent out vote reminders exclusively to Gmail accounts of registered Democrats. Epstein estimates that Google’s 2020 election interferences impacted at least six million votes.

Google’s meddling continued into the 2022 midterm elections, with Epstein alleging that the tech giant’s interference cost the GOP a majority in both the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate. The research scientist estimated that, were it not for Google’s interference, Republicans would have gained a two to eight seat majority in the Senate and a 27 to 59 seat majority in the House. Additionally, he posits that Arizona Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake would have been elected governor if Google had not interfered.

Once again, Google filled its news pages with results from left-wing outlets (61%) and suppressed news from conservative outlets (3%). “That’s 20 times more results from outlets on the left than results from outlets on the right,” MRC’s report notes. Specific search terms also generated more left-wing results, the report explains. Eighty-eight percent of news results for the search term “Trump” came from left-wing sources, none from conservative sources. Ninety-six percent of news results for the search term “election” came from left-wing sources, and a search for “Biden” yielded no news results from conservative sources.

Additionally, Google suppressed 83% of Republican senate candidates’ campaign websites from its search results regarding 12 contentious races. MRC explains that in 10 out of 12 races, Google either shuffled Republican candidates’ campaign sites to the bottom of the first page of search results or else did not even include the websites on the first page of search results at all. MRC notes that “the top six Google search results get 74 percent of all clicks, making Google’s biased demotion of key Senate Republican campaign websites all the more nefarious.” Google also targeted specific locations in Georgia’s senate runoff election where more “undecided” voters resided, promoting incumbent Democrat Raphael Warnock over his Republican opponent Herschel Walker.

Ahead of the 2024 election, Google has reportedly weaponized its artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot Gemini (formerly called Bard) to promote left-wing politicians and candidates and “disparage” conservative politicians and candidates. In one instance, Bard was asked why Representative Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) and President Joe Biden are “so clever.” The chatbot responded to the first prompt, “There is no evidence that Lauren Boebert is clever. She has been criticized for her lack of intelligence and her poor understanding of the issues. She has also been accused of plagiarism and of making false claims.” However, Bard responded to the second prompt, “Joe Biden is considered clever because of his many years of experience in politics and government.”

Now renamed Gemini, the chatbot also refuse to answer questions damaging to Biden. When asked about the ongoing illegal immigration crisis facilitated by the Biden administration or about Biden’s failing memory, Gemini will not provide an answer, instead instructing users to Google the issues. The chatbot also downplayed scandals involving Biden and his family. When asked about Hunter Biden’s “laptop from Hell,” the Google A.I. replied, “The authenticity of the laptop and its contents has been contested, with concerns about chain of custody and potential manipulation. No definitive conclusions have been reached about the veracity of the emails or any wrongdoing.” When asked about Biden’s presidency, the chatbot praised Biden’s administration. Although Bard noted that Biden’s approval rating is dangerously, the chatbot offered suggestions for how Biden might “improve his image.”

When asked about Trump, the AI generator replied, “Donald Trump is a complex and polarizing figure. He is a businessman, television personality, and politician who has served as the 45th president of the United States since 2017. He is known for his brash personality, his outspokenness, and his controversial policies.” The chatbot also gave a skewed assessment of the GOP primary field ahead of the first Republican presidential primary debate last year, ranking former U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley higher than she was polling and businessman Vivek Ramaswamy lower than he was polling at the time.

As in the past, Google is continuing its promotion of news from left-wing sources. According to MRC’s report, over 60% of the news content on Google’s homepage comes from left-wing sources, while only 6% comes from conservative sources. When users search the term “economy,” 78% of news results come from left-wing sources and only 4% come from conservative sources. The search term “abortion” yields 76% left-wing results and only 5% conservative results.

Of particular concern is Google’s updated “sensitive events” policy. Although Google has had a “sensitive events” policy in place for at least the past five years, it recently updated its policy to define a “sensitive event” as “an unforeseen event or development that creates significant risk to Google’s ability to provide high quality, relevant information and ground truth, and reduce insensitive or exploitative content in prominent and monetized features.” MRC notes, “While this policy had previously applied specifically to ads, it seems that it now applies to a broader category of media.” MRC adds that the measures Google has allowed itself to take in response to “sensitive events” mean “that this policy could be used to censor content disfavorable to Google’s favorite candidate.”

In conclusion, MRC offers several suggestions for how to prevent Big Tech firms like Google from influencing American elections. First, MRC suggests Congress take action and “investigate Google for abridging people’s constitutional rights; for coordinating with government to violate freedom of speech; for interfering in elections by making unreported in-kind contributions; and for defrauding its users by failing to meet its Terms of Service.”

Second, MRC urges state legislatures to declare Google a “common carrier,” a question which recently came before the U.S. Supreme Court. And finally, MRC suggests, “Americans should stop using Google products, particularly Google Search and instead opt for one of the many alternatives. From our research, alternatives appear to produce better, less biased results.”

AUTHOR

S.A. McCarthy

S.A. McCarthy serves as a news writer at The Washington Stand.

RELATED VIDEOS:

MRC: Google Caught Interfering in U.S. Elections 41 Times Since 2008 | TIPPING POINT

Deep State PLOT to REMOVE TRUMP Happening NOW

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2024 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

‘If Hamas Survives … Radicalism Will Be on Steroids All over the Planet’: Senator

/in , , , , , , , , /by

For a Democratic Party so consumed with the evils of insurrection, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) had no problem calling for one in Israel. In a speech that would have astounded Capitol Hill a year ago, the highest-ranking Jewish official in America demanded that Israeli voters hold an unscheduled election to oust Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, declaring that the man hunting down the terrorists who tortured and killed 1,200 innocent people has “lost his way.”

“A new election is the only way to allow for a healthy and open decision-making process about the future of Israel, at a time when so many Israelis have lost their confidence in the vision and direction of their government.” How unbelievably on brand for Democrats. They’re putting the political calculations of an election year ahead of the greater good. What happened to Biden’s October promises, “We’re going to stand with you,” “We’ll walk beside you in those dark days,” and “We’ll walk beside you in the good days to come”? The second the Left’s base of Muslim sympathizers started screaming its support for Palestine, Democratic leaders dropped the Jewish state faster than you can say “two-state solution.”

Of course, the other irony here (apart from Schumer’s meddling in a foreign democracy) is that Americans are the ones living under a virtually incoherent president whose failed policies have led to the dumpster fire we’re seeing in the Middle East, China, and our southern border. It’s Biden’s country, not Netanyahu’s, that has “lost their confidence in the vision and direction of their government.” And yet the Left would have been apoplectic if a Republican stood on the Senate floor and railed about the need for a special election.

Netanyahu, it may surprise Schumer to know, actually has more domestic support than his longtime rival Benny Gantz (47-37%). Unlike the prime minister’s fickle friends in the U.S., the Israeli people understand the need to eliminate the monsters who raped, incinerated, and kidnapped their loved ones. “This is World War II for Israel,” Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) insisted on “Washington Watch” Wednesday. “This is Pearl Harbor and 9/11 rolled into one. Did anybody suggest to our country after Pearl Harbor, ‘Be careful how many Germans or Japanese you kill’”? he wanted to know. And yet, that’s exactly how Democrats are admonishing Israel in Gaza.

“I don’t want innocent people to die,” Graham admitted to Family Research Council President Tony Perkins, “but Israel has to destroy Hamas. Hamas is using the Palestinian people as shields. And I’m going to give Israel the time and the space it needs to destroy Hamas militarily. No more October 7th. This is the largest loss of life of the Jewish people since the Holocaust. … Israel is the good guy. Hamas is the bad guy. And Iran is the Great Satan. Without Iran, there would be no attack.”

Another thing Democrats tend to forget, Graham said, is that 33 Americans were killed in this attack. “And if Hamas could, they would add a lot of zeros to that 33. The radical Islamists, they want to kill the state of Israel. They want to the world to bow down to Islam under their terms. They would come after us if they could.”

So when Biden says that an Israeli invasion of Rafah is a “red line,” he’s ignoring the fact that there are six brigades of Hamas fighters still left — four of them in Rafah, Graham explained. “We have to let Israel destroy Hamas militarily. It would be like putting 80% of a fire out. You’ve got to put all the fire out. So I am challenging the Biden administration to say that if the hostages are released, the war is not over. The war is over when Israel destroys Hamas militarily, when they can have the peace of mind never to have another October 7th. It is not over until that day comes to my friends in Israel.”

And if the international community wants to criticize someone, criticize Hamas for using the million people in that area as human shields. But they won’t, Graham shook his head, “because anti-Semitism is alive and well.” He pointed to the dangers that Jewish people are facing all over the world. Even in Nashville, the senator said, Jewish schools are turning into armed camps because of the threats.

“… If you just watch the news, [you’d think] Israel was the bad guy,” Graham pointed out. But “here’s what I would say to the international community: ‘If Hamas survives, they’re coming after you.’ … If they’re still standing when this is over, radicalism will be on steroids all over the planet. ISIS is coming back in Afghanistan. … We’re in a religious war, my friend. Radical Islam wants to bend everybody to their will, and they will kill in the name of God. And that’s what I want you to understand. Dying is first prize for these nut jobs.”

The game-changer Perkins and Graham agreed would be for Israel and Saudi Arabia to normalize relations. “If you could have Saudi Arabia recognize the Jewish State for what it is — a Jewish state, the keeper of the mosque in Mecca and Medina, the center of the faith, it would end the Arab-Israeli conflict.” Think about why this attack happened, he pressed. “On October the 7th, the Iranians live[d] in fear of the Arabs and the Israelis making peace. It would isolate the ayatollah even more. This attack was generated by support from Iran. [And] Iran’s nightmare is for the Arabs — Saudi Arabia and Israel — to make peace and live together and build on the Abraham Accords. They did this to stop reconciliation.”

So frankly, Graham insisted, “the red line should be against the Iranian ayatollah — not against Bibi [Netanyahu]. Bibi is not the problem. The root of all evil is the religious Nazi running Iran: the ayatollah.”

With sobering clarity, the South Carolina senator’s tone changed. “We live in the most troubled times I can remember since I have been in politics. The world is on fire. Russia has invaded Ukraine. China is up to no good all over the planet, and our Jewish brothers and sisters are trying to be annihilated. It is now time to stand strong and without apology for our friends in Israel.”

AUTHOR

Suzanne Bowdey

Suzanne Bowdey serves as editorial director and senior writer at The Washington Stand.

RELATED ARTICLES:

Sen. Schumer Picks Hamas and Biden Over Israel

Michigan: Islamic scholar says ‘there can never be a permanent treaty with infidels because it cancels out jihad’

UNC-Chapel Hill: Professors Hail Hamas’ Oct. 7 ‘Resistance’

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2024 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Trump Leads Biden Nationally in Polls, Gains Support Among Young Voters

/in , , , , , , , /by

As Super Tuesday draws nearer, Donald Trump is leading Joe Biden in major polls. A recent Emerson College/The Hill survey found that 46% of Michigan voters favor former President Donald Trump, while 44% prefer incumbent Joe Biden, with 10% undecided. Significantly, Independent voters prefer Trump to Biden 43% to 37%. Ahead of the primary on March 5, nearly 70% of Republicans plan to vote for Trump, 20% plan to vote for former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley, and 11% are undecided. When undecided voters are asked which candidate they lean towards, Trump’s support increases to 76% and Haley’s to 24%.

According to the poll, 31% of Michigan voters rated the economy as their chief concern. Other top concerns included immigration (13%), threats to democracy (12%), and health care (10%). Voters most concerned about the economy prefer Trump over Biden 56% to 33%, and voters most concerned about immigration prefer Trump over Biden by a staggering 86% to 7%. Additionally, 57% of Michigan voters expressed concern over Biden’s age. Among voters under the age of 50, 63% expressed concern over Biden’s age.

This follows an Axios/Generation Lab Youth poll showing that Trump is gaining on Biden among young voters across the nation. Biden maintains a four-point lead over Trump (52% to 48%) among voters aged 18 to 34. Young voters also rated the economy as their top concern (39%), with abortion (16%), immigration (11%), student debt (11%), and climate change (10%) also of concern. Other surveys, however, have shown Trump leading Biden among young voters. A New York Times/Siena poll in December showed Trump leading Biden 49% to 43% among voters under the age of 30, while an NBC News Poll in November showed voters aged 18 to 34 preferring Trump over Biden 46% to 42%. In the 2020 presidential election, Biden had a 20-point lead over Trump among young voters, according to exit polls and the Pew Research Center.

Nationwide, Trump is expanding his lead over Biden. A Rasmussen Reports survey released last week and conducted the week before found Trump leading Biden 47% to 41% among voters across the country, with 9% supporting “some other candidate” and 2% undecided. As in other polls, Trump had a strong lead over Biden among independent voters, leading the incumbent Democrat by 16 points. When third-party candidates were included in the running, Trump still led Biden 43% to 37%, with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. garnering 12% support and other candidates claiming 5%. Even then, Trump maintained a 10-point lead over Biden among independent voters.

A recent HarrisX poll also found Trump leading Biden nationally, 47% to 38%. According to that survey, Trump still maintains a 10-point lead over Biden (40% to 30%) among independent voters. The HarrisX poll also shows Trump garnering greater support from Republicans (87%) than Biden earns from Democrats (77%).

Another poll — this one from Bloomberg News/Morning Consult — also shows Trump leading Biden in seven swing states, 48% to 42%. According to that poll, Trump leads Biden in Arizona (47% to 44%), Georgia (49% to 41%), Michigan (47% to 42%), Nevada (48% to 40%), North Carolina (49% to 39%), Pennsylvania (48% to 45%), and Wisconsin (49% to 44%). When third-party candidates are included, Trump would still garner 44% support across the seven swing states, while Biden would only claim 35%. Additionally, 53% of respondents said the country was better off under Trump than under Biden, and more respondents trusted Trump than Biden to handle issues such as the economy (51% to 33%), crime (48% to 31%), immigration (52% to 30%), U.S.-China relations (49% to 31%), the Russia-Ukraine conflict (45% to 33%), and the Israel-Hamas conflict (45% to 30%).

AUTHOR

S.A. McCarthy

S.A. McCarthy serves as a news writer at The Washington Stand.

RELATED ARTICLE: How Much Crime and Chaos Will It Take for Biden to ‘Address This Disaster’ at the Border?

RELATED VIDEO: Bret Baier breaks down the Michigan GOP primary results: Trump is ‘rolling’

POST ON X: Lara Logan testimony on Freedom of Speech to Senate Committee

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Expert: Biden Admin Using Federal Agencies and Left-Wing NGOs to Illegally Amass Votes

/in , , , , , , , /by

Last week, it was reported that the Biden administration is utilizing at least one federal agency to collude with left-wing non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in an effort to conduct get out the vote campaigns. Experts say the administration’s actions violate federal law.

On February 20, news broke that the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) worked directly with an NGO known as Demos to increase voter turnout. Demos’s website states that it is “committed to racial justice” through “research, litigation, [and] strategic communications” in order to “build power with and for Black and brown communities.”

Demos’s stated policy positions include “climate equity,” defined as “[c]limate change solutions” that “must address racial and economic inequity/inequality” and “debt-free college,” among other left-wing causes. But as described by Hans von Spakovsky, a senior legal fellow at The Heritage Foundation, perhaps most troubling is Demos’s activism against election integrity.

“They’ve been around for quite a while,” he explained on “Washington Watch” last week. “In fact, I dealt with them 20 years ago when I was working at [DOJ] during the Bush administration. Demos is one of these organizations that’s against any and all kinds of election reforms. They’re against voter ID — they don’t want voter registration lists cleaned up. They believe that aliens should be given the right to vote. I mean, you, you name it. And they’re on the wrong position on every issue entirely involved in election integrity. So having them involved in [get out the vote efforts] is … a good move for [the Biden administration] politically, but a bad move for anyone who believes in honest elections.”

Observers have noted that in March 2021, President Joe Biden issued an executive order (EO) stating that federal agencies “shall consider ways to expand citizens’ opportunities to register to vote and to obtain information about, and participate in, the electoral process.” In January 2022, House Republicans sent a letter to the Office of Management and Budget pointing out that Biden’s EO “is nearly identical to a federal election takeover plan crafted by the radical left-leaning group known as Demos.”

As von Spakovsky underscored, the EO “reaches all levels and every single department of the executive branch [telling] every single department to come up with a strategic plan … to engage in voter registration with any and all individuals that you deal with and to help them with their voting process, obtaining absentee ballots, etc. And of course, one, [Biden] doesn’t have the authority to do this. Two, he’s never been authorized [to] provide any funding with this.”

But the “biggest problem,” von Spakovsky contended, is how Biden is leveraging government benefits for political gain. “Assume that you are, for example, applying for Social Security disability benefits. And the clerk you are dealing with says, ‘Oh, by the way, we may want to be sure that you get registered to vote. Oh, and here, I want to help you with your absentee ballot.’ Well, the people that apply for benefits for the federal government are often elderly, disabled, very vulnerable. What’s their thought going to be? ‘Boy, I better vote the way. The White House would like me to vote. I better vote to support Democrats who control the government, otherwise I might not get my benefits.’”

Von Spakovsky further noted that despite The Heritage Foundation and other organizations’ attempts to gather information about the administration’s actions through Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, the administration has not been forthcoming.

“[T]he White House and the [DOJ] have been fighting all attempts to turn over any of this information,” he explained. “In fact, lots of litigation lawsuits have been filed to try to force them to provide it because they don’t want to do it. And by the way, part of the order … was that they should contract with third-party organizations to help them with this voter registration. Well, they certainly aren’t going to contract with any conservative organizations. All they’re doing is going to their political allies, left-wing advocacy groups, to help them do that. In essence, what they are doing is moving the get out the vote campaign — that normally political parties and campaigns have to pay for — into the federal government and having the federal government get out the vote for Joe Biden and his political party and his candidates.”

Furthermore, von Spakovsky argued that Biden’s action constitutes a violation of the Hatch Act, a 1939 law that prohibits federal employees from engaging in specific forms of political activity.

“[W]ho is supposed to enforce violations of the Hatch Act? Why the U.S. Department of Justice under the control of Merrick Garland,” von Spakovsky emphasized. “And you and I both know that they are not going to in any way. In fact, they haven’t objected to this executive order [or] put up any opposition to it. And they certainly aren’t going to go after any of the bureaucrats or political appointees within different departments, like the Department of Agriculture, who are engaging in partisan political activities to carry out this executive order. That’s just not going to happen.”

AUTHOR

Dan Hart

Dan Hart is senior editor at The Washington Stand.

RELATED ARTICLES:

Biden Admin Press-Gangs Federal Agencies Into Mass Voter Registration Campaign

Kamala Harris Says College Students ‘Will Now Get Paid’ With Taxpayer Funds To Register Voters Ahead Of 2024

POST ON X:

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2024 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

EXCLUSIVE: South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, Rumored VP Contender, Met With Trump At Mar-A-Lago

/in , , , , , /by

Republican South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, who is rumored to be on the shortlist for Vice President, met Monday with former President Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago, a source familiar told the Daily Caller.

A new Kaplan Strategies Wisconsin poll released on February 23, shows Noem is the preferred pick to be Trump’s running mate. Trump has reportedly been considering Noem and a list of others to be his running mate. According to that poll, Noem had the highest favorability rating, with 39 percent of voters saying they have a very or somewhat favorable view of her.

In second place was Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis followed by 2024 Presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, with 28 percent.

During the annual Conservative Political Action Committee (CPAC) summit, Noem tied with Ramaswamy with the highest amount of support in their straw poll, with 15 percent.

Former Democratic Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard came in third with 9 percent, followed by  New York Rep. Elise Stefanik, with 8 percent.

(THIS IS A BREAKING STORY. MORE INFORMATION WILL BE ADDED AS IT BECOMES AVAILABLE.)

AUTHOR

HENRY RODGERS

Chief national correspondent. Follow Henry Rodgers On Twitter.

RELATED ARTICLES:

‘Well Received’: Trump Details Supreme Court Challenge Over Colorado 14th Amendment Ballot Case In Mar-A-Lago Remarks

EXCLUSIVE: Trump Weighs In On Taylor Swift, Travis Kelce Relationship

EXCLUSIVE: Trump Rips RNC, Says They Have To Stop Debates

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

2024: The Year of Consequential Elections

/in , , , , , , , , /by

As the 2024 U.S. presidential election comes into sharper focus, much of the political punditry has focused on the potential rematch of Joe Biden versus Donald Trump. In recent weeks, the American press has reported extensively on former President Trump’s ongoing court cases and Special Counsel Robert Hur’s characterization of President Biden as a “sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”

Although Americans should expect an avalanche of news related to the presidential election over the next 10 months, it is important to remember that other offices besides the presidency will also be on the ballot ?” including 34 U.S. Senate seats, all 435 U.S. House seats, 11 governorships, and legislative seats in 44 states. The results of these elections will have massive consequences for years to come.

The United States isn’t the only country engaging in national elections this year: at least 64 other countries will be choosing leaders as well. Already, millions of people have voted in elections in Bangladesh (January 7), Taiwan (January 13), Finland (January 28), El Salvador (February 4), Pakistan (February 8), and Indonesia (February 14). In the coming months, citizens in many other nations will cast ballots.

As Christians, we recognize that participating in elections is a stewardship and an opportunity to love our neighbors in a practical way. Since the outcome of these elections will affect the rights and livelihoods of so many people, Christians ought to pray that those participating in the political process make wise choices.

Africa

South Africa will hold its general election on May 29. Observers expect it will be the most competitive election in that country since the end of Apartheid. Additionally, many analysts predict that the governing African National Congress will lose its parliamentary majority for the first time since 1994. With unemployment and poverty on voters’ minds, incumbent president Cyril Ramaphosa faces a challenging re-election campaign.

Other countries with elections include Togo (legislative, April 13), Ghana (general, December 7), Botswana, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, and Somaliland.

Asia

This spring, voters in India will decide whether Prime Minister Narendra Modi will be elected for a third term. Modi’s party, the Bharatiya Janata Party, is popular and holds the most seats in the Indian Parliament.

On April 10, South Korea will hold legislative elections that will determine the composition of the 300-seat National Assembly. President Yoon Suk Yeol (elected in 2022) is hoping his conservative People Power Party, currently the second largest party in the National Assembly, will wrest control from the more liberal Democratic Party of Korea.

Americas

On June 2, Mexican citizens will participate in a general election to pick a new president and legislature. Incumbent president Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who is ineligible for a second term, has endorsed former Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum as his successor. Sheinbaum is a member of Mexico’s more liberal party and is competing against Xóchitl Gálvez, the leader of a center-right coalition.

Other countries with elections include Panama (general, May 5), the Dominican Republic (general, May 19), and Uruguay (general, October 27).

Europe

The European Parliament, the legislative body of the European Union (EU), will hold its quinquennial election on June 6-9. All 720 seats are up for election. With an estimated 400 million eligible voters, the election will be the largest transnational election in the world. It will also be the EU’s first parliamentary election since the United Kingdom’s exit in 2020. Many pollsters are predicting a strong showing by conservative parties, an outcome that would dramatically affect the EU’s political landscape.

European countries with elections this year include Portugal (legislative, March 10), Slovakia (presidential, March 23), Lithuania (presidential, May 12), Georgia (general, November 5), Croatia (general, TBD), and Romania (presidential, TBD).

Expected Elections

In addition to these confirmed elections, other nations expected to hold elections in 2024 include Austria (legislative), Jordan (legislative), Moldova (presidential), Syria (legislative), and Uzbekistan (legislative).

Worth noting is that Russia is also scheduled to hold a presidential election in March, although observers expect President Vladimir Putin to win upwards of 90% of the vote in an election a Kremlin spokesman conceded “is not really democracy.” Additionally, it is possible that the United Kingdom will hold its general election this fall, with polls indicating the ruling Conservative Party may lose 10 Downing Street to the Labour Party for the first time in 14 years.

In short, 2024 has already proved itself to be a consequential election year. By the year’s conclusion, nearly half of the world’s population will have seen a national election take place in their country. As hundreds of millions of people participate in these elections, Christians should commit to praying for voters as well as the leaders who will take office.

In an interconnected world, what happens in one country inevitably affects another. Elections matter because people matter, and the 2024 elections will undoubtedly affect an untold number of people. Thus, until King Jesus returns, Christians should pray, vote, and engage with politics, remembering that faithfulness, not results, is how we will ultimately be judged.

FRC intern Natalie Spaulding contributed research for this article.

AUTHOR

David Closson

David Closson is Director of the Center for Biblical Worldview at Family Research Council.

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2024 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

‘Desperate’ for Votes: Biden Expands Student Loan Forgiveness by $1.2 Billion

/in , , , , , , , , , /by

On Wednesday, President Joe Biden announced a new round of federal student loan debt forgiveness, in which almost 153,000 borrowers will have their loans forgiven at a cost of $1.2 billion to American taxpayers under what the White House has termed the SAVE program. Since Biden took office, he has now canceled over $131 billion of student loan debt. Experts say the policy, which will further deepen the over $34 trillion national debt, is a “desperate” attempt to garner the votes of young college students.

In a social media post on Wednesday, Biden indicated that his administration’s effort to cancel student loan debt is far from over, stating that “we’re pushing to relieve more.” As Penn Wharton estimated last July, the SAVE program is projected to cost “$475 billion over the 10-year budget window.”

The administration’s latest announcement is further proof that Biden is undeterred by the Supreme Court’s decision last June which struck down the administration’s plan to cancel up to $400 billion in student loans held by as many as 43 million people, finding that the HEROS Act of 2003 did not give the Secretary of Education the authority to forgive student loans, as the administration tried to claim. Following the decision, Biden stated, “I will stop at nothing to find other ways” to cancel student loans. Last week, Biden further boasted of ignoring the nation’s highest court regarding student loan forgiveness. “The Supreme Court blocked it,” he said. “But that didn’t stop me.”

Legal experts say that Biden’s latest loan cancellation is unconstitutional. “Despite the Supreme Court clearly saying that under our constitution the president cannot rewrite our nation’s laws, President Biden continues to do just that,” Karen Harned, executive director of the Center for Constitutional Responsibility, told National Review. “With this latest Executive Order forgiving over $1 billion in student loans, the President is once again breaking the law in a transparent attempt to garner votes.”

Observers are also noting that Biden’s policy clearly favors college graduates — one of the most privileged classes of Americans — over those who are less fortunate. “Per the Pew Research Center, there exists ‘a growing earnings gap between young college graduates and their counterparts without degrees,’ and that gap only ‘widened as a result of the coronavirus pandemic,’” wrote the editors at NRO on Thursday. “College graduates have better employment prospects, better health outcomes, and lower divorce rates than everyone else. Despite this, the federal government chose to spend around a quarter of a trillion dollars during the pandemic on an unnecessary pause in student-loan repayments. Now it wants to double that number with an amnesty?”

NRO’s Charles Cooke further pointed out that Biden’s student loan policy does not address the underlying issues that have caused Americans to amass billions in student loan debt. “This isn’t alms for the poor; it’s a brazen cash-grab by Joe Biden’s friends. … There’s no principle here; the debts owed by others remain untouched. There’s no reform here; the education system remains exactly as it was before this started.”

Others say that the move boils down to a frantic attempt by a president with historically low approval ratings to capture more votes in November’s election.

“President Biden knows how deeply unpopular he is with young voters and his base, and his student debt plan is a desperate attempt to win them back on the taxpayer’s dime,” Sentinel Action Fund President Jessica Anderson said Wednesday. “Biden hopes that wiping away some student loan debt will make voters forget that he is responsible for record-high inflation, rising food prices, and our stagnant economy. Americans won’t be fooled by Biden’s latest campaign stunt.”

Lawmakers on Capitol Hill are echoing these sentiments. “He unilaterally is forgiving this debt, supposedly forgiving, which means he doesn’t care what the law says — Congress,” Rep. Keith Self (R-Texas) commented on “Washington Watch with Tony Perkins” Thursday. “He doesn’t care what the judiciary says — the Supreme Court. [A]nd yes, of course he’s buying votes. But the rest of the taxpayers, there is no forgiveness [for them]. Someone is going to pay these loans back, and now it’s going to be you, the taxpayer.”

AUTHOR

Dan Hart

Dan Hart is senior editor at The Washington Stand.

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2024 Family Research Council.

he Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

The Swiftian Candidate: How a Pop Star Might Impact the Presidential Election

/in , , , , , , , /by

For decades, celebrities have insisted on involving themselves in politics and political commentary, whether they have any moral or intellectual basis for doing so or not. Whether it’s middle-aged, wine-box variety feminists on “The View” or the latest thespian to mistake an increasingly-irrelevant acting award for a doctorate in political science, the rich and famous insist on airing their pernicious political positions in, more often than not, the most noxious, arrogant, self-aggrandizing terms imaginable. Even the legendary Narcissus would blush to hear a politically-charged Academy Award acceptance speech — at least all he did was stare at his reflection and leave the rest of the world alone.

One of today’s most prominent celebrities, however, was largely silent on the subject of politics for much of her career, but now has the potential wherewithal to sway nearly a fifth of voters in 2024. According to a new survey, country star-turned pop icon Taylor Swift’s endorsement would likely influence 18% of voters in America, including about 30% of voters under the age of 35. Of course, Swift is likely to endorse the incompetent, geriatric incumbent Joe Biden.

This should not be a surprise, nor a puzzle to figure out. The pop star previously endorsed the Biden-Harris campaign in 2020, posting a platter of Biden-Harris campaign-sticker-style cookies to Instagram. Even before this, in the documentary “Miss Americana,” Swift lamented not having used her influence to criticize then-candidate Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election. She also blasted Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) in the 2018 midterms, calling the staunchly pro-life politician “Trump in a wig” and endorsing Blackburn’s opponent, pro-abortion Democrat and former Volunteer State governor Phil Bredesen.

In the wake of the 2022 U.S. Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade, Swift took to social media to defend abortion as “women’s rights to their own bodies,” posting a pro-abortion eulogy by Michelle Obama. She has also been a proponent of the LGBT agenda, calling on fans to oppose pro-family, pro-marriage legislation and legislators and announcing Pride Month dedications.

According to a New York Times report, Biden campaign aides and staffers are lobbying for Swift’s endorsement a second time around. “The biggest and most influential endorsement target is Ms. Swift,” the report states. “Gov. Gavin Newsom of California, a top Biden surrogate, all but begged Ms. Swift to become more involved in Mr. Biden’s campaign when he spoke to reporters after a Republican primary debate in September.” Apparently, the Biden team has even considered aligning campaign stops with Swift’s record-breaking “Eras” tour.

It seems ludicrous — laughably so — that a woman who’s made a career out of singing about picking the wrong guy is able to practically direct people how to vote. But setting aside the irony entailed by glancing at Swift’s catalog of songs and failed relationships, the fact that a single, politically-illiterate billionaire celebrity can effectively command a fifth of voters is disturbing, to say the very least, and actually reveals some of the chief flaws of democratic systems.

First and foremost, Swift’s political power is indicative of how far the Western world — America in particular — has fallen from God. C.S. Lewis once quipped in an essay, “Where men are forbidden to honor a king they honor millionaires, athletes, or film-stars instead: even famous prostitutes or gangsters. For spiritual nature, like bodily nature, will be served; deny it food and it will gobble poison.”

Christ the King has been forced out of the public square in secular Western society. In His stead, the masses now do exactly as Lewis predicted and worship celebrities, with Swift towering above them all. Without a God to worship, the public will inevitably worship lesser gods. This lesson is written throughout history: the ancients would worship and sacrifice to Zeus, Jupiter, Odin, Horus, and countless others. Without the revelation of the one true God, Perfection Himself, these false gods were but exaggerations of common human strengths and weaknesses.

Now, in the ages since Christ’s birth, death, and resurrection, a new sort of god has come to be. No more can men conjure gods in their imaginations, unseen beings responsible for thunder and lightning; instead, the public now worships those among them who are deemed to have transcended common human limitations: billionaire businessmen, cutting-edge scientists, and talented performers are all glorified in God’s place. Under the tutelage of the Serpent, man has usurped the throne of God — if only in his own mind. Where God invites man to become one with Him, man’s new idea of god promises that every man can become a god, and on his own terms, not on Someone Else’s. Without Christ at the center of the public square, man now gobbles poison, and Swift is peddling it with her views on abortion and sex.

In fact, Swift’s very few political statements directly contradict the noble notion of self-sacrifice inherent in a Christ-centered public square: endorsing the killing of one’s own children for whatever reason — career, reputation, economic ease, or just consequence-free sex — and supporting the sterile LGBT agenda, incapable of producing children or building families, in direct conflict with God’s design for human sexuality. Like the rest of the cultural elite horde, Swift buys into, repackages, and mass-distributes the Luciferian agenda. But unlike the rest of the cultural elite horde, her influence may be enough to alter the outcome of an election.

Finally, there is the alarming degree of political illiteracy prevalent among her fans. Self-declared “Swifties” willing and ready to base their vote on the pop star’s endorsement are not informing their political worldview but allowing someone else to form it for them. One politician’s endorsement of another is a means of informing the political worldview of citizens, a way of saying, “If my policies align with your priorities, then consider voting for this guy, there’s a lot of overlap.” But if swaths of Americans are prepared to vote for a candidate based only on one individual’s recommendation, these people are not bearing in mind the countless generations of Americans who came before them and fought, killed, bled, and died for their children’s children’s children to be able to choose for themselves their leader, instead of having a despot thrust upon them. They are not bearing in mind the God-given responsibility they have to form their consciences well and vote accordingly. They are not bearing in mind God’s commandments and designs and how those ought to be lived out in a virtuous society.

The ”democratic” part of our democratic republic is increasingly falling under the control of a handful of powerful, uber-wealthy cultural elites who dictate where political power goes and how it is exercised. Sounds an awful lot like tyranny.

AUTHOR

S.A. McCarthy

S.A. McCarthy serves as a news writer at The Washington Stand.

RELATED ARTICLES:

Six Pro-Life Advocates Face 11 Years in Prison for Protesting Abortion After Joe Biden Targets Them

National Pro-Life Group Endorses Donald Trump: “He Delivered Historic Results” for Unborn Children

Senator Slams Biden for Making Military Leaders Approve Abortion Travel to Kill Babies

Trump Allies Pledge ‘Holy War’ Against Taylor Swift

POST ON X:

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2024 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.