What’s Left for The Doomers and Gloomers?

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Democrats have been having a tough couple of weeks, as Donald Trump goes from success to success.

From ending Iran’s nuclear weapons program to multiple victories at the Supreme Court, great economic reports, and a rip-roaring stock market, Trump just capped a two-week victory streak by signing the Big Beautiful Bill into law, as promised, on July 4.

It was a deadline many members of his own party feared they would not be able to make just a few weeks ago. And yet, here we are.

As the New York Post headlined it, “Tired of Winning yet?”

But one victory continues to elude the president – ending the war in Ukraine — and he made it clear he finds it frustrating.

After an hour-long phone call with Putin yesterday, Trump reported that he had made “no progress” on getting the Russian president to agree to a ceasefire.

Instead, Putin just hammered away at his talking points and told Trump he remained committed to achieving his goals in the “special military operation,” which means annexing roughly one-third of the country, including parts of it that Russian troops have not yet conquered!

To underscore his determination, Putin unleashed a barrage of drones, ballistic and cruise missiles on Kiev and other population centers overnight that Zelenskyy said was one of the most intense of the entire war.

It’s hard to keep these two hellhounds from killing each other, even with the best of intentions.

In the world according to Trump, wars are to be ended by decisive action and deal-making. But when one of the belligerents is a nuclear-armed super-power and the other has vast international backing, the United States has little leverage.

If Trump really wants to end the war, he will need to put the type of pressure on Putin he talked about during the campaign — ending Russian oil sales, and cutting Russia off definitely from the international financial system.

But Trump also knows that such measures could backfire, forcing Russia into an even tighter alliance with Communist China, for example, or encouraging Russia, China, Iran, and others to adopt a new gold-backed currency.

Having turned the Iranian regime’s nuclear aspirations into so much railway ballast, the president appears to have washed his hands of Iran. Unlike many of his predecessors, this president has no appetite for regime change. So the Iranian people are on their own.

There were reports this week that after declaring a victory of historic proportions against Israel and the United States, Ayatollah Khamenei has unleashed his thugs to examine the cellphones of ordinary citizens on the streets.

If they find anti-regime propaganda — or even just mockery — they whisk the culprit away, never to be seen again. Many Iranians have now taken to leaving their cellphones behind when they leave home. Now there’s progress for you!

I discuss all of this on this week’s Prophecy Today Weekend. As always, you can listen live at 1 PM on Saturday on 104.9 FM or 550 AM in the Jacksonville, Florida, area, or by using the Jacksonville Way Radio app.

Happy 4th of July! I will be celebrating at my small piece of liberated territory in the south of France.

Yours in freedom.

©2025 . All rights reserved.

Ken Timmerman’s 14th book of non-fiction, THE IRAN HOUSE: Tales of Revolution, Persecution, War, and Intrigue, can be ordered by clicking here or by viewing my author’s page, here. 

Raising Olives in Provence, can be ordered by clicking here.

House Passes BBB as Conservatives Win ‘Significant Commitments’ on Life, Transgenderism

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Congress has delivered President Donald Trump’s signature legislation, the One Big Beautiful Bill, but not without hours of mean-spirited Democratic delay and principled conservative negotiations that secured “major” commitments of executive action and future legislation to promote the pro-life, pro-family cause.

The House of Representatives passed President Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act (H.R. 1) by a 218-214 vote on Thursday afternoon. All House Democrats voted no, joined by two Republicans: Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.) and Thomas Massie (R-Ky.). Massie, a libertarian-leaning Republican, opposes the bill’s high deficit and spending levels, while Fitzpatrick accused the White House of “withholding critical defense material” from Ukraine.

The bill narrowly passed the Senate Tuesday, when Vice President J.D. Vance cast the tie-breaking vote. Senators Susan Collins (R-Maine), Rand Paul (R-Ky.), and Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) voted against the bill. It now goes to President Trump’s desk.

Democrats in both chambers tried, and failed, to prevent the bill from passing Congress by President Trump’s July 4 deadline. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) forced the Senate to read the full text of the 940-page bill aloud, which lasted nearly 16 hours. Schumer also poked at the president with a procedural motion to strip the act of its formal title, “The One Big Beautiful Bill Act.” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) stalled proceedings further on Thursday morning with an eight-hour, 44-minute-long filibuster that began at 4:53 a.m. Jeffries all-but admitted he aimed to slow the bill’s passage as a procedural irritant, saying numerous times throughout his speech, “I am going to take my sweet time,” followed by a sustained standing ovation from the small gaggle of Democratic hangers-on who stayed to listen.

“It takes a lot longer to build a lie than to tell the simple truth,” replied House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) in a brief rejoinder to Jeffries’s record-breaking speech. “Scripture has been cited a lot this morning — I think mostly out of context.”

“Today was about performance for some of them,” said Johnson. “Democrats deliver performances, and Republicans deliver results.”

The narrow passage reflected the concern of pro-life conservatives, who withheld their support until obtaining promises from GOP leaders to address the pro-life, pro-family provisions stripped out by the Senate.

As fiscal conservatives, border security conservatives, and national security hawks celebrated the passage of President Donald Trump’s signature One Big Beautiful Bill, pro-life and pro-family leaders wonder aloud why their concerns got eliminated or minimized by the legislation. Family Research Council President Tony Perkins said the debate’s primary focus on taxes “reminds me of Bill Clinton back in his 1992 campaign: ‘It’s the economy, Stupid.’ It’s not the economy; it is the moral foundation of a nation that matters.” Some conservatives went as far as to call the watered-down Senate version of the bill “morally bankrupt.”

The revised Senate version of the bill “does not defund transgender surgery for minors. That is a moral issue. It only cuts funding for abortion services for one year, not the 10 in the House bill. That’s morally bankrupt,” Rep. Keith Self (R-Texas) told “Washington Watch with Tony Perkins” Wednesday night.

While many pro-life advocates — including SBA Pro-Life America and Americans United for Life — called the bill’s one-year defunding of Planned Parenthood a step forward, some former insiders say the deep-pocketed abortion industry has the resources to wait it out. “While any taxpayer money diverted away from Planned Parenthood is a good thing, defunding our nation’s largest abortion provider for just one year is not the win many of us who believe abortion is abhorrent wanted it to be,” said former Planned Parenthood director and founder of And Then There Were None, Abby Johnson, in a statement emailed to The Washington Stand. “A year is enough time for many Planned Parenthood facilities to hold out to be re-funded. Some will close, but Planned Parenthood as an organization has millions of dollars, wealthy donors, and could support those clinics if they choose.”

Planned Parenthood, which received $792.2 million in taxpayer funding in 2024, reported total net assets of $2.52 billion. “Bottom line: it’s not enough and Republicans should permanently defund the abortion giant, not just for a paltry 12 months,” said Johnson.

“A one-year defunding of Planned Parenthood is no victory; it’s a disheartening concession,” Katie Brown Xavios, national director of American Life League, told TWS. “To receive only a token punishment for those who harm women and kill the innocent is unacceptable.”

Quena González, senior director of Government Affairs at Family Research Council, called the one-year interruption “just a very short pause on defunding” on Wednesday, noting that under the revised bill, “taxpayers will still be forced to underwrite experimental gender transition procedures.”

Family Research Council backed the House version of the bill and reserved the right to score against the Senate version. Ultimately, it reconsidered after House conservatives wrung several promises out of the Trump administration and Hill leadership.

“Last night, we facilitated negotiations and conservations on key policy issues that had been removed or modified from the House version,” announced FRC President Tony Perkins on Thursday morning. “[W]e believe we will see policy outcomes that offset the changes made by the Senate.”

House Conservatives: ‘We Gained, America Gained’

Leaders of the House Freedom Caucus quickly confirmed they had obtained promises for future executive action and legislation to defund abortion and transgender procedures, as well as other policy priorities. “We got significant commitments on spending reductions outside the framework of the bill,” Rep. Andy Harris (R-Md.) told “This Week on Capitol Hill.” “We said, ‘Let’s talk about some offsets elsewhere. Let’s talk about some things the executive can do to mitigate some of the concerns about what the Senate did with our House bill,’” Harris told Perkins.

“We got a major commitment, a serious commitment on spending reduction,” as well as “a large commitment on social issues. We got an agreement that the administration will add adults to their transgender funding limitation. And we’re going to have a discussion with the administration on the egregious, cross-state trafficking in mifepristone,” he said. “We talked about looking at program integrity in food stamps and in Medicaid,” where improper payments and fraud cost “tens of billions of dollars a year.” And “on the Green New Deal/Green New Scam provisions, the administration has a pretty fair leeway to interpret some of the Senate changes” to provisions of the Biden administration’s so-called Inflation Reduction Act.

Harris also revealed the House Freedom Caucus extracted a promise from the speaker of the House to address the nation’s ever-expanding national debt. “The speaker has agreed to have another vote on a Balanced Budget Amendment, because the last one we had was in November of 2011, trillions of dollars of deficits ago,” he said.

The House Freedom Caucus left the negotiations satisfied. “Everything we did was perfectly in line with the president’s agenda. So he went along with it,” said Harris. “We gained, America gained.”

In a statement sent to The Washington Stand shortly after the vote, Rep. Self confirmed the House Freedom Caucus “moved the bill dramatically to the right on almost every front and at every stage of the process, including overnight, as a small group of us continued working with the White House to address critical policy and spending issues.”

The bill threatened to further divide the Republican Party, as many Republicans reluctantly embraced the bill as the best alternative capable of passing Congress. “People with the same principles, looking at the same facts can actually apply and analyze those facts a little bit differently and reach a little bit different conclusion,” Rep. Nathaniel Moran (R-Texas) told “Washington Watch” later on Wednesday. “This is not the end-all, be-all decision for every moral matter that we have to deal with in Congress. This is, at its core, a bill about taxes and liberty.”

Social conservatives have long seen taxes and defense spending prioritized, while promises of pro-life or pro-family action do not come to fruition. However, President Trump has repeatedly said he will govern by the motto, “Promises made, promises kept.”

In part, social conservatives in the Trump administration may be wary of submitting legislation for fear liberal Republicans will exercise their collective muscle in negotiations. Harris noted the Trump administration “didn’t want to have to send this bill back to the Senate,” where senators such as abortion-supporting Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) could assure the bill “would actually get worse.”

What Is in the One Big Beautiful Bill?

As The Washington Stand reported, the surviving provisions largely carry out President Trump’s legislative agenda:

  1. The revised bill increases the child tax credit to $2,200, indexed for inflation, down from $2,500 in the House bill. Without action, the child tax credit would have returned its pre-Trump level of $1,000.
  2. The bill creates “TRUMP” savings accounts for children, indexed to the stock market like a 401(k), with a $1,000 deposit from U.S. taxpayers upon the birth of each child. The bill also furthers school choice by expanding educational savings accounts.
  3. The bill makes permanent tax advantages from the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, including expanded personal exemptions and incentives for business research and development. “For working families, The One, Big, Beautiful Bill prevents a looming $1,700 tax hike and instead puts more money in Americans’ pockets — including upwards of $1,300 for tipped workers and $1,400 for hourly workers working overtime. Families will see a nearly $11,000 boost in take-home pay,” House Ways and Means Chairman Jason Smith (R-Mo.) told TWS. “Households making under $100,000 will see a 12% tax cut compared to what they pay today. The average family of four will see nearly $11,000 more in their pockets each year. Real wages for workers will rise by as much as $7,200 a year,” Smith added on the House floor. The final bill gives qualifying senior citizens a $6,000 deduction, which the White House Council of Economic Advisers estimates will assure that 88% of seniors on Social Security have no federal income tax liability. It eliminates federal income taxes on tips up to the first $25,000, phasing out for those who earn $150,000 a year (or couples making $300,000). Taxpayers may also deduct up to $12,500 of overtime pay under the same condition; it lapses in 2028. The bill also lets people who buy cars made in America write off up to $10,000 in interest on the car’s loan.
  4. Enhancing border security. “This bill gives President Trump the tools he needs to finish securing the border by providing $175 billion in new funding. It will allow for completion of the border wall, fund ICE deportation efforts, and hire and train new border patrol agents,” agreed Rep. Mark Harris (R-N.C.) in a statement sent to TWS. It also taxes remittances to foreign countries. “It secures our border, funds the largest mass deportation operation in American history, and delivers the tax relief working families deserve,” Rep. Brandon Gill (R-Texas) told TWS.
  5. Securing national defense. The bill increases defense spending by roughly $160 billion, including $25 billion for a domestic “Iron Dome” missile defense system.
  6. Student loan reform. The bill imposes a $257,500 lifetime cap on student loan borrowing and reduces provisions that allow borrowers to delay paying back their students loans.
  7. Underwriting high-tax states and cities. The Senate version of the bill increases the state and local tax (SALT) deduction to $40,000 for the next five years.
  8. Slowing our exit from the Green New Deal. The Senate bill ends tax credits or subsidies for green energy projects, such as wind and solar power favored by the Biden administration, for projects constructed within a year of the bill’s passage and that go into service by the end of 2027. But the latest bill removed a proposed excise tax on companies in those industries that use more than a specified amount of components (such as solar panels or batteries) made in China. The Senate version generally slows down the GOP’s efforts to phase out the Left’s cherished credits.
  9. Slowing SNAP reform. The Senate bill delayed reforms to the much-abused Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, program in certain states.
  10. Reforming Medicaid. Medicaid recipients capable of work and who do not have a child at home must spend 80 hours a month in paid work, community service, or schooling/vocational training. The work requirements would save taxpayers an estimated $325 billion over the next 10 years. The bill also reduces the Medicaid provider tax from 6% to 3.5% starting in the 2028 fiscal year.

Despite some well-received economic news, conservatives say the bill still spends too much money and raises the debt ceiling to $5 trillion.

Rep. Mark Harris warned, “if Washington’s overspending addiction continues, the opportunity to put our country back on a path to a sound financial future is in jeopardy. In the coming months, Republicans must use every tool at our disposal to rein in government spending. This is not the end of our work.” (Emphasis in original.) Still, he said, “The country is much better off today than it was a few days ago. There’s certainty in the average working man and woman’s pocketbook that they’re not going to get a tax increase next year” — and greater faith “that the president is watching out for them.”

Nonetheless, Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) promised TWS that conservatives would not rest long before collecting the policy commitments they earned in exchange for supporting the amended legislation.

“Celebrate today,” said Roy. “Fight again tomorrow.”

AUTHOR

Ben Johnson

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

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EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2025 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: We Found Out How Easy It Is To Order An Abortion Pill. The Results Are Shocking.

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In as little as five minutes, the Daily Caller News Foundation was able to easily order abortion pills opponents argue are unsafe without a doctor adequately verifying key eligibility requirements.

Groups that launched online services after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved mail-order abortions will provide the pill under circumstances that are questionable even by the agency’s relaxed standards, a DCNF investigation found.

“Mail-order abortion subjects women to an abysmal standard of care,” Dr. Christina Francis, CEO of the American Association of Pro-Life OBGYNs (AAPLOG), told the DCNF. “Not only is there minimal health screening that occurs, but women typically have no interaction with any medical professional, let alone a physician.”

The FDA removed in 2021 a requirement that providers distribute mifepristone in person and enabled prescribers to send the pill directly to women in the mail. Now, without speaking to a physician or confirming a pregnancy, a woman can order prescription abortion pills to her home “just in case” she needs them in the future.

Minutes after filling out a brief online form, she’ll have her request approved. Days after payment, the pills will arrive on her doorstep. The package might include a handwritten note saying, “You are brave,” but no doctor will physically be there to warn her that mifepristone is not “safer than tylenol” as its advocates claim or that the danger of complications is likely higher than the drug’s label indicates.

The DCNF obtained five sets of medication for $660 — with sets ranging from $90 to $150 each — simply by filling out online medical forms created by providers.

WATCH:

Three of the five organizations that sent pills to the DCNF — Aid Access, OPTIO Women’s Health and Abuzz Health — use GenBioPro, one of two FDA-approved manufacturers of mifepristone. The fourth, Cambridge Reproductive Health Consultants (CRHC), supplies pills produced by Danco Laboratories, the other approved manufacturer.

The final group, Women on Web, sent pills in a plain manila envelope that did not indicate the drug’s producer. The mailing address on its website is in Toronto, Canada, though the return address on the package was listed as “Supplement City” in Kansas City, Kansas.

The owner of the Kansas property is Jose Franco Guevara, per public records, who owns multiple other buildings in the neighborhood. He faced a federal lawsuit in 2019 for not paying employees overtime compensation at one business he runs in the area, Sabor Latino Restaurant. Guevara agreed to a Consent Order paying the employees money owed to them.

Several other groups listed P.O. boxes as their return address. Aid Access’ package shipped from a California address linked to an individual who works for Honeybee Health, which was the first online pharmacy to begin shipping abortion pills by mail.

Aid Access, OPTIO Women’s Health, Abuzz Health, CRHC, Women on Web and Honeybee Health did not respond to requests for comment. GenBioPro and Danco Laboratories also did not respond to requests for comment.

‘Legal Gray Area’

Mifepristone obtained by DCNF (Credit: Katelynn Richardson/Daily Caller News Foundation)

Though the FDA prescriber agreement form requires being able to “assess the duration” of a pregnancy and “diagnose ectopic pregnancies,” the online pill distributors made no effort to do so.

Advanced provision is a “legal gray area” that exposes the root problem of the FDA’s relaxed regulations, Gabriella McIntyre, legal counsel for Alliance Defending Freedom’s Center for Life, told the DCNF.

“It’s not an FDA-approved use of abortion drugs,” McIntyre told the DCNF. “It’s difficult to see how you get recourse, at least from the FDA’s perspective, unless you reinstitute in-person dispensing, which would resolve the issue of practitioners being able to send these drugs in the mail without verifying things like gestational age or whether the woman is pregnant.”

McIntyre said she is not aware of any litigation related to doctors providing pills for future use.

Abuzz Health Abortion Pill How-To (Credit: Screenshot/Abuzz Health)

Groups that supplied pills to the DCNF give instructions for taking the pill long after the 10 week period the FDA approved it for use.

“At 14 weeks, you might see a fetus about the size of a lemon,” Aid Access states. “Seeing a fetus after 14 weeks can be upsetting for some people. It is good to be prepared and have a plan for how to dispose of the fetal tissue.”

OPTIO Women’s Health similarly warns that a fetus at 12 weeks can be “about the size of a lime.” Abuzz indicates the pills can be used through 12+ weeks on its instructions, directing women to a FAQ page for more information, though the bottom of the page includes a caveat that “nothing on this website is to be construed as medical advice.”

“As an OB-GYN practicing in Texas, I have seen firsthand how these recommendations hurt women, because I have cared for many of them in the ER,” Dr. Ingrid Skop, vice president and director of medical affairs at the Charlotte Lozier Institute (CLI), told the DCNF. “Abortion drugs fail more frequently in higher gestational ages, so off-label use until 13 weeks may often require surgery to remove retained pregnancy tissue and/or the dead baby to prevent serious infection or hemorrhage.”

While the online medical forms these groups ask women to complete vary in length, each one took less than 5 minutes to fill out.

The groups asked only a few basic questions about preexisting health conditions and allergies to misoprostol or mifepristone, along with any history of a caesarean section or ectopic pregnancy. Several providers also asked about gender identity, sexual orientation and preferred  pronouns. Only one of the five websites, Abuzz Health, asked for photo identification.

When the DCNF asked about cost assistance, Aid Access indicated they could not reduce the cost for pills in advance but would help in the future if pills were needed for a current pregnancy. Other groups share similar policies on their website, promising financial assistance to those in immediate need.

However, one group, Abuzz, did provide a discount from the full $150, allowing a minimum payment of $90 for pills in advance.

The quickest deliveries came in just three days. The longest order arrived after 7 days.

An FDA spokesperson did not say whether the specific groups that supplied pills to the DCNF violated their prescriber agreement but noted the Mifepristone Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategy (REMS) Program is “in place to ensure the safe use of this drug and sets forth specific requirements providers must meet before prescribing this drug, including the ability to date pregnancies accurately and the ability to diagnose ectopic pregnancies.”

Shield Law Practice

After Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022, three doctors founded the Abortion Coalition for Telemedicine to promote laws that shield medical professionals in pro-abortion states from penalties for supplying abortion pills in states where it is banned. The organization provides instructions for doctors who want to become a “shield provider” supplying medication abortion in other states, including information on malpractice insurance and establishing an LLC.

One of the group’s co-founders, New York doctor Maggie Carpenter, is facing felony charges in Louisiana for supplying abortion pills to a mother who allegedly ordered them for her minor daughter. Democratic New York Gov. Kathy Hochul has said she would not comply with an extradition request to turn Carpenter over to Louisiana authorities.

A Texas court also ordered Carpenter to pay a $100,000 penalty in February for providing pills to residents of the state. Carpenter has worked with Aid Access since 2020, according to her archived bio.

The cases against Carpenter are the first efforts to hold doctors accountable for providing abortion pills across state lines. Several of the organizations that supplied mifepristone to the DCNF operate within states with shield laws.

CRHC operates The Massachusetts Medication Abortion Access Project (The MAP), which was developed after Massachusetts became the first state to pass a shield law in 2022 protecting doctors who serve patients in other states, where abortion may be illegal.

The CRHC is run by professors primarily from Canada, though one consultant on the team, Dr. Kathryn LaRoche, is an assistant professor of Public Health at Purdue University. CRHC’s website explains that it uses “doctors in Massachusetts to prescribe FDA-approved abortion medication to patients who apply through our website.”

Dr. Angel Foster, one of The MAP’s co-founders, wrote in a March letter to Connecticut state Sen. Gary Winfield that the organization is now supplying medication abortion “to about 2,500 patients a month,” with 95% of patients residing in states with abortion bans.

“[W]e need more states with comprehensive Shield Laws and we need more telemedicine Shield Law providers willing to offer care in all 50 states,” she wrote. “The more providers we have the more we will be able to normalize Shield Law provision and support each other.”

A Safe Choice Network, which partners with OPTIO Women’s Health, indicates on its website that all doctors in the network are licensed to practice in California, which passed a shield law in 2023.

Aid Access’ organization operated abortion “Roe-bots” — robots that dispense the abortion pill — outside the Supreme Court when it heard the case challenging mifepristone in 2024, operating them “remotely from within shield law states.”

Twenty-two states, along with Washington, D.C., now have some form of abortion-related shield laws in place, according to UCLA Law.

‘This Is Not Healthcare’

Nearly 83.5% of abortion-related ER visits that result from taking mifepristone were incorrectly coded as miscarriages between 2016 and 2021, according to a study of Medicaid data by CLI. These miscoded visits were more likely to be severe than those correctly coded.

“These miscoded abortion complications remain invisible to research scientists resulting in a large underestimation of actual medical abortion complications,” the study found.

Skop noted abortion providers who tell women not to disclose they took the abortion pill both reflect “a disregard for women’s well-being” and exacerbate “the already poor-quality abortion data collection in the U.S., further obscuring the frequency of complications from women and the public.”

One in ten women who take the abortion pill will experience a “serious adverse event,” according to an April study of insurance data by the Ethics and Public Policy Center (EPPC), which is higher than the “less than 0.5 percent” of patients listed on the drug label.

“Across the country, we’ve seen the horrific results of these practices,” Francis told the DCNF. “A teenage girl required emergency care for complications of the abortion drugs after being forced to take them by her mother who obtained them online. Women have died alone at home after attempting to undergo this process without medical supervision. This is not healthcare. It’s negligence.”

Yet statistics published by the groups, as well as anecdotes, confirm women are ordering the pills for future use in record numbers. Some women began stocking up after Trump won the 2024 election.

“I bought 2 rounds of the pills from Women on the web as soon as trump won,” one woman wrote on Reddit. “I have them because we don’t want kids, and I’m afraid we may loose [sic] access in a red state. So it’s well worth having, 2 Year shelf life. Would recommend to anyone who wants to protect their right to abortion access.”

Aid Access received over 5,000 requests for pills in the 12 hours after Trump’s victory was announced, according to The Guardian.

“We’ve never seen this before,” co-founder Rebecca Gomperts told the outlet.

AUTHOR

Katelynn Richardson

Investigative Reporter.

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

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

I’m MAD as Hell, and I’m not going to take it Anymore!

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We are witnessing the Destruction of America. Surely, you have heard the old saying, “Those that do not learn History, are doomed to repeat it”? How did we let it happen?

My answer is…it’s always the same! Did you get involved within the last 20 years? Did you say NO, Hell No, this is CRAZY!

Can anyone remember Network, 1976? Here’s a reminder!

(This is for entertainment purposes only). Network

You’ve got to get MAD!

Did you ever say…You’re not going to do that…whatever that was. If you or your family have never seen Network, I strongly recommend you watch it. Powerful messages.

Did you throw out all your common sense and just buy into the WOKE mentality because it is easier?

Do you believe:

  • There are multiple genders.
  • CO2 is poison.
  • The government knows best, and should raise your children.
  • Sexual assault on children or adults is OK
  • Kids graduating without knowledge of reading, writing or math is OK
  • Filling the country with people who hate you, and want to hurt or kill you, is great!
  • Not paying attention to bills that are passed is great!

If you want to know what our problem is and how we got here, just look in the mirror. We created the problem, we own it.

We are the only ones that can FIX THIS!

I was a child of the 60’s. I feel like I am reliving those bad old days. I remember getting up in the mornings, asking my mom, “What buildings or cities do you think will be burned down today? Where is the next riot? When is it going to stop?”

I just could not understand why this was happening. Why people wanted to burn down their own community, colleges, cities resulting in hurting civilians, and law enforcement people. It made no sense. It made no sense.

E Pluribus Unem: Order Out of Chaos

The fact is these Globalists and Communists must create Chaos, because they HATE and despise Western Civilization. They believe that if they create enough Destruction, people will scream for them to clean it up, they become heroes, and get re-elected.

Ulterior Motives

I looked to see who was President during the bulk of the 60s riots. Kennedy, King, and Kennedy were assonated. .The Viet Nam War raged. The country was on edge. Racial inequality, economic disparities and police brutality were the hot topics of the day. Lynden B. Johnson (D) was President, and cities were in financial ruin. Did the Mayors of these cities think, “If I take advantage of the Destruction, we get plenty of money to repair the damage? Did rioting represent another way out of the financial mess? Is Newsom and Bass using that motive as well?

Another problem I see is that the Government always focuses on reacting to a disasters, rather than being proactive and focusing on the root cause of the disasters, and coming up with a plan. They never think of the consequences of their actions.

Sorry, Maxine, destruction of property is not peaceful!

If the people all the way up to the top are not arrested and held to account for their actions, we will have more riots. If funding is not stopped from radical groups, there will be more riots.

If riots continue…the severity, brutality, property damage, injuries, and deaths…escalate.

Pam, the ball is in your court. So far I see nothing and get crickets.

POWER, MONEY, CONTROL is the name of the game.

Once Communists have power, they will do anything possible to keep it. Remember to them, the Ends always justify the means. Lie, Cheat, Steal who cares if you are in power. Where does that power come from. It comes from controlling the government. The House has the power of the purse (MONEY). How do you keep that power? The CENSUS. The more people the more representatives. The more representatives, the more power you have to CONTROL the flow of MONEY. Thanks to SCOTUS, the “Are you a citizen?” question is NOT on the census, so illegals can be counted. The more illegals funneled into Blue states the greater the power. Trump is deporting their power and you support his actions. Therefore, they hate Trump and they Hate you.

President Trump told us what he would do if elected. He is doing it. He did, however, give Globalists plenty of time to prepare. They have been planning this agenda for years. Do not listen to their lies! I ask them constantly, to give me an example of what they say. They never can. All they can say is Trump is a NAZI.

Anyone older than 65 knew the minute Homan said ICE raids, that rioting and devastation would result. Once nothing was done in 2020 to arrest the criminal looters, we knew riots would result. Anyone, with any knowledge of Marxist history, knows that chaos is their game plan. By ignoring their actions, we ultimately suffer the results.

The sad part is, we have allowed these Marxists to infiltrate the minds of our children. Young minds filled with HATE, become the leaders of the future.

Falling into the Abyss

Their future now has become a future of hate, self-loathing, and loneliness. The joy of love for family, G-d, and country falls into the Abyss, to be forgotten forever. The ideals that make America what it is, are forgotten. The patriotic desire to put America First has been replaced with the symbol of burning the flag.

Our children and young people’s minds are replaced by devices loaded with AI algorithms, telling them every move they are to make while watching everything they do.

We cannot allow the election of President Donald Trump to be just a speed bump in the road only used to slow us down!

We must act. You see what is going on in Congress. The same RINOS, doing the bidding of the Establishment, not the people. To them, America First…is really, America LAST. Time to get rid of these RINOS.

This weekend is the 250th Anniversary of our great military, as well as Flag Day, and President Trumps’ birthday. This weekend may also be the beginning of WWIII.

Wish President Trump a Happy Birthday. See the parade showing our great military. Pray that Americ is not pushed into another forever war.

Then, ask your family if they know what the Flag represents. Can they recite the Pledge of Allegiance? Do they know what it means, since the Pledge is no longer taught in schools? Here is a refresher:

I pledge allegiance to the flag Of the United States of America

This addresses the Jurisdiction in the Constitution, you pledge to follow the laws of America and to the Republic for which it stands

America is a Republic representing self-rule, Not a Democracy, representing Government rule

One Nation

United we stand, divided we fall

Under G-d

We follow G-d laws, Globalists must eliminate any entity higher than the govt. To them the Government is G-d

Indivisible with liberty and justice for all.

undivided, where all citizens are equal in the eyes of the law, patriotism

CRASH & BURN

Don’t sit on the sidelines watching America crash and burn. Step up, and do your part. Vote in Primaries and Elections. Pay attention to local events, take action, vote out RINOs.

GET MAD!

Enjoy this weekend, and join me on americaoutloud.news

Let Truth be our weapon, for it is the only thing that counts.

©2025 . All rights reserved.

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EXCLUSIVE: Pro-Life Pregnancy Centers Still Awaiting Justice 3 Years After Firebombing, Vandalism Spree

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The FBI has yet to solve at least five cases it opened into arson attacks targeting pro-life pregnancy centers in 2022, according to an investigation by the Daily Caller News Foundation.

The Biden FBI offered cash rewards in 2022 for information on suspects responsible for firebombings around the country, mainly directed at pro-life facilities, after the preemptive May 2 leak of a Supreme Court ruling that overturned the abortion precedent established by Roe v. Wade. Five local FBI field offices told the DCNF that the bureau is still offering the incentive for cases in Colorado, North Carolina, Washington state, Oregon and New York, indicating suspects were never found or convicted.

The FBI’s Seattle field office told the DCNF that it’s typical for the bureau to update or delete the bulletins asking the public for information if suspects are caught, and if they’re on the website, the FBI is still looking for answers. The FBI’s national press office did not respond to a request for comment.

‘Enforce The Law Equally’

One targeted facility’s CEO, Jim Harden, told the DCNF he got a phone call from an employee around two in the morning on June 7, 2022, that changed his life. The Amherst, New York, building that was home to his organization CompassCare was set ablaze in what was eventually determined to be arson. The FBI released footage showing what it said were two suspects arriving in a car at night and throwing Molotov cocktails at the building.

Harden’s team had been on high alert that summer, having already contacted the FBI over concerns about a heightened risk of violence. Soon after the fire, he moved with his wife and children to flee an onslaught of threats against them as extremists lashed out at CompassCare, a Christian nonprofit providing free medical care to pregnant mothers to steer them away from abortion.

“Our lives are very different now,” he said in an interview with the DCNF. “We had to relocate our family … we had people riding past our house pointing guns at our kids.”

Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon said in April that there were more than 200 cases of pregnancy resource centers “violently attacked by activists with no action by law enforcement, federal or state” in the past several years. Family Research Council documented almost 50 instances of vandalism and other attacks on pregnancy centers and pro-life organization buildings from May through June 2022.

“I can say we are taking them seriously now and will be for the duration,” Dhillon told the DCNF about such cases. Dillon declined to comment about any specific prosecutions that may be ongoing or forthcoming.

“This Department of Justice is committed to protecting crisis pregnancy centers, pro-life organizations and places of worship from targeted acts of violence and will work to ensure justice is served to criminals who engage in this unlawful behavior,” a DOJ spokesperson said in response to questions about the unsolved cases.

The spree of violence even resulted in arson at a Portland pregnancy center run by a self-professed pro-choice woman in July 2022. As in the five cases involving pro-life groups, the FBI told the DCNF it is still offering a reward for information. The Dobbs opinion leak, which was investigated but never solved, also inspired an assassination attempt on Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh near his home.

The Portland facility did not respond to multiple requests for comment. The other pregnancy centers with unsolved cases in Longmont, Colorado and Portland did not respond to multiple requests for comment, while one in Seattle declined to comment.

Harden, the CompassCare CEO, said the pro-abortion Biden administration seemed apathetic about solving the cases, despite the FBI interviewing him about the Amherst bombing. He recalled reaching out and asking urgently for updates, leading to a moment when he said an FBI agent “was screaming” over the phone that the bureau was not required to update him.

“Their job was to enforce the law equally,  and it did not appear as if they were doing so,” Harden said.

‘Mountain Of Evidence’

While announcements about pro-abortion vandalism cases were scarce, the Biden administration boasted in press releases about several prosecutions of pro-life activists under the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act for protesting at abortion clinics. On his first week in office, President Donald Trump pardoned nearly two dozen pro-lifers accused of federal crimes.

Former Attorney General Merrick Garland explained the discrepancy in March 2023 by telling Congress that “it is quite easy” to identify and charge pro-lifers protesting in daylight.

“Those who are attacking the pregnancy resources centers, which is a hard thing to do, are doing this at night in the dark,” Garland said.

Harden did not — and does not — buy Garland’s explanation whatsoever.

“There’s a mountain of evidence,” Harden said of the vandals, noting that the authorities can search for license plate numbers, body mechanic imagery and cell phone IP addresses. “It’s just not possible they don’t know who they are. The FBI [is] the most technically advanced law enforcement agency on the planet.”

Some attacks on pro-life centers in 2022 were linked to a leftist group called Jane’s Revenge, with activists posting online threats in response to news about the leaked Dobbs decision. The FBI said the CompassCare vandals left the spray-painted message, “Jane was here.”

Harden told the DCNF his Amherst building was repaired at “miraculous” speed in 52 days thanks in part to volunteer workers, but the damage cost millions of dollars.

The attack inspired Harden to become more outspoken about political issues via media interviews. He also launched a campaign on a pro-life platform to fill Republican Rep. Elise Stefanik’s House seat in a New York special election. Stefanik announced she would remain in her role in April after Trump pulled her nomination to represent the U.S. in the United Nations.

‘Heart Problem’

Paula McSwain, executive director of the Crisis Pregnancy Center in Lincolnton, North Carolina, told the DCNF she received a letter from the FBI in August 2024 saying its investigation into arson at her building in June 2022 was closed. Surveillance footage showed someone at nighttime throwing what the FBI said was a Molotov cocktail.

The Lincolnton case is one of several for which the FBI is still offering a reward for information on any suspects, according to the bureau’s Charlotte field office.

McSwain said she was fortunate enough to get the pregnancy center up and running fairly easily.

“If they wanted to destroy the building, they could have done a better job,” McSwain told the DCNF.

The pro-life leader decided to respond to her ordeal by limiting public outcry.

“That’s what they were seeking, was attention,” McSwain said of the vandals.

Harden and McSwain said that if they could give any message to their attackers, it would be one of forgiveness through Jesus Christ.

“If you throw fire at any building, you’ve got a heart problem and there’s something not right with your life … We don’t seek revenge, we just pray for them,” McSwain said.

“The only reason I can forgive you is because forgiveness has been made available to me, and so I would encourage you to come out of the darkness and into the light,” Harden said his words to the criminals would be.

“Nothing is going to go unpunished if it’s sin,” Harden said.

AUTHOR

Hudson Crozier

DCNF Crime and Extremism Reporter.

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

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

As Republicans Pass Tax Cuts, Democrats Propose ‘Disability Reproductive Equity Day’

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Shortly after voting down the “one big beautiful” tax bill, House Democrats introduced Resolution 453 to designate a day in May 2025 as “Disability Reproductive Equity Day.”

Democratic Massachusetts Rep. Ayanna Pressley introduced the bill to establish a symbolic equity holiday Thursday, with co-sponsorship from Democratic California Rep. Lateefah Simon, Texas Rep. Veronica Escobar and Illinois Rep. Delia Ramirez.

The bill’s introduction comes one week after the House of Representatives passed President Donald Trump’s comprehensive legislative package aimed at tax relief and economic reform.

The new legislation proposed by Democrats claims to commemorate the rights of people with disabilities and would establish a “Disability Reproductive Equity Day.”

Citing a “long history of reproductive coercion impacting people with disabilities,” the bill argues that many have been systematically denied their “reproductive autonomy.”

The bill states that about 4.1 million parents in the U.S. have disabilities, while about one in four adults live with a disability and roughly one in ten “people with disabilities” are capable of becoming pregnant.

It specifically highlights “women with disabilities, people of color with disabilities, people with disabilities with low incomes, and LGBTQI+ people with disabilities.”

The bill was introduced just days after all 212 House Democrats voted against a Republican-backed tax package that would extend key provisions of President Trump’s 2017 tax cuts.

Key components of Trump’s legislation include measures to eliminate taxes on tips and overtime pay, while expanding tax breaks for Americans aged 65 and older—provisions that deliver on several of Trump’s campaign promises if passed by Congress, having already been approved in a bipartisan U.S. Senate bill on May 20.

The spending package is also expected to deliver on Trump’s promise to secure the border by allocating over $100 billion toward strengthening border security and immigration enforcement.

The Democrats’ bill addresses issues such as sterilization, stating that 31 states and Washington, D.C., currently have laws permitting the forced sterilization of individuals with disabilities.

The bill also claims that “people with and without disabilities want children at the same frequency, but people with disabilities are less likely to receive contraception counseling and timely prenatal care, experience a higher rate of sterilization, and are at a greater risk for adverse pregnancy outcomes.”

Additionally, it underscores the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade  in the landmark Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization case.

The legislation adds that “nearly 3,000,000 reproductive-aged women with disabilities live in States that have, or are likely to have, abortion bans.” 

It also stated that individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities in group care settings are at a heightened risk of “physical and sexual abuse” and said women with disabilities are nearly twice as likely to experience sexual violence.

Pressley previously introduced a bill to designate a day in May 2024 as “Disability Reproductive Equity Day.”

AUTHOR

Ashley Brasfield

Reporter.

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

Sustaining the Consensus Against Violent Social Change

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A new article at NBC News completely flips reality about the recent bombing at a California fertility clinic, comparing the assault to attacks on abortion facilities.

Titled “Bombing at IVF clinic should be a security wake-up call for fertility centers, experts say,” the story by Elizabeth Chuck ignores the fact that the Palm Springs atrocity, in which the bomber died and four bystanders were injured, was perpetrated by a self-proclaimed anti-humanist who believed that bringing children into the world is wrong. The bomber, Guy Edward Bartkus, left behind a manifesto proclaiming his goal was to “sterilize this planet of the disease of life.” He was, in short, not a pro-lifer by any measurement, but the radical opposite.

Media reports like this one illustrate the now, near-ubiquitous challenge of what-aboutism, where what should be a sustainable consensus against violence from any quarter is converted into a tit-for-tat about one side or the other of public debates seeming to excuse such actions by its allies. The truth is that there is violence today on both sides of many hotly contested issues, and it is also true that most proponents of various causes reject such tactics as extreme. Maintaining this moral consistency has proven to be very difficult, but the facts about the prevalence of violence remind us of the urgent need for balance and self-restraint in what has become an aggravating blame game.

Take some of the most notorious criminal acts of the last several years. Besides the attack by Bartkus, as Wesley Smith notes in a must-read article at National Review, there has been a wave of antipathy to human existence in both the intellectual press and on the street. Smith cites an incident in 2010 where an assailant at the Discovery Channel demanded that the television service stop “encouraging the birth of any more parasitic human infants.”

Smith goes on to recap articles from the last few years in prestigious publications like the New England Journal of Medicine and the Journal of Medical Ethics that cast a relentlessly bleak picture of human existence and call for the end not only of policies that encourage childbearing but for any childbearing at all. In 2012, a planned mass shooting at Family Research Council was thwarted by the heroic action of building operations manager Leo Johnson, who sustained a serious wound when a man angered by FRC’s stances on sexual conduct invaded the FRC headquarters.

Far from isolated incidents, these kinds of crimes can become commonplace as a result of news events extremists label intolerable. Last month, a California man bent on killing Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh pleaded guilty to attempted assassination, blaming his actions on the Supreme Court’s leaked draft opinion on abortion and other judicial actions he believed were responsible for the mass school shooting in Uvalde, Texas. In the wake of the high court’s June 2022 ruling in the Dobbs case, attacks were launched against nonprofit pregnancy help centers across the United States. Varying in severity, and with fortunately no loss of life, an estimated total of more than 100 assaults occurred on centers and churches across the United States. Apprehensions and prosecution of individuals responsible were rare under the Biden administration but did occur under the federal FACE Act.

None of this is to say that opponents of abortion and objectors to other public policies have been immune from committing similar deeds. The individuals imprisoned for peacefully blocking access to abortion facilities may have been selectively prosecuted and disproportionately punished, but there is little question they violated the same federal law that protects pregnancy help centers and churches from illegal acts. Over the long history of the abortion debate, the killing of abortionists has occurred in Colorado, Kansas, Florida, Georgia, and several other states. Director-actor Clint Eastwood made the film “Richard Jewell” about a security cop who was wrongly prosecuted after he foiled a bomb attack on the Olympic Village in Atlanta. The actual perpetrator, one Eric Rudolph, was identified and convicted in 2005 for his role in the bombing of a gay nightclub and an abortion facility in Birmingham, Alabama, years earlier. He is serving multiple terms of life imprisonment for these actions.

Understanding why individuals resort to violence, and why more individuals now justify that resort, including when actions occur on the scale of the Black Lives Matter riots and the January 6, 2021 incursion into the U.S. Capitol, is a vital question of our time. It is a sad condition when one hears the first reports of a violent incident, a Tesla exploding outside a Las Vegas hotel or a car bomb outside an IVF facility, and immediately waits for news whether the perpetrator was “one of ours.” Because the truth is, people who abandon the law and resort to these actions, whatever their motive, are never one of ours, whether they are anti-natalists or militant pro-lifers or race partisans or election deniers. The temptation to which NBC News succumbed with trying to tie Bartkus to opponents of various IVF practices is another chapter of the continuing tragedy of what-aboutism.

It is vital that debates about ethical matters, especially those as potent as abortion and test tube babies, proceed without the injection of point-scoring masquerading as insight. On the eve of the release of expected policy recommendations on IVF from the Trump administration, the choice is not merely between massive public funding of this practice or endorsement of the Guy Bartkuses of the world. The choice is between rational, principled, public debate and a collapse into governing by fear, intimidation, or neglect.

It does little to defend democracy when smaller numbers than ever turn out to exercise it at the ballot box. The more passionate and portentous the issue, the more essential this commitment to peaceful change becomes. Add to the brew the fact, obvious from recent elections, that the United States is a sharply divided country on some of the most fundamental questions: what is a man or woman, who is a human being, are the disabled equally valuable, what is marriage? The side of these questions that not only makes the better argument but also appeals to our better nature, that eschews violence of action or rhetoric, that moves with compassion and clarity, is the side that can, and will deserve to, prevail.

Meanwhile, as Wesley Smith so persuasively demonstrates, the strain of nihilism running through today’s intellectual culture is far deeper than that of one madman who was bereft of fatherly presence or civil guidance. Today’s isolated and violent souls are increasingly fed by isolating ideologies for whom human doom is always just around the corner. Our most prominent journals would do well to do some couples therapy over their attraction to such thinking and stop publishing so much rancor, not because they do not have the right to do so but because it isn’t right to do so. The human future is only as bleak or bright as we are willing to make it.

AUTHOR

Chuck Donovan

Chuck Donovan served in the Reagan White House as a senior writer and as Deputy Director of Presidential Correspondence until early 1989. He was executive vice president of Family Research Council, a senior fellow at The Heritage Foundation, and founder/president of Charlotte Lozier Institute from 2011 to 2024. He has written and spoken extensively on issues in life and family policy.

RELATED ARTICLE: Trump Admin. Frees Nation’s Largest Christian College from Biden’s $37.7M Fine

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2025 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 Names Bishop Who Banned Pelosi From Communion to Commission

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DAILY CALLER NEWS FOUNDATION—President Donald Trump on Thursday named San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone to serve on the advisory board of the newly-created Religious Liberty Commission.

Cordileone made headlines in 2022 after denying then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi Holy Communion due to her public support and promotion of abortion. The commission was created via executive order on May 1 in order to “vigorously enforce the historic and robust protections for religious liberty enshrined in Federal law.”

“Religious liberty is a critical issue in our time that needs to be defended and addressed,” Cordileone said in a statement. “I am happy to join my brother bishops in providing a Catholic voice on this important topic at a national level.”

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The Archdiocese referred the Daily Caller News Foundation to the public statement in response to a request for comment.

Cordileone said in 2022 his decision to deny Pelosi communion was rooted in Church teaching and that lawmakers must oppose any law that isn’t protecting life.

“After numerous attempts to speak with Speaker Pelosi to help her understand the grave evil she is perpetrating, the scandal she is causing, and the danger to her own soul she is risking, I have determined that she is not to be admitted to Holy Communion,” Cordileone stated on Twitter at the time.

The Religious Liberty Commission is meant to investigate attacks on religious liberty in the United States and design strategies to preserve the right. The commission will be composed of several “educated representatives of various sectors of society” who will report their findings and recommendations to the White House.

The Biden administration was accused of infringing on religious freedom after it attempted to force religious doctors and hospitals to perform transgender surgeries despite the procedures conflicting with their faith. Former President Joe Biden, a reportedly devout Catholic, later took flak for issuing a proclamation for a “transgender day of visibility” on Easter Sunday.

The FBI under the previous administration also reportedly “abused its counterterrorism tools” to target Catholics and pro-life advocates, labeling them as “potential domestic terrorists,” according to the House Weaponization Subcommittee. The committee was referring to a February 2023 memo from the Richmond field office that described traditionalist Roman Catholics as “radical,” which the Bureau eventually retracted.

Originally published by the Daily Caller News Foundation

AUTHOR

Jaryn Crouson

Jaryn Crouson is a reporter for the Daily Caller News Foundation.

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Trump’s First 100 Days: A Gold Standard for the History Books!

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We have witnessed the greatest comeback in American political history. Who would have thought, after packing up for Mar-a-lago though he knew the 2020 election had been stolen from him, that Trump would run again? Or that he’d draw huge crowds to his signature rallies once more, even after the Dems did their damnedest to tarnish him as “a convicted felon”?

And when all their malevolent lawfare shenanigans failed, their likely Plan D was nearly accomplished in Butler, Pennsylvania when Trump missed being assassinated by a hair’s breadth. Ironically, it was his courageous defiance and his concern for We the People that emerged in his now iconic gesture to the crowd, “Fight! Fight! Fight!” that arguably sealed his victory, as well as his likely place on Mount Rushmore. And what are we to fight for? America! Our sovereignty! Our traditional Judeo-Christian values! Our birthright liberty!

And now, beyond Trump’s astonishing comeback and his landslide win in 2024, we have witnessed his first 100 days in office. Rather than pointing out the several things we may disagree about, or the staff or Cabinet posts we might think were bad picks, let’s admit that these 100 days were nothing short of breathtaking!

BIG, BEAUTIFUL TARIFFS

Not long ago, I read a stunning article about Trump’s tariffs that challenged the popular consensus of both the nay-sayers and the enthusiasts. Perhaps because I’m fresh from reading Trump’s autobiographical bestseller, “The Art of the Deal”—as engaging and entertaining as it is enlightening about deal-making—that article’s analysis makes perfect sense to me.

One of my favorite passages in Trump’s book is the one in which he stands looking at the old Commodore Hotel, and opines that most people standing there see a dilapidated hotel in a sad-looking neighborhood, but he sees something else. He sees scores of well-dressed men and women hurrying out of Grand Central Station, right across the street from the Commodore. He imagines a renovated and beautiful hotel there that would draw from that well-heeled crowd and light up the neighborhood. In other words, the man’s a visionary! He sees possibilities that others miss.

And that is the point of Jeff Childers’ brilliant analysis of Trump’s tariffs, in which he opines:

Historically, tariffs have always been used as protectionist tools (e.g., Smoot-Hawley) or revenue generators (in the pre-income-tax period). But Trump saw something every other president missed: he’s wielding tariffs as a universal negotiation tool, forcing countries to come to the table, not just to talk about widgets and steel, but to extract much broader concessions on things like military cost-sharing, tech regulation, currency manipulation, and who knows what else.

[ * * * ]

It’s totally new and wildly unprecedented. It’s like the Marshall Plan in reverse, except with the whole world, not just Western Europe. Trump is monetizing American hegemony. The globalists built a one-way grocery aisle of dependency — and Trump put a cash register at the end of the aisle. And now the whole world is waiting in line.

[ * * * ]

The most underappreciated piece of the puzzle is that only President Trump spotted the possibilities.

By the way, I attended a Townhall Zoom conference not long ago, and listened to a 20-minute presentation on tariffs by an expert economist. His basic conclusion: tariffs are bad. And he’s not alone: Many economists hate tariffs, Democrats hate tariffs, Libertarians hate tariffs, Saturday Night Live comedians hate tariffs—all the more if they’re imposed by the Orange Man.

But the expert economists and talking heads are mostly thinking within the box.

Trump doesn’t merely think outside the box, he doesn’t even notice the box! He looks with fresh eyes at the actual big picture—in this case at world economics—sees how other nations have ripped off America—and figures out how to remedy the situation. He’s bringing other nations to the bargaining table in the realization that the U.S., in spite of four miserable years of Bidenomics, is still the richest and most powerful country in the world—and he’s using that as leverage. He’s hitting other nations where it hurts: in their balance sheets.

But the purpose isn’t to “punish” them—it’s to effect a realignment of world economics that puts America back where we were before decades of incremental Progressive siphoning off of our wealth and productivity—the “giant sucking sound” Ross Perot spoke of when he ran for President in 1992, warning us what would happen if our manufacturing plants moved to Mexico.

It’s Trump’s signature campaign promise: to Make America Great Again! And that means we have to stop being the world’s piggy bank, which is all the more important as average Americans have been struggling after four years with a crooked and obviously senile man in the Oval Office, and with America-hating Obama likely the one calling the shots from behind the curtain.

WINNING WITH DOGE & BEYOND

President Trump’s execution of this overhaul of world economies at the same time he’s exposing and eliminating domestic rip-offs through DOGE, is sheer brilliance. In essence, he’s balancing the books! He’s uncovering the massive theft of American wealth by Leftists inside our own government, as well as the plundering of our nation by the international globalist elites and pals, as well as the “monkey see, monkey do” response of many other countries.

Even before President Trump had been in office for the proverbial 100 days, he’d begun winning so handily for the American people that it had to be seen to be believed.

Among his spectacular early achievements is the creation of DOGE which is uncovering the enormous waste—which looks mostly like fraud—hidden away in the catacombs of the Administrative State. And with his daring choice of Elon Musk to oversee the task, the cleansing of our nation’s Augean Stables is well underway.

STRIKING AT THE ROOT OF CULTURAL & INTELLECTUAL MARXISM

One of my favorite wins is Trump’s pulling the plug on Ivy League anti-intellectual factories of Marxist indoctrination and rampant anti-Semitism, including Obama’s alma mater: Columbia, along with Hahvahd and Yale.

Better yet, he’s challenging their accreditation, which gets them where they live, in their wallets. Cato Institute Research fellow Andrew Gillen puts it this way: ““If you lose Pell grants and lose student loans, for most colleges that means you’re done.”

And President Trump is doing this to combat “Ideological Overreach.”

Delicious!

HALTING THE DAMAGE TO PROPERTY RIGHTS & MORE THROUGH PHONY-BALONEY ENVIRONMENTALISM

Another of my faves is Trump’s defanging of the Endangered Species Act. Apparently he hates the fact that California keeps wasting our water to “save” an inedible bait fish, the Delta smelt, as much as I do:

He has blamed the water woes of California on misguided efforts to “protect an essentially worthless fish.”

Not to mention the fact that, thanks to the chemicals being sprayed in our skies, the fluoride in our drinking water, our GMO foods, and experimental mRNA vaccines, the only endangered species on Earth happens to be homo sapiens—We the People!

Besides, the environmentalist claims are almost uniformly bogus. Neither the Spotted owl, nor the Delta smelt were actually “endangered” as claimed.

In an article for Real Clear Politics, Philip Wegmann notes:

“Environmental is the biggest tool for stopping growth,” Trump said during an interview with Joe Rogan last October, harking back to his New York days as a real estate developer and complaining that rare flora and fauna on a job site could quickly grind even the biggest construction projects to a halt. The candidate called environmental regulations “a weapon,” and later as president-elect, he vowed to expedite the environmental permit and approval process for any company investing at least $1 billion in the United States. Wrote Trump on Truth Social last December, “GET READY TO ROCK!!!”

Wegmann’s own analysis follows:

Sweeping change would follow from redefining a single word: harm. Instead of allowing the ESA’s mission creep to continue, resulting in people losing the use of their land if authorities were to find, for example, a red-toed blind salamander on it, the Trump administration is redefining “harm” as “to harass, harm, pursue, hunt, shoot, wound, kill, trap, capture, or collect” the animal itself.

Bravo, Donald!

A BLACK EYE FOR BIG PHARMA

Not only did President Trump place Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in the most powerful health-related position in his Cabinet, but he’s now going after Pharma’s longtime habit of grossly overcharging its American customers. Why charge us triple or quadruple, or even eight times more for drugs than what they charge Canadians or Europeans? Because they could!

However, in the past few days, in addition to brokering peace talks between Russia and Ukraine, and a ceasefire between India and Pakistan, Trump signed an Executive Order pulling the rug out from under Big Pharma’s unconscionable scheme of price-gouging our own people.

Anyone tired of winning yet?

As a friend of mine put it: almost every day we seem to get another gift. Christmas came early this year!

THE EXQUISITE MELTDOWN OF THE LEFT

The Dems can’t seem to stop outing themselves as lunatics, from their great show of concern and compassion for a wife-beating Salvadoran gang member, to the kidnapping and murder of beloved pet squirrel P’nut by the overzealous New York gestapo, they’re on the wrong side of…well…everything.

This reminds me of how Trump changed the political landscape during his first run in 2016 with just two words: “Fake news.” Think of the courage it took to call out the mainstream media that way. And then rejoice in the fact that his pointing out that the Emperor wasn’t wearing any clothes got millions of previously trusting Americans to wake up. Perhaps even some Dems.

I said “perhaps.”

THE TRUTH HIDDEN IN PLAIN SIGHT: WE HAVE A LARGER-THAN-LIFE AMERICAN HERO IN THE WHITE HOUSE

Even Leftist politico Van Jones blurted out some obvious truth in an interview on TikTok:

Donald Trump is not an idiot. Let me just be very clear: Donald Trump is smarter than me, you, and all critics. You know why we know? Because he has the White House, the Senate, the House, the popular vote, he has a massive media ecosystem, bigger than the mainstream, built around him and for him, and a religiously religious fervor in a political movement around him. And his best buddy is the richest person in the history of the world, and the most relevant Kennedy is with him. This dude is a phenomenon! He is the most powerful human on earth and in our lifetime and we’re still saying well how is this guy…we look like idiots.

But I’ll give Steve Bannon the last word:

…he [Trump] understood at the time that if he came back and ran for president again, not just the Republican Establishment but that the Apparatus would try to put him in prison, the Apparatus would try to bankrupt him, the Apparatus would eventually try to assassinate him. He made the most courageous political move in the history of this country…

Most countries don’t have someone like Trump in their entire history. We’ve been very fortunate to have General Washington at the founding of the nation, President Lincoln at the rebirth of the nation and now President Trump at the rejuvenation of this country… a man like that comes along every hundred years. [Emphasis mine]

While we know the Radical Left and “One World Government” globalist elites will never give up and that vigilance must be our watchword, the MAGA Millions have surely earned a victory lap!

©2025 . All rights reserved.

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4 Inspirational Pro-Life Moms

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Mother’s Day is a wonderful opportunity to reflect on the gift of life, an especially important endeavor since we live in a culture that continues to reject it in a multitude of ways, not only through abortion but in the increasingly common decision of many to intentionally not have children. In the spirit of celebrating the gift of life that mothers have given us all, here are four beautiful examples of moms who are not only championing the preciousness of every life in the culture but are also selflessly mothering their own children.

Melissa Ohden

Melissa, who was adopted as an infant, was 14 when she found out that she was the survivor of a botched abortion. In 1977, her biological mother was 19 when she was forced to go through with a saline abortion by her family. Even though Melissa was soaked in a toxic solution in her mother’s womb for five days, she entered the world alive. Melissa survived due to the heroic actions of a nurse who rushed her to the NICU.

Melissa went on to found the Abortion Survivors Network, which seeks to “share stories and data to humanize survivors’ experiences” and “promote policies that protect and serve abortion survivors, their families and friends.”

Through God’s grace, Melissa was eventually able to connect with “a maternal cousin, my two maternal half-sisters, a maternal aunt — and yes, even my biological mother!” She now has two daughters of her own with her husband Ryan.

Abby Johnson

Abby spent eight years working for Planned Parenthood, America’s leading abortion supplier. As she rose through the ranks of the business, however, she became “increasingly disturbed by what she witnessed.” In 2009, she was asked to assist with an ultrasound-guided abortion. “She watched in horror as a 13 week baby fought for, and ultimately lost, its life at the hand of the abortionist.” Abby soon quit her job and vowed to “begin to advocate for life in the womb and expose abortion for what it truly is.”

Abby went on to write the memoir of her experience at Planned Parenthood and her subsequent conversion to the pro-life cause in “Unplanned,” in which she revealed that she had two abortions before the birth of her first child. “Unplanned” was later made into a film, earning $21 million at the box office on a $6 million budget. Abby also founded And Then There Were None, a pro-life organization that seeks to “help people in the abortion industry leave their jobs and rediscover the peace and joy they’ve been missing.” As a result of ATTWN’s work, over 700 abortion workers have quit, and 48 abortion facilities have closed after these workers left.

Abby now has eight children with her husband Doug, one of whom is adopted.

Lila Rose

At the age of 15, Lila founded the pro-life organization Live Action, which began by giving presentations on the tragedy of abortion to schools and youth groups. Beginning in 2006, she conducted numerous undercover sting operations at Planned Parenthood facilities, posing as an underage girl seeking an abortion. In multiple instances, the Planned Parenthood staff was caught on video encouraging her to lie about her age in order to cover up possible statutory rape and to get an abortion.

Lila has since become one of the leading voices in the pro-life movement through her numerous media appearances and through the work of Live Action, which continues to uncover illegal activity by abortion businesses and produce cutting edge pro-life media content, resulting in “the largest online impact among pro-life and pro-abortion groups reaching over 46 million per month and over 2 billion lifetime video views.”

Lila now has three children with her husband Joe.

Bethany Bomberger

Bethany and her husband Ryan founded the Radiance Foundation, a pro-life organization that seeks to educate and motivate the culture “to put truth and love into action.” She is the author of three children’s books, which focus on the unique gift that each child is as well as the unchangeable and beautiful truth of being either male or female.

After becoming pregnant in her early 20s, Bethany made the courageous decision to choose life. During an interview on CBN, she described a life-changing moment she experienced:

“I had a defining moment. I look back and I think of February 14th, which was Valentine’s Day. It was a Saturday morning at 9 o’clock, and I had my first ultrasound. I walk into this empty room, just by myself, with the ultrasound tech, and I saw for the first time my daughter’s little beating heart. I had this defining moment as I saw in the emptiness of the room, I felt the fullness of the love of God for me, and I just felt that he wrapped my heart and her heart and his heart and just called me back to himself. And that night, I went home and God gave my Psalm 34:5, which says, ‘They looked to him, and were radiant, and their faces were never covered with shame.’ And actually that’s what the Radiance Foundation is predicated upon. But for me it was so personal, because it didn’t matter the shame of my yesterday decisions, ungodly and selfish as they were, but when God infuses you with his glory, his glory becomes what people see, and it’s not shame anymore. I always wanted for my child and for my life to walk in that.”

Bethany has since become the mother of four children with her husband Ryan, including some by adoption, and “loves to celebrate courageous birthmoms and the beauty of adoption.”

Of course, every mother is an inspiring witness to the pro-life cause for a simple reason: they said yes to life and endured hours of pain and labor — in some cases even risking or giving up their own lives — to deliver a child into the world. May our hearts be grateful this Mother’s Day for every mother who has cooperated in God’s plan for humanity to “fill the earth,” with a simple yet profound “yes” to love, self-sacrifice, and new life.

AUTHOR

Dan Hart

Dan Hart is senior editor at The Washington Stand.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2025 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.

Discord In The DNC: Chairman Rebukes David Hogg’s Plan To Primary Incumbent House Dems

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Democratic National Committee (DNC) Chair Ken Martin on Thursday rebuffed DNC Vice Chair David Hogg’s plans to primary incumbent House Democrats in the 2026 midterm elections.

Martin told reporters that Democratic party officers “can’t be both the referee and also the player at the same time,” Politico reported. He also said he is drafting proposed bylaw changes to require officers to stay neutral in all Democratic primaries, according to the outlet.

Martin’s comments come after Leaders We Deserve, a political organization co-founded by Hogg, pledged on April 15 to spend $20 million in an effort to help elect younger Democratic leaders, including primary challengers to incumbent House Democrats, in the midterms.

Hogg pushed back on Martin’s comments in an X post on Thursday, claiming that he was “not currently breaking” any DNC rules.

“They’re trying to change the rules because I’m not currently breaking them,” Hogg wrote in the social media post. “As we’re seeing law firms, tech companies, and so many others bowing to [President Donald] Trump, we all must use whatever position of power we have to fight back. And that’s exactly what I’m doing.”

Hogg stated in a separate X post that Americans “trust Donald Trump more on the economy than Democrats,” adding that too many Democratic Party leaders are “asleep at the wheel.”

Hogg’s plans to primary certain incumbent Congressional Democrats has sparked massive backlash from leaders in his own party. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries on Sunday rebuked Hogg’s efforts to unseat some incumbent Democrats, telling Jonathan Karl on ABC News’ “This Week” that he will stand behind “every single Democratic incumbent” in the 2026 midterm elections.

The Democratic Party notably is facing a variety of struggles following the Republican Party’s victories in the 2024 election cycle, including declining approval ratings among voters. A Harvard Youth Poll released Wednesday found that the number of young Americans who approve of Congressional Democrats was just 23%, down from 42% in 2017.

A DNC spokesperson referred the Daily Caller News Foundation to an op-ed from Martin published by Time when reached for comment. A Leaders We Deserve spokesperson referred the DCNF to Hogg’s full thread posted to X on Thursday when reached for comment.

Editor’s Note: This story has been updated to reflect responses from spokespeople for the DNC and Leaders We Deserve.

AUTHOR

Ireland Owens

Contributor.

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

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

Leftist Violence — Angry Student Wrecks Pro-Life Club’s Table

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GUESTS AND TOPICS

MATT LAMB

Matt Lamb is an associate editor for The College Fix. He also writes for LifeSiteNews, AMAC Newsline, and Human Life Review. He has written for the Washington Examiner and Headline USA. He previously worked for Students for Life of America, Students for Life Action, and Turning Point USA, along with Open the Books. The College Fix regularly trains students and helps them find jobs in media, with alumni at Fox News, The Daily Wire, Washington Examiner, National Review, a host of other publications.

TOPIC: Leftist violence — Angry student wrecks pro-life club’s table

RYAN YOUNG

Ryan Young is the senior economist at the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI). His research focuses on regulatory reform, trade policy, antitrust regulation, and other issues.

TOPIC: Tariff relief on electronics

©2025 . All rights reserved.

PERKINS: Taxpayer Funds Should Respect the Will of the People

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A House DOGE subcommittee put a magnifying glass to NPR and PBS, funded in part with federal tax dollars through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. The most recent budget shows that the two left-leaning media outlets rake in just shy of $550 million a year from taxpayers.

DOGE’s triad is waste, fraud, and abuse. An obvious issue lawmakers are debating in this age of multi-media — and our unprecedented $36 trillion of national debt — is whether the government’s funding of these broadcasts is a waste of taxpayer dollars. That’s a legitimate question. Add to that concern the abuse of left-leaning viewpoints, like NPR’s promotion of genderqueer dinosaur enthusiasts and the fact that there isn’t a single identified Republican working at NPR at the national level, and you can understand the growing concerns about the abuse of taxpayer dollars.

In addition to direct funding, NPR and PBS also enjoy various federal carve-outs that give them competitive advantages over other news providers. Many believe the government should keep its thumb off the First Amendment’s scale and force NPR and PBS to stand on their own — free of federal subsidies.

Yet, the starkest example of waste, fraud, and abuse may be found in the abortion industry — particularly at Planned Parenthood, which surpasses NPR and PBS in the scope of public funding and controversy.

Let’s Talk about Waste:

  • After the overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022, Planned Parenthood reportedly raised nearly $500 million. Instead of using that money for health care services at their clinics, which the group claims is their priority, much of it went toward the organization’s political and legal interests.
  • Meanwhile, $699 million in taxpayer funds supported their clinics, where patient numbers have been steadily declining even as abortion procedures have risen.
  • According to The New York Times, Planned Parenthood has spent millions on CEO salaries, such as their national president, Alexis Johnson, whose annual salary in 2023 was $904,000. At the same time, very little funding was allocated to staff training — leading to incidents such as botched IUD placements and abortions.
  • I’m not alone in insisting that taxpayers shouldn’t be bankrolling the million-dollar salary of the CEO who heads the nation’s largest baby-killing operation. Even after the abortion lobby spent hundreds of millions of dollars after Roe fell, 60% of Americans still oppose taxpayer funding of abortion.

Let’s Talk Fraud:

  • Planned Parenthood has repeatedly faced allegations of trafficking fetal tissue — “baby body parts” — for profit.
  • There are also multiple reports suggesting Planned Parenthood has covered up criminal behavior and sexual abuse involving the very women it claims to serve.

Abuse?

  • The organization is increasingly pivoting toward so-called “gender-affirming” hormone therapy, including for minors — something many states are trying to prevent for their young residents.
  • Ultimately, it’s an abuse of taxpayer dollars to subsidize an entity involved in taking the lives of 400,000 unborn Americans.

Here is the bottom line: Our leaders should foster true neutrality in public funding and respect the will of citizens who object to financing controversial practices. It’s time to end all government funding for organizations like Planned Parenthood that are killing America’s opportunity to be great again.

AUTHOR

Tony Perkins

Tony Perkins is president of Family Research Council and executive editor of The Washington Stand.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2025 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 Party That Woke Broke

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Democrats have been wallowing in the despair of last November’s elections for months, unable — or maybe unwilling — to crawl out of the pit of public opinion they find themselves in. “It’s hard to win if you don’t know why you lost,” Axios’s Alex Thompson observed. But it’s even harder, some would say, if you know and do nothing about it.

To most people, the solution to the party’s problems is simple. After a year of losing ground with virtually every demographic — men, Black Americans, Hispanic Americans, Asian Americans, young people, Independents, suburban moms — the polling all points to Democrats being completely out of step with everyday voters. So why not just abandon the extremism Americans rejected? For the party of Barack Obama and Joe Biden, the answer is much more complicated.

The crisis facing Democrats isn’t about their identity; they have one. The crisis is that they can’t moderate their ideology — or embrace it — without severe consequences. As National Review’s Rich Lowry put it, “The reason Joe Biden won in 2020 is he didn’t seem like a progressive, and one reason that his party lost in 2024 is that he governed like one.” For Democrats, ideological extremism is their kryptonite and their lifeblood. It’s what excites the base and repels the populace. In other words, it’s a recipe for long-term political disaster.

And yet, in several instances, the Democrats who’ve tried to soften their positions or build a temporary bridge to sanity have been beaten back into conformity. After the election, Rep. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.) dared to say he didn’t want his daughters to play sports against biological boys — like 80% of his country — only to turn around and vote against his girls three months later. “I was just speaking authentically as a dad about one of many issues where I think we’re just out of touch with the majority of voters,” he explained to the angry mob in November. “… I stand by my position.” Or at least he stood by it until the time came to act on it, Americans learned.

But lately, even the barest hints of compromise are punished. Look at the hysteria over Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), who needs increased security simply for voting with Republicans to stop a government shutdown — something his own party argued would be a disaster for hard-working families a month earlier. For sticking to that position, there’ve been furious calls for his ouster and a leadership mutiny in party ranks.

Then, there’s California Governor Gavin Newsom (D), who tested the waters earlier this month with his whiplash comments on Title IX. Sitting down with Turning Point USA’s Charlie Kirk on his podcast, the governor was asked about the issue of trans-identifying athletes in girls’ sports. To most people’s surprise, the progressive replied, “I think it’s an issue of fairness. I completely agree with you on that.” He emphasized his point by adding, “It’s deeply unfair.”

Newsom, who, by his own admission, has been a “leader” in the “LGBTQ” movement, encouraged his party to admit that a lopsided playing field is cause for concern. He said, “We’ve got to own that. We’ve got to acknowledge it.” His sudden openness to a broader discussion was met with horror on the Left and deep skepticism on the Right — a perfect illustration of the conundrum facing Democrats.

As California Family Council President Jonathan Keller pointed out on a recent episode of the “Outstanding” podcast, “He’s trying to set it up in such a way that … he’s going to look like he’s a moderate.” But frankly, Keller said, “I’m not positive that’s actually going to be an effective strategy from him. I think what it may be effective in doing is getting him destroyed in the primaries,” he said, referring to the root problem for Democrats, which is that what wins primaries is the same thing that loses general elections.

In Newsom’s case, even an insincere shift to the middle is next-to-impossible to pull off, thanks to years of activist baggage. As Kirk wrote after the interview, “I’m under no illusions about why I was invited: Gavin Newsom wants to run for president in three years, and he thinks that talking [to] conservative figures like me increase his recognition, help him present as a centrist, and cast him as a champion of the Left in a time when the [L]eft has no real leaders. … We shouldn’t fall for this… ” he warned. “[A]nd fortunately, swerving to the center won’t be that simple for Gavin. … He knows his current record can’t win him the White House, and so he’s trying to rewrite what that record is.”

Polling proved the governor’s flirtation with rationality didn’t help his case. Of 1,000 California voters, only 24% said the podcast helped them see Newsom as more moderate, while 17% insisted it made them less likely to see him as a moderate. A majority, 59%, said it made no difference. Americans are not so easily fooled. A few soundbites does not a record make.

“Like the national Democrat[ic] Party and the legacy media,” John Nolte stressed, “Newsom has painted himself into a corner where the only way to survive is through the fealty to the 20 percent of hard leftists that make up the left’s base of activist and financial support. … With all their lies and lunacy in support of things like open borders and this transsexual nonsense, Newsom, Democrats, and the corporate media have alienated all the Normal People, probably forever. So that 20 percent is all they’ve got.”

The foot soldiers of the Democratic Party grasp the paradox. They’ve tried, unsuccessfully, for the last nine years to turn the heads of leadership to mainstream positions on things like gender, immigration, education, and energy. “I don’t want to be the freak show party like they have branded us,” one DNC member from Florida complained after the election when it was obvious the Left’s social radicalism had cost them every lever of power in Washington. “When you’re a mom with three kids,” she pointed out, “and you live in middle America, and you’re just not really into politics, and you see these ads that scare the bejesus out of you, you’re like, ‘I know Trump’s weird or whatever, but I would rather his weirdness that doesn’t affect my kids.’”

Others echoed her alarm. “The progressive wing of the party has to recognize — we all have to recognize — the country’s not progressive, and not to the far left or the far right. They’re in the middle,” said Joseph Paolino, a DNC committeeman for Rhode Island.

It felt like, at least from those comments, that the party was finally going to pivot. “This is basically a rebuild job from the bottom up,” former DNC Chair Donna Brazile emphasized.

But what happened when push came to shove? Against the pleas of their non-elite base, the far-left won even greater control of the party — electing woke, anti-gun, pro-trans, defund-the-police, ICE-abolishing, climate change-pimping DNC leaders in Chairman Ken Martin and Vice Chair David Hogg. To the everyday Democrats, who’d been “begging the party to ditch the radical Left,” it was an astonishing betrayal.

“The weaknesses of Democrats among non-white voters, particularly Hispanic and Black working-class voters, is pretty significant,” authors of a new book, “Where Have All the Democrats Gone?” insist. “They’re sort of realizing this is a problem. On the other hand, they’re so invested in this whole vector of cultural issues. They’re worried about the blowback on social media and from the college-educated ‘liberalish’ voters who are increasingly a loyal base of the Democratic Party. Trump understood that and he played upon it. He continues to play upon it. He continues to get votes upon it. And the Democrats are oblivious to it.”

Not all Democrats, it seems. A growing chorus of disillusioned officials are starting to speak up about the continued reckoning that awaits the party in future elections. During snippets of his interview with NPR Monday, Rep. Tom Suozzi (D-N.Y.) sounded outright logical in his assessment. “We can’t just resist. It can’t just be why we’re against Trump and what’s wrong with Trump. … The Democratic brand has been damaged. “

“When you ask people … ‘What do the Republicans stand for?’ They say, ‘Well, Make America Great Again. They want to cut the size of government, they want to give tax cuts, stuff like [that].’” Then, Suozzi said, when you ask, “‘What do the Democrats stand for?’ And I think the people are kind of scratching their head a little bit, they believe in, like, [abortion] and LGBT rights — which I believe in those things too — but I don’t know that you can build a whole party around that.” He talked about running on the border issue in 2024, and his consultants protested, arguing, “‘Well, Tom, that’s a Republican issue. I don’t know if you should be talking [about that].’ I said, ‘No, this is what the people of my district are talking about. We can’t ignore what the people are talking about.’”

Even longtime fixtures of the party are starting to reconsider the wisdom of pandering to a sliver of the country. Trusted Obama advisor Rahm Emanuel took on the misguided messaging of the current party earlier this month, urging local Democrats to beat the drum on “safe streets, strong schools, stable finances. Focus on those three things, and your city’s going to be fine,” he said on “Real Time with Bill Maher.” “Less about the bathrooms, more about the classrooms.”

The party’s fringe had a fit, forcing the ex-mayor to clarify, “I wasn’t looking to have a fight on woke culture. I was looking to have a debate on the failure of eighth graders to read. I don’t think culturally that being not just into the generic woke debate is wrong politically. It’s also [that] the data is pretty clear that people think that’s all we care about.” And in the end, he admitted, “We sunk our party. We’re responsible for that. And we’re also therefore responsible for rebuilding it.”

So far, the Democrats’ only idea for rebuilding has been parading Rep. Alexandria-Ocasio Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) around the country as the movement’s future standard-bearers. And, yes, CNN polling of the party’s voters did suggest that Sanders and the Squad leader “best represented the Democrats’ core values” — without asking if the majority of Democrats even supported those values in the first place. What they did question is if Democratic leaders are taking the party in the wrong direction, and a majority said “yes.” Either way, Lowry quipped, “If AOC is the Democratic future, the party is even worse off than we think.”

Most of us, FRC Action’s Matt Carpenter observed, “are used to seeing the Democrats operate as a tightly-knit team. For years, they moved in lockstep at the direction of their leaders toward the party’s goals,” he told The Washington Stand. “So it’s a curious thing to see them now rudderless, searching for leadership, searching for an issue to rally around, searching for support from voters and donors, and coming up short. The ground they gained over the years under the leadership of figures like Obama, Pelosi, and even Biden turns out to have left them stranded in the political wilderness.”

Making matters worse, Carpenter pointed out, “They just had their worst performance among minority voters maybe of all time. They are seen as the party of inflation, war, and obsessed with abortion and turning girls into boys and boys into girls. But that’s not even the worst of it for them,” he shook his head. “The worst part of it for the Democratic Party is that they’ve inculcated these ideas into their base. So they cannot retreat from their unpopular positions without watching their base become demoralized, or worse, angry.”

The reality is a painful one for a party in disarray, but Democrats are boxed in without a viable way out — at least for now. They’ve hitched their wagon to a radical, self-aggrandizing Left without looking behind them to see if anyone followed. Now that the wheels have come off, the sobering truth is this: they have no one to blame but themselves.

AUTHOR

Suzanne Bowdey

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

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EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2025 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.

Abortion, Mega-Donors, and Election Integrity: What to Know about Wisconsin’s Supreme Court Race

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A judicial contest in the Badger State is heating up and drawing national attention. Following President Donald Trump’s sweeping electoral victory in November, the race for a seat on Wisconsin’s state supreme court is shaping up to be the first major test of conservative voter momentum since the presidential election. Already, the race has become the most expensive judicial race in U.S. history, with spending exceeding $59 million so far and expected to reach $100 million. Early voting is underway and will continue until March 30, and the election itself is on April 1.

In comments to The Washington Stand, FRC Action Director Matt Carpenter urged Christians and conservatives in Wisconsin to vote in the crucial contest. “Turnout is generally low in these odd-year elections, even below midterm elections, so that’s why it’s important that Christians show up big-time — they can make the difference,” Carpenter said. An FRC Action Alert obtained by TWS and sent to voters in Wisconsin highlighted the significance of the judicial race:

“The decisions made by the Wisconsin Supreme Court have an immense impact on the work of the General Assembly, the integrity of Wisconsin’s elections, the unborn, and more. In 2023, liberal Janet Protasiewicz won an open seat, which created a 4-3 liberal majority on the Wisconsin Supreme Court. This majority has already forced the redrawing of state legislative districts, reversed previous court rulings on unstaffed mail-in drop boxes, and is expected to rule soon on a pre-Roe v. Wade law concerning the protection of unborn lives.”

While the race is officially non-partisan, candidate Susan Crawford, an incumbent Wisconsin Circuit Court judge for Dane County, has aligned herself with the Democratic Party’s agenda, and candidate Brad Schimel, an incumbent Wisconsin Circuit Court judge for Waukesha and the state’s former attorney general, has aligned himself with the GOP’s agenda. So who are Crawford and Schimel, what do they stand for, and who is backing them?

Susan Crawford

The Democrat-aligned candidate for a seat on Wisconsin’s highest court began her legal career with Iowa’s Department of Justice, before moving to Wisconsin’s, where she worked closely with then-Attorney General Jim Doyle, who would later become the state’s Democratic governor. Under Doyle’s administration, Crawford moved around various state departments, including the Wisconsin Department of Administration and the Wisconsin Department of Corrections before eventually being elevated to the role of Doyle’s chief legal counsel. Following Doyle’s departure from office, Crawford worked as a litigator for various left-wing organizations and causes, particularly focusing on teachers unions and pro-abortion groups, including Planned Parenthood.

Crawford’s litigation history and positions on issues such as abortion have earned her the support of numerous Democrats and left-wing donors. She has so far been endorsed by former President Barack Obama’s Attorney General Eric Holder, Senator Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.), billionaire activist George Soros, Reproductive Freedom for All (formerly NARAL Pro-Choice America) President Mini Timmaraju, Planned Parenthood Advocates of Wisconsin, the pro-abortion EMILY’s List, the pro-LGBT Human Rights Campaign, the atheist Freedom From Religion Foundation, the Wisconsin Democratic Party, and a host of labor unions. She has also received the tacit endorsement of Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker (D), who has funded much of Crawford’s advertising campaign, alongside Soros.

Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America affiliate Women Speak Out PAC sent out fliers to Wisconsin voters warning of Crawford’s “extreme” pro-abortion positions. The mailer stated that Crawford “is an extreme abortion activist, not an impartial judge.” Noting the bevy of pro-abortion activists and organizations supporting Crawford’s candidacy, the mailer added, “Thousands of lives are at stake! Don’t let Susan Crawford use Wisconsin’s highest court to impose abortion on demand with no limits!”

Pro-abortion groups aren’t the only ones backing Crawford, though. According to The Federalist, an LGBT nightclub in Madison hosted a “Disney Princess Drag Bingo” fundraiser to benefit Crawford’s campaign. “Right now more than ever we need to make sure to elect Susan Crawford to the Wisconsin Supreme Court,” said a social media post by Brandon Rounds, a “drag queen” who goes by the stage name Bianca Lynn Breeze. He added, “This [is] the future of Wisconsin and the LGBTQ Community. Come support this cause, and let’s raise some money!”

Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) also stomped for Crawford in an event featuring a vulgar, profane singer who identifies as transgender performing a song blaspheming God. A campaign ad aired by Schimel’s team also accuses Crawford of being backed by pro-transgender radicals. The ad warns that Crawford’s donors support allowing adult men who identify as transgender to use girls’ bathrooms at schools, biological boys to compete against girls in sports, and furnishing children with puberty blockers without parental consent. “That’s who Susan Crawford sides with, and I’m not okay with any of it,” the ad’s narrator ends.

Brad Schimel

The conservative Catholic candidate began his legal career as an assistant district attorney in the Waukesha County District Attorney’s Office, where he worked for 16 years before being elected district attorney. He was elected as Wisconsin’s attorney general in 2014 and, in that role, contested pro-abortion laws and court rulings and challenged the Obama-instituted Affordable Care Act. Republican Governor Scott Walker appointed Schimel to the Waukesha County Circuit Court in 2018.

While Crawford has earned the support of numerous Democrats and progressive groups, Schimel has been endorsed by Senator Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), five Wisconsin Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives, the Wisconsin Republican Party, the National Rifle Association (NRA) Political Victory Fund, and several high-profile allies of President Donald Trump, including billionaire Elon Musk, Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk, and the president’s son, Donald Trump, Jr. Musk has reportedly spent millions of dollars campaigning for Schimel. The Women Speak Out PAC and Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America have both supported Schimel’s pro-life record, describing the candidate as someone “who respects life, the Constitution[,] and the rule of law.”

In a televised debate against Crawford last week, Schimel accused his opponent of disingenuously moderating her position on election integrity while campaigning. Schimel noted that a measure to enshrine voter identification requirements into the state constitution is also on the ballot April 1 and that he intends to vote for it, but pointed out that Crawford has challenged the state’s voter identification laws in the past. “Now she backs off from things she was once proud of, campaigning as a judge,” Schimel said.

Carpenter told The Washington Stand, “Wisconsin has some of the best — if not the best — voter I.D. laws in the nation and enshrining them in the state constitution is one way to ensure the state’s supreme court (which has had a liberal majority since Janet Protasiewicz won an open seat in 2023) can’t block them.”

AUTHOR

S.A. McCarthy

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

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EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2025 Family Research Council.

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