DHS, Microsoft working to “assess and mitigate impacts” of Iranian hacking in 2020 presidential campaign

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There are the Left’s fantasies and fabrications about Russian interference in our elections on behalf of Trump, and then there is reality, which is the Islamic Republic of Iran working for the same goal as that of the Left: to defeat and destroy Trump.

“Microsoft claims Iranian hackers targeted US 2020 presidential campaign,” Silicon Republic, October 7, 2019:

The US Department of Homeland Security said it was working with Microsoft to ‘assess and mitigate impacts’ of an Iranian hacking operation targeting a US presidential campaign.

Microsoft has said that hacker group Phosphorous, which has been linked to the Iranian government, has targeted a US presidential campaign, as well as government officials, media targets and prominent expatriate Iranians.

Overall, the hackers attempted to access 241 accounts – four successfully – though none of those penetrated were associated with presidential campaigns or current or past US officials, Microsoft said.

The announcement is the latest sign that foreign governments are looking for ways to potentially disrupt the 2020 presidential election. US intelligence officials have sounded the alarm about the risks for months.

Russia’s hacking of the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s campaign, as well as the subsequent leaks of emails during the 2016 election, hurt Clinton’s electoral hopes and was a focal point in special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe.

The disruption caused by Russia’s attack has heightened awareness and prompted fears that other nations will try to follow Russia’s example.

US president Donald Trump recently withdrew the US from a nuclear agreement with Iran and stepped up sanctions against the country.

The US Department of Homeland Security said it was working with Microsoft to “assess and mitigate impacts”. Chris Krebs, director of the department’s cybersecurity and infrastructure security agency, said much of the activity is likely “run-of-the-mill” foreign intelligence service work.

However, he continued: “Microsoft’s claims that a presidential campaign was targeted is yet more evidence that our adversaries are looking to undermine our democratic institutions.”…

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EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. © All rights reserved.

The Power of Forgiveness

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An atheist group has filed a complaint against a judge in Dallas, Texas who supposedly violated their understanding of church and state relations.

The black judge (Tammy Kemp) presided over the racially-charged trial of the white ex-police officer (Amber Guyger) who was sentenced last week to prison for ten years because she shot and killed an innocent black man (Botham Jean). Guyger thought Jean had broken into her apartment. It turns out she mistakenly was in his apartment.

The victim’s brother (Brandt Jean) publicly and emotionally forgave Guyger in court because of the love of Jesus, which he said he hopes the ex-police officer will find. Judge Kemp gave Guyger a Bible and read to her John 3:16: “For God so loved the world….” And for that, the Freedom From Religion Foundation wants to throw the book, so to speak, at the judge.

Others on the left have also thrown a fit against the judge—and even against the victim’s brother—for offering forgiveness. But forgiveness is a great healer, cutting even through the racial barriers that so divide us.

Every day, as a spiritual discipline, I review in my mind a list of Scriptural truths, including: “God has forgiven me. I forgive others. I walk in forgiveness.”

Yet thoughts of revenge come naturally to us—so naturally that they’re even a point of humor:

  • “I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with great pleasure.” – Clarence Darrow
  • “I didn’t attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it.” – Mark Twain
  • And then there is the famous dialogue between Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Member of Parliament Lady Astor. She said, “If you were my husband I’d poison your tea!” He shot back, “Madam, If you were my wife, I’d drink it.”

All humor aside, in His classic Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7), Jesus taught His followers to pray using what we call “the Lord’s Prayer,” or the “Our Father.” Many churches, including mine, use this prayer week after week.

It includes this petition, “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us” or “Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.”

Jesus elaborated on this particular petition:

“For if you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.”

The forgiveness of sins by God is based on the fact that Jesus died on behalf of sinners. Those who believe in Him are forgiven and receive eternal life.

Forgiving others isn’t just good spiritual living. The late Lewis Smedes of Fuller Theological Seminary once said, “To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover the prisoner was you.” His 1984 book, Forgive and Forget, according to Psychology Today (10/7/19) “has been credited as the catalyst for modern forgiveness research.”

A study reported in the UK Telegraph (7/8/19) compared the difference between those who forgive as opposed to these who hold a grudge. Forgiving is better for your mental and physical health than is “grudge-holding.”

Georgia psychotherapist, Angela Buttimer observes, “When we hold onto grudges and resentment, it’s like drinking poison and expecting the other person to get sick.”

I find all this fascinating because I maintain that the Bible beat modern psychology by 2000 years when it comes to the importance of forgiving, of letting it go.

There is a fantastic quote in an old book by two psychiatrists. In 1951, J. T. Fisher and L. S. Hawley, wrote A Few Buttons Missing, in which they praised the good psychological principles taught by Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount.

Wrote Fisher and Hawley:

“If you were to take the sum total of all authoritative articles ever written by the most qualified of psychologists and psychiatrists on the subject of mental hygiene—if you were to combine them and refine them and cleave out the excess verbiage—if you were to take the whole of the meat and none of the parsley, and if you were to have these unadulterated bits of pure scientific knowledge concisely expressed by the most capable of living poets, you would have an awkward and incomplete summation of the sermon on the mount. And it would suffer immeasurably through comparison.”

And they add, “For nearly two thousand years, the Christian world has been holding in its hands the complete answer to its restless and fruitless yearnings. Here…rests the blueprints for successful human life with optimum mental health and contentment.”

And, of course, included in that blueprint is to experience God’s forgiveness and in turn to forgive others. The brother of the shooting victim and the judge are showing far more healthy behavior than their detractors are.

VIDEO: The Vortex — Vatican Stealing Millions. Where’s the money?

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TRANSCRIPT

I’m Michael Voris coming to you from Rome, where, in the midst of the controversial Amazon Synod, we are also chasing down other unrelated stories as well.

Each day, we will bring you an update on the synod proceedings, but as we said, there’s much more to report from Rome than just the synod.

One of those stories, which has just been dropped by the Catholic media world, is the ongoing scandal involving the finances of the Papal Foundation.

Church Militant has learned exclusively that board members and the overall membership have been lied to by members of the U.S. hierarchy about a certain $25 million.

Here’s the background first.

Last year, soon after the news of McCarrick broke and grabbed headlines all over the world, it came out that the charitable organization, the Papal Foundation, had been manipulated by McCarrick, in part, to send a $25 million grant to the Vatican.

Directly involved in McCarrick’s plotting was Cdl. Donald Wuerl, the point man in getting the board of directors to approve the loan.

The money was supposedly earmarked for here, the IDI hospital in Rome. IDI stands for the Immaculate Dermatological Institute in Rome.

Owing to the Church’s long-standing presence and involvement in charitable work here in Italy, it is not uncommon at all for the Vatican to have deep involvement with hospitals all over the country.

The problem with IDI is that it has been scandal-plagued for years — massively in debt, hundreds of millions of Euros.

There was a time recently when it was so heavily in the red that employees were not being paid and held a strike in the hospital’s parking lot demanding pay.

So when McCarrick and Wuerl approached the board of directors of the Papal Foundation in the United States to fork over $25 million, many of them balked, concerned that money they had all personally put up to assist the Pope’s personal charities was being misspent.

Eventually, Wuerl was abe to sufficiently twist arms and hoodwink the lay members for the board that they agreed to at first an $8 million grant, and then a second payment of $5 million for a total of $13 million.

That second payment was railroaded through by Wuerl on a secret ballot.

When news started circulating among lay members of the foundation that something iffy was going on, many of them demanded the $13 million be returned to the foundation, especially in light of the breaking scandal of sex abuse cover-up by so many bishops.

One of those bishops was Michael Bransfield of Wheeling-Charleston, West Virginia, outed as a homopredator and thief. Bransfield, it turns out, was dipping into not only his own diocesan funds to support a lavish lifestyle but also Papal Foundation monies.

He had access to the funds because he was president of the foundation, and if you are getting the picture that this whole thing seems like one big ripoff scam, you’re not far off.

Bransfield used almost $10,000 of Papal Foundation money to rent a private jet to fly to the funeral of one of the original lay founders of the board. But none of that was disclosed to membership. It has come out in light of the scandal surrounding Bransfield in his home diocese.

Now here’s the gigantic news.

When members demanded at the beginning of this year that the $13 million be returned, they were assured by Wuerl and company that it would be. Months went by and nothing happened.

When members started asking difficult and uncomfortable questions about why the money still had not been returned seven months later, they were told that someone had decided the $13 million would not be returned in whole but converted into a loan.

Who the loan was made to was not made clear. Was the loan directly to IDI hospital which is so far in debt no one in Italy would give them a loan? Or was the loan made to the Vatican, who would then give the money to IDI? To this day, it’s unclear.

But there is a lot unclear about this loan, and members have started asking very uncomfortable questions. In fact, this past August, an email was circulated among a huge number of Papal Foundation members asking some very pointed questions about the “loan.”

Church Militant was eventually shared on the email, which is explosive, revealing what appears to be a “fake” loan.

Close to a hundred members were shared on this email, and it’s causing a stir behind the scenes. These Catholic millionaires want to know where their money is. The email in question reveals a series of questions about the specifics of the loan and the answers are, well, unbelievable.

Question: What is the necessary collateral to justify this loan? Answer: There is no collateral.

Question: Who prepared the load agreement? Answer: Cardinal Parolin’s letter of intent to repay is our only agreement.

Parolin is the Vatican secretary of state, the second most powerful man in the Vatican. That indicates that this scheme goes all the way to the top of the Vatican.

Question: Who is the party responsible for this loan? Answer: The Vatican, we hope, on some level.

Question: Signer on the loan? Answer: None.

Interest rate charged on the loan? None.

When will the loan be amortized, meaning when do payments begin and over what time period?

Answer: Cardinal Parolin stated that they would endeavor to start to repay us in 2022.

What penalty will be assessed if payments are not made? Answer: None.

So what do we have here – total stonewalling from the Vatican about what amounts to a theft of at least 13-million dollars from the Papal Foundation – involving Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Parolin.

No answers; only deflection, lies and/or incomplete, misleading statements.

Members privately tell Church Militant that the board got bamboozled by a fast-talking Theodore McCarrick, a strong-arming Donald Wuerl, a thieving Michael Bransfield, and the whole thing is being nicely covered up and stonewalled by Cdl. Parolin.

And as stated earlier, there isn’t the slightest bit of evidence where this money is.

So one immediate question needs to be asked. Did Cdl. Parolin, in cooperation with members of the U.S. hierarchy, cook up a scheme to essentially steal $25 million from charitable Catholic U.S. millionaires and then divert the funds away from the supposed recipient and just keep the money in the Vatican bank?

It’s a very solid question because the Vatican ran nearly $80 million into the red last fiscal year.

Could this have been a scheme to try and alleviate that debt?

What we do know is the Vatican is bleeding money and all Papal Foundation funds first come here to the Vatican where the Pope’s men then distribute the money. But what if they don’t actually distribute the money?

A shady “loan” is raising all these questions.

Was it a loan? Was there ever a loan? Why was the promise to simply return the money broken and eight months later members informed about the supposed loan?

And perhaps the two most important questions: Where is the $13 million? And is Pope Francis’ number two man involved in a scheme to pilfer millions of dollars from unsuspecting generous Catholics in the United States?

Cardinal Sean O’Malley is now the new president of the Papal Foundation — placed, not elected into that position, by Donald Wuerl.

These are questions he needs to answer.

Members also tell us that all this scandal for the past year is taking its toll.

In years past, the foundation would get two or three new members a year, promising to give a million dollars to the Pope’s charities.

In the past couple of years, only one new member has joined, according to sources.

Likewise, a sizable number of members have simply stopped sending in their annual pledges — understandable.

One line from the email best sums up the entire fiasco: “This is typical of business as usual from the hierarchy of the Church.”

It appears theft can now be added to the list of crimes and immoralities happening here under the Francis papacy — unaccountable, zero transparency, lies, cover-up, deflections.

RELATED ARTICLE: AMAZON SYNOD REPORT — LOTS OF APPLAUSE (FOR REVOLUTION) And it IS revolution.

EDITORS NOTE: This Church Militant video is republished with permission. © All rights reserved.

Judicial Watch Uncovers Rosenstein Email to Mueller: ‘The Boss’ Doesn’t Know We’re Talking

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Rod Rosenstein, formerly the deputy attorney general, is a key figure in enabling, at a minimum, the Deep State’s seditious attacks on President Trump.

More proof is in new documents uncovered by a Judicial Watch lawsuit.

Specifically, we forced the release of 145 pages of Rosenstein’s communications that include a one-line email from Rosenstein to Mueller stating, “The boss and his staff do not know about our discussions.” They also include “off the record” emails with major media outlets around the date of Mueller’s appointment.

We filed a lawsuit to get these documents after the Department of Justice failed to respond to our September 21, 2018, Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request.

We were seeking any and all e-mails, text messages, or other records of communication addressed to or received by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein between May 8, 2017, and May 22, 2017.

The time period referred to in this suit is critical. On May 9, 2017, Rosenstein wrote a memo to President Trump recommending that FBI Director James Comey be fired. That day, President Trump fired Comey. Just three days later, on May 12, Rosenstein sent an email assuring Robert Mueller that “The boss and his staff do not know about our discussions.” (It is not clear if the “boss” is then-AG Sessions or President Trump.)

In a May 16, 2017, email, sent the day before Mueller’s appointment, Rosenstein emailed former Bush administration Deputy Attorney General and current Kirkland & Ellis partner Mark Filip stating, “I am with Mueller. He shares my views. Duty Calls. Sometimes the moment chooses us.”

The next day, May 17, Rosenstein appointed former FBI Director Robert Mueller to investigate Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election.

During the same period, between May 8 and May 17, Rosenstein met with then-acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe and other senior Justice Department FBI officials to discuss wearing a wire and invoking the 25th  Amendment to remove President Trump.

The documents also show that, again during the same time period, Rod Rosenstein was in direct communication with reporters from 60 Minutes, The New York Times, and The Washington Post. In an email exchange dated May 2017, Rosenstein communicated with New York Times reporter Rebecca Ruiz to provide background for this article about himself. Ruiz emailed Rosenstein a draft of the article, and he responded with off-the-record comments and clarifications.

  • In an email exchange on May 17, 2017, the day of Mueller’s appointment, Rosenstein exchanged emails with 60 Minutes producer Katherine Davis in which he answered off-the-record questions about Mueller’s scope of authority and chain of command:

Rosenstein: “Off the record: This special counsel is a DOJ employee. His status is similar to a US Attorney.”

Davis: “Good call on Mueller. Although I obviously thought you’d be great at leading the investigation too.”

  • On May 17, 2017, in an email exchange with Washington Post journalist Sari Horwitz with the subject line “Special Counsel,” Rosenstein and Horwitz exchanged:

Rosenstein said, “At some point, I owe you a long story. But this is not the right time for me to talk to anybody.”

Horwitz: “Now, I see why you couldn’t talk today! Obviously, we’re writing a big story about this Is there any chance I could talk to you on background about your decision?”

These astonishing emails further confirm the corruption behind Rosenstein’s appointment of Robert Mueller. They also show a shockingly cozy relationship between Mr. Rosenstein and anti-Trump media reporters.

Here’s some more background on the incredible finds from this one Judicial Watch lawsuit:

On September 11, we released 14 pages of records from the Department of Justice showing officials’ efforts in responding to media inquiries about DOJ/FBI talks allegedly invoking the 25th Amendment to “remove” President Donald Trump from office and former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein offering to wear a “wire” to record his conversations with the president.

On September 23, we released a two-page memo, dated May 16, 2017, by then-Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe detailing how then-Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein proposed wearing a wire into the Oval Office “to collect additional evidence on the president’s true intentions.” McCabe writes that Rosenstein said he thought it was possible because “he was not searched when he entered the White House.”

As the “coup” targeting President Trump continues through the House impeachment abuse, it is important to remember that its origins are in the Deep State agencies – especially the FBI and DOJ.

EDITORS NOTE: This Judicial Watch column is republished with permission. © All rights reserved.

Britain Get Talking!

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These are my views as a woman living in England, on how the culture and spirit of my country has changed over 50 years.   Why the country does not feel protected or strong any more, how it has lost, and is losing it values and decency, and how we are daily losing our free speech.

I couldn’t quite believe what I was listening to, or not listening to as the case might be, when this weekend some television presenters across the UK decided to go silent for a minute in order to promote conversation, and get Britain talking about the nation’s mental health.   It was stated that anxiety and depression in children has risen by 48% since 2004!

As silence reigned across the airwaves, apparently giving people the opportunity to talk to each other about their problems, the brief irony of not being indoctrinated with conflicting beliefs and statements made from the well-known faces blankly staring back through the TV screen, had been a welcome relief instead.

You see, some of these presenters are extremely inept at silencing people and tying them up in knots when they do not follow the politically correct narrative of the day.

The silence last night, although only momentary, was impregnated with this ‘Truth’.

And as I listened to the growing statistics of people both young and old who suffer with depression and anxiety with no-one to talk to, I wondered just how prepared our society is to really listen to some other core factors which are avoided, silenced and kept away from the public and especially our children in our never ending suppression of ‘Truth’?

The intended creation of confusion through a steady stream of brainwashing, and the suppression/dismissal of ‘facts’ has surely been a massive contributor in what is called our present day mental health problems.

In our advanced technological age where people are continuously connected to each other, surely it is not necessarily our isolation from others, although it is a contributing factor, but it is the growing distance from which we now stand, separated from an inward source connected to common sense, fact and rational against the influence of a ‘common purpose’ ideal. It is this ideal which labels people bigoted if it does not go along with its narrative.

Yes, some of those people who pretend to love everyone and think we should talk are really bullies, and they have no real patience or time whatsoever for those who might see more rationally.

Another mental health charity states the cause of our suffering is British reserve!

With the promotion of contempt towards anything which promotes moral character, values and sanity, British reserve is now a myth, and it is not causing people to suffer in silence. Political correctness, is just one of the branches with is at the real root cause of our silence and our suffering.

Brexit – The Betrayal

One of the main changes in British characteristics which I have observed during the course of my life is how courtesy or consideration towards others has been used against us in order for other people to get their own way.  There is no trick or emotion that a person without a conscience or any consideration towards others will not use against you.

The battle between kindness and the total displacement of any genuine and individual identity has ruthlessly left many people, and in particular an older age group, totally dismissed and their once respected voices are now silenced in respect to another generation who blames them for not fighting harder for their ‘climate’.

Today’s propaganda about climate change which is questionable on so many levels is turning the youth against adults to state that “the older generation will die of old age, the younger generation will die of climate change”! Really. There are a few world wars which may contest that statement.

It is a sad reality that many older people, who have made it through our poisoned environment, never used air travel, never had a car, survived on rations, and never had the privilege of using today’s modern technology in the UK today, as younger people do.   Many old people will often say they are really glad they will be leaving this earth because they are sick and tired of what they ‘see’ and ‘hear’

Brexit, in 2016, when 17.5 million people voted to leave a construct called the EU, is also the defining moment where it has become evidently clear that those voices really didn’t matter or count, even if certain politicians pretended they did…….

Who do you say I am?

Certainly another one of the biggest injustices today is the disregard which is being shown to parents who do not wish their children to receive RSE (Relationships and Sex Education) in schools to children who are sometimes as young as 4 years old.   Used as a vehicle to promote LGBT values, it is reported that many concerned parents also consider the new teaching to be a tool to state sponsored sexual grooming and abuse.   It is a lie that the material helps children who suffer from gender dysphasia.   It is creating it.

I have viewed some of the material which is shown to young children and it does attempt to influence very young boys to think they could be ‘gay’ if they don’t like playing with girls.   (Perfectly natural when you are a young boy)  The material also suggests that it is natural for boys to wear dresses if they ‘feel’ like it.

It is disturbing and very cruel that parents are being labelled bigoted, rather than being concerned or caring about the material which is highly suggestible to their children. Recent demonstrations made against a school in Birmingham, highlighted the fact that the parents who demonstrated were Muslim; however, the concern being expressed throughout the country is from a large cross section of society, including LGBT people, and also various religions, including Christianity.

In light of this, it is reported that guidelines made by the Department of Education in respect of objectors, have been distributed to schools.   It is claimed it offers preventative measures on demonstrations which may be organized; how to ensure rapid response from law enforcers, how to work with faith leaders and politicians, and how to work legally in applying for injunctions and/or anti-social behaviour orders.

Regardless of the obvious concerns beings expressed by many concerned parents and professionals, the state is ploughing ahead with its plans regardless of Protocol 1, Article 2 of the European Convention of Human rights, which is in English law under the Human Rights Act 1998.

“In the exercise of any functions which it assumes in relation to education and to teaching, the State shall respect the right of parents to ensure such education and teaching in conformity with their own religious and philosophical convictions.”

No-one is really talking about the immense distress that parents are experiencing.  In some cases, very young children are being encouraged to use hormone blockers without their parent’s permission or knowledge.

The statistics for fatal blood clots, suicidal behaviour, brittle bones and sterility potentially created by hormone blockers, and the statistics for people who suffer from trans-regret are also not mentioned in the information being provided to children.   Many people do not know that there is a huge ‘ex-gay’ community who are also silenced.

Whilst this section of society stays quiet, it is reported the BBC, have, however, been talking quite openly to teachers and informing them there are 100 genders or more that 9 – 12 year olds can choose from.

Whilst celebrating diversity, there are so many people who are not allowed to speak on this matter.   Political correctness has ensured these people will really suffer in silence……….

The Shedding of Blood

One could not help but make some connection between the recent pictures of the red-robed, ‘Extinction Rebellion’ activists who are being allowed to passionately demonstrate against global climate and wildlife emergencies across cities in Europe, and the symbol of red they are using.  There is the shedding of blood from 8.6 million abortions in England and Wales which have occurred over the last 50 years. Those silent voices together with the silenced voices of the parents who have suffered from mental health problems as a result of their choice is one particular horror which is distinctly kept as low key as possible.

The red-robed extinction rebellion activists have chained themselves to railings, stopped traffic, and received the highest exposure possible. Whilst adults and now a growing number of children will happily lie down in the road to take a stand about climate change and animal welfare, they may never be exposed to the filming of abortions or hear about the cruel way babies bodies are torn apart and used to experiment upon.

It is reported that a coffin with a plaque ‘Our Future’ was parked in Trafalgar square by a climate change activist. In many respects they fail to see that their extinction is already being devised through means other than the climate.

Are climate change activists a useful distraction against abuse which is really taking place?

The horror of how mankind is encouraged to destroy itself and how we are subjected to silence about that injustice through social manipulation, is perhaps our greatest shame of all; but all is not lost. Urgent action is needed. Our hope is a reconnection from the place where we fell.   Restoration is possible.  We need to be aware of the slyness of evil and how it operates.  Children’s lives depend on it, and they need to know we really care.

The silence which was instigated over the weekend is a good place to be.  Truth originates from there.   It was where it all began.

Let’s talk about it …………

RELATED ARTICLE: UK Court Deems Christian Doctor’s Belief In Two Genders “Incompatible With Human Dignity”

© All rights reserved.

Read the White House’s official response to Speaker Pelosi and Democrat leaders

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This evening, the White House sent an eight-page letter to Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other House Democrat leaders, responding to the unprecedented, unconstitutional “impeachment inquiry” launched against President Donald J. Trump.

The letter, written by White House Counsel Pat Cipollone, lays out how Democrat leaders designed a politically motivated inquiry that violates the constitutionally mandated due process protections:

You have denied the President the right to cross-examine witnesses, to call witnesses, to receive transcripts of testimony, to have access to evidence, to have counsel present, and many other basic rights guaranteed to all Americans. You have conducted your proceedings in secret. You have violated civil liberties and the separation of powers by threatening Executive Branch officials, claiming that you will seek to punish those who exercise fundamental constitutional rights and prerogatives. All of this violates the Constitution, the rule of law, and every past precedent. Never before in our history has the House of Representatives—under the control of either political party—taken the American people down the dangerous path you seem determined to pursue.

The facts are clear. The House Democrats’ “impeachment inquiry,” undertaken without a single vote of authorization by the full House—an astonishing breach of precedent—is constitutionally invalid and violates both basic due process rights and the separation of powers. By the admission of its own advocates in Congress, it plainly seeks to reverse the election of 2016 and to influence the election of 2020. Not only is there no legitimate basis for the inquiry, but the committees’ actions in pursuing it themselves raise serious questions that demand full transparency with the American people.

Read the White House’s full response to Speaker Pelosi and Democrat leaders.

How President Trump is securing our border—without Congress’ help

At a White House briefing today, Acting Commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection Mark Morgan announced the fourth straight month of a sharp decline in illegal immigrant apprehensions along America’s southwest border.

In September, just over 52,000 apprehensions occurred—a stunning improvement from the 144,000 in May.

 Acting Commissioner Morgan: The President’s actions are working.

How did this happen? It’s not because Congress finally stepped up after decades of broken promises and inaction. Instead, President Trump combined stricter enforcement of long-neglected laws with tough negotiations between the United States and its neighbors to the south. Today, for example, Mexico is helping to address the flow of illegal caravans that had been marching unimpeded through Mexico to the U.S. border.

Part of this renewed enforcement, of course, includes building the wall.

The work is far from finished, however. The underlying cause of our country’s immigration crisis—incentives in our laws to circumvent America’s safe, legal, and fair immigration system—are still there. If Congressional Democrats continue to insist on outsourcing control of our borders to criminal smugglers and cartels, both American citizens and migrant families will suffer.

“The bottom line: We still need Congress to pass meaningful legislation to address our broken legal framework when it comes to immigration,” Acting Commissioner Morgan said. “And while Congress has failed to bring a single piece of meaningful legislation to the floor, this President and this Administration is doing exactly what he promised to the American people.”

Watch: The media won’t report it, but our Border Patrol officers are saving lives!

 Mile by mile: We are building the border wall.

© All rights reserved.

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Pelosi Hasn’t Really Started the Impeachment Process

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Does an impeachment inquiry require a vote of the full House of Representatives? President Donald Trump and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., maintain that it does. Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., claims that it doesn’t.

Pelosi is correct that the Constitution doesn’t explicitly require it. It simply gives the House the “sole Power of Impeachment.” But the gravity of even considering impeachment, fundamental principles of fair and impartial justice, and preserving our republican form of government, do require it.

Pelosi alone announced on Sept. 25 that the House was opening an impeachment inquiry, directing six different committees to investigate the president. This is radically different, and much more partisan, than how this serious step was taken in the past.

In 1974, like today, a Republican was in the White House and Democrats controlled the House. On Feb. 6, the full House voted 410-4 to authorize an impeachment investigation of President Richard Nixon by the Judiciary Committee. Similarly, on Oct. 8, 1998, the full House voted 258-176 for the Judiciary Committee to open an impeachment investigation of President Bill Clinton.

Pelosi’s claim that there is no “House precedent that the whole House vote before proceeding with an impeachment inquiry,” therefore, is simply false.

Other than declaring war, there is no more serious undertaking by the House of Representatives in our constitutional republic. Why? Because through impeachment, the House is charging a president with misconduct so serious that he should immediately be removed from office. In other words, the House is effectively seeking to neutralize the choice—and the votes—of the American electorate.

That is an extraordinary action, especially in a system of government based on the people electing their own leaders. And it’s also the reason that impeachment alone cannot remove the president; that requires conviction by two-thirds of the Senate (67 senators). Neither of the presidents who were impeached—Andrew Johnson in 1868 and Bill Clinton in 1999—were convicted and, therefore, stayed in office.

In an Oct. 3 letter, McCarthy asked for a vote of the full House. He reminded Pelosi that the Judiciary Committee report on the Clinton impeachment investigation said:

“Because impeachment is delegated solely to the House of Representatives by the Constitution, the full House of Representatives should be involved in critical decision making regarding various stages of impeachment.”

An investigation to determine, in the words of the Clinton resolution, “whether sufficient grounds exist” for impeachment should be authorized by the body with the “sole Power of Impeachment”—the House of Representatives. Moreover, such a resolution should, as it did for the Clinton impeachment investigation, outline the rules under which it will be conducted.

McCarthy asked important questions that Pelosi’s announcement did not answer. Will the ranking minority member of the investigating committees have the authority to issue subpoenas and to question witnesses, or simply be ignored by the majority? Will the president’s lawyers be able to attend all hearings and depositions; to present evidence; to object to the admittance of evidence; to cross-examine witnesses; or to recommend witnesses to be interviewed?

As McCarthy says, if Pelosi says “no” to these questions, then she will be “denying the president the bare minimum rights granted to his predecessors.” Doing so would indicate that Pelosi and these committees do not intend to provide the fundamental due process rights we extend even to those accused of wrongdoing in our courts.

All Americans have an interest in the integrity of our government and the legitimacy of its actions. Departing from precedent; single-handed directives; freewheeling roving investigations by multiple committees; and running roughshod over the minority undermine that interest.

On the other hand, that interest is served by the entire House considering and authorizing an impeachment inquiry; a transparent investigation; authority for both the majority and minority committee members to investigate, subpoena, and call witnesses; and outlining the scope of the investigation.

America’s Founders did not put impeachment into the Constitution as a partisan tool to be used for overturning an election. How this process is conducted today will reveal who in the House of Representatives agrees with them.

Originally published in Fox News.

COMMENTARY BY

Hans von Spakovsky

Hans von Spakovsky is an authority on a wide range of issues—including civil rights, civil justice, the First Amendment, immigration, the rule of law and government reform—as a senior legal fellow in The Heritage Foundation’s Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies and manager of the think tank’s Election Law Reform Initiative. Read his research. Twitter: .

Thomas Jipping

Thomas Jipping is deputy director of the Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies and senior legal fellow at The Heritage Foundation.

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Citizens Speak Out Against Florida’s ‘Red Flag Law’ and ‘Risk Protection Orders’

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I want to thank and congratulate the 12 members of WH 912 (3 of which are also LARC Members & 4 of which are Members of Polk REC) who came to the annual FL Congressional Delegation forum open to the public on October 7, 2019 at the Polk State Campus in the PCSO complex.

Seven made 3 minute testimonies on the unconstitutional provisions of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas HS Public Safety Act (hereafter referred to as SB 7026) and five more supported us for a total of 12 activists in attendance.

Many thanks and kudos to our lineup of speakers – in order of appearance they were Patti Zelsman, Jack Zelsman, Danny Krueger (nominated for this years WH 912 Oscar), Royal Brown III, Glynnda White, Kay Mijou, and Manny Brito. All were well rehearsed and completed their presentations within 3 min limit or a few lines (seconds) past 3 minutes. We also appreciated those present to support us – Roy and Nancy Pearce, Linda Adams, Jane Thomas, and Dy Soldwedel-Krueger.

We spoke before five of the six members of the Polk County Congressional Delegation who were Senators Albritton and Lee and Representatives Burton, Tomkow and Bell. Sen. Stargel was not present, Her Legislative Asst. Chad Davis was the recorder for the Delegation.

Glynnda White wrote the narratives for each of our 7 speakers and submitted them to Chad Davis in advance so that we would be pre-scheduled in a sequence that built upon each other and reinforced all the major points we wanted to get across. Among important points made were as follows:

  1. MSDHSPSA (SB 7026) is unconstitutional and violates our 2nd, 5th and 14th Amendment Rights and, in certain circumstances may also violate our 1st and 5th Amendment Rights – each of the testimonies drove this point home with specific examples of how our rights are/can be violated.
  2. School Safety and Gun Control should have been considered in two separate bills/laws and not cobbled together in one rushed 3 week time frame after the Parkland shootings.
  3. The Risk Protection Order (RPO) codified within SB 7026 prescribes Ex Parte petitions resulting in seizures of firearms, ammo, accessories & permit without a Hearing which comes 14 days later at which time the respondent must prove he/she is not a threat. This is a clear violation of Due Process Rights and the Legal Precedent of “Innocent Until Proven Guilty” for law abiding citizens who might be served with an RPO. This and other provisions are not only troubling to law abiding gun owners (especially those who have undergone background checks, have no criminal record, received CCW training and issued carry permits) but are fraught with many dangers that can result in violations of our Constitutional Rights (see attachment which was given to all the Congressional Panel Members).
  4. Age restrictions on owning, possessing, purchasing long guns clearly violate the 2A rights of 18-20 year olds.
  5. Bottom line recommendation was to support, co-sponsor Rep Mike Hill’s HB 6003 or sponsor a companion Senate Bill to HB 6003 which will revoke the RPO and 2 A age restrictions. Reconsider a much different and constitutional Bill for potential emergency situations where firearm seizure procedures may be appropriate.

This is the kind of Grassroots effort we must all support if we want to retain our rights and not live in fear of the possibility of an unconstitutional seizure of our firearms, ammo, accessories and permit.

BACKGROUND: Risk Protection Order in SB 7026 Violates Many Rights

Stands Due Process on Its Head – RPO takes away our Due Process Rights under the 5th and 14th Amendments as well as the Fl Constitution Sec 1, Art 9 and infringed upon our 2nd Amendment (2A) rights including FL Constitution Sec 1, Art 8.

Ex parte seizure of firearms, accessories, ammo, permits (if issued), etc. before a hearing for the respondent

Triggered by False Allegations/Weak Investigations –   Allows possibility of being triggered by false accusations and possible less than thoroughly investigated information by very busy and often overworked law enforcement.

Reverses legal precedent of being innocent until proven guilty since the respondent must prove they are not a threat rather than the court proving they are in the “after the fact” (post seizure) final RPO hearing.

Premonition Not Fact – Judges making decisions to seize property based on premonition of what might happen in the future – to do so opens very dangerous avenues to ignore our rights – trading rights for safety

Impact on Innocent Respondent  – Current procedure could lead to law abiding gun owning citizens being put through the embarrassment of seizure, personal cost to hire an attorney, loss of the means to defend themselves and their families and bureaucratic nightmare of being placed on state & federal criminal data bases and the difficulties of clearing their names.

Civil Procedure Treated Like Criminal Law – Since the RPO is a civil procedure, Why then are respondents served an ex parte and Final RPO automatically reported for inclusion in the state and national criminal data bases ?  There are no provisions in the RPO section of the law to help the respondent remove their names from these lists thus setting up another potential bureaucratic nightmare for the respondent.  This is another level of punishment for the respondent as a part of the criminal system yet they were served with a civil order.

Weak Rules of Evidence  – An RPO based on a premonition should at least be supported with beyond reasonable doubt evidence not the nebulous clear and convincing evidence of a threat as stated in the law.

2A Privilege Not Right– Hearings being held after the fact of seizures has the effect of turning the 2A from a right to a privilege.

Legal Representation – During the final RPO Hearing the court is represented by prosecution/attorney(s) representing Law Enforcement (LE) petitioners whereas the respondent is not entitled to Public Defense.  If they want (and probably should retain) legal representation, the respondent must hire an attorney without reimbursement compensation should their case be vacated.

Vague language of the RPO is open to varying interpretations by different legal jurisdictions, Judges, LE.

Duty Judges – Reliable sources have reported where large numbers of RPOs are being issued, the load is too great for assigned judges to review petitions and hold hearings so case assignment can go to duty judges with little knowledge of the RPO procedures.

Contract Lawyers for LE are being hired to represent LE petitioners with an incentive for pay based on cases leading to issuing of Final RPOs.

Judges Removed  – In at least one Court Jurisdiction, the Judge assigned to RPO cases was replaced by the Chief Judge of that Jurisdiction because of complaints by LE petitioners that he was turning down too many LE petitions he judged to not be clear and convincing and did not issue an ex parte RPO.

Property Treatment – There are no specifics in the RPO process as to the condition of how the seized property of the respondent is to be handled, stored, maintained and returned nor are there stipulations within what timeframe to return property should the ex parte RPO or final RPO be overturned or vacated.  This can lead to damaged property being returned without compensation and bureaucratic delays in returning properties.

3rd Party Transfer – The time frame of the option whereby a respondent can transfer property to be held by a 3rd party is also not determined nor prescribed.  There are unanswered questions about the strict conditions (such as passing a background check) required of the 3rd party transferee.

  •     For example if the 3d party is a CCW permit holder is this enough proof that a background check has been performed or does a new check have to be made and by whom?  Transfer requires a  sworn statement that the 3rd party will not allow respondent access during RPO period – will the LE officer serving petition take this statement or does the 3rd party or if not who/where do they go?
  •     Based on the lack of specifics on the transfer process, it appears this transfer won’t happen before the seizure but afterwards/post seizure.  This then leads to more bureaucracy and time delays.  The transfer should be conducted before seizure so as to preempt the need for LE to take possession, store, maintain and return property e.g. this function should take place between respondent & 3rd party at the same time the petition is served to the respondent and LE conducts inventory.  This would save LE resources as well.

Unequal Penalties – The fact that an accuser found to have rendered a false statement can only be charged with a misdemeanor whereas a search warrant can be issued to determine if any of the prohibited items are in the respondent’s residence and if the respondent is found to possess any firearm or related item after the final RPO (including one firearm bullet), they can be charged with a 3rd Degree Felony. This is also absurd, amounts to a civil search and unbalances the scales of justice.

Other Rights in Jeapordy – We are concerned these violations of our 2nd, 5th and 14th Amendment rights by SB 7026 could lead to other violations such as our 1st and 4th Amendment rights.

  •   1st Amendment Rights – Sen. Galvano’s coordination with FDLE to identify hate groups and hate speech could lead to RPOs being issued to members of these groups even though no such correlation exists in past mass shootings.
  •   What will be the criteria/sources used to determine that a group is a terrorist group and that they are a threat?  Surely not the uber leftist SPLC who has placed most conservative groups on their list of terrorists?
  •   Who will determine what is hate speech ?  This is fraught with the possibility of politicizing hate speech and using it against political opponents and seems more like the tactics of the Communist KGB or Nazi Gestapo than USA law.
  •   There are leftist groups such as the SPLC who have falsely classified most conservative groups as hate groups.  Others have now stated the NRA is a terorist group and all members of the NRA are racists.  These types of action like the RPO run the risk of turning certain agencies of the FL Govt into “speech police” which could further jeopardize our 1st and 2nd Amendment rights.

Weakening Self Defense Laws: Then there are the intended or unintended consequences in RPOs weakening our Self Defense laws and Stand Your Ground rights – law abiding citizens will be concerned about using their firearms under lawful conditions for fear of then having an RPO issued against them while a determination of immunity from prosecution for shooting takes place.

  •   Acceptance of large donations from gun control groups like Everytown USA  to PACs helping Republican Senators get re-elected also smacks of a conflict of interest and definitely conflicts with Republican values.

Civil Law Process Treated Like Criminal Law.  Why then are respondents served an ex parte and Final RPO automatically reported for inclusion in the state and national criminal data bases ?  There are no provisions in the RPO section of the law to help the respondent remove their names from these lists thus setting up another potential bureaucratic nightmare for the respondent.  This is another level of punishment for the respondent as a part of the criminal system yet they were served with a civil order.

Conclusions – All of the above stacks the deck against the respondent in an RPO case especially if the respondent has no prior criminal record, is law abiding and is the target of someone’s vendetta, anger, political attack or other such lies and distortions to make LE petitioner and Judge wary that they might be a threat and then err on the side of perceived safety rather than individual liberty.

PODCAST: CrowdStrike and the Impeachment Frenzy, Ukraine reopened the Burisma-Biden probe in 2018, Minimum Wage Has Trade-offs . . .

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GUESTS AND TOPICS:

Ryan Young, Senior Fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI). His writing has appeared in USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, Politico, The Hill, Investor’s Business Daily, Forbes, Fortune, and dozens of other publications. He is a frequent guest on radio programs, been interviewed by outlets including The Huffington Post and Voice of America, and been cited in media outlets including ABC News, CNN, and London’s City AM. He formerly hosted the CEI Podcast, and writes the popular “This Week in Ridiculous Regulations” series for CEI’s staff blog.

TOPIC: Minimum Wage Has Trade-offs

George Parry Contributor to The American Spectator, The Federalist, and the Philadelphia Inquirer. George is a former federal and state prosecutor. George served as: Special Attorney for the Organized Crime and Racketeering Section, U.S. Department of Justice 1972-1978; Unit Chief, Investigations Division, Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office 1978-1983; Special Organized Crime Prosecutor, Blair and Cambria counties (central Pennsylvania) 1983-1992; Legal Analyst, KYW-TV 1988-1998; George now has a private trial practice in Philadelphia.

TOPIC: CrowdStrike and the Impeachment Frenzy

Robert Romano, Vice President of Public Policy at Americans for Limited Government. He grew up in a suburban Long Island township, Rocky Point, where he graduated from high school. He studied and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from Stony Brook University with the Class of 2008. In his free time, he composes music on piano, paints oil on canvas, and writes fiction. TOPIC China Tariffs.

TOPIC: Ukraine reopened the Burisma-Biden probe in 2018

What You Need to Know About the Transgender Case at the Supreme Court

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This interview, which is lightly edited, originally aired on “Problematic Women.”

Lauren Evans: Welcome back. Virginia and I are in the studio today with religious liberty superstar Emilie Kao. Emilie is an attorney and director of the Richard and Helen DeVos Center for Religion and Civil Society at The Heritage Foundation and has spent the past 14 years fighting for religious liberty. Welcome to the show, Emilie.

Emilie Kao: Thank you, Lauren.

Evans: There’s a case that will be heard by the Supreme Court where a man who identifies as a woman is alleging sex discrimination after being fired from their job at a funeral home. Can you tell us more about this case, Emilie?

Kao: Yes. The Harris Funeral Homes case originated when a male employee of a funeral home wanted to start presenting as a woman. He wanted to start dressing as a woman, and the funeral home has a sex-specific dress code, which is legal.

The funeral home owner, Thomas Rost, was very concerned, not only about his employees, his female employees, who might have to share bathrooms with the male employee, but also about the effect on the people whom the funeral homes serve. Because these are people who are grieving at a time when they’re very focused on their emotional loss, and it could be very distracting and even disturbing for them to see a man dressed as a woman.

So when the employee refused to comply with the dress code according to his sex, they decided to part ways with him and offered him a severance package.

What happened next was that the employee and the EEOC, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, got involved and sued the funeral home. And the case has percolated up through the courts. They lost in the lower court and now it’s gotten to the Supreme Court.

Virginia Allen: Emilie, I want to ask you just to provide a definition for sexual discrimination.

Kao: The correct way to understand discrimination on the basis of sex—it is when one person is treated more disfavorably than a person of the other category.

So if you have a person who is male who is treated worse than a person who’s female because of their sex, that is sex discrimination. If you have a female who is treated worse than a male, that is sex discrimination.

Sex discrimination is not merely when you treat two people differently because we treat males and females differently all the time. That’s why we have some of the other sex-segregated spaces and events that we’ve talked about before. That’s why we have sex-segregated bathrooms. We have sex-segregated sports. Because the courts and the American people have realized men and women are different, and so there’s nothing discriminatory about having sex segregation in appropriate ways, sex-segregated spaces, sex-segregated events that involve a person’s physical capacity.

But what the people in the Harris Funeral Homes case are arguing on behalf of the employee who is identifying as transgender is that he was treated more poorly because of his status as a person who identifies as transgender.

He’s a male who wants to dress as a female. He’s a male who wants to use female restrooms. But that is not sex discrimination because the funeral home would have treated somebody of the opposite sex the same way if they manifested in the same way that this employee is.

So if you were a female employee of that funeral home and you wanted to identify as a male and use the male restroom and wear the male clothing that’s required by the dress code and be referred to as a male, the treatment would be the same of that female employee. So that’s why this case does not actually qualify for the sex discrimination category.

Evans: What was crazy to me about this case is that no laws were technically broken, correct?

Kao: Well, the claim of the EEOC and the employee is that the funeral home owner has violated the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex.

The whole theory of the transgender-identifying employee is that sex actually means gender identity, which there’s nothing in the text that says gender identity. But they have a theory that sex should mean gender identity.

So they’re essentially saying that the EEOC can redefine sex, and they now want the Supreme Court to redefine sex. And the Supreme Court should stay in its own lane, which is to interpret the law, not make the law, which is Congress’ duty.

Allen: So, Emilie, this case is going to come before the Supreme Court on Oct. 8, where it will decide, hopefully, whether federal civil rights law that bars job discrimination on the basis of sex protects transgender people. What do you think we can expect?

Kao: I think you can expect from the funeral home side that they will say Congress should stick with the original public meaning of what the word sex meant in 1964. And that is it established a way of interpreting the law that the court should refer to the original public meeting, which means, what did a regular person in the general public understand sex to mean, not what did a particular member of Congress think?

I think everyone pretty much agrees that in 1964, the word sex meant biological sex, male or female, not a person’s subjective self-perception of their gender, which is what gender identity means.

So I think that there will be a lot of discussion about the procedural part, which is, what is the correct role of the Congress versus what is the correct role of the courts?

As your listeners may know, the Congress has actually been trying to amend the Civil Rights Act recently through the Equality Act to add the classes of sexual orientation and gender identity. So the fact that the Equality Act is being introduced in Congress sort of begs the question, “Well, if sex already meant gender identity, why would you have to add it through this legislation?”

We also know that through the decades, Congress has actually dealt with the question of gender identity. Sometimes they have added it to legislation like the Violence Against Women Act, but sometimes they have declined, they have projected the addition of the term gender identity. So the historical record’s pretty clear. Congress knows that gender identity and sex are two different things.

Allen: So if SCOTUS rules that gender identity does not apply to federal civil rights law, will that create a roadblock for Congress to move forward with the passage of the Equality Act?

Kao: I think it will clarify what the current understanding of the Civil Rights Act should be, and I think it will make it more difficult for the EEOC to continue to politicize these cases. But I don’t think it will make it more difficult in a procedural sense for Congress to try and pass something like the Equality Act.

However, I do think it could make the public support for something like the Equality Act change. Because I think one of the interesting things about this case is that it will bring to the forefront some of the issues that we’ve talked about, how gender identity essentially erases women as a coherent category in the law.

We’ve seen the manifestation of this in several cases like the homeless shelter in Alaska. They were sued because they would not allow a man into a space that was reserved for women who’d been battered, and abused, and trafficked. The whole theory behind the male plaintiff’s case was that he was being discriminated against on the basis of gender identity.

So we see from that case that when you introduce the idea of gender identity, it erases the protections in the law for women, for their safety, and privacy. And there are a number of other cases with women’s sports and with, unfortunately, a girl in a public school in Georgia being sexually assaulted after the school adopted a transgender bathroom policy.

Allen: Emilie, I’m glad that you brought up the Alaska case about the homeless shelter. I want to get into that for a moment. Let me just give a little bit of background to our listeners if they’re not familiar.

The Hope Center is a Christian nonprofit women’s homeless shelter in Anchorage, Alaska. Right now, we have some great news that we just received this week that they are now free to continue serving homeless women without the threat of looming legal action or even being shut down.

The reason why that threat arose to them was in January 2018, a drunk and injured man dressed in a pink nightgown tried to gain access to the Hope Center. During the day, the center does serve men and women by providing them with meals, laundry, and shower services, job skills training, and clothing. But in order to provide a safe space for homeless women, the shelter at night does only house women.

So when this intoxicated, biological man identifying as a woman came knocking on the center’s door after hours, the Hope Center sent the individual to the hospital to get the care he needed. They even paid for the taxi. But then the Hope Center faced a complaint from the Anchorage Equal Rights Commission claiming that the center had discriminated against this individual because of his gender identity. This appeared to be an attempt to attack the center’s Christian beliefs.

At that point, the Christian nonprofit legal defense firm Alliance Defending Freedom stepped in to help and they filed a lawsuit in federal court on the center’s behalf. In August, that court issued an order that temporarily stopped the city from misplaying this law against the Hope Center.

So, Emilie, I want to ask you, how big of a win is this, and do you think this is actually the end of this case or will there be maybe an appeal?

Kao: I think it’s a very big win, not only for the Hope Center but for similarly situated women’s shelters and other spaces for women around the country. I think it’s a great precedent. My understanding is that there was a settlement. So if there was a settlement, I don’t expect that this will be relitigated.

Evans: One thing that I’ve learned since this case has come out is that Anchorage actually has a higher than normal population of women who have been sex trafficked because it’s kind of a middle point between Russia and the United States. So … these women, they need a safe space.

How unique is this case, and are faith-based women’s homeless shelters under attack pretty much everywhere?

Kao: Unfortunately, this is not a totally unique case because we’ve also seen a case in California called Poverello House, I believe it is a secular women’s shelter, where the women were forced to shower with a man who was apparently making, they allege, lewd comments toward them in the showers.

It was actually the women in that case who sued because they did not want to be housed with a man and have to share intimate facilities with a man.

So I think that, unfortunately, wherever we see these laws that have sexual orientation and gender identity in addition to the other protected categories, there is the possibility that women’s safety and privacy will be compromised in spaces that used to be for their protection.

Evans: The name of the act is the Equality Act, and it puts, I think, our listeners and people who believe in religious liberty in a hard place when somebody is like, “Man, why aren’t you for equality?”

So what is kind of misunderstood about this case, and what are some talking points that our listeners can use when put in this hard place of wanting to love all people but wanting to protect women?

Kao: I think the term equality has been misused. I think that one basic thing you can say is that all people have dignity and deserve to be treated with respect. All people have equal status, but not all ideas have equal status. And we don’t have to agree on all ideas.

What the Equality Act would do is basically adopt a government orthodoxy on sexual orientation and gender identity. Now, those two categories are distinct from many of the other categories that are protected in the Civil Rights Act. So if you think of race and sex, those are both biological and immutable traits. Gender identity is a person’s subjective perception of their own sex, which people have the freedom to believe that, but people also should have the freedom to disagree with that, to say, “Well, I think you actually are either a male or a female,” and they don’t believe in gender fluidity.

Then, the category of sexual orientation, again, that also involves a person’s behavior or their conduct, which we are free to have different opinions about behavior and conduct. That is not an immutable characteristic. So, unfortunately, what the Equality Act would do is it would lead to a government orthodoxy, and that will lead to the punishment of dissenters.

Some of those dissenters will be people who have religious convictions. Some of those dissenters will be people with moral convictions. And some of those dissenters, as we’ve seen from the women who oppose the Equality Act, their objections are based on science and based on concerns for women’s safety, and privacy, and equality.

So, unfortunately, the Equality Act would establish a nationwide orthodoxy and punish disagreement.

Allen: Emilie, with cases like the Hope Center case, do you see this as the left weaponizing anti-discrimination law and then using that to attack faith-based organizations?

Kao: I think that the treatment of people of faith over the past few years by the left, especially by organizations like the Human Rights Campaign and actually some members of Congress, has been incredibly intolerant.

You look at some of the rhetoric, the way that they describe people like Jack Phillips, the baker from Colorado. In Colorado, some of the government officials compared him to a Nazi and a slave owner. When you look at the targeting of organizations, businesses like his, with boycotts and picketing and not only that but death threats, harassing phone calls.

That’s, unfortunately, not an isolated incident. We’ve seen that with many of the wedding vendor cases, many of the cases involving sexual orientation and gender identity. There’s been verbal harassment, and economic threats, boycotts, and also sometimes threats of physical violence.

So, unfortunately, I think our culture is at a point right now that the left’s intolerance of religious beliefs about sexuality, and marriage, and even sex differences is increasing. So the use of these laws to punish people for disagreement, I think, is part of an overall picture of increasing intolerance toward people who simply hold the view that marriage is between a man and a woman and that there are two sexes, male and female.

Evans: Emilie, we talk a lot on the show about the Equality Act and these transgender issues, but at the end of the day, we’re blessed in the United States to have the First Amendment that protects our right to religious liberty. A lot of people in the world don’t have that First Amendment protection, and you [look at] a lot of issues talking about international religious freedom. And I know President Trump made a speech … at the U.N. about international religious freedom.

Can you give our listeners kind of an update about what’s going on around the world with these religious freedom issues?

Kao: President Trump gave a landmark speech and elevated religious freedom at the U.N. General Assembly to a level that it’s never been elevated before, which is very critical because the U.N. tends to downplay the importance of religious freedom even though over 80% of the world’s population lives under serious restrictions of religious freedom. So it really put the U.N. on notice and many of the countries that are the worst violators of religious freedom on notice.

I thought a particularly interesting part of the event that he held was to spotlight the survivors of religious persecution, and some people who were there had family members who are still in prison in places like China and Iran.

So I think that the Trump administration has added at the U.N. General Assembly to the work that it’s been doing for the past few years with the International Religious Freedom Ministerial Summit that Secretary [of State Mike] Pompeo and Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom Sam Brownback have hosted.

They’ve done a great job on building multilateral cooperation. Their summits have brought together government leaders from over 100 countries, and it has fostered more cooperation in places like the Middle East, and Asia, and Europe to combat religious freedom violations.

Allen: Emilie, I want to take just a moment to let you share a little bit about an event that’s happening at The Heritage Foundation next week. Earlier in the show, Lauren and I took some time to talk about the epidemic of child abuse through child pornography. And there is an event that you’re hosting next week at Heritage that addresses this crisis. Could you tell us a little bit more about that?

Kao: Thanks, Virginia. Yes, we are very concerned about this growing epidemic of children being sexualized by adults through culture, and education, and health care. Sometimes, this is actually as a result of government-led initiatives, which means that it is actually the use of taxpayer money.

So we will be looking at issues like pornography and trafficking, also the introduction of comprehensive sexuality education in public schools, the introduction of sexual orientation, gender identity curriculum, the transgender policies, and private facilities like bathrooms and locker rooms, and the increasing politicization of health care for children with gender dysphoria that’s leading to harmful treatments of testosterone and surgeries on children. So we will be bringing together thought leaders from around the country to discuss these issues with one another.

Hopefully, this will be a great way for parents to learn about what they can do. We’ll be introducing the national parent resource guide on the transgender trend, which is a very helpful tool for parents, gives them practical steps that they can take if a transgender policy is being introduced in their school district, ways that they can talk to their school, and it tells them what their rights are.

So we’re really looking forward to bringing together all of these experts from around the country to find solutions to this growing epidemic.

Allen: When is the event taking place, and how can people register?

Kao: The event is Wednesday, Oct. 9 from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. They can watch online, and they can register on the Heritage website. We will have three panels on culture, education, and health care, in that order.

>>> On Wednesday, Oct. 9, The Heritage Foundation and Family Policy Alliance will co-host a Summit on Protecting Children from Sexualization to examine these issues in-depth. The summit also will debut the National Parents Resource Guide on the Transgender Trend. RSVP for the event or watch the livestream here.

We really encourage all parents to tune in at some point to this summit because it will give them an overview of how children are being targeted for sexualization, will give them practical tools to fight back, and it will introduce them to some of the federal and state policies that can help solve some of these problems.

Evans: If you are a podcast person, all Heritage events are turned into podcasts. You can listen to it. It’s almost immediate, usually takes an hour or two for us to get it uploaded. Also, a lot of the participants in the panel will be doing interviews with The Daily Signal, which will run throughout the week and probably into next week.

Allen: Thank you so much, Emilie, for joining us. We really appreciate your time and you sharing your expertise with us.

Kao: Thank you.

COLUMN BY

Lauren Evans

Lauren Evans is the multimedia producer for The Daily Signal and The Heritage Foundation. Send an email to Lauren. Twitter: @laurenelizevans.

Virginia Allen

Virginia Allen is a contributor to The Daily Signal. Send an email to Virginia. Twitter: @Virginia_Allen5.

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The President Is Right: We Must Clean Up America’s Cities

A Note for our Readers:

In the wake of every tragic mass shooting or high-profile incident involving gun violence, we hear the same narrative: To stop these horrible atrocities from happening, we must crack down on gun laws.

But is the answer really to create more laws around gun control, or is this just an opportunity to limit your Constitutional right to bear arms?

The researchers at The Heritage Foundation have put together a guide to help you better understand the 8 Stubborn Facts on Gun Violence in America.

They’re making this guide available to all readers of The Daily Signal for free today!

GET YOUR FREE COPY NOW! >>

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Signal column is republished with permission. © All right reserved.

Stalled Biden to Trump: ‘I’m Not Going Anywhere!’

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In a speech Wednesday evening in Reno, Nevada, presidential contender Joe Biden responded to President Trump’s allegations of corruption by asserting, “I’m not going anywhere!”

Biden is correct, but not in the defiant way he intended. He is indeed going nowhere, as his momentum in the race for the Democrat nomination has stalled while competitor Elizabeth Warren has taken first place.

“Let me make something clear to Trump and his hatchet men and the special interests funding his attacks against me — I’m not going anywhere,” Biden said in his speech. “You’re not going to destroy me. And you’re not going to destroy my family. I don’t care how much money you spend or how dirty the attacks get.”

Biden, who is the actual corrupt politician at the center of Trump’s Ukraine “scandal,” also claimed ludicrously that the President is “afraid of just how badly I would beat him next November.”

Joe Biden

In March 2016 – while Ukraine’s Prosecutor General, Viktor Shokin, was actively investigating Burisma’s alleged corruption – Vice President Biden threatened to withhold $1 billion in U.S. loan guarantees to the Ukrainian government unless it agreed to fire Shokin immediately. Because the revocation of American aid would have been devastating to Ukraine, President Petro Poroshenko caved to Biden’s threat and fired Shokin on March 29. At the time of Shokin’s termination, he and other Ukrainian prosecutors were in the midst of preparing a request to interview Hunter Biden about his activities and the funds he was receiving from Ukraine.

In a sworn affidavit prepared for a European court, Shokin later testified that he had been told that the reason for his firing was that Joe Biden was troubled by the Burisma investigation. “The truth,” said Shokin, “is that I was forced out because I was leading a wide-ranging corruption probe into Burisma Holdings, a natural gas firm active in Ukraine and Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, was a member of the Board of Directors. On several occasions President Poroshenko asked me to have a look at the case against Burisma and consider the possibility of winding down the investigative actions in respect of this company but I refused to close this investigation.”

And here is how Joe Biden himself – in a January 2018 speech at the Council on Foreign Relations – boastfully recollected his own role in getting Shokin fired:

“I was supposed to announce that there was another billion-dollar loan guarantee. I had gotten a commitment from [Ukrainian President] Poroshenko and from [Prime Minister] Yatsenyuk that they would take action against the state prosecutor [Shokin]. And they didn’t. So they said they had — they were walking out to a press conference. I said, nah, I’m not going to — or, we’re not going to give you the billion dollars. They said, ‘you have no authority. You’re not the president. The president [Obama] said’ — I said, ‘call him’ [Obama]. I said, ‘I’m telling you, you’re not getting the billion dollars.’ I said, ‘You’re not getting the billion. I’m going to be leaving here in,’ I think it was about six hours. I looked at them and said: ‘I’m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money.’ Well, son of a bitch. He got fired. And they put in place someone who was solid at the time.”

To learn more, click here.

Tlaib: Use only blacks as Detroit’s facial recognition analysts, whites “think African Americans all look the same”

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One might almost get the impression that Tlaib wants to sow hatred and division between different groups of Americans. Now what could possibly be the purpose of doing that?

“Tlaib: Use only blacks as Detroit’s facial recognition analysts,” by George Hunter, Detroit News, October 1, 2019 (thanks to Tim):

U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib told Detroit police Chief James Craig he should employ only black people on the department’s facial recognition team because “non-African Americans think African Americans all look the same.”

The Detroit Democrat made the statement during a tour of the Real Time Crime center, where monitors display live footage from video cameras on traffic lights and in and around businesses.

A day after Tlaib made the comment Monday, her spokesman said she was trying to convey the importance of accurately identifying black suspects in a city with an African American population of about 80%.

Police officials invited Tlaib to the facility inside Public Safety Headquarters to see how Detroit uses facial recognition software, after she criticized the technology in an Aug. 20 tweet. The congresswoman wrote: “@detroitpolice You should probably rethink this whole facial recognition bull—-.”

The tour, which lasted more than an hour, was often tense, with Tlaib and Craig wrangling over how the department uses the software, privacy issues, and concerns that the technology misidentifies a disproportionate number of darker-skinned people. A major point of contention: whether only black civilians should work in the crime center analyzing photos flagged by the software.

“Analysts need to be African Americans, not people that are not,” Tlaib told Craig. “I think non-African Americans think African Americans all look the same.

“I’ve seen it even on the House floor: People calling Elijah Cummings ‘John Lewis,’ and John Lewis ‘Elijah Cummings,’ and they’re totally different people,” Tlaib said, referring to the two longtime Democratic congressmen. “I see it all the time, and I love them because they go along with it.”

Craig replied: “I trust people who are trained, regardless of race; regardless of gender. It’s about the training.”

“I know,” Tlaib answered. “But it does make a huge difference with the analysts.”

After the tour, when a reporter asked whether she meant white people weren’t qualified to work in the crime center, Tlaib said: “No, I think there has actually been studies out that it’s hard for — African Americans would identify African Americans, or Latinos, same thing.”

Tlaib then was asked whether that means non-whites should be barred from working as crime analysts in mostly white communities. She replied: “Look it up.”…

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EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. © All rights reserved.

VIDEO: Chair of Interfaith Council of Central Florida Rev. Bryan Fulwider arrested for Assault on a Minor

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WMFE.org’s Abe Aboraya reports:

The Reverend Bryan Fulwider has been arrested and charged with sexual assault on a minor by a person in a position of authority.

Fulwider is the co-host of Friends Talking Faith with The Three Wise Guys, an independent radio show carried by WMFE since 2012. It is also carried by WMFV.

When reached by WMFE Wednesday night, co-host Imam Muhammad Musri said he was unaware of the charges and arrest of Fulwider, and declined to comment.

His arrest warrant was issued by the Winter Park Police Department, but was not immediately available. Fulwider was arrested Wednesday and booked into the Seminole County Jail, and is due in court Thursday afternoon.

Read more.

In 2012, a team from The United West exposed the hypocrisy of an interfaith meeting when conservative views are introduced by Egyptian Baptist Pastor Usama Dakdok.  What followed was an interesting transition when Bryan Fulwider and Imam Sykes left and a true interfaith meeting followed.

Watch: Interfaith Dialogue Exposed – True Dialogue Held: Imam Sykes & Rev. Fulwider – The United West, posted Jan 21, 2012

D.C. and Virginia Do NOT Want Federal Shelters for Unaccompanied Alien Children

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This is an update of a story I posted here in August where we learned that even the Washington Post was calling out local Leftwing politicians for their hypocrisy!

It is your classic ‘Not-in-my-backyard’ tale.

Washington, D.C. and its wealthy (Democrat-run) bedroom communities of northern Virginia do not want shelters for the mostly teens coming across our borders illegally.

Send them to Arizona and Texas instead!

From the Washington Business Journal:

Trump administration drops plans for Northern Virginia immigrant shelter

The Trump administration has called off its plans to bring a new shelter for unaccompanied immigrant children to Northern Virginia.

Federal officials are “no longer conducting exploratory assessments of vacant properties to lease” in the region, according to an email from spokespeople with the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Refugee Resettlement. The agency revealed in August that it was considering a variety of Northern Virginia jurisdictions for a new, 110,000-square-foot facility.

But that move prompted fierce pushback from local leaders…

[….]

The HHS officials did not say why they ultimately declined to pursue a shelter in the region. They added in the email that they’ve also stopped searching for space in Atlanta, Central Florida and Los Angeles, and will likely pursue new facilities in Texas and Arizona instead.

The mayor of Alexandria, Virginia, Justin Wilson, said if the feds send some bucks to the city he might consider discussing it further.

“If the federal government wished to provide the city with the resources to care for these children, in partnership, I would be open to discussing such a scenario,” Wilson wrote. “But as it has been presented to the city at this point, I do not believe this is something the city should be a part of.”

The Trump administration’s plans for a similar immigrant shelter in D.C. are considerably more unsettled.

Separately from the search for space in Northern Virginia, HHS also plans to work with Maryland-based contractor Dynamic Service Solutions to open a new shelter in Takoma. Mayor Muriel Bowser, however, has rolled out new regulations in a bid to block that project, though it remains unclear whether federal officials have a way to sidestep her efforts.

More here.

Trump Jilts Google in Copyright Dispute at Supreme Court

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The Trump administration has urged the Supreme Court to stay out of a long-running copyright dispute between Google and Oracle Corp., dealing a considerable blow to Google’s efforts to avoid an $8 billion damages award.

At issue in the dispute, billed as the copyright fight of the decade, are software interfaces called API declarations, which are shorthand commands that facilitate prewritten, complex computer functions. Google used a trove of Oracle-owned Java API declarations when building its Android smartphone operating system.

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“[Google] copied 11,500 lines of computer code verbatim, as well as the complex structure and organization inherent in that code, in order to help its competing commercial product,” the Trump administration’s legal brief reads. “The record demonstrates, moreover, that [Google’s] unauthorized copying harmed the market for [Oracle’s] Java platform.”

Sun Microsystems originally developed the contested API declarations. Oracle acquired Sun in 2010. Shortly thereafter, Oracle sued Google in federal court for patent and copyright infringement, saying Google impermissibly copied the API declarations. Years of litigation followed.

Now before the Supreme Court, Google questions whether APIs are copyrightable in the first place. The federal Copyright Act provides that protection does not extend to “methods of operation.” In Google’s view, APIs are a method of operation because they help developers access prewritten, complex functions.

“The Java API declarations simply tell developers how to access the prewritten methods to perform tasks carried out by the implementing code,” Google’s petition reads. “In that respect, the declarations are analogous to a set of rules developers are trained to follow when writing programs in the Java language. If the rules were changed, the prewritten methods would not work. For that reason, the declarations are necessarily part of the method of operating the libraries of prewritten code.”

The Trump administration disagreed, saying APIs do not count as a method of operation simply because they perform a function.

“Although there is a sense in which all computer code could be described as a method of operating a computer, the Copyright Act as a whole makes clear that computer programs can be protected by copyright, refuting any suggestion that the functional character of computer code suffices to bring it within [the Copyright Act],” the government’s brief reads.

The Supreme Court gives the federal government’s views great credence when, as here, the justices ask for its guidance about whether to take a case.

However, Google contends the federal appeals courts are split as to whether copyright protections reach software interfaces like APIs. The Supreme Court justices are much more likely to take a case featuring a question of law over which multiple courts disagree.

Google prevailed at the case’s first trial in 2012. A jury deadlocked over Oracle’s claims, prompting the judge to sign with Google. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, a specialized court for patent appeals, reversed that decision and ordered a new trial in 2014.

Google appealed the Federal Circuit’s ruling to the Supreme Court, but the justices turned the request down in 2015.

A second trial followed in 2016. A jury sided with Google, finding fair use protected its reliance on the API declarations. The Federal Circuit overturned that verdict, ruling Google had not engaged in fair use. It returned the case to a lower court for a trial on damages.

That decision is now pending before the Supreme Court. On April 29, the justices asked the Trump administration to weigh in on the petition.

The case is No. 18-956 Google v. Oracle America.

COLUMN BY

Kevin Daley

Kevin Daley is a legal affairs reporter for the Daily Caller News Foundation. Twitter: @kevindaleydc.

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, email licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.