The New House Homeland Security Committee Chair Already Has the Left Enraged

Rep. Mark Green (R-Tenn.) has been tapped as the new chair of the House Committee on Homeland Security, and even though the new Congress has barely gotten started, he already has the censorious Left up in arms. Newsweek reported last Monday that Trump nominated Green to be Secretary of the Army, but “he ended up withdrawing his nomination from consideration for the role in 2017 after coming under fire for past comments about members of the LGBTQ community, particularly transgender people.” It seems that Green said: “If you poll the psychiatrists, they’re going to tell you transgender is a disease.” Horror of horrors! Everyone can see that men who think they’re women and vice versa are as sane and well-adjusted as the day is long. And now it has come to light that Green has violated Leftist pieties in another way as well: he has a history of making “anti-Muslim comments.”

The HuffPo sounded the alarm on this Thursday, doing its level best to portray Green as a racist, redneck yahoo. HuffPo claimed that Green, whom it identified as “a physician, Iraq War veteran and former GOP state senator,” that is, just the sort of person Leftists abhor, once said “that Iraqis smelled like ‘curry mixed with sweat.’” Sabina Mohyuddin of the American Muslim Advisory Council fumed: “If you hold stereotypes about communities, how can you effectively move on issues that are really nuanced and require a greater understanding of the issues?”

However, Rachel Del Guidice, Green’s communications director, shot back that “some media outlets cut and spliced” what Green said, and added: “Rep. Green has not, and will not ever, force his religion on anyone. He believes that every American has a right to defend their country. Having served three tours of duty overseas during the War on Terror, Rep. Green acted as a steadfast protector of everyone in this nation. Vilifying people of faith because they don’t agree with progressive policies is against America’s founding principles — the very principles he fought to protect.”

The HuffPo, however, wasn’t done. It claimed also that Green “once said he didn’t want students in Tennessee to learn about Islam.” This came up at a Tea Party meeting in 2016, “when an audience member read a passage from a textbook that correctly stated that Muslims believe in all the prophets in the Old and New Testament,” and Green replied, “When you start teaching the pillars of Islam … we will not tolerate that in this state.” According to the HuffPo, Green went on to say that “if students did have to learn about Islam…they should only learn ‘the history of the Ottoman Empire’ and ‘the assault of Islam out into the Levant and North Africa and into Constantinople.’”

You see? He’s ignorant as well as racist! And so Sumayyah Waheed of Muslim Advocates, which the HuffPo says is a “national civil rights group based in Washington, D.C.,” declared: “Rep. Green’s well-documented history of hate speech against Muslims, LGBTQ people, and immigrants made him unfit to be Secretary of the Army, and that history makes him unfit to chair the House Homeland Security Committee. As chair of the House Homeland Security Committee, Mark Green is a threat to Muslims ― especially to those that live at the intersections of the communities he has gleefully attacked for political gain.”

But the HuffPo, true to form, doesn’t bother to tell you that what Green was actually talking about was his opposition to Islamic proselytizing and indoctrination in public schools, which has been abundantly documented. Green was pushing back against the whitewashed version of Islam that is taught in all too many public school textbooks around the country, but of course the HuffPo doesn’t give you even a hint that there was ever a controversy over the way Islam was taught in public school textbooks.

The only thing that could legitimately be seen as offensive is his alleged statement that Iraqis smelled like “curry mixed with sweat,” although to jump from there to the claim that he is a “threat to Muslims” is beyond ridiculous. It’s certainly impolite, at the very least, to say it, but I’m sure Americans smell like all sorts of strange things to non-Americans, too, and HuffPo is making a big deal out of a pungent quip in order to try to defame and destroy Green.

This is, of course, how the “Islamophobia” industry always operates: quotes without context given the worse possible spin, no explanation or rebuttal allowed, and demonstrably true statements presented as not only false, but offensive. These gutter tactics have worked wonderfully well for the Left in the past, but people are beginning to wake up. Green may not lose his chairmanship over these remarks; if he doesn’t, that may be an indication that the new House leadership really does have some spine.

Here at PJ Media, we’re always on top of the stories that the establishment media doesn’t want to report, or spins beyond all recognition. Want to know what’s really happening with the new Republican House? We’ve got it! And you can get access to even more first-rate content when you become a PJ Media VIP memberVIPs get deeper dives into important issues as well as podcasts and an ad-free experience. VIPs also have more fun, whiter teeth, fresher breath, and a certain sly charm that people find absolutely winning. With VIP Gold, it gets even better. VIP Gold membership gives you access to all of the Townhall family of sites, including Hot Air, Twitchy, Bearing Arms, and RedState, along with live chats. A PJ Media VIP membership is a tremendous value on its own, but we currently have a 40% off deal with the promo code SAVEAMERICA. Sign up today!

This column originally appeared in PJ Media.

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

Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX) Introduces Bill Criminalizing ‘Conspiracy to Commit White Supremacy’

Unhinged racist Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX) introduced a House Bill last Monday criminalizing “conspiracy to commit white supremacy,” which includes criticism of non-white people that influences an individual to commit a hate crime.

The legislation, H.R.61 “Leading Against White Supremacy Act of 2023,” states that someone engages in a white supremacy-inspired hate crime “when white supremacy ideology has motivated the planning, development, preparation, or perpetration of actions that constituted a crime or were undertaken in furtherance of activity that, if effectuated, would have constituted a crime.”

“Conspiracy” to engage in white supremacy-inspired hate crime entails the publishing of material “advancing white supremacy, white supremacist ideology, antagonism based on ‘replacement theory’, or hate speech that vilifies or is otherwise directed against any non-White person or group.”

It also calls for the Department of Justice (DOJ) to gain “authority to conduct operations and activities pursuant” to what it deems “necessary and appropriate to interdict, mitigate, or prevent such action from culminating in violent activity.”

The bill would grant the department authority to “prosecute” persons engaged in such actions, with “records of white supremacy inspired hate crimes” maintained and annual reports provided.

In response, Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) wrote, “In case you weren’t aware of what the Democrats were prioritizing in the 118th Congress, just take a look. When they’re not bankrupting our country, they’re busy making a mockery of the First Amendment.”

“Who wants to tell her about the First Amendment?” asked conservative attorney Harmeet Dhillon.

“Congressman Sheila Jackson Lee just introduced a bill that would make it a federal crime for White people, and White people only, to criticize mass immigration or to say anything that she claims would vilify ‘a non-White person or group,’” wrote one Twitter user.

“Sheila Jackson Lee should be introduced to the Bill of Rights. Particularly the first amendment pertaining to free speech,” another wrote.

“This is a disturbing, yet not surprising, piece of #AntiWhite legislation,” yet another user wrote.


Sheila Jackson Lee

106 Known Connections

Jackson Lee Has Repeatedly Accused Others of Racism

Over the course of her career as a legislator, Jackson Lee has often accused her political opponents of racism. For example:

On March 2, 2021, CNN’s Don Lemon asked Jackson Lee: “The Supreme Court is hearing arguments today that could weaken voting rights in Arizona. Major push nationwide to make it harder for people to vote. What does this mean particularly for black voters?” The congresswoman replied: “Well, I think tragically we have not had this historic opposition to our rights since slavery, during the Jim Crow days and of course the harshness of the 1960s. The tragedy of this is an entire party, the Republican Party, is committed to voter suppression, committed to avoiding the opportunity of votes. Donald Trump laid out he only wants one day for votes. They don’t want opportunities for absentee ballot, extended voting, same-day registration, all things that empower young people and people of color, African-Americans. This is a war on black people as it relates to voting…. It’s tragic that Republicans want to take that stand because they can’t win fairly. They can’t draw people to their positions. They are now trying to suppress the votes.”

To learn more about Sheila Jackson Lee, click here.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Discover the Networks column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Religious Freedom for Christian Colleges: A Victory in Federal Court

A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit by the LGBTQ-sponsored “Religious Exemption Accountability Project” (REAP) asserting that “young and vulnerable” LGBTQ+ persons are “at the mercy of religiously affiliated, taxpayer-funded social service and educational institutions that often turn them away or force them into the closet.”

The students who litigated against the U.S. Department of Education and the Council of Christian Colleges and Universities (CCCU) wanted to overturn “a provision of Title IX that allows religious colleges to seek exemptions” from a law barring “sex-based discrimination.” Title IX is part of a 1972 measure and states, “No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.”

However, there is a federal statute stating that Title IX “does not apply to an educational institution that is controlled by a religious organization to the extent that application of Title IX would be inconsistent with the religious tenets of the organization.” In other words, if a school believes that sexual intimacy is reserved for one man and one woman in the covenantal bond of marriage, and thereby adhering to 3,500 years of Judeo-Christian teaching, it can receive federal resources without penalty.

So, in October 2021, “the U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon allowed three Christian post-secondary schools represented by Alliance Defending Freedom attorneys — Corban University, William Jessup University, and Phoenix Seminary — to intervene in the lawsuit and defend the relevant provisions of Title IX, the federal law under attack.”

The judge who issued the ruling, U.S. District Judge Ann Aiken, was appointed to the federal court by Bill Clinton. “Exempting religiously controlled educational institutions from Title IX,” she wrote in her decision, “is substantially related to the government’s objective of accommodating religious exercise.”

The judge also “rejected (REAP’s) argument that the exemption ran afoul of the First Amendment’s prohibition against the establishment of religion by Congress, saying they failed to show how the federal government, in contrast to the schools, advanced religion.”

Throughout the country — in workplaces, businesses, and other venues — LGBTQ-identifying persons can be subject to verbal cruelty and personal harassment. These are affronts to the God-given dignity enjoyed by every image-bearer of our Creator. Followers of Jesus should not only oppose them but defend those attacked when able.

With that said, I cannot help but wonder why the students who filed the lawsuit attend Christian colleges and universities whose faith commitments state clearly what they believe about human sexuality. Did they apply to and enter these schools under false pretenses — affirming the institutions’ doctrinal standards while intending to fight them once enrolled? Or upon attending, did they decide they were LGBTQ and choose to remain in order to overturn the schools’ commitments to biblical teaching?

Perhaps they felt they have a strong precedent for such initiatives as the REAP lawsuit. This past fall, the Christian Reformed Church, even though affirming the Bible’s teaching about men, women, and sex, decided to let the faculty at its flagship college, Calvin University, “dissent from a clause in (the CRC) confession of faith that regards sex outside of heterosexual marriage as sinful, enabling them to continue to work at the Christian school while also respecting their convictions.”

In other words, a college founded to uphold scriptural standards allows professors who disdain some of those standards to teach and, thereby, influence the young people who attend the institution. This is like saying that although my car uses diesel fuel I’m going to fill it up with low-octane gas. Hey, I’m filling it up, right? Why judge me for my tolerance of and even compassionate sympathy for diverse fuel types?

Similarly, some churches have abandoned the Bible’s clear teaching about human sexuality after intense and unrelenting pressure from LGBT-identifying activists and their allies. Even though the worldwide Methodist communion uniformly opposes any sexual intimacy outside of traditional marriage, American Methodist advocates of complete sexual autonomy have insisted on violating their church’s stated beliefs and are now dividing the United Methodist Church.

With precedents like these, it is understandable that the insistent and relentless demands of LGBTQ activists and their supporters would try to erode those institutions retaining fidelity to “the Word of God and the testimony of Jesus Christ” (Revelation 1:2).

Anyone who agrees with a school’s doctrinal statement or at least agrees to abide by its standards is welcome at a Christian college or university, depending on the individual institution’s rules. Yet no one is compelled to remain at a school whose standards are repellent to him or her. To do so speaks of a lack of moral courage and personal dishonesty as well, perhaps, of a certain desperation for affirmation that the student himself or herself does not possess within.

My heart goes out to those wrestling with issues of sexual identity. But this court case hasn’t been about any student’s view of his or her sexuality. It’s about standing for the truth of the Word of God and allowing those who follow it to do so without penalty. Continuing to stand without compromise is one of the great and ongoing challenges for the believing church today. May we be found faithful.

AUTHOR

Rob Schwarzwalder

Rob Schwarzwalder is Senior Lecturer in Regent University’s Honors College.

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

Biden’s mishandling of top secret documents is a symptom, not the real problem

Official Washington is consumed with Joe Biden’s serial mishandling of classified documents. His partisans insist that it’s not as bad as what Donald Trump did. His critics correctly say illegal stashing of top secret material in Joe’s garage, a file marked “Personal” and an office paid for by anonymous Chinese donors is, indeed, far more serious.

That’s especially so since, unlike a vice president, President Trump actually had the authority to declassify the documents he stored in a padlocked room at Mara Lago with the blessing of the FBI.

The real problem is that Joe Biden’s conduct generally is a grave threat to the national security. For starters, he’s a “controlled asset” of Chinese intelligence. Then, there’s his: surrender of Afghanistan, hollowing out of the U.S. military and destruction of our energy security – among other betrayals.

It’s past time for Joe to go.

This is Frank Gaffney.

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Frank Gaffney, Jr.

Founder and Executive Chairman.

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Wisconsin Special Counsel Finds Zuckerberg’s Election Money Violated State Bribery Laws

Here we are again, more election fraud, more election interference, and yet there is no redress, no recourse. No action. We are living a dystopian nightmare.

Wisconsin Special Counsel Finds Zuckerberg’s Election Money Violated State Bribery Laws | Facts Matter

The Epoch Times

The special counsel who was appointed to study the 2020 election in Wisconsin submitted his official report, in which he determined that the millions of dollars that Mark Zuckerberg spent on the Wisconsin election violated the state’s laws in regard to bribery.

That’s beside the multiple other issues the special counsel found, which included unconstitutional drop boxes, illegal directives from the elections commission in regard to nursing homes, as well as problems with the voter rolls themselves.

Watch here…..

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EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Top 5 Biden Administration Fails This Week

The new year began on a grim note for the Biden administration. On the first day back in the office after the New Year’s holiday, news broke that almost 80% of Americans projected 2023 to be a “year of economic difficulty.” Things haven’t gotten much better since then for the White House. It has indeed been a particularly rough week for the Biden administration. Here are five of their biggest fails.

1. Mishandling of Classified Documents

It was discovered this week that President Biden apparently mishandled top secret classified documents, which could be prosecuted as a federal offense. Some were found in his garage in Wilmington, Del. next to his Corvette, while others were found in “a box, locked cabinet — or at least a closet,” according to the president. Still other top secret documents were found at Biden’s think tank in Washington, D.C.

On Thursday, Attorney General Merrick Garland announced that an investigation would be opened into the matter and appointed a special counsel to lead the probe.

2. FAA System Failure Grounds Thousands of Flights

In the largest single incident of grounded flights in one day since 9/11, a failure of the Federal Aviation Administration’s pilot alert system led to the agency halting all domestic departures on Wednesday. Over 2,900 flights were cancelled, while almost 8,000 more flights were delayed. The reason behind the system outage is still being investigated.

Numerous pilots have contended that the grounding of all domestic flights was an “overreaction” by the Biden administration, as multiple backup systems are available to ensure the safety of flights. “They didn’t have to ground all the flights. We would have been fine,” one pilot told Fox News.

3. Administration Official Considers Banning Gas Stoves

On Monday, U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commissioner Richard Trumka Jr. told Bloomberg News that gas stoves are “a hidden hazard. Any option is on the table. Products that can’t be made safe can be banned.” With around 40% of all homes in the U.S. using gas stoves and with the appliances considered to be the industry standard for restaurant food preparation nationwide, the backlash to the news was swift.

“This is a recipe for disaster,” tweeted Senator Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.). “The federal government has no business telling American families how to cook their dinner. I can tell you the last thing that would ever leave my house is the gas stove that we cook on.” His comment encapsulated the outrage, and even left-wing late-night host Stephen Colbert couldn’t help but quip, “You can have my gas range when you pry it from my hot, sizzling hams.”

On Wednesday, the Biden administration walked back the possibility of a proposed ban. “To be clear, I am not looking to ban gas stoves and the CPSC has no proceeding to do so,” said CPSC Chairman Alex Hoehn-Saric. A White House spokesman also stated, “The president does not support banning gas stoves.”

4. Biden Team Shields President from Immigrants while Visiting Overrun Southern Border

On Sunday, President Biden made a “tightly controlled” three-hour visit to the southern border in El Paso, Texas. He visited a deserted section of the border wall with Border Patrol agents, a processing center, and had brief meetings with CBP officials and leaders of local NGOs.

Curiously, the processing center that Biden toured was inexplicably deserted at the time of his visit. In response to a CNN inquiry as to why the president visited this specific center and did not interact with any migrants, an administration official said, “There just weren’t any at the center when he arrived. Completely coincidental. They haven’t had any today.”

Shortly after Air Force One touched down in El Paso, Texas Governor Greg Abbott (R) greeted the president and handed him a letter, which noted that Biden’s “visit avoids the sites where mass illegal immigration occurs,” adding that the city “has been sanitized of the migrant camps which had overrun downtown El Paso because your Administration wants to shield you from the chaos that Texans experience on a daily basis.” The Daily Signal reported that “[c]ity officials dismantled homeless migrant encampments in El Paso ahead of Biden’s visit.”

5. Biden White House Fails to Comment on Whether Babies Born Alive Should Be Saved

It appears that the White House has no official comment on the passage of the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act, which was passed in the House on Wednesday. The bill simply requires medical personnel to administer lifesaving care to an infant that is born after a failed abortion attempt, just as they would any other infant in any other life-threatening circumstance.

Biden’s second in command, Vice President Kamala Harris, was unimpressed by the bill’s basic attempt to establish a baseline for humane treatment of infants. “House Republicans passed an extreme bill today that will further jeopardize the right to reproductive health care in our country,” she tweeted, despite the fact that the bill does not address abortion law. “This is yet another attempt by Republican legislators to control women’s bodies.”

AUTHOR

Dan Hart

Dan Hart is senior editor at The Washington Stand.

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

Oops! Democratic ‘Oversights’ Would Legalize Polygamy, Infanticide

One of the most famous illustrations in all of literature comes from “The Adventure of Silver Blaze,” when Sherlock Holmes notes “the curious incident of the dog in the night-time”: the dog that did not bark. The canine’s silence revealed the watchdog’s familiarity and comfort with the criminal. “Obviously the midnight visitor was someone whom the dog knew well,” remarks Holmes.

Voters can glean the inner disposition of our lawmakers, learning which issues they consider vital and which never enter their minds, through a similar device: the “errors,” omissions, and oversights politicians make when drafting legislation. Allegedly inadvertent “oversights” and “drafting errors” by Democratic lawmakers over the last year alone would have decriminalized infanticide, legalized polygamy, and suppressed sacred religious liberty rights enshrined in the First Amendment.

Lest I be accused of overstatement, let’s look at the record:

1. Infanticide

En route to becoming an “abortion sanctuary,” California lawmakers passed Assembly Bill 2223introduced by Assemblywoman Buffy Wicks. The original draft forbade law enforcement from prosecuting or investigating any mother for the death of her child through “miscarriage, stillbirth, or abortion, or perinatal death.” Pro-life legal scholars noted that California state law extends the term “perinatal death” up to 30 or “60 days following delivery,” essentially decriminalizing infanticide. Wicks retorted that her law could never be construed to support child murder, because “one of the tools judges would use in that case is legislative intent.” (Then again, if judges valued original intent, Roe v. Wade would never have been written.) Wicks called pro-life concerns “absurd and disingenuous” … but then the Assembly’s overwhelmingly Democratic Judiciary Committee released its official analysis, which put the matter as gently as possible:

[T]he “perinatal death” language could lead to an unintended and undesirable conclusion. As currently in print, it may not be sufficiently clear that “perinatal death” is intended to be the consequence of a pregnancy complication. Thus, the bill could be interpreted to immunize a pregnant person from all criminal penalties for all pregnancy outcomes, including the death of a newborn for any reason during the “perinatal” period after birth, including a cause of death which is not attributable to pregnancy complications, which clearly is not the author’s intent.

That is, pro-life critics were right all along: The language of her bill would legalize the murder of newborns. Wicks amended the “perinatal death due to a pregnancy-related cause.” Despite this change, the law “still prevents law enforcement from investigating ‘perinatal death,’ and the amendments Ms. Wicks” added proved “woefully inadequate,” Jonathan Keller, president of California Family Council, told me at the time.

Nonetheless, Governor Gavin Newsom (D), an undeclared 2024 presidential hopeful, signed the amended bill into law alongside a pack of 12 other abortion-promoting bills. These bills underscore the need for the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act, which passed the House of Representatives on January 11: national lawmakers must correct the “oversights” of far-left state legislators. Unfortunately, they must also correct their own.

2. Legalizing Polygamy Nationwide

After then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) hustled the drastically misnamed Respect for Marriage Act (RFMA) through the House of Representatives in one day, U.S. senators noted something curious: The original draft of the bill did not limit marriage to two people. While one provision mentioned “2 individuals,” another section of the bill would have amended federal law to say simply “an individual shall be considered married if that individual’s marriage is valid in the State where the marriage was entered into,” with no numerical limit.

The bill’s chief Republican sponsor, Senator Susan Collins (R-Maine), chalked the oversight up to a “drafting error,” though she admitted “the language needs to be clarified” that the bill does not permit polygamy/polyandry. The authors said, in effect, they intended to redefine the most fundamental institution in human society, just not quite that far. Again, legal scholars say the new legislative patch sewn into the old garment of the RFMA failed to fix the problem. The “clarified” final draft of “the bill leaves open the possibility that one person can be in multiple two-person marriages at the same time, which would trigger federal recognition if a state legally were to recognize such consensual, bigamous unions as separate family units,” noted the Heritage Foundation’s Roger Severino. Nonetheless, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (R-N.Y.) exclaimed “Praise God!” as President Joe Biden signed the bill into law last December 13. That would not be the bill’s only oversight.

3. Erasing Religious Liberty

The Respect for Marriage Act makes a second appearance, as the bill’s authors also ignored all concerns about religious liberty. Despite years of litigation aimed at bringing Bible-believing Christians to heel, and warnings that the bill will usher in “a new era of oppression” of Christians like Masterpiece Cakeshop owner Jack Phillips, Senate Democrats only entertained the notion of a religious protection amendment as a fig leaf for wavering Republicans. They insisted they did not mean to wage culture war against believers; they just crushed your religious freedom all accidental-like. Once again, the “cure” proved inadequate, as the Senate rejected Mike Lee’s (R-Utah) amendment in favor of an irrelevant and legally ambiguous substitute.

Like Holmes, we can deduce from these silences that when social liberals ponder transforming life, marriage, and society, they give not one thought to the lives of newborn children, the nuclear family, or a Higher Power (Who, in His sovereignty, might restrain and hold them accountable for their actions). Their ideological fever to revolutionize everything from marriage to human nature blinds them to any negative consequences — or convinces them these results will be tolerable, even desirable.

That analysis would explain how Democrats omitted the word “God” from their 2012 platform and then booed when His Name was restored. It might make clear why candidate Joe Biden referred to the benevolent Creator as “you know, The Thing,” apparently likening Jehovah to a 1950s monster movie — much as the man most responsible for inflicting Biden on the nation, Barack Obama, regularly elided the Almighty from his quotations of our founding documents (which Obama demeaned as “the fundamental flaw of this country that continues to this day”).

A platform that doubles as a photographic negative of God’s Word might offer some insight into why the Left “did not like to retain God in their knowledge” (Romans 1:28).

Such hostility to the God of the Bible has led liberals into the legislative wilderness for two more years. One of the most overlooked upgrades the Republican congressional majority will have over previous management has gone unappreciated: Even the quality of legislative errors will improve.

The Democrats’ radical “oversights” should also warn every thoughtful statesman against hastily voting for any bill promoted by social liberals, lest they risk placing their own stamp of approval on polygamy, atheism, infanticide, or other evils they cannot see while blinded by left-wing bias.

Finally, the fact that many of these oversights come as news, even to well-informed conservatives, serves as an eloquent indictment of the nation’s Christians. It is not merely Sherlock’s dog that held its peace. The prophet Isaiah condemned the inert watchmen of his day as “blind,” “ignorant,” “greedy,” and “dumb dogs [who] cannot bark; Sleeping, lying down, loving to slumber.” They “have no understanding” and look only unto their “own gain” (Isaiah 56:9-12; compare with John 10:11-12).

Like the self-serving shepherds of Isaiah’s day, too many people who know better did not expose the implications of these bills for the sake of political favoritism, for fear of offending the Facebook algorithm (and its sweet, remunerative traffic), or sheer timidity. Some modern evangelicals also love dreams — fantasizing of being hailed as the “reasonable” and “winsome” Christian, of their leftist overlords granting their children a safe haven from endless culture wars, even of being invited to “a seat at the table” to carve out their rights as an ideological minority. They may have even been promised these things — but then, empty promises were the one thing the devil never lacked.

The other side’s silences show their fealty to their masterplan. Let our speech prove our fidelity to our Master’s plan. Now is no time to remain silent.

AUTHOR

Ben Johnson

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

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

Migrant Encounters At The Southern Border Hit New All-Time Record

U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) migrant encounters at the southern border surpassed 250,000 for the month of December, the highest ever recorded, a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) source, who requested anonymity as they weren’t authorized to speak publicly, told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

The new total surpasses May 2022’s more than 241,000 migrant encounters, which was the highest DHS ever recorded before December 2022. The total encounters include Border Patrol and Office of Field Operations encounters of migrants both at and between U.S. ports of entry.

Fox News first reported the new record.

In December, Republican states and the Biden administration fought over whether or not to scrap Title 42, the Trump-era public health order used to quickly expel illegal migrants to mitigate the spread of COVID-19. Illegal immigration surged during that time period in places like El Paso, Texas, where hundreds of migrants crossed into the area in a matter of days in anticipation of Title 42 expiring on Dec. 21 due to a previous court ruling that the Supreme Court quickly paused.

The influx in El Paso drew the attention of President Joe Biden, who visited the area Jan. 8 in his first border visit.

Biden’s tenure in office has been marked by years of record migrant encounters. In fiscal year 2022, CBP encountered another record of more than 2.3 million at the southern border.

Biden announced Jan. 5 new efforts to expel illegal migrants from Cuba, Haiti and Nicaragua to Mexico. The plan also means that migrants from those countries who don’t cross illegally will have the opportunity to apply for asylum at U.S. ports of entry if they have a U.S. sponsor.

CBP didn’t respond to a request for comment.

AUTHOR

JENNIE TAER

Investigative reporter.

RELATED VIDEO: CA Rep: Legal Immigrants Are FURIOUS With Illegal Migrants Cutting The Line

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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.

VIDEO: Guess Who’s Been Censoring Nearly Everything You Read?

Every Facet of Government Is in the Censorship Business.


“It’s much more serious than what I thought at the beginning.” — Matt Taibbi

STORY AT-A-GLANCE

  • Between the documentation obtained through a recent lawsuit against the White House and the Twitter files released by Elon Musk, it’s become quite clear that every facet of the U.S. government, including its intelligence agencies, are involved in illegal and unconstitutional censorship
  • We now have proof that the FBI has been acting as the key instigator and implementer of the government’s illegal censorship of Americans. The FBI has also actively interfered in multiple elections — all while inventing the narrative that foreign nations were interfering
  • Twitter has worked hand in hand with the U.S. Department of Defense to aid U.S. intelligence agencies in their efforts to influence foreign governments using fake news, computerized deepfake videos and bots
  • The Twitter files also reveal members of Congress have a direct line to Twitter and have had accounts suspended on their behalf and content removed at their whim
  • Discovery documents from a lawsuit against the White House filed by the attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana show at least 67 federal employees across more than a dozen agencies are also engaged in illegal censorship activities. This includes aides to President Biden, who pressured social media companies to change their policies to fit White House demands for censorship

Between the documentation obtained through a recent lawsuit against the White House and the Twitter files released by Elon Musk, it’s become quite clear that every facet of the U.S. government, including its intelligence agencies, are involved in illegal and unconstitutional censorship.

In the video above, Fox News host Tucker Carlson interviews independent journalist Matt Taibbi, who has spent weeks sifting through the released Twitter files and reported on the contents.

FBI Has Gone Off the Rails

Importantly, we now have proof that the FBI has been acting as the key instigator and implementer of the government’s illegal censorship of Americans’ political and medical views. The agency has also, on a regular basis and for unknown purposes, asked Twitter to reveal the location of specific Twitter users, such as actor Billy Baldwin.

What’s more, internal Department of Homeland Security (DHS) memos, emails and documents show the DHS has worked on expanding its influence over tech platforms for years, so, government censorship is not something that came about in response to the COVID crisis. Nor is the censorship limited to COVID or public health information in general.

Evidence shows the FBI has actively interfered in multiple elections — all while inventing the narrative that foreign nations were doing the interfering.1 As noted by Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., these kinds of activities are “the biggest threat to our constitutional democracy today.”2

As just one example, we now know the FBI plotted to quench the Hunter Biden laptop story well before the first report about it was published. In collaboration with Twitter, Facebook and the Aspen Institute, the FBI held a tabletop exercise to practice the shaping of the media’s coverage of a potential “hack and dump” operation involving Hunter Biden material.3,4 As reported by the New York Post:5

“[The] drill was put into practical use weeks later, when The Post broke the news about Hunter Biden’s infamous laptop — which was either ignored or downplayed by most mainstream news outlets and suppressed by both Twitter and Facebook.”

There’s also evidence showing the FBI has been shielding Hunter Biden and working with social media to censor bad press about him as far back as 2018.6 That job was probably made easier by the fact that reportedly former FBI agents work at both Twitter and Facebook.

For example, Jim Baker spent three decades with the FBI before becoming Twitter’s head lawyer,7 and Facebook employs no less than 115 “former” employees of the FBI, CIA, NSA and other intelligence agencies, most of whom now work in Facebook’s content moderation department.8

Twitter Paid to Censor Americans and Promote US Propaganda

Disturbingly, we now also have evidence showing that while Twitter insisted it was cracking down on covert government propaganda accounts, they only tracked down and banned foreign government-affiliated propaganda while working hand in hand with the U.S. Department of Defense to aid U.S. intelligence agencies in their efforts to influence foreign governments using fake news, computerized deepfake videos and bots.9 As reported by The Intercept:10

“Behind the scenes, Twitter gave approval and special protection to the U.S. military’s online psychological ops. Despite knowledge that Pentagon propaganda accounts used overt identities, Twitter did not suspend many for around two years or more. Some remain active …

In 2017 a U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) official sent Twitter a list of 52 Arab language accounts ‘we use to amplify certain messages.’ The official asked for priority service for six accounts, verification for one and ‘whitelist’ abilities for the others.”

Whitelisted accounts have a “validated” status similar to that of the blue check mark, which ensures they are promoted in searches. These accounts also don’t get shadow-banned or limited by other means. Adding insult to injury, the FBI has been using taxpayer dollars to pay Twitter for their censorship and propaganda services — more than $3.4 million between October 2019 and February 2021 alone.11

Congressional Members Involved in Censoring Americans

The FBI has not acted alone, however. Far from it. The Twitter files reveal members of Congress have a direct line to Twitter and have had accounts suspended on their behalf and content removed at their whim. As reported by MSN:12

“… Taibbi … reported that Twitter ‘received an astonishing variety of requests from officials asking for individuals they didn’t like to be banned.’ An example he shared was one sent in November 2020 by [Rep. Adam] Schiff’s office, who contacted Twitter hoping the tech giant would take action regarding ‘alleged harassment from QAnon conspiracists’ against Schiff’s staff, including aide Sean Misko.

‘Remove any and all content about Mr. Misko and other Committee staff from its service — to include quotes, retweets, and reactions to that content,’ the request to Twitter read. ‘Suspend the many accounts, including @GregRubini and @paulsperry, which have repeatedly promoted false QAnon conspiracies.'”

Other government leaders have been less clandestine in their censoring operations. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, for example, wrote an open letter to Amazon demanding they ban my book, “The Truth About COVID-19.”

Similarly, two state attorneys general, Letitia James and William Tong, publicly threatened social media companies with legal ramifications if they refused to censor the “Misinformation Dozen.” President Joe Biden also publicly called on social media platforms to ban my accounts. But it gets worse.

Government Has Been Weaponized Against the People

Discovery documents from a lawsuit against the White House13 filed by the attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana (Eric Schmitt and Jeff Landry) show at least 6714,15 federal employees across more than a dozen agencies are engaged in these kinds of illegal censorship activities. This includes officials from:

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency’s (CISA) Election Security and Resilience team Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Office of Intelligence and Analysis
The FBI’s foreign influence taskforce The Justice Department’s (DOJ) national security division
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence White House staff (including White House lawyer Dana Remus, deputy assistant to the president Rob Flaherty and former White House senior COVID-19 adviser Andy Slavitt)
Health and Human Services (HHS) Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) The Office of the Surgeon General
The Census Bureau The Food and Drug Administration (FDA)
The State Department The U.S. Treasury Department
The U.S. Election Assistance Commission

Consultants from the strategic communications and marketing firm Reingold16 were also hired to manage the government’s collusion with social media in this intentional effort to violate our Constitutional right to free speech.

A Look Inside the White House Censorship Machine

In a January 8, 2023, op-ed for The Wall Street Journal, Jenin Younes and Aaron Kheriaty reviewed a series of emails between White House digital media director Rob Flaherty and a Facebook executive, illustrating how the White House pressured the company to censor and remove vaccine content even though Facebook itself characterized the material as “often-true content:”17

“Newly released documents show that the White House has played a major role in censoring Americans on social media. Email exchanges between Rob Flaherty … and social-media executives prove the companies put COVID censorship policies in place in response to relentless, coercive pressure from the White House — not voluntarily.”

Flaherty also demanded Facebook limit the spread of viral content on WhatsApp, a private messaging app with broad reach among “immigrant communities and communities of color.” In the end, Facebook acquiesced to all of Flaherty’s demands to prevent the spread of vaccine hesitancy and control political speech. As noted by Younes and Kheriaty:18

“President Biden, press secretary Jen Psaki and Surgeon General Vivek Murthy … publicly vowed to hold the platforms accountable if they didn’t heighten censorship. On July 16, 2021, a reporter asked Mr. Biden [about] his ‘message to platforms like Facebook.’

He replied, ‘They’re killing people.’ Mr. Biden later claimed he meant users, not platforms, were killing people. But the record shows Facebook itself was the target of the White House’s pressure campaign.”

White House Pressured Google and YouTube to Do Its Bidding

Flaherty also had Google in his crosshairs, and accused YouTube of “‘funneling’ people into vaccine hesitancy,” adding that this concern was “shared at the highest (and I mean the highest) levels of the White House.”

“These emails establish a clear pattern,” Younes and Kheriaty write. “Mr. Flaherty, representing the White House, expresses anger at the companies’ failure to censor COVID-related content to his satisfaction. The companies change their policies to address his demands. As a result, thousands of Americans were silenced for questioning government approved COVID narratives.

Two of the Missouri plaintiffs, Jay Bhattacharya and Martin Kulldorff, are epidemiologists whom multiple social-media platforms censored at the government’s behest for expressing views that were scientifically well-founded but diverged from the government line — for instance, that children and adults with natural immunity from prior infection don’t need COVID vaccines …

The First Amendment bars government from engaging in viewpoint-based censorship. The state-action doctrine bars government from circumventing constitutional strictures by suborning private companies to accomplish forbidden ends indirectly.

Defenders of the government have fallen back on the claim that cooperation by the tech companies was voluntary, from which they conclude that the First Amendment isn’t implicated. The reasoning is dubious, but even if it were valid, the premise has now been proved false.

The Flaherty emails demonstrate that the federal government unlawfully coerced the companies in an effort to ensure that Americans would be exposed only to state-approved information about COVID-19. As a result of that unconstitutional state action, Americans were given the false impression of a scientific ‘consensus’ on critically important issues around COVID-19.”

Weaponization of Government Select Committee Impaneled

Taken together, the revelations from the Twitter files and this lawsuit clearly demonstrate that most, if not all, aspects of the U.S. government have been secretly weaponized to undermine and circumvent the Constitutional rights of the people.

As noted by Taibbi in his Fox News interview:

“This is not a partisan story. It’s a story about the architecture of the intelligence community and law enforcement getting its hands on speech, and on the ability of people to communicate with one another through platforms like Twitter and Facebook. And they’re doing this in a very profound way — it’s much more serious than what I thought at the beginning …”

While the danger we’re in as a nation is far more dire than anyone suspected, there is some good news. A new select committee, chaired by Rep. Jim Jordan, has been launched to investigate the weaponization of government, the politicization of the FBI and the DOJ’s investigation into and harassment of parents who spoke out against COVID mandates, critical race theory and the sexualization of their children at school board meetings. As reported by The Post Millennial:19

“This investigative panel will demand emails and correspondence between the Biden administration and big tech companies, and follows the massive revelations that came to light through the recent release of the Twitter files. Newly minted House Speaker Kevin McCarthy … was asked to form the committee as part of the negotiations that brought him to power …

The probe into communications between tech giants and President Biden’s aides will look for government pressure that could have resulted in censorship or harassment of conservatives — or squelching of debate on polarizing policies, including the CDC on COVID …”

While it’s likely that government personnel and agencies will try to ignore the committee’s requests for information, the committee does have subpoena power, and hopefully will not be too timid to use it.

Unfortunately, since the GOP does not control the Senate, it’s unlikely they’ll be able to pass any new laws based on the committee’s findings. That said, legislation to penalize government censorship has already been introduced, and you can help push it forward by asking your representatives to support it.

Support Legislation to Penalize Government Censorship

The Protecting Speech from Government Interference Act20 (HR.8752), introduced by three Republican House Representatives on the House Oversight and Reform, Judiciary, and Commerce committees, including Jordan, is specifically aimed at preventing federal employees from using their positions to influence censorship decisions by tech platforms.

The bill would create restrictions to prevent federal employees from asking or encouraging private entities to censor private speech or otherwise discourage free speech, and impose penalties, including civil fines and disciplinary actions for government employees who facilitate social media censorship.

While the U.S. Constitution clearly forbids government censoring and restricting free speech, HR. 8752 could be a helpful enforcement tool — and we clearly need enforcement, seeing how more than a dozen agencies are flouting the Constitution and have done so for years. People might tend to think twice, though, when they know there’s a personal price to pay.

Sources and References

New Church Committee Has A Chance To Show How Bad The Federal Gov’t Has Gone Off The Rails

In January 1975, Senator Frank Church, a Democrat from Idaho, gaveled in a new bipartisan committee — the United States Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence. Fifteen months later, the select committee eventually concluded that the FBI and others for years had acted illegally and with insufficient oversight from their superiors or from elected officials.

If that sounds familiar, it should.

Earlier this week, the House of Representatives established within the House Committee on the Judiciary the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government. Leaving aside the messaging problem with the name of the subcommittee (no one understands what “weaponization” might mean in this context), the scope and composition of the subcommittee will pose a challenge.

That said, the creation of the select subcommittee is welcome. The amount of criminal and questionable behavior among the FBI and the Department of Justice is so overwhelming and obvious that Congress must take action.

We know that some in the FBI and the DOJ tried to select the president in 2016 and 2020 and helped fabricate evidence (the Steele Dossier) to do so. We know that some in law enforcement and the intelligence community have committed perjury before Congress and the FISA courts. We know that former senior members of the intelligence community intentionally obstructed efforts to thoroughly examine the contents and provenance of Hunter Biden’s laptop before the 2020 election.

The FBI has used the CIA and NSA to surveil American citizens. The intelligence community has surveilled Congressional offices. The Department of Homeland Security surveilled reporters and others. The FBI surveilled presidential campaign staff in 2016.

Multiple elements of the federal government have used social media companies to silence their opposition. FBI agents have violated the bureau’s own rules almost 750 times in recent years while conducting investigations involving individuals engaged in politics, government, the news media, and religious groups.  Federal law enforcement has ignored crimes propagated by one side of the political spectrum (think firebombing pregnancy centers or the 2020 riots).

We are still awaiting a complete inventory of the illegalities that no doubt will surround the human dumpster fire that is Hunter Biden and his laptop.

Right now, we are in the middle of a demonstration of politicized law enforcement. The FBI essentially kicked the door in at Mar-a-Lago searching for classified documents, while Team Biden has been allowed to conduct their own search on their own timetable for illegally-held documents.

Salting the wound, the media and federal law enforcement — despite knowing about the illegalities almost a week before election day — kept the potential criminality of Mr. Biden or his cronies secret until after the 2022 elections.

That’s quite a list, and it includes just the things we know.

Unfortunately, the scope of the select subcommittee is unclear, and its leadership (and membership) may not have the necessary skills (or desire) to complete the task at hand.

The Republicans will probably focus on mostly trivial issues and vengeance. They should focus on educating voters about the very real risks posed by the involvement of law enforcement and intelligence agencies in the political arena. They should expand the topics and agencies examined.

When people with guns and badges decide who is going to lead the country, it is inevitable that the country will eventually have nothing but barracks emperors. If we don’t put the leash back on the agencies now, we may never get another chance.

This is not a moment for members whose primary concern is their social media accounts.

This moment requires a sober, deliberate, non-partisan and expansive assessment of the depth of our crisis and the changes that need to be made.

Statesmanship, clarity of purpose and an approach free of rancor and score-settling is essential.

We have a rare, and perhaps singular, opportunity for a systemic, transparent, expansive and material examination of a fundamental threat to the republic. It would be tragic to waste it scoring partisan and trivial points and not addressing the actual existential threat to the republic.

The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.

AUTHOR

MICHAEL MCKENNA

Michael McKenna is the president of MWR Strategies. He was most recently a deputy assistant to the president and deputy director of the Office of Legislative Affairs at the White House.

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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.

House Republicans Officially Launch Investigations Into Biden Documents

The FBI and DoJ knew about these docs months ago. Well before the election. That demands investigation as well.

The Mar-a-Lago illegal raid was a pre-emptive strike against what they knew was coming.

ONE COMMENTATOR — The play book:

  • Leftist Democrats claim the Republicans are doing exactly what they are themselves are guilty of, always.
  • Then the MSM doubles down and as if reading from a memo repeat the same phrases over and over and over.
  • Whenever anyone denies their accusations they are labeled a racist or conspiracy theorist or white supremacy.
    When the truth is ultimately revealed they ignore it completely.
  • When anyone gains too much traction against them they send in the FBI.
    Then the AG prosecutes.
  • All accusations of it being a political attack are dismissed as racist, conspiracy theory or white supremacy.
    They portend to defend the constitution while defiling it continuously.
  • The proof of this is that they make all whom have been harmed by their constitutional disregard file suit for their constitutional rights, and most of the time they win.

House Republicans Officially Launch Investigations Into Biden Documents

By Jack Phillips, The Epoch Times, January 13, 2023:

House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) requested a range of documents and other materials from the White House after it was revealed that classified documents were found at President Joe Biden’s office and Delaware home, triggering a special counsel investigation.

In a new letter issued to White House counsel Stuart Delery on Friday, Comer noted that his committee recently initiated an investigation into Biden’s possession of classified materials and said that more documents are needed by Jan. 27. That includes “all classified documents” that were recently obtained by Biden’s lawyers “at any location,” according to the letter.

Comer’s letter also sought a complete list of Biden’s aides and lawyers who are tasked to look through Biden’s documents, a list of locations where the documents were found, and communications and documents that were sent between the Department of Justice and White House or the National Archives. The latest House Oversight letter was triggered after a second batch of documents were found by Biden’s aides and lawyers inside rooms of his Delaware residence; classified materials were also found at his Washington office.

“We have [documents] revealing this address appeared on Hunter’s driver’s license as recently as 2018,” House Oversight Republicans wrote, referring to Biden’s son Hunter Biden, “the same time he was cutting deals with foreign adversaries.”

The nexus between the tranche of documents and Hunter Biden is notable, as the GOP has long sought to investigate connections between the president and his son’s controversial business ventures in China and Ukraine. Before Republicans took control of the House, Comer and other Republicans announced they want to make investigating the Bidens’ business dealings a priority.

AUTHOR

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Blue States Attempted To Crackdown On Guns. Firearm Sales Skyrocketed Instead

Blue states have recently introduced restrictive gun laws that aim to remove firearms from the streets, but numerous states are now seeing massive increases in gun sales as Americans begin to “vote with their wallets,” according to data from the Firearm Industry Trade Association (NSSF).

Gun sales in Oregon, Washington and Illinois jumped either before or after legislators introduced or passed restrictive gun measures, according to National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) data adjusted by the NSSF. The number of gun sales per month in each state was based on the number of firearm background checks performed by NICS.

‘Threats, and actual legislation to limit the right of law-abiding citizens to own the firearm of their choosing, does have an effect on firearm sales,” NSSF Public Affairs Managing Director Mark Oliva told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

In November, Oregon residents narrowly passed Ballot Measure 114, a gun law that requires background checks, firearm training, fingerprint collection and a permit to purchase a gun. Following the law’s passing, background checks jumped from 29,472 in October to 86,075 in November, according to NSSF data obtained by the DCNF.

“Oregon’s figures easily demonstrate that Oregonians acted while they had the opportunity to buy the guns of their choice before the state moved to infringe on their Constitutional rights,” Oliva told the DCNF.

In March 2022, Democratic Washington Gov. Jay Inslee signed three gun laws that restrict gun usage, including where guns can be carried, how to handle firearms without serial numbers and what kinds of magazines can be made and sold, according to The Spokesman-Review. After signing the laws, background checks jumped from 39,247 in February to 59,419 in March, according to the NSSF data.

In December 2022, Inslee announced additional gun control legislation that would ban “assault-style” weapons, hold manufacturers and retailers accountable for gun sales and implement a permit-to-purchase requirement for all gun buyers, according to a press conference.

“We intend in this session of the legislature to give Washingtonians assertive, effective and protective laws to protect them and their children against this epidemic of gun violence,” Inslee said.

Background checks in Illinois were at 33,326 in November, jumping to 42,305 in December, according to NSSF data.

“Every time new restrictions on firearms ownership are enacted we always see a spike in gun sales. The gun prohibition lobby is the best gun salesman out there. When people’s Second Amendment rights are attacked they respond by exercising them,” Second Amendment Foundation Founder Alan Gottlieb told the DCNF.

In January, Illinois passed a ban on “assault weapons” that went into effect immediately. The law banned more than 100 guns that were deemed “weapons of war” and limited magazine capacity to 10 rounds for long guns and 15 rounds for handguns, according to the legislation. However, the law states that gun owners can keep any firearm purchased before the ban took effect.

Leading up to the law’s passing, background checks climbed from 33,318 to 51,301 over a three-month period, according to NSSF data. “There’s been quite a rush of people trying to get in under the wire,” Maxon Shooter’s Supplies Owner Dan Eldridge told the Illinois Newsroom.

“Obviously, the law-abiding gun owners are concerned. And they’re voting with their wallets,” he continued.

AUTHOR

BRONSON WINSLOW

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.

Court of Appeals Agrees to Expedite Kari Lake’s 2022 Election Case

“Those who vote decide nothing. Those who count the vote decide everything.” ― Joseph Stalin


If I had to bet on a fighter to win, it’s Lake. Kari Lake is a hero.

One of these cases is going to break the dam wide open.

Court of Appeals Agrees to Expedite Kari Lake’s 2022 Election Case

By: Epoch Times, January 13, 2023:

The Arizona Court of Appeals agreed to expedite consideration of Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake’s lawsuit alleging that the 2022 election was flawed.

In a brief order, issued on Jan. 9 and made public the next day, the court ordered a reset of “the matter for conference on February 1, 2023,” and agreed with Lake’s arguments that her challenge should be handled as a “special action petition.” The court date was reportedly scheduled for March.

Lawyers for Democrat Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs, the state’s former secretary of state, has until Jan. 17 to respond and argue why Lake’s challenge should be rejected, according to the order. Lake had petitioned both the state’s Appeals Court and Supreme Court after a Maricopa County judge rejected her case after a two-day trial in December.

But earlier this month, the Arizona Supreme Court denied Lake’s petition to transfer her election lawsuit to the high court and said it will be heard before the Appeals Court first.

In December, Lake filed a lawsuit against Hobbs in her capacity as secretary of state, Maricopa County supervisors, Maricopa Recorder Stephen Richer, and other officials, asserting that the county’s handling of the election was seriously flawed and disenfranchised Election Day voters. Lake, a former broadcast journalist, argued that such disenfranchisement and election voting issues were enough to swing the election in her favor. She lost by 17,000 votes.

A Maricopa County judge, Peter Thompson, threw out Lake’s lawsuit on Dec. 24 and said she did not produce enough evidence, but he ruled that Lake should not be sanctioned and fined hundreds of thousands of dollars. Days before that, Thompson tossed out 8 of Lake’s 10 election claims.

A portion of Lake’s lawsuit included claims that she would have won or had a better chance of winning if dozens of Maricopa County ballot printers worked properly on Election Day. A number of those printers created ballots that couldn’t be read by tabulators, Maricopa County Supervisor Bill Gates and Richer confirmed during a Nov. 8 news conference, telling voters to place those ballots in drop-boxes or find another location to vote.

Supervisors in Maricopa recently sought to produce a report to determine why those ballot printers didn’t work in November. They hired former Arizona Supreme Court Chief Justice Ruth McGregor to carry out an investigation, the county confirmed last week.

Lake’s lawyers previously argued that those Maricopa officials allegedly “admitted, after first denying, that illegally misconfigured ballots were injected into the election” and triggered the “tabulators to reject tens of thousands of ballots.” Lawyers stated Republican voters on Election Day were disproportionally impacted.”

During the two-day trial, Lake called on independent pollster Richard Baris, who testified that he believes the Election Day technical problems disenfranchised enough voters that it would have changed the outcome of the race. Maricopa Election Day voters, he asserted, mostly trended Republican and that between 25,000 to 40,000 people who would normally have voted actually didn’t cast ballots as a result of the tabulator and printer errors.

Baris told the court that his estimate was primarily influenced by the number of people who began answering his exit polls but didn’t finish the process during the midterm contest.

Keep reading……

AUTHOR

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Biden promotes an ‘easier’ plan for migrants trying to enter America

A wide-open Southern border to allow anyone to enter America, unvetted, means little to Joe Biden. His concern is not with rule of law, the American economy, crime, or national security threats. It is only with bringing as many migrants into the country as possible, legally or illegally. So now he’s planning on an active outreach program to making entering the country even easier for the migrants than it already is.

Biden has abandoned Americans in pursuit of the migrant vote.

Biden professes not to see the difference between responsible immigration policies and his current reckless acts. First he creates a crisis, and then he invents a plan to make it easier on migrants, as well as to make it look as though he is solving the problem of illegal entries. Like many Leftists, he wrongly insists that those who oppose his disastrous immigration policies are xenophobic and oppose immigration as a whole.

Joe Biden Details ‘Easier’ Plan for Migrants Trying to Enter U.S.

by Charlie Spiering, Breitbart, January 10, 2023:

President Joe Biden promoted his plan Tuesday to make it easier for migrants to come to the United States after meeting with the leaders of Mexico and Canada.

“This has been the greatest migration in human history around the world as well as in this hemisphere,” Biden said, speaking about the ongoing migration crisis after meeting with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador during a summit in Mexico City.

But the president did not appear troubled by the volume of border crossings and migrants flooding into local communities in the United States, placing a burden on U.S. citizens and legal residents.

He spoke about his administration’s plan for new ways to allow migrants claiming asylum to sign up, get background checks, get a sponsor, and get them examined, allowing them to go directly to a port of entry to make their case.

“We’re trying to make it easier for people to get here, opening up the capacity to get here,” Biden said.

He said that the majority of migrants were fleeing the countries of Venezuela, Cuba, Haiti, and Nicaragua and that his administration would reach out to them directly to get them to sign up for admission to the United States.

He suggested his new plan would cut down the number of immigrants crossing at the Southern border using cartels and coyotes and getting victimized to make the “god-awful” trip to the United States.

“Look, right now the cartels make a lot of money, which they use for drug trafficking as well,” he said.

He complained that Republicans and even some Democrats were reluctant to work with him on immigration reform, despite a long tradition of immigration to the United States…..

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Coming Soon: Judgment Day for Pfizer, Share This Film

‘Anecdotals’ Documentary:

STORY AT-A-GLANCE

  • The film “Anecdotals” provides a glimpse into the lives of people who have suffered significant adverse reactions from COVID-19 shots
  • Those who spoke out about their shot-related injuries have been shamed, ridiculed and labeled unethical
  • Those injured by the shots have been largely abandoned by the mainstream medical community; their medical issues have been politicized, while society provides no empathy
  • With no programs in place to help those injured by COVID-19 shots, and many doctors afraid to even acknowledge the shot’s connection to patients’ symptoms, many of those harmed have nowhere to turn for help
  • The film calls for an open dialogue and a movement from humanity to acknowledge the risks of COVID-19 shots, as well as those who are suffering due to them

People who have been harmed by COVID-19 shots have suffered a range of medical issues — everything from death and permanent disability to pericarditis, nerve damage and overwhelming fatigue. While their symptoms vary, they share several common themes:

  • Abandonment — Those injured by COVID-19 jabs have been largely abandoned by the mainstream medical community and government.
  • Shame — Those who spoke out about their injuries have been shamed, ridiculed and labeled unethical; their medical issues have been politicized, while society provides no empathy.
  • Hopelessness — With no programs in place to help those injured by COVID-19 shots, and many doctors afraid to even acknowledge the shot’s connection to patients’ symptoms, many of those harmed feel lost and don’t know where to turn for help.

Bringing attention to the issue — and to the people whose lives have changed drastically since receiving a COVID-19 shot — is the first step to recovery. The film “Anecdotals” does just that, providing a glimpse into the lives of people who have suffered significant adverse reactions from COVID-19 shots.1

Many of them have been told their stories don’t matter. After all, they’re just anecdotes. But as you’ll see in the film, their journeys need to be heard, not only so they can access much-needed medical care but also so society becomes aware of the real risks of COVID-19 shots that have been covered up and censored.

Secrets From the Trials

One case involves Maddie de Garay, who was a healthy 12-year-old when she signed up for Pfizer’s COVID-19 trial for 12- to 15-year-olds. She suffered a severe systemic adverse reaction to her second dose of the shot, however, and struggled through 11 ER visits and four hospital admissions in the year and a half that followed.

Injuries from the shot have left her unable to walk or eat — she receives her nutrition via a feeding tube — and suffering from constant pain, vision problems, tinnitus, allergic reactions and lack of neck control.2

As though the physical trauma weren’t enough, Maddie and her family were continually dismissed by the medical professionals put in place to help, ignored by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and denied the care needed to help Maddie. But the first red flag, Maddie’s mother Stephanie said at a hearing, was the way the trial was set up in the first place.3

Participants were given access to the TrialMax app to record side effects, like a swollen arm, but de Garay was surprised at the format it used. There wasn’t space for open-ended comments, only direct questions with “yes” or “no” options for answers, or check boxes to signify a set of predetermined potential effects.4 She explained:5

“I just want to give everybody a little better idea of what happened in our trial, because I did not know when you enter the trial, everybody uses a trial app. The app only allows you to record solicited adverse events — fever, redness, mild, moderate.

There’s no free form to fill in any other reaction that you have. What you have to do, if you have any other type of adverse event, is you have to call this study doctor. This leaves a lot of room for human error and concern of reporting bias coming from the principal investigator.”

In Pfizer’s April 2021 disclosure of Maddie’s case to the FDA, it’s stated only that she had abdominal pain:6

“One participant experienced an SAE [serious adverse event] reported as generalized neuralgia, and also reported 3 concurrent non-serious AEs (abdominal pain, abscess, gastritis) and 1 concurrent SAE (constipation) within the same week. The participant was eventually diagnosed with functional abdominal pain. The event was reported as ongoing at the time of the cutoff date.”

Then, a day before Pfizer submitted their request for emergency approval of the COVID-19 shot for 12- to 15-year-olds to the FDA, they added functional neurological disorder as a diagnosis in Maddie’s chart.7 Her mother noted in the film:8

“By the data cut off for the trial, Maddie experienced over 35 adverse events. None of these were mentioned … Maddie was in the hospital when the EUA [emergency use authorization] was approved. I thought that Maddie would be in the best hands possible in the rare chance she has a severe reaction. That was not the case. They did everything in their power to hide everything. Neither Pfizer, the FDA or the CDC has ever talked to us.”

Pfizer Trial ‘Like Nothing I’ve Ever Seen’

While health agencies continue to assure the public that COVID-19 shots are safe, those working closely on the trials had a different take. “I was working on Pfizer’s trial,” Brooke Jackson, a regional director formerly employed by Pfizer subcontractor Ventavia Research Group, which was testing Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine, said in the film.9 “What I saw was like nothing I’ve ever seen before.”

She witnessed falsified data, unblinded patients, inadequately trained vaccinators and lack of proper follow-up on adverse events that were reported. After notifying Ventavia about her concerns repeatedly, she made a complaint to the FDA directly — and was fired the same day.10 In her words:11

“The speed in which they were enrolling in the study — four to five coordinators pushing through 40, 50, 60 patients a day. We were not storing the vaccine at its appropriate temperature, the failures in reporting serious adverse events. We had so many reports of adverse events … we just could not keep up. The study doctor signed a physical exam when he wasn’t even in clinic.

Then Ventavia had unblinded every patient that was randomized in the trial. When we brought it to their attention, that’s what we were instructed to do — remove the evidence and destroy it. Emails about mislabeled blood specimens per Pfizer’s protocol, we should have immediately stopped enrolling, but they never told Pfizer.

I would bring the concerns to my managers and it was, ‘We’re understaffed.’ The FDA, they only see what Pfizer gives them. So I was documenting all of this. And on the 25th of September, I went directly to the FDA, and about six and a half hours later, I lost my job. I was fired.”

The FDA and Pfizer attempted to hide the COVID-19 shot clinical trial data for 75 years, but the FDA was ordered by the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas to release redacted versions of trial documents on a much faster schedule. As part of the court order, 80,000 pages of documents related to the FDA’s approval of Pfizer’s COVID-19 shots were released June 1, 2022.12

Among those documents were case report forms (CRFs) revealing that deaths and severe adverse events took place during Phase 3 trials, but, as reported by Children’s Health Defense, Pfizer had “a trend of classifying almost all adverse events — and in particular severe adverse events (SAEs) — as being ‘not related’ to the vaccine.”13 Journalist Naomi Wolf explained:14

“We’ve got these amazing 2,500 volunteers — highly credentialed medical researchers, doctors and nurses — pouring over these 55,000 documents that a court order forced Pfizer and the FDA to release.

Well, they’re finding that there were horrible harms — deaths, spontaneous abortions, neurological problems, fainting, heart damage, debilitating muscle pain, debilitating joint pain — that were concealed by Pfizer and the FDA from the American people.”

Adverse Reactions — Real, Not Rare

The film details adverse reactions that have stolen careers, independence and the ability to function normally in daily life from countless people. Dr. Joel Wallskog, a former orthopedic surgeon, shared his story after getting the shot:15

“My life has dramatically changed after this adverse reaction. My career of 19 years, that I took almost 14 years to train for, is likely over. I’m just not safe to work as an orthopedic surgeon. Assuming the FDA and the CDC would be alarmed at my diagnosis, I expected to be contacted soon after my VAERS [Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System] submission. No phone call, no contact.”

Kellai Rodriguez also detailed her struggles since receiving a COVID-19 shot:16

“I lost my ability to speak naturally. I have become unable to walk without a walker, and never know if or when the tremors will come or go. I can no longer cook, clean or even pick up and hold my baby for too long, before my body begins to shake uncontrollably or is thrown into excruciating amounts of pain.

I’ve seen countless ER doctors as well as two neurologists who have given me no diagnosis, no further testing besides regular bloodwork, CT scans, ECGs, EKGs and an MRI, all of which the doctors told me came back normal.”

At a rally for those injured by the shots, hundreds came together to share their experiences, with striking similarities. Many suffered from tremors that left them unable to walk, with onsets within days of receiving the shots. In the hospital, nurses shared that other patients were experiencing similar symptoms, but doctors refused to label the conditions shot-related. Jennifer Bridges, a former nurse with Houston Methodist Hospital, who was fired for not getting the shot, explained:17

“I’ve seen emails, where hospitals threatened their doctors — you cannot sign medical exemptions, you cannot talk about, you cannot report adverse reactions to these vaccines. And if somebody was actually brave enough to do that in writing, there were other people higher up to erase those. I have the proof, and I have the people that have shown me these things.”

Stories Censored and Silenced

Those injured by the shots were left abandoned during shot mandates. The film’s director, Jennifer Sharp, is among those who suffered from debilitating symptoms after the shot, including facial numbness, electric shock-like feelings and muscle weakness. She opted to not get a second dose of the shot after experiencing the serious adverse events after the first dose, and lost her job as a result:18

“In January 2022, I lost a job because I wasn’t vaccinated. I had a VAX card showing one shot, I had a blood test showing that I still had antibodies and a doctor’s exemption. And I was willing to get tested every day. They didn’t care. I couldn’t go to restaurants, gyms, malls, events.

So when the anti-mandate rally came to Los Angeles, I attended it to represent those of us who were suddenly societal outcasts just for doing what the government asked us to do. Even if you fundamentally disagree with someone else’s stance, does that justify the lack of compassion for them losing their livelihoods?”

Yet, when those affected tried to speak out about their experiences, they were silenced and shunned. One woman who was injured by the shots shared:19

“We are being so censored that we can’t get the message out that we’re even being censored, because if it’s through social media, they are one of the platforms that is censoring us. And even if it’s not outwardly, we’re being shadow banned …

So you could share something, but nobody acknowledges it. And you’re thinking, ‘Oh, I’m isolated, I’m alone,’ but they’re probably not seeing it. It’s been moved to the bottom of the timeline or it’s not in existence. You literally cannot post on social media about having a vaccine reaction without it being censored.”

When Sharp decided to film “Anecdotals,” she made a pitch video that she shared privately on the platform Vimeo. It described her reaction to the shot and the need for compassion. “It was removed for misinformation. They said they don’t allow content that goes against the CDC recommendations. I am not allowed to tell my own story,” she said.20

Suicides Due to COVID-19 Shot Reactions

Brianne Dressen, cofounder of React10, a nonprofit offering financial and other support to those suffering from long-term adverse events from COVID-19 shots, detailed several suicides among victims suffering from electric shocks, neuropathy, tinnitus, tremors and other effects from the shots. She also considered suicide due to adverse effects she suffered after participating in the AstraZeneca trial:21

“I don’t think people realize how debilitating the symptoms are. My husband couldn’t leave me alone for months. He’d leave the house and he didn’t know if he was going to come home to a wife that was alive. He was afraid, every moment of every day, and it seeps into our kids’ lives.

Six months, I was not mom, I was not a human. I was just going to drive down to the lake. And I was going to carbon monoxide my car. And I was gonna put AstraZeneca did this on a sign in the window. And I was too sick to do it. So only reason I’m alive is because I was too sick to do it. And I would like to finish with a letter from a friend, Bree:

‘I cannot take this any longer. This has taken everything away from me, my career, my family, my life, my body will not stop attacking itself. And this is beyond the worst amount of torture. Please accept my apologies. I must bid farewell to this world. Please make sure the world knows the cruelty that has been imposed upon us. Goodbye, my dear friend, I will see you on the flip side.’

Rochelle Walensky. Janet Woodcock, Peter Marks, Anthony Fauci, you erased her and the many others like her, their blood is on your hands. You cannot bring my friends back. But you can save others from their fate. If you finally just tell the truth.”

The film calls for an open dialogue and a movement from humanity to ask the difficult questions and acknowledge those who are suffering due to COVID-19 shots. “We must be seen, believed and helped,” Sharp said. “Our stories are anecdotal, but in a situation where the science is changing, the studies are flawed and political agendas regulate, anecdotes could quite possibly be the most reliable data that we have. Yes, we are anecdotal. And these are our stories.”22

RELATED VIDEO: CAUGHT HIM! Rebel News pummels Pfizer CEO with questions at World Economic Forum

Sources and References

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