MUSIC VIDEO: Trump Won and You Know it by Natasha Owens

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This video titled “Trump Won” by Natasha Owens was posted by Eeyore.

EDITORS NOTE: This Vlad Tepes Blog post is republished with permission. ©All rights reserve.

Here’s Information on the Florida Legislative Process, Terminology & Bills in the 2023 Session

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To help Floridians with your continuous Bill Tracking and activism with applicable Florida Legislators, please see the tweet and information below.

The first is a FLOW CHART showing the entire Bill Process which you may find very useful. For example it shows you what 1st, 2nd and 3rd Readings are all about and how you can cross reference the meaning on the terminology list as well.

The second is a list of TERMINOLOGY that you may see used when checking on the status of a Bill.

The source for this information is Information Center: Online Sunshine (state.fl.us)

So far I do not see where any of the dozen or so bad 2nd Amendment related bills we have tracked have moved anywhere. Several key 2nd Amendment bills appear on their way to being passed and signed into law e.g. HB 221 and SB 214 prohibiting Credit Cards and Banks from discriminating against those in firearms industry and HB 543/SB 150 permit less carry (but not true Constitutional Carry because doesn’t allow open carry or campus carry).

In the Education/School Board area some good bills that have progressed include HB 1 (School Choice which has grown from 50 to 115 pages due to Amendments some of which may not be that good); SJR 94 (Partisan Election of Members of District School Boards); HB 303 (FL Bright Futures Scholarship); HB 467 (Anti-drug instruction in public schools); HB 477 (Term Limits for District School Boards) and others have been tracking and reporting on.

Some other good bills progressing not related to 2A or Education/SB are HJR 131 (Recall of County Officers/Commissioners); HB 305/SB 222 (Protection of Medical Freedom); and HB 477 (Term Limits for District School Board Members).

Terminology in the Florida Bills

Information Center : Online Sunshine (state.fl.us)

ADOPTED Resolutions, memorials, motions, and amendments are “adopted”; bills are “passed.” Adopt means to consent to or accept; pass means to enact by the requisite number of votes. In the Florida Legislature, resolutions (except joint resolutions) and amendments are usually adopted by a voice vote. Bills, as required by the Constitution, are passed by the recorded votes of a majority of the members present. Joint resolutions are passed by a three-fifths vote of the membership.

AMENDMENT Changes in any bill or other proposed legislation may be offered by a committee or an individual legislator in the form of an amendment to a specific portion of the pending bill. All amendments receive a six-digit identifying bar code when filed. As with bills, House amendments are odd-numbered and Senate amendments are even-numbered. An amendment may be offered in four forms: (1) an amendment to the pending bill; (2) an amendment to the amendment; (3) a substitute amendment; and (4) an amendment to the substitute. For example, after the amendatory process in the House has been completed and 2 the bill is passed and sent to the Senate, the Senate may begin the amendatory process again. Upon return of the bill, the House may concur in the Senate amendment(s), refuse to concur and ask the Senate to recede, or amend the Senate amendment.

COMPANION BILL When bills substantially worded the same and identical as to specific intent and purpose are filed in the House and Senate. The purpose is to expedite progress by having simultaneous movement in both houses on the proposal. When a house passes its bill, the sponsor in the other house must be careful to substitute this companion there. Otherwise, each house may pass its own bill, and neither becomes law. While both houses may have acted on identical text, each will have passed a separate bill. See CROSS CONCURRENCE When one house agrees to an amendment adopted by the other house. After concurring in the amendment, a vote is taken again on the passage of the bill as amended.

CONCURRENT RESOLUTION A formal expression of the opinion of both legislative houses. A concurrent resolution may, for example, offer the Legislature’s recognition of an honor or achievement of an individual or group. It also may be used to mourn the passing of a distinguished citizen. Usually, a concurrent resolution applies to non-lawmaking matters, but an exception is the use of a concurrent resolution to express Florida’s ratification or rejection of an amendment to the United States Constitution. Concurrent resolutions are also used to extend sessions and can be used to call the Legislature into joint session.

CONFERENCE COMMITTEE A conference committee is actually two committees, one from each house, meeting together to work out compromise language acceptable to the Senate and House on some measure when agreement could not be reached through amendments. 8 A majority of the members of the committee from each house must agree before the conference committee report may be submitted to the Senate and House. Neither house is obligated to accept the report, but they usually do since the alternative could be the failure of the legislation for that session. Vote on Entirety A conference report differs in importance from the vote in the House and Senate on the original bill because the vote on the conference report is binding. A conference report must be accepted or rejected. It cannot be amended. If rejected, a conference report usually will be recommitted to the conference committee for another try at adjusting the differences.

CONFIRMATION The action of the Senate in agreeing to appointments by the Governor. See EXECUTIVE SESSION; SUSPENSION CONFORMING BILLS Bills that are included in the conference committee negotiations and are considered necessary to “conform” the Florida Statutes to provide for the fiscal changes implemented by the passage of the General Appropriations Act.

CONSENT CALENDAR The Consent Calendar contains bills of a noncontroversial nature and is usually considered under expedited procedures which the House approves in advance of considering the bills. The consent calendar is voted on with one vote for all bills thereon.

CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT, STATE Proposals to amend Florida’s Constitution primarily come from two sources. One is an initiative petition of the citizens; the other is a joint resolution passed by a three-fifths vote of the members elected to each legislative body. The proposal must then be ratified by 60 percent of the voters in a general election. Unless otherwise provided by law, amendments go to the electorate at the next regular general election, so long as this election is held more than 90 days after an amendment has been proposed by the Legislature. The Legislature, by a law enacted by three-fourths of the members elected to each house, may provide for a special general election to be held at least 90 days after the Legislature has proposed the amendment. Amendments to the Florida Constitution, when ratified by the electorate, become effective on the first Monday in January following the election, unless some other date is specified in the amendment.

COSPONSOR The House member introducing a bill is known as the firstnamed sponsor, and his or her name appears first on the sponsor list and in the Journal. All others who “s

DECORUM The reasonable quiet or calm that a Speaker or President seeks to impose upon the body so that business may be conducted in an orderly manner with an appropriateness of appearance, behavior, and conduct. This decorum provides for the ability to be both seen and heard.

DELEGATION Legislators from the same locality, typically a county. Legislators occasionally will designate themselves as being members of the county’s delegation.

ENGROSSED BILL When a bill has been amended, it is written to include the change in language. This version is known as the engrossed bill. This version is done in the house of origin: a Senate amendment to a House bill will be attached and if accepted by the House, the bill will then be engrossed under the supervision of the Clerk of the House. Similarly, a House amendment to a Senate bill, if accepted by the Senate, will be engrossed by the Senate Secretary. A bill may be engrossed more than once. See

ENROLLED BILL After both houses have agreed upon a bill, and it becomes an act, the bill is reformatted and this enrolled version is signed by the Constitutional officers of the House and Senate, sent to the Governor for consideration, and subsequently transmitted to the Secretary of State (unless vetoed during a legislative session). Memorials, Joint Resolutions, and Concurrent Resolutions are filed directly with the Secretary of State. See ENGROSSED BILL EXECUTIVE SESSION A session the Senate enters for the purpose

FIRST READING This constitutional requirement is met when a bill is officially introduced into one of the houses of the Legislature and its title is published in the Journal. This constitutes the “first reading” in the Journal and also shows the committee to which the presiding officer has referred the bill.

INTRODUCTION The process of bringing a proposed bill before the Legislature. Members approve their bill drafts prepared by the bill drafting services and a bill number is assigned to each bill. The bill title is printed in the Journal of the House and Senate, which constitutes first reading and introduction.

LAY ON THE TABLE Laying a bill on the table enables the body to move on to the next order of business without completing action on the bill under discussion while leaving it in a position which could allow its reintroduction. A bill, motion, or amendment laid upon the table is usually dead.

ORDER OF BUSINESS The order in which business is taken up in the Legislature each day of the regular session. The daily order of business in the House is:

  1. Call to Order
  2. Prayer
  3. Roll Call
  4. Pledge of Allegiance
  5. Correction of the Journal
  6. Communications
  7. Messages from the Senate
  8. Reports of Committees
  9. Motions Relating to Committee and Subcommittee References
  10. Matters on Reconsideration
  11. Bills and Joint Resolutions on Third Reading 19
  12. Special Orders
  13. House Resolutions
  14. Unfinished Business
  15. Introduction and Reference

The Senate order of business is slightly different:

  1. Roll Call
  2. Prayer
  3. Pledge of Allegiance
  4. Reports of Committees
  5. Motions Relating to Committee Reference
  6. Messages from the Governor and Other Executive Communications
  7. Messages from the House of Representatives
  8. Matters on Reconsideration
  9. Consideration of Bills on Third Reading
  10. Special Order Calendars
  11. Consideration of Bills on Second Reading
  12. Correction and Approval of Journal
  13. Unfinished Business

PASSED To be approved by the body. Bills and joint resolutions are passed. Memorials, other resolutions, amendments, and motions are adopted

PRIME COSPONSOR The second-named sponsor of a bill in the House. Listed after the member who filed the bill, the prime cosponsor will occasionally 21 stand with the first-named sponsor while the bill is being heard in committee or on the floor. The prime cosponsor asks and is approved by the first-named sponsor and their name will appear on the title of the bill.

PRIME SPONSOR The House member submitting a bill for introduction is known as the “prime sponsor” (by rule, the “first-named” sponsor). The prime sponsor’s name appears first, not only on the original bill, but in the printing of the bill, reference to the bill in Leagis, and all other references.

READINGS Each bill or proposed constitutional amendment must receive three readings on three separate days, unless waived by a two-thirds vote of the members voting in each legislative house before passage. The reading of the title only typically suffices. This reading of the title is usually brief, often just a few words, but enough to describe the subject of the bill. A “reading” may be regarded as a stage in the progress of legislation. Certain things happen on these different stages in the movement of a bill through each house. On “first reading,” a bill is introduced. “First reading” now is almost exclusively done by publication in the Journal. Amendments generally are considered on “second reading.” Debate and final passage occur on “third reading.”

SELECT COMMITTEE A select committee is created by the presiding officer for the purpose of dealing with a specific issue. Unlike standing committees, which remain in existence for the duration of the session, a select committee usually goes out of existence when the purpose for which it was selected has been accomplished

SESSIONS, LENGTH OF In accordance with the Florida Constitution, a regular session of the Legislature shall not exceed 60 consecutive days and a special session shall not exceed 20 consecutive days, unless extended beyond such limit by a three-fifths vote of the members voting of each house. During such extension, no new business may be taken up in either house without the consent of two-thirds of its membership

STANDING COMMITTEE A standing committee is created by rule with 28 continuing authority to consider matters within its subject field, including bills filed by members of the houses. The name of the committee usually indicates its policy jurisdiction

STATUTES Acts that amend or create law are compiled, edited, and published annually in the Florida Statutes. The Law Revision Division of the Legislature edits and publishes the Florida Statutes following each regular session. Sets of the Florida Statutes may be purchased from Law Book Services at www. flalegistore.com and viewed online at www.leg.state.fl.us

TITLE The Florida Constitution requires each bill to be prefaced by a concise statement of its contents. This statement is known as the “title.” The Florida Supreme Court, in 1983, defined three types of title: the caption title (i.e., “SB 83”); the short title, (i.e., “An act relating to the possession of controlled substances”); and a full title which may be lengthy. The court held that each of these met the requirements of the Constitution for readings

TRAIN A bill relating to a single subject, but combining many aspects. The legislative train often combines the good and the bad for individual legislators as well as the Governor

©Royal A. Brown III. All rights reserved.

Why We Should Let Bad Banks Fail

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Bad banks need consequences. Let them fail.

By now, you’ve likely heard about regulators closing down Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) and now Signature Bank as well.

While I’m not going to go into all the details, the basic story is described well in this article on Seeking Alpha. Essentially, SVB received a large influx of deposits as the Federal Reserve flooded the market with dollars during COVID.

From there, SVB went out and bought government bonds to store that money. But then, the Federal Reserve started enacting policies which moved interest rates up. The problem? As interest rates rose, the bonds SVB purchased in the past declined in value.

Bond prices and the interest rate have an inverse relationship. If interest rates increase, you can earn a higher return on financial assets purchased today. When that happens, bonds issued at a previously lower rate must sell at a discount to compete.

So when rates rose, SVB’s assets (composed largely of old lower-rate government bonds) plummeted in value.

The key question now is, what are we going to do about it?

I have a modest proposal—let them fail.

Allowing banks to fail may sound extreme, but it’s really the most reasonable solution. It’s true there will be some costs if the banks fail. Any time a business fails, other investors tied financially to the company lose.

But here’s the rub—people who invest in bad businesses should lose. SVB’s failure is a reflection of the fact that it was a wealth shredder. It took depositors’ perfectly good cash, and converted it into now severely devalued bonds.

Banks that destroy wealth shouldn’t be allowed to continue to do so indefinitely. And when depositors make a “run” on bad banks, they’re performing a public service.

At this point, a bank bailout not only would mean the taxpayers will be left holding the bag for bankers’ mistakes—it would mean screwing up incentives in the banking industry even more.

To see the incentive problem, consider an example. Imagine a world where, no matter the circumstances, the government will pay to fix cars after every accident. What do you think this would do to the number of car accidents per year? It would sky-rocket.

If you never need fear paying a price for crashing your car, why drive carefully? There is still some incentive to avoid serious accidents due to injury, but the point is this system lowers the cost of risky behavior, and therefore lowers an individual’s incentive to be careful. Economists call this a moral hazard problem.

And this is the primary issue with bank bailouts. If the government sets a precedent that all bank failures will be ameliorated by using taxpayer money, banks will engage in risky behavior which they otherwise would not. Why be cautious with depositors’ money if you get a bailout no matter what?

You cannot have a healthy free market when you privatize the profits and socialize the losses. The taxpayer’s wallet, if treated like common property, will be subject to the tragedy of the commons.

And I don’t just mean that I’m against a formal bailout to save investors. I’m opposed to taxpayer dollars being reallocated to save the bottom line of anyone involved. Some may worry about small depositors, but the FDIC already insures up to $250,000 (regardless of what I or anyone else thinks about that policy), meaning every depositor who has less than that in their account is getting their money back already.

And for the larger depositors? Business deals have risks. We cannot pay people to ignore that fact. If you want to house more than a quarter of a million dollars in any one institution you should be very careful in picking.

If some individual wants to come along and buy SVB or these other failing banks and try to resuscitate them, I invite them to try. Maybe there is a profit opportunity there. But if the choice is between a bailout and letting them fail, the answer is clear to me.

If they can have the profits, they should have the losses as well.

AUTHOR

Peter Jacobsen

Peter Jacobsen teaches economics and holds the position of Gwartney Professor of Economics. He received his graduate education at George Mason University.

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

Mr. President, Fire Your Woke Minions And Appoint Some Competent People

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The failure of three banks in the last two weeks, including Silicon Valley Bank on Friday and Signature Bank on Sunday, is a saga of utter government incompetence. Call these bank collapses Biden’s Banking Busts. The Biden administration has been obsessing on woke causes while banks teeter toward insolvency.

Three days before Silicon Valley Bank collapsed, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen cautioned that climate change puts the banking industry at risk. Yellen was in la-la land, speculating that future storms and tornadoes could diminish the value of banks’ assets.

Weather is a risk, but she was oblivious to the much more immediate problem facing banks — the plummeting value of the bonds they own. She was heedless to the impending downfall of SVB and possibly several other small banks that had purchased long-term bonds when interest rates were near zero.

In 2022, after doing nothing to tame inflation the previous year, the Federal Reserve hiked rates repeatedly to make up for their previous inaction. Those rapid rate hikes, the most drastic in decades, made the banks’ bonds lose value.

A week before Yellen’s climate change harangue, Moody’s Investors Service already had delivered bad news to SVB that it was about to be downgraded several notches because its inventory of bonds was not worth enough to repay depositors. A day before Yellen’s loony speech, Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Chairman Martin Gruenberg also cautioned that the diminishing value of the bonds held by banks meant a $620 billion problem ahead.

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, a part of Yellen’s Treasury, is responsible for examining the financial condition of banks. It failed to avert the SVB collapse.

Yellen has been an outspoken activist for climate change, women’s rights and diversity, including appointing the Treasury’s first ever racial equity officer. Apparently, the hordes of bureaucrats working under her are also too busy with diversity, equity and inclusion seminars to prevent banks from failing.

As the SVB crisis unfolded, Yellen was MIA. Now she says she’s monitoring several banks “struggling with the whiplash in prices” of their bonds.

Financial experts warn smaller banks are in for a rough ride, though the big banks like JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo and others are not apt to be in trouble.

Admittedly, SVB’s managers made mistakes. Banking’s first rule is that assets should match deposits. If depositors can demand their money back anytime, then using their money to buy long-term bonds is risky. SVB had to sell $21 billion worth of bonds at a fire sale, taking a $1.8 billion loss.

Trading was suspended Friday in the stocks of several small banks whose share prices plunged on fears they were in the same situation. On Sunday, New York bank regulators shut Signature Bank.

President Joe Biden created the perfect storm for what may become a string of banking busts. In 2021, he lied about inflation, saying it was temporary and “no serious economist” considered it a threat. Yellen and Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, whose first term was about to expire, went along with Biden and did nothing to bring down prices. It was the single biggest monetary policy mistake in half a century.

Then in March 2022, newly reappointed Powell launched aggressive rate hiking to cure what the Wall Street Journal called “a mess largely of the Fed’s own making.” As rates rose fast, startup companies could no longer afford to borrow, and instead started withdrawing their bank deposits. Without regulatory intervention, the downfall of SVB was almost a foregone conclusion.

On March 7, Powell predicted that the Fed will likely “increase the pace of rate hikes” to continue bringing down inflation. A task made more difficult by our spendaholic president’s budget proposal, which is an inflation accelerator.

As rates rise, more banks could be in trouble. Continued government incompetence is not an option.

Mr. President, get rid of your woke minions and appoint competent people. Our money and jobs are at stake.

On Sunday night, Biden said he’s “firmly committed to holding those responsible for this mess fully accountable.” Look in the mirror, Mr. President.

Instead, he’s looking at the list of Democratic campaign donors and scurrying to bail them out. Ninety-eight percent of all political contributions from people who worked at internet companies went to Democrats in 2020. Silicon Valley residents coughed up nearly $200 million for Democrats. No surprise that the Treasury and the Fed are offering bailouts, whether they use that word or not.

Biden’s reckless spending and incompetent monetary policy are causing this string of banking busts. And John Q. Public will end up paying one way or another.

COPYRIGHT 2023 CREATORS.COM

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

BETSY MCCAUGHEY

Betsy McCaughey is a former lieutenant governor of New York and chairman of the Committee to Reduce Infection Deaths. Follow her on Twitter @Betsy_McCaughey. To find out more about Betsy McCaughey and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com. McCaughey is the author of “Beating Obamacare.”

RELATED TWEET:

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EJ ANTONI And PETER ST ONGE: Biden Bails Out The Rich And The Reckless

Chuck Schumer, Maxine Waters Return Political Donations Linked To Silicon Valley Bank

DENNIS PRAGER: Banks Go Bust When Activism Comes Before Business

Silicon Valley Bank Committed Over $73 Million To BLM And Social Justice Causes Before It Collapsed

Shocker: One Of America’s Most Politically Connected Banks Is Due For A Huge Profit Off Other Bank’s Failure

FLASHBACK: Barney Frank Tells Daily Caller’s Kay Smythe He’s On The Board Of Signature Bank

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‘We’ve Got Some Cleanup To Do’: Former FDIC Chair Says There Will ‘Probably’ Be More Bank Failures

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.

How the Democrats Bake Systemic Fraud Into Our Elections

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Last week, I told you about individual wrongdoers – mostly Democrats – who were arrested and sent to jail for voter fraud.  But criminal wrongdoing in our elections is also perpetrated – again, mostly by Democrats – by election officials, Democrat and left-wing advocacy groups, and other systemic players engaged in wholesale fraud.

Starting with election officials, a Republican county elections commissioner in New York was charged with 12 felony counts of using other people’s identifications to request, complete, and submit absentee ballots.  A Democrat township clerk in Michigan who was also a candidate was convicted of felony ballot tampering for opening a sealed ballot canister, invalidating the votes inside.  The Democrat New Mexico Secretary of State is accused of unlawfully receiving county election totals before counties certify results and using an uncertified software program to add up the totals.  Elections officials in Oakland, California are accused of ignoring a court order, unsealing ballot boxes without public observation, and making it impossible for citizen observers to monitor and understand the vote tallying process.

Lawless election officials are not the only source of systemic wrongdoing in our elections.  Left-wing and Democrat advocacy groups are major sources, as well.  The Virginia Democratic Party ballot harvesting manual instructs party activists to include dead people and bad addresses when compiling voter contact lists.  This information goes into a party database which is used to target likely Democrat voters.  The Democrat Party did not respond when asked about this.

Left-leaning nonprofits like the Center for Voter Information and the Voter Participation Center are abusing their 501(c)(3) tax status by registering likely Democrat voters.  Targeting particular demographic groups likely to vote Democrat skirts IRS rules preventing tax-exempt organizations from engaging in partisan activity.

In Wisconsin, a leftist group paid voters $250 if they succeeded in persuading their friends to vote for the Leftist candidate in the state Supreme Court race.  Under state law, it is felony bribery to give anything of value to any person for inducing others to vote or not vote for or against particular candidates.

The Federal Election Commission received but has ignored information about campaign ‘money mules’ operating in Missouri, Georgia, and elsewhere.  Democrat Senator Raphael Warnock of Georgia was the top beneficiary identified in the scheme.  To give you some idea of how the scheme works, ‘Steven in Missouri’ was somehow able to make over 14,000 campaign donations totaling $180,000 in two years despite being unemployed.  Something’s not right with this picture.

Yet more systemic election fraud is found in a Florida county where felons vote illegally, dead voters are sent mail-in ballots, voter addresses are changed without request, and individuals are putting multiple ballots into drop boxes despite being limited under state law to two.  This information came from a whistleblower inside an elections office who was upset these problems were not being addressed.  The office is run by a Democrat and would not respond to questions.

Here is one more way systemic fraud can occur:  County officials can change the zip code of tens of thousands of voters all at once.  Mail ballots go out, but the ones with the wrong zip code are undeliverable.  Someone scoops them up, then the elections office changes the zip codes back.  Voters go to the polls, only to be told they already voted, their ballot has already been cast by somebody else.  A new data company uncovered this kind of fraud in Wisconsin and Florida, including one county where more than 31,000 zip codes were changed this way.  The company bought daily voter rolls and tracked zip code changes, discovering how the game is played.

We are supposed to have representative government in this country.  But we cannot be assured of true representation unless systemic fraud, perpetrated mostly by Democrats, is rooted out from the elections process.

©Christopher Wright. All rights reserved.

Visit The Daily Skirmish and Watch Eagle Headline News – 7:30am ET Weekdays

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BIDEN BANK CRISIS: Dow Plunges 700 Points, ‘First Domino To Drop’

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Stock indexes are on pace for one of their worst days this year.
Woke and broke. And still Biden and the Democrats are pushing, legislating and imposing these fatal polices.

This is the poison fruit of the diversity, equity and inclusion hiring practices that elevates whining whiners and demonizes talent, intelligence and skill.

Life was golden under Trump.

Dow Plunges 700 Points As BlackRock Chief Warns SVB Collapse Merely ‘First Domino To Drop’

By: Derek Saul, Forbes, March 15, 2023: Forbes Staff

U.S. stocks plunged in Wednesday trading as concerns about the health of the global banking industry continued to weigh on the market, with one high-profile Wall Street bigwig cautioning the contagion of Silicon Valley Bank’s failure could spread further than previously anticipated.

Key Facts

The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 717 points, or 2.2%, by 1 p.m. ET; the S&P 500 and tech-heavy Nasdaq similarly slid 2% and 1.4%, respectively.

The domestic losses come amid broad declines in stocks abroad, with the Zurich-based bank Credit Suisse’s 24% slide to a record low in share prices amid capital concerns headlining the losses.

Also stoking concerns about the fallout of Silicon Valley Bank, Signature Bank and Silvergate Capital’s recent closures was a bleak letter from Blackrock CEO Larry Fink warning the failures could simply be the first “domino[es] to drop” before a potential “cascade throughout the U.S. regional banking sector with more seizures and shutdowns coming.”

Regional bank stocks captained Wednesday’s sinking ship, with share prices of PacWest sinking 20% and First Republic dropping 23%.

Keep reading.

AUTHOR

Pamela Geller

RELATED VIDEO: Economist warns U.S. is ‘on brink of a 2008 style financial crisis’

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BIDEN’S ECONOMY: Silicon Valley Bank COLLAPSES Following Run on Bank, 2nd Biggest Bank Failure In United States History

BLM Movement Received Nearly $83 Billion from Corporations

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The Black Lives Matter (BLM) domestic terror and black supremacist movement has received a jaw-dropping $82.9 billion from corporations, according to a new funding database from the Claremont Institute.

The Claremont Institute’s Center for the American Way of Life asserted in an article in Newsweek that the 2020 BLM movement was about more than just “rioting and destruction.”

The Center explained that “The BLM pressure campaigns, harassment, and moral blackmail also amounted to possibly the most lucrative shakedown of corporate America in its history.”

“As a point of reference, $82.9 billion is more than the GDP of 46 African countries. In 2022, the Ford Motor Company’s profits were $23 billion,” they noted. The sum of $82.9 million includes “more than $123 million to the BLM parent organizations directly,” as well as much more to other organizations supporting BLM’s agenda.

The list reveals that several popular corporations from a wide range of different industries supplied the movement with large sums of cash. Walmart, for example, which is based in Arkansas, gave a whopping $100 million in support of BLM and related causes focusing on “racial equity.” Amazon gave even more, supplying the movement with an astonishing $169.5 million. Silicon Valley Bank gave the movement $73.45 million.

Meanwhile, the pharmaceutical company Abbvie gave the movement over $62 million in funding. Allstate gave $7.7 million to the cause and American Express gave $50 million. Apple gave $100 million while AT&T gave $21.5 million. The movement and its causes received another $90 million from Nike.

United Airlines, JetBlue, Southwest Airlines, and Delta Airlines all gave money to BLM and related causes as well.

Bank of America, meanwhile, provided $18.25 million to BLM and related causes while Wells Fargo diverted $210 million towards BLM and related causes. Deloitte gave $85 million to BLM and related causes.

Asset management giant BlackRock put a shocking $810 million towards BLM and related causes, while other powerful financial institutions also bankrolled the movement, with Capital One Financial giving $10 million, Morgan Stanley giving $30 million, US Bank giving $160 million, and Goldman Sachs giving $10.1 million.

Meanwhile, Prudential Financial supplied the movement and its related causes with a sum of $450 million but was outdone by Mastercard, which gave $500 million.

The database found that Boeing gave $15.6 million, while Northrop Grumman gave $2 million and Raytheon gave $25 million.

The Walt Disney Company gave $8.8 million to BLM and related causes while the Pokémon Company gave $200,000.

The Claremont Institute’s Center for the American Way of Life also explained how the funds have been used, remarking that

The Global Network is investing tens of millions of dollars to support future operations, purchasing luxury real estate, engaging in nepotism, disbursing grants to dozens of BLM chapters and revolutionary organizations, and operating a PAC to “elect progressive community leaders, activists, and working-class candidates fighting for Black liberation.”

Meanwhile, “Local BLM chapters are spending millions on activism and initiatives to defund police departments” and “BLM At School is indoctrinating children around the country in critical race theory and queer theory, teaching them to hate themselves, their peers, and their country.”

“Left-wing nonprofits are effecting wholescale societal change too radical for normal legislative avenues, constituting a form of shadow governance,” they went on to note.

The agenda has also seeped into the financial industry’s loan operations, the Center explains, pointing out that “banks are issuing billions of dollars in subprime loans ‘to help end systemic racism,’” all while “corporations are funding leftist bail funds that release violent rioters and criminals onto our streets and collaborating to create racialized, anti-meritocratic hiring schemes.”

The shakedown “may be viewed as a form of reparations made to self-declared enemies of the American nation and way of life,” they added.

Black Lives Matter (BLM)

177 Known Connections

BLM Activist Says Looting Is a Form of Reparations

In August 2020, BLM activists in Chicago held a rally to express their solidarity with the 100+ individuals who had recently been arrested after a night of mass looting and criminal activity. One BLM organizer who spoke at the rally, Ariel Atkins, said: “I don’t care if someone decides to loot a Gucci or a Macy’s or a Nike store, because that makes sure that person eats. That makes sure that person has clothes.” “That is reparations,” she continued. “Anything they wanted to take, they can take it because these businesses have insurance.” In a similar spirit, In a similar spirit, a social media post for the rally encouraged people to come out and “support the people arrested last night for protesting another police shooting & taking reparations from corporations.”

To learn more about Black Lives Matter, click here.

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

Biden’s Migrant Catch-and-Release Policy Unlawful, Trump-Appointed Judge Rules

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The Biden administration has turned the southwest border into a meaningless line in the sand and little more than a speedbump for aliens flooding into the country, according to a scathing federal court order blasting the president’s controversial catch-and-release policy. Known as Parole Plus Alternative to Detention (Parole+ATD) the program released over a million illegal immigrants in the U.S. in a year, supposedly tracking them with technology and other tools. Florida officials filed a lawsuit in 2021, accusing the Biden administration of violating immigration laws with policies that freed illegal aliens from detention after entering the country via the Mexican border. The state alleged that releasing illegal immigrants impacts it because about 100,000 ended up in Florida, increasing healthcare, education, and criminal justice costs.

A federal judge agreed with officials in the Sunshine State, ruling this month that the Biden administration is responsible for the southwest border crisis and that it is to blame for the influx of migrants. In his 109-page order the judge, T. Kent Wetherell of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Florida, writes this: “Defendants have effectively turned the Southwest Border into a meaningless line in the sand and little more than a speedbump for aliens flooding into the country by prioritizing “alternatives to detention” over actual detention and by releasing more than a million aliens into the country—on “parole” or pursuant to the exercise of “prosecutorial discretion” under a wholly inapplicable statute—without even initiating removal proceedings.” Rejecting the government’s rationale for the outrageous policy, the Trump-appointed jurist likens it to “a child who kills his parents and then seeks pity for being an orphan.”

The lashing continues in the lengthy decision, which was delivered after a weeklong trial in January. Biden’s open border policies are akin to posting a flashing “come in, we’re open sign on the Southern border,” Judge Wetherell writes. “The unprecedented ‘surge’ of aliens that started arriving at the Southwest border almost immediately after President Biden took office and that has continued unabated over the past two years was a predictable consequence of these actions.” The judge cites Border Patrol Chief Raul Ortiz’s testimony revealing that the current surge in migrants differs from prior surges he has seen over his lengthy career in that most of the border crossers are turning themselves in to federal agents rather than trying to escape. “It is reasonable to infer (and just plain common sense) that aliens are doing this because they are aware that they will be expeditiously processed and released into the country,” the order states, adding that “indeed, on this point, Chief Ortiz credibly opined based on his experience that the aliens are likely turning themselves in because they think they’re going to be released.”

Ruling that Biden’s catch-and-release policy is unlawful, Judge Wetherell gives the administration seven days to comply with federal immigration law. Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody, who filed the lawsuit, said the ruling affirms what we have known all along, that Biden is responsible for the border crisis and his unlawful immigration policies make the U.S. less safe. “A federal judge is now ordering Biden to follow the law,” Moody said in a statement, adding that “his administration should immediately begin securing the border to protect the American people.” A former state judge and federal prosecutor who tried drug, firearm, and fraud crimes, Moody and her legal team presented the court with evidence that the Biden administration purposely reduced Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) holding capacity and narrowed removal pathways to force the release of hundreds of thousands of migrants into the U.S.

Besides recently being ruled illegal by a federal court, a former senior advisor at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) says the ATD program has proven to be a “costly failure” and thousands of illegal aliens disappear from monitoring every year. “The goal should be to quickly determine whether these individuals have a valid case, and if not, to quickly deport them,” the former DHS advisor, Jon Feere, says in a news article. In the same story former acting ICE director Ron Vitiello says that ATD is popular among the left and sounds great, but the reality is illegal immigrants in the program will likely never be deported.

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

Being a Democrat Means Eventually Having to Say You’re Sorry

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Last week, a former advisor to Democrats Al Gore and Bill Clinton made an extraordinary confession and apologized to conservatives and Republicans for being so wrong about so many things.

Naomi Wolf issued a “formal letter of apology” for believing the Democrats’ “lies” about the January 6th attack on the Capitol:

I was duped, and that as a result I made mistakes in judgement, and that these mistakes, multiplied by the tens of thousands and millions on the part of people just like me, hurt millions of other people like you all, in existential ways…. I believed that Pres Trump instigated the riot at the Capitol — because I did not know that his admonition to his supporters to assemble “peacefully and patriotically” had been deleted from all of the news coverage that I read…. I owe you a full-throated apology.

She also apologized for lots of other things she wrongly believed:

  • I also believed wholesale so much else that has since turned out not to be as I was told it was by NPR, MSNBC and The New York Times.
  • I believed that stories about Hunter Biden’s laptop were Russian propaganda… til it was debunked.
  • I believed that President Trump’s campaign colluded with Russia — until that assertion was dropped.
  • I believed that President Trump was a Russian asset, because the legacy media I read, said so
  • I believed in the entire Steele dossier, until I didn’t, because it all fell apart.

And here’s the kicker: “I am sorry I believed so much nonsense.”

Nonsense.  In the Right’s terms, Naomi Wolf got red-pilled, hit with undeniable doses of reality.  It really only takes five minutes with someone to rip apart the Left’s phony narratives and deprogram people out of the Democrat cult.  This is why the Democrats are afraid of people like me and do their darndest to shut us up.  Twitter and Facebook censored me.  It didn’t work.  The traffic on my website where this commentary appears is quadruple what it was when I was banned.  I’m on several TV stations in the West and lots of websites repost my work.  I’m doing just fine without Facebook and Twitter, and I’m just getting started.

Naomi Wolf is not the only liberal to apologize to conservatives, recently.  Others apostatizing from the Democrat faith include a former Reuters editor who admitted he was misled on climate change.  “The idea climate change threatens the health, safety and economic well-being of people worldwide is an assertion, not a fact,” he wrote.   Moreover, there is no scientific consensus CO2 is to blame for the planet’s warming in the last 10,000 years.  Scientists he asked backed away from making any such claim.

Then there’s the abortion doctor and the abortion clinic business developer who both confessed recently they knew abortion was the taking of innocent human life.  The abortionist confessed to murdering countless children, but pro-life outreach changed the abortionist’s mind.  For his part, the developer is now pro-life and fighting to end abortion.

For a Democrat mom in Pennsylvania, it was the Democrats’ appalling COVID lockdowns leading to learning loss in school that led her away from the Democrat Party.  A New York City councilman switched to the Republican Party because the Democrats are too soft on crime and making everyone unsafe.  For another former liberal, it wasn’t any one thing.  It was a 30-year process of watching the Left’s pronouncements not match up with reality, helped along by the insufferable “arrogance and snobbery” of Leftist elites.  The #WalkAway movement of former Democrats from a few years ago, is still going strong.  Their testimonies contain all kinds of reasons to leave the Democrat fold.

But my favorite apostasy story is the young woman who told me some years ago that, for her, it was the blue dress – Bill Clinton’s sexual escapades with Monica Lewinsky in the Oval Office.   Like I said, it only takes minutes to sweep the fairy dust off people and get them to realize the Democrats have a lot to be sorry about and apologize for.

©Christopher Wright. All rights reserved.

Visit The Daily Skirmish and Watch Eagle Headline News – 7:30am ET Weekdays

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Adolf Hitler Came to Power 92 Years Ago When The German Banks Collapsed. Is History Repeating Itself?

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“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” — George Santayana

“History repeats itself, but in such cunning disguise that we never detect the resemblance until the damage is done.” — Sydney J. Harris

“If history repeats itself, how incapable must man be of learning from experience.” — Karl Marx

Is history repeating itself?

Banks and the rise of Adolph Hitler

In a March 19, 2019 Vox EU article titled How failing banks paved Hitler’s path to power: Financial crisis and right-wing extremism in Germany, 1931-33 José-Luis Peydró, Hans-Joachim Voth and Sebastian Doerr asked,

Can financial crises fan the flames of fanaticism?

[ … ]

In a new study, we provide such evidence for the canonical case of Germany during the 1930s (Doerr et al. 2019). The country saw one of the worst depressions on record, with output contracting by more than a quarter, and sky-rocketing unemployment. Germany’s slump was aggravated by a severe banking crisis in the summer of 1931, which helped turn an ordinary recession into the Great Depression (Figure 1). The crisis was triggered by the collapse of Danatbank, one of Germany’s four big universal banks. Following a Central European banking crisis that had begun in Austria in May, German banks experienced deposit withdrawals. Danatbank itself faced unsustainable losses when one of its borrowers, a large textile firm, defaulted due to fraud and bad luck. The ensuing bank run led to a suspension of bank deposits, the failure of another bank, Dresdner, and a three-week bank holiday with Germany’s de facto exit from the gold standard. Both external and domestic factors, combined with political inactivity because of repayments (due to political conflict between Germany and France over reparations), turned Danatbank’s troubles into a full-blown financial crisis (Ferguson and Temin 2003, Born 1967, Schnabel 2004).

[ … ]

A rich and growing literature has shown that financial crises have real economic effects. Firms connected to banks in trouble perform worse, and the more so if they need external financing (Ivashina and Scharfstein 2008, Campello et al. 2010). Local economies exposed to firm-specific financial shocks suffer economically (Huber 2018). What has been missing in the literature on ‘real effects’ of financial crises is a clear link between financial shock and political catastrophe. Our new study documents such a link for one key historical episode – a financial shock increased support for a radical agenda that successfully blamed a minority for the general population’s misery.

Read the full article.

Capital DE’s Christian Schütte in an article titled How the bank crash promoted the rise of the Nazis in 1931 wrote,

The German banks collapsed in the summer of 1931. The global economic crisis turned into a severe recession. A dictatorship from a shaky democracy.

[ … ]

Only a year and a half later the new Chancellor was called Adolf Hitler.

Did Hitler nationalize the German banks? No, he said there was no need to nationalize banks and industries when he had already nationalized the people (into the military). He gave huge military contracts to industries and they couldn’t be happier.

‘Rapid Deterioration’ as Moody’s Rating Service Downgrades U.S. Banking System

Spencer Brown | Townhall March 14, 2023 wrote,

Following the biggest bank failure since the financial crisis of 2008, Moody’s Investor Service has downgraded its rating of the “U.S. banking system” in the latest sign that President Biden’s Monday morning attempt to assuage concerns went over like a lead balloon.

Moody’s cuts outlook on entire U.S. banking system to negative, citing ‘rapidly deteriorating operating environment’ – CNBC

Moody’s — one of three major rating entities — downgraded its outlook for the U.S. banking system from “stable” to “negative” on Tuesday morning “to reflect the rapid deterioration in the operating environment following deposit runs at Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), Silvergate Bank, and Signature Bank (SNY) and the failures of SVB and SNY,” Moody’s explained.

In addition to downgrading the entire banking system, Moody’s also issued warnings for several individual banks “with substantial unrealized securities losses and with non-retail and uninsured US depositors” that “may still be more sensitive to depositor competition or ultimate flight” and end up “with adverse effects on funding, liquidity, earnings and capital.”

The unrealized losses, specifically, have become substantial:

View FDIC Unrealized Gains (Losses) on Investment Securities infographic.

The specific institutions being monitored by Moody’s for “potential downgrades” include INTRUST Financial, Western Alliance, Comerica, Zions Bancorp, and First Republic.

Markets, however, did not seem to move much on the news.

Moody’s just cut its outlook on U.S. banking system to negative due to ‘rapidly deteriorating operating environment’

Keep reading.

Nationalizing American Banks

Roger Altman, the former Deputy Treasury Secretary in the Clinton administration, told CNN host Kaitlan Collins,

What the authorities did over the weekend was absolutely profound. They guaranteed the deposits, all of them, at Silicon Valley Bank. What that really means — and they won’t say it, and I’ll come back to that — what that really means is that they have guaranteed the entire deposit base of the U.S. financial system. The entire deposit base.

Watch the interview with Roger Altman.

Federal regulators shut down Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) Friday after its stock price collapsed and customers began a bank run following the financial institution’s disclosure of a $1.8 billion loss on asset sales due to high interest rates, CNBC reported.

America is now in a situation in which the federal government is in the process seizing control of the banks. This is the final economic step to tyranny.

We know that the Biden administration has expanded its government powers, conducted surveillance on U.S. citizens, colluded with social media to censor its political enemies and arrested and imprisoned those who peacefully demonstrated on January 6th, 2021.

The nationalization of our banks may be the last nail the Constitutional Republic.

It may also be the last nail in our economic freedom.

©Dr. Rich Swier. All rights reserved.

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‘Non-Binary Climate Change Activist’: Tucker Carlson Mocks Left-Wingers In New Twitter Bio

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Fox News host and Daily Caller co-founder Tucker Carlson mocked left-wing elitists and activists in his newly updated Twitter bio Tuesday.

Carlson’s updated Twitter page describes him as a “non-binary climate change activist of color,” as well as a “visionary tech founder” and “CNBC market analyst,” and an “informal” advisor to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. The description then ends with two transgender flag emojis.

“Non-binary climate change activist of color. Visionary tech founder. CNBC market analyst. Informal Zelensky advisor,” the account reads.

The Daily Caller co-founder originally mocked liberals on his Twitter account, which has 5.8 million followers, by labeling himself “fully vaccinated” and listing his pronouns as “They/Theirs” next to an emoji of the Ukrainian flag. He also described himself as an “Emmy-award-winning broadcast journalist, graduate of Harvard College & Yale Law School” and a “frequent visitor to the Aspen Inst.”

Carlson previously said he created the first social media mockery over his anger toward the House vote to send $40 million in military and humanitarian aid to Ukraine. The most-watched Fox News anchor has repeatedly criticized Congress and President Joe Biden’s administration for aiding Ukraine and Zelensky as the U.S.-Mexico border remains in an ongoing crisis.

“That Ukraine vote made me so mad, I’m desperate to amuse myself,” he said in May.

AUTHOR

NICOLE SILVERIO

Media reporter.

RELATED ARTICLE: ‘They Control Your Brain’: Tucker Argues The Left Uses The ‘Trans Movement’ To ‘Censor’ People

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.

China President Xi Plans Meeting with Zelensky to Discuss Peace Proposal, Mediating End To The War

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Wiping the floor with Biden.

This was America’s global role and responsibility (not marching to WWIII) before the 2020 coup.

Watch the Democrat party of treason spins this faster than Rumpelstiltskin.

Chinese leader Xi Jinping plans to speak with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky for the first time since the start of the Ukraine war, likely after he visits Moscow next week to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin, according to people familiar with the matter.

The meetings with Messrs. Putin and Zelensky, the latter of which is expected to take place virtually, reflect Beijing’s effort to play a more active role in mediating an end to the war in Ukraine, some of the people said.

Xi Jinping Plans Meeting with Volodymyr Zelensky to Discuss Peace Proposal

Chinese leader Xi Jinping plans to speak with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky for the first time since the start of the Ukraine war, likely after he visits Moscow next week to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin, according to people familiar with the matter. The meetings with Messrs. Putin and Zelensky reflect Beijing’s effort to play a more active role in mediating an end to the war in Ukraine. A direct conversation with Mr. Zelensky would mark a significant step in Beijing’s efforts to play peacemaker in Ukraine. It would also bolster Beijing’s credentials as a global power broker after it facilitated a surprise diplomatic breakthrough between Saudi Arabia and Iran last week

Read more.

China’s Xi to meet Putin in Moscow, speak to Zelenskyy: reports

BY STUART LAU • MARCH 13, 2023

Chinese President Xi Jinping is planning to visit Moscow to meet with Vladimir Putin as early as next week, according to reports by Reuters and the Wall Street Journal.

The U.S. newspaper added that Xi would also call Ukraine’s leader, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, which will be the first time the two men will have had direct communication, at least publicly, since the Russian invasion started more than a year ago.

The Kremlin last week refused to comment on reports saying that Xi would be in the Russian capital on March 21.

Xi, who broke with tradition and embarked on his third five-year term as president last week, has long considered Putin his “old friend,” while the two governments reached a “no-limit partnership” shortly before Putin waged war on Ukraine.

Read more.

AUTHOR

Pamela Geller

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

‘Rapid Deterioration’: Moody’s Rating Service Downgrades U.S. Banking System

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It’s coming down fast, folks. Literally and figuratively.

Biden voters have destroyed this country.

‘Rapid Deterioration’: Major Rating Service Downgrades U.S. Banking System

By: Spencer Brown | Townhall March 14, 2023 12:00 PM

Following the biggest bank failure since the financial crisis of 2008, Moody’s Investor Service has downgraded its rating of the “U.S. banking system” in the latest sign that President Biden’s Monday morning attempt to assuage concerns went over like a lead balloon.

Moody’s cuts outlook on entire U.S. banking system to negative, citing ‘rapidly deteriorating operating environment’ – CNBC

Moody’s — one of three major rating entities — downgraded its outlook for the U.S. banking system from “stable” to “negative” on Tuesday morning “to reflect the rapid deterioration in the operating environment following deposit runs at Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), Silvergate Bank, and Signature Bank (SNY) and the failures of SVB and SNY,” Moody’s explained.

In addition to downgrading the entire banking system, Moody’s also issued warnings for several individual banks “with substantial unrealized securities losses and with non-retail and uninsured US depositors” that “may still be more sensitive to depositor competition or ultimate flight” and end up “with adverse effects on funding, liquidity, earnings and capital.”

The unrealized losses, specifically, have become substantial:

View FDIC Unrealized Gains (Losses) on Investment Securities infographic.

The specific institutions being monitored by Moody’s for “potential downgrades” include INTRUST Financial, Western Alliance, Comerica, Zions Bancorp, and First Republic.

Markets, however, did not seem to move much on the news.

Moody’s just cut its outlook on U.S. banking system to negative due to ‘rapidly deteriorating operating environment’

Keep reading.

AUTHOR

Pamela Geller

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

WATCH: Biden Says Opposing the Mutilation of Children Is ‘Close to Sinful’

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Old Joe Biden appeared on Comedy Central’s The Daily Show Monday night, where the guest host Kal Penn, star of the deathless classic Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay, asked him about same-sex marriage and boys who want to become girls and girls boys. In response, Biden struck a moral tone, suggesting that support for same-sex marriage and the genital mutilation of children in pursuit of delusions and fantasies was simply the decent position to take, and darn it, Lunchbucket Joe didn’t see why it had to be any more complicated than that.

As we have all come to expect by now, Biden lied when he told a story that he has told before about his alleged “epiphany” on same-sex marriage. As Matt Margolis shows here, Biden claims to have begun to support same-sex marriage as a teenager, when he saw two men kissing. This was the 1950s, when no one was talking about same-sex marriage and it was extremely rare to see homosexuals kissing in public, so his story is dubious on its face. But Matt demonstrates that Biden opposed same-sex marriage decades after that, casting his entire “epiphany” into doubt. Old Joe even threw in his patented insistence “I’m not joking,” which he often says when he’s in the middle of telling a lie.

Then, when Biden turned to discussion of today’s fashionable gender madness, the conversation got even worse.

Penn had asked the ostensible president about what the government could do to protect the “trans kids who are dealing with all these regressive state laws that are popping up right now.” Biden replied, “Transgender kids is a really harder dnnnn. Thing. What’s going on in Florida,” and here he paused, shaking his head, weary at the evil of it all, “is, as my mother would say, close to sinful.”

What’s going on in Florida? Last October, the Florida Board of Medicine voted to ban the mutilation of children in the name of attempting to aid them to pretend that they’re of the opposite sex. At a Board workshop on this issue, a woman named Chloe Cole, who had embarked upon the path that she thought would make her a man, described the monstrousness of the procedures involved in abetting these delusions:  “My breasts were beautiful, now they’ve been incinerated for nothing. Thank you, modern medicine. At 13, I started taking puberty blockers and testosterone, and at 15, I underwent a double mastectomy in which my breasts were removed and my nipples were grafted. And yet, at 16, after years of medically transitioning, I came to realize that I severely regretted my transition.”

Woke doctors sold Cole a lie: “During my diagnosis for dysphoria and the consultations for these treatments, the overall picture of my life just went completely unaddressed….I was introduced to inappropriate content and an echo chamber of far-left ideology, such as that sex and gender are separate, women are inherently victims, men are inherently superior in every way, and that dysphoric children need hormones and surgeries in order to live.” This Mengelian manipulation is what Old Joe Biden was saying it’s “close to sinful” to stop.

Old Joe rambled on semi-coherently, claiming to be on the side of the good and loving: “It’s terrible what they’re doing. It’s not like a kid wakes up one morning and says, ‘You know, I decided I want to become a man’ or ‘I want to become a woman’ or ‘I want to change.’ I mean, what are they thinking about here? They’re human beings. They love. They have feelings. They have inclinations that are… I mean, it just, to me, is, I don’t know, is, it’s cruel.” No. What’s cruel is putting children on a path that they think will help them attain their delusions, only to find that it’s impossible for them to discard what they are and become something else.

What’s cruel is Old Joe Biden pretending that any of this butchery and mutilation is compassionate. But he is determined to protect these Frankensteinian, life-destroying procedures by law: he said that we need to “make sure we pass legislation like we passed with same-sex marriage. You mess with that, you’re breaking the law and you’re going to be held accountable.”

Will Biden himself ever be held accountable for the human cost of his misplaced “compassion”? Almost certainly not. He’s more likely to get a Nobel Prize than to face the repudiation and shame that should be coming to him for endorsing this inhuman social contagion. Still, Biden’s appropriation of religious language to support this disgusting barbarism is one of the most disgraceful episodes of this singularly repulsive man’s noxious career.

AUTHOR

ROBERT SPENCER

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

Thousands of Schools Won’t Tell Parents About Kids’ Gender Transition: Report

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More than 5,000 schools across the nation allow teachers to hide a child’s decision to identify as a member of the opposite sex from the child’s parents. The parental exclusion policy — which is heavily advocated by LGBT lobbying groups and applies to more than 3.2 million children nationally — has already resulted in the sexual trafficking of at least one young girl.

A total of 5,904 schools in 168 school districts nationwide allow, or require, teachers to conceal children’s transgender “social transition” — in which children change their name or preferred pronouns, or begin using the locker rooms of the opposite sex — from their parents. School districts keeping legal guardians ignorant about their children’s life-altering decisions stretch from Portland, Maine, to Portland, Oregon, and from Alaska to Arizona.

“This investigation shows that parental exclusion policies are a problem from coast-to-coast — and that living in a red state doesn’t mean that families are automatically shielded from this issue,” said Nicole Neily, president of Parents Defending Education (PDE), which compiled the list. PDE discovered four districts in deep-red Kansas that have adopted the policy, crafted by LGBT activists. For example, Wichita Public Schools’ teacher training claims, “The lack of using [a child’s preferred] pronouns could lead to death.”

In all, PDE reports, such policies affect 3,268,752 students — and their parents — in 28 states and the District of Columbia.

“This list is not comprehensive,” the report notes.

A Virginia high school’s decision to conceal a teenage girl’s gender transition ended with the teen being drugged, gang-raped and, on two separate occasions, sexually trafficked. In August 2021, 14-year-old Sage began attending Appomattox County High School. Her biological grandmother, Michele, who legally adopted her, said Sage told her “all the girls there were bi, trans, lesbian, emo,” and Sage soon decided she “wanted to wear boys’ clothes.” But Michele added, Sage told school officials “she was now a boy named Draco with male pronouns. Sage asked the school not to tell me, and they did not tell me.”

After a group of boys accosted and threatened to rape her in the boys’ restroom, Michele took Sage home and found a pass made out to “Draco.” Michele said Sage was too afraid to return to school, so she ran away to meet an online “friend,” who sexually trafficked her through Washington, D.C. and Maryland. By the time the FBI found her locked inside a room in Baltimore nine days later, Michele recalled, Sage had been “locked in a room, drugged, gang-raped, and brutalized by countless men.”

“One of the expert witnesses in the hearing [on January 30] confirms that online predators do target social media accounts of children who list themselves as ‘ftm’ or ‘female to male,’” Delegate David LaRock (R-Berryville) told The Daily Signal.

But Sage’s nightmare had only begun. A judge accused Michele and her husband of inflicting “emotional and physical abuse” by “misgendering” their granddaughter. The judge had Sage committed to the male section of a children’s home, where she was “repeatedly beaten” and “given street drugs,” Michele said. Sage ran away from the home, but the FBI found her in the grips of a sexual trafficking in Texas. Sage had again “been drugged, raped, beaten, and exploited.”

“Sage isn’t unique,” LaRock told “Washington Watch with Tony Perkins” on February 9, although “the degree to which she’s been violated is, hopefully, rare.”

Reports of schools allowing or encouraging minors to “socially transition” to another gender have trickled out, as outraged parents have taken legal action against the districts on PDE’s list. A coalition of parents sued Iowa’s Linn-Mar Community School District last summer. Last month, Amber Lavigne filed a lawsuit against the Great Salt Bay Community School in the coastal Maine village of Damariscotta — population 2,300 — after she found a chest binder in her 13-year-old daughter’s belongings. A social worker facilitated the child’s decision to identify as another gender, and the school withheld all information from her mother, according to her legal counsel. “The school never stopped trying to keep me in the dark at every turn, repeatedly stonewalling me when I tried to find out what was going on,” said an exasperated Lavigne, who is represented by the Goldwater Institute. “My parental rights aren’t up for debate: I deserve to know what’s happening to my child in school.”

“Counselors and teachers didn’t tell Sage’s family about the fact that she was transgender. And she got caught up in some horrific human trafficking issues, and they almost lost her,” Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin (R) told a CNN townhall last Wednesday. “There’s a basic rule here, which is that children belong to parents — not to the state, not to schools, not to bureaucrats, but to parents.”

Last September, Youngkin enacted model school guidelines that affirm, “School personnel shall keep parents fully informed about all matters that may be reasonably expected to be important to a parent.” Parents may “determine (a) what names, nicknames, and/or pronouns, if any, shall be used for their child by teachers and school staff while their child is at school, (b) whether their child engages in any counseling or social transition at school that encourages a gender that differs from their child’s sex, or (c) whether their child expresses a gender that differs with their child’s sex while at school,” the guidelines add.

Despite Youngkin’s actions, the report lists seven school districts in Virginia that continue to hide social transition from parents.

To remedy the situation, LaRock introduced “Sage’s Law” (H.B. 2432), which requires school officials to contact parents if a child begins using names or pronouns not consistent with his or her sex. The bill passed the House of Delegates on February 6 by a narrow 50-48, party-line vote. (Democratic Delegate Cliff Hayes also intended to vote no.) It is currently under Senate consideration.

The Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives is taking steps to assure no American parent is frozen out of his or her child’s life decisions. Last week, House Republicans advanced a measure barring any federally funded elementary or middle school from changing a “minor child’s gender markers, pronouns, or preferred name” on any school form, or allowing students to use the restrooms and changing facilities of the opposite sex. The House Education and the Workforce Committee adopted the measure — originally introduced as a separate bill, the Parental Rights Over the Education and Care of Their (PROTECT) Kids Act, by Rep. Tim Walberg (R-Mich.) — as an amendment to the Parents Bill of Rights (H.R. 5). Senator Tim Scott (R-S.C.) introduced a companion bill in the Senate (S. 200).

Walberg, an ordained pastor who once worked for the Moody Bible Institute, found it “unconscionable that some believe that parents should be kept in the dark regarding gender transitions of their own children. He urged Congress to “ensure that schools do not hide important information about children from their own parents,” “increase transparency, and defend the God-given authority and rights of parents.”

President Joe Biden is all but certain to veto such a bill. The president’s now-inactive nonprofit, the Biden Foundation, partnered with Gender Spectrum, a group whose “Gender Support Plan” tells schools to have “contingencies in place” if parents find out their child is “being supported” against their will. Since taking office, Biden has said transgenderism reflects “the image of God.”

You may see PDE’s incomplete list of the school districts that have adopted anti-parental rights transgender policies here. The group asks citizens to report such policies to PDE.

“Frighteningly, this only begins to scratch the surface of what is taking place behind closed doors in America’s schools,” said Neily. “Without a doubt, there are hundreds (if not thousands) of others with similar policies on the books.”

AUTHOR

Ben Johnson

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

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