The School Board Queen: How a Florida Mom Is Shaking Up U.S. Education

My wife – Bridget Ziegler – is a Rockstar.

Anyone who has gotten to know her, already knows that, but for those that haven’t yet… Bloomberg headed down to Sarasota to spend a couple days diving into her story and how she became one of the leading Conservative School Board Members in the country.

As you listen to her story and her impact on Education, it’s important to keep in mind that her recent successes – flipping our School Board from 3-2 Liberal to 4-1 Conservative – are a culmination of almost a decade of non-stop efforts battling The Left & The Establishment.

And during that time, my wife was the target of press smears, some very nasty personal attacks and even vile and dangerous attacks on our children. Yet, she persevered and our School District, local Community and the next generation of children will be better off because of it.

Then reply back and share what you think of the discussion and what your thoughts are about your local School Board & public education.

The School Board Queen: How a Florida Mom Is Shaking Up US Education

Bridget Ziegler is a leader in the parental rights movement focused on US school board elections. The final episodes of the “Bedrock, USA” podcast examine her conservative agenda.

By  and 

After all the talk of a “red wave” in 2022’s US midterm elections, the anticipated Republican sweep failed to materialize. Or did it?

At the school board level, candidates who opposed mask mandates and how gender and race are addressed in schools won about 30% of board seats, according to Ballotpedia, a nonprofit that tracks elections. Faced with new challengers, school board incumbents lost their elections at higher rates in 2021 and 2022 than in the previous three years,  Ballotpedia’s analysis shows.

Up until 2021, “people really weren’t paying a lot of attention to what was going on in these elections,” says Doug Kronaizl, a senior staff writer with Ballotpedia. “And now all of a sudden people are paying very close attention to what’s going on.”

At the forefront of this trend is Bridget Ziegler, a school board member in Sarasota, Florida, and a mother of three. She is a founding member of Moms for Liberty, the right-wing activist group, and she has the support of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis; she says she was influential in helping pass the Florida Parental Rights in Education Act, and is now supporting the governor’s Stop W.O.K.E. Act. Last year, she was put in charge of training people on how to run for school boards for the Leadership Institute, a conservative nonprofit that’s been helping politicians all over the country since the 1970s, including with big wins during the 2022 midterms.

Over three chapters, “The School Board Queen” podcast explores who Bridget Ziegler is, what she stands for, and how she plans to help reshape and influence American education. The miniseries is part of “ Bedrock, USA” — a podcast from Bloomberg CityLab and iHeart Media that examines how the far right is making inroads into local government.

Listen to Chapter 1 here

The first episode looks at why Ziegler ran for school board — it was actually her husband’s idea. (Christian Ziegler is vice chair of the Florida GOP and currently running for chair.) Her goal was to help shape the schools her children would some day attend. Once she got on the school board she encountered members she called “mean” and unprofessional. She didn’t buy into how school boards were being run — too much control was given to the superintendent, she says. We also talk to Caroline Zucker, a school board member who worked alongside Ziegler and switched from Republican to Democrat because she “couldn’t take the shenanigans going on anymore.”

Listen to Chapter 2 here

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In the second episode, we journey back in time to the 1950s and 1960s and discover the origins of the conservative movement in education. We speak to two historians, Michelle Nickerson and Natalia Mehlman Petrzela. Nickerson describes how conservative activists in the 1950s and 1960s pushed back against progressive measures for that era. And Mehlman Petrzela discusses how sex education took center stage in the culture wars of the 1960s and 1970s. We draw a throughline from back then to today, and the big common denominator: the overreaching arm of government in children’s lives.

Listen to Chapter 3 here

The last episode digs in with Ziegler about why she has been called racist and homophobic. She has criticized the Black Lives Matter movement and how it was taught in schools, and she has promoted unscientific ideas around trends in trans youth. She explains her beliefs and why she is supporting Governor DeSantis in his education agenda. We also spend time with an eleventh grade trans teenager who talks about what it’s like to be a student in Florida after the Florida Parental Rights in Education Act was passed.

©Christian Ziegler. All rights reserved.

Florida College Presidents Pledge To Not Fund Critical Race Theory, Diversity Initiatives On Campus

The Florida College System (FCS) presidents said on Wednesday that no state funds will be used to support diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) or critical race theory (CRT) initiatives on campus, according to Florida’s Voice.

The presidents confirmed in a collective letter that none of the system’s 28 institutions would use state money to “fund or support any institutional practice, policy, or academic requirement that compels belief in critical race theory or related concepts such as intersectionality, or the idea that systems of oppression should be the primary lens through which teaching and learning are analyzed and/or improved upon,” the letter, obtained by Florida’s Voice, read. The announcement came after Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration requested information about how colleges and universities used state funding to support DEI or CRT initiatives on campus.

“Historically, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives served to increase diversity of thought as well as the enrollment and the success of underrepresented populations and promote the open access mission of our state college system,” the letter reportedly reads. “The presidents of the Florida College System (FCS) also understand that some initiatives and instruction in higher education under the same title have come to mean and accomplish the very opposite and seek to push ideologies such as critical race theory and its related tenets.”

The presidents clarified that any initiative to limit CRT in the classroom will not infringe on academic freedom, but instructors will be required to teach the material in a “objective manner.”

“In the development of knowledge, research endeavors, and creative activities, a college faculty and student body must be free to cultivate a spirit of inquiry and scholarly criticism, and to examine ideas in an atmosphere of freedom and confidence, free from shielding and in a nondiscriminatory manner,” the letter continues. “The FCS presidents remain committed to developing campus environments that uphold objectivity in teaching and learning and in professional development and that welcome all voices- environments in which students, faculty, and staff can pursue their academic interests without fear of reprisal or being ‘canceled.’”

FCS presidents will review and remove any “any institutional instruction, training, and policies” by Feb. 1 considered to be discriminatory, according to the letter.

“I would like to commend our presidents for ensuring our state colleges are environments where all students can embrace educational freedom and acquire the knowledge and skills necessary for a thriving career,” Manny Diaz Jr., Florida’s education commissioner, told Florida’s Voice.

Diaz and DeSantis’ office did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.

AUTHOR

ALEXA SCHWERHA

Contributor.

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Team Biden Joins the School Library Wars, Launching Federal Investigation

UPDATE:


“Whoever succeeds in telling the stories to the children gets to control the future.” That was Kirk Cameron’s answer to people wondering why he’s joined the debate over America’s libraries. As parents everywhere fight to keep graphic content out of their children’s hands, Texas officials are warning the battle is taking an ominous turn. It’s not just the forces of the Left that communities will have to contend with. It’s the federal government, whose new investigation into a local school district could upend every grassroots effort to protect kids.

For leaders in Texas’s Granbury School District, the bomb dropped shortly before Christmas. Officials in the Civil Rights Division of Biden’s Department of Education (DOE) said they’d received a formal complaint from the ACLU that the small community outside Fort Worth was somehow violating the government’s definition of “sex” by pulling books from school library shelves.

The ACLU’s beef dates back to November 2021 when Texas Governor Greg Abbott (R) urged the state’s association of school boards to “ensure no child is exposed to pornography or other inappropriate content in a Texas public school.” His letter, which keyed off parents’ growing outrage about the material on school shelves, insisted on greater transparency about the content students can access. Abbott said his office had been contacted by a number of moms and dads who were “rightfully angry” about the “pornographic and obscene” content.

Granbury officials took the governor’s directive to heart, ordering a review of the district’s book titles. But what ultimately landed the district in hot water was a candid conversation Superintendent Jeremy Glenn had with the schools’ librarians — which was eventually leaked to the press. He talked about the conservative make-up of the community and insisted that they would act accordingly. “We do have a very conservative board,” Glenn said in a reference to the two new school board members. “They are elected, and recently more conservative. And so that’s what our community is. That’s what our job is.”

At the end of the day, Glenn insisted, “I don’t want a kid picking up a book, whether it’s about homosexuality or heterosexuality, and reading about how to hook up sexually in our libraries. … And I’m going to take it a step further with you,” the superintendent went on. “There are two genders. There’s male, and there’s female. And I acknowledge that there are men that think they’re women. And there are women that think they’re men. And again, I don’t have any issues with what people want to believe, but there’s no place for it in our libraries. … I’m cutting to the chase on a lot of this,” Glenn insisted. “It’s the transgender, LGBTQ, and the sex — sexuality — in books. That’s what the governor has said that he will prosecute people for, and that’s what we’re pulling out.”

Over the next two weeks, Granbury embarked on what the Texas Tribune called “one of the largest book removals in the country, pulling about 130 titles from library shelves for review.” Two months later, the volunteer review committee inexplicably voted to return all but three books that they’d permanently banned.

By then, the audio of Glenn’s meeting had made its way to the media, and liberal news outlets like the Texas Tribune, ProPublica, and NBC News pounced, accusing Glenn of anti-LGBT bias. That’s when the local chapter of the ACLU got involved, demanding an apology and calling for every book to be reinstated.

Glenn didn’t oblige, conveying through district spokesman Jeff Meador that all the titles they’d pulled from shelves are “sexually explicit and not age-appropriate.” That said, the libraries “continue to house a socially and culturally diverse collection of books for students to read, including,” he pointed out, “books that analyze and explore LGBTQ+ issues.”

Naturally, that didn’t satisfy the ACLU, whose lawyers decided to involve the federal government in a local dispute that could have a chilling effect nationwide. “If the government finds in the ACLU’s favor,” The Washington Post cautioned, “the determination could have implications for schools nationwide, experts said, forcing libraries to stock more books about LGBTQ individuals and requiring administrators — amid a rising tide of book challenges and bans — to develop procedures ensuring student access to books that some Americans, especially right-leaning parents, deem unacceptable.”

Of course, the heart of the ACLU’s allegation — that Granbury (and Glenn, especially) is violating the Left’s new definition of “sex” — is a stretch by almost every legal standard. The Biden administration may have twisted the word “sex” to mean “gender identity” and “sexual orientation,” but that interpretation has never been passed into federal Title IX law.

And yet, the ACLU’s Chloe Kempf maintains (unconvincingly) that the “book removals and also the comments create this pervasively hostile environment.” “Both send a message to the entire community that LGBTQ identities are inherently obscene, worthy of stigmatization — and the book removals uniquely deprive LGBTQ students of the opportunity to read books that reflect their own experiences.”

Conservatives pushed back, insisting that this isn’t about LGBT hostility but age-appropriate content. Meg Kilgannon, senior fellow for Education Studies at Family Research Council, insisted that this whole controversy amounts to a leftist intimidation campaign. “The ACLU is bullying school districts who have responded to parental concerns about pornographic library books offered to children. Access to pornography at school is not a civil right.” Even if the law had been changed to include “sexual orientation and gender identity” in Title IX, “children still do not have a right to sexually explicit or violent content in public school library books. And school systems are under no obligation to support a publishing industry who can’t sell these books to parents and so sells them to librarians instead.”

Frankly, Kilgannon argued, “This is federal overreach into the education system, which is supposed to be a state issue.” Not to mention that “Biden is weaponizing another government agency: the DOE.”

If the president does intervene, dictating how school libraries handle certain book titles, the issue will almost certainly end up in court. “This isn’t the sort of civil rights issue that requires federal intervention,” Will Flanders of the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty argued. “It’s a question about books in schools, not about individual rights being violated.”

Either way, it does show one thing: the potency of the parents’ movement. Cameron, who’s in his own fight to host story hours in the same libraries that allow drag queens, is witnessing the momentum firsthand. As many as 1,000 people turned out in Placentia, Calif. to hear the “Growing Pains” actor read his new book, “As You Grow.”

“I know why parents and grandparents are coming out of the woodwork,” Cameron told The Federalist. “They understand there is a war on children — and nobody’s going to stop it but us.” So if there’s one thing Americans can do, he told the crowd, it’s this: “Don’t just talk about what’s going on. Change what’s going on.”

AUTHOR

Suzanne Bowdey

Suzanne Bowdey serves as editorial director and senior writer 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.

Report: U.S. Is ‘Most Permissive Country’ for Minor Gender Transition

UPDATE:


”The United States is the most permissive country when it comes to the legal and medical gender transition of children,” according to a 12-country policy review by medical advocacy group Do No Harm. The group compared “different legal requirements for gender change-related treatments and actions” among the U.S. and the 11 countries of Northern and Western Europe. These countries — Belgium, Denmark, Iceland, Ireland, Finland, France, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, and the United Kingdom — “share the United States’ broad support for transgenderism” yet “reject the gender-affirming care model for children.”

Do No Harm explained that America has adopted a “gender affirmation” policy for children, which “assumes that gender incongruence can manifest as early as age four and that questioning a minor’s gender self-definition is harmful and unethical. The American Academy of Pediatrics has embraced an affirm-only/affirm-early policy since 2018, and most states abide by its guidance despite withering medical and scientific criticism.” By contrast, some European countries “have explicitly abandoned” the gender-affirming care model and “now discourage automatic deference to a child’s self-declaration on the grounds that the risks outweigh the benefits.” They also recommend “months-long psychotherapy sessions to address co-occurring mental health problems.”

The report proceeded with a country-by-country comparison of requirements for the medical and legal gender transition of children.

American restrictions on puberty blockers vary by state, but “the most permissive states do not impose restrictions,” and blockers have been prescribed “as early as age eight.” Oregonians “are legally entitled” to blockers “from age 15,” with Medicaid assistance and without parental consent. In Iceland, there is “no minimum age” except as a “matter of clinical judgment.” The U.K. permits blockers “from the earliest stages of puberty,” while Belgium, France, and Norway permit blockers from Tanner Stage II, or “once physiological signs of puberty manifest.” Denmark, Netherlands, and Sweden allow puberty blockers “from age 12.” Finland allows them “about age 13.” Ireland allows them “under 16 years old.” In tiny Luxembourg, “no official guidance exists,” but “in practice, adolescents almost always receive blockers in a neighboring country.”

Restrictions on prescribing cross-sex hormones (estrogen and testosterone) to minors also vary state by state across the U.S., but “the practice has been documented with parental consent in children under the age of 13.” In Oregon, minors may “access cross-sex hormones from age 15 without consent and with Medicaid assistance.” France has “no age restrictions” on cross-sex hormones, but “clinicians generally will not administer them before Tanner Stage II.” Again, Luxembourg has “no official guidance,” but “Patients almost always receive hormones in a neighboring Country.” In every other European country studied, cross-sex hormones were available “from age 16,” although the U.K. requires that “individuals must have been receiving puberty blockers for at least one year.”

Do No Harm provided few specifics regarding the status of parental consent for these chemical gender transition procedures. They do say that, besides Oregon, “in most states, puberty blockers cannot be administered before age 18 without parental consent,” but they provide no insight on cross-sex hormones. However, California passed a bill in September effectively removing any parental consent requirement.

By contrast, children may not access gender transition chemical treatments until age 16 or 18 in nearly every country. Denmark is the most permissive, allowing children without parental consent to access puberty blockers at 15. In the U.K., “instances of children under 16 receiving blockers without consent are reportedly rare,” although such consent is not required. To access cross-sex hormones without consent in either country, children must be 16. In Iceland, Ireland, Netherlands, and Norway, children must be 16 to access either puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones, although Norway raises the age for cross-sex hormones to 18 “if the treatment is considered irreversible.” Sweden also allows cross-sex hormones without consent at 16, “so long as the individual is deemed sufficiently mature,” while it bars puberty blockers without consent until age 18. In Belgium, Finland, and France, neither treatment is available without parental consent until a person turns 18.

The report also compared the number of youth gender clinics in the various countries. The U.S. led by far, with “more than 60 pediatric gender clinics and 300 clinics” that “provide hormonal interventions to minors.” France also has many locations because “care is decentralized,” and “any doctor can prescribe treatment for medical transition.”

But after that the number quickly dwindles. Sweden administers all gender transition procedures through four hospitals, of which three provide surgery. Denmark administers gender transition hormones at only three locations. There are only two hospitals or clinics providing medical gender transitions in Belgium, Finland, and soon the U.K., which currently has one. Iceland, Ireland, Luxembourg, Netherlands, and Norway have one gender transition facility apiece. Granted, the United States is far larger than many of these countries. But the U.S. has a population 2.5 times larger than all the countries except France, while it has 20 times as many clinics providing hormonal interventions to minors.

Do No Harm also compared the minimum age at which countries allow persons to legally change their gender in civil registries. In the U.S., “there is no minimum age” for federal documentation, such as passports or Social Security cards, but such changes require the consent of both parents. There is more variation in state documentation, such as ID cards and birth certificates, but at least seven states “permit minors to change their birth certificate gender markers with parental consent.”

Three European countries, Iceland, Luxembourg, and the U.K., have policies similar to the U.S. federal government in that there is no age limit, but children under the age of 18 need parental consent to change legally recognized gender. In Norway, gender markers can be changed, with parental permission, from age six, and from age 16 without parental permission. Netherlands also allows 16-year-olds to legally change their gender without parental permission. In Belgium and Ireland, 16-year-olds may change their legal gender identity with parental consent, and 18-year-olds may change it without parental consent. Denmark, Finland, France, and Sweden do not allow minors under the age of 18 to legally change their gender identity.

The U.S. also exceeds most European countries in legally recognizing genders other than male or female. Federal “passports offer an X gender option,” and a sizable number of states allow a gender marker of “X” on identification documents (22 states plus D.C. on driver’s licenses, and 16 states plus D.C. on birth certificates). Only Iceland permits gender variation, allowing “third gender and/or nonbinary designations” on official documents. Denmark and Ireland allow a third gender option on IDs and passports respectively, but their “civil registry is binary.” In the Netherlands, a person may only obtain a gender neutral designation through a court. In the other seven countries, Belgium, Finland, France, Luxembourg, Norway, Sweden, and the U.K., “male and female are the only recognized genders.”

“The United States is the most permissive country when it comes to the legal and medical gender transition of children,” concluded the review. “Only France comes close, yet unlike the U.S., France’s medical authorities have recognized the uncertainties involved in transgender medical care for children and have urged ‘great caution’ in its use.”

“Given the growing body of evidence and the European consensus, which is grounded in medical science and common sense,” pleaded Do No Harm, “the United States should reconsider the gender-affirming care model to protect the youngest and most vulnerable patients.”

AUTHOR

Joshua Arnold

Joshua Arnold is a staff writer 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.

Joe Biden: The Bull Connor of the Pro-Abortion Movement

For a man who ran for president to save the soul of America from racism, former segregationists’ buddy Joe Biden resembles few people more than the infamously abusive police chief Bull Connor. Both allowed domestic terrorists aligned with the Democratic Party to vandalize, bomb, and set fire to their opponents’ churches with impunity while using maximum force to arrest peaceful, Christian, protesters.

Sixty years later, little more than the names and faces have changed: Connor’s allies rallied behind the banner of white supremacy, while Biden’s supporters mobilize around “abortion on demand without apology.” The Biden administration’s refusal to protect pro-life Christians bears an eerie resemblance to Bull Connor’s collusion and selective prosecution. Imagine how civil rights protesters would have fared if George Wallace won the 1964 presidential election, and you get a sense of Biden’s treatment of peaceful, prayerful, pro-life advocates.

‘We’re Going to Allow You 15 Minutes….’

The Freedom Riders, who tested Southern segregation laws from Virginia to New Orleans, planned to stop in Birmingham on May 14, 1961. The Ku Klux Klan — and the Alabama lawman they helped elect Birmingham’s Commissioner of Public Safety, Theophilus Eugene “Bull” Connor — had other plans. The KKK plotted a series of coordinated strikes against the protesters spanning multiple cities. Klansmen knew the details of the demonstrators’ travel itinerary, because the Birmingham sheriff’s department told them — and the sheriff’s department knew, because the FBI told them. As the protesters departed Georgia, Martin Luther King Jr. warned the Freedom Riders, “You will never make it through Alabama.”

In the days leading up to their arrival, Bull Connor personally gave the Klan the green light to rough up Yankee “meddlers.” Connor’s right-hand man, Birmingham Police Department Sgt. Thomas H. Cook, arranged for a meeting with a man named Gary Thomas Rowe, a member of a violent chapter of the Klan — but also an FBI informant. Historian Raymond Arsenault recounts the scene:

Unaware that Rowe planned to relay his words to the Birmingham FBI office, Cook laid out an elaborate plot to bring the Freedom Ride to a halt in Birmingham. He assured Rowe that other members of the Birmingham Police Department, as well as officials of the Alabama Highway Patrol, were privy to the plan and could be counted on to cooperate. “You will work with me and I will work with you on the Freedom Riders,” he promised. “We’re going to allow you 15 minutes. …You can beat ‘em, bomb ‘em, maim ‘em, kill ‘em. I don’t give a s***. There will be absolutely no arrests. You can assure every Klansman in the country that no one will be arrested in Alabama for that fifteen minutes.”

“By God, if you’re going to do this thing,” Cook later told the Imperial Wizard of the Alabama Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, Robert Shelton, “do it right.” Similarly, Bull Connor instructed the Klan to “make them look like a bulldog got a hold of them.”

The Klan didn’t have to be told twice; they planned to strike twice. They swarmed the first of the two vehicles, a Greyhound bus, when it arrived in nearby Anniston, breaking its windows and slashing its tires. Police escorted the protesters as far as the city limits … where the Klansmen were waiting. One Klansman threw an explosive device into the back of the bus and, as protesters scurried out of the door for their lives, the mob beat them savagely. “Then, God Almighty intervened,” remembered Hank Thomas: The bus’s gas tank exploded in two bursts, frightening the crowd away. “A miracle happened in Anniston.”

Klansmen posed as passengers of the Trailways bus carrying the other group of Freedom Riders. In Anniston, the Klan insisted the riders segregate the bus and pummeled several passengers — including Walter Bergman, then age 61 — to make their point. Although Bergman would remained partially paralyzed for the rest of his life and have to learn to feed himself again, a local policeman told his assailants, “Don’t worry about no lawsuits. I ain’t seen a thing.”

Unfortunately, the real violence awaited in Birmingham. Confident they would face no repercussions, the Klan invited CBS News reporter Howard K. Smith to witness the violence as the bloodied protesters descended the bus stairs to desegregate the terminal’s lunch counters. A mob of Klansmen (including the FBI informant, Rowe) and members of the National States Rights Party swarmed, sometimes beating protesters 12-on-one. The melee continued until one of Connor’s detectives, Red Self, told the Klansmen: “Get the boys out of here. I’m ready to give the signal for the police to move in.”

Faced with local intransigence, the FBI would soon arrest the four people responsible for firebombing the Greyhound, but it would be far from the last act of unpunished violence. A tragic 40 unsolved bombings over two decades earned the city the nickname “Bombingham.”

Not content to outsource his brutality to the Klan, Bull Connor ordered his police to use all means necessary to quash the message of Christian civil rights protesters.

Release the Guilty, Jail the Innocent

Bull Connor’s police proved more likely to arrest peaceful protesters than the Klansmen perpetrators. In April 1963, Martin Luther King Jr. wrote his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” courtesy of Connor’s constabulary. As King and his supporters went to jail for “parading without a permit” (holding unauthorized demonstrations), Connor said:

[W]e are not going to stand for this in Birmingham. And if necessary we will fill the jail full, and we don’t care whose toes we step on. I am saying now to these meddlers from out of our city, the best thing for them to do is stay out if they don’t want to get slapped in jail. … I’ve never seen anyone yet look for trouble who wasn’t able to find it.

Volunteers evaporated from the desegregation campaign. King’s group, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), responded with “The Children’s Crusade,” recruiting more than 1,000 schoolchildren to march through Birmingham on May 2 and 3, 1963. As the youngsters left the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church carrying signs with such messages as, “Segregation is a sin,” Connor’s men arrested 959 the first night. But they did not merely apprehend the marchers: Police blasted young children with high-powered firehoses, beat them with batons, and sicced police dogs on them.

The cruelty was the point. The pretense of law masked ruthless hatred, as segregationists used overwhelming force to discourage them from ever again publicly voicing views disfavored by the powerful.

As the French say, “Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.” The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Joe Biden Bull-ies the Pro-Life Movement

Fast forward 60 years, and violent hatemongers with powerful political allies have again received free rein to terrorize their nonviolent, Christian foes. But Jane’s Revenge has enjoyed more than a 15-minute reign of terror. Since the leak of the Supreme Court’s Dobbs ruling last May 2, pro-abortion fanatics have launched a wave of arsons, vandalism, and death threats against at least 101 pro-life churches or pregnancy resource centers. Abortion activists firebombed pro-life pregnancy resource centers in the same way Bull Connor let the Klan firebomb Freedom Riders’ buses — with the same number of arrests: zero. Leftist extremists perpetrated 52 attacks before the FBI even announced its investigation.

This wave of violence, like most cowardly violence, targets the powerless — unborn babies, their desperate mothers, and the nonviolent Christian churches and nonprofits that serve them — but this wave also victimized the powerful with impunity. On June 13, two people threw a lit flare into the offices of Washington State Rep. Andy Barkis (R). Eight days later, vandals smashed the windows at the local office of U.S. Rep. Tim Walberg (R-Mich.). Like the Klan in Alabama, pro-abortion fanatics feel confident enough to leave their calling card — often scrawling, “If abortion isn’t safe, neither are you” on pro-life women’s centers and churches — and to alert the media they will take “increasingly drastic measures.”

Biden’s nonfeasance embodies the administration’s defiant message that its ideological opponents enjoy no legal protection — a far cry from the promise Biden made the day after the media declared him winner of the 2020 election: “I will work as hard for those who didn’t vote for me as those who did.” The atmosphere of hatred has resulted in an 84-year-old pro-life woman being shot. (The male suspect said he shot her by accident.)

At least one congressman has connected the dots. The wave of anti-life terrorism represents “the death cult’s echo of the KKK’s burning cross — brazen, violent intimidation,” said Rep. Dan Bishop (R-N.C.). “But the federal government responded to the KKK. Where is the Biden Justice Department amid this violent campaign of national scope?” The administration, and Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), instead aim to “put a stop” to pro-life pregnancy resource centers.

“To my knowledge, no one — no one — has been prosecuted under the FACE Act,” noted Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) as House Republicans passed a resolution condemning violence against pregnancy resource centers on January 11. J. Edgar Hoover, who shared the racial views of his time, arrested the Anniston bombers in a matter of days. In a world of high-definition security cameras and facial recognition software, Biden and Attorney General Merrick Garland have apparently arrested no one in eight months.

At least, no one who shares the administration’s extreme commitment to abortion. “But if you’re a pro-life activist, and you’re praying outside of an abortion clinic like Mark Houck, guess what happens to you?” asked Jordan. “The FBI kicks in your door, arrests you, puts you in handcuffs, and does it in front of your wife and seven children,” using dozens of heavily armed agents. Biden’s DOJ meted out similar treatment to Paul Vaughn, a 55-year-old father of 11. Just as black-and-white footage of Bull Connor unleashing his dogs on children inspired national revulsion of segregation, Biden’s overreach should inspire outrage at federal collusion with the abortion industry.

As pregnancy resource centers burned, in July Biden’s Justice Department established the Reproductive Rights Task Force to take “proactive and defensive legal action” to protect the abortion industry (and punish its foes) — and tapped as its leader Vanita Gupta, who as a “civil rights” officer in Obama’s DOJ tried to force all public schools to allow men to use women’s restrooms, showers, and overnight accommodations or lose all federal funding. She applied her ideological fervor equally well to abortion. Biden’s Justice Department arrested 26 pro-life advocates by last October, with more following, including:

  • Franciscan friar Fr. Fidelius Mocinski (whose birth name was Christopher), just as local New Jersey prosecutors dropped charges for conducting his “Red Rose Rescues”: entering abortion facilities and giving mothers red roses. In this case, he lay down in front of an abortion facility’s entrance, just as protesters in the ‘60s laid down in front of Lyndon Johnson’s presidential limousine. (“If any demonstrator ever lays down in front of my car,” cracked segregationist Governor George Wallace of Alabama (D) during the 1968 presidential campaign, “it’ll be the last car he’ll ever lay down in front of.”);
  • Nine defendants who entered a Washington, D.C., abortion facility and sang “let there be peace” (as a live-stream of the event shows) in October 2020. At least one of the women had participated in Rose Rescues;
  • Eleven defendants who entered an abortion facility in Tennessee in March 2021. If convicted, some of the defendants stand to serve up to 11 years in prison, three years of supervised release, and fines totaling hundreds of thousands of dollars;
  • Pastor Daniel Courney of Enfield, N.J., one month after it wrung an agreement out of him not to commit “future FACE Act violations” — which, out of fear, would effectively cause him to end his presence outside abortion facilities; and
  • Bevelyn Williams and Edmee Chavannes, who happen to be black women from the South, for allegedly violating the FACE Act as far back as June 2020. (Curiously, their indictment begins with peaceful pro-life activity in 2019.) In one alleged violation in the indictment, Chavannes told an abortion facility employee, “Do not touch me.”

The arrest total seems all the more lopsided, since pro-life women’s centers are 22 times more likely to be attacked than abortion facilities. Both Gupta and Garland touted their work prosecuting pro-life advocates at a civil rights assembly last December. Both invoked Martin Luther King Jr.

As noted, in many cases the Biden administration presses pro-life advocates to sign agreements not to protest any more — a similar tactic employed by the Obama-Biden administration. A federal judge questioned whether the Obama-Biden administration’s prosecution of Mary Susan Pine “was the product of a concerted effort between the Government and the [abortion provider], which began well before the date of the incident at issue, to quell Ms. Pine’s activities.” (Ultimately, the DOJ paid Pine $120,000 in legal fees.) One could be forgiven for asking the same question of these cases.

A trial may conclude some of these acts violated the law, just as civil rights protesters violated the law of their day — the law their peaceful, prayerful actions aimed to change. But today’s prayerful pro-life advocates see their homes raided, not aided, by the federal government led by a vice president who raised bail money for the BLM’s “mostly peaceful” rioters. They face enormous legal bills, a criminal record, huge fines, and perhaps more than a decade in prison.

Despite these pressures, the pro-life movement has not buckled, as the terrorists and their federal government enablers wished. When bombed, they have rebuilt. When denied protection, they have secured their ministries of mercy. When denied justice, they hired their own private investigators. They have suffered long and done good. They have emerged from the fiery crucible of persecution with a stronger resolve to help the weak and save the innocent. The pro-life movement is “hard-pressed on every side, yet not crushed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed — always carrying about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body” … And, one day, manifested in our laws.

We shall overcome.

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.

Social Determinants of Health: A Trojan Horse

Yesterday, I told you how government healthcare programs are getting bigger and how this is the wrong direction for the country.  I also mentioned a relatively new theory from the Left – social determinants of health [SDOH] – that is about to make government healthcare programs even bigger.

Social determinants of health is the idea that social factors like housing, income, and employment have more to do with a person’s health than do individual risk factors like behavior and genetics.  So, if you give poor people free housing, free food, free employment services, free education, free transportation, other free services, and guarantee their income, their health will get better.  This will reduce hospital admissions, as well as overall health spending, the theory goes.  At least that’s the cover story.  The real agenda is radical egalitarian redistribution of income.  But the theory sounds good.  It sounds right.  It sounds plausible.  However, there’s just one problem.  There’s very little evidence for this happy-face assertion.  Billions have already spent on the theory, but the track record of real-world results is not good.

Unfortunately, that hasn’t stopped the government from rushing pell-mell into social determinants of health and into the arms of the people pushing it.  The Biden administration recently announced it is giving states discretion to cover social services under their Medicaid programs.

No one is asking how much this is going to cost.  The federal deficit is already $421 billion for the current fiscal year which began in October.  Sorry, but Uncle Sugar doesn’t have unlimited pots of money.  If the true agenda is redistribution, how much more do you think there is to get with a deficit like that?   Would we even be talking about spending money on social determinants of health if we had to balance our budget?    Also, no one is asking about the downsides.  Nothing in life is perfect.  Shouldn’t lawmakers be informed of the negative consequences before being asked to vote on such a thing?  And speaking of Congress, this sounds like a major change that cannot be done by agency regulation alone under recent Supreme Court jurisprudence.  So where is Congress on this?  Are they falling down on the job again by not reining in agencies from committing us to huge new expenditures without congressional authorization?  Why am I the only one asking these questions?

Tax-exempt hospitals spent $2.5 billion on social determinants of health – housing, employment, education, and food security – from 2017 to 2019.  They are obligated to provide community benefit in exchange for their tax exemptions.  But their spending on social determinants initiatives has fallen off more recently because the evidence such initiatives are effective is limited, a study found.  Another study found social spending reduces unnecessary healthcare use but the costs outweigh the benefits.  Other researchers found no association between overall community benefit spending and hospital readmission rates.  These researchers concluded “the evidence for health outcome improvements from interventions focused on social determinants is thin…. This is very little evidence on which to base billions in investment….”  The study concluding the costs outweighed the benefits found $3.4 million in healthcare savings after $22.4 million was spent on a social determinants case management program.  Costs running seven times bigger than the savings – doesn’t sound like a smart investment to me.

This begs the question: if the evidence is so thin and even counter to what proponents claim, why proceed?  Why is the federal government itching to spend more money on social determinants of health?  Especially when social determinants theory has been criticized for ignoring the importance on health outcomes of personal choices and responsibility regarding alcohol, tobacco, junk food, drugs, and gambling.  Moreover, in a previous commentary, I criticized social determinants theory for ignoring the magnet effect of free stuff from the government drawing ever-larger numbers of people into government dependency.  Wrong direction.

The current administration has made no bones about working towards ‘equity’, ensuring equal outcomes, and redistribution.  Social determinants of health theory – which comes from the redistributionist World Health Organization – is tailor-made for the Biden administration’s goals, whether the theory makes any sense or not.

In making its announcement states can add social determinants to their Medicaid programs, the administration said it will require states to show their social outlays are cost-effective, something the research has failed to show convincingly, so far.  Whether the administration really means it is anybody’s guess, but Republicans on Capitol Hill need to police this to make sure the analysis is on the up and up and to shut the initiative down if it turns out it’s just another redistributionist boondoggle without any real benefit, aside from making redistributionists feel good about being so virtuous in giving away other people’s money.

©Christopher Wright. All rights reserved.

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REPORT: DOJ Decided Against Having FBI Agents Monitor Biden’s Lawyers As They Rifled Through Classified Docs

The Department of Justice (DOJ) considered having FBI agents monitor President Joe Biden’s lawyers as they rifled through classified documents before ultimately rejecting the idea, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported Tuesday.

Biden’s lawyers found classified materials at the Penn Biden Center think tank in Washington, D.C., just before the midterm elections. The president’s legal team then conducted a search of Biden’s properties for other such materials. The president’s lawyers and the DOJ discussed the possibility of having FBI agents monitor the search but later decided against it, according to the WSJ.

The two parties instead agreed to notify the DOJ of any classified materials they found, after which law enforcement would promptly remove the documents from the premises, according to the WSJ.

In addition to the materials found at the Penn Biden Center, Biden’s lawyers found additional documents next to his Corvette in the garage at his Wilmington, Delaware, home in December. More documents have been discovered at his home throughout January.

Attorney General Merrick Garland on Thursday appointed former U.S. Attorney Robert Hur as special counsel to investigate President Joe Biden’s handling of the classified documents. “The extraordinary circumstances here require the appointment of a special counsel for this matter,” Garland said in a statement.

The DOJ did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller’s request for comment about the alleged plan.

AUTHOR

SARAH WEAVER

Social issues reporter.

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

New Body Worn Camera Footage from J6 Supports Calls for Release of All Video

This is why they don’t want the surveillance tapes released.

As one commenter opined, “If the footage supported the leftist narrative it would have been released almost immediately. Instead the left wants to hide the footage because it wants to hide what really happened that day.”

Jan 6 Political Persecution….. more here……

New Body Worn Camera Footage from J6 Supports Calls for Release of All Video

The American people deserve the unvarnished truth, not the Capitol police version of events.

By Julie Kelly, AM Greatness, January 16, 2023

Body-worn camera footage obtained by American Greatness of a D.C. Metropolitan police officer on duty on January 6, 2021, shows the chaos unfolding in real-time that day and how law enforcement’s response to the protest led to rising tension and deadly violence.

Officer Terrence Craig, an 11-year veteran of the force, testified last week in the criminal trial of Richard Barnett, the Arkansas man notoriously photographed with his feet on a desk in then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) office on January 6, 2021. Nearly two-and-a-half hours of video was captured by Craig’s body-worn camera, providing an uninterrupted and shocking view of what happened inside and outside the building.

Never-before-seen interactions with police and protesters bolster demands by House Republicans to release all surveillance video recorded by Capitol security cameras on January 6.

Craig’s video starts with a group of D.C. Metro and Capitol Police advancing toward the west side of the building at 2:30 p.m. The first physical breach occurred about 15 minutes beforehand; Capitol police had used “nonlethal” munitions such as flashbangs, pepper balls, and tear gas on the crowd assembled outside on Capitol grounds for roughly an hour—the first time in department history that officers were ordered to use such dangerous crowd control devices on political protesters.

D.C. police were ordered to dress in full riot gear, including gas masks, face shields, gloves, and ballistic vests. Under cross-examination by Joseph McBride, one of Barnett’s defense attorneys, Craig admitted the officers were “fully geared up” before taking their positions.

McBride: So you’re fully geared up. You’re strapped up from head to toe?
Craig: Yes.
McBride: Ready to rock and roll?
Craig: Yes.

And “rock and roll” they did. The footage showed a dramatic shift in tone from the massive crowd assembled on the Capitol lawn as jack-booted cops arrived on the scene. Craig admitted as much. “[It] was peaceful heading up to the Capitol,” he told McBride. “You can hear the noise and the sounds, and you see the officers on the side.”

But chants of “U.S.A.! U.S.A!” quickly dissipated as the crowd grew agitated at the sight of police officers, faces obscured while dressed in military-type gear, forming groups on the upper terrace. (At least a few SWAT officers can be seen mingling with local police at around 2:45 p.m.)

Police continued to douse the crowd with chemical spray even though protesters were not attempting to breach a line of officers down below.

Craig entered the Rotunda around 2:50 p.m., about five minutes after the fatal shooting of Ashli Babbitt. The area at first appears sparsely populated with protesters and police; in one scene, officers appear to be tending to the injuries of an elderly man lying on the floor.

Physical and verbal confrontations started inside the Rotunda around 3:10 p.m. as police forcibly tried to move the increasingly packed crowd out of the area. “Do you feel big and strong now?” one woman asked the officers. “Does that get you off pushing around a bunch of women? A bunch of fucking unarmed women?” A female voice is then heard screaming, claiming she’s “trying to” get out of the building.

Craig walks throughout the building, at parts chaotic and other parts relatively calm. One man approached Craig to explain that police took his cell phone and asked how he could get it back. Craig’s answers are unintelligible, impaired by the gas mask and face shield. “Sir, I can’t understand you,” the man said as he followed Craig down a set of stairs.

“Wait, is this the Capitol?” the man asked Craig. “Are you serious?” he replied. “I’ve never seen it,” the man said, underscoring the fact many individuals had never before been in the Capitol and did not know where to go or how to exit.

Craig then takes a position outside the building around 3:50 p.m. amid a heavy police presence. The situation is relatively calm. Chants of “We the People” can be heard.

Some police are again confronted by protesters. “Are y’all gonna tear gas us?” one unidentified man said to a line of officers. One D.C. Metro police officer nodded his head. “It’s we the people, not we the cops,” another man shouted. By that point, three Trump supporters were dead, either wholly or partially due to excessive force.

At 4:20, Craig and several other officers suddenly rush back into the building and march toward the lower west terrace tunnel, the scene of the most violent clashes between police and protesters. (This is the same location where police are caught on camera beating women, including Victoria White.)

As Craig approached the mouth of the tunnel, angry shouts can be heard. “You need to stop! Stop!” one individual yelled at police. Several other men can be heard screaming for help while police spray more chemical gas into the crowd.

At least three men and a few officers are seen dragging the lifeless body of Rosanne Boyland to the mouth of the tunnel. Her shirt is pulled up near her head; one man is attempting to administer CPR. Previously-released footage and eyewitness accounts indicate that Boyland, 34, likely died after succumbing to the effects of toxic gas sprayed by police in the enclosed space and what appears to be a beating by another D.C. Metro officer.

“She’s fucking dead! This is on you, motherfuckers!” one man screamed at the officers, who continued to spray the men tending to Boyland. “This is the woman you killed, you fuckers!”

Some throw items at the front line of police as Boyland’s body is dragged face-up through the tunnel and into the building. Physical confrontations with officers continued for another 20 minutes.

Craig relayed his version of events to McBride. “I saw the dead young lady, and they dropped her right in front of me,” Craig calmly explained. “They just brought her and said, ‘Hey, do your job and take care of her.’”

(After prosecutors objected to the line of questions, Judge Christopher Cooper instructed McBride to avoid “[talking] about the circumstances of people dying.”)

Several men involved in the confrontations related to Boyland’s death were arrested, detained, and charged with assaulting police officers. The Department of Justice and news media have carefully controlled the narrative, portraying protesters as the perpetrators of violence rather than the victims, while justifying the fatalities of four Trump supporters on January 6. (Boyland was officially pronounced dead at 6:09 p.m. The D.C. coroner later claimed she died of a drug overdose, a dubious conclusion given public evidence to the contrary.)

AUTHOR

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

White House Confirms: No Visitor Logs for Biden’s Wilmington Home

Mind you, Biden has spent more than a fourth of his presidency working from Delaware and caches of classified documents have been found in this home.

Who and what are they hiding? What foreign adversaries?

And then there is this:

No visitor logs exist for Biden’s Wilmington home, site of classified doc discovery, WH Counsel’s Office says

Biden is under a special counsel investigation for keeping classified documents in the home

By Anders Hagstrom , Peter Doocy | Fox News

There are no visitor logs for President Biden’s home in Wilmington, Delaware, the White House Counsel’s Office said in a Monday statement.

Republicans on Capitol Hill demanded the visitor logs this weekend following revelations that Biden’s lawyers had discovered a stash of classified documents inside the home’s garage. While it is common practice to keep comprehensive visitor logs at the White House, Biden’s lawyers say no such record exists for his home in Delaware.

“Like every President in decades of modern history, his personal residence is personal,” the White House Counsel’s Office told Fox News Digital on Monday. “But upon taking office, President Biden restored the norm and tradition of keeping White House visitors logs, including publishing them regularly, after the previous administration ended them.”

Biden is currently facing a special counsel investigation into his handling of classified documents after at least two stashes were found at his Wilmington home and a pro-Biden think tank in Washington, D.C

The Secret Service also stated Sunday that while a detail is assigned to the home, they do not record visitors.

“We don’t independently maintain our own visitor logs because it’s a private residence,” spokesman Anthony Guglielmi told reporters.

Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., chairman of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, had demanded to see logs for the residence on Sunday.

“Given the serious national security implications, the White House must provide the Wilmington residence’s visitor log,” Comer wrote to White House chief of staff Ron Klain. “As Chief of Staff, you are head of the Executive Office of the President and bear responsibility to be transparent with the American people on these important issues related to the White House’s handling of this matter.”
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Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed a special counsel to investigate the matter on Thursday. He tapped Robert Hur, a former U.S. attorney, to discover “whether any person or entity violated the law in connection with this matter.”

AUTHOR

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

WATCH: Man Wearing ‘Jesus Saves’ Shirt Kicked Out of Mall of America in Minnesota

The guard: “We’ve had guests come up saying that they’ve been offended by your shirt…

There is a very large Somali Muslim population….they’re ‘offended.’

Man Wearing “Jesus Saves” Shirt Kicked Out of Mall of America in Minnesota (Video)

By Anthony Scott, TPG, January 16, 2023 at 4:33pm

A man who was wearing a t-shirt that read “Jesus Saves” was reportedly kicked out of the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota for his shirt being too offensive for others.

Footage of the incident went viral and shows security officers telling the man wearing the green “Jesus Saves” shirt that his shirt was “offending” other shoppers in the mall.

The security would continue to tell the man he either had to remove his shirt or leave the mall.

The back of the man’s shirt read “Jesus is the only way” and had the word “coexist” crossed out.

According to Blaze, the video first emerged on Facebook on January 7th and has been making its way around the web ever since.

In the video, the officers were quoted saying, “Jesus is associated with religion, and it’s offending people.”

The man would respond, “I didn’t speak… I didn’t say anything. I just went to Macy’s.”

Many users on Twitter were shocked this occurred in the United States:

https://twitter.com/Kingjewell8/status/1614922308501520384?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1614922308501520384%7Ctwgr%5E9abb8f6ba779ff6541791e7a7807fe3de3854984%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fgellerreport.com%2F2023%2F01%2Fwatch-man-wearing-jesus-saves-shirt-kicked-out-of-mall-of-america-in-minnesota.html%2F

AUTHOR

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

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.

AUTHOR

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

The White House: A Headquarter for the KGB’s Mafia/Army

“I am worried about capitalism” — Bernard Marcus, Co-founder of Home Depot


What a mess Biden’s America is in! We surrendered Afghanistan to the Taliban-terrorists after twenty years of war and enormous human sacrifices. Then Biden’s America opened our Southern border and the migrants from 160 countries invaded American land, depriving us of our national sovereignty. Watch the politicized FBI and the planned 87 thousand IRS additional members to watch you. Biden killed our energy independence and created an American crisis, which then turned to a global crisis. Who is interested in applying such destructive politics in America? The answer is: Socialist/Globalists, Biden’s White House and his predecessors in the Democrat Party. They have been transforming capitalist America to socialism for the last 3-4 decades. My heart is bleeding, I have run from socialism and dearly love my adopted country, and I don’t want socialism in America!

Socialism corrupts everything it touches. Don’t you feel it in Biden’s America? Something unprecedented happened lately, two Special Counsels have been appointed for two American Presidents: Donald J. Trump and Joe Biden. Aren’t you surprised by the similarity of the cases, conducts and charges? History has always determined our future and present, and knowledge is Power. Therefore the focus of both Special Counsels should be Putin’s Russia, its Intel Apparatus and ideology of Soviet Socialism. I know that because as a former Soviet attorney I have been writing about Russia vis-à-vis America for the last forty years. You can read my columns for free…

We have been talking non-stop about Russia for the last seven years. Yet do we know the subject matter? No, not at all. That is why the long-term discussions didn’t bring any solutions or results. On the contrary, the chaos in America worsened to the highest degree. America doesn’t know about Socialism! Socialism has never worked in Russia and it will never work in China, dealing with very entrepreneurial Chinese people. We know that Socialism didn’t work in many other countries where it has been implemented by force. Look at Venezuela, it is rich in oil, but people run from the Socialist regime. The Chinese military ambitions are known to the world, the Russian covert actions from within are covered up by the Dems. The point is: the Chinese military ambition is known to the world, the Russian covert actions from within are covered up by the Dems to destroy the American Constitutional republic. Do you get it?

America’s national security is the main concern for me and this matter requires a complete knowledge of Russia, its Intel and Security Apparatus. All of them are a direct threat to America’s National Security, which forced me to dedicate forty years of my life to educate and warn the American people about Russia and its Socialist ideology of Soviet Socialism. The Soviet people called it—Stalinism. I have lived under Stalinism half of my life, working within the legal community and learning the agenda of Soviet Socialism. All details you can find in any of my books or in my columns, read them for free at www.drrichswier.com/author/spipko/

Stalinism: Soviet Socialism or Soviet Fascism

The explanation about the current Biden’s Classified Docs scandal started almost a hundred years ago by the agenda of Soviet Socialism, established by Comrade Stalin: One World Socialist Government under Kremlin’s Rule. Stalin’s idea of a world government under the Kremlin’s rule has become a major agenda of the Communist Party for all further Communist leaders. The political ideology translated into the application of force, expansion, invasion, and occupation: the East European Warsaw Pact testified to that. Seeing a rare situation on the globe and America’s vulnerability, Stalin waged a war against Western civilization. I gave this war a new title—WW III. . You can read a lot about WW III in my columns.

Stalin’s domestic policies also applied force against his own people and destroyed Russian agriculture and industry. To enforce his policy Stalin had involved the Soviet security apparatus, including secret police-weaponization of the government. He also determined the exact language of how to wage the war domestically and outside, a Socialist modus operandi: lies, deception, fabrication and fraud. This war has never ended and it is proceeding today in Biden’s America. If you analyze the deeds of Biden’s team, you will find a constant and deliberate application of Stalinist, Socialist modus operandi: lies, deception, fabrication, and fraud. You will find all of these actions purposely used by Biden’s team. Pay attention to that: this is the sign of criminal activities and possibly a “crime scene…”

The title of this segment is not accidental: in my writing for forty years, I had been discussing two terms; whether we were dealing with Soviet Socialism or with Soviet Fascism. I have done it deliberately to emphasize the significance of Stalinism, his ideology and warn the American people and the world about its catastrophic danger. Following Stalin’s timeline and agenda, it should be noticed that Stalin understood the needs of the cadres: he started in Asia. The foundation of North Korea as a Socialist State was the beginning of the “Axis of Evil ” established in 1948. The Korean War Balkanized Asia, caused the Vietnam War and further expansion to help Stalin establish the Chinese Communist State. Read my columns.

Considering Solzhenitsyn’s account, Stalin’s Socialist agenda cost Russia–60 million lives. Other experts suggested—80 million. Counting expansions, invasions, and occupations plus China, and all wars started after the Korean War, I believe that over 200 million people died by fighting for or against Socialism. You should know Stalinism to perceive the current resemblance of two President’s cases—this is a continuation of Stalinist postulate to make Republicans guilty for the crimes the Democrats have committed for decades.

Here is Stalin’s order: ““Never admit a crime committed, instead accuse your opponent of that exact crime.” Please, recall the past seven years and the Dem’s fiasco accusing Trump of collusion with Russia. They did it to cover up that exact crime that they had committed following Stalinist recommendation. I have named the leaders of the false accusations: Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and Vladimir Putin. We see those false accusations against Republicans again today. That is the reason I have focused my entire writings on explaining and showing the culprit, the KGB’s Mafia/Army and the existence of the “criminal cabal”, the Swamp in America who colluded with Russia’s Intelligence Apparatus.

It was Russia’s Intel that infiltrated our Universities by Socialist/Communist professors in 1950-1960. You see the results in the 21st century in our Universities, when Penn Biden Center had received $57 Million from Chinese/Communists. Joe Biden had received $1 Million as a professor at the University, though he has never had a class to teach. Please, recall Stalin’s Socialist modus operandi: lies, deception, fabrication and fraud. Biden’s administration demonstrates all listed behaviors—watch their performances. For me, it is a painful return to the Stalinist Soviet Union and an incredible victory of the KGB’s Mafia/Army. What a shame that the Democrat Party sold our America the Beautiful to the Socialists and Communists of the world! We have hundred thousand Socialists/Communists infiltrated in our democratic institutions, including the U.S. Congress. Read my columns.

Twitter Files main revelations by Matt Taibbi, shows the relationship between big tech and Intel agencies. I have been talking about the failed FBI and CIA for forty years. They don’t know Russia, its Intel and Stalinist Soviet Socialism. They don’t know that there are no Mexican Cartels, they are Russian Cartels–KGB’s Mafia/Army established by Stalin in 1950-1960 in Mexico. They couldn’t vet. We have Mayor Pete as the Secretary of Transportation, though he can be a part of the KGB’s Mafia/Army within Biden’s team. Infiltration and destruction of our democratic institutions is the major task of the enemy. We don’t have experts on the KGB’s Mafia/Army, and we suffer greatly. We are not prepared for war.

Please, read Stalin’s prediction:

“America is like a healthy body and its resistance is threefold: its patriotism, its morality, and its spiritual Life. If you can undermine these three areas, America will collapse from within.” — Joseph Stalin.

I have Republican Senators and Representatives, sending them my columns. They used the information, but none of them mentioned the title of the columns to educate the American people, who didn’t know that the attacks on 9/11 had been coordinated by Putin’s Russia. That is the reason you saw the enemy’s slogans: “Defund the Police” and a consequent open season on Police Officers. My blood was boiling… I also had a correspondence with some Republican leaders, too. You can see and read them:

“Hi Kevin, please don’t waste time. The Democrats are the lying thugs and traitors, they are corrupt and created lawlessness in America. I have been writing about this for the last few decades. Please follow my advice. The executive branch is as corrupt as any government institution under Socialism. Using a President with dementia, the White House is occupied by the KGB’s Mafia/Army and therefore run by Vladimir Putin. Don’t be surprised, do what I have suggested fast. The Dem won’t stop fighting the Republican Party to destroy our Constitutional Republic. Believe me, I know them very well. Let one of your staffers read my columns, the Republicans must know our foremost enemy-Russia. Better late than never. Time is short!

Good Luck!

Simona”

Simona Pipko <simonapipko@gmail.com> Dec 23, 2022, 10:09 PM (2 days ago)

 

To Leader

Hi Kevin,

I am endorsing you as Leader and wish you success in two upcoming years. It will be hard: the FBI and CIA are infiltrated by the foreign agency to be précised by the Russian KGB’s Mafia/Army, and so the Democrat Party—our enemy #1. We have been betrayed by the Dems for 6-7 decades, while Republicans have hibernated. The catastrophe is unspeakable and the response should be adequate. The main culprit is Biden’s staff, who use a demented President’s name. He is taking the orders from his staff, it is them who are manipulating the message of the Pandemic, too. No bipartisanship. Stop Putin, who is running Biden’s America, including Afghanistan!

House’s Committees will investigate the criminal cabal, but the Republicans should help the process by applying the 25th Amendment against demented Joe Biden and stop the continuation of treason. I know the enemy and have been writing about the KGB’s Mafia/Army for many decades. To be successful next year, my endorsement should be between us. Period. Only Ronny Jackson can be privately approached to help with application of the 25th Amendment. It should be announced as a surprise for the Dems. That must be done as soon as possible, don’t waste time. The Democrats won’t be able to fight MD. Experts. Please, think out of the box. The next step will be the Impeachment of the VP. Harris. Read my columns: http://bit.ly/3iWXQ6A https://bit.ly/3VjudKa

 

Simona Pipko

<simonapipko@gmail.com>

1:07 PM (7 hours ago)

To House

“Congratulations Kevin! To do the right thing for America, you should know our ideological enemy. As a former Soviet attorney, I dedicated my writings to introduce to America the Russian Intel that destroys us from within. That knowledge is a must for any decent Americans and your great agenda. I invented the term the KGB’s Mafia/Army to identify the force that covertly destroys us from within an organized invasion to America from 160 countries—a global humanitarian crisis.

This destructive force acts openly under the name of the Democrat Party to demolish the Republican leadership. You saw this RED FLAG in the speech of the Democrat leader presenting you as a Speaker–it was a speech of Socialist modus operandi: lies, deception, fabrication, and fraud. That exact Socialist modus operandi will attack you and the Republican Party for the upcoming two years in the House. You must know this force. To learn about the Russian disinformation-scam and save America, let one of your staffers read my columns. Start with my latest: https://bit.ly/3VjudKa

Good luck,

Simona

On Sun, Jan 8, 2023 at 12:54 PM House GOP HQ <info@victory.teamscalise.com> wrote: To unsubscribe from the Team Scalise, click here

Keep in mind the FBI has been infiltrated by the Russian Intel at least since 2002, when the top officer falsely submitted my name to the FISA Court to make me a Foreign Agent. My writings have been sabotaged since then, but Mr. Wray has never investigated the crime against me, an American citizen. There is an explanation why the DOJ couldn’t keep secret Biden’s irresponsible behavior, known to them before the midterm election. The White House was monitoring my computer and knew my correspondence with the leaders of the Republican Party. They saw my drafts for several emails to Jim Jordan and Kevin McCarthy. That is the reason they couldn’t keep secret Biden’s additional Classified Docs. Please, look at my email to Jim Jordan two days prior to the DOJ revelation of Biden’s Classified Docs in the garage. The Democrat Party has done catastrophic harm to American national security and wasted $ Trillions to bankrupt The U.S.A.!

Here is my email to Jim Jordan:

Simona Pipko <simonapipko@gmail.com> Tue, Jan 10, 4:47 PM (4 days ago)

To Jim

“Biden’s trip to the border was a theatrical performance to cover up the crime. All our troubles collide with the border-invasion orchestrated by Putin/Biden collusion. To my knowledge Biden colluded with Putin since 2013 as a VP. To learn about the Russian operation disinformation-scam and save America, let one of your staffers read my columns. Start with this: https://bit.ly/3VjudKa Russia is a primary culprit in Treason, its KGB’s Mafia/Army now destroying us from within by the Putin/Biden conspiracy.”

You will be the judge of my column and advice given to the Republican leaders by me. I expect fair criticism. I also leave it to you to determine the name of our enemy: Soviet Socialism or Soviet Fascism. Please, watch and consider the recent events of the Russia/Ukrainian War, the killings of civilians and everything alive by Russia.

To be continued www.simonapipko.com and at www.drrichswier.com/auther/spipko/

©Simona Pipko. All rights reserved.

RELATED ARTICLE: JUDGE ANDREW P. NAPOLITANO: Biden Could Stop Three Letter Agencies From Freely Spying On Americans. Why Won’t He?

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…..

AUTHOR

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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.