Fired FBI Director James Comey Pushes Gun Control, Bashes NRA

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Fired FBI Director James Comey’s self-aggrandizement tour continued apace this week. Momentarily turning his attention from attacking President Trump, Comey used the occasion of a trip to the largely-disarmed United Kingdom as an opportunity to advocate for stricter U.S. gun laws and to level barbs at NRA.

In an interview with the UK’s iNews published Tuesday, Comey appeared to express his support for ongoing efforts to restrict young adults ages 18-20 from acquiring firearms and for a ban on commonly-owned semi-automatic firearms. Comey told the media outlet,

Surely there are things we can agree upon that relate to who’s able to buy a weapon, what kind of weapon and at what age, what the capabilities of the weapon are, how many rounds does it hold, and things like that, that in no way threaten the rights under the US constitution of people to keep and bear arms.

Comey’s statement on gun control is puzzling. Legislation that extinguishes young adults’ ability to exercise their Second Amendment rights is by its very nature a threat to, “the rights under the US constitution [sic] of people to keep and bear arms.” Moreover, so is a ban on commonly-owned semi-automatic firearms. That’s not just NRA’s position; that’s the position of the U.S. Supreme Court, which affirmed an individual right to keep and bear arms in the District of Columbia v. Heller case.

In Heller, the late Justice Antonin Scalia explained that the Second Amendment protects the ownership of firearms, “of the kind in common use at the time.” The AR-15, the favorite target of current gun ban legislation, is America’s most popular rifle. Moreover, Scalia Joined Justice Thomas to dissent from a denial of certiorari in the case of Friedman v. Highland Park, which concerned a ban on commonly-owned semi-automatic firearms. In the dissent, Thomas wrote,

The overwhelming majority of citizens who own and use such rifles do so for lawful purposes, including self-defense and target shooting. Under our precedents, that is all that is needed for citizens to have a right under the Second Amendment to keep such weapons.

Addressing NRA, Comey stated, “One of the worst things that goes on in the US is the current voice of the National Rifle Association, because it sells fear in the wake of any incident.” The former FBI director went on to add,

[NRA’s] constant argument is: ‘It’s a slippery slope. If we restrict a particular kind of weapon or raise the age of purchase, it means the end of gun ownership in the US.’ And that argument is a lie… There’s no slippery slope in America when it comes to guns. It’s a concrete staircase, which is our constitution…. We just have to decide should we go up a stair or down a stair.

While Comey might liken U.S. gun laws to a, “concrete staircase,” it’s unlikely many gun owners in jurisdictions such as California, New Jersey, and New York feel confident in their footing. For them the slippery slope of gun control is an everyday reality. Faced with a federal judiciary that is often unwilling to honor the rulings of the Supreme Court, as Justice Thomas has pointed out on numerous occasions, the Second Amendment offers these Americans little security.

Moreover, the slippery slope isn’t pro-gun fear mongering, it’s gun control advocates’ stated policy. In a 1976 New Yorker interview, National Council to Control Handguns (precursor to the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence) Chairman Nelson T. Shields stated,

I’m convinced that we have to have federal legislation to build on. We’re going to have to take one step at a time, and the first step is necessarily—given the political realities—going to be very modest… So then we’ll have to start working again to strengthen that law and then again to strengthen the next law, and maybe again and again. Right now, though, we’d be satisfied not with half a loaf but with a slice. Our ultimate goal—total control of handguns in the United States—is going to take time.

Moreover, the character of recent gun control efforts has made Comey’s position untenable. In March, John Paul Stevens took to the opinion page of the New York Times to call for the repeal of the Second Amendment. In recent years, the New York Times and the Boston Globe have run pieces calling for firearms confiscation. On the 2016 campaign trail, Hillary Clinton lamented the Heller decision, refused to acknowledge that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to keep and bear arms, and endorsed Australia’s confiscatory gun control measures. Anti-gun protests are replete with calls to disarm citizens.

An exchange that appears near the end of the iNews item might reveal the most about Comey. The fired FBI director explained that he chose not to carry a firearm while at the FBI, stating, “I was surrounded by armed people all day long. If I wasn’t safe in the hands of the FBI, then our country was really in trouble.” Here Comey admitted that despite being one of the nation’s highest ranking law enforcement officials, he was unwilling to concern himself with any personal responsibility for his own safety and the safety of those around him.

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From JFK to the Resistance: What has happened to the Democratic Party?

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The July/August 2017 issue of The Atlantic had an article titled “What’s Wrong With the Democrats?” by Franklin Foer. Foer wrote:

Leaderless and loud, the Resistance has become the motive power of the Democratic Party. Presidential hopefuls already strive to anticipate its wishes. Elected officials have restructured their political calculus to avoid getting on its wrong side. The feistiness and agitation of the moment are propelling the party to a new place.

But where? The question unnerves Democrats, because the party has no scaffolding. All the dominant leaders of the last two generations—the Clintons, Barack Obama—have receded. Defeat discredited the party’s foundational strategy—or, at the very least, exposed it as a wishful description of a more distant future, rather than a clear plan for victory in the present. Resistance has given the Democrats the illusion of unity, but the reality is deeply conflicted. Two of the party’s largest concerns—race and class—reside in an increasing state of tension, a tension that will grow as the party turns toward the next presidential election.

To produce a governing majority, the party will need to survive an unsettling reckoning with itself. Donald Trump didn’t just prevail over the Democrats; he called into doubt their old truths. [Emphasis added]

The Democratic Party is eating its own. Watch this video about how a Hispanic socialist candidate won the Democrat primary in New York because she targeted her Democratic opponent was white.

As a young man I was a JFK Democrat. He was my American idol. It was the time of Camelot and at the peak of American economic, political and military power. JFK embodied a vision of the future that Americans embraced.

Allow me to point out a few examples of what JFK brought to the Democratic Party:

  • JFK was a Catholic. He held those beliefs and spoke about his beliefs. JFK stated, “For while this year it may be a Catholic against whom the finger of suspicion is pointed, in other years it has been, and may someday be again, a Jew— or a Quaker or a Unitarian or a Baptist. It was Virginia’s harassment of Baptist preachers, for example, that helped lead to Jefferson’s statute of religious freedom. Today I may be the victim, but tomorrow it may be you — until the whole fabric of our harmonious society is ripped at a time of great national peril.”
  • JFK was a decorated Navy Combat Veteran. JFK Commanded PT109. He served proudly and loved the military. He created the U.S. Army Special Forces, which led to the creation of special operations forces such as the Navy SEAL program. JFK said, “Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.” JFK supported compulsary military service and noted, “A young man who does not have what it takes to perform military service is not likely to have what it takes to make a living. Today’s military rejects include tomorrow’s hard-core unemployed.”
  • NASA and reaching for the stars. It was JFK who believed in American ingenuity and wanted to put a man on the moon. He and his policies did just that.
  • The National Rifle Association. JFK was a life member of the NRA. On March 20, 1961 JFK became a life member and in a letter to the NRA President Franklin L. Orth stated, “Through competitive matches and sports in coordination with the National Board for Promotion of Rifle Practice, the Association fills an important role in our national defense effort, and fosters in an active and meaningful fashion the spirit of the Minutemen.” BHO hates the NRA and all it stands for. BHO, his administration and Democrats have taken an adversarial position on the Second Amendment and the right to bear arms. JFK supported Second Amendment rights for Americans, saying in an April 1960 statement, “By calling attention to a well-regulated militia, the security of the nation and the right of each citizen to keep and bear arms, our founding forefathers recognized the essentially civilian nature of our economy. Although it is extremely unlikely that the fears of government tyranny, which gave rise to the Second Amendment, will ever be a major danger to our nation, the Amendment still remains a major declaration of our basic civilian-military relationships, in which every citizen must be ready to participate in the defense of his country. For that reason, I believe the Second Amendment will always be important.”
  • JFK added the M16 (AR15) rifle into the U.S. military inventory. It was JFK who introduced the Armalite M16 (AR-15) rifle into the inventory of the U.S. Military. Under JFK, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara ordered Secretary of the Army Cyrus Vance to test the M14 , the AR-15 and the AK-47 . The Army’s test report stated only the M14 was suitable for Army use, but Vance wondered about the impartiality of those conducting the tests. He ordered the Army Inspector General to investigate the testing methods used, who reported that the testers showed undue favor to the M14. McNamara ordered a halt to M14 production in January 1964. In November, the Army ordered 85,000 XM16E1s for experimental use, and the Air Force ordered another 19,000. Meanwhile the Army carried out another project, the Small Arms Weapons Systems (SAWS) , on general infantry firearm needs in the immediate future. They highly recommended the immediate adoption of the weapon, so much so that they started referring to it as the M16.
  • Immigration policy was much different under JFK. JFK in his book “A Nation of Immigrants” wrote, “The interaction of disparate cultures, the vehemence of the ideals that led the immigrants here, the opportunity offered by a new life, all gave America a flavor and a character that make it as unmistakable and as remarkable to people today as it was to Alexis de Tocqueville in the early part of the nineteenth century.” In his book JFK Kennedy outlines three main reasons why immigration to the U.S. took place: freedom from religious persecution, political oppression and economic hardship. While JFK believed in a generous, fair and flexible immigration policy he did not believe in open borders and no immigration policy.
  • On Federal taxation and balancing the budget. As JFK wrote on September 18, 1963, “A tax cut means higher family income and higher business profits and a balanced federal budget….As the national income grows, the federal government will ultimately end up with more revenues. Prosperity is the real way to balance our budget. By lowering tax rates, by increasing jobs and income, we can expand tax revenues and finally bring our budget into balance.” BHO has raised taxes, spent like no other president and increased the federal deficit to historic levels.
  • Communism and the Free World. As JFK stated in his 1961 inaugural address, “Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty. This much we pledge —- and more. To those old allies whose cultural and spiritual origins we share, we pledge the loyalty of faithful friends. United, there is little we cannot do in a host of cooperative ventures. Divided, there is little we can do—for we dare not meet a powerful challenge at odds and split asunder….We dare not tempt them with weakness. For only when our arms are sufficient beyond doubt can we be certain beyond doubt that they will never be employed.”
  • JFK and McCarthyism. Joseph Kennedy had befriended McCarthy because he found him to be a likable fellow Irish-Catholic who had all the right ideas on the domestic communist menace. These warm feelings were quickly transferred to the entire Kennedy family. JFK liked the fact that McCarthy went after the “elites” in the State Department whom JFK regarded with contempt. Even before McCarthy made accusations against the State Department of subversion, JFK had already aligned himself with the militant anti-communists who blamed the Truman State Department for the “loss” of China. So JFK declared on the House floor in January 1949, “The responsibility for the failure of our foreign policy in the Far East rests squarely with the White House and the Department of State.”

I could go on and discuss how JFK worked with Congress. How JFK embraced the Constitution. At his 1962 State of Union, JFK stated, “The Constitution makes us not rivals for power but partners for progress.”

Just like Foer, I ask, “What has happened to the Democratic Party?”

RELATED ARTICLE: SALON: Let’s abandon the Democrats: Stop blaming Fox News and stop hoping Elizabeth Warren will save us

Meet These 5 Stellar Conservatives Trump Just Added to His Supreme Court List

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On Friday, President Donald Trump announced the addition of five individuals to his outstanding list of potential candidates for a future Supreme Court vacancy.

As was the case with the lists Trump put out during his presidential campaign, these new additions to the list are conservative men and women who are committed to interpreting the Constitution according to its original public meaning.

While there are currently no vacancies on the Supreme Court, rumors abound that Justice Anthony Kennedy may retire in the near future. Here’s a look at the new names.

Amy Barrett

Judge, U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit
Age: Approximately 45

Barrett, a former University of Notre Dame law professor, was recently confirmed to the 7th Circuit. After graduating from Rhodes College and Notre Dame Law School, Barrett clerked for Judge Laurence Silberman on the D.C. Circuit and Justice Antonin Scalia on the Supreme Court.

She then worked in private practice (where she was part of the team that represented George W. Bush in Bush v. Gore) before starting her career in academia, teaching briefly at George Washington University and the University of Virginia before joining the Notre Dame Law faculty in 2002.

Barrett is a prolific writer, having published in leading law reviews across the country on topics including originalism, federal court jurisdiction, and the supervisory power of the Supreme Court.

In 2010, Chief Justice John Roberts appointed her to the Advisory Committee for the Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure, where she served for six years.

At her confirmation hearing in September, Senate Democrats chided her for her writings as a law student in 1998 and asked inappropriate questions about her Catholic faith. But Barrett received robust bipartisan support from the legal community, including from Neal Katyal, a prominent liberal who served as President Barack Obama’s acting solicitor general.

Britt Grant

Justice, Supreme Court of Georgia
Age: Approximately 39

Appointed to Georgia’s highest court by Gov. Nathan Deal in 2016, Grant previously served as the state’s solicitor general and in other capacities in the state attorney general’s office. She also worked in the George W. Bush administration, serving on the Domestic Policy Council and the Office of Cabinet Affairs.

Grant began working at the White House weeks before the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, and after that horrific day, her mission became making government “as effective as it can be and as protective of liberty as it can be.”

Earlier in her career, she served as an aide to then-Rep. Nathan Deal, R-Ga., on Capitol Hill, clerked for Judge Brett Kavanaugh on the D.C. Circuit, and worked in private practice at Kirkland & Ellis, one of the top appellate law firms in Washington, D.C.

She is a graduate of Stanford Law School and Wake Forest University.

In a letter recommending her appointment to the state’s high court, Kavanaugh praised Grant’s “superb” writing, which is “[o]ne of the most important duties” of judges. In her 11 months on the bench, she’s heard numerous cases and displayed her excellent writing abilities.

In a recent decision reinstating criminal charges against a woman who secretly filmed her boss in the nude, Grant wrote a special concurrence agreeing with the judgment but not the reasoning of the majority. The majority analogized a state law criminalizing “hostile intrusion or surveillance” by a private party with the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. She explained, “[t]he statute cannot bear the weight that the Fourth Amendment puts on it when addressing the behavior of private parties and not of the government” and that it “addresses a privacy interest quite different than the one that we all share against government search and seizure.”

Brett Kavanaugh 

Judge, U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit
Age: 52

A former clerk for Justice Anthony Kennedy and graduate of Yale College and Yale Law School, Kavanaugh worked as a senior associate counsel and assistant to President George W. Bush and as an associate independent counsel.

He was nominated to the D.C. Circuit in 2003 but not confirmed until 2006.

Former Attorney General William Barr stated that Kavanaugh “quickly established himself as one of the key outside lawyers I went to on some of my toughest legal issues. He has a keen intellect, exceptional analytical skills, and sound judgment. His writing is fluid and precise. I found that he was able to see all sides of an issue and appreciate the strengths and weakness of competing approaches. He was particularly effective in dealing with novel issues which required some original thinking.”

Since joining the bench, Kavanaugh has distinguished himself as a thoughtful, apolitical jurist, who is not afraid to stake out bold positions on complex issues. We included him on The Heritage Foundation’s list of potential Supreme Court nominees.

Kavanaugh recently delivered the annual Joseph Story Distinguished Lecture at Heritage—joining the ranks of Justice Clarence Thomas and many other renowned federal judges. He spoke eloquently about the judiciary’s essential role in maintaining the separation of powers.

Watch Judge Kavanaugh’s Speech at The Heritage Foundation

Kevin Newsom

Judge, U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit
Age: Approximately 45

Kevin Newsom, former all-star appellate lawyer, was confirmed to the 11th Circuit in August. After graduating from Samford University and Harvard Law School, Newsom clerked for Judge Diarmuid O’Scannlain on the 9th Circuit and Justice David Souter on the Supreme Court. He then worked in private practice before serving as Alabama’s solicitor general.

After five years of government service, Newsom went back to private practice where he became a partner at Birmingham’s Bradley Arant.

Before joining the bench, Newsom had an extensive Supreme Court practice, arguing four cases at the high court and authoring dozens of cert. petitions and amicus briefs. Newsom has won countless awards for his work, including the National Association of Attorneys General’s Best Brief Award four times.

He has argued more than 30 cases in federal appellate courts across the country as well as in Alabama’s appellate courts. In 2011, Roberts, the chief justice, appointed Newsom to the Advisory Committee on Appellate Rules.

Patrick Wyrick

Justice, Supreme Court of Oklahoma
Age: 36

Patrick Wyrick is the youngest person on the Trump list, at 36 years old. Then again, Joseph Story was only 32 when he was nominated by President James Madison to serve as an associate justice to the Supreme Court, a position in which he served with great distinction for nearly 34 years.

Wyrick was appointed to the Oklahoma Supreme Court last February, after serving as the state’s solicitor general for six years.

As solicitor general, Wyrick argued cases before the Oklahoma Supreme Court, and also successfully argued Glossip v. Gross (a case challenging the constitutionality of lethal injection) before the U.S. Supreme Court.

A graduate of the University of Oklahoma and that school’s College of Law, Wyrick clerked for U.S. District Court Judge James Payne.

When Wyrick was nominated to the Oklahoma Supreme Court, then-State Attorney General Scott Pruitt described Wyrick as “a superb lawyer” and “a constitutional scholar well-versed in both state and federal law … ” He added that Wyrick’s “wisdom, compassion, and integrity are unparalleled among the many public servants with whom I’ve had the pleasure of working.”

In his short time on the bench, Wyrick has written some noteworthy opinions, including the majority opinion in a case striking down a fee that the Oklahoma Legislature imposed on cigarette companies for violating a provision in the Oklahoma Constitution that sets forth the procedures that must be followed before enacting a “revenue raising” measure.

Although young, Wyrick’s meteoric legal career could ultimately land him on the high court.

We commend the president for taking the utmost care in continuing to identify outstanding individuals to serve on all levels of the federal bench.

COMMENTARY BY

Portrait of John G. Malcolm

John G. Malcolm

John G. Malcolm is the vice president of the Institute for Constitutional Government and director of the Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies, overseeing The Heritage Foundation’s work to increase understanding of the Constitution and the rule of law. Read his research. Twitter: 

Portrait of Elizabeth Slattery

Elizabeth Slattery

Elizabeth Slattery writes about the proper role of the courts, judicial nominations, and the Constitution as a legal fellow at The Heritage Foundation. Read her research. She co-hosts SCOTUS101, a podcast about everything that’s happening at the Supreme Court. Twitter: .

Portrait of Tiffany Bates

Tiffany Bates

Tiffany Bates serves as legal policy analyst in the Meese Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at The Heritage Foundation. Twitter: .

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Dear Readers:

With the recent conservative victories related to tax cuts, the Supreme Court, and other major issues, it is easy to become complacent.

However, the liberal Left is not backing down. They are rallying supporters to advance their agenda, moving this nation further from the vision of our founding fathers.

If we are to continue to bring this nation back to our founding principles of limited government and fiscal conservatism, we need to come together as a group of likeminded conservatives.

This is the mission of The Heritage Foundation. We want to continue to develop and present conservative solutions to the nation’s toughest problems. And we cannot do this alone.

We are looking for a select few conservatives to become a Heritage Foundation member. With your membership, you’ll qualify for all associated benefits and you’ll help keep our nation great for future generations.

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Neither ‘Reform’ Bill Would Solve the Immigration Crisis: Here’s why they’re doomed to fail — by design.

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Two well-known and powerful members of the House of Representatives, Speaker Paul Ryan and Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte have proposed legislation to address the DACA aliens and a many other issues that all comprise failures of the immigration system.

The Goodlatte bill is seen as the “tougher” of the two bills.

It would fund the hiring of 10,000 additional employees for Customs and Border Protection including 5,000 additional Border Patrol Agents but no additional ICE agents.

Today, ICE has 6,000 agents, but half of them are enforcing customs or other non-immigration related laws.

Before we go further, consider this hypothetical question:

If President Trump was able to build the wall along the southern border that was 50 feet tall and topped with ultra high-voltage electrified concertina wire, what would a determined alien need to defeat that wall?

Some pundits would say that such an alien would simply need a 55 foot ladder.  So to make things interesting, let me add that the device that could defeat President Trump’s wall could fit in the alien’s pocket.

We will consider the solution to the problem a bit further on, but first, on June 18, 2018 the Washington Times Examiner article, Paul Ryan’s immigration bill gains traction ahead of House votes provided an extremely limited comparison of the two competing bills as noted in this excerpt:

Goodlatte has acknowledged his own measure lacked the votes to pass, leaving the Ryan bill as the sole Republican option with any chance of becoming law.

The Ryan legislation includes four immigration reform requirements outlined by President Trump in January. That includes providing a special pathway to citizenship for 1.8 million Dreamers who came here as children, a reduction in chain migration, an end to the visa lottery system, and money for a wall along the southern border.

The Goodlatte/McCaul measure provides a more difficult pathway to citizenship and only for the approximately 800,000 people now enrolled in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program put in place by President Barack Obama. Goodlatte’s bill would end chain migration, the visa lottery system, and would authorize border wall funding.

Two outside groups who favor reduced immigration rates are critical of the Ryan plan, arguing that it amounts to amnesty for those who came to the country illegally, continues chain migration, and does not include a mandate for companies to use E-Verify, which some immigration reform advocates say is needed to curb illegal immigration. E-Verify is a system that ensures new hires are in the country legally.

Ryan has promised a vote on E-Verify in July and has also pledged consideration of a bill to create a program for immigrant agriculture workers.

President Trump has expressed a willingness to sign an immigration reform bill to finally end the immigration crisis.

Whether or not he would sign either of the two bills is not certain but interestingly, Chairman Goodlatte stated that even though he is the author of one of the two bills being considered, he would be willing to support the Ryan bill.

Both bills emphasize constructing the wall along the U.S. / Mexican border.  Goodlatte’s bill would only provide legal status to aliens who have already participated in the DACA program while Ryan would also provide lawful status to aliens who would claim to have been eligible to participate in the DACA program but, for one reason or another, did not do so.

Estimates as to how many additional aliens could thus be processed for lawful status vary widely, from 1.8 million to double that number (3.6 million).

No one really knows how many aliens would actually make that claim but as I noted in a previous commentary, DACA: Trump and Congress Must Look Before They Leap- 800,000 DACA aliens just became 3.6 million.

There is absolutely no way to know how many aliens would attempt to game this program by falsely claiming to have entered the United States prior to their 16th birthdays.  Records of entry are not created when aliens enter the United States without inspection by running our borders or stowing away on ships.  The Ryan bill would enable aliens who are in their mid-thirties to file applications.

There would be so many applications that no interviews of applicants and field investigations to verify the information contained in applications would be possible.

The 9/11 Commission Staff Report on Terrorist Travel detailed numerous examples of instances where terrorists made use of visa and immigration benefit fraud- including political asylum fraud to enter the United States to also embed themselves in the United States.

Page 54 contained this excerpt under the title “3.2 Terrorist Travel Tactics by Plot.”

Although there is evidence that some land and sea border entries (of terrorists) without inspection occurred, these conspirators mainly subverted the legal entry system by entering at airports.

In doing so, they relied on a wide variety of fraudulent documents, on aliases, and on government corruption. Because terrorist operations were not suicide missions in the early to mid-1990s, once in the United States terrorists and their supporters tried to get legal immigration status that would permit them to remain here, primarily by committing serial, or repeated, immigration fraud, by claiming political asylum, and by marrying Americans. Many of these tactics would remain largely unchanged and undetected throughout the 1990s and up to the 9/11 attack.

Thus, abuse of the immigration system and a lack of interior immigration enforcement were unwittingly working together to support terrorist activity. It would remain largely unknown, since no agency of the United States government analyzed terrorist travel patterns until after 9/11. This lack of attention meant that critical opportunities to disrupt terrorist travel and, therefore, deadly terrorist operations were missed.

That excerpt above provides the answer to my question.  An alien who has a green card or passport with a visa would not have to scale that wall but simply stroll into a port of entry and be cheerfully welcomed into the U.S. by CBP personnel.  This is why immigration fraud is so dangerous.

Neither immigration bill calls for the hiring of a single additional ICE agent.

I tackled the necessity of effective interior enforcement of our immigration laws in my article, Border Security and the Immigration Colander.

Mandatory E-Verify is absolutely essential, however, without ICE agents to conduct field investigations, unscrupulous employers could easily defeat mandatory E-Verify by hiring illegal aliens “off the books.”

Immigration fraud undermines national security.  While Goodlatte does call for assigning ICE agents to embassies around the world to enhance visa security, many aliens acquire various immigration benefits inside the United States by defrauding the adjudications process.

The Tsarnaev brothers who attacked the Boston Marathon and their other family members were granted political asylum by lying about “credible fear.”  They were ultimately granted lawful immigrant status and one of the two terrorist brothers became a naturalized citizen by committing fraud.

The Goodlatte bill also has lots of other “goodies” for aliens, employers and immigration lawyers including a massive guest worker program for agricultural workers.

Without agents to police this program there would be no way to assure that aliens would not apply for such visas and then disappear, never showing up for work.

The Goodlatte bill would require that the employers of such errant workers to notify ICE, but without any ICE agents to seek these aliens, they will likely remain at large, joining the millions of other such illegal alien absconders who play the successful game of “Hide and seek” in America, because ICE has no agents who can seek.

Neither bill would address this major deficiency.

While on the topic of agricultural workers, the previously noted 9/11 Commission Staff Report on Terrorist Travel contained this passage:

Once terrorists had entered the United States, their next challenge was to find a way to remain here. Their primary method was immigration fraud. For example, Yousef and Ajaj concocted bogus political asylum stories when they arrived in the United States. Mahmoud Abouhalima, involved in both the World Trade Center and landmarks plots, received temporary residence under the Seasonal Agricultural Workers (SAW) program, after falsely claiming that he picked beans in Florida.

Not all DACA aliens are from Latin America- indeed some are from the Middle East.

On March 21, 2012 the House Committee on Homeland Security that was then chaired by New York Congressman Peter King conducted a hearing into these planned operations. The topic of the hearing was, Iran, Hezbollah, and the Threat to the Homeland.  The Huffington Post reported about that hearing, Peter King: Iran May Have ‘Hundreds’ Of Hezbollah Agents In U.S.  If you think this is old news, read my recent article that focused on a recent hearing chaired by Peter King this past April 2018, Congressional Hearing: Iranian Sleeper Cells Threaten U.S.

“Sleepers” often commit immigration fraud to acquire lawful status as an embedding tactic.

Why in the world doesn’t either Ryan or Goodlatte seek increased resources for critical interior enforcement?

Only they can answer that question.

Finally, Goodlatte would provide an additional 55,000 high-tech foreign workers with visas.  Not exactly good news for unemployed or under-employed highly-skilled, highly-educated and highly-experienced American workers or their families.

Neither bill would enable President Trump to keep his campaign promises to Americans and make America safe again!

RELATED ARTICLE: Immigration Fraud:  Lies That

RELATED VIDEO: Violent Left Replaces American Flag with Refugee Flag.

EDITORS NOTE: The column originally appeared in FrontPage Magazine.

What Lincoln Foresaw Would Occur If Maxine Waters, Others Got Their Way With Mob Justice

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In 1836, at the Young Men’s Lyceum in Springfield, Illinois, a 28-year-old lawyer named Abraham Lincoln delivered one of his finest addresses.

Lincoln condemned the sharp increase of mobs in America, which had exploded in number as the debate over slavery and regional animosity intensified.

“Accounts of outrages committed by mobs, form the every-day news of the times,” Lincoln said.

Many of these mobs had turned violent and subverted the law. They were undermining free government.

Calls for civility are sometimes vapid excuses to shut down political dissent. But what’s occurring now in America is not just heated debate at political rallies, it’s a surge in mob activity directed at political opponents in everyday life.

In just the past few weeks we’ve seen the harassment of a Trump Cabinet member, Kirstjen Nielsen, at a District of Columbia restaurant.

Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, a Republican, was, somewhat ironically, accosted as she left a movie about Fred Rogers, or “Mr. Rogers,” the nationally beloved children’s show host famous for welcoming people to his fictional neighborhood.

These incidents were bad enough, but some are calling for much more.

Over the weekend, the owners of a Virginia restaurant booted White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders because of her association with the Trump administration.

This incident provoked the debate over freedom of association, but then Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., stepped into the fray and made the situation worse.

At a rally Saturday, the Los Angeles congresswoman called for mobs to go after political opponents wherever they may be.

“Let’s make sure we show up wherever we have to show up. And if you see anybody from that Cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd,” Waters yelled.

Waters also said in an interview with MSNBC: “I want to tell you, these members of [Trump’s] Cabinet who remain and try to defend him, they won’t be able to go to a restaurant, they won’t be able to stop at a gas station, they’re not going to be able to shop at a department store.”

Some activists have grabbed hold of these recent incidents to call for more radical action. One writer on a left-wing blog, Splinter, went even further than Waters. In an article titled “This Is Just the Beginning,” he took the next big leap to essentially condoning outright violence:

Read a recent history book. The U.S. had thousands of domestic bombings per year in the early 1970s. This is what happens when citizens decide en masse that their political system is corrupt, racist, and unresponsive. The people out of power have only just begun to flex their dissatisfaction. The day will come, sooner that you all think, when Trump administration officials will look back fondly on the time when all they had to worry about was getting hollered at at a Mexican restaurant.

Of course, Lincoln in his Lyceum address begged to differ.

“There is no grievance that is a fit object of redress by mob law,” Lincoln said. “In any case that arises, as for instance, the promulgation of abolitionism, one of two positions is necessarily true; that is, the thing is right within itself, and therefore deserves the protection of all law and all good citizens; or, it is wrong, and therefore proper to be prohibited by legal enactments; and in neither case, is the interposition of mob law either necessary, justifiable, or excusable.”

Some, even on the left, have been a little unnerved by calls for mobs, whether violent or nonviolent, to attack political foes in everyday life.

“Those who are insisting that we are in a special moment justifying incivility should think for a moment how many Americans might find their own special moment,” The Washington Post said in an editorial. “How hard is it to imagine, for example, people who strongly believe that abortion is murder deciding that judges or other officials who protect abortion rights should not be able to live peaceably with their families?”

Her fellow Democrats have voiced some condemnation of Waters’ demand for mobs to harass political opponents. Much of this criticism has been muted, though.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., did take to Twitter, calling such language “unacceptable,” but ultimately blamed President Donald Trump for the “provoked responses.”

Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., said that “there’s nothing wrong” with confronting Trump administration officials, but people should do it in a way that “leads with love.”

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., offered the strongest condemnation of Waters, saying that calling for harassment of political opponents is “not American.”

One would hope that mob law and mob justice don’t become the norm, but we’ve already seen a steady uptick in the mentality that leads to that point.

We’ve seen it with the mobs that descended on historic statues to illegally pulverize them in the name of social justice. Now the mobs are coming for living people.

This kind of ugliness is a bad sign for our future.

Lincoln explained to his Springfield audience what could ultimately destroy the United States.

“Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant, to step the Ocean, and crush us at a blow?” Lincoln asked.

No, never.

“At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected?” Lincoln asked again. “I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.”

Passionate debates are good and healthy in a republic.

There was never a “golden age of civility” when all Americans got along, nor should we necessarily desire one.

Nevertheless, the ability to live together as free citizens in large part necessitates a respect for civil relations among us, where we look to persuasion and ballots to put our ideas in action, not brute intimidation of opponents.

The constitutional system the Founding Fathers built is strong, but it can’t survive when citizens en masse are ready to come to blows with one another on a semipermanent basis, are ready and willing to gin up mobs to go after one another for political disagreements.

That system shattered in 1860, and ended with the bloodiest period in our nation’s history.

This sort of crackup may, in fact, be what some want, but it’s unlikely to end well for those who believe in free institutions in the United States.

COMMENTARY BY

Portrait of Jarrett Stepman

Jarrett Stepman

Jarrett Stepman is an editor and commentary writer for The Daily Signal and co-host of “The Right Side of History” podcast. Send an email to Jarrett. Twitter: .

RELATED ARTICLES:

Rep. Waters, You Are Sullying Martin Luther King’s Legacy

The Flawed Red Hen Analogy Shows Liberals Still Don’t Understand Christian Baker Case

RELATED VIDEO: Maxine Waters calling for mob attacks on those who serve President Trump.

Dear Readers:

With the recent conservative victories related to tax cuts, the Supreme Court, and other major issues, it is easy to become complacent.

However, the liberal Left is not backing down. They are rallying supporters to advance their agenda, moving this nation further from the vision of our founding fathers.

If we are to continue to bring this nation back to our founding principles of limited government and fiscal conservatism, we need to come together as a group of likeminded conservatives.

This is the mission of The Heritage Foundation. We want to continue to develop and present conservative solutions to the nation’s toughest problems. And we cannot do this alone.

We are looking for a select few conservatives to become a Heritage Foundation member. With your membership, you’ll qualify for all associated benefits and you’ll help keep our nation great for future generations.

ACTIVATE YOUR MEMBERSHIP TODAY

EDITORS NOTE: The featured image of Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) is by Brian Cahn/Zuma Press/Newscom.

VIDEO: Hollywood Two-Step — Against Sexual Assault, Except When It Involves Planned Parenthood

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Hollywood celebrities have declared the era of hiding sexual assault to be over. The #TimesUp movement launched earlier this year and gained the support of some of Hollywood’s biggest stars. They have used their money and star power to raise millions of dollars to fight against sexual assault and on other issues.

Many of these same celebrities, however, have refused to revoke their support for one of America’s most prolific protectors of sexual abusers: Planned Parenthood.

As revealed by Live Action’s amazing research and seen in the embedded video below*, Avengers star Scarlett Johannson, Harry Potter star Emma Watson, and others in Hollywood stand behind Planned Parenthood even as they say #TimesUp on sexual assault. 

Live Action has for years exposed Planned Parenthood’s frequently illegal and always immoral practices. Their newest campaign, focused around Planned Parenthood’s cover-ups of sexual abuse, may be followed here and here.

The hypocrisy of these hashtag activists is appalling. You can hold them accountable, however — let them know on social media that just as #TimesUp for Harvey Weinstein, it should also be up for Planned Parenthood. Urge them to retract their support for an abortion company that cares more about its bottom line than protecting little girls.

And don’t forget to use your second vote wisely outside of Hollywood. You can see all the companies that support Planned Parenthood’s abortion industry on 2ndVote’s resource page here.

*2ndVote is grateful to Live Action for allowing us to be the first organization to post the above video. We couldn’t be prouder to help such a great organization make the world aware of the evils of Planned Parenthood.

RELATED ARTICLE: Abortion Activists and University Staff Wash Away ‘Provocative’ Pro-Life Messages

Help us continue developing the content and research that conservatives are using to hold corporations for their activism by becoming a 2ndVote Member today!

SPLC Settles for Intolerance

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You know a radical sea change is underway when the headline of the Washington Post is: “The Southern Poverty Law Center Has Lost All Credibility.” But a change is exactly what this week’s bombshell demanded after the SPLC admitted to a gross defamation of character. One of the few, unfortunately, that it’s actually being held accountable for. Marc Theissen is the latest to take the extremists at SPLC to task after including a Muslim reformist on its list of anti-Muslim radicals. Much to SPLC’s chagrin, Maajid Nawaz wasn’t about to sit back and watch the labeling affect his fundraising and personal safety — as the group’s false smear campaigns have done to others. He sued, insisting (rightly) that, “They put a target on my head. The kind of work that I do, if you tell the wrong kind of Muslims that I’m an extremist, then that means I’m a target.”

That’s not a situation, as Theissen points out, to take lightly. “In 2010, it placed the Family Research Council (FRC) — a conservative Christian advocacy group that opposes abortion and same-sex marriage — on its “hate map.” Two years later, a gunman walked into the FRC headquarters with the intention to ‘kill as many as possible and smear the Chick-fil-A sandwiches in victims’ faces.’ He told the FBI that he had used the SPLC website to pick his target.”

After being linked to two shooters (including SPLC Facebook fan and congressional baseball gunman, James T. Hodgkinson), you’d think the mainstream media would get the hint. The FBI, U.S. Army, and Obama Justice Department did, backing away from the group’s resources after complaints that it was simply smearing individuals and organizations who didn’t agree with SPLC politically. Finally, that practice of reckless labeling came back to haunt them. SPLC was forced to fork over nearly $3.4 million in a legal settlement to Nawaz, but the price to its legitimacy is much steeper.

“Unfortunately, the settlement that the SPLC reached with Nawaz is not likely to deter it from smearing others — $3.4 million is a drop in the bucket for the center, which raised $132 million between November 2016 and October 2017 and has a $477 million endowment, including a reported $92 million in offshore accounts. Sliming conservatives is big business.

The only way to stop the SPLC is if people stop giving it money and the media stop quoting it or taking it seriously. The SPLC once did important work fighting the Ku Klux Klan. But when it declares Maajid Nawaz, the Family Research Council, Ben Carson and Charles Murray as moral equivalents of the Klan, it loses all integrity and credibility.”

Tony Perkins’ Washington Update is written with the aid of FRC senior writers.

RELATED ARTICLES:

Beyond libel: How the SPLC uses lies, distortions, and disinformation as a political weapon

After SPLC Apology, Conservative Groups Demand Media “Dissociate” From Radical Leftist Group

Media Separated from Reality at Border

Victory Is Sweet for Colorado Baker

Here’s How Trump Wants to Streamline Government

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The Trump administration proposes to reform and reorganize government by streamlining food regulation, merging two Cabinet departments, and consolidating housing programs.

Combining the Education and Labor departments is among 32 proposals in a plan released Thursday by the Office of Management and Budget in response to a charge President Donald Trump issued 14 months ago.

“We wanted to change the dialogue in Washington, to say it’s not acceptable to have things that just don’t make sense,” Margaret Weichert, OMB’s deputy director for management, told The Daily Signal.

Weichert did not provide an estimate of savings, but said it would be clear in the administration’s next budget proposal.

Mick Mulvaney, director of the Office of Management and Budget, lauded the report’s recommendations Thursday during a Cabinet meeting convened by the president.

The OMB’s 132-page plan also would merge the food component of the Food and Drug Administration, now part of the Department of Health and Human Services, into a Department of Agriculture entity to be known as the Food Safety Agency.

The report notes that the USDA regulates chicken, but the FDA oversees eggs—if the eggs are in shells. If the eggs are processed and in a carton for pouring, then it’s the USDA’s job.

What’s more, the FDA regulates cheese pizza but the USDA regulates pepperoni pizza.

“Our favorite one is an open-face roast beef sandwich is regulated by the Department of Agriculture,” Weichert said. “If you stick a layer of bread on top of it, and you add new bureaucracy, it switches to FDA. That just doesn’t make sense.”

Since the Labor Department and the Education Department both are responsible for learning and skills for Americans, the Trump administration wants to create a single Department of Education and the Workforce.

The merger, if approved by Congress, would put the United States in line with most other developed nations that are part of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, Weichert said.

“When it comes to education and labor, most OECD countries managed education and labor missions in an integrated fashion. It’s actually part of the kind of competitive advantage dialogue that you can see in Europe and China,” Weichert told The Daily Signal, adding:

Lifetime learning and whatever form of education is needed to both drive the needs of society broadly, but also to drive the economy, is integrated. The House committee itself that has jurisdiction over these two agencies is a single committee.

Rep. Virginia Foxx, R-N.C., chairwoman of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, called the proposed change a long overdue recognition of the connection between the two missions.

“We welcome the administration’s focus on education and workforce issues together, and as we continue our oversight over the Department of Education and the Department of Labor, we look forward to working with the administration on the proposal and how the new department could function to best serve American students, workers, job creators, and families,” Foxx said in a public statement.

The merger idea already is getting pushback, though, including from unions.

“The proposed merger of the departments of Labor and Education is yet another attempt by the Trump administration to weaken programs that serve and protect working families and to concentrate even more power in the hands of large corporations,” Chris Shelton, president of the Communication Workers of America, said in a formal statement.

In general, the OMB report calls for combining the functions of several departments and agencies and largely eliminating duplication.

Between a quarter and a third of the recommendations may be done through executive action, but the bulk of them would require congressional action, Weichert said.

In April 2017, Trump signed Executive Order 13781, which directed the Office of Management and Budget to propose a plan that would reorganize governmental functions to limit duplication.

The resulting plan contains solid ideas, said Paul Winfree, who was director of budget policy at the White House when Trump asked for the reorganization plan. Winfree since has returned to his position as director of the Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies at The Heritage Foundation.

“The Heritage research team started thinking through a reorganization proposal more than three years ago,” Winfree said in a statement provided to The Daily Signal. “Early in the administration, I drafted the executive order that established the plan for assembling the proposal, which the president signed.”

“OMB worked closely with the Heritage team,” Winfree said, “and it’s obvious from reading the administration’s proposal that everyone is moving in the same direction.”

The federal government spends about $250 million a year for education programs on financial literacy across more than 20 agencies. The report recommends consolidating programs to save time and taxpayer resources.

The plan also calls for moving programs providing rural housing loan guarantees and rental assistance out of the Agriculture Department and into the Department of Housing and Urban Development, locating all federal housing programs in a single Cabinet department.

“To be sure, there’s going to be a lot of good public-sector drama around some of these proposals,” Weichert said, adding:

But I hope underneath all of that, we can find a spirit of willingness to actually do the right thing for the American people. Frankly, all of us know we need to do something. That’s why this president was elected. That’s why the American people wanted a businessman to come to Washington, was the fact that so much business as usual in Washington doesn’t make sense.

Past presidents, going back decades, have tried to reorganize and reform government but haven’t reached the desired effect, said Max Stier, president of the Partnership for Public Service, a nonpartisan research group.

“No one can reasonably dispute that our government needs reform, but structural reorganizations are rarely the most effective way to improve service to our citizens,” Stier said in a public statement.

The OMB report notes that President Warren Harding created the Bureau of the Budget in 1921 in one of the earlier reorganization attempts of the 20th century.

President Jimmy Carter carried out a personnel reform agenda that was fully implemented under President Ronald Reagan. And Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama all pushed efforts to reduce duplication and increase public-private sector cooperation.

“For the administration’s reorganization plans to succeed, the president and members of his administration must articulate a government-wide vision for reform, the rationale for each proposal, and how the administration will implement changes and measure progress,” Stier said. “The White House also must get congressional buy-in and bipartisan support, make substantial, upfront investments, and plan for sustained attention over many years.”

Still, Weichert contends now is a time for action.

“Our system was designed after World War II, addressing legacy problems that in many cases are not problems today, and, we are 20 years into the 21st century, fundamentally. We have no time to waste,” she said.

COLUMN BY

Portrait of Fred Lucas

Fred Lucas

Fred Lucas is the White House correspondent for The Daily Signal and co-host of “The Right Side of History” podcast. Send an email to Fred. Twitter: @FredLucasWH.

Dear Readers:

With the recent conservative victories related to tax cuts, the Supreme Court, and other major issues, it is easy to become complacent.

However, the liberal Left is not backing down. They are rallying supporters to advance their agenda, moving this nation further from the vision of our founding fathers.

If we are to continue to bring this nation back to our founding principles of limited government and fiscal conservatism, we need to come together as a group of likeminded conservatives.

This is the mission of The Heritage Foundation. We want to continue to develop and present conservative solutions to the nation’s toughest problems. And we cannot do this alone.

We are looking for a select few conservatives to become a Heritage Foundation member. With your membership, you’ll qualify for all associated benefits and you’ll help keep our nation great for future generations.

ACTIVATE YOUR MEMBERSHIP TODAY

EDITORS NOTE: The featured image is of White House Budget Director Mick Mulvaney presenting proposals to consolidate the work of executive agencies during a meeting Thursday of President Donald Trump’s Cabinet. (Photo: Jonathan Ernst/Reuters/Newscom)

Trump Orders Fix to Family Separation on Border, Calls for ‘Comprehensive’ Immigration Solution

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President Donald Trump signed an executive order Wednesday to halt separating families that illegally cross the border, but also said he wants to sign a “comprehensive” immigration bill from Congress.

In signing the executive order, Trump said, “We are going to have a lot of happy people.”

“It’s about keeping families together while at the same time being sure that we have a very powerful, very strong border,” the president said. “Border security will be equal, if not greater, than previously. So we are going to have strong, very strong borders, but we are going to keep the families together. I didn’t like the sight or the feeling of families being separated.”

Trump added, “It continues to be a zero tolerance. We have zero tolerance for people who enter our country illegally.”

“Zero tolerance” marked a tougher approach by the Trump administration in enforcing existing immigration law by arresting those who enter the country illegally.

The order is a temporary fix, and is titled “Affording Congress an Opportunity to Address Family Separation.”

The executive order says:

The Secretary of Homeland Security (Secretary), shall, to the extent permitted by law and subject to the availability of appropriations, maintain custody of alien families during the pendency of any criminal improper entry or immigration proceedings involving their members. … The Secretary shall not, however, detain an alien family together when there is a concern that detention of an alien child with the child’s alien parent would pose a risk to the child’s welfare.

Trump was accompanied in the Oval Office Wednesday by Vice President Mike Pence and Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen

“This is a situation that president after president hasn’t dealt with for decades,” Nielsen said. “This one is willing to stand up and fix it. We ask Congress to do their part.”

Pence called it a “false choice between being a country of law and order and a country that demonstrates compassion and heart of the American people.”

Trump said that Congress must act, not only to address the minors situation but also for a “comprehensive” bill to address immigration.

“We are also wanting to go through Congress. We will be going through Congress,” Trump said. “We are working on a much more comprehensive bill.”

Past “comprehensive” proposals have awarded legal status to illegal immigrants, while increasing border security.

Trump met with 11 Republican senators and five GOP House members earlier Wednesday in the Cabinet Room of the White House where he first announced he would be signing the order, and also called for a broader measure.

Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., asserted that immigration has “bedeviled” lawmakers for 40 years.

“You’re the president who can help us solve the immigration problem with your leadership,” Alexander said. “You may be able to do for immigration what Nixon did for China and Reagan did for the Soviet Union and a lot of us would like to work with you on that.”

At least two bills have some GOP support in the House.

House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., sponsored a more conservative bill that requires employers to use E-Verify, to check immigration status of employees, gives renewable legal status to beneficiaries of the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program for three years, authorizes a border wall, and ends chain migration.

House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., has a “compromise bill” that gives DACA beneficiaries a pathway to citizenship and includes $25 billion for a border wall.

Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz., told Roll Call of the two bills, “We don’t like any of them,” and said that “Immigration is kind of my sacrosanct. You’ve got to do this the right way. You just can’t do this badly.”

The detention of children has been a raging controversy as the administration increased enforcement.

According to immigration experts, under the federal government’s Flores settlement of 1997, the federal government would release unaccompanied minor illegal immigrants after no more than 20 days of detention. A separate 2008 law required unaccompanied minors be transferred out of custody of the Department of Homeland Security to the custody of the Department of Health and Human Services.

Then, a 2016 judicial interpretation expanded the Flores settlement to include minors brought into the country with their parents. So, conforming to the expanded interpretation of the settlement and the existing law, the DHS enforcement agencies, after arresting illegal immigrant parents, have transferred minor children to the custody of the HHS Office of Refugee Resettlement, which tries to place them with relatives or a caretaker.

During the meeting with members of Congress, Pence told lawmakers the administration was limited.

“We don’t want children to be taken away from parents, but, right now under the law, and we sit with these lawmakers, we only have two choices before us,” Pence said. “No. 1 is don’t prosecute people who come into our country illegally, or prosecute them and then under court cases and the law, they have to be separated from their children.”

The executive order references the Flores settlement.

The Attorney General shall promptly file a request with the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California to modify the Settlement Agreement in Flores v. Sessions, CV 85-4544 (“Flores settlement”), in a manner that would permit the Secretary, under present resource constraints, to detain alien families together throughout the pendency of criminal proceedings for improper entry or any removal or other immigration proceedings.

The order is not a policy departure for the president, said Hans von Spakovsky, senior legal fellow for The Heritage Foundation.

So to the extent the 1997 Flores settlement and the 9th Circuit’s misinterpretation of it prevents DHS from holding juveniles for more than 20 days, this language gives DHS the exception they need to still separate families if they have to in order to comply with Flores.

As I expected, the [executive order] also tells the AG in Sec. 3 (e) to file a request with the court in the Flores case to allow DHS to detain families together “throughout the pendency of criminal proceedings for improper entry or any removal or other immigration proceedings.”

So the president is not backing down from prosecuting all illegal aliens who cross the border, which is what the critics wanted.

Pence reiterated the president’s call for a comprehensive measure when talking to lawmakers.

“The president’s vision, as articulated in his State of the Union address, was let’s solve the whole problem,” Pence said. “Let’s build a wall, let’s close the loopholes, let’s solve the problem for 1.8 million people that were brought into this country through no fault of their own, and let’s deal with law and order and compassion with this issue of family separation at our border.”

COLUMN BY

Portrait of Fred Lucas

Fred Lucas

Fred Lucas is the White House correspondent for The Daily Signal and co-host of “The Right Side of History” podcast. Send an email to Fred. Twitter: @FredLucasWH.

RELATED ARTICLES:

How Immigration Officials Cooked the Books and Fooled Congress for Years

Who’s Responsible for Separating Alien Kids From Their Parents? Many People, but Not Trump

Dear Readers:

With the recent conservative victories related to tax cuts, the Supreme Court, and other major issues, it is easy to become complacent.

However, the liberal Left is not backing down. They are rallying supporters to advance their agenda, moving this nation further from the vision of our founding fathers.

If we are to continue to bring this nation back to our founding principles of limited government and fiscal conservatism, we need to come together as a group of likeminded conservatives.

This is the mission of The Heritage Foundation. We want to continue to develop and present conservative solutions to the nation’s toughest problems. And we cannot do this alone.

We are looking for a select few conservatives to become a Heritage Foundation member. With your membership, you’ll qualify for all associated benefits and you’ll help keep our nation great for future generations.

ACTIVATE YOUR MEMBERSHIP TODAY<

EDITORS NOTE: The featured image is of President Donald Trump holding a signed executive order to keep families together at border in the Oval Office of the White House, in Washington, D.C., on June 20, 2018. Photo by Olivier Douliery/ Abaca Press (Newscom TagID: sipaphotoseight258174.jpg) [Photo via Newscom]

Fact-Checking 4 Claims About Detaining Children at the Border

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The Trump administration is taking heat from Democrats and Republicans for separating parents and children after they illegally crossed the southern border.

Over the six weeks from April 19 through May 31, federal officials separated about 2,000 children from their families at the U.S.-Mexican border, the Associated Press reported last week.

President Donald Trump blamed the procedure on Democrats in Congress.

“They’re obstructing. They’re really obstructionists and they are obstructing,” Trump said Monday at the White House. “The United States will not be a migrant camp and it will not be a refugee holding facility. It won’t be.”

“If you look at what’s happening in Europe, if you look at what’s happening in other places, we can’t allow that to happen to the United States—not on my watch,” he said.

During the White House press briefing Monday, Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said: “This is a very serious issue that has resulted after years and years of Congress not taking action.”

Here’s a look at four of the more questionable claims made about the enforcement action.

1. Democrats’ Law or Trump Policy?

“The Democrats forced that law upon our nation,” Trump asserted last week.

Democrats, backed by some media commentators, counter that it’s not the law but a Trump administration policy.

Actually, experts say, the situation is a combination of a bipartisan law and a Clinton administration policy.

In 1997, the Clinton administration entered into something called the Flores Settlement Agreement, which ended a class action lawsuit first brought in the 1980s.

The settlement established a policy that the federal government would release unaccompanied minors from custody to their parents, relatives, or other caretakers after no more than 20 days, or, alternatively, determine the “least restrictive” setting for the child.

In a separate development, in 2008 the Democrat-controlled Congress approved bipartisan legislation to combat human trafficking and President George W. Bush, a Republican, signed it into law.

Section 235 (g) in that law, the William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act, states that unaccompanied minors entering the United States must be transferred to the custody of the Department of Health and Human Services Office of Refugee Resettlement rather than to the Department of Homeland Security.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit expanded the Flores settlement in 2016 to include children brought to the country illegally by their parents.

For consistency between the provision of the anti-trafficking law and the 9th Circuit’s interpretation of the Flores agreement, children who came into the country illegally with parents had to be taken into HHS custody, said Art Arthur, former general counsel for Immigration and Naturalization Services (now known as Immigration and Customs Enforcement) as well as a former federal immigration judge.

“As soon as their parents are detained, the children are classified as unaccompanied,” Arthur, now a resident fellow for law and policy at the Center for Immigration Studies, told The Daily Signal.

2. Unprecedented Action by Trump Administration?

Some media outlets have called the practice of separating children from parents at the border “unprecedented” or a “new low” for the United States.

What’s different under the Trump administration, though, is a “zero tolerance” approach to enforcing existing immigration laws and policy.

On May 7 in Scottsdale, Arizona, Attorney General Jeff Sessions directed federal prosecutors to prosecute all adults who illegally enter the country, including those accompanied by their children, under a provision of federal law (8 U.S.C. § 1325(a)) that covers illegal entry.

“If you’re smuggling a child, then we’re going to prosecute you, and that child will be separated from you, probably, as required by law,” Sessions said. “If you don’t want your child separated, then don’t bring them across the border illegally. It’s not our fault that somebody does that.”

Since it takes more than 20 days to adjudicate an asylum claim, the 9th Circuit’s interpretation of the Flores Settlement Agreement essentially provides three options, said David Inserra, a homeland security policy analyst for The Heritage Foundation.

“The Trump administration currently faces two options: Either release every family that crosses the border and claims asylum and know that most of them will never show up at their immigration court hearing; or release the child as required by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals’ interpretation of the Flores settlement while holding the parents while awaiting trial,” Inserra told The Daily Signal.

“A third, better solution is to fix the loophole created by the 9th Circuit with regard to Flores and improve the asylum process to discourage frivolous asylum claims, while also better serving those with legitimate asylum cases,” Inserra added.

Proposed legislation by Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va.; Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C.; and House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis. would reverse the 9th Circuit’s interpretation.

“This would mean only a brief period of separation while the parents are prosecuted,” Arthur said.

Depending on the outcome, the family would be reunited and either be released or deported together.

3. ‘Concentration Camps’?

Much of the criticism of separating children from parents at the border has been from Democrats.

However, former CIA Director Michael Hayden, who served under President George W. Bush, and former Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele, who was once lieutenant governor of Maryland, both compared the practice to Nazi concentration camps.

The Department of Homeland Security rejected the comparison, noting that most children caught crossing the border illegally are not detained by federal officials.

“We have high standards,” Nielsen said during the White House press briefing Monday. “We give them meals and we give them education and we give them medical care. There are videos, there are TVs. I visited the detention centers myself.”

In the last fiscal year, 90 percent of apprehended children were released to a sponsor who was either a parent or close relative, according to the department.

Homeland security officials also say they work with HHS to improve and ease communication between detained parents and their children in HHS care.

Sponsors may be “a parent, adult sibling, relative, or appropriate home that meets criteria for the safety of the child and continuation of any immigration proceedings,” according to DHS. Also, a parent who is prosecuted and later released can be a sponsor and ask HHS to restore custody of the child.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement has dedicated a facility to operate primarily as a family reunification and removal center. ICE staff who interact with parents will receive training in trauma-informed care, and the agency will assign staff trained in mental health care to detained parents who have been separated from children, according to DHS.

4. Taking Babies From Nursing Mothers?

CNN reported last week on an illegal immigrant from Honduras who claimed her nursing daughter was pulled away from her before she was handcuffed. CNN cited a lawyer from a liberal legal group called the Texas Civil Rights Project.

In a conference call with reporters last week, a senior Department of Homeland Security official said this was not the case.

“We do not separate breastfeeding children from their parents. That does not exist. That is not a policy. That is not something that DHS does,” an official told reporters Friday. “We believe that that is false.”

An estimated 14,500 to 17,500 individuals are smuggled into the United States each year. For perspective, that number constitutes about 5.7 percent of total apprehensions of illegal immigrants in 2017, though apprehensions don’t account for all border crossings.

This article has been modified since publication.

COLUMN BY

Portrait of Fred Lucas

Fred Lucas

Fred Lucas is the White House correspondent for The Daily Signal and co-host of “The Right Side of History” podcast. Send an email to Fred. Twitter: @FredLucasWH.

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Dear Readers:

With the recent conservative victories related to tax cuts, the Supreme Court, and other major issues, it is easy to become complacent.

However, the liberal Left is not backing down. They are rallying supporters to advance their agenda, moving this nation further from the vision of our founding fathers.

If we are to continue to bring this nation back to our founding principles of limited government and fiscal conservatism, we need to come together as a group of likeminded conservatives.

This is the mission of The Heritage Foundation. We want to continue to develop and present conservative solutions to the nation’s toughest problems. And we cannot do this alone.

We are looking for a select few conservatives to become a Heritage Foundation member. With your membership, you’ll qualify for all associated benefits and you’ll help keep our nation great for future generations.

ACTIVATE YOUR MEMBERSHIP TODAY

EDITORS NOTE: The featured image of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen is by Leah Millis/Reuters/Newscom.

Sports Tickets, Other Freebies for FBI Leakers Raise ‘Bribery’ Issues, Legal Experts Say

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The Justice Department’s internal watchdog is investigating FBI leakers, as legal experts say revelations about gifts in an inspector general’s report this week raise new legal and ethical issues.

“We will separately report on those investigations as they are concluded,” @JusticeOIG says.

The Justice Department’s Office of Inspector General noted that “dozens” of FBI agents had contact with the news media, and many were taking sports tickets, golf outings, and other gifts from reporters to whom they were leaking unauthorized information about a criminal investigation.

The FBI’s Office of Integrity and Compliance discourages the acceptance by agents of anything of value, said Ron Hosko, a former FBI assistant director.

The liberal Left continue to push their radical agenda against American values. The good news is there is a solution. Find out more >>

“Accepting something from someone who clearly expects something back has the whiff of a quid pro quo,” Hosko told The Daily Signal.

“Any agreement for something of value in exchange for information—particularly, information related to an investigation—would constitute a corrupt relationship and warrants the strongest sanction,” he added.

The inspector general’s report about the FBI’s handling of Hillary Clinton’s private email server scandal, released on Thursday, said:

We have profound concerns about the volume and extent of unauthorized media contacts by FBI personnel that we have uncovered during our review.

In addition, we identified instances where FBI employees improperly received benefits from reporters, including tickets to sporting events, golfing outings, drinks and meals, and admittance to nonpublic social events.

We will separately report on those investigations as they are concluded, consistent with the Inspector General Act, other applicable federal statutes, and OIG policy.

The report goes on to recommend that “the FBI evaluate whether (a) it is sufficiently educating its employees about both its media contact policy and the Department’s ethics rules, and (b) its disciplinary penalties are sufficient to deter such improper conduct.”

The Office of Government Ethics describes specific restrictions on executive branch employees accepting gifts. A “prohibited source” of a gift is “seeking official action” or “has an interest.”

The question arises if and when that affects a news organization with an interest in information held by a government employee who is taking gifts, potentially using that job for personal gain.

“We are looking at two potential crimes. One is potential disclosure of classified information. The second is potential bribery,” Curt Levey, president of the Committee for Justice, a nonprofit conservative legal group, told The Daily Signal. “Under bribery statutes, the Supreme Court has determined you have to prove a quid pro quo.”

That would be a difficult case to prosecute, because bribery is often thought of in the context of giving a government official “cash or a Rolex,” said David Rivkin, a lawyer who served in the White House Counsel’s Office under President George H.W. Bush.

“If an FBI agent received meals and benefits in exchange for providing this information, it might fall under the bribery statute,” Rivkin told The Daily Signal. “You might convince a grand jury, but can you convince a jury?”

Rivkin said another potential offense would be FBI agents misusinggovernment property or the authority of their office to advance a purely personal agenda.

While Justice Department Inspector General Michael E. Horowitz determined political bias didn’t affect the outcome of the investigation into Clinton’s email scandal, Rivkin thinks the FBI employees demonstrated an agenda.

FBI officials Peter Strzok and Lisa Page were the only named individuals, while others were identified only as FBI employees or agents.

“I found the totality of the messages, not just Strzok and Page, but ‘Agents 3 and 4,’ absolutely appalling,” Rivkin said. “I have never seen anything like this in my years at the Department of Justice.”

On Oct. 28, the day then-FBI Director James Comey notified Congress he had reopened the Clinton probe, “FBI Employee 1” wrote, “I mean, I never really liked the Republic anyway.”

“FBI Employee 3” responded, “As I have initiated the destruction of the republic … Would you be so kind as to have a coffee with me this afternoon?”

“FBI Employee 4” chimed in, “I’m clinging to small pockets of happiness in the dark time of the Republic’s destruction.”

Fewer jokes were exchanged the day after the election, Nov. 9, 2016. “FBI Attorney 2” wrote, “I am numb.”

“FBI Employee” (no number assigned) replied, “I can’t stop crying.” “FBI Employee” later said, “You promised me this wouldn’t happen. YOU PROMISED.”

“FBI Attorney 2” wrote, “I am so stressed about what I could have done differently,” adding, “I don’t know. We broke the momentum.”

As a reassurance, “FBI Employee” wrote, “All the people who were initially voting for her would not, and were not, swayed by any decision the FBI put out. Trump’s supporters are all poor to middle class, uneducated, lazy POS that think he will magically grant them jobs for doing nothing.” (“POS” is an acronym for a barnyard epithet.)

“They probably didn’t watch the debates, aren’t fully educated on his policies, and are stupidly wrapped up in his unmerited enthusiasm,” the message continued.

What upset Rivkin the most about the messages was that no FBI employees seemed to object.

“If you looked at all the people involved in those chains of messages with disdain and anger, you don’t see any Boy Scouts,” Rivkin said. “That’s very depressing to me.”

COMMENTARY BY

Portrait of Fred Lucas

Fred Lucas

Fred Lucas is the White House correspondent for The Daily Signal and co-host of “The Right Side of History” podcast. Send an email to Fred. Twitter: @FredLucasWH.

Dear Readers:

With the recent conservative victories related to tax cuts, the Supreme Court, and other major issues, it is easy to become complacent.

However, the liberal Left is not backing down. They are rallying supporters to advance their agenda, moving this nation further from the vision of our founding fathers.

If we are to continue to bring this nation back to our founding principles of limited government and fiscal conservatism, we need to come together as a group of likeminded conservatives.

This is the mission of The Heritage Foundation. We want to continue to develop and present conservative solutions to the nation’s toughest problems. And we cannot do this alone.

We are looking for a select few conservatives to become a Heritage Foundation member. With your membership, you’ll qualify for all associated benefits and you’ll help keep our nation great for future generations.

ACTIVATE YOUR MEMBERSHIP TODAY

EDITORS NOTE: The featured image is by Yuri Gripas/Reuters/Newscom.

Senators Announce Bill to Protect States’ Legalization of Marijuana

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One likes to think of policymaking as a deliberative process, one where legislators base their debates on scientific information to craft evidence-based bills. Au contraire, mes amis.

For several years, an emerging marijuana industry has poured money into sponsoring ballot initiatives and lobbying state legislators to legalize marijuana. Industry’s money not only legalized pot for medical use in 31 states and for recreational use in 8 of those states, but also silenced the nonprofit voices of prevention, treatment, and public health that lack the wherewithal to compete. The legislative playing field is by no means level.

In January, Attorney General Jeff Sessions rescinded the Obama Administration’s Cole Memo, which gave the industry a pass from federal enforcement so long as it adhered to eight conditions (all of which were violated within weeks without follow-up enforcement).

Infuriated by Sessions’ action, Colorado Sen. Cory Gardener put a hold on all judicial candidates nominated by President Trump until he capitulated in April, promising he would uphold states’ rights to legalize pot.

Last week, Senators Gardener and Elizabeth Warren (MA) introduced the Strengthening the Tenth Amendment Through Entrusting States (STATES) Act. Representatives Jared Polis (CO), David Joyce (OH), and Earl Blumenauer (OR) introduced the companion bill in the House. President Trump announced he would support the bill.

The STATES Act would exempt states that have legalized marijuana from the US Controlled Substances Act. If Congress passes the Act, the marijuana industry will not only be able to expand in states that have made pot legal, it will amass even more money to lobby for full legalization in the 42 states that haven’t.

Americans have no idea how much money is being spent by the marijuana industry to get what it wants: full legalization nationwide at the expense of public health.

Read ABSNews story here.

Yes, You Can Become Addicted to Marijuana. And the Problem is Growing.

Although many Americans are unaware that marijuana can cause addiction, in the public health and medical communities, “it is a well-defined disorder that includes physical withdrawal symptoms, cravings and psychological dependence,” and increasing numbers of people are seeking treatment for it, notes this Pew Charitable Trusts story.

Experts are trying to find out why. Some think the intense levels of THC in marijuana strains (up to 20%) and concentrates (up to 80%) are responsible for the upsurge. Others think it may be because more users are taking the drug multiple times a day.

Nearly 3 million Americans meet the diagnostic criteria for marijuana dependence.

This article chronicles the trajectory of marijuana addiction in one young man, Quintin Pohl, pictured above, now age 17. Quintin began smoking marijuana in middle school and is now free of the drug thanks to treatment at a California residential treatment center and extensive follow-up aftercare.

Read this Pew Charitable Trusts story here.

Vermont Marijuana: What Parents Should Know about Pot and Juuling THC

The latest fad for teens and tweens is “to Juul.” Picture above, Juuls are e-cigarettes popular with young people who often post pictures of themselves on social media inhaling candy-flavored liquids from them. Juuls and other e-cigarettes heat the liquids and produce vapors which can then be inhaled.

The liquids can contain nicotine or cannabis oil. No one can tell the difference, but both can be harmful to health. Some chemicals in e-cigarette liquids are carcinogenic.

Schools are developing policies that ban Juuls on campus and recommend that parents reinforce that message at home with their teenagers. Legal marijuana will soon be available in Vermont but not for anyone under age 21. This article offers six tips to parents to help them talk with their teenagers about marijuana.

Read the Burlington Free Press article here.

Helping to End Addiction Over the Long-term (HEAL)

The directors of the National Institutes of Health, the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke; and the National Institute on Drug Abuse lay out a research plan for ending addiction over the long term.

Read the JAMA article here.

The Marijuana Report is a weekly e-newsletter published by National Families in Action in partnership with SAM (Smart Approaches to Marijuana).

Visit National Families in Action’s website, The Marijuana Report.Org, to learn more about the marijuana story unfolding across the nation.

Subscribe to The Marijuana Report.

Our mission is to protect children from addictive drugs by shining light on the science that underlies their effects.

Addictive drugs harm children, families, and communities.

Legalizing them creates commercial industries that make drugs more available, increase use, and expand harms.

Science shows that addiction begins in childhood.

It is a pediatric disease that is preventable.

We work to prevent the emergence of commercial addictive drug industries that will target children.

We support FDA approved medicines.

We support the assessment, treatment, and/or social and educational services
for users and low-level dealers as alternatives to incarceration.

About SAM (Smart Approaches to Marijuana)

SAM is a nonpartisan alliance of lawmakers, scientists and other concerned citizens who want to move beyond simplistic discussions of “incarceration versus legalization” when discussing marijuana use and instead focus on practical changes in marijuana policy that neither demonizes users nor legalizes the drug. SAM supports a treatment, health-first marijuana policy.  SAM has four main goals:

  • To inform public policy with the science of today’s marijuana.
  • To reduce the unintended consequences of current marijuana policies, such as lifelong stigma due to arrest.
  • To prevent the establishment of “Big Marijuana” – and a 21st-Century tobacco industry that would market marijuana to children.
  • To promote research of marijuana’s medical properties and produce, non-smoked, non-psychoactive pharmacy-attainable medications.

SPLC’s Dangerous Bigotry: Empowered by Facebook, Twitter, Google, & Amazon

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2ndVote readers are familiar with the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). The famed civil rights organization has devolved into little more than a left-wing fundraising machine, naming Christian organizations “hate groups” for doing nothing more than holding to traditional values on sexuality.

In a rational world, SPLC would be out of business for its dangerously false designations, which have been linked to at least one attempted mass shooting. Instead, it has massive corporate support, is regularly given credibility by mainstream media outlets, and — as was uncovered last week by The Daily Caller News Foundation (DCNF) — is consulted by Google, Facebook, Twitter, and Amazon for censorship purposes.

The DCNF reports that of the four organizations, Amazon gives SPLC the greatest free rein:

“We remove organizations that the SPLC deems as ineligible,” an Amazon spokeswoman told TheDCNF.

Amazon grants the SPLC that power “because we don’t want to be biased whatsoever,” said the spokeswoman, who could not say whether Amazon considers the SPLC to be unbiased.

The Smile program allows customers to identify a charity to receive 0.5 percent of the proceeds from their purchases on Amazon. Customers have given more than $8 million to charities through the program since 2013, according to Amazon.

Only one participant in the program, the SPLC, gets to determine which other groups are allowed to join it.

Christian legal groups like the Alliance Defending Freedom — which recently successfully represented a Christian baker at the Supreme Court — are barred from the Amazon Smile program, while openly anti-Semitic groups remain, The DCNF found in May.

One month later, the anti-Semitic groups — but not the Alliance Defending Freedom — are still able to participate in the program.

The other social media giants are not far behind in using SPLC to punish groups with which don’t follow left-wing ideology. Google uses SPLC to police alleged hate speech on YouTube even as it has been accused of demonetizing YouTube videos with conservative content. Facebook and Twitter both consult with SPLC to police alleged hate speech.

Conservatives at the Family Research Council, Alliance Defending Freedom, and the Ruth Institute haven’t bowed to SPLC’s bullying, and the DCNF’s new report gives more credibility to conservative concerns. The refusal to back down has brought adherents from the mainstream press. The Atlantic published a defense of one of SPLC’s Muslim targets while former Politico reporter Ben Schreckinger and former Bloomberg columnist Megan McArdle criticized SPLC’s overall methodology.

Now it’s your turn. We urge you to use your second vote to let SPLC’s corporate backers know that you won’t stand for the SPLC’s dangerous bigotry against conservatives:

Abbott Laboratories
Apple
Bank of America
Charles Schwab
Deutsche Bank
Disney
Freddie Mac
JPMorgan Chase
Kraft Heinz
Liberty Mutual
Lyft
MGM
Newman’s Own
Pfizer
Progressive Insurance
Shell
Verizon

Learn more about the corporate support for SPLC at our resource page here.

Help us continue providing resources like this and educating conservative shoppers by becoming a 2ndVote Member today!

Trump Challenges NFL Players to Put Up or Shut Up

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President Donald Trump gave an interesting answer to a reporter about the National Football League’s national anthem problem.

“I’m going to ask all of those people to recommend to me—because that’s what they’re protesting—people that they think were unfairly treated by the justice system,” Trump said at the White House before departing for the G-7 summit, according to the New York Post.

“I’m going to take a look at those applications, and if I find—and my committee finds—that they’ve been unfairly treated, then we’ll pardon them,” the president said. “Or at least let them out.”

Trump already has posthumously pardoned boxing legend Jack Johnson and said he’d consider Muhammad Ali as well, whether that’s necessary or not.

He’s clearly been on a pardon spree.

The response to Trump’s proposal to the players will be quite telling.

One of the problems with the NFL’s kneeling movement is that it has a specific target—the national anthem and the American flag—yet nebulous demands.

Despite players’ claims otherwise, many fans say they believe the players are protesting America, the military, and law enforcement in general.

Trump’s proposal puts players on the spot. If they have specific concerns that they want addressed, certain injustices that are intolerable, the president says he will work with them to rectify those issues.

It has been said that baseball is America’s pastime, but football is America’s passion.

Major League Baseball doesn’t quite sit at the cultural height it once did in this country. The game has receded during the seemingly inevitable rise of the National Football League in particular.

But now the NFL has a huge problem on its hands.

The national anthem controversy has damaged the league among its most passionate fans. And it clearly has played a key role in the swift decline in viewers, especially in the past year when the protests and media coverage of them exploded.

This statistic, noted by New York Daily News, should be particularly concerning:

A survey conducted by The Wall Street Journal and NBC News revealed that adults who say they follow the league closely have dropped 9 percent since 2014. And strikingly, men aged 18 to 49—the league’s core demographic—who say they follow the NFL closely are down from 75 to 51 percent over the same period.

This is not a league that can thrive without a passionate fan base.

The NFL notably changed its policy for the upcoming season, electing to fine teams—though not individuals—for kneeling in protest during the anthem. Players who wish to protest now will be allowed to stay in the locker room while the song is played.

This is no guarantee that angry fans will suddenly be pleased again. And as we saw with the aborted White House visit by the Super Bowl champion Philadelphia Eagles, the protests and contention haven’t abated.

While many of these fans may never come back to the NFL, Trump has offered at least one resolution to the league’s problem.

Protesting players who are sincere about their goals should take the president’s challenge seriously.

If, instead, the movement is simply focused on protesting America as a racist country or is just resistance to Trump from the sports world, then the players and league will become further isolated from their unhappy fans, who mostly dislike the protests.

And if the league wants to save itself from constant protest, declining fan interest, and permanent politicization, then the players would be wise to at least consider Trump’s proposal and look to work with the president when he offers an olive branch.

COMMENTARY BY

Portrait of Jarrett Stepman

Jarrett Stepman

Jarrett Stepman is an editor and commentary writer for The Daily Signal and co-host of “The Right Side of History” podcast. Send an email to Jarrett. Twitter: .

Dear Readers:

With the recent conservative victories related to tax cuts, the Supreme Court, and other major issues, it is easy to become complacent.

However, the liberal Left is not backing down. They are rallying supporters to advance their agenda, moving this nation further from the vision of our founding fathers.

If we are to continue to bring this nation back to our founding principles of limited government and fiscal conservatism, we need to come together as a group of likeminded conservatives.

This is the mission of The Heritage Foundation. We want to continue to develop and present conservative solutions to the nation’s toughest problems. And we cannot do this alone.

We are looking for a select few conservatives to become a Heritage Foundation member. With your membership, you’ll qualify for all associated benefits and you’ll help keep our nation great for future generations.

ACTIVATE YOUR MEMBERSHIP TODAY

EDITORS NOTE: The featured image is by Curtis Compton/TNS/Newscom.

Zuckerberg Admits Mishandling Controversy in Labeling Conservative Pundits as ‘Dangerous’

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Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg admitted Monday that his company “mishandled” the controversy of labeling Diamond and Silk—two popular conservative personalities—“dangerous” and “unsafe to the community” in early April.

Facebook restricted the two conservative social media personalities on its platform on April 5 after being given the labels. The two are highly popular on Facebook for making pro-President Donald Trump videos and shattering racial and gender stereotypes.

dcnf-logo

“We mishandled communication with Diamond and Silk for months,” Zuckerberg said in a response to Congress that was released on Monday, two months after his highly publicized congressional testimony. “Their frustration was understandable, and we apologized to them. The message they received on April 5, 2018, that characterized their page as ‘dangerous’ was incorrect and not reflective of the way we seek to communicate with our community and the people who run Pages on our platform.”

“As part of our commitment to continually improve our products and to minimize risks where human judgment is involved, we are making a number of changes,” Zuckerberg added.

The original message Facebook sent to Diamond and Silk on April 5 read: “The Policy team has came to the conclusion that your content and your brand has been determined unsafe to the community. This decision is final and it is not appeal-able in anyway.”

One of the changes Facebook plans to implement is using conservative leaders, including a former Republican senator from Arizona, Jon Kyl, to help audit Facebook for political bias.

“We have engaged an outside adviser, former Sen. Jon Kyl, to advise the company on potential bias against conservative voices,” Zuckerberg said. “We believe this external feedback will help us improve over time and ensure we can most effectively serve our diverse community.”

COLUMN BY

Kyle Perisic

Kyle Perisic is a member of the Young Leaders Program at The Heritage Foundation.

EDITORS NOTE: The featured image is of Viral video personalities Lynnette “Diamond” Hardaway (L) and Rochelle “Silk” Richardson speaking  at the annual National Rifle Association (NRA) convention in Dallas, Texas, U.S., May 4, 2018. REUTERS/Lucas Jackson (Newscom TagID: rtrlnine895711.jpg) [Photo via Newscom]. Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities for this original content, email licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.