MEMRI TV: Compilation of California Imams in Support of October 7th Hamas Attack

/in , , , , , , , /by

Claiming Attack Defeated Israel, Calling For Annihilating Israel, Claiming Israel Created Hollywood-Type Videos Of Hamas Atrocities, Saying The U.S. Lied About Hamas Beheading Babies And Raping Women, Calling To Make Zionists On Campuses ‘Very Uncomfortable’ And For Jews To Hang From The Rope Allah Gave Them

Palestinians | Special Dispatch No. 11093

Since October 7, 2023, when Hamas invaded southern Israel, murdered over 1,200 people, and took nearly 250 hostage, the MEMRI research team that monitors imams’ sermons in mosques in the U.S. as well as speeches and statements by U.S. Muslim leaders and organizations has been finding, and exposing, some very disturbing content.

This content has included antisemitic and pro-Hamas statements, expressions of support for the October 7 attacks and calls for further violence, denial of the atrocities perpetrated by Hamas, and anti-Israel and anti-U.S. statements.

It is notable that in our extensive monitoring, our researchers have not found a single sermon denouncing Hamas or the October 7 attacks.

Our exposure of statements by Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) executive director Nihad Awad – that he was “happy to see” Palestinians “breaking the siege” on October 7, “throwing down the shackles of their own land, and walk[ing] free into their land,” and his assertion that “the people of Gaza have the right to self-defense… [but] Israel, as an occupying power, does not have that right to self-defense” – led the White House to disavow CAIR and to remove it from its National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism.

This compilation includes sermons that we have found from across California – nearly a dozen, and more are in the works – compiled into a single video. These sermons reflecting the sentiment we have found in our broader U.S. monitoring are by Sunni and Shi’ite imams from major mosques and leading organizations, as well as by individuals associated with universities.

The speakers herein express blatant antisemitism, including tropes about Jews controlling the media, descriptions of Israel as the new Nazis who are “fabricating videos” of the atrocities “like a Hollywood studio,” assertions of Hamas’s humanity to their Israeli captives who hugged and kissed them goodbye when they were released, and calls for violence against Jews. One of the more disturbing clips focuses on Palestinian protests on college campuses and exhorts the audience, “This is the time to agitate, to make Zionists feel very uncomfortable on campus.”

No other organization is doing the work MEMRI does. Monitoring these groups and individuals and producing these clips is very exacting and demanding, and expensive.

To view the MEMRI Sermons By Imams In The West page, click here.

Santa Clara, California Imam Abdel Malik Ali: The Mask Of The Jews Is Off – They Are The New Nazis; Zionists Are White Supremacist Europeans With No Semitic DNA; Warns Of ‘False Flag’ Attack In The U.S. Intended To Incriminate Muslims And Curtail Growing Popularity Of Islam; Adds; Muslims Are Seen As Heroes Now Because Of Gaza – The West Has Got A Problem

At a December 13, 2023 lecture at the Muslim Community Association in Santa Clara, CA, Imam Amir Abdel Malik Ali of Masjid Al-Islam in Oakland CA, discussed the growing popularity of Islam in the West. He said that Muslims are heroes now because of Gaza and it should be no surprise if there will be a “terrorist attack” on America, which will be attributed to Muslims, in order to make them “shut up about Palestine.” However, Ali said, Muslims are so popular in America right now, that they will be believed this was a “false flag” operation. He said that the West has a “problem on their hands” because Islam is the fastest growing religion in the West. Ali said that the Jews are the “new Nazis” and that they are white Europeans who converted to Judaism.

According to the social media accounts of the Muslim Community Association, the lecture was titled “Gaza: Unveiling Reality – An Immediate Call to Action and Spiritual Empowerment,” and a video recording of the lecture was posted on the YouTube channel of the Islamic center on December 20, 2023. Imam Amir Abdel Malik Ali is the leader of the Oakland branch of As-Sabiqun, which was founded by DC Imam Abdul Alim Musa. As-Sabiqun has been identified as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League.

Torrance, California Imam Mohammad S. Ahmed During Friday Sermon: The Children Of Israel Have A Long History Of Wickedness, Murder, And Occupation; Bursts Into Tears: What Have We Done Wrong To Make Allah Not Choose Us To Be Martyrs Like The Palestinians?

Imam Mohammad S. Ahmed broke down in tears during a December 22, 2023 Friday sermon at the Islamic Institute of Torrance, California, asking: “What have we done wrong to not be martyrs for the sake of Allah?” He added: “What have we done for our mothers not to be like the mothers of the martyrs in Palestine […] for our men not to be among those resisting in Palestine?” Ahmed went on to say that the Palestinians have been chosen by Allah to be “the best people living on the earth nowadays.” He said that the Children of Israel have a long history of cowardice, wickedness, and murder and that Allah has punished them for this. The sermon was posted on the YouTube channel of the Islamic Institute of Torrance.

UCLA Law Professor Dr. Khaled Abou El Fadl In Friday Sermon: The Israelis And Americans Blame The Palestinians For Their Own Slaughter Like The Germans Blamed The Jews; They Dehumanize Us Like The Nazis Dehumanized The Jews

UCLA professor of Law Dr. Khaled Abou El Fadl said in a December 22, 2023 sermon streamed live on the YouTube channel of the Usuli Institute that the Israelis and Americans employ the same rhetoric against the Palestinians as the Germans did against the Jews. He also stated that the U.S. that lied about beheaded babies and raped women remains silent facing the brutality of Israel in Gaza.

According to the website of the University of California, Los Angels, Dr. El Fadl is the Omar and Azmeralda Alfi Distinguished Professor of Law at the UCLA School of Law. He was also formerly the Chair of the Islamic Studies Interdepartmental Program at UCLA. He is the founder of the Institute of Advanced Usuli Studies (“The Usuli Institute”), a non-profit which describes itself as “dedicated to research and education to promote humanistically beautiful and morally elevating interpretations of Islam.”

American Muslims For Palestine (AMP) Official Taher Herzallah At San Diego Mosque: This Is The Time To Make Zionists Feel Very Uncomfortable On Campuses; It Is Incumbent Upon The Muslims To Rule Palestine, Enforce The Rules Of Allah On Earth

American Muslims for Palestine (AMP) director of outreach and grassroots organization Taher Herzallah spoke at a December 23, 2023 AMP event held at the Islamic Center of San Diego about pro-Palestinian student activism. He said that this is the time to make the Zionists feel “very uncomfortable on campus.” He stated that the “Zionists are really going to regret the day they made Muslims their enemy,” and he claimed that the Jews colonized Palestine in order to be accepted into “whiteness.” Herzallah said that on October 7, the people of Yemen and Gaza destroyed the “veneer of superiority” of the West and the colonizers, and he advised his audience to follow the path they have set. He said that it is “incumbent” on the Muslims to rule Palestine from the River to the Sea and that the Muslims will “bring the rules that Allah gave us to this earth, because that’s what we were sent for.”

Other speakers at the AMP event were the mosque’s imams, Taha Hassane and Shaykh Abdeljalil Mezgouri, Dr. Ahmed Soboh, the religious director of the Islamic Center of Yorba Linda, religious advisor of the Chino Calley Islamic Center, former chairman of the Islamic shura council of southern California, and board member of CAIR LA, and Osama Shabaik, member of the “Irvine 11,” along with Taher Herzallah. The event was streamed live on the YouTube channel of the Islamic Center of San Diego.

Rancho Cucamonga, California Banker And Community Leader Dr. Yahya Abdul-Rahman: Today We Can Manufacture Rockets, Destroy Merkava Tanks; Gaza Is Teaching The World That Planning And Determination Will Get You Far; Gaza Defeated The Occupiers On October 7

Dr. Yahya Abdul-Rahman, CEO of the LARIBA Banking Group, said in a December 8, 2023 Friday sermon at the Islamic Center of Inland Empire-Rancho Masjid in Rancho Cucamonga, California that the year 2023 will be written in the history of the Muslims as a “changing point.” He added that Gaza is teaching the world that determination and planning can defeat the occupiers, like they did on October 7. Dr. Abdul-Yahya said: “Today, we manufacture rockets, […] we can destroy the prime of all tanks […] called the Merkava.” He added that Muslims came to America because Allah wanted them to spread the message of Islam, and he announced that he would be officiating the “acceptance of Islam” of a woman named Priscilla Lopez. Dr. Yahya Abdul-Rahman is a leading figure in the Muslim community in California. The sermon was streamed live on the YouTube channel of the Islamic center.

California Imam Dr. Sayed Moustafa Al-Qazwini: The Jews Killed Their Prophets, Are Entitled Liars; The Enemies Of Gaza Are The Enemies Of Mankind, Humanity

California imam Dr. Sayed Moustafa Al-Qazwini said, in a November 17, 2023, Friday sermon streamed lived at the Islamic Education Center of Orange County on YouTube on November 17, 2023, that the Jews have killed their prophets, have a sense of entitlement, and are liars. He said that Allah had forewarned the Jews against lying and fabricating, but the Jews justify targeting hospitals in Gaza, by claiming these are centers of Hamas, and then leading a disinformation campaign of lies and fabrications for which they can’t find proof. He prayed that Allah grant victory to the people of Gaza against its enemies, and he added that the enemies of Gaza are the enemies of mankind and the enemies of humanity.

California Imam Marc Manley: The Israelis Are Fabricating Videos Like A Hollywood Studio, Lengthening The Rope That Will Eventually Hang Them, Like The Dogs That They Are; May Allah Bless Me And Let Me Hear Their Last Gasps

In a November 17, 2023 Friday sermon delivered at the Middle Ground Muslim Center in Upland, California, Imam Marc Manley said that Israel will be hanged from a rope, “like the dogs that they are.” He said that he hopes Allah will bless him to see them take their last gasps. Manley said that everyday people are becoming Muslims, because “of the evil that the Zionists are doing” to the people of Palestine and Gaza, and others are “seeing the light,” and this is making Israel so desperate it is “fabricating videos like a Hollywood studio.” He said that the Zionists know that what they are doing is evil, this is why they need to remind everybody of the Holocaust.

San Francisco Bay Area Islamic Scholar Dr. Khalid Siddiqi: The Jews Make Up Only 1% Of The Universe, Yet Probably Cause 99% Of The Problems In The World

In a November 4, 2023 lecture at the Yaseen Belmont Masjid, California, Islamic scholar Dr. Khalid Siddiqi said that Jews make up only 1% of the universe, yet they “probably” cause 99% of the problems in the world. He praised a Palestinian father, who handed out sweets when he discovered all his children had died as martyrs, and said: “Who can fight this kind of people? They cannot defeat them. Nobody can defeat them.” Dr. Siddiqi also claimed that Freemasonry was a Jewish movement that seeks to rebuild Solomon’s Temple. The lecture was streamed live on Iqra Tube on YouTube. According to his website, Dr. Siddiqi is a lecturer at the Graduate Theological Union’s Center for Islamic Studies, Chabot College, Mission College and Ohlone College. He is the Director of the Islamic Education and Information Center, founder of the Islamic Law (Shari’a) Council and continues to serve as Secretary for the Council. Dr. Siddiqi is also the regular Friday preacher at the Islamic Society of San Francisco, Masjid Dar Esalam in San Francisco, California.

RELATED ARTICLES:

Gavin Newsom Meets with Hamas-Linked Groups

Boston’s first Muslim city councilor says Oct. 7 jihad massacre was a ‘military operation’

France: Muslim enters store, screams ‘Allahu akbar,’ threatens to slit throats of those who do not convert to Islam

Canada: Muslim opens fire at Edmonton City Hall, cites Gaza as reason, authorities search for motive

The Domestic Terrorists of Tomorrow are Blocking Traffic Today

EDITORS NOTE: This MEMRI video and column are republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Tammy Nobles on the Border Crisis: ‘I Don’t Want Any Other Parent to Live the Nightmare I Am Living’

/in , , , , , , , , , , /by

Illegal immigration is no longer an issue that only impacts people in border states. According to a recent Harvard CAPS-Harris poll, it has passed inflation as the #1 issue facing the nation. Communities across the country are feeling the detrimental effects of migrant crossings on their schools and businesses, and it’s contributed to a tremendous increase in drug trafficking, human trafficking, and crime.

Last Thursday, two mothers spoke on Capitol Hill before the House Homeland Security Committee, sharing their heartbreaking stories about how they lost their daughters due to the actions of illegal immigrants — two criminals that, before 2021 when the Biden administration took over, most likely would have been stopped at the border and not allowed into the United States.

Tammy Nobles from Maryland and Josephine Dunn from Arizona testified at the committee’s impeachment hearing for Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. Both of these grieving mothers believe that their daughters’ deaths were the result of Secretary Mayorkas’s refusal to follow the laws and secure the border. While Mrs. Dunn took the long trip from Arizona to Washington, D.C. to share her story, Mayorkas did not even show up to the two days of hearings to listen to her or Mrs. Nobles or look them in the eye.

Tammy Nobles’s daughter, Kayla Hamilton, was brutally raped and murdered on July 27, 2022 by an MS-13 gang member who strangled her with her phone cord and robbed her of $6.00. Kayla’s life would have been spared if this known violent MS-13 gang member had been stopped at the southern border. But he was not. Instead, according to Nobles:

“Among other neglectful actions, DHS employees failed to visually inspect the assailant by lifting his shirt to check for gang-related tattoos. Had DHS employees performed a visual inspection of the assailant’s body, they would have seen MS-13 gang related tattoos on his body, disqualifying him from entering the U.S. DHS employees failed to make a simple phone call to the El Salvador government to verify if [the] assailant was on an MS-13 gang affiliation list. Had they done so, El Salvador government officials would have confirmed that the assailant was a known MS-13 gang member with a prior criminal history. DHS supervisors had failed to train and supervise DHS employees to properly screen minors attempting to enter U.S. soil from El Salvador.”

As Nobles told Fox News’s Harris Faulker, the detectives who were working on Kayla’s case asked U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) if they could hold the suspect, a minor, until the DNA evidence came back, and ICE refused to. So the detectives had Child Protective Services (CPS) hold him, and CPS told the detectives that they were going to put him in a secure location. They later found out that officials put him in an unsecured children’s home where he had issues with other children. Finally, CPS put him into a foster home.

Chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, Congressman Mark Green (R-Tenn.), joined Nobles for that FOX News interview. Astounded, Faulkner asked Green, “He’s still illegal right? … Why does he get the same rights of ‘innocent until proven guilty’ in this country? … This guy gets to roam and gets put into homes where there are children.”

Green shared her frustration replying, “It’s insane. In fact, this individual gets more rights than an American citizen. An American citizen, under the [Department of Justice] right now, if there’s a court hearing pending, they report that information. They’ll say when the court date is. For illegals, they don’t even advertise or tell us the court dates for these people. It’s insane. They get more rights than we do.”

Faulker asked, “If he’s part of a gang, doesn’t he get a special designation of terror? I just don’t get it.”

Green responded, “They’re supposed to.”

At the end of her heart-wrenching testimony at Mayorkas’s impeachment hearing, Nobles said:

“For me this not a political issue — this a safety issue for everyone living in the United States. This could have been anyone’s daughter. I don’t want any other parent to live the nightmare that I am living. I am her voice now, and I am going to fight with everything I have to get her story told and bring awareness of the issue at the border.

“If we had stricter border policies, my daughter would still be alive today. Nothing will bring my daughter back nor fix the pain of not having her here, but I want to prevent this from happening to someone else’s child. This isn’t about immigration, this is about protecting everyone in the United States.”

While Nobles lost her daughter to a rapist and murderer who should have been caught at the border, Mr. and Mrs. Dunn lost their daughter due to the actions of a drug dealer that DHS should have stopped from coming into our country. Dunn talked about her daughter, Ashley, who would have turned 29 on January 19 — the day she offered her testimony. Instead, Ashley died as a result of fentanyl poisoning when she was 26 years old. With deep emotion, Dunn tearfully explained:

“In the same five minutes that I get to share her story, someone else’s loved one in the United States will die from fentanyl. Over the next 24 hours, 190 loved ones will die. Today, in my state, the beautiful state of Arizona alone, five people will lose their lives to this weapon of mass destruction.”

Ashley’s murderer is a convicted, repeat drug distribution offender, a 44-year-old career drug dealer and trafficker. She has 14 prior convictions for drug sales. Dunn stated that one half of one pill that contained five milligrams of fentanyl killed Ashley. She went on to explain:

“Her dealer cannot be prosecuted for Ashley’s death. Nor can she even be charged. Ashley’s son, her father, and I are not even considered victims of ‘Dawn the Dealers’ actions. We do not even have the ability to provide a victim impact statement in Ashley’s trafficker’s case. The evidence is clear in Ashley’s phone. Toxicology report states five milligrams of fentanyl. Nothing can be done. She knowingly sold poison to our daughter which caused her death. Yet she will not be charged.”

According to The Heritage Foundation, fentanyl is often disguised as other medication. It kills before the victim even realizes what is happening to them. In addition, most illicit fentanyl today is manufactured in Mexico and brought across our southern border.

Heritage explains, “The American public needs to understand these fentanyl deaths aren’t classic overdoses among addicts. These aren’t broken kids with ‘substance use disorder.’ The overwhelming majority aren’t actively seeking fentanyl at all. Rather, in an age where medication is advertised wall-to-wall on our TVs, radio and social media, kids (like adults) think they can take a pill to fix anything, including stress and anxiety — conditions rampant among young people.”

Opioids, largely fentanyl, are now the number one killer of Americans aged 18-45 years old. Secretary Mayorkas and the Department of Homeland Security should do everything it can to put a stop to this epidemic and secure our borders immediately. And yet, Mayorkas didn’t even show up to listen to Dunn’s testimony, where she said:

“I understand that the mission of [the] Department of Homeland Security is to secure our nation’s air, land, sea, and borders to prevent illegal activity while facilitating lawful travel and trade. In my humble opinion, Mr. Mayorkas is partially responsible for my daughter’s death. His wide-open border policy allows massive quantities of poisonous fentanyl into our country. Arizona is the fentanyl superhighway into the United States. I personally feel Mr. Mayorkas is guilty of aiding and abetting the enemy who uses 10 million illegal border crossings since February 2021 to supply fentanyl, the weapon of mass destruction that has killed over 100,000 Americans on our soil for two years in a row.

“This is an invasion, a weapon of mass destruction, and unimaginable death and damage to our country [has been] facilitated by Mr. Mayorkas. His participation in all of this, what I believe is a war, is clearly intentional support of the enemy, which disqualifies him from his position. Our country deserves a secure border. We need to close the fentanyl superhighway. Thank you.”

AUTHOR

Kathy Athearn

RELATED ARTICLE: Dems Say Biden Should Seize Control Of Texas’ National Guard–But Here’s What They Aren’t Telling You

POSTS ON X:

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2024 Family Research Council. 

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

Studies Show Professional Fact-Checking Is Subjective

/in , , , , , , , /by

Ask 10 professional fact-checkers to rate something as true or false, and get one, unanimous answer. That’s what we assume will happen based on our understanding of the word “fact” and our understanding of the responsibilities of a person who “checks” them. That assumption is incorrect, according to a recently published study that found a “low level of agreement of professionals over what is misinformation.” Fact-checkers sometimes enjoy a reputation as paragons of objectivity — but, based on the conduct of many fact-checkers, the opposite conclusion isn’t all that surprising.

In a paper published in Nature on December 20, 2023, a six-person research team (Aslett, et. al.) found that “Online searches to evaluate misinformation can increase its perceived veracity,” as broadcasted in their headline. But a more significant finding went unheralded: that fact-checkers often disagree about what misinformation is. As part of the research model, four to six professional fact-checkers evaluated 265 news articles to rate them as “true” or “false/misleading.” According to the supplementary information they posted, the professional fact-checkers only agreed unanimously on how to rate less than half (44.62%) of the articles — a far larger discrepancy than the online search effect they were actually studying.

Keep in mind that fact-checkers have a rather simple task: they can rate articles as true or false, or possibly choose from a limited set of options in between. As anyone who has ever taken a test with true/false or multiple-choice questions knows, there is a non-negligible chance of selecting the correct answer by pure accident, so there is a chance of a limited number of fact-checkers selecting the same option from a limited number of ratings by pure accident.

Researchers can apparently control for random chance in agreement between raters by calculating a Fleiss Kappa score. I’ll admit I don’t fully understand how this statistic is calculated, but complete agreement would yield a score of 1, while a complete lack of agreement would yield a score of 0, or a negative number. In this case, the researchers found a Fleiss Kappa score of 0.42, which is again less than one-half.

Aslett, et. al. were not the first research team to find such low agreement among fact-checkers; in fact, they noted the level they found was “slightly higher than other studies.” They referenced a paper published September 1, 2021 in Science Advances, in which a four-person research team (Allen, et. al.) found that “small, politically balanced crowds of laypeople” could produce results just as good as professional fact-checkers. In that study, three fact-checkers agreed unanimously on how to rate only 49.3% of 207 articles (with a Fleiss Kappa score of 0.38).

Allen, et. al.’s paper, in turn referenced a July 19, 2018 paper by researcher Chloe Lim, published in Research & Politics. Lim compared fact-checks of 77 identical or nearly identical claims, reviewed by both Politifact and the Washington Post Fact Checker. She found the two sites agreed on 49 (63%) of the claims on a five-point scale, but she calculated a Cohen’s Kappa score of 0.47 (Cohen’s Kappa is like Fleiss Kappa, but only for exactly two raters). “Fact-checkers,” she noted, “disagree more often than one might suppose.”

The finding that fact-checkers don’t necessarily agree all that much should act like an unexpected ice shower on those who would use fact-checkers to either control “misinformation” or advance a political narrative. This tactic is especially employed against independent media, such as Family Research Council’s “Washington Watch” and The Washington Stand, which cover the stories the mainstream media refuses to cover.

One recent example is TWS’s senior reporter and editor Ben Johnson’s extensive coverage of the World Health Organization’s planned pandemic treaty, which he then discussed on “Washington Watch.” A reel of that interview, which FRC posted to Instagram, was flagged as containing “Partly False Information,” after it was “reviewed by independent fact-checkers.”

To be more specific, FactCheck.org rated the interview as “partly false” because Johnson claimed that the “WHO pandemic agreement threatens national sovereignty.”

FRC disputed the rating based on the following information: “The WHO Pandemic Agreement places a number of restrictions and demands on U.S. sovereignty:

  • “Under the WHO Pandemic Agreement, nations would retain their sovereignty only ‘in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations and the general principles of international law’ (Article 3:2).
  • “The agreement will create a global medical force at WHO’s disposal. Member nations must create and fund ‘a skilled and trained multidisciplinary global public health emergency workforce that is deployable’ to nations at their request to ‘prevent the escalation of a small-scale spread to global proportions’ (Article 7:3).
  • “It gives The Hague jurisdiction over members’ disputes. If WHO is not able to solve disagreements between members, nations may agree to the ‘submission of the dispute to the International Court of Justice.’ They may also settle things through arbitration by the Conference of the Parties (Article 34:2).
  • “Real decisions are made by nameless, unaccountable bureaucrats from around the globe. The agreement creates a ‘Conference of the Parties,’ headed by a secretary, within one year of the treaty’s ratification. It will meet annually, or at any member’s request. ‘Only delegates representing Parties will participate in any of the decision-making of the Conference of the Parties’ (Articles 21 and 24).
  • “WHO takes a double tithe of U.S. vaccines, medicines, and equipment. ‘In the event of a pandemic,’ the United States must give WHO ‘a minimum of 20%’ of all ‘pandemic-related products,’ such as vaccines or personal protective equipment, for global redistribution: ‘10% as a donation and 10% at affordable prices’ (Article 12:4b(ii)(a)).”

Of course, evenhanded justice is nearly impossible when the prosecuting attorney is also the judge and jury. “Thanks for your email disputing our rating of your post,” FactCheck.org replied insincerely. “We’ve reviewed the examples you gave and believe our rating is correct.”

The email went on to explain, “The agreement would not affect national sovereignty — meaning it does not affect countries’ sovereign rights to set policies within their own national borders. The examples you give are related to international obligations and do not mean the WHO would interfere with national sovereignty for any country.” Utterly ignored in this illogical reply are the multiple ways in which FRC pointed out that the treaty’s international obligations impinge on a country’s sovereign rights by attaching strings to their pandemic equipment stockpiles and public health emergency staff.

In the article FactCheck.org referenced, they reason that the WHO Pandemic Accord will not affect national sovereignty is because the WHO says it won’t — which sounds like the claim they should be fact-checking. Johnson’s research pores through the proposed text of the agreement; FactCheck.org does not.

FactCheck.org quoted only a single, biased expert, Lawrence Gostin, a Georgetown law professor who helped draft the treaty. “The US constitution is the highest law of the land. No international treaty can override the provisions of our constitution,” insisted Gostin. It doesn’t take a law degree to know that the Constitution’s Supremacy Clause (Article VI, Clause 2) makes international treaties equal to the Constitution as “the supreme law of the land,” by which judges in every state are bound.

Obviously, FactCheck.org already “believed” in their rating, despite the slim evidence, and no recitation of the facts was going to change their opinion. (That’s what it was, a judgment based upon opinion, not fact.) But there is no one else to appeal to. Social media platforms outsourced the business of fact-checking in the first place because they don’t want to wade into the inescapable morass of contradictory opinions, borderline rulings, and fact-less findings.

In many ways, this recent incident with a fact-checker is characteristic of a trend of biased fact-checking, seemingly designed to discredit disfavored opinions, which FRC has been experiencing for years.

“Our social media posts have had fact-check labels applied from time to time, especially since the COVID-19 pandemic. However, I would characterize the fact-checks as more of a difference of opinion, rather than a factual correction,” Keri Boeve, director of Social Media at Family Research Council, told The Washington Stand. “When we have taken the time to file a dispute or appeal the fact-check on a post, it has never generated a change, and the responses (if we get one) claim the slimmest and most debatable reasons.”

The virtue of a fact-check is it discredits outright falsehoods, allowing public debate to more quickly proceed toward the truth. This virtue becomes a vice when fact-checks are weaponized against debatable propositions — opinions or interpretations of the facts. They are particularly odious to the ideals of free society and open debate when they are targeted against independent voices and minority viewpoints, with the goal of protecting the prevailing groupthink from having to do the hard work of either defending itself or persuading others.

Two plus two equals four, the calculator tells you every time you put in that equation. The word “fact” is spelled F-A-C-T, every time you look it up in the dictionary. These are facts, and checking them produces the same result every time. This turns out to be very different from the business of “fact-checking.”

AUTHOR

Joshua Arnold

Joshua Arnold is a senior writer at The Washington Stand.

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2024 Family Research Council.

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

If Hamas Isn’t Defeated, ‘It’s Open Season on Israel,’ Experts Say

/in , , , , , , , , /by

On Monday, 24 Israeli soldiers were killed in the Gaza strip while attempting to establish a buffer zone for residents of the communities on the Israeli border so they could return home. It was during this process that a blast was triggered and two buildings collapsed. The fatal explosion made victims of two dozen soldiers, a tragedy that The Times of Israel called “the single deadliest incident since the start of Israel’s ground offensive in the enclave.” Several other soldiers were severely wounded.

Since the beginning of the war between Israel and Hamas, there’s been no shortage of pain and suffering. Thousands have died, many are still held hostage, and deadly conflict threatens to spread throughout the Middle East. Amid all the chaos, death, and destruction, many wonder: why keep fighting? Caroline Glick, a senior contributing editor at the Jewish News Syndicate and host of the “Carolyn Glick Show,” has an answer.

“We lost 24 soldiers [Monday]. It’s a big blow to the country. It’s a big blow to the families,” she shared on “Washington Watch with Tony Perkins.” But the hard truth is that “the fight must go on,” because this is “a fight for Israel’s survival,” she urged.

Since October 7, mass casualties have resulted on both sides. But at the heart of the matter, Glick emphasized, Hamas is a terrorist organization that has vowed not to end their brutal attacks until Israel is extinct. She pointed out that “Hamas, in and of itself,” does not “pose an existential threat” in the sense that they have atomic bombs. But rather, they’re a force that won’t stop building itself back up again, no matter the blows it receives. She emphasized, “They don’t have anything that animates them as a people other than killing Jews.”

But Hamas is not alone in their fury against the Jews. As Glick discussed, Israel has many enemies. Iran could be considered the “head of the snake,” with Hamas, the Houthis, Hezbollah, and other terrorist organizations connected to the Islamist regime. “And if we don’t finish the job with Hamas,” she added, “what we’re telling everybody is that it’s open season on Israel.”

Perkins pointed out that the Biden administration wants a two-state solution. Few involved in the war agree with that course of action, Glick noted. A two-state solution “would be a massive reward for terrorism,” she said. “There’s no support in Israel whatsoever for this, but … there’s no support among the Palestinians” either. She explained that the majority of Palestinians don’t want a two-state solution because they “just want to annihilate Israel.”

“I mean, it’s hard for us to get our heads around because [Hamas is] so evil and it’s so different from us,” she continued. “They worship death, and they seek literally to kill us all. … It’s not just in their charter. It’s what they say, and it’s what they do.” So essentially, Glick said, the Biden administration is asking Israel “to choose between impossible alternatives.” Perkins added, “It’s not the reasonable man theory.” Compromise is what Biden and the Left are pushing for, Glick agreed, but “you can’t compromise on this when it’s a zero-sum game.”

She emphasized that there are a “quarter of a million Israelis who are living as internal refugees,” both from the south and from the north, who won’t stop fighting. Ending the war with a cease fire, she warned, would leave “Hamas in power … Hezbollah at the border … [and] Iran to be nuclear.”

“After October 7th, everybody’s eyes are open to the danger,” Glick concluded. “[W]e’re a country that loves life, and we insist on surviving.”

AUTHOR

Sarah Holliday

Sarah Holliday is a reporter at The Washington Stand.

RELATED ARTICLE: The Two-State Solution Would be Israel’s Fatal Final Solution

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2024 Family Research Council.

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

A Hundred Days after Gaza’s October 7 Part I: Double Helix over Gaza

/in , , , , , , , /by

Many of the first responses to these events, as with the Holocaust, were denials that such savageries had ever taken place.

  • History has the form of a double helix: history is indeed the DNA of living memory. There is what actually happened and there is what people believe happened. They are not the same but they are inseparable….
  • Hamas had told Israel that it intended to focus on helping its people in Gaza and that it did not want war. Israel, to show good faith, had even provided work permits for thousands of Palestinians to enter Israel every day for better wages than in Gaza. What Israel did not know was that many of them were spies who would tell Hamas exactly where in the villages to attack.
  • An elated youth called Mahmoud called home to his father and mother in Gaza using a murdered Israeli woman’s phone to boast about how he had just killed ten Jews with his own hands (“oh my son God bless you”… “Mom, your son is a hero”). Part of the recording was played to the judges of the ICJ as part of the State of Israel’s must-see rebuttal of South Africa’s accusations.
  • Jeffrey Gettleman, in The New York Times on 28th December, published details of the unimaginable mass depravity committed by Gazan men on Israeli women….
  • Many of the first responses to these events, as with the Holocaust, were denials that such savageries had ever taken place.

Almost four months to the day, and not in a good way, the world has turned upside down.

In a risibly threadbare case, the victim of a depraved genocidal attack was accused at the UN’s International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague of committing genocide. Lacking evidence of mens rea (criminal intention) that is prerequisite, or indeed any vestige of substantive evidence, South Africa sought to invert the object and purpose of the Genocide Convention of December 1948, which is specific to the “crime of crimes”. The accused is not just any victim, but the Jewish state, whose re-establishment in the May of the same year that the Convention was brought into effect was no coincidence.

Raphael Lemkin’s coinage of the concept of “genocide” was occasioned by the need to find words to describe the systematic killing of six million Jews by the Nazis. South Africa’s case, rather than putting Israel on trial, instead parrots, in places, the genocidal views of Hamas and other fundamentalist splinters of the Muslim Brotherhood, and surely must be an embarrassment to some of the distinguished jurists who lent themselves to that litigation. Unintentionally no doubt, it also puts the credibility of the court itself in the dock.

At the end of the week in which the ICJ heard this shoddy case, and within the massed ranks marching “for Gaza” (meaning against Israel for the seventh time on the streets of London), a new poster could be spotted. It explained that in fact the USA and Israel itself were together responsible for the pogrom of 7th October 2023. Why did they do it? Our race-baiting poster-writer – whom the Met Police failed to arrest – opined that it was to steal Iran’s oil, just as they stole Libya’s and Iraq’s. So, in the poster’s world-view, the Jews inflicted genocide on themselves because of their schemes of world domination, starting by incriminating the “true” victims – Hamas – who were the actual perpetrators. In this moral inversion, Hamas may have wielded the instruments of rape, torture and murder but they did so blamelessly.

All that was lacking was one of the visual cues to complete the full repertoire of anti-Semitic tropes, re-framed as “Israelophobia” – no more and no less than the old blood libels revived in new form.

From the Black Hundreds to the Nazis to Hamas and its supporters on the streets of London in 2024. Never Again? It is happening before our eyes. How? Why? Where did all this dark energy come from?

Now that more than one hundred days have passed since the pogrom of 7/10 and with Israel still fully engaged in what has become its longest and most technically difficult war since its War of Independence in 1948, there are three aspects to an adequate answer to those questions, aspects which hitherto have not been prominently interlinked in one place. One facet is historical, a second is ethical, a third is legal; together, they might help to form a view of what might — and what should — come next?

Why have so many Western journalists and university people been culpably blind and biased in their reporting? What are the ethics and laws of armed conflict which actually pertain in such warfare? That is the structure of what follows.

History has the form of a double helix: history is indeed the DNA of living memory. There is what actually happened and there is what people believe happened. They are not the same but they are inseparable; and both are the proper study of historians. The bitter joke told in the days of the USSR was that the future was certain; only the past kept changing. Now this joke has become the bitter reality of the morally gutted universities of the English-speaking world where the long march of wokeness through all our institutions first quickened its step. Nowhere is the entwining of history’s double helix more weaponised and deadly than in the modern Middle East.

In the intelligence communities, where countless warnings appear every day, it is often difficult to know what to believe and what is just clutter. In the US, warnings of the 9/11/2001 attacks were not heeded, as were warnings of the 7/7/2005 transit attacks in the UK. It is still not clear if Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was even told that documents warning of the possibility of the October attacks existed.

We do not know, and possibly never will, whether the failure in Israel on 7/10 was comprehensive: whether it was an epic intelligence failure based upon too great a reliance on technology and not enough attention paid to human intelligence, or whether it was a political failure to accept intelligence warnings as well.

What is clear is that Hamas seemed to have persuaded many in Israel at the time that it was not seeking war. There is evidence that a Hamas psyops deception strategy, well prepared for weeks with the fingerprints of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps all over it, “played” many Israelis. Hamas had told Israel that it intended to focus on helping its people in Gaza and that it did not want war. Israel, to show good faith, had even provided work permits for thousands of Palestinians to enter Israel every day for better wages than in Gaza. What Israel did not know was that many of them were spies who would tell Hamas exactly where in the villages to attack.

Meanwhile, on the other side of Israel, near Jordan, before the 7 October attack, terrorism had been on the rise in the West Bank, so Israel’s attention and many IDF forces were concentrated there. For some weeks, there had been discounted reports from female IDF border surveillance soldiers warning of ‘red flags’ in suspicious activities in Gaza, and there is some indication that early on that fatal morning, tactical intelligence from a Gaza border watchtower, which was analysed a female soldier, was passed through before she was killed, but was not acted on in time. Agonised telephone calls came from the kibbutzim near Gaza, many members of which were peace-activists. Despite the pleading telephone calls, disastrously, the IDF could not get there in time.

There was, then, nothing to prevent the dawn invasion, which began with a barrage of rockets, motorized hang-gliders, bulldozers, and nearly 3,000 Hamas operatives and their followers who stormed 22 towns and villages. On hearing the news, it was left to individual IDF personnel, Israel Police and first responders to drop everything and rush south, spontaneously, tragically too late.

That day, more Jews were killed than on any day since the Holocaust. Nor were they simply killed. The conduct of the Hamas men fell short of standards set by the most educated of the commanding officers of one of the four Nazi SS Einsatzgruppen A-D (paramilitary genocide units.

On trial for his life at Nuremberg, Otto Ohlendorf, was commander of the southernmost Einsatzgruppe, responsible for murdering 91,000 Jews, Gypsies and Communists.

During his examination-in-chief, Ohlendorf said that genocide should be carried out “…as humanely as conditions would permit for the unfortunate victims, and to prevent brutal excesses by any of the [SS] men…” Executions were to be conducted by firing squads on command in a military manner: no maltreatment, no undressing, no belated on-the-scene confiscation of personal possessions, and no outsiders present. Any man evincing pleasure in this task was barred from future assignment. No-one could volunteer. Ohlendorf’s affidavit statement reads like veterinary instruction for conscientious conduct of an abattoir.

Copious photographic evidence and testimony from all areas A-D produced at Nuremberg showed naked or semi-naked victims before execution. Such orders, if given, were simply not followed; and under cross-examination, Ohlendorf conceded that in fact outer clothing was removed just before execution but not any earlier in order to minimise distress. Yet Ohlendorf plainly sensed that it might help his defence at Nuremberg if he said that these orders should have been followed. He told the Court that these “humane” orders were his alone.

We have seen none of Ohlendorf’s Nuremberg scruples in his successors. On 7th October, the attitude of Hamas’s pathological murderers was that the Jews deserved what was coming to them, so the terrorists’ blood-lust was unconstrained. Their own body camera evidence shows that there were no moral or command-ordained restraints whatsoever on what they might do. Those, especially military men whose minds are inured to horror and who have viewed this footage, told this author that the glee and joy of the rapists, torturers and murderers as they perpetrated these crimes was their strongest abiding shock.

An elated youth called Mahmoud called home to his father and mother in Gaza using a murdered Israeli woman’s phone to boast about how he had just killed ten Jews with his own hands (“oh my son God bless you”… “Mom, your son is a hero”). Part of the recording was played to the judges of the ICJ as part of the State of Israel’s must-see rebuttal of South Africa’s accusations. Victims ranged from tiny babies decapitated or burned alive, to actual Holocaust survivors. By the terrorists’ evident choice, young women were tortured, raped, brutalised, sometimes all at once, and then murdered, their corpses further mutilated in appallingly sadistic ways.

Jeffrey Gettleman, in The New York Times on 28th December, published details of the unimaginable mass depravity committed by Gazan men on Israeli women, mainly at the Supernova music festival. The nearly naked body of murdered, free-spirited Shani Louk was taken back and contemptuously paraded through Gaza in the back of a pick-up truck and spat upon. Others in great number, including her boyfriend Orion Hernandez Radoux, were abducted as hostages and, at this writing, remain captive. According to the report, others endured even worse atrocities.

Many of the first responses to these events, as with the Holocaust, were denials that such savageries had ever taken place.

AUTHOR

Gwythian Prins

Gwythian Prins is Research Professor Emeritus at the London School of Economics and a past member of the British Chief of the Defence Staff’s Strategy Advisory Panel.

EDITORS NOTE: This column published by the Newsrael News Desk originally appeared on the Gatestone Institute. ©All rights reserved.

Leadership Of Major U.S. Landowner Chock-Full Of Chinese Communist Party Members

/in , , , , , , /by

Top executives at Hong Kong-based WH Group Limited, the world’s largest pork producer that controls vast swaths of U.S. farmland through its American subsidiary, are Chinese Communist Party (CCP) members, according to a Daily Caller News Foundation review of corporate records and state-run media reports.

Records and reports reviewed by the DCNF identify four top executives and the chairman of the pork giant as CCP members with extensive ties to the Chinese government. WH Group controls nearly 150,000 acres of land across 29 U.S. states through its subsidiary Smithfield Foods, a family-run business established in 1936, which it purchased for $7.1 billion in 2013. While a keyword search on Smithfield’s website returned only two articles mentioning the firm’s relationship with WH Group, neither of the two articles mentioned China. An online map of Smithfield’s global business activities does not list any operations in, or connection to, Asia, despite archived reports from their website suggesting otherwise.

Revelations about WH Group’s CCP and Chinese government ties, which the DCNF found by cross-referencing the firm’s roster with Chinese-language news reports and corporate records, come as Republicans push for bans on Chinese rural land purchases, in particular, those close to U.S. military bases.

“It is no joke to join the Chinese Communist Party,” Matt Shoemaker, a former Defense Intelligence Agency officer, told the DCNF. “You cannot just walk in and sign-up. You have to show that you are a true believer.”

Several states, including Florida, have taken legislative and executive action to ban Chinese ownership of U.S. farmland. Recently, Missouri Gov. Mike Parson issued an executive order banning such purchases near military installations. GOP lawmakers also recently pressed the Biden administration to launch an investigation into the second-largest foreign owner of U.S. land after his CCP membership came to light.

“No foreign government should be owning American farmland,” said Shoemaker, who is running for Congress in North Carolina as a Republican. “It is a national security issue, for obvious reasons.”

WH Group’s chairman, Wan Long, as well as multiple board members and some senior management were identified as CCP members in a 2022 Chinese-language stock exchange filing from a subsidiary called Shuanghui Investment and Development Co. (SIDC). WH Group and Chinese corporate records from SIDC also show that WH Group’s chairman and several top executives hold, or previously held, Chinese government positions.

Between 2010 and 2021, the amount of U.S. land owned by Chinese entities skyrocketed from 13,730 acres to 383,935 acres, according to USDA reports.

Smithfield operates half a dozen distribution centers, nearly 20 direct store delivery services, 36 feed mills, as well as more than 40 production plants and 2,400 farms across 29 U.S. states, according to the firm’s website. In total, WH Group owns 146,000 acres in the U.S., according to a 2018 report by the Economic Research Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).

“Smithfield Foods, Inc. holds a substantial market share in the U.S. pork industry, accounting for approximately 26% of the total market share,” according to trade publication Essential Protein Trade & Shipping News.

In a bygone era, GOP governors might have welcomed Chinese investment into rural industries and communities. Now, it’s become a major source of concern as relations between the U.S. and China continue to sour.

South Dakota Republican Gov. Kristi Noem told the DCNF her office has had “a lot of hard conversations” with Smithfield’s leadership, adding she now believes the company poses a national security threat.

“Any time it felt like we would have the opportunity to work together, it ended up not going as well as I hoped,” Noem said. “I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that Smithfield is owned by China.”

Smithfield did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

‘The CCP’s Long-Term Strategy’

WH Group Chairman Wan Long is among the company’s senior leadership who is a CCP member with Chinese government ties, a DCNF review of corporate business filings and Chinese state media reports found.

An archived business profile on SIDC’s website identifies Wan Long as a CCP member.

SIDC is “the largest animal protein company in Asia” and its products include “chilled fresh pork and packaged meat products,” according to Smithfield’s website.

The DCNF reviewed and carefully translated key sections of SIDC’s Chinese-language website, which contains extensive information about WH Group executives’ CCP and Chinese government ties that are absent from WH Group’s English-language website.

Born in 1940, Wan Long joined the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) at the age of 20 before entering China’s meat industry, according to Chinese state-run media outlet People’s Daily. Wan Long has since earned various Chinese government positions and state awards, his archived SIDC profile states.

Between 1998 and 2018, Wan Long served as a representative to the National People’s Congress, according to his archived SIDC profile. The National People’s Congress operates “under the leadership” of the CCP, and its officials are “invariably influential members of the CCP and leaders of major mass organizations,” according to the Congressional Executive Commission on China.

SIDC’s archived website also notes that Wan Long has received a “special allowance” from China’s State Council. This refers to a reward system created to “strengthen and improve the work of the Party’s intellectuals,” according to the state-run China News Service. The tax-free reward ranges from a monthly stipend of roughly $85 to an approximately $2,800 lump sum payment, according to China’s Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security. However, it is unclear if Wan Long still receives this government reward.

Wan Long also earned the honorific “senior political engineer” from the Chinese government, according to his archived SIDC profile. Senior political engineers are required to possess a “relatively systemic grasp of Marxism-Leninism, Mao Zedong Thought and Deng Xiaoping Theory,” according to the State Council’s State-Owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission.

China’s United Front Work Department (UFWD) also named Wan Long as one of 100 “Outstanding Private Entrepreneurs In The 40 Years Of Reform And Opening-Up” in 2018, according to the All-China Federation Of Industry And Commerce, a UFWD subordinate agency that co-sponsored the award.

The UFWD engages in “influence activities and intelligence operations,” according to the House Select Committee on the CCP.

SIDC’s 2022 filing on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange also identifies three WH Group senior managers — Qiao Haili, Wang Yufen, Liu Songtao — and WH Group executive director Ma Xiangjie as CCP members. All four WH Group executives hold high-level positions at SIDC.

Ma Xiangjie was also elected to serve as a National People’s Congress delegate in Henan province, according to that government body’s website. Delegates are elected by “the People’s congresses at the provincial level as well as by the People’s Liberation Army,” according to the Congressional-Executive Commission on China.

A local branch of the All-China Federation Of Industry And Commerce named Ma Xiangjie as one of Henan province’s people of the year between 2019 and 2020, according to the UFWD-affiliate’s website.

Yet, it is unclear just how many CCP members WH Group employs.

SIDC, on the other hand, has employed hundreds, according to the Communist Party Member Network’s website, which is operated by the CCP’s Organization Department.

“In recent years, over 300 new Party members have been recruited, strengthening the Party’s troops,” reads SIDC’s Communist Party Member Network profile. “Currently, Shuanghui Development’s senior executives include 17 Party members, constituting 85% [of all senior executives]; six business department general managers are Party members; six Party members are among the seven management department directors; all project managers are Party members; and 47% of the firm’s mid-level cadre are Party members.”

‘Update CFIUS’

When WH Group purchased Smithfield in 2013, the acquisition “received clearance” from the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS).

CFIUS reviews foreign investments into the U.S. on the grounds of national security, the Treasury Department website states. Multiple U.S. government agencies participate in the CFIUS process, including the Department of Justice, the Department of Defense and others, according to the Treasury Department, which is also involved in that process.

“We are pleased that this transaction has been cleared by CFIUS, and we thank the Committee for its careful attention to this review,” Smithfield’s CEO and president at the time, C. Larry Pope, said at the time, according to an SEC filing.

Over a decade later, House Republicans see CFIUS’ approval of WH Group’s purchase of Smithfield as a case study in why the body needs to be reformed.

“What we need to do is update CFIUS to ensure that it has jurisdiction over all foreign adversary land purchases, and to ensure that it has the ability to consider U.S. food security as a factor in assessing the potential risk of a transaction,” Wisconsin Republican Rep. Mike Gallagher, who chairs the House Select Committee on the CCP, told the DCNF.

Iowa Republican Rep. Ashley Hinson said the CCP has “nefariously exploited loopholes to buy U.S. land, so they can exert control over our food supply and undermine our national security.”

“This is all part of the CCP’s long-term strategy to hurt America and our interests — whether it’s garnering valuable U.S. military intelligence or interfering with our food supply chain,” Hinson told the DCNF. “We cannot allow another acre of U.S. land to get into the hands of the CCP.”

WH Group, SIDC, Wan Long and CFIUS did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

AUTHOR

PHILIP LENCZYCKI

Investigative reporter.

RELATED ARTICLE: EXCLUSIVE: Second-Largest Foreign Owner Of US Land Is A Chinese Communist Party Member

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

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

How Much Money Would You Have To Earn To Get All The Benefits of Being an Illegal? $300,000!!!

/in , , , , , , , , , , , /by

Illegal invaders receive cash, free housing, free food, free phones, free healthcare, free tuition. What is the equivalent of what you have to earn to for that bounty?

“[Illegals] are told they have a court date in eight or nine years. You’ll get free housing, you’ll get you free everything… Why won’t you come there? Why wouldn’t you come? In fact the New York Times, to their credit, and I’m no fan of The New York Times given their viewpoint, but to the credit of the New York Times they did a study to try to figure out how much money you’d have to make to get all the benefits of being an illegal.  $300,000  By the time you add up for family of four – the the food that you get, the phones that you get,  the cash that you get, the housing that you get  $300,000 And what does this mean for Americans? How about that? We’re paying for it.”

Cost to taxpayers: $300,000 per illegal alien.

Who earns that kind of money, anyway?

Report: Feds Spent $20B on Migrant Refugee Assistance

By Sandy Fitzgerald

With migrant encounters at an all-time high, researchers have found that Congress has appropriated $20 billion over the last two fiscal years to fund “refugee and entrant assistance.”

The money went through the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), a division of Health and Human Services, reports Adam Andrzejewski of Open the Books, which examined the government office to determine funding being used to provide migrants with services.

The $20 billion that was spent on refugee and entrant assistance came as costs rose from $8.925 billion in fiscal year 2022 to $10.928 billion in fiscal year 2023, the investigation showed.

The Administration of Children and Families, which is ORR’s parent agency got $2.94 billion for Afghanistan Supplemental Appropriation and additional supplementals in fiscal year 2022, while Ukrainian refugees cost taxpayers $900 million in fiscal year 2022 and $1.775 billion in fiscal year 2023.

The agency, presenting its Congressional Budget Justification, suggested expanding services to even more applicants, allowing immigrant minors in the unaccompanied minor program to access the same benefits as refugees, including Medicaid and foster care services.

It also called for additional funding for legal assistance for Ukrainian and Afghan children for ensuring permanent residency; cash assistance for full-time college or technical school students; and removing the need for refugees to become economically self-sufficient as soon as possible.

Meanwhile, ORR distributed $1.5 billion in discretionary grants, with most of the spending occurring over the past two years.

Grant spending went from $33 million to over $400 million in 2021 and 2022, and in 2023 went to $615.6 million, the report indicated.

The “Preferred Communities Program” in the Refugee and Entrant Assistance category had the most spending 2022, at $275.9 million, and went up to $436 million in 2023 spending was up to $436,247,481, with the funding split between seven organizations.

Read more.

AUTHOR

Pamela Geller

RELATED ARTICLES:

Hawley raises alarm after border gotaways exceed Kansas City, St Louis populations combined last fiscal year

Republican Governors Line Up Behind Texas Governor Abbott In Support of States’ Constitutional Right of Self Defense

Fox News Poll: Wall garners record support, as half feel situation on southern border is an ’emergency’

‘HOPEFUL MIGRANTS’: Illegal Alien Mobs in Chicago Arrested for Mass Looting

Dem Lawmakers Urge Biden To Seize Control Of Texas National Guard

Social Media Goes Ballistic As Biden Speech Devolves Into Word Soup And Supporters Clap ‘Like Brainless Seals’

POST ON X:

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

Republican Governors Line Up Behind Texas Governor Abbott In Support of States’ Constitutional Right of Self Defense

/in , , , , , , , , , , /by

Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott remained defiant and issued a statement on the state’s “constitutional right to self-defense” days after the Supreme Court ordered the Texas National Guard to remove barbed wire to keep illegal migrants out. More here….

Republican governors have begun to line up in support — every Republican should join the force for freedom. NOW.

Florida, Oklahoma, South Dakota….and many more.

AUTHOR

Pamela Geller

RELATED ARTICLES:

HOLD THE LINE: Texas Governor Greg Abbott Defies SCOTUS, Outlining States’ Rights to Constitutional Self-Defense When Dealing with a “Lawless President”

Group That Advocated To ‘Abolish’ ICE Received Millions In Taxpayer Dollars

The Story of the Liberty Gene

How Much Money Would You Have To Earn To Get All The Benefits of Being an Illegal?

‘HOPEFUL MIGRANTS’: Illegal Alien Mobs in Chicago Arrested for Mass Looting

POSTS ON X:

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

Red State Senate Kills Gov’s Veto On Bill Banning Child Sex Changes

/in , , , , , , , , , , , /by

The Ohio Senate voted Wednesday to override Republican Gov. Mike DeWine’s veto of a bill that would prohibit doctors from performing sex-change medical procedures on minors.

The state’s House of Representatives voted 65 to 28 on Jan. 10 to override the governor’s veto of the bill, which would bar doctors from performing transgender surgeries or prescribing cross-sex hormones and puberty blockers to minors. State senators voted 28 to 4, largely among party lines, to pass the legislation.

“The Governor does not have [a] new comment today. His previous comments on the bill and his veto reflect his position on the issue,” Dan Tierney, DeWine’s press secretary, told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

DeWine signed an executive order earlier this month that banned transgender surgeries for minors, but allowed children to obtain cross-sex hormones and puberty blockers. DeWine argued that he never disagreed with his Republican colleagues on the issue, but that other procedures should be left up to parents and medical professionals.

The bill, which is set to go into effect in 90 days, will also prevent men who identify as transgender women from competing in women’s sports, a decision DeWine has publicly come out against in the past. DeWine also received $40,000 in donations between 2018 and 2023 from several state children’s hospitals, at least one of which he visited in December to discuss the bill with families, patients and medical professionals.

A training video from one of the hospitals, Cincinnati Children’s, revealed staff teaching doctors how to work around parental consent when treating a minor transgender patient. The hospital’s CEO, Steven Davis, claimed in his December testimony against the bill that the hospital always gets consent from the parents before performing transgender medical procedures on minors.

AUTHOR

KATE ANDERSON

Contributor.

RELATED ARTICLES:

State Legislatures Are Taking On Gender Ideology In First Weeks Of 2024

Swing State Spent Millions On Sex Changes And Trans Hormones, Including For Those Under 18

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

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

Pro-Choice Is a Misnomer

/in , , , , , , , , , , /by

Around this time of year, we remember the infamous Supreme Court decision of Roe v. Wade of January 22, 1973, which condemned some 65 million preborn people in America to death in abortions. Although Roe was overturned, abortion is very much a pressing issue today.

And it has been and continues to promoted in the name of “choice.” Pro-choice is a misnomer. Those who are pro-choice are in reality pro-abortion.

Although the proponents call themselves “pro-choice,” many studies indicate that the majority of women who have an abortion felt compelled to seek the procedure.

I spoke with Eric Scheidler of the Illinois-based Pro-Life Action League in a recent radio segment on this very topic.

He told me, “When someone tells me now that they’re ‘pro-choice,’ I say, ‘I’m glad to hear that because everyone should have the right to choose to become a parent.’ Then we get into the question of women having a right to motherhood taken away from them by those who are pushing abortion on them.” That includes, says Scheidler, the parents, the boyfriends, the employers, the politicians, and the abortion industry.

OB-GYN Ingrid Skop, M.D., wrote recently: “It is usually assumed that most women in the U.S. freely choose abortion and consider it to have been the best decision for them, all things considered. However, an expanding body of literature calls this assumption into question.”

Skop continues, “A recent peer-reviewed study conducted by [Charlotte Lozier Institute] scholars found that only one-third of abortions are ‘wanted.’ Nearly one in four described their abortion as ‘unwanted’ or ‘coerced.’ An additional 43% described the abortion as ‘accepted’ but ‘inconsistent with their values and preferences.’”

And she adds, “A majority, around 60%, said their preference would have been to give birth had they received more emotional support or had greater financial security….In another 2023 peer-reviewed survey, 61% of women reported “high levels” of pressure to abort.”

So much for choice. As Dr. D. James Kennedy once declared, “The only ‘choice’ the abortionists ever give anybody is ‘Tuesday or Friday? When do you want to have the abortion?’”

Meanwhile, there are crisis pregnancy centers out there doing the Lord’s work as they provide loving options for those seeking abortions. They provide real choice.

Yet these crisis pregnancy centers are often targeted by pro-abortion extremists. For example, on June 7, 2022, in Amherst, New York, the Compass Care crisis pregnancy center was firebombed, causing half-a-million dollars in damages.

I’ve interviewed Jim Harden, the president of Compass Care, about the destruction of his center and on other issues related to abortion. For this piece on how pro-choice is a misnomer, I asked him if he cared to give me a comment.

Harden said, “It is telling that a recent study revealed that nearly 70% of women are coerced to abort their babies….When a woman faces an unplanned pregnancy, she considers abortion because she feels trapped… like she has no choice. Mercenary abortionists masquerade as medical professionals to profiteer from this tragic reality” [emphasis his].

However, Senator Elizabeth Warren has the audacity to claim that these crisis pregnancy centers are “harmful” to women.

Harden continues, “Yet pro-life pregnancy centers help a woman with everything but abortion…for free. Pro-life pregnancy centers are the abortion industry’s only competition, delivering up to 2 million women nearly $358 million worth of free medical care and support every year. And while pro-abortion politicians get re-elected on the coat tails of abortion propaganda, it is the pro-life pregnancy centers that are empowering women with true informed consent and support.”

Thankfully, through the Lord, there is healing and forgiveness available for those who have had an abortion, by choice or otherwise. I saw a news item where a former female rock singer said she is very sorry for her three abortions, which she regrets deeply, but very grateful to God for His forgiveness.

Speaking of regrets, OB-GYN Vivina Napier, M.D. said recently: “In my years in practice, I have never met a woman who has expressed regret over giving birth to her baby, but I have met plenty who shared their regret for having abortions.”

Katie Daniels of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America says, “There is an abortion industry that makes billions of dollars killing children and hurting their moms, and that is who we’re up against. So we need to speak clearly and honestly about that reality while also contrasting our compassion for moms and babies.”

Our nation’s founders declared independence from Great Britain and dependence upon God. They said that our Creator has endowed us with certain inalienable rights, and that first among these is the right to life.

Real choice is as American as apple pie. But “pro-choice” only chooses one option—and a grisly one at that. America can do better than this.

©2024. Jerry Newcombe, D.Min. All rights reserved.

Will the Pentagon’s solar panels be Chinese?

/in , , , , , , , /by

The Energy Department has announced it is putting solar panels on the roof of the Pentagon for environmental reasons. No study has been done on the feasibility of this venture. No one has figured out the actual capacity needed, the percentage of power it could generate, whether the Pentagon’s building can support such an installation or how disruptive installing a solar system could be to Pentagon operations, or even how long it would take. Furthermore, nothing has been done to figure out whether a solar power system will undermine the building’s electronic security.

The other big question is where will the solar system for the Pentagon come from? Will the panels be Chinese? What about the batteries? The switching system? If Chinese, could they bug the system?

Eight out of ten solar panels installed in the United States come from China. Even if the Pentagon buys American-made panels, the metallurgical grade silicon and polysilicon needed for solar panels mostly comes from China.

In addition, if the Pentagon is really going to rely for its operation on solar energy it will need massive batteries. The batteries will be based on lithium, and China is the world’s second-largest producer. When it comes to the actual batteries, the Solarquotes blog says this: “Six of the world’s ten largest lithium-ion battery companies are in China. They produced a whopping 79 percent of all lithium-ion batteries that entered the global market in 2021 and are projected to remain the leading country in lithium-ion battery manufacturing in 2025.”

Even if the battery packs are American, the individual batteries inside them probably come from Asia, most likely China.

The Pentagon is supposed to follow the Buy America Act. Usually, that is interpreted to mean that domestically sourced portions of the acquisition must add up to more than half the total cost. Vendors, however, are allowed to count installation costs in figuring the percent of US content.

Moreover, Buy America requirements are often waived. That has been necessary for the past three decades since Chinese-made computers, laptops, modems, and other electronics are used regularly even in strategic nuclear submarines. This is done by using “waivers” that are in the Act and in the Act’s regulations. A key provision allows waivers: “The provisions of the act may be waived if the head of the procuring agency determines the act to be inconsistent with the public interest or the cost of acquiring the domestic product is unreasonable.”

Neither the Department of Energy, which is providing the initial funding, nor the Defense Department is likely to look too hard if the stuff is full of Chinese content.

If the Pentagon gets a solar system, one hopes that the storage batteries are installed in a building separate from the Pentagon – in the same way that the Pentagons independent power plant is in a separate building.

While the Energy Department says it is paying for the solar panels, it’s likely that the installation cost and new buildings plus the special wiring and switching systems will have to come out of the Pentagon’s budget.

Read more.

Originally published by Asia Times

AUTHOR

Stephen Bryen

Senior Fellow.

EDITORS NOTE: This Center for Security Policy column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Abbott Delivers Blistering Statement To Biden, Insists Texas Has Authority To Repel Border ‘Invasion’

/in , , , , , , , , , , /by

Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott doubled down Wednesday on the state’s “constitutional right to self-defense” days after the Supreme Court ordered the Texas National Guard to remove barbed wire to keep illegal migrants out.

The Supreme Court, in a 5-4 decision Monday, agreed to vacate an injunction that temporarily blocked Border Patrol from cutting wire Texas had placed along the border. Texas authorities appeared to ignore the ruling, with a video circulating on social media showing authorities setting up razor wire for the border in Eagle Pass, Texas.

The case made its way to the high court after the Biden Administration sued.

Abbott doubled down on the state’s response, invoking the Founding Fathers.

“The federal government has broken the compact between the United States and the States. The Executive Branch of the United States has a constitutional duty to enforce federal laws protecting States, including immigration laws on the books right now,” Abbott said in a statement. “President Biden has ignored Texas’s demand that he perform his constitutional duties.”

“James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and the other visionaries who wrote the U.S. Constitution foresaw that States should not be left to the mercy of a lawless president who does nothing to stop external threats like cartels smuggling millions of illegal immigrants across the border,” Abbott continued, citing Article IV Section 4 which says the federal government “shall protect each [State] against invasion” and Article I, Section 10, Clause 3 which says the states have a “sovereign interest in protecting their borders.”

“The failure of the Biden Administration to fulfill the duties imposed by Article IV, § 4 has triggered Article I, § 10, Clause 3, which reserves to this State the right of self-defense. For these reasons, I have already declared an invasion under Article I, § 10, Clause 3 to invoke Texas’s constitutional authority to defend and protect itself. That authority is the supreme law of the land and supersedes any federal statutes to the contrary. The Texas National Guard, the Texas Department of Public Safety, and other Texas personnel are acting on that authority, as well as state law, to secure the Texas border.”

Border Patrol agents have recorded a record-breaking amount of illegal migrants. More than 2.2 million illegal migrant encounters were recorded in fiscal year 2022 at the southern border and more than 2 million in fiscal year 2023, federal data shows.

Texas authorities took control of Shelby Park in Eagle Pass on Jan. 11 after Abbott declared an emergency. The Department of Homeland Security then alleged that Texas prevented Border Patrol agents from responding to a drowning two days later. Biden’s Department of Justice then admitted in a Jan. 15 court filing that by the time federal authorities were notified of the drownings, the incident had already occurred.

AUTHOR

BRIANNA LYMAN

News and commentary writer. Follow Brianna on Twitter.

RELATED ARTICLE: Agents ‘Absolutely’ Don’t Want To Cut Greg Abbott’s Razor Wire, Border Patrol Union President Says

RELATED VIDEO: Rep. Chip Roy Calls on Texas to Disregard the SCOTUS’s Ruling on the Invasion at Our Border

POSTS ON X:

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

Feminism Is the Mother of Transgenderism

/in , , , , , , , , , , /by

All evidence over the past two centuries leads to the conclusion that feminism has been a tragic misstep and an ugly wound in the history of Western civilizational thought. One of the most destructive consequences of feminism has been the still-unfolding and exponentially-worsening transgenderism crisis. This horrific ideology — now plaguing numerous Western nations and destroying the lives of countless men, women, and children — is a direct descendant of feminism, and it is fueled and fed by the feminism pervading every aspect of society.

Feminism Nascent

It can truly be said that feminism is the “mother” of both the Sexual Revolution and the LGBT movement, which are intimately intertwined. Since its inception in the late 18th century, feminism has held the necessity of “sexual liberation” and “free love” as one of its core and even essential doctrines. The chief progenitor of feminism, Mary Wollstonecraft, advocated and practiced sexual promiscuity, as did her eventual husband William Godwin, a forefather of modern anarchist movements, who believed that monogamy and faithful marriage were devices meant to subjugate and oppress women. Wollstonecraft shared this view.

Wollstonecraft’s vision of feminism injected the atheistic, libertine, anti-hierarchical philosophy behind the French Revolution (which she lauded in her book “Vindication of The Rights of Men,” an antagonistic response to conservative Edmund Burke’s “Reflections on The Revolution in France”) into the most basic and fundamental building block of society — the family. Where the French revolutionaries beheaded the king, Wollstonecraft sought to spiritually behead the king of the family, the father. Where the French revolutionaries held that every man could be his own king, Wollstonecraft held that every woman could be her own man.

This philosophy was, after her death, adopted by Wollstonecraft’s son-in-law, the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. Shelley, who had been expelled from Oxford for his 1811 tract “The Necessity of Atheism,” adapted and blended the thought of his parents-in-law — Godwin’s anarchistic atheism and Wollstonecraft’s Luciferian feminism — and infused the philosophy into his own poems. His writing inverted the traditional understanding of Genesis, in which Adam and Eve are expelled from Paradise for falling prey to the temptations of the Serpent. In Shelley’s imagination, the Fall was not a tragic plummet into disorder but rather a reordering of creation, with the animal (the Serpent) reigning supreme, woman dominating over man, and God completely left out of the picture. In another work, Shelley creates a character named Cynthna, who is described as “the earthly messenger of Satan the liberator.” In “Revolt of Islam,” Cynthna asks, “Can man be free if woman be a slave?” In service to her demonic master, she proceeds to “disenchant” women of all affection for marriage, motherhood, and family.

The inherently atheistic foundation of feminism laid by Wollstonecraft and Shelley, replete with the seeds of the Sexual Revolution, festered and percolated for over a century before finally surging to the forefront of culture at the dawn of the 20th century.

Feminism Ascendant

Although the term “culture wars” was first popularized by Pat Buchanan in 1992, the thing itself to which the name refers had been around for at least two centuries prior. As the First World War drew closer, the Western World was rocked by two closely-connected political movements: communism and women’s suffrage. Like its atheistic forebearer of French Revolutionary Republicanism, communism sought to abolish hierarchy — and go even further to destroy class distinctions and even the family. Particularly as the women’s suffrage movement united suffragettes from across a broad swath of classes, communism crept into the movement.

Women’s suffrage served as a political channel for the anti-family feminist ideology, fracturing the family politically, confirming the individual (and deposing the family) as the most basic unit of society, and spreading antagonism against what is today called “gender roles.” Up until then, it was largely understood that men were designed to serve as providers and protectors, while women were made to serve as mothers and nurturers. Through the women’s suffrage movement, feminism eroded these divinely-instituted ideals. Of course, some suffragettes simply fought for basic respect for women and their legal rights and protections, which had been gradually suppressed in some cases with the rise of democracy and the individualistic-focused society it formed. But feminism’s weaponization of the women’s suffrage movement had long-lasting effects on the Western world.

Over the succeeding decades, feminism and communism formed an even closer bond, especially in the wake of the First World War, when women had become prominent fixtures in the workforce while millions of men were fighting and dying in the near-global conflict. Communism encouraged feminism, recognizing its potential for keeping women in the workplace, serving the state’s economic interests, and creating even more jobs for the state to populate in the form of nurseries, daycares, and government schools. The first half of the 20th century saw Wollstonecraft’s and Shelley’s notion of men and women as equal coming to fruition.

This notion of equality must be carefully parsed from the notion of dignity: Christianity, of course, holds that all men and all women are created with equal dignity and are loved equally by God. However, Christians know — both through God’s word in Sacred Scripture and through the experience of God’s creation — that men and women are not created equal, as in “interchangeable” or “one and the same.” Their equality is in dignity and love, not in capability and biology. Feminism ignored and outright rejected the Christian understanding of equality in dignity, and instead declared, with diabolical hubris, that man and woman are actually interchangeable, one and the same. Anything a man can do, a woman can do. The “and vice versa” would come later.

Feminism Dominant

In the wake of Second World War, as both East and West became increasingly materialistic in their oddly-opposing ways, feminism became a more and more dominant ideology in civilization, reaching a watershed moment in the 1960s. The Sexual Revolution and the “free love” movement were direct results of feminism, enabled by the burgeoning contraceptive industry. For the first time, men and women of all classes and incomes could (in theory) have sex as promiscuously as they liked without having to accept the responsibility of a child. This was, from a diabolical point of view, feminism’s master-stroke. The family was finally defeated: the act which had, for millennia, brought about new life and sustained the human race — which had, for centuries, been held as sacred and bound by the covenant of marriage — was now completely divorced from its chief aim and result, cheapened and degraded from the source of new life to a mere communal pleasure.

Of course, where contraception failed, less delicate and even more barbaric methods were devised and promulgated to alleviate “free lovers” from the burden of a child. Abortion was erroneously declared a constitutional right in the U.S. just a few short years after the sexual revolution’s advent and has since been adopted and defended across the globe.

Having played its trump card and offering the masses animalistic sexual pleasure without the joys and duties of parenthood, feminism seemed somewhat irrelevant. In the 1970s and 80s, it adopted a nastier, more vicious façade to achieve its few remaining goals. It wasn’t enough to simply cut off the family at its source, the family extant had to be demolished, too. Women were encouraged into the workforce at rates previously unimaginable, told to focus on their careers to the detriment of their children.

In the 70s and 80s, feminism became that which it abhorred, a mother, giving birth to the LGBT movement. Of course, initially, it was mostly just the “G” movement, with a few “Ls” interspersed, and maybe the odd “B.” Homosexuality was nothing new to the world, the practice had been around for ages in various ways in various cultures. But now it had cultural standing: If men and women really were interchangeable and if sex was no longer primarily a procreative act but a pleasurable one, then what point was there in constraining sex to opposite-sex couples? Why couldn’t two men “have sex,” or two women?

A later development in the history of feminism was the perpetuation of the myth of “toxic masculinity.” That which is toxic is not masculinity, but an absence or rejection of authentic masculinity. But traditional masculinity, which had served as the backbone and engine of Western civilization since even before the birth of Christ, became a reviled social stigma. A natural and wholesome inclination became suppressed as a sort of psychological disease.

Transgenderism’s Lineage

Just as homosexuality relied on feminism’s ideological precedent and social cachet to gain a cultural foothold, so too did feminism’s younger son — or daughter — or whatever. If men and women were really one and the same, interchangeable in practically every regard, then why could a man not become a woman, or a woman become a man? If the only real difference between men and women was a matter of perceived personality, then why could the biological accidents of the body not be rearranged to correspond to the “reality” of feelings?

Transgenderism was birthed from the feminist philosophy, following her precedents to their natural conclusions. Many self-professed feminists protest against transgenderism’s onslaught, claiming that the ideology is erasing women, without realizing that the very movement that they espouse and propagate is based on erasing the distinctions between men and women. Given feminism’s premise that men and women are equal one to another in essence, bodily distinctions and biological differences become mere accidents to be subjected to and conquered by “science” at the whim of one’s feelings and emotional instability.

Moreover, feminism has bred the very discontent and societal rot which is fueling transgenderism’s alacrity. Young women are no longer content with their sex, having been told for generations now that they can be men, should be men, and can do whatever men do, yet consistently finding that they in fact cannot. Disappointed with this reality, young women seek to rectify this seeming wrong by “becoming” men. Young men have been told for generations that their sex is dangerous and “toxic,” that they need to be gentler, softer, and, in practically every respect, more like women. With such pressures placed upon them, trying to “be” women seems a reasonable escape for young men. And thus countless young women and young men are drugged, butchered, and mutilated, all based on a lie.

It is the lie of feminism that men and women are equal, one and the same, interchangeable. Its atheistic, Luciferian disregard for the order instituted by God — written in human biology, lived out in the form of the family, explicated in the sacrament of marriage — has led to rampant degeneracy — from the contraceptive Sexual Revolution to the “normalization” of homosexuality — and horrors prior generations could have never imagined — such as abortion and the surgical mutilation of children’s genitals, all under the fraudulent guise of “health care.” Feminism has decimated Western civilization.

AUTHOR

S.A. McCarthy

S.A. McCarthy serves as a news writer at The Washington Stand.

RELATED ARTICLE: The Tooth Fairy and Gender Dysphoria

RELATED VIDEO: Son of World Famous Photographer Likens Trans Acceptance to Gun to Society’s Head

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2024 Family Research Council.

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

Group That Advocated To ‘Abolish’ ICE Received Millions In Taxpayer Dollars

/in , , , , , , , , , , /by

A group that advocated to “abolish” Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) received roughly $125 million in federal funding for refugee resettlement, according to a new report from Open the Books.

The Church World Service (CWS), which tweeted the hashtag “AbolishICE” in 2021, received the funding from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) through grants from fiscal year 2013 to 2023, according to the report obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation. The group has advocated to pull funding from ICE to quash detention and deportations of illegal aliens.

“Instead of providing excessive and immoral resources for inhumane treatment of immigrants and asylum seekers, the United States should put those resources into programs that expand our capacity to welcome immigrants with the dignity and respect everyone deserves,” CWS said in September 2022.

The Biden administration has also partnered with CWS to launch Welcome Corps, a program that allows Americans to sponsor refugees, in January 2023 and previously tapped the group to lead the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Case Management Pilot Program to monitor illegal immigrants awaiting their court dates in the U.S.

“As American foreign policy failures have stacked up, it’s exacerbated an already-disastrous situation at our southern border. Potential migrants from an ever-broader range of countries are trying to enter the country by any means necessary,” OpenTheBooks.com Founder & CEO Adam Andrzejewski said in a statement shared with the DCNF.

“From Afghanistan to Ukraine to the infamous swell of Haitians huddled under a Texas bridge, the news traveling back home is: come to America. Entry is easy and the benefits are aplenty once you’ve arrived. The grantmaking in particular is a powerful magnet for more people to keep flooding our borders; who would turn down not just a free lunch but a leg up on a new life?” Andrzejewski said.

CWS didn’t immediately respond to the DCNF’s request for comment.

AUTHOR

JENNIE TAER

Investigative reporter.

RELATED ARTICLES:

Fetterman Sides with GOP on Border Control

Karine Jean-Pierre Dodges Question About Biden Admin Having ‘No Idea’ Who’s Entering Through Border

BIDEN SUED! Meet Matt O’Brien, illegal immigration investigator, going after Biden’s ICE!

Border Patrol Agents Pour Cold Water On Biden’s Plan To Bring In More Manpower

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

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

EXCLUSIVE: Fani Willis Hired Firm To Monitor Her Media ‘Coverage Value’ Just Days Before Announcing Trump Probe

/in , , , , , , , /by

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’ office agreed to pay $10,000 on a service to monitor her media coverage just days before announcing the probe into former President Donald Trump, according to invoices and emails obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Willis announced in a letter sent to four state officials, including Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, on Feb. 11, 2021 that she had opened a criminal probe into Trump over his alleged attempts to influence the outcome of the presidential election. However, just days earlier, her office contracted with Critical Mention, a New York-based media monitoring service designed for tracking mentions and metrics like publicity value.

The documents show Willis’ interest in tracking media coverage of herself and her office as she launched an investigation into the former president.

The first invoice charging $10,000 for the annual contract is dated Feb. 8, 2021. Emails show the District Attorney’s office was in discussion with the company as early as Feb. 1.

“We are getting more coverage via your name than by title,” said what appears to be a Fulton County employee in a Feb. 2021 email, referencing Willis. “This graph has the coverage value for the last week at over $150 million.”

“I ran a report for mentions of ‘Fulton County District Attorney’ worldwide for the last seven days. Critical Mention (the PR monitoring platform I told you guys about that we contract for last week) gives a ‘publicity value’ to the coverage, which is meant to reflect what it would cost to buy paid advertising equivalent to the penetration of the media coverage,” the email continues. “While it can be a bit exaggerated, it says in the last week we’ve gotten media coverage equivalent to $67 million in advertising. Even half of that value would be staggering.”

Critical Mention’s website pitches its service to “PR, Communications and marketing agencies” who use the platform to “to help clients track earned media coverage in real-time, analyze campaigns and grow their brands.”

Atlanta-based criminal defense attorney and legal analyst Philip Holloway told the DCNF that prosecutors are required “to be objective and to wield their great power without bias and certainly not to use the criminal justice system as a political weapon.”

“If there is even the appearance that she is using a criminal grand jury to enhance her personal media profile or for personal political advancement, we could be witnessing a real-time derailment of this indictment,” he said. “Fundamental fairness is at the heart of constitutional due process and if this case was not brought and maintained in the spirit of fundamental fairness, then it should be dismissed and the rest of the chips can fall where they may.”

When renegotiating the contract in Feb. 2023, Deputy District Attorney for the Media Relations Division Jeff DiSantis mentioned to a company representative that he has had to “push the county hard to pay for this.”

“We paid for a whole year last year but the service was turned off for several months,” he wrote. “I understand if you can’t give us credit for that, but I have to push the county hard to pay for this, and I don’t think they will renew it without that credit.”

A company representative told DiSantis later that day that they had “received payment for the 2022 renewal on 9/12/22, and the due date was 3/31/22.”

Earlier emails show the company reached out multiple times in 2021 to warn about past due invoices, telling Willis in a May 12, 2021 email that her account was “in danger of suspension.”

“I have been informed by Ms. Goff my purchasing manager that there is paperwork that needs to be filled out to be paid by the county,” Willis said in a reply to the company representative. “Until your company jumps through the county hoops it is impossible to pay you.”

County data shows Critical Mention was paid once, on May 28, 2021, for $10,000.

Later emails from DiSantis to a representative for TV Eyes, another media monitoring service, indicate he considered subscribing the District Attorney’s Office to an alternate service. The county has paid $12,600 to TVEyes Inc since Sept. 2021 for the Sheriff’s Office and External Affairs, per county data.

Trump co-defendant Michael Roman filed a motion Jan. 8 claiming Willis benefited from a “lucrative” contract she awarded her alleged lover, special prosecutor Nathan Wade, when he took her on vacations using money earned from his position. Bank statements have since shown that Wade purchased tickets to Miami and San Francisco in Willis’ name.

Additionally, Wade has been paid at a higher hourly rate than John Floyd, one of the other special prosecutors on the case who is known as Georgia’s top racketeering expert, according to billing statements and contracts obtained by the DCNF. Floyd was paid between $150 and $200 an hour, while Wade has been paid $250 an hour.

Wade has made nearly $654,000 from the county since 2022, per county data.

The District Attorney’s Office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

AUTHOR

KATELYNN RICHARDSON

Contributor.

RELATED ARTICLE: EXCLUSIVE: Fulton County Commissioner Requests Fani Willis Produce Info On Alleged ‘Misuse’ Of County Funds

POSTS ON X:

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

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.