Tag Archive for: elections

Trump Eyeing Prosecuting Google over ‘Illegal’ Election Interference

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Tech giant Google’s days of election interference may be drawing to a close, pending the outcome of November’s presidential election. Former President Donald Trump pledged on Friday to prosecute Google for manipulating search results to benefit Democratic political candidates, should he retake the White House.

“It has been determined that Google has illegally used a system of only revealing and displaying bad stories about Donald J. Trump, some made up for this purpose while, at the same time, only revealing good stories about Comrade Kamala Harris,” Trump shared in a post on Truth Social. He continued, “This is an ILLEGAL ACTIVITY, and hopefully the Justice Department will criminally prosecute them for this blatant Interference of Elections.” The 45th president vowed, “If not, and subject to the Laws of our Country, I will request their prosecution, at the maximum levels, when I win the Election, and become President of the United States!”

A report published last week by Media Research Center (MRC) Free Speech America revealed that Google has been manipulating and “padding” search results to promote Vice President Kamala Harris and disparage Trump. Researchers used Google to search for both “Donald Trump Presidential Race 2024” and “Kamala Harris Presidential Race 2024” and found that Google listed Harris’s campaign website higher in search results than Trump’s campaign website. Google also promoted news websites — such as CNN, NBC, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Politico, and The Economist — which have a left-wing bias and provided negative coverage of Trump’s campaign and policies and favorable coverage of Harris’s campaign and policies.

“This is not neutral, there are snotty headlines and opinion pieces,” MRC NewsBusters Executive Editor Tim Graham commented. He continued, “Writers highlight negatives for both campaigns but suggest Harris is not an ideologue, and that Trump is very divisive. Apparently, Democrats can say the worst things about Trump and his supporters and it’s never viewed as divisive. It’s merely implied that it’s accurate.”

A previous MRC report found that Google has “interfered in elections” over 40 times since 2008. Over the past almost-two-decades, Google has consistently worked to promote news, opinion, and analysis from sources with a left-wing bias; buried stories damaging to Democratic politicians; buried Republican candidates’ campaign websites; and used search result suggestions to liken Republicans to Nazis. Google worked hard to promote then-Senator Barack Obama’s presidential campaign and, in 2012, his reelection efforts. In 2016, Google hid search suggestions related to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s criminal indictment and her involvement in the deaths of American citizens and soldiers in Benghazi, Libya.

Google also overrepresented media sources with a left-wing bias. When searching for results related to “abortion,” “campaign finance reform,” “global warming,” “Iraq war,” and others, Google users were 40% more likely to be fed sources with a left-wing bias. In the 2018 midterms, the overrepresentation of left-wing news sources increased, with Google burying Republican candidates’ campaign websites, listing “Nazism” as a “related search” to Republican organizations, and listing the Republican Party under search results for “Nazism.”

In 2020, Google continued its election interference efforts in an attempt to “prevent … the next Trump situation,” as a senior Google official put it. In addition to overrepresenting news sources with a left-wing bias, Google also blocked and blacklisted news sources it deemed too conservative, including MRC’s NewsBusters, the Daily Caller, The Christian Post, and Catholic News Agency. These websites would not appear in search results conducted using Google mobile apps.

Other websites — including Breitbart News and The Federalist — were blocked from appearing in Google search results regardless of the app or platform used to access Google. The tech giant blocked emails from Republican campaigns and organizations — including the Republican National Committee — from being delivered to Gmail accounts. Google also rewrote its campaign ads policies in order to suppress campaigns that executives considered threatening to former Vice President Joe Biden’s presidential campaign.

In the past several months, Google has worked with the Harris campaign to attach campaign ads to news results, altering headlines to make it appear that major news outlets like the Associated Press, USA Today, The Guardian, The Independent, Time Magazine, NPR, PBS, CNN, CBS News, and others are endorsing or promoting Harris’s presidential campaign. One of the news outlets targeted by the Harris campaign — the family-owned, North Dakota-based WDAY Radio — is considering taking legal action against both Google and the Harris campaign.

In the weeks following the first assassination attempt against Trump, in Butler, Pennsylvania, Google censored search suggestion results related to the event. The Washington Stand reported that a Google search for “assassination attempt” yielded autocomplete results such as “on hitler” and “on ronald reagan,” but no mention was made of Trump. Likewise, a search for “assassination attempt on” returned autocomplete results for such figures as Adolf Hitler, Ronald Reagan, Vladimir Lenin, Bob Marley, Harry Truman, Prince Charles, Gerald Ford, and Pope John Paul II, but not Trump. Searches that did not include the word “assassination” were also censored. A search for “Trump butler,” referring to the site of the attempted assassination, returned no autocomplete results and a search for “Trump shot” was corrected to “Trump Soho,” “Trump shoe,” “Trump shuttle,” or “Trump show.”

In early August, a federal court determined that Google was operating as an illegal monopoly and was controlling the search engine and search engine advertising markets. “Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly,” U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta wrote. Ken Blackwell, a senior fellow at Family Research Council and election integrity adviser at FRC Action, said at the time, “This is a victory for Americans who want free and fair elections.” He continued, “When Google allegedly manipulates search results to suppress results on issues like the attempted assassination of President Donald Trump, including the iconic photo of him after the shooting raising his fist in the air with the American flag in the background, that is election interference, and should not be tolerated.”

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) is reportedly considering breaking up Google’s illegal monopoly and forcing the tech giant to divest several of its assets, including the Android operating system.

AUTHOR

S.A. McCarthy

S.A. McCarthy serves as a news 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.

Has America Received the ‘Sentence of Death’?

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“We were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself. Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death” (2 Corinthians 1:8b-9a).

That is what the Apostle Paul wrote in relation to the affliction he and his comrades endured in Asia. Whatever it was, we know it was intense and great. From their perspective, their very lives were on the line. For all they knew, death was around the corner. And in many circumstances, that would cause a lot of people to throw in the towel.

When reading of Paul’s affliction and how it made him feel, I couldn’t help but think of the current political climate. Yes, it’s a disaster. If you’re reading this, then you’ve likely also read some of the headlines that address children being mutilated due to transgender ideology. You’re likely painfully aware of the fact that, under the current administration, our country has been flooded with illegal immigrants who are causing Americans significant ail. The economy is beyond help, you may think, and it’s hard to even consider how anything could get better under a Harris-Walz administration.

On that note, maybe you’re completely frazzled over the upcoming election. In less than 40 days, someone will be elected as the next president of the United States, and the options don’t feel particularly great. I’m not here to endorse any particular candidate, only to highlight what I have heard in various conversations.

Unfortunately, I’ve heard numerous believers speak in utter despair over the state of this country and the potential outcome of the election. “I really, really don’t know what we will do if Kamala Harris wins,” I’ve heard said. “Donald Trump changing his stance on abortion makes me wonder if I should even vote,” others have expressed. Borrowing Paul’s language, the society that surrounds us feels like a “burden beyond our strength,” and now we feel “despaired of life itself” as it pertains to regaining sanity in the various aspects of life now tainted by poor policies and deceptive authorities.

I have no doubt, under the present circumstances, there are countless Americans — Christian and non-Christian alike — that feel America has received “the sentence of death.” Like Paul and his fellow affliction-bearers, perhaps it feels like this is the end, and it’s time to throw in the towel. “God help us,” many have sighed as they shut off the TV and retreat from the public square.

But what if that sigh of retreat is exactly the answer we need to calm our troubled souls? At least, that’s the message Paul articulated further into this chapter in Corinthians. Yes, they suffered greatly in Asia, but God helped them. Here was his response to those circumstances, “Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death. But that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead. He delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us. On him we have set our hope that he will deliver us again” (2 Corinthians 1:9-10).

So what if it feels like America has received the sentence of death? We serve a God who raises the dead! In the midst of “deadly peril,” Paul raised His eyes to the life-giving, promise-keeping God. He turned to Him for deliverance, trusting that His power was stronger than the circumstances Paul found himself in. He turned to God, because “on Him” he had set his hope. “I know my God will come through,” the apostle declared. “And I know He will do it again and again.”

When you look at the world around you, with all its worries and woes, where does it cause you to turn? If you turn to yourself, you’ll only find more reasons to worry and despair. The sentence of death is all there will be, and you’ll forget that God has promised no sentence of death, but a gift of eternal life to those who believe in Him. What if the political pandemonium around us was “to make us rely not on ourselves but on God”? What if, regardless of who is elected in November, we actually believed that God can and will deliver us, even from deadly peril? What if, rather than on politics, our hope was set on Christ? Well, perhaps then we would find the peace we crave, and the assurance we’re looking for that things will be alright.

Dear reader, the princes of the air may be hard at work deceiving and destroying, but Christ is the King of the universe and has established His throne forever. The spirits of darkness may run amok, but Jesus is the light of the world. Evil may be rampant, but God uses evil for good (Genesis 50:20; Romans 8:28). Rulers and authorities may abuse their power, but they are still subject to God’s ultimate authority.

So long as Christ lives, it is indisputably impossible that any evil, darkness, or threat of any kind could ever lead us to ruin. Revelation 20:10 reminds us of the future we can be sure of: “And the devil who had deceived them was thrown into the lake of fire and sulfur where the beast and the false prophet were, and they will be tormented day and night forever and ever.” This is not a pipedream. This is the victory Christ secured on the cross. His Kingdom knows no end, and not even the gates of hell shall prevail (Luke 1:33; Matthew 16:18).

And alongside these truths, in which we find peace, hope, and assurance, we must acknowledge that faith is not merely our anchor in the storm but also a call to action. In final thoughts over his affliction and God’s deliverance, Paul concludes in verse 11, “You also must help us by prayer, so that many will give thanks on our behalf for the blessing granted us through the prayers of many.”

Church, we need to be praying fervently.

When tempted to fear about which policies will pass or who will be elected, pray. When worried about the future of this country, pray. When you think you can’t vote, pray, and vote anyway. Vote for the person you know better reflects God’s truth. Ultimately, for those who are believers of the Lord Jesus Christ, we are never called to despair. We are always called to hope, trust, believe, and pray.

Paul could have ended the discussion with a reminder of our need to rely on God. But he chose to include the call for prayer. Because Paul, in line with what all of Scripture proclaims, believes in the power of prayer. More importantly, he believes in the One to whom we pray.

Do you?

AUTHOR

Sarah Holliday

Sarah Holliday is a reporter at The Washington Stand.

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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.

More Americans Identify as Republican than Democrat as November Draws Nearer

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For the first time in recorded history, more Americans are identifying with the Republican Party in the third quarter of a presidential election year than the Democratic Party — and are aligning with the GOP on key issues heading into November. Gallup released an in-depth analysis this week revealing that 48% of adults in the U.S. either identify as Republican or lean towards the Republican Party, compared to only 45% who identify as Democrat or lean towards the Democratic Party.

“Party affiliation and voting are strongly predictive of individuals’ vote choices, with the vast majority of identifiers and leaners voting for the candidate of their preferred party,” Gallup noted. The analytics giant continued, “At the aggregate level, there are typically more Democrats and Democratic leaners than Republicans and Republican leaners in the U.S. adult population.” In observing prior elections, Gallup pointed out that Democrats have typically won the White House when they have had “larger-than-normal advantages in party affiliation.”

For example, 52% of Americans identified with the Democratic Party in 1992, as opposed to 40% who allied themselves with the Republican Party, and Bill Clinton, then the Democratic Governor of Arkansas, won the presidency. The margin was a little lower in 1996, when 50% of Americans identified with the Democratic Party and 41% with the GOP, but Clinton won reelection. The margin was significantly narrower in 2000 (48% Democrat, 43% Republican) when Texas Governor George W. Bush, a Republican, beat incumbent Vice President Al Gore, a Democrat. In 2004, the nation was evenly split (47% identifying with the Democratic Party, 47% with the Republican Party), yielding another Bush win.

From that point forward, the margins between the two party identifications stayed fairly close, but still with a decided Democratic advantage. Barack Obama took the White House in 2008 (49% identifying with the Democratic Party, 41% with the Republican Party) and was reelected in 2012 (47% identifying with the Democratic Party, 43% with the Republican Party). Donald Trump ascended to the presidency four years later, with 46% of Americans identifying with the Democratic Party and 43% with the GOP, the slimmest margin seen since 2000. In 2020, 48% of Americans affiliated themselves with the Democratic Party and only 43% with the Republican Party and former Vice President Joe Biden was sworn in as president.

Now, more Americans not only identify with the Republican Party than the Democratic Party, but more Americans identify with the Republican Party than have identified with the Democratic Party over the past 16 years. Gallup noted, “Republicans previously have not had an outright advantage in party affiliation during the third quarter of a presidential election year, and they have rarely outnumbered Democrats in election and nonelection years over the past three decades.”

Beyond party identification, Gallup discovered that Americans have greater confidence in the GOP’s handling of issues voters consider important — namely, the economy and inflation, immigration, and government — than in the Democratic Party’s, by a five-point margin, which Gallup classifies as a “strong” advantage in the context of previous presidential elections.

The Republican Party is also leading on economic issues. As Gallup noted, “Americans currently give the Republican Party a six-percentage-point edge, 50% to 44%, as the party they think would do a better job of keeping the country prosperous.” The party which has held an advantage on this question in the past has won 12 out of 16 presidential elections. Americans also give the economy a rating of -28, with only 22% saying that economic conditions under President Joe Biden are “excellent” or “good.” Gallup added, “Republicans hold a more substantial advantage of 14 points (54% to 40%) as the party Americans believe is better able to keep the nation safe from terrorism and other international threats.”

Additionally, only 22% of Americans say that they are satisfied with how things are going in the U.S. currently, a low unrivaled since 13% said the same in 2008. Gallup observed, “Satisfaction levels this low have been associated with incumbent presidents losing their reelection bids in 1980 (19%), 1992 (22%) and 2020 (28%).” Biden’s low favorability ratings (39%, significantly lower than former President Donald Trump’s 46% heading into the 2020 election) are less likely to impact the 2024 election, Gallup anticipates, since he dropped out of the presidential race. But Gallup noted, “Biden’s unpopularity could still affect the election to the extent voters transfer their frustrations with the Biden administration to Vice President Kamala Harris.”

The survey analysis from Gallup follows news that Republican voter registration is on the rise, outpacing Democratic voter registration in several historically-Democratic districts, and Republicans are accounting for a significantly higher percentage of early voting turnout than in previous years. Historically, early voting and mail-in voting have been dominated by Democrats, with Republicans voting on election day itself.

In its analysis, Gallup concluded, “The political environment suggests the election is Trump’s and Republicans’ to lose. Nearly every indicator of the election context is favorable to the Republican Party, and those that aren’t are essentially tied rather than showing a Democratic advantage.”

AUTHOR

S.A. McCarthy

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

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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.

Harris Campaign Leader Admits VP Plans to ‘Keep a Lot’ of Biden’s Economic Policies

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According to the co-chairman of the Harris-Walz campaign, incumbent Vice President Kamala Harris has a plan to fix the American economy — and that plan is almost identical to what she and President Joe Biden are already doing with their White House tenure. Senator Chris Coons (D-Del.), one of the chairmen of Harris’s presidential campaign, addressed Americans’ financial worries in an interview on Tuesday, claiming that Harris has a plan to “open up the door to economic opportunity.”

CNBC’s Andrew Ross Sorkin asked Coons, “Do you think that the American public … deserve to know specific details about her economic plan?” In other words, “Should you know what your tax rate is going to be or at least what she believes your tax rate should be before you go to the polls? Should you know what the regulatory sort of regime in her perfected world would look like?”

Coons replied that Harris has “laid out a broad vision for what are her priorities” in terms of the economy. After suggesting that Americans “look at the chaos, the unpredictability, the sort of careening around the field of the former president,” the Delaware Democrat did admit that Harris intends “to keep a lot of the same policies and agendas” put in place by the Biden-Harris administration.

But those same economic policies and agendas have proven wildly unpopular. For years now, Americans have been worrying about skyrocketing inflation and sharply-increasing housing prices while going into debt just to fund day-to-day necessities like school supplies for children. Noting these concerns, CNBC’s Joe Kernen said, “Americans still don’t feel like it’s a great economy and they prefer Trump — maybe it’s narrowing a little, but they prefer Trump and the way he managed the economy more than the current administration.”

Coons responded, “Part of it is that Americans — when you ask the question, ‘Are you better off today than you were four years ago?’ — many Americans misremember just how bad the economy was four years ago and how strong our economic recovery from the pandemic has been.”

But Americans do remember being able to afford gas and groceries. Immediately following the presidential debate earlier this month between Harris and her rival, former President Donald Trump, undecided and Independent voters overwhelmingly aligned with Trump, largely citing the strength of the U.S. economy under his administration. One voter told The New York Times, “When Trump was in office — not going to lie — I was living way better. I’ve never been so down as in the past four years. It’s been so hard for me.”

In fact, according to voter analysis from Fox News, even Democrats preferred Trump’s vision and plan for the economy, jobs, and inflation over Harris’s. A CNN poll found that Trump maintains a 20-point lead over Harris on economic issues, which have been consistently ranked the most pressing concern for voters ahead of November. He also holds a 23-point lead over Harris on immigration, which voters rank as a close second for crucial issues.

A number of voters also expressed dissatisfaction with Harris’s failure to clarify her plan for the economy. Many said that the vice president was too vague and offered few details. Those complaints have persisted in the succeeding weeks, as Harris has failed to offer specifics in interviews. Even when asked point blank, Harris has opted to reminisce about her “middle class” childhood rather than detail her vision for the economy.

Coons was confronted on this point on Tuesday. Sorkin said that he could only name five specific policies Harris has mentioned over the past months and noted that most voters would prefer to hear of 10 or 15 proposals. Coons grinned and, instead of offering answers, simply asked, “And what do you know about Donald Trump’s tax and regulatory agenda?”

AUTHOR

S.A. McCarthy

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

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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.

Republicans Outpacing Dems in Voter Registrations, but Election Integrity Concerns Persist

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A crucial county in the swing state of Pennsylvania is flipping red for the first time in nearly 60 years, following a statewide and nationwide trend. Luzerne County, the most populous county in the Keystone State’s northeastern region, has officially registered more Republican voters than Democrats for the first time since 1970.

According to local WFMZ-TV 69 News, there are 87,415 registered Republicans in Luzerne County, against 87,332 registered Democrats, as of Monday morning. There are also 22,414 unaffiliated voters and 6,160 third-party voters. Luzerne had been a Democrat stronghold for decades, but former President Donald Trump won the county by eight points in 2020 and is poised to do so again by wider margins in November.

In comments to The Washington Stand, FRC Action Director Matt Carpenter said, “Pennsylvania is known as the Keystone state, and that moniker could not be more fitting for its role in the 2024 election. Without the state’s 19 electoral college votes, the paths to 270 for Kamala Harris and Donald Trump get much more difficult.” He added, “But, with a closely divided Congress, all eyes are on the state’s contested Senate race and competitive House races as well.”

Carpenter continued, “Luzerne County is probably the swingiest county in arguably the most crucial swing state, and with the news that Republicans outnumber Democrats in this key county for the first time in decades, suddenly the prospect of turning this state red at the presidential level, defeating longtime Democrat Senator Bob Casey, Jr., and Democrat Representative Matt Cartwright, is a real possibility.”

Just 10 years ago in 2014, Democrats held a lead of 47,322 registered voters over Republicans, with 111,233 Democrats registered to vote and only 63,911 Republicans. That lead has increasingly diminished over the past decade and Republicans now lead by 83 registered voters. This trend is not isolated to Luzerne County. According to Early Vote Action founder Scott Presler, Democrats have also lost their lead in Pennsylvania’s Bucks County. In 2020, there were 201,254 Democrats registered in Bucks and 185,672 Republicans, giving the Democrats an advantage of 15,582 registered voters. Now, there are 199,359 Democrats registered and 201,479 Republicans, giving Republicans a lead of 2,120 registered voters. Last year, Pennsylvania’s Beaver County was also flipped red.

Other states, like Virginia, have seen similar shifts away from Democratic Party enthusiasm. According to former state senator Glen Sturtevant (R), early voting has seen a significant uptick from prior years, with roughly 30,000 more ballots having been cast early than the same time in 2020, with a heavy Republican lean. Virginia’s solidly-red Washington County has reportedly seen a 150% early voting increase compared to 2020, Bland County has seen a 200% increase, and Smith County has seen an even greater increase.

While some battleground states are more hotly-contested, Trump has made inroads among Democrats. In Michigan, the Democratic mayor of Hamtramck, the most densely-populated municipality in the state and the nation’s only majority-Muslim city, formally endorsed Trump over Harris. “President Trump and I may not agree on everything, but I know he is a man of principles,” said mayor Ameer Ghalib. “I believe he is the right choice for this critical time. I’ll not regret my decision no matter what the outcome would be, and I’m ready to face the consequences.”

Additionally, a poll of Teamsters Union members showed that Trump is leading among the historically-Democrat-aligned voting bloc, especially in battleground states. Trump is leading Harris among the Teamsters by 18.6 points in Arizona, 15.6 points in Georgia, 33.9 points in Pennsylvania, nearly 30 points in Michigan, and 16.5 points in Wisconsin. This follows the Teamsters Union refusing to endorse Harris — the first time in decades that the union hasn’t endorsed a Democrat — after internal polling revealed that nearly 60% of union members supported Trump’s reelection campaign.

However, the Virginia Project, a voter outreach and election integrity organization, warned that polling data and voter registrations need to be accompanied by election integrity safeguards and lawyers. “Pennsylvania isn’t going to stop a 3AM ballot dump with voter registrations. The longer the question remains open and nobody can proffer a responsible party with a real plan, the more disturbing the situation is and the less likely we will carry that state,” the group warned.

The Virginia Project asked, “When Philly illegally kicks out observers, covers the windows of the polling place, and stuffs the ballot box, who exactly is going to do what exactly to stop it?” Pointing to the election integrity measures used in Virginia elections, the organization explained, “Here’s what would happen in Virginia. An observer would see something improper, and would immediately call the legal hotline. Inside 15 minutes lawyers would strike like a bolt of lightning and put everything on hold until a court can decide.”

AUTHOR

S.A. McCarthy

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

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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.

Over a Quarter of Dems Say America Would Be ‘Better Off’ If Trump Were Killed

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A shocking new survey is revealing that nearly a fifth of Americans wish former President Donald Trump had been slain by an assassin’s bullet. According to a Napolitan News Service poll conducted by RMG Research founder and president Scott Rasmussen, 17% of surveyed voters answered “Yes” when asked if the U.S. would be “better off if Donald Trump had been killed…” Nearly 70% of voters responded “No” and 14% said that they were “not sure.”

Over a quarter (28%) of those who replied “Yes” were registered Democrats, while another 27% were identified as voters who “lean Dem.” Additionally, 12% of Independent voters, 7% of registered Republicans and 1% of voters who “lean GOP” said that the nation would be “better off” if Trump were to be assassinated.

However, a majority of every political demographic — except registered Democrats — said that the nation would not be “better off.” An unsurprising 92% and 91% of registered Republicans and voters who lean Republican, respectively, answered “No” to the survey’s question, as did 66% of Independents and 53% of voters who lean Democrat. Less than half (47%) of registered Democrats said that the country would not be “better off.” Overall, a combined total of 53% of registered Democrats either responded that the country would be better if Trump were assassinated or said that they don’t know if the country would be better off or not.

The poll’s publication follows a second assassination attempt against Trump on September 15, which itself came almost exactly two months after a would-be killer shot the 45th president in the side of the head at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. “The desensitization of some Americans following the second assassination attempt of former President Trump is alarming,” Napolitan News Service noted. Rasmussen added, “It is hard to imagine a greater threat to democracy than expressing a desire to have your political opponent murdered.”

The survey also discovered that almost half (49%) of Democrats polled believed that the Trump campaign and possibly even Trump himself orchestrated or was involved in the assassination attempts as a political ploy. Meanwhile, a majority (52%) of Republicans said that they believe the Democratic Party and its operatives were involved in the assassination attempts.

Following the second assassination attempt and the revelation that Ryan Routh, who attempted to shoot Trump while the former president played golf, directly quoted Democratic nominee and Vice President Kamala Harris’s “democracy is on the ballot” sound bites, the Trump campaign argued that the rhetoric used by Democrats “inspired” the assassination attempts. The Trump team said that the two attempted assassins were “egged on by the rhetoric and lies that have flowed from Kamala Harris, Democrats, and their Fake News allies for years.” The campaign statement continued, “Democrats used increasingly incendiary rhetoric against President Trump in the days, weeks, and months leading up to the two assassination attempts…”

Examples the campaign provided of that rhetoric included Harris and her boss, President Joe Biden, repeatedly referring to Trump as a “threat,” including “a threat to our democracy and our fundamental freedoms.” Harris’s running mate Minnesota Governor Tim Walz (D), former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas), Rep. Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.), Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.), Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and countless other Democratic Party or Democrat-aligned politicians have echoed the claim that Trump is a “threat” to the nation or to democracy, with some also labeling him an “enemy” or “destructive” and some using violent terminology, such as saying that the former president needs to be “eliminated” or put in a “bullseye.”

Democrat Stacey Plaskett, a delegate to the United States House of Representatives from the U.S. Virgin Islands, explicitly said that Trump “needs to be shot,” and Lincoln Project founder Rick Wilson said that somebody needs to “go out and put a bullet in Donald Trump.”

Addressing the attempts on his life at a recent campaign rally in Long Island, New York, Trump credited God with protecting him. “God has now spared my life,” Trump declared. Looking to Heaven and raising his hand, he added, “It must have been. God, thank you.” The former president continued, “These encounters with death have not broken my will, they have really given me a much bigger and stronger mission. They have only hardened my resolve to use my time on earth to make America great again for all Americans, to put America first.”

AUTHOR

S.A. McCarthy

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

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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.

Teamsters Union Won’t Endorse Harris after Members Back Trump

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For the first time in decades, one of the nation’s largest and most influential labor unions is refusing to endorse a Democrat for president. Representing nearly one-and-a-half million American workers, the Teamsters Union announced late Wednesday that it would not be endorsing either Vice President Kamala Harris or former President Donald Trump in this year’s presidential race.

This marks the first time since 1996 that the Teamsters have not endorsed a presidential candidate. Previously, the union has overwhelmingly endorsed Democrats for president, including endorsing now-President Joe Biden in 2020. The Teamsters have not endorsed a Republican presidential candidate since George H.W. Bush in 1988.

“The Teamsters thank all candidates for meeting with members face-to-face during our unprecedented roundtables,” Teamsters’ International Union General President Sean O’Brien said in a statement. “Unfortunately, neither major candidate was able to make serious commitments to our union to ensure the interests of working people are always put before Big Business,” O’Brien continued. “We sought commitments from both Trump and Harris not to interfere in critical union campaigns or core Teamsters industries — and to honor our members’ right to strike — but were unable to secure those pledges.”

“As the strongest and most democratic labor union in America, it was vital for our members to drive this endorsement process. Democrats, Republicans, and Independents proudly call our union home, and we have a duty to represent and respect every one of them,” O’Brien added. “We strongly encourage all our members to vote in the upcoming election, and to remain engaged in the political process. But this year, no candidate for President has earned the endorsement of the Teamsters’ International Union.”

In comments to The Washington Stand, FRC Action Director Matt Carpenter said, “To see the Teamsters decline to endorse the Democratic nominee for president is not something I thought I would ever see in my lifetime. Since the 2016 election, we have seen the emergence of a truly stunning realignment in the coalitions that make up the two-party system in American politics.” He explained, “The GOP, once home to free trade absolutists and corporate America, has transformed into the home of working men and women, while the Democratic Party has morphed into a party of the upwardly-mobile, high-income, and college-educated.”

Carpenter added, “While the Teamsters opted not to endorse Donald Trump, and instead opted to decline an endorsement of either candidate, they did release polling of their members showing by almost two-to-one they prefer a second Trump term to a Harris administration.”

The Teamsters did release internal polling data, also on Wednesday, asking union members who the 121-year-old organization should endorse for president. According to electronic polling conducted from late July to September 15, nearly 60% said the union should back Trump, while only 34% went with Harris. The remaining 6.4% of polled Teamsters said “other candidates.” A phone poll conducted from September 9 to September 16 found little difference, except a noticeable decline in support for Harris, with 58% of Teamsters backing Trump and only 31% backing Harris. The remaining 11% were almost evenly split between “undecided” and “don’t know.” Polling conducted prior to Biden dropping out of the presidential race found nearly 45% of Teamsters supported Biden, 36.3% supported Trump, and the remaining 7% were split among third-party candidates.

Trump himself commented on the Teamsters’ refusal to back Harris. “The Teamsters for many, many decades always automatically support the Democrats. This year, they refused to do it,” the 45th president said in an interview Wednesday night. He continued, “They took a poll and we got 60% in the poll, in the Teamsters. They’re not gonna support the Democrat this year, they’re gonna — I guess remain neutral. But that was sort of a big event. Nobody ever expected a thing like that to happen.” Trump added that a lot of Teamsters workers used to work for him in the construction and real estate development business years prior and referred to O’Brien as a “top guy.”

In July, O’Brien became the first Teamster to speak at the Republican National Convention, at Trump’s invitation. Upon accepting Trump’s warm welcome, O’Brien said, “Anti-union groups demanded the president rescind his invitation. The Left called me a traitor. This is precisely why it is so important for me to be here today.” Referring to Trump being shot in the head and surviving an assassination attempt just days earlier, O’Brien added, “I think we all can agree, whether people like him or they don’t like him, in light of what happened to him on Saturday, he has proven to be one tough S.O.B.” The Teamsters leader also derided economic and labor policies that hurt “American workers,” calling for reform to labor law and bankruptcy law.

Just last month, polling data found that Trump commands a nearly-30-point lead over Harris among white, working-class, and non-college-educated voters nationally. The former president also leads among white, working-class voters across swing states. Earlier this week, Trump spoke at a campaign rally in Flint, Michigan and pledged to increase tariffs on cars made in places like Mexico, in order to bring jobs back to American workers in places like Michigan. “We are going to bring so many auto plants into our country,” Trump promised. “You’re going to be as big or bigger than you were 50 years ago. Because if they’re not willing to build a plant, we don’t want their product.”

AUTHOR

S.A. McCarthy

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

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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.

CatholicVote Exposes Harris’s Support for Funding Gender Transition Surgeries for Kids

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A conservative Catholic advocacy group is launching an ad campaign across swing states exposing Vice President Kamala Harris’s support for taxpayer-funded mutilative gender transition procedures on children. CatholicVote began airing ads on Monday using Medicaid data to reveal that the incumbent Biden-Harris administration has been using American taxpayer dollars to fund the procedures — including mastectomies, hysterectomies, and penis amputations — on minors. The campaign’s target audience are Catholic voters and parents in swing states.

“Medicaid data shows 97 underage girls had their breasts completely removed, 14 underage girls underwent hysterectomies,” the ad airing in Pennsylvania exclaims. Billing the procedures as “taxpayer-funded experiments on kids,” the ad continues, “Sex-change operations attempting to make young boys into girls, penis amputations. Sound weird? Disgusting? It is. And you’re paying for it. Kamala Harris supports these taxpayer-funded sex change operations. A vote for Harris [is] a vote for medical experiments on kids.”

Tommy Valentine, director of CatholicVote’s Catholic Accountability Project, told The Washington Stand, “We thought it was about time someone exposed the graphic details of what transgender surgeries really do to children. These ‘surgeries’ are really just mutilations. They’re irreversible and life-changing.” He added, “People should be uncomfortable with the ad because they are paying for these surgeries with their tax dollars. If Kamala Harris gets elected, these numbers are going to skyrocket, and thousands of children will be left devastated.”

“Thousands of trans surgeries are happening — on kids — across the country. Double mastectomies on young girls. Hysterectomies. Amputation of boys’ genitalia. Full skin grafts to forehead, chin, underarms, genitals, hands, and feet,” CatholicVote President Brian Burch explained. “The Biden-Harris administration is using your tax dollars today to pay for them. And Kamala Harris wants to expand these medical experiments on kids. … This ad is hard to watch for a reason. Because the truth is sickening. America’s children are being carved up and sterilized.”

According to CatholicVote’s ads, 35 underage girls in Michigan were subjected to double mastectomies and seven to hysterectomies, as part of gender transition procedures. In Wisconsin, 86 girls were subjected to double mastectomies and 12 to hysterectomies. CatholicVote is airing an ad in Spanish in Nevada, to reach Hispanic-American Catholics. In the Silver State, 18 underage girls were subjected to double mastectomies and three to hysterectomies. “The number of trans mutilations on kids is already shockingly high. If Kamala Harris wins, how many more children’s bodies will she help destroy?” Burch asked. “None — if we stop her.”

The Biden-Harris administration has long been among the top promoters of gender transition procedures, including for minors. Harris’s recently-announced policies for a potential presidency include continuing and even ramping up that promotion of transgenderism and related surgeries. In addition to adjusting civil rights legislation to protect “sexual orientation” and “gender identity,” likely forcing American Christians to violate their sincerely-held religious beliefs in order to avoid breaking the law, Harris also suggests scrapping state legislation like Ohio’s Saving Adolescents From Experimentation (SAFE) Act, which bars targeting children for gender transition procedures, including puberty blockers and hormone drugs. In 2019, Harris endorsed using taxpayer dollars to perform gender transition procedures on federal prisoners and detained illegal immigrants, a position so outrageous that mainstream media “fact-checkers” labeled it as false last week, before correcting themselves.

Commenting to TWS on CatholicVote’s ad campaign, Family Research Council Senior Fellow Meg Kilgannon said, “Vice President Harris is completely on board with the gender agenda. From her time in California government to the present, Harris has supported the most radical LGBTQ+ demands. She believes that children can be born in the wrong body and should be allowed to change their sex.” Kilgannon continued, “The danger of such beliefs being weaponized by leaders in our government is apparent. This, along with Harris’s extremist abortion advocacy, should disqualify her from consideration for Catholic voters. Thanks to CatholicVote for pointing this out in such clear terms.”

AUTHOR

S.A. McCarthy

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

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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.

1.5 to 2.7 Million Illegals Likely to Vote in 2024: Experts

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Do you plan to vote this November? You’re not alone. Experts say somewhere between 1.5 million and 2.7 million illegal immigrants are likely to cast a ballot in the 2024 elections, impacting races from dog catcher to president of the United States.

The historic flood of illegal immigrants during the Biden-Harris administration has also padded voter rolls, thanks to controversial federal legislation from the Clinton administration. If illegal immigrants and other noncitizens vote in the same proportion as in previous U.S. elections, the number will range anywhere from one-and-a-half to nearly three million votes.

“A 2014 academic journal found that 6.4% of noncitizens voted in 2008,” Kerri Toloczko, executive director of Election Integrity Network and senior advisor to the Only Citizens Vote Coalition, told The Washington Stand. “There are about 24 million noncitizens in the U.S. right now. If they voted only at the same rate of 6.4% this year as they did in 2008, they would account for 1.5 million votes.”

That ponderous number of unlawful votes may just be the tip of the iceberg. “Based on the increased noncitizen activity at state DMVs, and the work of left-wing voter registration activists, this 6.4% could be much higher than it was in 2008. We could be looking at over two million unlawful noncitizen votes,” she told TWS.

Her estimate largely dovetails with a previous study showing 2.7 million noncitizens are likely to vote in the 2024 election.

The author of that study — James D. Agresti, the president and cofounder of the think tank and fact-check website Just Facts — confirmed to TWS that “the most comprehensive, transparent, and rigorous study on this matter found that about two to five million noncitizens are illegally registered to vote, and aggressive attempts to debunk the study have completely failed.”

Opponents of election integrity laws minimize the problem by claiming it is already illegal for foreigners to vote in U.S. elections. But, unlike other purported threats, the problem truly holds the power to undermine our democracy, election experts say. “The Left likes to use phrases like, ‘It’s not that widespread,’” Toloczko observed. “But how many does a moral relativist uninterested in upholding the law think is too many?” And “if every unlawful vote cancels out the vote of a lawful citizen voter, how many of those are acceptable?”

Would two million unlawful votes be “enough to possibly make a difference in House and Senate races, and even the presidency?” she asked. “You bet.”

Agresti noted that “the claim that noncitizens rarely vote is based on studies with absurd methodologies. For example, they measure the prevalence of this crime by merely counting convictions for it.”

This is “ridiculous,” Agresti told TWS. He compared the statistic to measuring the number of Americans who illegally use narcotics “based on guilty pleas and verdicts. The same applies to any other law that isn’t strictly enforced, like driving above the speed limit.”

The House of Representatives released a 22-page report in June documenting illegal immigrants voting in the United States. Under current law, 17 cities in California, Maryland, and Vermont as well as the District of Columbia allow noncitizens to vote. While the noncitizens are supposed to vote only in local elections, “mistakes” have been reported.

Toloczko highlighted documented cases of foreigners illegally voting in U.S. elections. “The federal government recently indicted a group of noncitizens from 15 different countries on federal voting charges. Texas recently purged 6,500 noncitizens from its voter rolls — 30% of whom had voting records,” Toloczko told TWS, expressing similar thoughts in The Stream.

Illegal immigration impacts U.S. elections in a second way: Counting noncitizens in the U.S. Census redistributes eight congressional seats and, with them, their Electoral College votes which elect the president, a team of immigration scholars found. America’s teeming illegal immigrant population gives additional congressional seats to California (3), Texas (2), New York, New Jersey, and Florida (one each); and it takes seats away from Alabama, Idaho, Michigan, Missouri, Minnesota, Ohio, Rhode Island, and West Virginia (one seat each). Illegal immigrants alone transfer one seat each from Ohio, Alabama, and Minnesota to California, Texas, and New York, the study from the Center for Immigration Studies found.

House Republicans have sought to address the problem by passing a number of border security and election integrity measures, including the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act (H.R. 8281), which would require local election officials to verify someone’s U.S. citizenship status before registering that person to vote. It passed the House of Representatives in July.

“States are prohibited from requiring documentary proof of U.S. citizenship” thanks to court interpretations of the 1993 National Voter Registration Act (NVRA), Rep. Andy Barr (R-Ky.) told Fox Business show “Mornings with Maria” on Tuesday. “Democrats who vote against that show what they are really up to: that they want noncitizens to vote and rig our elections.”

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-La.) has called the bill’s passage “a generation-defining moment.” Johnson favors attaching the election integrity bill to a must-pass continuing resolution to keep the government funded past the end of the fiscal year on September 30 and avert a government shutdown. Yet Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) has declared the bill dead on arrival in the Senate. “What is he afraid of?” asked Senator Deb Fischer (R-Neb.) on Tuesday morning on Fox Business.

The underlying numbers behind the 1.5 to 2.7 million noncitizen vote count may undercount the extent of the problem. Yale University researchers estimated the size of the U.S. illegal immigrant population at 16 to 29 million in 2016, before the Biden-Harris administration enacted border policies that saw record-breaking levels of illegal immigration every year to date. While administration officials channeled illegal immigration into ports of entry and other means such as the CBP One app which reduce the number of entries on paper during this presidential election year, experts say the number of overall immigrants entering the U.S. has remained the same or increased.

Americans have increasingly groaned under the strain of illegal immigration. Video footage has shown members of the Venezuelan transnational criminal organization Tren de Aragua (TdA) rampaging through the Denver suburb of Aurora, Colorado, where they reportedly terrorize and extort residents of multiple apartment buildings.

The Biden-Harris administration has placed roughly 20,000 Haitians in the town of Springfield, Ohio — a town of 58,000 Americans — where they have proceeded to drive up housing costs, underbid American workers for jobs, and engage in a spree of car crashes. The problem has reportedly spread to the nearby town of Tremont. Ohio Governor Mike DeWine (R) recently sent the city millions of dollars and deployed a team of Ohio State Highway Patrol troopers to get the deadly traffic problem under control. Although the legacy media attempted to pin a large reported number of bomb threats against Springfield schools and other institutions on J.D. Vance and other politicians who have highlighted the city’s plight, DeWine verified that officials determined that all 33 threats were “hoaxes” that originated overseas.

Mayors of Aurora and Tremont say they were not consulted about the resettling of these foreigners in their cities.

A Axios/Harris poll released in April showed a majority of Americans support the mass deportation of illegal immigrants back to their countries of origin. Overall, 51% of U.S. citizens back the Trump-endorsed policy of deportations, including about half (46%) of all registered Independents. A surprisingly high 42% of Democrats support mass deportations, likely fueled by the increasing number of African Americans — who have voted as high as nine out of 10 for the Democratic presidential candidate — who see their neighborhoods impacted by a surging illegal immigrant population, especially in sanctuary cities. Their cities’ Democratic leaders often divert taxpayer funds, and deny taxpayer-funded services to U.S. citizens, in favor of illegal immigrants.

As the government funding drama plays out in the U.S. Capitol, America First Legal has filed numerous lawsuits contending that two provisions of federal law — 8 U.S.C. § 1373(c) and 8 U.S.C. § 1644 — already allow state and local officials to obtain information about applicants’ citizenship status before registration.

“The reason why [Democrats have] got that wide-open border is so they can get as many illegals in here and get them to vote, so they can dominate the American vote,” Rep. Mike Ezell (R-Miss.) told “Washington Watch” in July. “They want to dominate the House, the Senate, and the White House.”

“They want to get elected by any means necessary,” Ezell said.

AUTHOR

Ben Johnson

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

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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.

With So Much at Stake in 2024, Christians Must Vote in November

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While former President Donald Trump’s recent comments on the life issue have brought concern to many pro-life leaders, it remains important to recall the totality of what is at stake in the 2024 election.

Of the five Republican presidents elected after the infamous Roe v. Wade (1973) decision legalizing the abortion of children throughout the entire pregnancy, Donald Trump is the only one who secured the appointment of enough United States Supreme Court justices to reverse Roe: Associate Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett. President Trump appointed a total of 231 judges to federal courts (District, Appeals and the Supreme Court).

The Supreme Court decided 5-1-3 in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization (2022) that the “right” to an abortion is neither a fundamental right recognized by the Constitution, nor part of America’s national history and traditions. The court’s reversal of Roe returned the legality of abortion to the states as it had been before Roe was decided.

Abortion State Referenda in 2022-2024

The Dobbs decision apparently galvanized pro-abortion advocates, who won all of the state ballot referenda in 2022 that instituted pro-abortion constitutional amendments for California, Michigan, Vermont, Kentucky, Kansas, and Montana, as well as Ohio in 2023. Two pro-abortion candidates for state Supreme Courts won in 2023 in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania with support for abortion as the deciding factor. Pro-life organizations lost all nine state referenda on abortion even in politically conservative states. In May, however, a pro-life Republican judicial candidate in Georgia beat the pro-abortion candidate, a former 10-year Democrat congressman, who had Planned Parenthood’s support.

Abortion referenda are on the 2024 ballots in 10 states: the swing states of Arizona and Nevada, the solid blue-leaning states of Maryland, Colorado, and New York, and the red-leaning states of Florida, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, and South Dakota. In June, Planned Parenthood announced it will spend $40 million ahead of November’s election to help elect Democrats in Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and North Carolina.

Political commentator Victor Davis Hanson said in August that Democrats “have nominated two neo-Marxists who are openly proud of what they have done.” Steve Forbes noted that the Harris-Walz team is promoting “the most radical leftist Stalinist policies in American history.”

The Communist Party USA, which has the identical abortion policies of Harris-Walz including providing taxpayer-funded abortions, noted:

“The recent overturning of Roe v. Wade casts a shadow over the country … Our own party has rightfully joined the chorus in condemnation of the Supreme Court’s decision … The October Revolution gave birth to the first successful socialist experiment. … In 1920 the Soviet Union became the first country in the world to legalize abortion on request. The People’s Commissariats of Health and of Justice passed a decree, noting that the procedure was to be ‘made freely and without any charge …’”

Freedom of Speech, Press, and Assembly

  • The First Amendment’s guarantee of freedom of speech and petitioning government for redress of grievances is the foundation of the entire Bill of Rights! At the Faith and Freedom Coalition Rally in June, President Trump promised to pardon the peaceful, pro-life picketers imprisoned by the Biden-Harris justice department.
  • Minnesota Governor Tim Walz (D) stated recently, “There is no guarantee to free speech on misinformation or hate speech, and especially around our democracy.” But in Matal v. Tam (2017) the Supreme Court ruled (9-0) that “we protect the freedom to express ‘the thought that we hate.’” For Harris-Walz, hate speech or misinformation is any speech they disagree with. During the 2020 Democratic presidential primary, Harris urged Twitter to shut down Trump’s account: “Donald Trump, who has 65 million Twitter followers … he and his account should be taken down.”
  • As California’s attorney general, Harris “co-sponsored” a 2015 bill compelling California pro-life pregnancy centers to distribute abortion facility information to their clients (AB 775, the Reproductive FACT Act). Fortunately, the Supreme Court ruled that the bill violated the First Amendment (NIFLA v. Becerra, AG of California, 138 S.Ct. 2361).
  • In September 2024, a federal district court in Louisiana decided in Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. v. Joseph R. Biden that the Biden-Harris administration illegally censored Kennedy, who opposed the Biden-Harris COVID-19 policy: “The Court finds that Kennedy is likely to succeed on his claim that suppression of content posted was caused by actions of Government Defendants … there is a substantial risk that he will suffer similar injury in the near future.”

Freedom of Religion and Conscience

  • As California’s attorney general, Harris filed a brief asserting that Hobby Lobby’s owners had no religious liberty or conscience rights and should be compelled to supply abortion drugs to employees. The Supreme Court disagreed in 2014 (Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, 573 U.S. 682).
  • In 2018, Democratic Senators Kamala Harris (Calif.) and Maise Hirono (Hawaii) opposed President Trump’s judicial nominees Brian Buescher, Paul Matey, and Peter Phipps, claiming they could not be impartial because they belonged to the Catholic fraternal organization Knights of Columbus, which opposes abortion and same-sex marriage. The Harris-Hirono “religious test” violates Article VI, Clause 3 of the Constitution; “[N]o religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust.” The Senate confirmed Trump’s nominees despite the Democratic senators’ anti-Catholic bigotry.
  • Harris introduced the “Do No Harm Act” (S. 2918) in 2018 to stop churches from relying on the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which the Supreme Court has ruled exempts religious organizations from being required to support abortion, LGBTQ+ ideology, and other polices against their religion. Fortunately, S. 2918 failed.
  • The Biden-Harris Equality Act (HR 5 from 2021) compels Christians and Christian institutions to accept behavior condemned by Scripture, or pay huge fines. It prohibits federally chartered banks from loaning money to non-compliant churches and also allows up to $500,000 in fines for not “celebrating” same-sex marriages. Churches and schools would lose tax-exempt status and school certification unless they promoted LGBTQ+ policies. (HR 5 has failed so far.)
  • Tim Walz mandated that education administrators and public and private school teachers certified by the state who do not accept or affirm a student’s transgender identity and sexual orientation will not receive a teaching license per the latest version of the regulations.

Right to Life and Reproductive Ethics

  • The Planned Parenthood Votes super PAC stated that it “is working to ensure Kamala Harris and Tim Walz make it to the White House.” Planned Parenthood sent a mobile clinic to the Chicago Democratic Convention, offering attendees free abortions and vasectomies.
  • Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) boasted that Harris was the “first vice president in history to visit an abortion clinic.” What colossal hubris and utter disregard for babies!
  • Senator Kamala Harris introduced S.510 (2017) to forbid states from requiring that only doctors do abortions, and to make it illegal to delay abortions or increase costs (think of informed consent, parental consent, 24-hour waiting periods, health/safety regulations, and banning taxpayer-funded abortions).
  • On CBS’s “Face the Nation” in September 2023, Harris was asked, “At what week of pregnancy should abortion access be cut off?” Harris answered, “We need to restore … Roe v. Wade.” In February 2019, The Daily Caller asked Senator Harris if there was any point in pregnancy at which she thought abortion was immoral. She said, “I think it’s up to a woman to make that decision, and I will always stand by that.”
  • Tim Walz told the Democratic Convention, “[T]he government stays the hell out of your bedroom.” But Walz justified China’s forced late-term abortion, infanticide, sterilization and IUD policy. Walz claimed it was necessary because, “the Chinese population was so large.” Steven Mosher of the Population Research Institute) states that “hundreds of millions of Chinese women didn’t just pay a tax. … Their babies were ripped out of their wombs by cesarean section by Red doctors who went on to sever the fallopian tubes of those who violated the one-child policy.” So much for Walz’s “choice” or government staying out of the bedroom.
  • Walz signed HF 1 in 2023, stating that, “Every individual has a fundamental right to make autonomous decisions about the individual’s own reproductive health, including the fundamental right to use or refuse reproductive health care.” Walz’s law includes teen minors. Reproductive care includes transgender drugs/surgery. The Minnesota Senate voted 34 to 33, and Minnesota’s House voted 69 to 65 to pass HF 1.
  • Senator Kamala Harris, in an interview with The Root in 2019, was asked whether she thought sex work “ought to be decriminalized.” “I do,” Harris responded.
  • The 2024 Democratic Platform states, “With a Democratic Congress, we will pass national legislation to make Roe the law of the land again. … We will repeal the Hyde Amendment [which bans taxpayer-funded abortions].” Harris-Walz will force all Americans to fund abortion in every state.
  • The Human Rights Campaign states, “The Biden-Harris Administration has been the most pro-LGBTQ+ administration in history … [and has] appointed a record number of LGBTQ+ … to key posts … including the first gay cabinet secretary, first Senate-confirmed transgender appointee, and historic federal judges. … [W]e must stop Donald Trump.”

Second Amendment

  • In 2019, presidential candidate Harris said, “I support a mandatory gun buyback program.” That is confiscation. Law abiding citizens would lose their means of self-defense. What policies do they intend to impose that warrant ending the inalienable right of self-defense? In 2008, Harris filed a court brief asserting that the Second Amendment (2A) allows a total hand gun ban, and that 2A applies only to the militia. The Supreme Court ruled firearm ownership is an individual right (District of Columbia v. Heller, 2008; McDonald v. Chicago, 2010); and that it is a self-defense right to carry outside the home (New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, 2022).
  • In a 2023 poll, Gallup asked Americans if handgun possession should be banned, except for police or authorized persons. It found that “just 27% of U.S. adults believe that no one outside of police or other authorized persons should be able to possess a handgun.” Still, Harris-Walz push a radical anti-self-defense agenda.

Select Pro-Life, Pro-Family Actions of the Trump Administration

2017: The Trump administration ended Obama’s funding for international organizations that carry out or promote abortions, Obama’s policy requiring public schools to allow transgender students to use restrooms and showers of their choice, and Obama’s Department of Defense transgender policy.

2018: Trump ended Obama’s abortion policy that restricted states’ ability to stop abortion funding under Medicaid and Child Health Insurance Program, prevented those who identify as transgender from joining the military going forward, issued an executive order to release American Christian pastor Andrew Brunson who was jailed in Turkey, terminated a $15,900 HHS contract for securing fetal tissue from abortion for “research,” and exempted groups with religious or moral objections from being forced to purchase health insurance with birth control or abortion coverage.

2019: President Trump informed Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) he would veto any bills that weakened current pro-life policies or legislation and prevented Title X family planning grantees from referring or carrying out abortions.

2020: Under Trump, HHS authorized Texas to operate its Medicaid program without paying for abortion, the DOJ filed a statement of interest on behalf of a Virginia church which received a criminal COVID-19 violation by Democratic Governor Ralph Northam for holding a 16-person service, an HHS final rule clarified that in the Affordable Care Act “discrimination based on sex” did not include “gender identity” or “termination of pregnancy,” and that the federal government would not compel doctors to do abortions or gender reassignment surgery, and withheld $200 million in Medicaid funds from California for its abortion insurance policy requirements.

2021: An HHS final rule eliminated requirements that all grant recipients including faith-based foster care and adoption providers must accept same-sex marriage and profess gender identity policies to receive federal grants.

Republican Platform

The 2024 Republican Platform opposes late-term abortion and defends the religious liberty of businesses, hospitals, churches, and individuals from supporting or carrying out abortion. It recognizes parental authority over children, prohibits taxpayer-funded gender transition procedures (drugs/surgery) of minors, protects students’ religious freedom, and the right to pray and read the Bible in schools, and keeps men out of women’s sports. It opposes federal funding of schools for critical race theory or radical gender ideology classes. Harris-Walz and the Democratic Platform oppose these policies.

November 5 Voting

This race is very close. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who recently endorsed Donald Trump, is attempting to remove his name from the ballots in 10 “swing states.” Although Democrats tried to keep Kennedy off the ballot to protect President Biden, they are now working to keep him on the ballot to undermine Donald Trump in some states!

If neither Trump nor Harris receive the necessary 270 electoral votes to win, the House of Representatives would vote by state to pick the president (26 to win). Each senator would cast a single vote for vice president (51 to win). This happened in 1800 and 1824. Therefore, the majority party emerging from the 2024 election could choose the president and vice president in January 2025.

Conclusion

If a sufficient number of pro-life Americans decline to vote, and Harris-Walz wins along with their Democratic down-ticket colleagues, the Republicans will likely lose the majority in Congress. With so much at stake, how can anyone justify not voting?

AUTHOR

Bob Marshall

Bob Marshall served 26 years in the Virginia House of Delegates and was the chief House sponsor of the 2006 voter-approved Virginia Marriage Amendment and a ban on late term abortion. He authored 60+ laws and studies, and was Chairman of the General Assembly Stem Cell Study.

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.

Independent and Undecided Voters Largely Aligning with Trump Post-Debate

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Tuesday night’s debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump has been touted as either a draw or a Harris victory by mainstream media pundits, but Independent and undecided voters saw the evening differently. Multiple polls are showing that a majority of undecided voters either decided on backing Trump or leaned towards that decision following the debate. Reuters conducted interviews with a focus group of 10 undecided voters, six of whom said that they would support Trump following the debate. Only three said they would back Harris, while a final voter was still undecided.

“Harris and Trump are in a tight race and the election will likely be decided by just tens of thousands of votes in a handful of battleground states, many of whom are swing voters like the undecided voters who spoke to Reuters,” the news agency noted. “The Trump converts said they trusted him more on the economy, even though all said they did not like him as a person. They said their personal financial situation had been better when he was president between 2017-2021,” Reuters continued, adding, “Four of those six also said Harris did not convince them she would pursue different economic policies than Democratic President Joe Biden, a Democrat they largely blame for the high cost of living.”

Most of the undecided voters interviewed by Reuters said that Harris spent too much time attacking Trump and was “vague” on her own policies. “I still don’t know what she is for. There was no real meat and bones for her plans,” 61-year-old Floridian Mark Kadish told Reuters. Robert Wheeler, a 48-year-old Nevadan, told Reuters that he had been leaning towards Harris prior to the debate but decided on Trump after watching the vice president’s performance. “I felt like the whole debate was Kamala Harris telling me why not to vote for Donald Trump instead of why she’s the right candidate,” Wheeler commented.

The New York Times also interviewed a slate of undecided voters, most of whom were unimpressed with Harris’s showing on debate night. Most voters said that Harris “did not seem much different from Mr. Biden,” and while they acknowledged that Harris “laid out a sweeping vision to fix some of the country’s most stubborn problems,” she offered no details or “fine print” regarding how she would achieve that vision.

While most undecided voters named by NYT simply remained undecided following the debate, a number skewed in favor of Trump. Keilah Miller, a 34-year-old black woman living in Milwaukee, said she had been leaning toward Harris but was disappointed by the vice president’s debate performance. “Trump’s pitch was a little more convincing than hers. I guess I’m leaning more on his facts than her vision,” Miller said. “When Trump was in office — not going to lie — I was living way better. I’ve never been so down as in the past four years. It’s been so hard for me.”

Voter analysis from Fox News also found that Independent voters supported Trump’s positions, expressed in the debate, on immigration and the economy. Even Democrats liked what Trump had to say about taxes, jobs, and inflation. Pollster Lee Carter told Fox News, “Independents are tracking very much with Republicans. They’re looking for a couple of things. They’re looking for answers on immigration, they’re looking for answers on the economy. They want to hear that things will get better for them and they also want change from what is happening right now.” Carter continued, “One of the most important things they were looking for last night from Kamala Harris is how are you going to make it different?”

A post-debate poll from CNN found that while a majority (63%) of voters said that Harris did better overall, Trump performed better on issues of the greatest importance to voters. Trump garnered a 20-point lead (55% to 35%) over Harris when voters were asked who would do better on economic issues, and an even-wider 23-point lead (56% to 33%) on immigration issues. Trump was also ranked a better “commander-in-chief” (49% to 43%) than Harris.

As polling data comes trickling in, Harris has requested a second debate against Trump. So far, the 45th president has refused to commit to a second debate, posting on Truth Social, “In the World of Boxing or UFC, when a Fighter gets beaten or knocked out, they get up and scream, ‘I DEMAND A REMATCH, I DEMAND A REMATCH!’ Well, it’s no different with a Debate.” Trump added, “She was beaten badly last night… so why would I do a Rematch?”

AUTHOR

S.A. McCarthy

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

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RELATED PODCAST: Kamala Harris’s Policies

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.

Trump Takes the Lead in Post-Debate Battleground Polling

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Ahead of Tuesday night’s debate, most commentators and voters alike anticipated that former President Donald Trump’s and Vice President Kamala Harris’s performances would do little to sway voters one way or the other, but a series of recent polls suggests otherwise. On Thursday, Trump released internal polling data targeting seven battleground states, showing an increase in support for the man vowing to “Make America Great Again.”

Conducted by veteran Republican pollster Tony Fabrizio, the survey found a two-point increase in support for Trump following the debate, and no increase for Harris. In a six-way contest featuring Trump, Harris, and a handful of Independent and third-party candidates, the poll found that Trump and Harris were tied at 46% support each prior to the debate, but Trump pulled ahead to 48% support following the debate. Likewise, while Trump and Harris were tied at 48% each in a one-on-one contest ahead of the debate, Trump’s support increased to 50% following the debate, while Harris’s support dropped to 47%. “These are largely Independent Voters, who are tired of watching our Country go down, and want to, [Make America Great Again]!” Trump observed in his social media post publicizing the polling information.

In a memo accompanying the polling results, Fabrizio wrote, “We found that despite the best efforts of Kamala Harris and media to portray the debate as some kind of overwhelming win for her, voters did not see it this way as support for her remained flat. The only change we saw was a 2-point bump for President Trump in both ballot configurations.” The pollster added, “Clearly, target state voters were not impressed by Kamala Harris’s empty platitudes and while the media would have people believe she is cruising to victory, this couldn’t be farther from the truth.”

Another post-debate poll, this one from Insider Advantage, shows Trump leading Harris in hotly-contested Michigan, where the 45th president leads the incumbent vice president by one point (49% to 48%). Insider Advantage pollster Matt Towery explained, “While there remains some enthusiasm gap in many of these states, with an advantage to Democrats, Michigan has no gap whatsoever. The candidates are basically tied in every age demographic, with Trump slightly ahead among independents.” An Insider Advantage survey prior to the debate found Harris leading in Michigan by two points (49% to 47%), so that the post-debate polling represents a three-point swing away from Harris.

A series of focus group interviews in the immediate aftermath of the debate also indicated burgeoning support for Trump, especially among Independent and undecided voters. Reuters surveyed ten undecided voters after the debate and found that six of the ten had decided to back Trump, while only three supported Harris; one remained undecided. Referring to the newly-minted Trump supporters, Reuters explained, “Four of those six also said Harris did not convince them she would pursue different economic policies than Democratic President Joe Biden, a Democrat they largely blame for the high cost of living.”

The New York Times also reported that undecided voters were unimpressed with Harris’s debate performance, with many siding with Trump throughout the debate. Fox News found that Independent voters tracked almost entirely with Republicans during the debate, aligning with Trump’s positions on inflation, immigration, and other issues. A CNN survey found that Trump had a 20-point post-debate lead over Harris on economic issues and a 23-point lead on immigration issues.

Numerous other polls have found that a majority of Americans are deeply dissatisfied with the state of the nation under the Biden-Harris administration. A Napolitan News Service survey found that nearly 60% of Americans believe that they were better off four years ago, under Trump’s presidency, than they are today. Two-thirds of respondents also said that their income “has been falling behind” and not keeping up with inflation. A Pew Research poll discovered that 74% of Americans are “very concerned about the price of food and consumer goods,” while concerns over the cost of housing have increased nearly 10 points just over the past year. A New York Times/Siena College poll reported that nearly two-thirds (63%) of likely voters directly fault Harris for the ongoing illegal immigration crisis.

AUTHOR

S.A. McCarthy

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

RELATED ARTICLE: Independent and Undecided Voters Largely Aligning with Trump Post-Debate

PODCAST: Kamala Harris’s Policies

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.

The 10 Kamala Harris Lies Moderators Let Slide at the ABC News Debate

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Presidential debates have often been compared to professional wrestling matches, but the ABC News debate between former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris more closely resembled a handicap match, with Trump taking on three opponents at once: Harris and both moderators. As “World News Tonight” anchor David Muir and ABC News Live “Prime” anchor Linsey Davis regularly fact-checked Trump in real time, they allowed Harris to get by with numerous evasions and false statements on such issues as late-term abortions, post-birth executions, government pregnancy monitors, the economy, and haggard canards about “very fine people” at Charlottesville.

Here are a few of Kamala Harris’s misstatements that the ABC News moderators let her get away with.

1. Late-term abortion is a myth?

Kamala Harris attempted to deny President Trump’s charge that the Democratic Party supports late-term abortion by denying such abortions take place. “Nowhere in America is a woman carrying a pregnancy to term and asking for an abortion,” Harris dodged.

In reality, 21 states allow abortion until birth: Six states have no legal limit protecting unborn children, and the rest allow abortion after the point of viability thanks to a vague and expansive “health of the mother” exception.

Late-term abortions are well-documented. In 2022, pro-life advocates found the remains of five babies whom abortionist Cesare Santangelo aborted late in their term or possibly after birth at the Washington Surgi-Clinic in Washington, D.C. The Biden-Harris Justice Department advised the District of Columbia to destroy the evidence.

“In 2013, New Mexico abortionist Shelley Sella faced medical board sanctions after she committed an abortion on a child at 35 weeks,” reports Carole Novielli of Live Action. “In 2003, abortionist Charles Rossmann gave abortion pills to a woman who was past 30 weeks.” Southwestern Women’s Options in Albuquerque’s website advertised that “abortion services are available through 32 weeks. Exceptions after 32 weeks are provided on a case-by-case basis.”

A 1981 Philadelphia Inquirer article documented that, in abortion facilities, “unintended live births are literally an everyday occurrence,” but they are “hushed up” instead of treated as “a problem to be solved.”

More than 56,000 abortions took place after 21 weeks, according to the most recent CDC report.

2. Abortions after birth don’t happen?

The issue of infanticide cropped up during the debate, as President Donald Trump cited comments made by a former Virginia governor about allowing babies born alive during birth to die — a position Trump called “execution after birth.” Lindsey Davis responded to Trump’s comments on abortion by saying, “There is no state in this country where it is legal to kill a baby after it’s born.”

It is true that during a 2019 interview, then-Virginia Governor Ralph Northam (D) said, if a baby is born alive during a botched abortion, “I can tell you exactly what would happen. The infant would be delivered. The infant would be kept comfortable. The infant would be resuscitated if that’s what the mother and the family desired, and then a discussion would ensue between the physicians and the mother” about the child’s future.

His comment was not an outlier. In 2013, a lobbyist representing the Florida Alliance of Planned Parenthood Affiliates, Alisa Lapolt Snow, testified before the Florida House of Representatives that even if a baby is alive, breathing on a table and moving, “We believe that any decision that’s made” about administering treatment to the newborn “should be left up to the woman, her family, and the physician. … That decision should be between the patient and the health care provider.”

Whistleblowers have noted abortionists regularly allowed children to be born alive, then die by neglect. Jill Stanek, who served as a nurse at Christ Hospital in the Chicago area, testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee in 2020:

“In the event a baby was aborted alive, he or she received no medical assessments or care but was only given what my hospital called ‘comfort care’ — made comfortable, as Governor Northam indicated. One night, a nursing co-worker was transporting a baby who had been aborted because he had Down syndrome to our Soiled Utility Room to die – because that’s where survivors were taken. I could not bear the thought of this suffering child dying alone, so I rocked him for the 45 minutes that he lived. He was 21 to 22 weeks old, weighed about 1/2 pound, and was about the size of my hand.”

Some accounts are more gruesome. Multiple employees accused “Texas Gosnell” abortionist Douglas Karpen of twisting the heads off live babies after birth.

Yet the Democratic ticket has not lifted a finger to require infant lives be saved. In 2019, then-Senator Harris voted against the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act, which requires abortionists to provide potentially lifesaving care to babies born during botched abortions. There is no federal requirement to provide medical care to an infant born during an abortion. As governor of Minnesota, vice presidential candidate Tim Walz signed a bill which removed a requirement that abortionists “preserve the life and health of the born alive infant.”

Although only eight states currently require that the data be reported, official statistics show 277 babies were born alive during abortions. Pro-life advocates Gianna Jessen and Melissa Ohden survived botched abortions.

Only eight states require abortionists to report infants born alive during a botched abortion (Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Indiana, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Dakota, and Texas.). Two states — Tim Walz’s Minnesota and Gretchen Whitmer’s Michigan — repealed those requirements. Abortionists are not known as for being conscientious about reporting their own botched abortions.

Numerous Democratic lawmakers have introduced bills to legalize “perinatal death,” which an official analysis confirmed would bring about the “unintended” legalization of infanticide.

Summing up the evidence, Family Research Council’s Mary Szoch said that the Democratic Party’s “attack on life begins at fertilization, but it continues throughout the entirety of pregnancy and does not even stop after the baby is born. Vice President Kamala Harris and Governor Tim Walz have actively worked to ensure that babies born alive following abortions do not receive the help that they desperately need.”

3. Pro-life protections prevent miscarriage care?

Harris repeated the lie that state pro-life protections prevent doctors from treating women suffering from miscarriages. Harris said she had spoken to women “being denied care in an emergency room, because the health care providers are afraid they might go to jail.”

No pro-life law in the nation prohibits doctors from caring for miscarriages. Even Project 2025, which Harris repeatedly invoked as extreme, states, “Miscarriage management or standard ectopic pregnancy treatments should never be conflated with abortion.” Pro-life advocates blame confusion created by the abortion industry with causing doctors to deny women treatment. To help women’s health, the abortion industry should stop promoting that lie, they say.

4. Donald Trump would have the government monitor pregnancies and miscarriages?

Harris asserted that Trump would preside over the installation of a Big Brother-style surveillance of every pregnancy in America. “In his Project 2025 there would be a national abortion — a monitor that would be monitoring your pregnancies, your miscarriages,” Harris said, without any moderator’s intervention.

This statement had been repeated at the Democratic National Convention, and the Harris-Walz campaign has claimed in TV spots that Trump has endorsed “requiring the government to monitor women’s pregnancies.”

But Project 2025 — which is not Trump’s platform — contains no such provision. Presumably, Harris is wrenching out of context its reasonable proposal that states report abortion statistics accurately. The Biden administration’s most recent annual report on abortion — known as the Abortion Surveillance — excludes statistics from four states including the most populous state: California, Maryland, New Hampshire, and New Jersey. Project 2025 calls on the federal government “to ensure that every state reports exactly how many abortions take place within its borders, at what gestational age of the child, for what reason, the mother’s state of residence, and by what method.” The government would “ensure that [state] statistics are separated by category: spontaneous miscarriage; treatments that incidentally result in the death of a child (such as chemotherapy); stillbirths; and induced abortion.” That’s a far cry from a “government monitor” peeping in on women’s ultrasounds.

Even legacy media fact-checkers have denied this claim. FactCheck.org noted curtly, “Trump has not made such a proposal.” Reuters reported, “Fact Check: Project 2025 did not propose a ‘period passport’ for women.” Harris’s allegation “significantly overstates the nature of the monitoring called for in Project 2025,” reports USA Today.

5. National abortion ban?

“If Donald Trump were to be re-elected, he will sign a national abortion ban,” claimed Harris. Trump removed the Republican Party platform’s historic commitment to passing a Human Life Amendment, aspirational as it was, and has repeatedly said he opposes any further national legislation on the issue. “It’s the vote of the people now,” Trump said at the debate.

6. Trump called for a ‘bloodbath’?

In one of the more egregious statements allowed to slip into public consciousness without any pushback, Harris falsely asserted that “Donald Trump the candidate has said in this election there will be a bloodbath, if the outcome of this election is not to his liking.”

Trump used the economic term “bloodbath” while contrasting his tariff policy with the Biden-Harris administration’s pro-China electric vehicle policy during a March rally near Dayton, Ohio. “We’re going to put a 100% tariff on every single car that comes across the line, and you’re not going to be able to sell those cars if I get elected. Now if I don’t get elected, it’s going to be a bloodbath for the whole” industry, he said. As this author noted at The Washington Stand:

“The term ‘bloodbath’ is regularly used in the financial sector to describe an industrial contraction. The Merriam-Webster dictionary lists one of the definitions of ‘bloodbath’ as ‘a major economic disaster.’ … Democratic campaign operatives pounced on Trump’s use of the term ‘bloodbath’ to insinuate he wanted to foment a blood-drenched revolution if he lost the election. … The [then-]Biden campaign promptly wrenched the president’s remarks out of context to create a digital campaign ad titled ‘Bloodbath,’ which recycles other erroneous statements, such as falsely claiming Trump praised rioters at the Charlottesville and January 6 D.C. riots.”

ABC News moderators let the Democrat’s baseless allegation of revolutionary violence go unchecked.

7. Are Americans better off today than they were four years ago?

Muir opened the debate by asking Harris, “Do you believe Americans are better off than they were four years ago?”

Harris responded, “So, I was raised as a middle-class kid” and spoke for two minutes about her economic plans, ignoring the question completely. Unlike numerous questions in which the moderators demanded an answer of President Trump, Muir asked no follow-up of Harris.

Harris boasts of being the tie-breaking votes for the American Rescue Plan and the Inflation Reduction Act, which economists credit with setting off historically high inflation rates that exceeded 9%. The cost of a gallon of gasoline more than doubled during the Biden-Harris administration and is still $1.29 higher than the day President Trump left office. Staples such as groceries have risen nearly 20%, and new houses have more than doubled on her watch.

8. Project 2025 is Donald Trump’s plan?

Harris continually attempted to tie Trump to Project 2025, a now-inactive project of The Heritage Foundation, which the former president has repeatedly disparaged.

Trump replied, “I have nothing to do with Project 2025,” referring to its commonsense conservative proposals as “out there.”

“I haven’t read it. I don’t want to read it,” he added.

The plan’s authors have acknowledged Trump had nothing to do with their conservative vision for the next four years. “Project 2025 is not affiliated with any candidate, and no candidate was involved with the drafting of the Mandate for Leadership, which was published by Heritage in April 2023,” Noah Weinrich, a spokesperson for Project 2025, told CNN.

9. Trump praised neo-Nazis and white supremacists?

Kamala Harris repeated misinformation that, as president, Donald Trump praised neo-Nazis and white supremacists at the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville. “Let’s remember Charlottesville, where there was a mob of people carrying tiki torches, spewing anti-Semitic hate, and what did the president then at the time say? There were ‘fine people’ on each side,” Harris claimed.

In reality, Trump said, “You had some very bad people in that group. But you also had people that were very fine people, on both sides.” But Trump promptly stated, “And I’m not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists, because they should be condemned totally. But you had many people in that group other than neo-Nazis and white nationalists, okay? And the press has treated them absolutely unfairly. … There were people protesting very quietly the taking down of the statue of Robert E. Lee. … They had some rough, bad people — Neo-Nazis, white nationalists.”

“You had people in that group that were there to protest the taking down of, to them, a very, very important statue and the renaming of a park from Robert E. Lee to another name,” because of Lee’s role as military leader of the Confederacy. But many Founding Fathers were also slaveowners. “Are we gonna take down statues of George Washington? How about Thomas Jefferson?” he asked. “You’re changing history. You’re changing culture.” Trump also pointed out the presence of Antifa protesters there to cheer on the tearing down of America’s historical monuments, who — unlike those opposed to tearing down U.S. history, did not have a permit to meet. “Now, in the other group also, you had some fine people, but you also had troublemakers, and you see them come with the black outfits, and with the helmets, and the baseball bats. You got a lot of bad people in the other group, too.”

Even Snopes.com ran an article titled, “No, Trump Did Not Call Neo-Nazis and White Supremacists ‘Very Fine People.’”

10. Trump is above the law?

Harris attempted to raise fears that President Trump would break the law with impunity in a second term. “The United States Supreme Court recently ruled that the former president would essentially be immune from any misconduct if he were to enter the White House again,” said Harris, while claiming Trump would weaponize government against his political enemies in a second term.

“The [p]resident enjoys no immunity for his unofficial acts, and not everything the [p]resident does is official,” stated the court ruling, written by Chief Justice John Roberts. “The [p]resident is not above the law.”

AUTHOR

Ben Johnson

Ben Johnson is senior reporter and editor 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.

Trump Kicks Off Coalition to Shore Up Catholic Support

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Former President Donald Trump is launching a new initiative to bolster his support among American Catholics. On Wednesday, Trump’s campaign launched the “Catholics for Trump” coalition.

“The Catholics for Trump Coalition is committed to safeguarding the vital principles of religious liberty and the sanctity of life that President Donald J. Trump has ardently championed,” the coalition’s mission statement says. “Under President Trump’s leadership, our nation witnessed unprecedented support for religious freedoms, with significant victories both domestically and globally. President Trump restored protections for faith-based organizations and bolstered the rights of religious institutions against governmental overreach.”

“Unlike the Harris-Biden administration, which has systematically undermined these fundamental rights, President Trump has stood unwaveringly in defense of traditional values and the sanctity of human life,” the mission statement continues. “Catholics for Trump stands with President Trump to continue building a nation where the rights of every individual to practice their faith freely is protected. Together, we have the opportunity to secure a future that honors the principles of freedom, faith, and life that are integral to our American heritage.”

Trump has been encouraging Catholics to back his reelection, noting the anti-Catholic policies of his Democratic opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, and her running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz (D). Trump recently posted on social media, “Catholics are literally being persecuted by this Wack Job, just ask the Knights of Columbus. They say that she is the most Anti-Catholic person ever to run for high office in the U.S.” He called on “ALL CATHOLICS TO VOTE AGAINST KAMALA…”

While polling over the years has shown Trump — and the Republican Party more generally — gaining support from American Catholics, especially as the Democratic Party embraces increasingly extreme positions on abortion, a more recent EWTN News/RealClear Opinion Research survey found that Trump is trailing Harris among Catholic voters, though neither candidate has the support of a clear majority. Abortion has proven to be a dividing issue, with Trump’s declaration that the federal government has no role in abortion-related legislation finding little favor among Catholic voters. Like most Americans, Catholics rank inflation and the economy, as well as border security and illegal immigration, the most pressing issues ahead of November’s election.

The Catholic Church is strictly and directly opposed to abortion, unequivocally declaring the practice a grave moral evil. Trump’s positions on abortion, voiced over the course of this year, along with the positions of his running mate, Catholic convert and Senator J.D. Vance (R-Ohio), have caused some concern among pro-life Americans, including Catholics. For example, Trump recently suggested that he would support an amendment to Florida’s state constitution allowing abortion, which is currently prohibited past the sixth week of pregnancy in the Sunshine State. In response to backlash from pro-lifers, including Catholic pro-life activist Lila Rose, Trump reversed his position and announced that he would be voting against the amendment. The former president’s abortion-related comments have thus been a source of consternation for Catholic voters.

In comments to The Washington Stand, Catholic League President Bill Donohue explained, “Most practicing Catholics are pro-life (the non-practicing ones are more in tune with the secular pro-abortion side), but they also want to win, and that means we need to be pragmatic.” While Donohue did say that Trump “did the right thing initially” by focusing on politically winning issues like inflation, the economy, and illegal immigration, his more recent comments on abortion show that he has “faltered” and needs “to rebound” on the issue. “He will find a sympathetic audience with Catholics, and most Americans, if he talks about the real extremists — Democrats who favor late-term abortions and who vote against bills that protect the life of a child who survives a botched abortion. He needs to be more consistent on this issue,” Donohue continued.

He added, “Trump won the Catholic vote in 2016, 52% to 45%, but he barely won it in 2020. Given the anti-Catholic animus of the FBI, and other agencies under Biden-Harris, the Catholic vote should be his in 2024.”

The “Catholics for Trump” coalition boasts that, while in office, Trump “did more for Catholics than any administration in history!” Among the achievements listed are conscience protections to ensure that Catholics in the health care industry are not forced to commit or support abortions, pro-life executive orders, and Trump’s address to the annual March for Life — the first time a sitting U.S. president ever spoke to attendees of the event.

AUTHOR

S.A. McCarthy

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

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RELATED VIDEO: Rasmussen Reports: Trump is on his way to WINNING the national popular vote

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.

‘Sorely Needed’: Speaker Johnson May Attach SAVE Act to Government Funding Bill

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Congressional Republicans say House leadership will likely attach a bill to prevent illegal immigrants from voting in U.S. elections — a bill Republicans say is necessary for the “protection of citizenship and our national sovereignty”— to a must-pass government funding bill as a precondition for avoiding a government shutdown.

Multiple sources indicate Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-La.) will add the Safeguarding American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act to a continuing resolution, or CR, which Congress needs to pass before October 1 to avert a government shutdown.

“I suspect you’re going to see a CR with the SAVE Act coming up in the next two to three weeks,” predicted Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.) on “Washington Watch” Wednesday. “What the Speaker has discussed with us is a six-month continuing resolution. You and I both don’t love that,” Perry told the program’s guest host, former Congressman Jody Hice, “but that gets us into the Trump administration, God willing, if he were to prevail. But included with that would be attaching to that the SAVE Act, which requires states then to verify citizenship of every one of their voters. And that’s something that is sorely needed.”

Congressional Republicans see the bill as necessary to fix a loophole in federal law that may incentivize illegal immigrants to vote in U.S. elections. The SAVE Act amends the 1993 National Voter Registration Act (sometimes called the “Motor-Voter Law”), which stipulates that anyone who applies for a driver’s license must be offered the opportunity to register to vote. The form asks applicants to certify they are U.S. citizens, but a court ruling prevents officials from taking any steps to verify the applicant’s citizenship. The SAVE Act would require officials to assure the would-be voter’s U.S. citizenship before an illegal ballot gets cast.

Democrats object to the law as unnecessary and redundant, saying existing laws already bar non-citizens from voting. But Republicans say the current landscape does nothing to prevent illegal immigrants from voting. “Of course, it’s already illegal for people that are here illegally to vote, but that’s not to say it doesn’t happen, because no one is enforcing it,” explained Perry. “This would require states to actually enforce the law.” Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) wrote in an op-ed for Breitbart that Congress finds itself “in the historically unique position” of being able to leverage government funding for election security.

“Asking for proof of citizenship should not bother anyone. That’s the only way that we can protect the integrity of citizenship and the integrity of our elections,” Ken Blackwell, senior fellow for Human Rights and Constitutional Governance at Family Research Council, told Hice later in the show. “This is a situation that cries out for more … protection of citizenship and our national sovereignty.”

With just two months before the 2024 presidential election, Republicans see the election integrity bill, which has been endorsed by former President Donald Trump, as pivotal. Speaker Johnson called the bill “a generation-defining moment” in U.S. civic history. “We see it as a potential game changer,” said Perry. “We just want our elections to be fair, but determined by American citizens. And the fact that the Democrats oppose that should tell you everything you need to know.” The bill has the support of conservatives in both houses of Congress. “This is where the House Freedom Caucus and I stand: While we oppose passing any CR, if it’s forced upon us, we will fight to ensure the SAVE Act is part of the deal. It’s time to hold the line and demand accountability, because secure elections should be non-negotiable,” said Rep. Michael Cloud (R-Texas) in a statement emailed to The Washington Stand.

As concerns over illegal voting take center stage in Washington, the issue is winding its way through the nation’s courts, as well. On Wednesday, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) sued Bexar County after its commissioners pressed forward with a plan to send mail-in ballots to all county residents, regardless of their eligibility or citizenship status. “This program is completely unlawful and potentially invites election fraud,” said Paxton. The move comes after Texas Governor Greg Abbott (R) removed more than 1.1 million ineligible registrants — including 7,000 non-citizens — from the state’s voting rolls.

In neighboring Arizona, America First Legal sued all 15 county recorders for failing to remove illegal and ineligible voters from the system ahead of November’s election. The lawsuit contends that two provisions of federal law — 8 U.S.C. § 1373(c) and 8 U.S.C. § 1644 — allow state and local officials to obtain information about applicants’ citizenship, an authority which they have failed to use. “America First Legal will do everything in its power to fight mass illegal alien voting and foreign interference in our democracy,” said Stephen Miller, a former Trump aide.

The road ahead at the federal level is not without obstacles. Some in Washington oppose attaching the SAVE Act to the CR, and many House conservatives have expressed displeasure that the House must pass a CR rather than legislating discreet bills for each area of government. Two congressmen — Reps. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) and Matt Rosendale (R-Mont.) — have announced they will vote against the bill. Perry said the speaker’s solution is the most practical response. “We’re going to be left with a couple options: a continuing resolution, which keeps spending the same amount of money [and the] same policy until the deal is worked out, or an omnibus, which would be terribly written in Chuck Schumer’s office by his staff, spending wildly” and codifying “terrible policy,” said Perry.

Democrats in both chambers have gone all-out to oppose the measure. A meager five House Democrats voted for the SAVE Act in July, with 198 opposed. (The Democrats who voted in favor were Reps. Henry Cuellar and Vicente Gonzalez Jr. of Texas, Don Davis of North Carolina, Jared Golden of Maine, and Marie Gluesenkamp Perez of Washington.)

Polls show the American people believe the Republicans have the better part of the argument. A whopping 87% of Americans support the bill’s goal of assuring only Americans vote in American elections. “I’m for those wanting a better life to get the opportunity to become a citizen the right way. But if you’re not American, you shouldn’t be voting. Simple as that,” said NFL great Brett Favre.

Despite overwhelming public support, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) has pronounced any funding measure including the SAVE Act “dead on arrival.” And Senate Appropriations Committee Chair Patty Murray (D-Wash.) called the bill’s election integrity measures “outrageous partisan poison pills.”

“Chuck Schumer might say it’s dead on arrival,” but if the House passes the election integrity bill as part of the must-pass bill, the Democrat is “going to have no choice to either accept that, or he will be responsible for shutting down the government,” Perry told Hice. “If the government shuts down over the Democrats’ unholy obsession with noncitizen voting, that’s on Chuck Schumer,” said Senator Mike Lee (R-Utah) in a social media post. Senator Rick Scott (R-Fla.) made similar comments Wednesday during comments to the Republican Jewish Coalition.

“Sure would be a strange reason to shut down the U.S. government,” noted Elon Musk, who became a legal immigrant to the United States in 2002.

But Blackwell does not believe the bill will cause a stand-off in Congress. “By actually shining some spotlight on this challenge, I think that we can we can pull the curtain down on this illegal action,” said Blackwell, who oversaw Ohio’s elections as Secretary of State (1999-2007).

Nothing is more important to American political life than safeguarding the integrity of the ballot, he said. “Every vote counts. And so protecting the integrity of the system by making sure that there’s no illegal vote that cancels out a legal ballot is prudent. We cannot sit on the sidelines. Each citizen of the United States has to demand this integrity, has to demand this sort of transparency, has to get involved. And we must continue to make sure that we have as many people as observers and workers at the polling places as possible at the precinct level.”

“We should not have a polling place in America that is not covered by two sets of eyes, bipartisan sets of eyes, so that we have transparency. So, make sure you go to your local party, go to your local county office, and ask how you can become involved as a worker or an observer,” he exhorted.

“We cannot let darkness prevail in this election,” Blackwell concluded.

AUTHOR

Ben Johnson

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

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