Tag Archive for: elections

State of the 2024 Election

Much has been made about what’s at stake in the upcoming 2024 election, and rightfully so. The last three and a half years have seen wars emerge on almost every continent, a dramatically weakened dollar with persistently high inflation and declining standard of living, the deterioration of military readiness, a wide-open southern border, the politicization of our legal system, an unprecedented all-out assault on the unborn and those standing up for life, attacks on religious freedom, a disconcerting rise in political violence, and more. As a result, just 28% of Americans say the country is on the right track, and they are primed to make their voice heard.

Presidential Election

The presidential election between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump has generated most of the attention and campaign spending and will be the main driver of turnout among voters. Every day, there are several new national and battleground polls released to the public, and in general they show a race within the margin of error (give or take 2-4 points depending on the specific poll) at the national level. Harris currently enjoys a two-point edge in the head-to-head polling average at RealClearPolitics. However, this lead is not enough to allow the vice president to rest on her laurels. During this time in 2020, then-candidate Joe Biden led then-President Trump by 10 points, and Hillary Clinton led Trump by 5.8 points. The former would go on to win (thanks in large part to relaxed mail-in voting rules) by less than 85,000 votes and the latter would go on to lose by less than 45,000 votes. Harris is polling significantly behind the other Democratic candidates to have faced off against Donald Trump at this point in the election.

The Democratic candidate has traditionally won the national popular vote, but because of the wisdom of our Founding Fathers, the Electoral College is determinative. If you live in a state like Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Michigan, or Wisconsin, you are no doubt tired of the ads and text messages. Both campaigns know your vote will be important for their candidate to prevail in your state, which could likely determine the outcome of the election. The two-point lead Harris enjoys in the national popular vote translates, at this moment, to an Electoral College loss. At the time this was written, the RealClearPolitics average for the battleground states would give Trump a win in the electoral college 296-242, with the key battleground states of Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Michigan in the Republican’s column. Among the battleground states Harris is currently projected to carry, Wisconsin and Nevada, she is trailing Biden’s 2020 performance in the polling by five points in each state — again, not where the Harris campaign wants to be.

Control of the U.S. Senate

Sixty-one percent of Americans agree the country is on the wrong track, and while this portends trouble ahead for the Harris campaign in persuading voters to continue the Biden-Harris policies in a Kamala Harris administration, it does translate to some anti-incumbent sentiment among voters, which plays to the benefit of Senate Republicans hoping to take the majority in the upper chamber in Congress. With a slim 51-49 seat majority, the Senate Democrats stand severely disadvantaged this election. Of the 34 Senate seats up for a vote this cycle, 23 are held by Democrats, many of which are in states that are also highly competitive at the presidential level. Pennsylvania, Nevada, and Wisconsin all have Senate Democrats running for reelection in tough matchups — in particular, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin are incredibly tight at the moment with incumbents Sen. Bob Casey, Jr., (D-Pa.) and Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) leading their Republican challengers by a mere three points.

In other states, like West Virginia, Montana, and Ohio, Democratic candidates for Senate are running at a disadvantage because their states are expected to vote for Trump by more than 10 points, endangering Democratic incumbents Sens. Jon Tester (D-Mt.) and Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio). Tester, for example, is trailing his Republican challenger, Tim Sheehy, by seven points. Brown, on the other hand, is doing better in the public polling, leading Republican Bernie Moreno by just two points. West Virginia will not be competitive, as former Governor Jim Justice is favored to win this race comfortably.

In Michigan, incumbent Senator Debbie Stabenow (D) announced she would not run for reelection, which has pitted Democratic Representative Elissa Slotkin against former Republican Representative Mike Rogers, and in Arizona, Democrat-turned-Independent Senator Kyrsten Sinema announced she would also not run for reelection, creating a match-up between Democratic Representative Ruben Gallego and Republican Kari Lake. The Michigan race is a toss-up, with Slotkin leading in the public polling average by less than two points. In Arizona, Gallego leads by just under seven points. Both states feature prominently in the Electoral College calculus of the Harris and Trump campaigns, so it’s possible the coattails of whichever presidential candidate wins the state will play an outsized role in who wins these races; this is true more so for Michigan than Arizona, because Lake is trailing outside the margin of error.

Republican Senators Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Rick Scott (R-Fla.) are also running this year and are facing well-financed challengers, but both are the favorites in their respective races. If the GOP doesn’t lose in either Texas or Florida and wins the Senate races they are expected to win in West Virginia and Montana they will take overcontrol of the Senate with 51 seats. Bernie Moreno in Ohio is likely to benefit from Trump’s coattails in that state, which would bring the GOP to 52 seats. With few exceptions, ticket-splitting is all but gone these days. So, if Trump were to carry Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Nevada, and Wisconsin, and carry Republican Senate candidates over the finish line with him the GOP would have 57 seats in the Senate. Some GOP candidates in a few of these states are polling far enough behind Trump that were he to win some of these states his coattails might not be enough to deliver for them, however.

Control of the U.S. House of Representatives

After redistricting in 2020, the number of competitive races in the House of Representatives dipped. Gone are the days of 40-60 seat swings like we saw in the Tea Party era. This year, Cook Political Report has identified just 26 toss-up races in the U.S. House of Representatives. Of these 26, Republicans are defending 14, and Democrats are defending 12. For the current razor-thin, three-seat Republican majority , winning every one of these toss-up races is a must. With just 23% of voters approving of the job Congress is doing, the GOP is swimming against the tide to keep their majority.

Since there are 435 members in the U.S. House of Representatives, pollsters ask respondents to state whether they prefer a “generic Republican” or “generic Democrat” to represent them in Congress to get a sense of how the race for the majority House will play out. Now, the RealClearPolitics generic congressional vote average shows Democrats leading by just one point. In 2022, when the GOP won back control of the House of Representatives after the Democrats held the House since the 2018 midterm elections, the GOP had a three-point lead in the generic congressional polling at this time in the 2022 midterm elections. This victory for the GOP in wresting the speaker’s gavel from Nancy Pelosi was earned by winning just a four-seat majority by a mere 4,500 votes. It doesn’t get much closer than that. I think we’re likely to see a similarly paper-thin result decide which party controls the House this November.

Unlike the Senate, where a presidential candidate’s coattails can be decisive, most of the toss-up races in the House are in states that are not particularly competitive at the statewide or presidential level. Each individual candidate will have to win or lose in their own foxhole. Alaska, California, Colorado, Iowa, Maine, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, and Washington account for 16 of the 24 most competitive House races and will not see a competitive result at the presidential or Senate level, or do not have a competitive Senate race. GOP incumbents in these states will have to win in an environment of supercharged Democrat turnout, and vice versa for Democrat incumbents in toss-up races in Republican states. If you’re the GOP, of particular concern are GOP incumbents in California and New York. There are eight GOP incumbents between these two states alone, and both states are likely to go for Kamala Harris by as much as 20 points, or more. Combine anti-incumbent sentiment with deep blue states and you have a strong headwind for GOP incumbents in these states.

Conclusion

Hundreds of thousands, if not millions of Americans, have updated their voter registration or registered to vote for the first time this year. All this data is important and tells us some early signs of how the election will go. Florida, for example, once the preeminent swing state, is now firmly in the grip of the GOP, as Florida Republicans outnumber Democrats by more than a million voters. Pennsylvania, a state that as recently as 2008 had 1.2 million more Democrats than Republicans and was once firmly within the Democrats’ Rust Belt “blue wall” has replaced Florida as the preeminent swing state, and Democrats have the lowest voter registration edge they have ever held in the Keystone State: 343,000 voters. Republicans have been winning the voter registration battle elsewhere as well.

Similarly, early vote data shows a dramatic decline in the number of mail-in ballots requested compared to 2020. Using Pennsylvania again as an example, the 2020 election saw a total of 2.7 million mail-in ballots requested, or 39% of the total vote came from mail. So far this cycle, just 1.4 million mail-in ballots have been requested (mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania can be requested until October 29th, so this number will go up. But it will likely not be anywhere close to the 2.7 million number from 2020). Mail-in voting is likely to play a smaller role in the 2024 election than it did in the 2020 election when so many were still dealing with COVID-19.

Then there’s the campaign spending. Kamala Harris’s campaign has raised $678 million to Donald Trump’s $313 million. The Democratic National Committee similarly enjoys a fundraising advantage over its Republican counterparts, raking in $385 million to the Republican National Committee’s $331 million. The Republicans enjoy a slight campaign finance edge in the Senate contests, outraising their Democrat counterparts $200 million to $173 million. In the House, the National Republican Congressional Committee raised $183 million to the Democrats’ $250 million. This all amounts to billions of dollars flooding the airways and cell phone towers with campaign messaging.

All of this to say, the respective candidates and political parties have their own advantages and disadvantages. It’s incredibly difficult to say which advantages will determine outcomes, whether it’s a campaign cash advantage or public polling, voter registration or mail-in ballot requests, we will not know for sure until election night. Right now, the presidential race looks like it’s trending toward Donald Trump, the Senate is securely within reach of the Republicans, and the speaker’s gavel is at risk of being handed back over to the Democrats. If that’s the case, then we’ll look back and say 2024 was clearly an anti-incumbent election, and the country is asking for change. If Harris wins, the Democrats retain control of the Senate, and win back the House, then we can say campaign funding is the decisive factor in elections. If Trump wins, the GOP wins the Senate, and retains control of the House, we can say it was a repudiation of the Biden-era with its excessive social engineering, abortion extremism, runaway spending, foreign policy blunders, and all.

As followers of Christ, we know God is sovereign. This is not an excuse for inaction, but an acknowledgement that no election outcome surprises Him. The best day of the republic still falls short of the glory of the New Heaven and New Earth to come. We should pray for righteous leaders to prevail in November and pray that our nation would once again humble itself before the Lord acknowledging how far we have fallen from His righteous standard. The 2024 elections are incredibly important because of the stark differences in worldview represented by the major parties, but their importance pales in comparison to the work needed to repair our nation’s spiritual walls.

AUTHOR

Matt Carpenter

Matt Carpenter is the director of FRC Action.

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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.

Biden-Harris Admin Sues to Stop States from Removing Noncitizens from Voting Rolls

The Biden-Harris administration has hauled two Republican states into court to prevent them from removing noncitizens from the voter rolls.

As part of last Friday’s news dump, the administration’s Department of Justice announced on October 11 that it had sued the Commonwealth of Virginia over an order from to purge “noncitizens” from the ballot.

On August 7, Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin (R) issued Executive Order 35, which called for the state to assure every registered voter is a legal U.S. citizen. “This isn’t a Democrat or Republican issue, it’s an American and Virginian issue. Every legal vote deserves to be counted without being watered down by illegal votes or inaccurate machines. In Virginia, we don’t play games and our model for election security is working,” said Youngkin at the time.

The Biden-Harris administration sued, claiming the action violates the National Voter Registration Act’s 90-day Quiet Period Provision, which says states must curtail all such actions 90 days before an election. The DOJ filed a similar lawsuit on September 27 against the state of Alabama, after Alabama Secretary of State Wes Allen (R) announced he had instituted a “process to remove noncitizens registered to vote in Alabama,” on August 13.

“Only U.S. citizens are eligible to vote in U.S. federal elections. That fact is not in dispute, and there is no evidence of widespread noncitizen voting in the United States. But that is not what this case is about,” claims the government’s legal complaint against Virginia.

Yet in announcing the Alabama lawsuit, Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division said, “The right to vote is one of the most sacred rights in our democracy.”

As this reporter has noted at The Washington Stand:

  • In Pennsylvania, Department of State official Jonathan Marks testified that noncitizens voluntarily told the state they had illegally voted 544 times in elections held between 2000 and 2017 — representing one of every 172,000 votes cast in the swing state.
  • An official review of Georgia’s voting rolls found 1,634 noncitizens had attempted to register to vote in the swing state between 1997 and 2002.
  • Virginia removed 5,556 noncitizens from its voting rolls between 2011 and 2017. Noncitizens had voted 7,474 times between 1988 and 2017, officials found.
  • North Carolina voter rolls showed 1,454 registered voters who “did not appear to be naturalized before Election Day 2014,” according to the Public Interest Legal Foundation, and “89 attempted to vote.”

The action is virtually unprecedented. The Obama administration sued to stop then-Florida Governor Rick Scott from removing noncitizens (at Judicial Watch’s behest) in 2012. Conversely, the Trump and George W. Bush administrations sued states or localities (Kentucky, New York City, Maine, Missouri) for failing to maintain accurate voting lists, including removing noncitizens and the deceased.

A majority of Americans worry that voter fraud will impact the 2024 election, according to a NPR/PBS News/Marist poll released earlier this month. Overall, 58% of Americans shared their concerns about election integrity in next month’s election, although that is driven by an overwhelming concern from Republicans. In all, 86% of Republicans, and 55% of registered Independents, say illegal voting could impact the election, as compared to 33% of Democrats (and just 29% of confirmed Kamala Harris voters).

Once cast, there is no way to differentiate which ballot belongs to a specific person; voter fraud is permanent. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-La.) has said the House must pass the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act to address this “clear and very real threat” to election integrity.

“The reason our movement is called election integrity is not just based on policy and procedures, but also on the character of the individuals who comprise it,” said Election Integrity Network Executive Director Kerri Toloczko in a statement emailed to The Washington Stand.

“Thousands of patriotic Americans have given selflessly of their time to become experts on their states’ election codes,” said Toloczko in a separate instance. “They have tirelessly worked in the trenches on all the aspects of the election process, researching state and county voter rolls; finding thousands of ineligible registrations, mistakes, errors, duplicates, and the like; are volunteering to serve as poll workers and observers; and who love this country so much that they are willing to take the abuse leveled at them by the corporate media, the Democratic Party, state governments, and even the federal government.”

Nationwide, 47 close elections, including 29 ties, have already taken place in 2024, according to the Public Interest Legal Foundation.

AUTHOR

Ben Johnson

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

RELATED ARTICLE: Biden-Harris Admin Sues to Stop States from Removing Noncitizens from Voting Rolls

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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.

Porn Industry Runs Ads for Harris in Wake of VP’s Appearance on Sex Podcast

The pornography industry often makes headlines related to human trafficking, child sexual exploitation, or social media regulations, but this time it’s in the news for running political ads. With less than a month to go before the presidential election, a coalition of pornography producers, distributors, and “performers” is running ads online, encouraging porn users to vote for Vice President Kamala Harris.

The $100,000 “Hands Off My Porn” campaign claims that former President Donald Trump will ban pornography if elected again. The claim is based on policy recommendations in The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, which Trump has repeatedly disavowed. Senior Trump campaign advisor Danielle Alverez responded, “Since the Fall of 2023, President Trump’s campaign made it clear that only President Trump and the campaign, and NOT any other organization or former staff, represent policies for the second term.”

Project 2025 authors and “Trump allies” are labeled “weirdos” in the ads, which claim that Trump will imprison porn producers. Holly Randall, a porn producer and “director” involved in the ad campaign claimed that the pornography coalition has not coordinated with the Harris campaign or the Democratic Party but intends to increase their advertising budget.

Despite Randall’s protests, Family Research Council Senior Fellow Meg Kilgannon observed that the Harris campaign must at least be aware of the advertising venture. “It is now legal for outside groups to coordinate expenditures with presidential campaigns,” Kilgannon noted. She continued, “While the fact of the porn expenditures themselves is shocking, the messaging around Project 2025 and the targeting of swing states would lead one to believe that these ads are coordinated with the DNC and the Harris campaign.”

She continued, “Is this all the sitting Vice President of the United States has to offer those who use pornography — empty threats that porn will be banned if she loses? Does she hope to distract the young men in this demographic from the very real prospect that in a Harris-Walz administration they will be drafted for military service and shipped overseas to die on foreign soil?”

Kilgannon concluded, “It would be better to promise lower taxes, lower prices, and more jobs, but since Harris-Walz is not credible on those topics, it’s not surprising that the expert fearmongers at DNC would supplement their dire abortion messaging to women with porn-based ads for men.”

The ads will reportedly run in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona, and Nevada. However, the claim that a second Trump administration would outlaw pornography may be at least partially undermined by the fact that over a third of U.S. states — including North Carolina and Georgia — have enacted age verification laws to prevent minors from accessing online porn, and pornography behemoth PornHub has outright stopped operating in many of those states.

When Utah passed age verification laws last year, PornHub’s parent company — then called MindGeek, now called Aylo — blocked access in Utah to PornHub and a number of other pornographic websites it owned. PornHub has also shut down in Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, North Carolina, Texas, and Virginia. When internet users visit the site, they are now met with a message criticizing the states’ laws barring minors from accessing pornography and urging porn users to contact their state representatives to complain.

The ad campaign comes in the wake of Harris’s recent appearance on “Call Her Daddy,” a sex podcast known for its vulgar and explicit language.

Child protection and anti-trafficking advocates have observed in the past that pornography creates a heightened demand for human trafficking, including child trafficking. PornHub and its parent company even admitted in federal court last year that the companies profit from illegal sex trafficking: PornHub hosted videos from a sex trafficking pornography production company and profited from those videos. According to court documents, PornHub and Aylo either knew or should have known that the profits they were receiving were from human trafficking. There are a number of allegations that PornHub and other major pornography distributors knowingly host and profit from human trafficking and videos depicting rape, pedophilia, bestiality, and other aberrant content.

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.

Afghan National in U.S. Plotted ISIS Terror Attack on Election Day

The U.S. Department of Justice on Tuesday indicted an Afghan national living in Oklahoma City “for conspiring to conduct an Election Day terrorist attack in the United States on behalf of the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS), a designated foreign terrorist organization (FTO).” Along with his wife’s juvenile brother, Nasir Ahmad Tawhedi plotted to attack “large gatherings of people” and “die as martyrs.”

The FBI foiled the plot with a months-long sting operation, according to Senator James Lankford (R-Okla.). They arrested Tawhedi and his co-conspirator after they purchased two AK-47 rifles, magazines, and ammunition from a “confidential human source” and “other FBI assets.”

The good news is that U.S. law enforcement foiled a potentially deadly and disruptive terrorist plot. The bad news is that the episode shows “just how vulnerable we are for attack,” said Rep. Josh Brecheen (R-Okla.) on Wednesday’s “Washington Watch.”

Election Vulnerability

A terrorist attack on Election Day would harm America far beyond any lives taken in the attack. It would infect our civic institutions with fear, further eroding social trust and public confidence in our elections.

As necessary as ballot security is for free and fair elections, voter security is even more fundamental. Voters who feel unsafe or intimidated at polling places may refrain from voting or change their votes, undermining the ability of elections to accurately record the will of the people. This is the reason behind laws requiring secret ballots or laws prohibiting certain campaign activities too close to a polling location.

If Islamist terrorists start attacking polling locations on Election Day, how many American voters will become more nervous about waiting in line to vote — as sitting targets? “‘Vulnerable’ is a key word,” agreed Family Research Council Action President Jody Hice. “Underline that, highlight it, and circle it.”

The ugly truth is that the U.S. government possibly could have prevented Tawhedi from forming this would-be terrorist plot in the first place. Tawhedi reportedly “entered the United States in 2021 under a special visa,” observed Hice, “which again underscores the Biden-Harris administration’s repeated failures to manage the entire immigration vetting process.”

Botched Withdrawal

In 2021, the Biden-Harris administration determined that, come hell or high water, they would remove all American troops from Afghanistan by an arbitrary and unfeasible date. This decision, made against the advice of senior military officials, effectively abandoned the country’s fledgling democratic government — not to mention the nation’s women — to the cruel mercy of the Taliban, a band of Islamist extremists who had previously sheltered al-Qaeda training camps.

America’s chaotic withdrawal left pro-American Afghans hanging in the wind. The Taliban would surely hunt down and kill men who served as guides for U.S. troops, for instance, or Christians. So some Afghans legitimately qualified for political asylum in America.

But, to meet the previously determined, arbitrary deadline for the evacuation of U.S. troops, the U.S. State Department had neither time nor manpower to either vet or evacuate Afghans in need of U.S. asylum. Several anecdotes suggest that the State Department provided “little to no help of any consequence” to congressmen and private citizens striving to evacuate Afghans, as Hice, then a congressman, recalled his own experience.

The U.S. State Department did grant special visas to a number of people flown out of Afghanistan. But these flights were loaded hastily and without adequate vetting. In fact, “because of the debacle of the way that this country withdrew and then the lack of vetting that took place,” the Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General said the “process [was] ripe for people to fall through the cracks,” explained Brecheen. “So you’ve had heightened numbers of people with this special visa,” but some of them may have come to the U.S. with bad intentions.

Some people who should have been evacuated were left behind or stranded in refugee camps in other countries like the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Meanwhile, some people received visas and boarded flights who had no basis to claim asylum in the U.S. By the end of the evacuation process, the Taliban controlled the airport where refugee flights boarded, which means they controlled who could or couldn’t board the flights. Tawhedi’s is an obvious case in which the system failed; Brecheen’s office is chasing down how he got a visa and what kind, but they have not yet received an answer.

Border Vulnerability

Boarding special evacuation flights from Afghanistan is not the only way that would-be terrorists with harmful intentions can make their way into America. “What happened with Afghanistan has shown the American people — in addition to what’s coming across the southern border — just how vulnerable we are for attack,” said Brecheen.

According to data released late last month, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has on its docket more than 660,000 illegal immigrants with a criminal history. This includes more than 400,000 convicted criminals and more than 200,000 with pending criminal charges who are no longer in ICE custody. These numbers include not only Central Americans fleeing crime and poverty in their home countries, but people from all over the world. Just last week, law enforcement agents apprehended 40 people from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, Egypt, Turkey, and India at the southern border. Earlier this year, DHS discovered that over 400 illegal immigrants had been smuggled into the country through an ISIS-affiliated network, and the whereabouts of 50 remain unknown.

Proponents of illegal immigration — words that shouldn’t even belong together — like to claim that immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than native-born Americans. Setting aside the fact that illegally entering the country is itself a crime, this claim misses two key points. First, every crime committed by an illegal immigrant in the U.S. is one the government could have prevented by barring that individual from entering the country — something that should at the very least be done for individuals with a violent criminal history.

Second, it only takes one bad actor, with the right plan, resources, and execution, to inflict devastation. It took years for the FBI to detect Tawhedi’s plot and then more months to catch him. How many other would-be terrorists are on the loose in America? And how many of them are law enforcement agencies able to track and capture?

In some nations around the world, violence and intimidation in elections are common, even expected — especially those with minimal history of fair and free elections. When America extends an unconditional invitation to residents of those countries to enter our country, we run the risk of elections in our country resembling the elections in theirs (it doesn’t take a voter registration card to intimidate poll-goers). This is obviously not in the best interest of America.

This is not to say that all immigrants are bad for America and our tradition of popular election, nor that everyone in foreign nations opposes free and fair elections. Rather, it suggests that America should discriminate between immigrants — not based upon any unreasonable categories, but based upon their goodwill toward our country and their willingness to abide by our laws. If an immigrant is glad to join American society, then America should be glad to have him. But if an immigrant hates America and contemplates violence against our people or our institutions, we shouldn’t let him into our country.

This should be common sense. And it is roughly what our current immigration law tries to achieve. Alas, the Biden-Harris administration has ignored that law and unwisely pursued a policy of allowing the maximum number of immigrants into our country, regardless of their intentions. This policy will not end well, and an ISIS terror plot in Oklahoma City on Election Day — though foiled, fortunately — is only the beginning.

AUTHOR

Joshua Arnold

Joshua Arnold is a senior 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.

PERKINS: How Should Christians Approach the 2024 Election?

The candidates say it. We say it. Every few years, the world thinks it: “This is the most important election of our lifetime.” And in a nation ripped apart at the seams by two radically different visions for our country, it will never stop being true. Since Barack Obama’s vow to fundamentally transform America — a promise he kept — each November has become less about politics and personalities and more of a ferocious battle over whose worldview will define a nation. Values and traditions that used to unite us have vanished, replaced by the hard contours of two parties without much common ground.

In 2024, we’re a country racked by violence, turmoil, and upheaval at the highest levels of government. For Christians, this year has not only been marked by the shock of an assassination attempt and the unprecedented shake-up at the top of the Democratic ticket — but a unique set of challenges. The disappointments of a watered-down GOP platform still sting, and the abandonment of core principles by leaders we’ve come to know and trust is forcing some believers to question their very involvement in politics. When even those who claim to be conservative walk away from absolute truth, as clearly revealed in Scripture, what should Christians do? How should we approach an election when the flaws of the candidates and the imperfections of both parties seem more evident than ever before?

1. With Realistic Expectations

“None is righteous, no, not one” (Romans 3:10).

Our political system, like the rest of our fallen world, is messy, broken, and flawed. As frustrating as it is to see our values trampled or ignored, we need to accept that the church isn’t going to find a perfect ruler until the millennial reign of Christ. Men and women in public office are human, and they’ll continue to let us down, no matter how sincere their faith may seem.

As someone who served on this year’s Republican platform committee — a process that’s been described as “insulting” and “despicable” — I understand the disillusionment that comes with the betrayal of longtime principles. I watched leaders who I considered stalwarts of the conservative movement wipe out decades of pro-life and pro-family progress. It convinced me of this: Christians should go into this election with eyes wide open. We must practice discernment, understanding that we will never have perfect alignment with any political party.

Does that mean we shrug our shoulders and walk away? Absolutely not. It means we recommit ourselves to being faithful witnesses to the truth of His Word at this moment in time that God has entrusted to us, whether it’s in vogue or not.

2. With Discernment

“But test everything; hold fast what is good” (I Thessalonians 5:21).

An alarming number of Christians in America today aren’t operating from a biblical worldview. How can we expect those believers to vote for biblical values if they don’t know what the Bible says? If Christians are going to change the country’s trajectory, it has to begin with a basic understanding of God’s truth.

Engaging the culture and evaluating the candidates all begins with a biblical perspective. Fortunately, Scripture spells out the fundamental values we should be looking for in the first 12 chapters of Genesis: God the Creator (1:1); Life (1:26); Marriage (2:22); Male and Female (1:26); and Israel (12:3). Using these five categories as a guide, how do Kamala Harris and Donald Trump stack up?

While Donald Trump seems to have taken a disconcerting step back from some of his socially conservative views in recent months, Americans do have the benefit of the 45th president’s four-year track record, which demonstrated his support for the sanctity of life, religious freedom, parental rights, biological sex, national security, legal immigration, military readiness, free speech, constitutionalist judges and justices, and Israel. (Visit FRC Action’s Trump Administration Accomplishments for a detailed list.)

What is much less known is the record of Kamala Harris, who, like Trumpprofesses to be Christian but invokes her faith as a justification for policies like social justice, LGBT activism, same-sex marriage, and even abortion.

When she ran (unsuccessfully) for the 2020 presidential nomination, Harris insisted that the work she did as California attorney general should serve as “a model of what our nation needs to do…” That “model” was a six-year masterclass in weaponizing the office of AG in which she:

  • Attacked pro-lifer David Daleiden for exposing Planned Parenthood’s sale of baby body parts;
  • Demanded that California pregnancy resource centers promote abortion;
  • Targeted businesses with moral objections to abortifacients;
  • Refused to defend laws upholding man-woman marriage;
  • Fought to overturn abortion safety standards for women.

Harris’s record in the U.S. Senate was so lopsided that GovTrack dubbed her 2019’s “most liberal senator,” an unsurprising distinction considering she:

  • Voted twice in favor of legal infanticide;
  • Vowed to force taxpayers to fund abortion;
  • Applied a religious test to judicial and Supreme Court nominees;
  • Sponsored the Equality Act to end religious freedom in America;
  • Promoted legal prostitution;
  • Supported the elimination of the Senate filibuster to pack the Supreme Court and abolish election integrity laws;
  • Opposed homeschooling and popular school choice legislation;
  • Earned 100% on Planned Parenthood’s scorecard;
  • Introduced the Do No Harm Act to gut religious liberty;
  • Cosponsored a bill that would block religious freedom for adoption providers;
  • Campaigned on allowing trans-identifying men and women in the U.S. military; and
  • Lobbied for girls’ restrooms, locker rooms, showers, sports, and even women’s prisons to be opened to biological men.

In the White House, insiders say she’s the force behind Joe Biden’s leftward lurch, even becoming the first sitting president or vice president to visit an abortion facility. Together with the president, she:

  • Rewrote Title IX to force schools to use preferred pronouns, hide gender identities from parents, and elevate transgenderism above women’s rights;
  • Sued pro-life states to overturn protections for the unborn;
  • Turned neighborhood drugstores into abortion pill dispensaries;
  • Granted taxpayer-funded travel to active military seeking abortions;
  • Forced taxpayers to cover abortions for veterans;
  • Reinstated overseas abortion funding;
  • Advocated for gender-mutilating surgeries and hormones for minors, while demanding taxpayers cover transgender procedures for veterans and military personnel;
  • Prosecuted political opponents like peaceful pro-lifers and whistleblowers like Eithan Haim for exposing his Texas hospital’s unlawful transgender procedures on children;
  • Lobbied to expose students to pornographic books;
  • Funded Planned Parenthood through Title X dollars; and
  • Tried to shut down America’s largest Christian universities.

(For a complete list, visit FRC Action’s website.)

While it’s true that we can’t save the country with a single election, the reality of these policies is: we could very well lose it.

3. With Obedience

“Faith without work is dead” (James 2:26).

Why should Christians care about politics? Because government is appointed by God. In Romans 13:1-7, Paul describes the governing authorities as “ministers of God,” responsible for administering civil justice. Government is God’s idea, and Christians should think about it and engage with it in a way that’s consistent with its God-ordained purposes.

As believers called to be agents of transformation in the broader society, we have a clear responsibility to vote — not just when we’re enthusiastic about the options or when the choices seem most obvious. If political parties and candidates don’t align perfectly with our values, the answer is not for Christians to retreat. The answer is in rekindling our love and devotion to Christ that causes us to accomplish our spiritual and cultural commissions.

That’s not to say that we should put our trust in the outcome of any election or elected leader — because that would be a false hope. But if we fail to be the salt and light we’ve been called to be, we could clearly see America sink deeper into darkness.

4. With Neighborly Love and Global Compassion

“Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves…” (Proverbs 31:8).

America’s decisions have a direct impact on people’s lives everywhere from our local communities to the rest of the world. When God commanded us to love our neighbors (Mark 12:31), one way we can do that is by engaging in the political process to meet other people’s needs. While the race for president gets the most attention, there are much broader implications for voting this November than who will occupy 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. In our hands rest the hopes of soldiers on foreign battlefields, the persecuted church in faraway lands, and the peace of God’s chosen nation Israel (Numbers 24:9).

And many would argue that there are much more important decisions than the presidency on the state and local ballot. Control of the House and Senate hangs in the balance. Governors, state attorneys general, local school boards, even comptrollers are amassing major victories in protecting children from radical gender ideology, pushing back on corporate America’s woke agenda, fighting the Biden administration’s lawless overreach, and passing sweeping pro-life and pro-parent laws. While we might not have the ideal situation at the very top of the ballot, Americans have several other issues to be mindful of as we head to the polls.

5. With Eternal Perspective

“But our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ” (Philippians 3:20).

As we weigh how to approach this year’s election, it’s just as important to understand how not to approach it — and that’s with fear, timidity, or despair. I Thessalonians 5:18 says, “In all things give thanks…” Regardless of what’s happening in America, we should be eternally grateful that we live in a country where we still have the ability to vote. Even though the fabric of our nation is being stretched and tested as never before, each of us has the power to shape our future and our family’s future — a luxury millions of people around the world will never know.

And yet, as believers, we understand that this earth is not our ultimate home. However, we must engage with the culture, including politics, while standing firm on the transcendent truth of God’s word. Paul tells the Ephesians to keep standing (6:13). We are called to stand whether the battle is in our favor or against us, knowing that as we remain faithful to God’s Truth, our actions in this life will echo into eternity.

Will we turn this country around? We will work toward that end. As former president John Quincy Adams responded to a cynical question about the failure to end slavery after decades of trying, he said simply, “Duty is ours; results are God’s.” Let us do our duty!

This story was adapted from Decision Magazine’s October print version. It was originally published in its shortened form in Decision Magazine.

AUTHOR

Tony Perkins

Tony Perkins is president of Family Research Council and executive editor of 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’s Confused Answer about Whether Israel Is Our Ally

In a recent interview with “60 Minutes,” Vice President Kamala Harris responded to a question about the U.S.-Israel alliance with what amounted to “more of a political answer than an answer of reality,” said Family Research Council President Tony Perkins.

Interviewer Bill Whitaker asked, “Do we have a real close ally in Prime Minister Netanyahu?” To this, Harris responded, “I think, with all due respect, the better question is do we have an important alliance between the American people and the Israeli people. And the answer to that question is yes.”

It shouldn’t be difficult for an American official running for president — not to mention one heartbeat away from the presidency — to affirm this country’s close relationship with both Israel and its leader, a relationship that every administration has respected since President Harry Truman recognized Israel’s independence in 1948. But, for Harris, encountering this question in a friendly media venue made her so uncomfortable that she had to rephrase the question into one she preferred to answer.

The roundabout nature of her reply led some commentators to interpret an implied negative to the first question. “That’s another way of saying no,” summarized National Review’s Jim Geraghty. “Heck of a way to mark the first anniversary of the October 7 massacre.”

“I never thought I would see someone running for president say something like this. This should automatically disqualify her from even running,” declared Rep. Mark Alford (R-Mo.) on “Washington Watch” Monday. “[It was a] tepid, disgusting answer that creates doubt and uncertainty between our relationship and Israel.”

“It does nothing but cast doubt on our relationship with the leadership of Israel,” Perkins agreed. “And if there is not a good relationship between the leadership of Israel and the United States, then there’s no good end.”

The fatal flaw in Harris’s reply is the natural connection between the people of Israel and their prime minister. In contrast to most countries in the Middle East, Israel maintains a parliamentary system where national leaders are popularly elected (with various coalition negotiations because no party holds a true majority in Israel’s multi-party parliament).

In effect, the people of Israel choose their prime minister at the ballot box. The Israeli prime minister then carries out constitutionally defined duties on behalf of the people, such as running the government and overseeing national defense. Harris’s insistence that the people of Israel are a close ally, but not their popularly elected head of government, is nonsense.

Harris appears to be running Biden’s playbook against Netanyahu. Throughout the year, Biden has conducted a whisper campaign against the Israeli prime minister, not-so-subtly suggesting that the White House would welcome a change of leadership in Israel to a government willing to countenance Biden’s failed strategy of Iranian appeasement and the fantastical ultimate aim of a two-state solution.

Distinguishing a nation’s regime from its people can be appropriate when a government is not popularly elected and its people are discontented with its governance. The Islamist regime in Tehran, which brutally suppresses its own people, comes quickly to mind as an example. But neither condition applies in Netanyahu’s case.

Not only has Netanyahu triumphed in election after election, but his policies are more popular now than perhaps at any other point in his long career. It turns out that the people of Israel likedhis decision to strike Hezbollah hard and fast, even while the Biden-Harris administration was impotently blustering about a ceasefire. In fact, Israelis are so fed up with the Biden-Harris administration’s apparent determination to rob them of victory that 83% agreed with Netanyahu’s decision to inform Washington only after terrorist leaders were killed. If an Israeli election were held today, polling suggests that Netanyahu enjoys twice the support of each of his top two rivals, and these rivals would most likely prosecute the war in a similar way to Netanyahu.

The basic problem is not that Netanyahu is the prime minister of Israel, but that the Biden-Harris administration does not approve of the policies that are good for (and popular among) the Israeli people. “They would rather have the votes in Michigan and Minnesota from the people in the Islamic community,” suggested Alford. “They’re [so] afraid of losing congressional seats and possibly electoral votes, that they are willing to turn their back on Israel.”

There is a longstanding alliance between the U.S. and Israel — both their people and their respective governments. But a small and vocal minority hate Israel and deny its right to exist. The power of these voters is accentuated by the closeness of the election and their concentration in important swing states, but that doesn’t mean that they represent the opinions of most Americans, nor that they should be able to dictate the policy of the U.S. government.

AUTHOR

Joshua Arnold

Joshua Arnold is a senior writer at The Washington Stand.

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


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

Vance: Trump Has Been ‘Consistent’ about Defunding Planned Parenthood

Former President Donald Trump’s running mate is pledging to defund the abortion giant Planned Parenthood if Trump is elected for a second term. Senator J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) was asked by RealClearPolitics over the weekend if a second Trump administration would defund Planned Parenthood, a policy Trump discussed during his first presidential bid. Vance replied, “On the question of defunding Planned Parenthood, look, I mean, our view is we don’t think that taxpayers should fund late-term abortions. That has been a consistent view of the Trump campaign the first time around. It will remain a consistent view.”

In comments to The Washington Stand, Mary Szoch, director of the Center for Human Dignity at Family Research Council, said, “The majority of Americans believe that taxpayer dollars should not fund abortion. Planned Parenthood, an organization that kills close to 400,000 unborn babies every year, feels differently.”

She continued, “American taxpayer dollars are meant to help our country be stronger and more secure, and to help our people be healthier and better cared for. Using taxpayer dollars to kill unborn children does not accomplish any of these goals.” Szoch added, “Praise God that the Trump-Vance ticket recognizes that the hard-earned dollars of American men and women should not be used to kill the most innocent among us.”

During his first administration, Trump revised the Title X federal family planning program to bar tax dollars from going to organizations that partnered with the abortion industry or provided referrals for abortions, effectively forcing Planned Parenthood to withdraw from Title X. “For decades, American taxpayers have been wrongfully forced to subsidize the abortion industry through Title X federal funding. So today, we have kept another promise,” Trump announced at a Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America event in 2018. He continued, “My administration has proposed a new rule to prohibit Title X funding from going to any clinic that performs abortions.” The Biden-Harris administration reversed Trump’s Title X rule upon taking office in 2021.

Trump was responsible for appointing three of the U.S. Supreme Court Justices who overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022 — an achievement he touts when appealing to conservative evangelicals and Catholics — but announced earlier this year that he intends to leave the issue of abortion legislation to the individual states and will not use federal authority to protect the unborn.

Prior to the 2024 Republican National Convention, Trump was responsible for slashing the Republican Party Platform, removing the GOP’s longstanding commitment to pro-life principles. Since then, both Trump and Vance have avoided promoting pro-life legislation and have even stated that they would oppose a national abortion ban. However, both have also called the Democratic Party “radical” for promoting abortion throughout all nine months of pregnancy, even up until the moment of birth, and have pressed Democrats like Vice President Kamala Harris to admit that they support unrestricted abortion.

Earlier this year, Students for Life of America President Kristan Hawkins called on Trump to defund Planned Parenthood in a second administration, “If you want no federal involvement in abortion, then debar and defund Planned Parenthood. The federal government wasted almost $700 million on Planned Parenthood, according to their 2022-2023 annual report.”

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.

To the 41 Million Christians ‘Unlikely’ to Vote This November: ‘You Need to Repent’

While Kamala Harris’s numbers are starting to come back to earth after a disastrous vice presidential debate, things have never looked better for the Californian’s campaign. As much as people have come to rely on the ebbs and flows of public opinion, longtime strategists know that there’s a better predictor of how Democrats will do — and that’s the evangelical vote. Or, as the 2024 numbers warn, the lack thereof.

According to some truly shocking statistics from George Barna at Arizona Christian University (ACU), as many as 41 million Christians plan to sit this election out — more than enough to hand the country’s keys to the eager and radical Left. For Donald Trump’s opponent, the news that one of the Dems’ biggest obstacles to victory is voluntarily shirking their civic duty is cause for premature celebration.

Incredibly, the research, conducted between August and September, suggests that 41 million self-described born-again Christians are “unlikely” to vote in the November election. To Len Munsil, president of ACU, that spells disaster. “I see two huge takeaways from this blockbuster report,” he explained. “First, that Christians could be the deciding factor in a bunch of federal and state races — and are choosing not to be. And second,” he continued, “that they are longing for their local church to instruct them on how to think biblically about policy and politics. They don’t want to be told how to vote,” Munsil added, “but they do want to know why they should vote and how to view political issues from a biblical framework.”

When Christians were asked to explain their complacency, 68% replied that they aren’t interested in politics, followed by 57% who dislike both presidential candidates, and another 52% who believe their vote won’t make a difference. In a sad sign of where we are as a country, 48% also worry that the election results will be manipulated.

Of course, one of the most problematic aspects of this passivity is that November 5 involves a lot more than the White House. In fact, Family Research Council President Tony Perkins argues, many would contend that there are “much more important decisions than the presidency on the state and local ballot. Control of the House and Senate hangs in the balance. Governors, state attorneys general, local school boards, even comptrollers are amassing major victories in protecting children from radical gender ideology, pushing back on corporate America’s woke agenda, fighting the Biden administration’s lawless overreach, and passing sweeping pro-life and pro-parent laws. While we might not have the ideal situation at the top of the ballot,” he wrote in Decision magazine, “Americans have several other issues to be mindful of as we head to the polls.” In our hands rest “the hopes of soldiers on foreign battlefields, the persecuted church in faraway lands and the peace of God’s chosen nation Israel (Numbers 24:9),” Perkins warned.

And yet, this church-wide short-sightedness threatens to leave everyone from our global neighbors to our next-door neighbors without help or hope. “Think about what has happened here in America in just the last 35 years,” Cornerstone Chapel Senior Pastor Gary Hamrick told the Pray Vote Stand Summit on Saturday. “Think about some of these things. There’s been gender confusion. There’s been marriage redefinition. There’s been a disregard for life. There’s become environmental worship, the stripping of parental authority, the deterioration of religious liberties, and the list goes on and on.”

How “absurd,” he went on, that in a matter of a generation, “people are now trying to figure out what bathroom to use. Businesses are being sued for not baking cakes or doing graphic designs for same-sex weddings. The nanny state has approved pornographic reading material in many public school systems. … It’s illegal to disturb sea turtles in South Florida, but not illegal to abort babies from a womb. This is complete insanity.”

And frankly, Hamrick declared, “We have no one to blame but ourselves.” “There are 90 million self-identified evangelical Christians eligible to vote in the United States of America,” and according to George Barna a healthy slice of them will refuse to.

“Let me tell you what happens when we are not involved in the political process,” he said somberly. “We open the door for every evil ideology to fill the vacuum. When we decide we’re going to check out, we’re not going to be involved, we’re not going to be politically engaged, all we do is open the door for more of the same evil agenda and ideology. Why is it that so many Christians are sitting out on the sidelines? Why [is there] such political apathy in our world? Because a lot of Christians think that politics is a dirty word that they don’t want to be involved in. ‘We will leave the world of politics up to the rest of the world,’ they would say, and then wonder why every evil has filled the vacuum.” If you thought the last 35 years was disturbing, imagine the next 35. “…We are one generation away from losing what is valuable and precious and sacred,” Hamrick warned.

This trend of political indifference and disgust is in spite of the Scripture’s clear teaching that government — like the family and the church — is an institution created and established by God. “Why is it that when it comes to the family, people are protective of the family, Christians in particular? Why is it when it comes to the church, Christians in particular want to care for the church and defend the church? But then when it comes to this third institution, the second one that God ordained, [and] all of a sudden people say, ‘Well, that one doesn’t need my involvement, that one doesn’t need my participation, that one doesn’t need for me to be engaged.’”

Look, church, Hamrick urged, “God has called us in 2 Corinthians 5:20 to be his ambassadors. An ambassador is one who represents another official or dignitary. Our dignitary that we are representing is the Lord Jesus Christ Himself, and He calls us to represent him in every facet and aspect of life. That means we represent him in the job. That means we represent Him in the family. That means we represent Him in the church. That means we represent Him in our neighborhood, where we go to school, where we interact on every level with every person. God calls us to be his ambassadors. We don’t stop being ambassadors because we think, ‘Well, government is a dirty word. Politics is a dirty word. We don’t want to be engaged in all that. We’ll just leave that to other people’ — other people who will continue to take it down the progressive path it’s on right now and destroy this nation.”

It’s a point that Calvary Chapel Chino Hills Senior Pastor Jack Hibbs reiterated in his own remarks. “We are citizens of heaven. We are to act like heaven. We are to represent heaven. We are to speak about the things that concern heaven.” Does that mean we have to be excited about the choices before us? Absolutely not. But as God’s people, we should all want a president “that will save more babies’ lives than Kamala Harris,” he argued.

That doesn’t mean Donald Trump can save this country. As Hibbs acknowledged, “There’s no politician, including Trump, that can affect the soul of this nation. You’re the only one. The answer is not in the statehouse. And it’s not going to be in the White House. It’s got to be in your own house. It’s got to be in the [house] of God.” If your response is, “Well, I don’t vote,” then “you need to repent,” Hibbs insisted. “Every opportunity God gives us, we are to use it to the advancement of His kingdom. And voting is the easiest. We fire no bullets,” he pointed out. “We don’t pull out any swords. There [aren’t] tanks in the street. We just get up and go vote.”

And get over trying to find the perfect candidate, Hamrick admonished. “There is no candidate who is the full package because Jesus is not on the ballot. There is no perfect person running,” he pointed out, “and God has used both righteous leaders and unrighteous leaders all through the Bible to accomplish his good purposes.”

But, the Cornerstone leader cautioned, “If we see the rising tide of evil in our land and we decide to do nothing, we are ceding ground to the enemy, and we are being unfaithful to our calling as ambassadors for Christ.”

AUTHOR

Suzanne Bowdey

Suzanne Bowdey serves as editorial director and senior writer at The Washington Stand.

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


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

Butler 2.0: Trump Returns to Site of Assassination Attempt for Campaign Rally

Former President Donald Trump hosted his second campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on Saturday. The last time he was in Butler, he was shot in the side of the head.

After Trump took the stage, he pointed to the same graph — depicting the drastic rise in illegal immigration under the Biden-Harris administration — he had had onscreen when he was shot on July 13 and began, “As I was saying…” Noting that Election Day was exactly one month away, the former president declared, “We stand on the verge of the four greatest years of the history of our country. We can make these the four greatest years. We’ll turn it around so fast that your head will spin.” He added, “With victory on November 5, we are going to redeem America’s promises and unlock the extraordinary future that is just within our reach.”

“I’ve been on a mission to rescue our country from a failing and very corrupt political establishment, very corrupt. We have to change it,” Trump continued. He stated, “I will never quit. I will never bend. I will never break. I will never yield, not even in the face of death itself.” Trump also said that what the political Left has “never understood” is that the Make America Great Again (MAGA) political movement is not “about me.” He explained, “It’s always been about you. It’s been about a lot of people, millions and millions of people. The biggest ever in the history of this country, maybe anywhere.”

He continued, “And every day, people who are the heart and soul of our country, they love our movement, they love our country, and they know they are doing right. Your hopes are my hopes. Your dreams are my dreams. And your future is what I am fighting for every single day.”

“America will, once again, be strong and confident and free,” Trump promised. Referring to the assassination attempts made against him since July, he went on, “That’s why I’m here today. You know, I could, right now, be having a beautiful life. I don’t have to be here. I could have said I could be on a gorgeous beach someplace. I have such nice property, I could be in Monte Carlo, as an example, but I’d rather be in Butler.”

Thomas Crooks opened fire on Trump and rallygoers at 6:11 p.m. EST on July 13. At 6:11 on Saturday, Trump announced, “Exactly 12 weeks ago, this evening, on this very ground, a cold blooded assassin aimed to silence me and to silence the greatest movement, MAGA, in the history of our country.” He continued, “For 16 harrowing seconds during the gunfire, time stopped as this vicious monster unleashed pure evil from his sniper’s perch, not so far away, but by the hand of Providence and the grace of God, that villain did not succeed in his goal. He did not come close.” Trump went on, “He did not stop our movement. He did not break our spirit. He did not shake our unyielding resolve to save America from the evils of poverty, hatred, and destruction. Yet we are here this evening in record numbers.”

Two rallygoers were wounded during the July shooting, in addition to Trump, and one man was killed. Corey Comperatore was a firefighter who died shielding his wife and daughters from the sniper’s fire. Trump asked attendees on Saturday to pause for a moment of silence in Comperatore’s honor and invited world-renowned tenor Christopher Macchio to sing the “Ave Maria.” Trump placed Comperatore’s firefighter’s uniform in the seats and spent time with the late husband and father’s family, who attended the event. “Corey Comperatore was an incredible husband and father, a devout Christian, a veteran, and a proud former fire chief, very respected within the town. Everybody knew him. Few men volunteered to run into fires, but Corey was one of those who did. He ran into fires,” Trump said.

He continued, “And when the sound of gunshots pierced the air on that July evening, Corey leapt into the fire one more time. In his last seconds on this earth, he threw himself on the top of his wife and daughters. He didn’t want them hurt.” He added, “Every father and husband in America hopes that if the time came, we would have what Corey had: tremendous courage, tremendous guts, and he wanted to protect his family, and he did protect his family.”

Trump also invited James Sweetland, a doctor who tried to save Comperatore, to speak. “I had the opportunity to take care of Corey Comperatore during the last Butler rally,” Sweetland said. “The fact that all you are here,” he went on, addressing attendees, “makes you all heroes. You’re standing up for your candidate and the right to celebrate your candidate.” Sweetland gave the crowd a “disclaimer” and said that he “used to be a Democrat.” He joked, “Please forgive me for that.”

Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk, who purchased Twitter and renamed the social media site “X,” also spoke. “The true test of someone’s character is how they behave under fire. We had one president who couldn’t climb a flight of stairs and another who was fist-pumping after getting shot, ‘Fight, fight, fight,’ blood coming down the face,” Musk said. He asked, “Now, America is the home of the brave, and there’s no truer test than courage under fire, so who do you want representing America?” The crowd cheered, “Trump!” Musk continued, “I think this election, I think it’s the most important election of our lifetime. This is no ordinary election. The other side wants to take away your freedom of speech, they want to take away your right to bear arms, they want to take away your right to vote, effectively.”

“This is a must-win situation,” Musk observed. He said that he had “one ask” for all Americans watching the rally: “Register to vote. And get everyone you know — and everyone you don’t know — drag them to register to vote.” The billionaire tech entrepreneur said that if conservatives don’t register to vote and show up to vote, “This will be the last election. That’s my prediction.”

Trump’s running mate, Senator J.D. Vance (R-Ohio), also spoke at the rally, quoting Scripture. Referring to the July assassination attempt, Vance said, “Now I believe, as sure as I’m standing here today, that what happened was a true miracle. And on that day, America felt the truth of Scripture.” Citing Psalm 23:4, the senator continued, “Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for You are with me.”

The Trump campaign has estimated that over 105,000 Americans attended the rally on Saturday. Over the course of the rally, attendees also sang “How Great Thou Art” and “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

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.

9 Ways Harris and Walz Built Their Campaign on Misinformation and Disinformation

More than any time in history, the Democratic Party has spent the last eight years warning that politics runs the risk of being contaminated by the foul specter of “misinformation and disinformation.” Anyone conversant with politics knows “misinformation and disinformation” have long been synonymous with political campaigns from candidates of all backgrounds, but the Harris-Walz campaign wants to criminalize political differences.

In 2019, then-presidential candidate Kamala Harris promised the NAACP that she will “hold social media platforms accountable” if they “act as a megaphone for misinformation.” But if she did that, Harris might turn her own campaign into a federal case. She has frequently been guilty of what the head of her proposed federal disinformation board, Nina Jankowicz, called “information laundering”: repeating lies in a prominent political or media outlet. As we have noted, ABC News moderators let at least 10 Kamala Harris lies slide at her (apparently only) debate with Donald Trump on September 10, many of which she had made in her acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention and some of which the party had enshrined in the 2024 Democratic Party platform. Here are a few more:

1. Pro-Life Laws ‘Kill Women’

Harris has long claimed that “Trump abortion bans” kill women, and she recently felt invigorated that she had found one — in a swing state, no less. But the facts cannot hold the weight of her fact-defying narrative. The mother, 28-year-old Amber Thurman, died from the side effects of the abortion pill and medical negligence — perhaps reinforced by media misinformation about abortion “bans.”

Thurman ingested the two-drug chemical abortion cocktail of mifepristone and misoprostol but, as they frequently do, the pills failed to expel all of her aborted babies’ body parts from her womb. As she went into sepsis — alone, in her home, with no help from anyone in the industry — she sought medical care for her incomplete miscarriage. The standard of care would call for a dilation and curettage (D&C) procedure to remove her deceased children’s remaining fetal tissue. As one witness boldly testified to the U.S. Senate recently, no pro-life law in the nation prevents women from receiving appropriate care for a miscarriage, including a D&C.

Yet the media and Democratic politicians, Kamala Harris foremost among them, lie that pro-life protections bar doctors from administering emergency care. Doctors may be confused by these narratives and refuse to provide lifesaving care after a miscarriage, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy based on misinformation, disinformation, and unwarranted support for the abortion cartel.

It’s impossible to know for sure what would have happened if these states had managed to enact pro-life protections for unborn babies at all stages — including the abortion pill cartel’s often-illegal activities trafficking chemical abortion agents into pro-life states, efforts facilitated by the Biden-Harris administration and its blue state allies. But one can make an educated guess. If red states had abortion pill bans, Amber Thurman would be alive today, anticipating what it will feel like to hold her baby. Today, she’s a victim of the abortion industry’s neglect and the Democratic presidential candidate’s lies and distortions on its behalf.

2. Springfield Bomb Threats

After former President Donald Trump and his running mate Senator J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) reported Haitian migrants harming resident of Springfield, the media blamed them for a string of bomb threats against the city, especially its “migrant” population.

“Trump and Vance are still stoking fears of Haitian migrants, as Ohio community faces bomb threats,” claimed the Associated Press. “Vance continues fueling false rumors about migrants in Ohio as community receives threats,” said PBS (at your expense). “Bomb Threats Don’t Stop J.D. Vance From Attacking Immigrants in Ohio Town,” charged Rolling Stone.

As it turned out, all of those were “hoaxes,” said the state’s anti-Trump governor. “So 33 threats, 33 hoaxes,” summarized Ohio Governor Mike DeWine (R) on September 16. “None of them have panned out. We have people, unfortunately, overseas who are taking these actions. Some of them are coming from one particular country,” although he refused to specify which country made dozens of threats against the citizens of his state (as well as the tens of thousands of Haitians currently resident there). Multiple media reports, sometimes citing U.S. government whistleblowers, indicate that Iran has attempted to organization assassination plots against Trump and clearly wants Harris to remain in office.

Yet Harris continued to baselessly blame the bomb threats on “hateful rhetoric” from Trump and Vance, whom she claimed are “spewing lies … grounded in tropes.” Likewise, PBS twisted the governor’s explanation in a taxpayer-funded misinformation headline stating, “Springfield facing threats from overseas after Trump’s lies about Haitians, Ohio governor’s office says.”

Taking matters to their logical extension, a Haitian immigrant group known as the Haitian Bridge Alliance has demanded officials arrest Trump and Vance for allegedly having “wreaked havoc” against the “Haitian community” in Springfield. The group has received more than $1 million from the Open Society Foundations, a nonprofit founded by George Soros.

3. J.D. Vance: School Shootings Are ‘a Fact of Life’

During a September 5 speech, J.D. Vance addressed the issue of school shootings. “If these psychos are going to go after our kids, we’ve got to be prepared for it. We don’t have to like the reality that we live in, but it is the reality we live in. We’ve got to deal with it. I don’t like that this is a fact of life,” he said. He went on to say that would-be psycho killers “realize that our schools are soft targets. And we have got to bolster security at our schools. We’ve got to bolster security so if a psycho wants to walk through the front door and kill a bunch of children they’re not able.”

That’s an entirely mainstream message: For all the Left’s insistence that federal funding must turn public schools into “safe spaces,” it never wants to spend a dime improving students’ physical safety. Statistics show that schools which end their status as a “gun-free” zone are incredibly safe. Only a vast distortion of his message could make it controversial.

Enter the Associated Press. Within hours, the AP targeted Vance, posting a social media message claiming, “JD Vance says school shootings are a ‘fact of life,’ calls for better security.” After backlash, AP replaced that post with a placeholder message (although the headline is still on AP’s website) — but the original message had served its purpose, which is to let the Harris-Walz campaign repeat the inaccurate reporting, as they did. The campaign released a statement distorting that quotation and another from Trump saying America has to deal with its grief and go on. Walz recycled the falsehood in a September 22 rally in Pennsylvania, claiming the Republican candidates “want to tell you that [you should] just get over it, it’s a fact of life. This is the way it is.”

4. Trump Called for ‘Execution’ of the Central Park Five, Who Were Later Found Innocent

Kamala Harris has repeatedly foisted another blood libel on Donald Trump, claiming he called on police to execute innocent teens of minority backgrounds for allegedly raping a Central Park jogger in 1989. At their presidential debate, Harris instructed her audience, “Let’s remember, this is the same individual who took out a full-page ad in The New York Times calling for the execution of five young black and Latino boys who were innocent, the Central Park Five — took out a full-page ad calling for their execution.”

Nearly everything in that statement is false. In response to the brutal rape and beating of a woman jogging through Central Park in 1989, Trump took out a full-page ad in a number of newspapers, including the Times and the New York Daily News, attacking soft-on-crime policies … but he said nothing about executing the Central Park Five.

Trump’s ad called on city officials to protect “New York families — White, Black, Hispanic, and Asian” — against street thugs and “murderers.” And, “when they kill, they should be executed for their crimes,” he declared. “We must cease our continuous pandering to the criminal element of this city.”

Moreover, the notion that the “wilding” youths were innocent is underwhelming. As columnist Ann Coulter noted in a column that deserves to be read in its entirety:

“Four of The Five gave videotaped confessions, at least three of them in the presence of parents or guardians. Defense attorneys spent weeks attacking the confessions as ‘coerced,’ but two multicultural juries and the trial judge concluded that the confessions were voluntary.”

Additional evidence implicates members of the crowd even after another individual gave his own confession.

5. Bailing Violent Criminals Out of Jail Is ‘Misinformation’

Despite posting the words on social media, Kamala Harris has claimed that ties to the Minnesota Freedom Fund, which bailed out 2020 BLM rioters who went on to commit other crimes.

“I am the child of parents who marched for civil rights,” the “middle-class” kid began, “and I will always be and will always be a supporter of peaceful protests.” She called the allegations another example of “misinformation and disinformation” in an October 2022 interview with WCCO-4, the CBS affiliate in Minneapolis. WCCO tailored a “fact-check” story, not on whether Harris ever promoted the group, but instead noting carefully that “Despite Trump claim and 2020 tweet showing support, Harris never donated to Minnesota Freedom Fund,” a story subsequently updated days after Joe Biden dropped out of the 2024 presidential race.

This is a rare case of double disinformation. Of course, the BLM riots in Minneapolis, the nation, and the world as a whole were far from peaceful. Violent BLM riots claimed 19 lives — including 77-year-old retired St. Louis police officer David Dorn, whose widow endorsed Trump — and caused at least$2 billion in property damage.

But Harris did, in fact, support bailing out rioters. On June 1, 2020, Kamala Harris posted a message to her followers on social media, stating, “If you’re able to, chip in now to the @MNFreedomFund to help post bail for those protesting on the ground in Minnesota.” The tweet remains on her timeline. She later called the deadly riots “an essential component of evolution in our country, as an essential component or mark of a real democracy.”

Arguably, the story makes CBS News and Kamala Harris look worse. Trump never claimed Harris personally donated; he said she “helped” bail out Shawn Michael Tillman, who had been jailed for gross indecent exposure and went on to murder a man after the Harris-endorsed fund bailed him out. The fact that Harris did not personally support the cause while encouraging her followers to do so could arguably make her seem insincere or hypocritical.

6. J.D. Vance’s Erotic Dalliance with a Couch

The Walz-Harris campaign engaged in “information laundering” with a coarse internet statement self-consciously offered as an internet lie.

Shortly after his selection as her running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz (D) targeted J.D. Vance. “I can’t wait to debate the guy — that is, if he’s willin’ to get off the couch and show up,” said Walz with evident self-satisfaction. “Ya see what I did there?” he said, in case anyone missed it.

He referred to a July 15 social media post from an online account created the day Trump announced Vance as his running mate, with the handle @rxckrxdxscxlvxs (Rick Rude’s calves). The anonymous poster said he “can’t say for sure but he might be the first vp pick to have admitted in a ny times bestseller to f****** an inside-out latex glove shoved between two couch cushions (vance, hillbilly elegy, pp. 179-181).” He later posted a meme exposing his previous post as a lie.

No such citation exists in the book.

The Associated Press branded the story false in a fact-check — but then pulled the story, allegedly because editors felt it did not meet their editorial standards. But Snopes.com has rated the story “False” (while helpfully including a section asking, “Why is this rumor so believable?”). Walz opposition research team undoubtedly knew the story was fallacious. But like certain rumors contained in the Russian dossier about Donald Trump (rumors paid for by the Democratic Party and the Hillary Clinton campaign), the rumors served their purpose.

7. ‘We Are Not Taking Anybody’s Guns Away’

During the presidential debate on September 10, Harris stated, “Tim Walz and I are both gun owners. We are not taking anybody’s guns away.”

But at a joint campaign appearance with Walz in Philadelphia on August 6, Kamala Harris promised, “Together, when we win in November, we are finally going to pass universal background checks, red flag laws, and an ‘assault weapons’ ban.” Red flag laws allow law enforcement to remove firearms from the homes of legal gun owners without due process. The controversial laws, which both candidates have supported, take guns away from law-abiding Americans who purchased their firearms lawfully after receiving a report — possibly from an abusive ex, a jealous neighbor, or a local thief — that the individual poses a threat to himself or others. A so-called “assault weapons ban” would prevent Americans from purchasing such weapons. Harris has promised to support a “mandatory buy-back” for guns possessed lawfully.

Production of “Modern Sporting Rifles” (such as AR-15s and AK-47s) increased 32% between 2020 and 2021, bringing the total number produced since 1990 to 28.1 million, according to the National Shooting Sports Foundation. Americans own an estimated 473.2 million firearms.

8. Trump Promised a ‘Bloodbath’

Harris has accused Trump of another blood libel, claiming he will lead another violent revolution against the government.

The comment came as Trump spoke near Dayton, Ohio, promising to “put a 100% tariff on every single car that comes across” the border from Mexico, some of them built by Chinese companies. “Now if I don’t get elected, it’s going to be a bloodbath for the whole” automotive industry, Trump continued.

As I wrote at the time 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.”

Despite extensive reporting about the full context of the former president’s remarks, Harris attacked Trump during their presidential debate, insisting 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.”

9. Trump Said There Were ‘Very Fine People’ in Charlottesville’s ‘Unite the Right’ Rally

Joe Biden claimed he decided to launch his third presidential bid because of Trump’s response to Charlottesville. The 2024 Democratic Party platform contains a reference to the remarks. And Kamala Harris has dredged up the comments, telling viewers of the presidential debate to “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.”

In reality, President Donald Trump began his remarks by condemning “some very bad people” in that group. “But you also had people that were very fine people, on both sides,” Trump continued. “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,” because they were “protesting very quietly the taking down of the statue of Robert E. Lee.” Trump went on to declare the Woke mob would not stop at destroying statutes of Confederate heroes but would come for George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and others.

He went on to establish a 1776 Commission, which proposed erecting a series of monuments depicting historic Americans heroes, which the Biden-Harris administration canceled via executive order.

See also The 10 Kamala Harris Lies Moderators Let Slide at the ABC News Debate and Tim Walz’s Lies: The Top 7.

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.

Tim Walz Calls Abortion a ‘Basic Human Right’ in ‘Disastrous’ VP Debate Performance

Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz suffered what critics say was a “disastrous” performance during his only face-to-face showdown with Republican J.D. Vance before the 2024 presidential election, referring to himself as a “knucklehead” who has “become friends with school shooters.” Walz also repeatedly promoted misinformation about the impact of state pro-life protections, calling abortion a “basic human right.”

Senator J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz (D) squared off in their first and only debate of the 2024 election season in New York City Tuesday night, in a debate moderated by “CBS Evening News” anchor Norah O’Donnell and “Face the Nation” hostess Margaret Brennan.

Walz, who appeared nervous throughout the debate, fumbled out of the gate, confusing Israel with Iran in his first answer. During a discussion of gun violence, Walz explained his transformation from a pro-NRA congressman representing a rural district to a proponent of anti-gun measures. “I’ve become friends with school shooters,” Walz said. “That was perhaps the greatest presidential or vice presidential flop in living memory,” Senator Mike Lee (R-Utah) told Tucker Carlson moments after the debate. “It didn’t come across as the speaker intended.” The phrase immediately went viral, with the Republican Party turning Walz’s misstatements into an online meme.

Many pro-life proponents found themselves dissatisfied with both candidates’ statements on abortion.

Vance continued the 2024 GOP orthodoxy that the federal government has no role in abortion policy. “Donald Trump has been very clear that on the abortion policy specifically, that we have a big country and it’s diverse. And California has a different viewpoint on this than Georgia. Georgia has a different viewpoint from Arizona. And the proper way to handle this, as messy as democracy sometimes is, is to let voters make these decisions, let the individual states make their abortion policy.”

Former President Donald Trump responded to comments about a “national abortion ban” with an all-caps denunciation of advancing the pro-life cause:

“EVERYONE KNOWS I WOULD NOT SUPPORT A FEDERAL ABORTION BAN, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, AND WOULD, IN FACT, VETO IT, BECAUSE IT IS UP TO THE STATES TO DECIDE BASED ON THE WILL OF THEIR VOTERS (THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE!). LIKE RONALD REAGAN BEFORE ME, I FULLY SUPPORT THE THREE EXCEPTIONS FOR RAPE, INCEST, AND THE LIFE OF THE MOTHER. I DO NOT SUPPORT THE DEMOCRATS RADICAL POSITION OF LATE TERM ABORTION LIKE, AS AN EXAMPLE, IN THE 7TH, 8TH, OR 9TH MONTH OR, IN CASE THERE IS ANY QUESTION, THE POSSIBILITY OF EXECUTION OF THE BABY AFTER BIRTH. THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER!”

Vance also appeared to promote taxpayer-funded in vitro fertilization (IVF) — in which 50% and 70% of newly conceived children will die by day six and many survivors will be “selectively reduced” or frozen indefinitely — as a “pro-family” measure. “I want us, as a Republican Party, to be pro-family in the fullest sense of the word. I want us to support fertility treatments,” he said. “I want us to make it easier for moms to afford to have babies. I want to make it easier for young families to afford a home so they can afford a place to raise that family. And I think there’s so much that we can do on the public policy front just to give women more options.”

Yet pro-life advocates say the Democratic ticket’s extremism far outstrips the current GOP leadership’s skittishness on the issue. Walz rejected the state-federal distinction, echoing Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris’s pledge to expand “rights as basic” as abortion to all 50 states. “That’s not how this works. This is a basic human right,” Walz insisted of abortion, which ends a newborn child’s unalienable right to life. “How can we as a nation say that your life and your rights as basic as the right to control your own body is determined on geography?” Walz asked.

Tim Walz “supports abortion through the ninth month,” said SBA Pro-Life America. “No limits. No safeguards to protect women from abortion coercion.” Walz signed a bill eliminating all protections for unborn life until the moment of birth in Minnesota, ending the legal requirement for abortionists to provide appropriate lifesaving care for a baby born alive during a botched abortion, and lifting the mandate to provide aborted babies with a dignified burial (as opposed to disposing of their mutilated bodies at the landfill with discarded medical waste).

Vance has insisted social conservatives will “have a seat at the table” in the Republican Party under his leadership.

Perhaps the most effective pro-life statement of the debate came during the commercials, as national television carried a commercial highlighting Minnesota state data that show, during Walz’s tenure as governor, at least eight babies were born alive during botched abortions. These newborns “died gasping for air,” the ad states, as the viewer hears the sound of babies struggling for breath. “Kamala Harris may have played dumb during the debate on her record of literally voting to allow infanticide to continue, and she may try to ignore her chosen running mate’s decision to hide cases of infanticide in his home state of Minnesota, but the Pro-Life Generation will not ignore a record of radical abortion support that includes allowing lives to be lost after a botched abortion,” said Students for Life Action President Kristan Hawkins in an email to The Washington Stand. (Emphasis in original.)

Walz spread misinformation about abortion without any fact-checking from the moderators. “We have seen maternal mortality skyrocket in Texas,” Walz claimed. That assertion gets the data backwards, said Michael New, a professor of political science and social research at the Catholic University of America and a scholar at the Charlotte Lozier Institute. “Taking the data at face value, their report indicates that the maternal-mortality rate in Texas actually declined by 35 percent between 2021 and 2022,” despite the fact that in 2022 the Texas Heartbeat Act “had already taken effect,” wrote New at National Review. “In short, during the year with the strongest pro-life protections in place, the rate of maternal mortality in Texas actually fell by 35 percent.”

Walz further dishonestly claimed that Project 2025, which the Trump campaign has repeatedly denounced, “is going to have a registry of pregnancies” — something Brennan allowed Vance to address and which the report’s author corrected in real time. “Walz outrageously claims the @Prjct2025 section I wrote would create a ‘pregnancy registry’” when the report “merely recommends CDC compile anonymous abortion stats for all 50 states instead of the current 46-47. Walz’s own state collects miscarriage information every year, so it runs a ‘miscarriage registry’ according to his logic,” clarified Roger Severino, a former Trump administration official now serving as a scholar at The Heritage Foundation. “So hypocritical. So dishonest.”

Observers praised Vance’s poise during the interview in the face of one-sided interruptions from O’Donnell and Brennan. Although the debate rules stated that CBS News would leave fact-checking to the candidates and respond only on its own website, Brennan attempted to downplay the impact of tens of thousands of Haitian migrants on the city of Springfield, Ohio, by stating they were “legal” immigrants.

“The rules were that you guys weren’t going to fact check, and since you’re fact checking me, I think it’s important to say what’s actually going on,” said Vance, speaking over attempts by moderators to shut him down. He correctly explained that the Biden-Harris administration had used the CBP One app and other means to open up “legal” pathways of temporary residence to applicants who otherwise would be illegal immigrants. Indeed, CBS News reported last July that “[t]he Biden administration has welcomed over half a million migrants under programs designed to reduce illegal border entries or offer a safe haven to refugees, using a 1950s law to launch the largest expansion of legal immigration in modern U.S. history, unpublished government data obtained by CBS News show.”

Walz said, while “I don’t talk about my faith a lot,” he believed Matthew 25 supported the Biden-Harris administration’s chaotic border policy.

Vance repeatedly underscored Kamala Harris’s responsibility for the deterioration of the American dream and the fraying of national security over the last four years. “Who has been the vice president for the last three-and-a-half years?” he asked Walz early in the debate. “The answer is your running mate, not mine.” Vance repeatedly underscored that Kamala Harris is the sitting vice president and could enact her often-vague policy proposals today, if she wished, while contrasting the bleak Biden-Harris record with that of Donald Trump. “Donald Trump’s economic plan is not just a plan, but it’s also a record,” he said.

Vance noted that, as president, Trump held the line on expanding America’s war footprint and — aside from the COVID-19 lockdowns — presided over an administration marked by prosperity and increasing take-home pay for the middle class. “When was the last time that an American president didn’t have a major conflict break out? The only answer is during the four years that Donald Trump was president,” Vance said. Walz attempted to blame Iran’s advancing nuclear program on “Donald Trump’s fickle leadership,” but Vance countered that Iran and its proxies attacked Israel “during the administration of Kamala Harris,” which has opened up billions of previous frozen dollars to Tehran.

The moderators’ choice of questions also came under fire. Norah O’Donnell deflected a discussion on Hurricane Helene — which has claimed more than 100 lives and devastated entire communities in Appalachian North Carolina — into a discussion of “climate change.” At one point, Vance described Green alarmism as “weird science.” “The answer to reducing carbon emissions lies in reshoring American manufacturing, which has the highest standards of emission standards,” he pointed out. “What have Kamala Harris’s policies actually led to? More energy production in China, more manufacturing overseas, more doing business in some of the dirtiest parts of the entire world.”

The moderators have demonstrated bias in the past, noted experts at the Media Research Center. Both moderators questioned whether Donald Trump bore the blame for political violence after the Republican presidential candidate’s first near-assassination on July 13. “It’s almost like the rhetoric’s gotten hotter since” January 6, said Norah O’Donnell one day after the first assassination attempt. “Does Donald Trump bear some responsibility for that? Does he need to change his rhetoric?” Likewise, Brennan put the onus for the Trump assassination attempts on the victim. “This was a traumatic event no doubt for him, but I did notice there was no call for lowering the temperature, condemning all political violence,” said Brennan.

The overwhelming majority (84%) of “CBS Evening News” coverage of Kamala Harris since Joe Biden dropped out of the 2024 presidential race has been positive, while 79% of news stories featuring Donald Trump have been negative, according to analysis from the Media Research Center.

Tuesday night’s debate appears to provide voters with their final look at the two parties’ candidates before the presidential election on November 5. After Harris and Trump faced off in their first debate (his second of the election cycle) — which Republicans have criticized due to the moderators’ heavy, one-sided fact-checking — Harris demanded a rematch, an offer Trump has steadfastly refused. The former president announced he will not take part in a back-to-back interview for the “60 Minutes” election special Monday night alongside the incumbent Democratic vice president. Harris has proved reticent to grant interviews since Joe Biden bowed to pressure and withdrew from the 2024 presidential election some 72 days before the vice presidential debate.

CNN’s John King summed up the consensus by nearly all pundits of the vice presidential debate: “Republicans were happy tonight and Democrats a little bit nervous.”

The November 5 election takes place in 34 days.

AUTHOR

Ben Johnson

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

RELATED ARTICLE: What J.D. Vance Said Right about Abortion at the VP Debate

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 Eyeing Prosecuting Google over ‘Illegal’ Election Interference

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’?

“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

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

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.