More than a dozen Republican senators are demanding that the partys Senate leadership move for the upper chamber to consider an amendment that would end the militarys Covid shot mandate for U.S. service members.

In a letter sent to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and other members of Senate GOP leadership on Wednesday, 13 Republican senators voiced their opposition to invoking cloture on the National Defense Authorization Act unless the Senate votes on an amendment that would prevent the military from discharging service members for choosing not to get the Covid shot, as well as reinstate those who had already been discharged with full back pay.

The Department of Defense COVID-19 vaccine mandate has ruined the livelihoods of men and women who have honorably served our country, the letter reads. The United States simply cannot afford to discharge our brave men and women in uniform and lose the investments we have made into each and every one of them due to an inept bureaucratic policy. We respectfully request that the Senate vote to remedy a policy that adversely affects our service members and our national security.

Among the Republicans signed onto the letter are Sens. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, Rand Paul of Kentucky, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Rick Scott and Marco Rubio of Florida, Mike Lee of Utah, Ted Cruz of Texas, Mike Braun of Indiana, Roger Marshall of Kansas, Tommy Tuberville of Alabama, Steve Daines of Montana, Cindy Hyde-Smith of Mississippi, and Josh Hawley of Missouri.

Despite the CDCs acknowledgment in May 2021 that the Covid jabs dont prevent individuals from getting or spreading the respiratory virus, the Biden administration proceeded to mandate the shots for all U.S. service members in August of that same year. According to the Republican senators Wednesday letter, as of April 2022, approximately 3,400 troops have been involuntarily separated from service for refusing the jab.

Some service members, however, have since filed lawsuits against the Defense Department over the agencys overwhelming denial of troops religious exemptions from the shot mandate. Earlier this year, several members of the U.S. Coast Guard filed suit against high-ranking military officials such as Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, claiming that the departments denial of their religious exemptions is an infringement of their First Amendment rights.

Chaplains attested to the sincerity of Plaintiffs religious objections to being vaccinated, and Defendants did not contest the sincerity of Plaintiffs religious objections to being vaccinated, the suit reads.

Shawn Fleetwood is a Staff Writer for The Federalist and a graduate of the University of Mary Washington. He also serves as a state content writer for Convention of States Action and his work has been featured in numerous outlets, including RealClearPolitics, RealClearHealth, and Conservative Review. Follow him on Twitter @ShawnFleetwood

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13 GOP Senators Demand An End To Military Covid Jab Mandate

Alaska Republicans are calling on the Kentucky GOP to formally censure Sen. Mitch McConnell for the bluegrass senators interference in the Alaskan Senate contest against the party-endorsed candidate.

On Thursday, the Alaskan Republican Partys District 9 central committee passed a resolution to condemn the Senate minority leaders spending on behalf of Sen. Lisa Murkowski. The incumbent senator running for a fourth full term in the upper chamber is locked in a tight contest against Donald Trump-backed challenger Kelly Tshibaka, who is also endorsed by the Alaskan Republican Party.

McConnells super PAC to reclaim the majority, the Senate Leadership Fund, is spending heavily in the race between two Republicans, which the latest polls show is a tied match. According to the Anchorage Daily News, McConnells political operation has poured more than $7 million into the Alaskan contest instead of using that money towards ripe pick-up opportunities in Nevada and Arizona.

We request the Senate Leadership Fund immediately stop the attack ads against Kelly Tshibaka and discontinue all support of Senator Murkowski, District 9 Republicans demanded. Their resolution went on to demand Kentucky GOP leadership censure their senator for meddling in Alaskas party affairs while the minority leader abandons efforts at capturing the majority.

We request the Republican Party of Kentucky leadership act against Senator Mitch McConnell for his inappropriate behavior against Alaska Republicans and Republican endorsed candidate Kelly Tshibaka, the Alaska Republicans wrote.

Alaskas District 9 committee based in Anchorage is the second state party group to admonish the Kentucky lawmakers interference, according to Must Read Alaska columnist Suzanne Downing.

The first was District 6, a Homer-area subdivision of the Alaska GOP, Downing wrote.

In September, McConnells PAC reinjected money into the Alaska Senate contest after initially canceling $1.7 million alongside $8 million stripped from Republican Arizona Senate nominee Blake Masters. McConnell later pulled another $10 million from the Arizona race, leaving the Republican candidate abandoned by the primary super PAC charged with reclaiming the upper chamber.

Both Masters and Tshibaka have pledged not to support McConnell for another term in GOP leadership.

The decision to spend scarce resources on an ally in Alaska instead of a tight race in Arizona to bring down a Democrat incumbent drew criticism from former President Donald Trump on Monday.

Kelly Tshibaka is doing very well in Alaska, probably leading horrendously bad Senator Lisa Murkowski, a Republican (barely!), Trump wrote.

According to the latest aggregate of surveys from RealClearPolitics, which are often manipulated to fit pre-determined narratives, the Arizona Senate race remains a five-point race.

Tristan Justice is the western correspondent for The Federalist. He has also written for The Washington Examiner and The Daily Signal. His work has also been featured in Real Clear Politics and Fox News. Tristan graduated from George Washington University where he majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow him on Twitter at @JusticeTristan or contact him at Tristan@thefederalist.com.

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Alaska Republicans Call On Kentucky GOP To Censure McConnell

Over the next few months we will explore through a series of eLessons the debate over ratification of the United States Constitution as discussed in the Federalist and Anti-Federalist papers. We look forward to exploring this important debate with you!

One of the great debates in American history was over the ratification of the Constitution in 1787-1788. Those who supported the Constitution and a stronger national republic were known as Federalists. Those who opposed the ratification of the Constitution in favor of small localized government were known as Anti-Federalists. Both the Federalists and the Anti-Federalists were concerned with the preservation of liberty, however, they disagreed over whether or not a strong national government would preserve or eventually destroy the liberty of the American people. Today, it is easy to accept that the prevailing side was right and claim that, had you been alive, you would have certainly supported ratifying the Constitution. However, in order to develop a deeper understanding of the ideological foundations upon which our government is built, it is important to analyze both the Federalist and Ant-Federalist arguments.

The Anti-Federalists were not as organized as the Federalists. They did not share one unified position on the proper form of government. However, they did unite in their objection to the Constitution as it was proposed for ratification in 1787. The Anti-Federalists argued against the expansion of national power. They favored small localized governments with limited national authority as was exercised under the Articles of Confederation. They generally believed a republican government was only possible on the state level and would not work on the national level. Therefore, only a confederacy of the individual states could protect the nations liberty and freedom. Another, and perhaps their most well-known concern, was over the lack of a bill of rights. Most Anti-Federalists feared that without a bill of rights, the Constitution would not be able to sufficiently protect the rights of individuals and the states. Perhaps the strongest voice for this concern was that of George Mason. He believed that state bills of right would be trumped by the new constitution, and not stand as adequate protections for citizens rights. It was this concern that ultimately led to the passing of the bill of rights as a condition for ratification in New York, Virginia, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and North Carolina.

The Federalists, primarily led by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay, believed that establishing a large national government was not only possible, but necessary to create a more perfect union by improving the relationship among the states. Until this point, the common belief was that a republic could only function efficiently it was small and localized. The Federalists challenged this belief and claimed that a strong national republic would better preserve the individual liberties of the people. By extending the sphere of the republic, individual and minority rights would be better protected from infringement by a majority. The federalists also wanted to preserve the sovereignty and structure of the states. To do so, they advocated for a federal government with specific, delegated powers. Anything not delegated to the federal government would be reserved to the people and the states. Ultimately, their goal was to preserve the principle of government by consent. By building a government upon a foundation of popular sovereignty, without sacrificing the sovereignty of the states, legitimacy of the new government could be secured.

Today, it appears that the government established by the Constitution is an improvement from that which was established by the Articles of Confederation. At the time however, the Constitution was merely an experiment. Forget what you now know about the success Constitution. Considering its unprecedented nature and the fear that a strong national government would be a threat to personal liberty, would you have been a Federalist or an Anti-Federalist?

Learn more about Federalist papers.

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Would you have been a Federalist or an Anti-Federalist?

Democrats in the House of Representatives blocked an amendment that would have protected religious Americans from retaliation based on their opposition to same-sex marriage, in order to jam legislation furthering the LGBT lobbys agenda through Congresss lame-duck session.

House Rules Committee ChairmanRep. James McGovern shot down Republicans last chance of defending religious liberty in the ill-named Respect for Marriage Act on Monday when he refused to even let Rep. Chip Roys amendment solidifying First Amendment protections be brought to the House floor for a vote.

McGoverns reasoning for bypassing procedural debate was rooted in the fact that Roys amendment would give the process of passing the RFMA a shelf life that could last well into the newly-elected Republican House.

Seeing as most of the Republicans in the current House oppose the RFMA on the grounds that it stomps on religious Americans right to act on their convictions about traditional marriage, McGovern and his Democrat allies werent keen on waiting around to see if the legislation would survive the new GOP-led House.

If we were to amend this and it goes back to the Senate, for all intents and purposes, its dead for the year. And many of us believe that we have a court right now that is hell-bent on trying to reverse the rights for the LGBTQ community and we do not trust them to respect marriage equality in this country, McGovern said to the rules committee on Monday. When January comes along, the gentlemans party will be in charge and you can bring one amendment after another to reverse the last 70 years of social progress, if the gentleman prefers. We will oppose you on that.

Theres no evidence of the armageddon that he describes being at the doorstep, Republican Rep. Michael Burgess retorted.

Roy, along with his Republican cosponsors Reps. Byron Donalds and Doug Lamborn, submitted the amendment for review on Thursday in a last-ditch effort to convince conservative legislators to prioritize Americans First Amendment rights. Roys amendment copied the legal protections for religious Americans that Republican Sen. Mike Leetried, but ultimately failed, to addto the Senates version of the legislation two weeks ago.

I think it would be an important amendment just to offer on the floor of the House, Roy replied to McGovern during the committee meeting. You know how it will work. Well get an hour of debate on both sides. The amendment will almost certainly get voted down, but I hope it wouldnt because I believe its important. Id like to have at least the opportunity, in the one hour of debate that I would get in this august body, to be able to make the case for religious liberty with my colleagues.

McGovern, however, refused to listen to Roys concerns. As a result, the unamended RFMA, which expands the Supreme CourtsObergefell v. Hodgesdecision to further open the door for LGBT activists to sue Americans opposed to same-sex marriage, will see a floor vote as soon as next week.

The 47 Republican legislators who voted for a previous version of the bill still have a chance to vote no to the RFMA. Even without GOP support, however, the Democrat voting bloc is expected to send the bill to the White House where President Joe Biden already signaled he plans to sign it into law.

Jordan Boyd is a staff writer at The Federalist and co-producer of The Federalist Radio Hour. Her work has also been featured in The Daily Wire and Fox News. Jordan graduated from Baylor University where she majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow her on Twitter @jordanboydtx.

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House Dems Kill Amendment Protecting Religious Americans

Those who seek to destroy or delegitimize the Supreme Court for upholding the Constitution are no better than those who desire to overturn or delegitimize presidential elections. In fact, they probably pose a greater long-term threat to American democracy.

Now, if you believe the above contention is hyperbole, consider that many leftists arent merely advocating for court-packing or nullification of the Dobbs decision; they justify those attacks with a litany of other grievances about the constitutional order.

Even as the Supreme Court relinquished its power, and threw the abortion issueunmentioned anywhere in the Constitutionback to the voters, a horde of j-school graduates and politicians, either ignorant of basic civics or contemptuous of them, descended with panic-stricken warnings about the demise of democracy. Almost none of their objections were grounded in any sort of legal arguments about the alleged constitutionality of terminating unwanted human beings. Instead, their case centered around the specious idea that the court had undermined the will of voters by no longer dictating abortion policy by judicial fiat.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who, at this point, sounds virtually indistinguishable from Senate leadership or the authoritarians writing at The Washington Post, points out that seven of the nine justices on the court were appointed by a party that hasnt won a popular vote more than once in 30 years, that one of their seats was stolen, and that several lied to Congress to secure their appointment

None of those contentions are true. Every single justice on the court, including the ones Democrats preemptively smeared as deviants to undermine the legitimacy of the court, was nominated using the prescribed constitutional method that is used by every party. And every senator who voted to confirm those justices did so using the only legal process available to them. The popular vote is not a real thing.

When Democrats win both the Senate and the White House, they have the power to nominate and confirm any justice they desire. But they also seem to be under the impression that when they win only the White House, theyre still authorized to dictate whom Republicans are allowed to confirm (as was the case with Merrick Garland). And when they are completely out of national power, they simply reject the legitimacy of justices who do not meet their invented, evolving, extraconstitutional standards. Democrats treat every victory of the opposition as dubiously attained.

The Founding Fathers wrote a constitution designed to prevent a tyranny of the majority, says former Barack Obama adviser David Axelrod. But what happens when you have a tyranny of the minority, gaming the system to promote a radical agenda that flouts the will of the majority under the guise of constitutionalism? Similar assertions were repeated across the left-wing punditsphere this weekend.

Axelrod, in true Obama fashion, begs the question. But the fact that the Electoral College doesnt align with the popular vote isnt a disqualifying aspect of American politics, it is the very point. If the Electoral College always synchronized with the outcome of the nonexistent direct democratic national tallies, it wouldnt need to exist. It isnt a loophole; it is a deliberately created mechanism that stops a handful of states from dominating policy. (Not only is the national vote immaterial, but we really have no idea what one would look like because (winning) candidates do not run up scores in big states, they campaign nationally.)

Though I do wonder what remedy Axelrod or Ocasio-Cortez have in mind for this supposed problem? Should the GOP abdicate the presidency to a Democrat every time it fails to win the nonexistent popular vote? Should Republican senators from smaller states ignore their constituents and ask Elizabeth Warren for permission to support judicial nominees? Sounds like one-party rule.

None of this is to even mention that a lack of national legislation on an issue isnt a tyranny of the minority. Its federalism. There is no other way to keep a sprawling, geographically, ethnically, culturally, religiously diverse nation free and self-governing. Thats why enumerated powers exist. And thats also why the increasingly radical progressive left is obsessed with getting rid of the filibuster, the only thing preserving some semblance of legislative limitation on federal power. The only people who refer to federalism as minority rule are people who believe that Americans need to be ruled over in the first place. Indeed, the court did not stop Illinois from making its own abortion policies. Its Axelrod who wants the court to compel, by edict, abortion policy in states like Mississippi.

Democrats want the Supreme Court, created to adjudicate the constitutionality of laws free from political pressures, to follow public opinion polls. The only way we can truly know how voters feel about abortion is by subjecting the issue to the democratic process. Whether Roe, a legal decision, is popular is irrelevantthough its unsurprising the majority of Americans, after decades of media championing abortion, know little about it. Because, at some point, voters will decide if the Democratic Partys new position, government-funded abortion on demand until crowning, or the position of states like Mississippi, 15 weeks bans, are more radical.

When the Supreme Court concocted the constitutional right to abortion in 1973, the pro-life movement didnt promise to dismantle the system; rather it spent 50 years creating an intellectual and political movement that would begin to restore proper constitutional limits. They voted for presidents who promised to put textualists on the bench and elected senators who would confirm them. If youre unhappy with those rules, you are free to amend the Constitution. But, for the contemporary left, democracy isnt just a euphemism for policies we support anymore, its a pernicious belief that Republicans have a responsibility to live in a political system that exists outside of the Constitution. And a system with two sets of rules is untenable.

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Democrats Have Become A Serious Threat To The Republic - The Federalist

Editors note: The following is an adapted excerpt from Liberal Misery: How the Hateful Left Sucks Joy Out of Everything and Everyone, by Federalist D.C. Columnist Eddie Scarry, available now on Amazon.

It made some sense that liberal Democrats would be bitter immediately after the 2016 election. The country had just denied Hillary Clintonyes, Empress Hillary Clintonas heir to her throne and instead chose to elevate a foul-mouthed barbarian named Donald Trump to the presidency.

A true outsider who represented all the things liberals hate masculinity, optimism, independenceruined the illusion that America was now exclusively their domain, a place they had hoped to use for their racial fixations, green energy projects, and weird gender-bender social experiments.

They lost. And losing hurts. But its not supposed to be permanent. The next critical election is always within arms reach and there are more productive ways to spend time than holding on to the pain of the last one.

As of 2016, though, liberals and Democrats no longer saw things that way, if they ever truly did at all. After that election, they believed there was no reason to pretend that they understood differences of political opinion, nor that they could tolerate them. They no longer viewed Republicans, conservatives, or even just open-minded independents as the opposition in an honest democracy. They saw them all as an existential enemy that needed to be extinguished.

And thus began our long journey through hell. Pussy hats. Public crying. Fake hate crimes perpetrated by nonexistent Trump supporters. Safe spaces. Angry, vulgar protests broadcast on network television under the guise of being Hollywood award ceremonies. The tragic rise of liberal civil rights attorney Ben Crump. On and on.

And if you thought the four years under Donald Trump were bad, those were a piece of cake compared with what would come. A presidential election was approaching in 2020 and the economy was booming. What were Democrats and their reliable friends in the news media left to do other than turn up the dial to a breaking point, generate mass race rioting and covid hysteria, then promise the public that it would only go away if they were put in charge?

It was fraudulent but enough voters found it persuasive. The bigger problem, however, was that by validating the tactic and voting for Joe Biden, Americans effectively encouraged the Lefts worst impulse, which is to spread its own bitter, joyless misery.

Even when Democrats emerged victorious from the suffocating bonfire of 2020, having control of the White House and all of Congress for two years, has their mood change? No. Its only gotten worse.

They may have traded their pussy hats for Fauci prayer candles, but the attitude has never been angrier or more spiteful. Vengeance has animated them each and every day.

There are scores of studies, surveys, reports and data to back up that truism. But like others, I also know it so well firsthand.

As just one (perfect) example, in November of last year I was sitting with two friends at the bar of All Purpose, a popular pizza restaurant in Washington, D.C. One friend, a white woman in her early 30s, had exchanged niceties with the bar server, also a white woman who appeared to be in her 30s, and with dyed hair that made it look like a mix between silver and very light purple.

My friends and I at one point were discussing the not-guilty verdict that had just been rendered in the trial of Kyle Rittenhouse. I mentioned that it was amazing how many people were under the impression that Rittenhouse was prosecuted for shooting blacks, when in fact all parties involved with his case were white. My friend said that nonetheless, she believed that racism colored the outcome of the trial.

What makes it racist? I asked.

Immediately, the bartender with the dye job looked up from the drink she was preparing to declare, WHAT MAKES IT RACIST IS

But just as quick as she was to insert herself, I held up the palm of my hand and said, We were just talking among ourselves.

Okay, no problem, she said. And then I watched her for the duration of our time sitting there as she walked around, alerting every other member of staff about the belligerent racist who wouldnt let her speak.

I mean, I dont know for certain thats what she was telling her coworkers, but is there any doubt? Thats precisely what an obnoxious liberal would do anywhere.

This isnt normal behavior. Normal people dont assume its their place to butt in on the discussions of strangers, let alone when those strangers will be deciding how much of a tip to leave. The level of discomfort that these monsters are willing to instill on well-meaning, unassuming people has no boundaries. It can be minor, say a cold shoulder at a social gathering, and it can be extreme to the point of obscenity.

Their thoughts and feelings about politics are no longer a piece of their lives, but all-consuming. Its not without consequence. When half the country chooses to exist in a perpetual state of irritability, vindictiveness, and intolerance, were all forced to share in the misery.

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How Democrats Made Themselves Miserable And Want You To Be Too - The Federalist

The lefts reaction to the Supreme Courts historic decision last week overturningRoe v. Wadehas been uniformly appalling but not at all surprising:violence,calls for more violence,calls to pack the court, ignore its decisions,dissolve it. In other words, about what youd expect from people who want to destroy every institution they dont control.

On the right, the reaction has been rather more mixed, mainly because of the cowardice and intellectual dishonesty of the Never Trump faction, whose leading lights cant bring themselves to give credit to former President Donald Trump for accomplishing what the Republican establishment could not.

Make no mistake: without Trump,Roewould still be on the books. No other Republican candidate could have beaten Hillary Clinton in 2016, and no other GOP president would have yielded the results Trump did once in office.

Trump didnt just deliver three solid originalist justices to the Supreme Court, he did so despite enormous pressure from Democrats and the media pressure that any other politician almost certainly would have submitted to. Would any other Republican president have stood by Brett Kavanaugh amid the orchestrated smear campaign against him, or nominated someone like Amy Coney Barrett to replace Ruth Bader Ginsburg less than six weeks before the 2020 presidential election? Of course not, and everyone knows it.

Trump was able to do these things precisely because he possesses qualities his Never Trump critics most deplore: combativeness, a disdain for the media, political instincts that told him the Supreme Court was of paramount importance to his conservative base and that he needed to deliver on the promises he made.

Indeed, crediting Trump for his central role in the overturning ofRoeshould not be a heavy lift, even for those who are no fans of the former president. You can think of him as a kind of Balaams ass, if you like, and still recognize the essential part he played.

For Never Trumpers like Bill Kristol, the easiest way to avoid this reckoning is simple hypocrisy. Just write the opposite of what you wrote in the past, and blame Trump for your intellectual dishonesty.

But for some Never Trumpers, the whole thing iscomplicated. Thats how Timothy Carney of the American Enterprise Institute put it last week ina Washington Examiner columnthat was mostly a bunch of throat-clearing about how bad Trump was for the GOP brand and how much he hurt the conservative movement.

Never mind that the conservative movement Trump supposedly hurt has been working for decades to overturnRoe v. Wade, and indeed largely defined itself through opposition to abortion in an era when every major institution in American life was arrayed against it.

Carney doesnt engage that argument, or any other, because he has no argument to make. He admits as much when he says, no issue in politics is more important than abortion because no cause is more righteous than protecting innocent babies from slaughter. No president did more good on abortion than Trump. So this makes things complicated.

No, it doesnt. It only makes things complicated if youre wedded to the idea that decorum is more important than actual victories for the conservative cause, or if you draw a paycheck from a Never Trump bastion like AEI. Maybe then its complicated. But out in the real world, where untold children will escape being butchered in the womb partly as a result of Trumps resolve, it isnt complicated at all.

Read in the best possible light, Carneys hand-wringing over Trumps role in all this is at least a tacit acknowledgement that he might have been wrong. Not so for the impossible-to-parody Kevin Williamson of National Review, who wasted no timechurning out a laughably dishonest columnabout how the end ofRoeisnt Trumps victory.

Why? Because, says Williamson, Trump did what any Republican president would have done and delegated his judicial selections to the Federalist Society. It does not seem to enter into Williamsons thinking that Trump perhaps turned to the Federalist Society in light of the past failures of Republican presidents to nominate justices sufficiently originalist to overturnRoe. Indeed, it was a plurality opinion from a trio of justices appointed by Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush that botched the chance to overturnRoe30 years ago inPlanned Parenthood v Casey, and instead maintained its central holding that women have a constitutional right to abortion.

Never mind all that, says Williamson. No conservative who knows how to read supported Trump in 2016 because he was solid on judicial originalism or any other major conservative issue. But as Williamson surely knows, many conservatives (including some literate ones!) supported Trump in 2016precisely becausehe committed to nominating Supreme Court justices who were solid on judicial originalism, and evenreleased a list of possible nomineesin May 2016 something no other GOP primary candidate had ever done. Indeed, his explicit commitment to nominate originalist justices is one reason many Republicans who were on the fence about Trump decided to vote for him in the end.

None of this matters to Never Trumpers of Williamsons bent of mind. To them, reality even something as real and astounding as the end ofRoe will never overturn their smug conviction that they were right to oppose Trump. So satisfied are they in their own opinions and prejudices that nothing so mundane as actual events will ever persuade them they were wrong.

So be it. Its not like the Republican Party needs the dozens of voters whose views these pundits represent. Williamson can go on writing his snarky, nattering columns peppered with snide little insults to Trump and the people who supported him. One has to pay the bills, after all, so he might as well have fun with it. Carney can go on striving to sound measured and respectable, for all its worth.

But the rest of us on the right, including some (like me) who havecome to realize they were wrong about Trump, will remember that it took Trump, of all people, to bring about a result so glorious and long-sought that honest conservatives should be willing, even happy, to admit they were wrong.

John Daniel Davidson is a senior editor at The Federalist. His writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the Claremont Review of Books, The New York Post, and elsewhere. Follow him on Twitter, @johnddavidson.

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After Roe, Never Trumpers Should Just Admit They Were Wrong - The Federalist

Virginia Ginni Thomas, a prominent conservative activist who is also married to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, is demanding that the House Select Committee on Jan. 6 elaborate on its basis for soliciting testimony over privately petitioning her own government.

Hours after the Jan. 6 Committee wrapped up its sixth hearing on Tuesday, Ginnis attorney, Mark Paoletta, sent a letter to the panels leadership requesting specifics on why the probe with an open animosity for the Thomas family seeks to publicly drag his client before lawmakers.

Mrs. Thomas is eager to clear her name and is willing to appear before the Committee to do so, Paoletta wrote to Chairman Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., and Vice-Chair Liz Cheney, R-Wyo. However, based on my understanding of the communications that spurred the Committees request, I do not understand the need to speak with Mrs. Thomas.

In March, Ginni became the center of a fabricated controversy related to the Jan. 6 Committees investigation when the panel leaked a series of private text messages with former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows. The messages, 29 in all, revealed a conservative activist pleading with a government official to continue investigating allegations of election fraud in the pandemic-era contest, which included record-level turnout in the form of mail-in voting that was ripe for misconduct.

Committee members escalated their efforts to compel Ginnis testimony earlier this month after more private communications were revealed with individuals involved in former President Donald Trumps efforts to halt certification of the 2020 election. Thompson told Axios his colleagues on the panel think its time that we, at some point, invite her [Thomas] to come talk to the committee.

Ginni said shortly after she looked forward to talking to them.

I cant wait to clear up misconceptions, she told the Daily Caller.

Further examination of the committees request, however, has given Ginni pause.

The panels request focuses on Ginnis communications with attorney and law professor John Eastman, who produced legal theories to justify delays in certification of the electoral college. The extent of the pairs contact, however, as outlined by Paoletta, stretches to generic emails forwarded by Ginni on a large distribution list and an invitation to speak to a group of conservative activists, a type of event Ginni organizes regularly.

Not a single document shows any coordination between Mrs. Thomas and Mr. Eastman, Paoletta wrote.

Paoletta also outlined skepticism that the committee was operating in good faith in its desire to bring Ginni before lawmakers, considering her husband is among the most targeted members of the Supreme Court.

In 2014, Thompson stood by his comments calling Justice Thomas Uncle Tom in a speech with the New Nation of Islam, which believes intermarriage or race mixing should be prohibited.

Thomas doesnt like black people, [and] he doesnt like being black, the congressman said.

These statements by the Committees chairman certainly raise alarm bells when the committee says that it wants to speak with Mrs. Thomas, Paoletta wrote.

Tristan Justice is the western correspondent for The Federalist. He has also written for The Washington Examiner and The Daily Signal. His work has also been featured in Real Clear Politics and Fox News. Tristan graduated from George Washington University where he majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow him on Twitter at @JusticeTristan or contact him at Tristan@thefederalist.com.

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EXCLUSIVE: Ginni Thomas Demands Context From J6 Panel Before She'll Cooperate With The Hostile Probe - The Federalist

As soon as the Supreme Court issued its ruling finally overturning the Roe v. Wade abortion decision that had so roiled the nation for nearly 50 years, Democrats and their allies who control corporate media began asserting it would be a political boon for their party.

Democrats see abortion as a big base motivator and a potential winning issue with independents, claimed Politico.

Democrats could certainly use some help. The party controls all of Washington, D.C. Voters have indicated theyre prepared to deliver large Republican gains in November in response to a series of Democrat policy failures leading to a looming recession, labor problems, supply chain disruptions, high gas prices, rising crime, another foreign war without a strategy for victory, and a completely out of control border.

But there are several problems for Democrats hoping to stem the losses, including that the general Democrat position of abortion on demand until the moment of birth is far too radical to gain politically in most areas of the country. Even CBS polling found that only 17 percent of Americans agree with such an extreme stance.

The Dobbs v. Jackson Womens Health Organization decision, despite the media disinformation, simply returns abortion law to the states, enabling citizens and their elected representatives to debate and set abortion laws and policies. Roe had falsely decreed that a right to abortion was in the Constitution, and therefore beyond public debate, a view the court flatly and finally rejected last week.

Abortion is a hotly debated topic, and neither those who oppose or support it are likely to be fully happy about public opinion. Most Americans strongly oppose abortion on demand through all nine months of pregnancy, but most Americans also support some allowances for abortion at earlier stages in pregnancy. In May, a Gallup poll found that 63 percent of Americans support making abortion illegal or legal only in certain circumstances.

While the decision may help Democrats hold onto a few suburban seats Republicans had hoped to wrestle back from the party in power, it is unlikely to help them in battleground states and districts where Republicans are experiencing dramatic gains. California and New York may be ready to pass even more radical abortion legislation, but not every state is as leftist as those are. And Democrats and the media are in for a rude awakening if they think everyone is as extreme as they are in their bubbles.

For example, Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin announced his plans to pass protections for babies who have reached 15 weeks of age in the womb. Thats the type of popular protection that will pass in a swing state, but would be viewed as anathema for New York newsrooms. A recent Fox poll found that a majority oppose abortion after 15 weeks. Similarly, the Wall Street Journal found more support than opposition for 15-week abortion bans like those now permitted in America.

So take a state like Nevada. Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, the incumbent Democrat running for re-election, voted in May for a bill that would legalize abortion to the moment of birth, forbid states from enacting protections for unborn life, and expand taxpayer funding. Her opponent Adam Laxalt is endorsed by pro-life groups and supports at least some protections for unborn children.

As attorney general of Nevada, he signed onto a legal brief assisting the Little Sisters of the Poor, who were facing crippling fines from the Obama administration for not funding abortifacients. Is Cortez Mastos radical stance really going to help her in a state where one out of every four residents is Hispanic, many of them Roman Catholic or evangelical? Is she really going to get major traction on her stance that its okay for children to have their lives violently ended in the womb for no other reason than theyre the wrong sex?

Pennsylvania also has a Senate race, and the Democrat nominee John Fetterman already publicly announced his support for the ruthless abortion-until-birth legislation Cortez Masto voted for. The legislation which had bipartisan opposition but still had 48 senators and 218 congressmen voting for it explicitly states the right to abortion on demand shall not be limited or otherwise infringed.

Fetterman is running against Mehmet Oz, who has stated hes pro-life but would support popular exceptions to abortion bans. Is Fettermans extreme stance going to help or hurt him in November? Ditto New Hampshires Maggie Hassan.

In North Carolina, Democrat nominee Cheri Beasley has made abortion on demand through all nine months of pregnancy the central argument of her campaign. She wants federal legislation to codify this view. By contrast, her opponent Ted Budd says he thinks states should handle abortion law and he has focused his campaign on how to improve the economy.

Polls show that voters are dramatically more worried about the economy than focused on abortion. Traditionally, those who care the most about abortion tend to vote for Republicans. Even if Budd had an extreme pro-life position, and he doesnt, the issue would probably break 50-50 in the southern state, rather than be a huge boon for Beasley.

At a time Democrats desperately need to seem normal, they are saddled with one of the least defensible policy positions in American life: that ending human life in the womb should be legal for any reason up until the moment the baby is being born.

The signature legislation nearly all of them voted for weeks ago would have forbidden state-level protections for babies with Down syndrome or other disabilities, overturned informed consent laws that have been upheld by the Supreme Court, prohibited state restrictions blocking abortion when the unborn child can feel pain, and completely removed conscientious protections for health-care employees who oppose abortion. This is an extremely radical set of positions. For instance, 75 percent of Americans support protecting the conscience rights of health-care employees. And seven out of ten Americans oppose aborting children because they have Down syndrome.

Its also not just that Democrats have to affirmatively support that view but that they will also be saddled with the policy position that any restriction, no matter how minor and no matter how popular, such as a 15-week abortion ban, is untenable.

Democrats and their media allies are trying to spread conspiracy theories about banning contraception or same-sex marriage to make Republicans seem less moderate, but those efforts will suffer from the lack of evidence to support them. The pro-life movement has been vibrant and active for 50 solid years, marching each January in the nations capital, and working diligently to pass laws protecting human lives. There is no movement for the conspiracy theories being spread by corporate media.

Few people realize how radical the American abortion position was prior to Dobbs. This week, Noah Smith tweeted a picture of how restrictive European abortion laws are relative to the Roe era in the United States, adding, Wow. Today I learned that Europe has more restrictive abortion laws than most of the U.S. did up until this week.

While pro-lifers have known that for decades, the media run by people with extremely liberal views on abortion have hidden those facts from their readers and viewers. But Americans are learning these facts about the Democrat position and how radical it is.

Another problem for Democrats is that prior to Dobbs, the main campaign strategy was to gin up hysteria about the January 6 riot. Since the leak of the draft decision, abortion supporters have engaged in campaigns of violence against churches and maternal care centers.

Last week, prominent Democrats such as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and President Joe Biden began calling on their base voters to protest in the streets. Leading leftists also claimed the Supreme Court was now illegitimate, because it had ruled on the law in a way that differed from their preferred policies. Media figures began spreading disinformation about abortion being banned in America.

It will be exceedingly difficult to continue the January 6 show trial while this widespread and orchestrated campaign of violence is happening nationwide.

Exceedingly few Americans support Democrats policies in favor of abortion until the moment of birth. DC-based media and Democrat strategists exist in a bubble that isolates them from public opinion.

But elections happen in places where views have to be explicitly stated and contend with public opinion. Outside of a small handful of House districts in suburban areas dominated by wealthy and college-educated white women, the more GOP candidates speak confidently and unapologetically about their views, they will have the political edge.

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Democrats' Abortion Views Are Far Too Radical To Benefit From Post-Roe - The Federalist

Your labor was not in vain. The national regime of abortion on demand imposed by Roe v. Wade is over, thanks as much to the humble and unheralded as to the powerful and connected.

Yes, the Dobbs decision was made by Supreme Court justices, appointed by presidents and confirmed by senators, and they deserve the praise they receive. But the pro-life movement was sustained by the millions of Americans who just wouldnt quit.

They didnt quit when the Supreme Court said the issue was settled, then said so again. They didnt quit when all of the cultural powers-that-be from academia to Hollywood disdained and reviled them. They didnt quit despite decades of minimal gains and routine betrayals by politicians and judges.

Instead, they kept marching and praying. They kept volunteering and voting. They kept writing and speaking. And they were not just political activists. They built networks of crisis pregnancy centers and other charities to help women and children in need, providing everything from diapers to baby formula to health care.

Within families, churches, and communities, they made innumerable decisions to protect human life. They became adoptive and foster parents to care for the abused and abandoned. They are the grandparents who helped when told of an unexpected pregnancy, rather than encouraging the disposal of the unplanned child.

There are, of course, professional pro-lifers leading and staffing organizations. But the pro-life movement is sustained by its volunteers. And they are remarkable for their persistence and their unselfishness. They donate their time and treasure to a movement that they know will not make them safer, healthier, or wealthier.

They were not fighting for their own rights. They were not lobbying for more benefits for themselves. In a political system and culture dominated by self-interest, they have never demanded anything for themselves.

It is, of course, true that abortion is generally destructive to society. It breaks the primal social bond of mother, father, and child and hardens the hearts it doesnt stop. Leaving a womb-shaped hole in legal protection for human life precludes a culture and politics of real solidarity.

But although pro-lifers recognized these broad evils of abortion culture, they are not what motivated the movement. If that was all they cared about, it would have been easier to just work on protecting their own families and communities (which is indeed a moral obligation). But pro-lifers care about the specific injustice of abortion: that it is the deliberate, violent taking of an innocent human life.

So they spoke for those whose voices could not yet be heard, and who were being discarded as inconvenient and unwanted. They marched and voted, yes. But they also gave and counseled and helped and taught. They just wouldnt quit. Now, they finally won.

This is not, of course, a final victory. Overturning Roe only returns the question of abortion to the democratic process, and now even as some states restrict it others are funding it. But ending Roe breaks the legal siege that had trapped the pro-life cause, subjecting every restriction on abortion to the caprice of the federal judiciary.

Pro-lifers should rejoice and be rejuvenated by the end of Roe. This is an opportunity not only to restrict and even ban elective abortion in many states, but also to develop affirmatively pro-life and pro-family policies. There are pro-lifer scholars, such as my Ethics and Public Policy Center colleague Patrick Brown, who have been preparing for this, and their suggestions should be given consideration.

There will, of course, be disagreements about the best way to do this, and it is possible that one size will not fit all. What works for Utah might not work as well in Alabama. But the pro-lifers will be there, pushing year after year, in every state, to protect human life in law and provide help when children and families need it.

The battle against Roe is over, but the war for a pro-life American has just begun, as pro-abortion state legislatures are embracing abortion more than ever. Although pro-lifers in those states will have a harder task before them, they can take courage from knowing that victory is possible. The decades-long struggle to overturn Roe proves the pro-life movement will endure, and that it can win. And they will keep fighting, even if it takes generations.

The Dobbs decision is a victory, above all, for the humans in utero whose lives may now be protected in laws. And it is due to all of those who labored in the pro-life movement without knowing if this day would ever come.

This win is for the volunteer receptionist at the crisis pregnancy center. For the doctor spending Saturday mornings providing free ultrasounds and exams. For the grandmother quietly praying the rosary outside of an abortion clinic.

Its for the college students who memorialized Roe on their campuses with fields of crosses despite insults and vandalism. For those running baby bottle drives for ministries providing support and resources to pregnant women. For the activists who worked to elect pro-life leaders locally and nationally, and the voters who voted for life, even as everyone said their vote never mattered.

For all of these and more, your labor has not been in vain. Lives were saved, a pro-life culture was nourished, and politicians and judges finally corrected one of this nations greatest evils.

There is more to do, but for now, thank you.

Nathanael Blake is a senior contributor to The Federalist and a postdoctoral fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.

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Dear Prolifers: Your Labor Was Not In Vain - The Federalist

A little over a week ago, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) authorized the first round of Pfizer and Moderna Covid-19 shots for infants as young as 6 months old. The decision came following a unanimous agreement among members of the FDAs advisory panel, who recommended the jabs for children under the age of five.

Together, with science leading the charge, we have takenanother important stepforwardin our nations fight against COVID-19, said CDC Director Rochelle Walensky in a statement on the matter. We know millions of parents and caregivers are eager to get their young children vaccinated, and with todays decision, they can.

Walensky would later go on to falsely claim during a Thursday press conference that Covid-19 has been one of the top five causes of death for children since the beginning of its outbreak, making her the third CDC official this month to make this assertion.

In greenlighting the use of Covid jabs for infants, the CDC and FDA also officially made the United States the first country in the world to do so. U.S. President Joe Biden took to Twitter to celebrate the decision, saying that For the first time in our fight against this pandemic, nearly every American can now have access to life-saving vaccines.

Similar sentiments were also echoed by White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain, who repeatedly emphasized how America would be the first country on earth to give mRNA vaccines to its youngest children.

As has long been established, children are the least at-risk age demographic with respect to Covid-19. As of June 2, 2022, for instance, 0-to 17-year-olds comprised approximately 0.1 percent of the total Covid-related deaths in the United States. Recent studies conducted in Sweden and Germany have also documented similar trends, with both analyses finding Covid fatalities among healthy children in each European country to be nearly nonexistent.

In addition to children not being super-spreaders of the virus, research shows the majority of American children have already recovered from Covid and therefore possess immunity to reinfection. According to the CDCs own data, approximately 75 percent of children in the United States have recovered from Covid. Numerous scientific studies have shown individuals previously infected with the virus possess robust natural immunity.

In light of such minimal risk to children and that the jabs dont stop individuals from getting or spreading the virus, medical professionals have begun to raise concerns about the U.S. governments push to vaccinate infants against Covid, given the risk of harmful side effects balanced against the potential benefits. While speaking with radio host Dan Bongino on Fox News, renowned cardiologist Dr. Peter McCullough expressed dismay at the FDAs decision and noted the effects of the virus are characteristically a mild syndrome in children when compared to the elderly.

We know even if [the vaccines are] used in kids, there wont be any differences in rates of Covid-19 serious outcomes, he said, referencing two studies on the subject. Theres no reductions in hospitalizations and deaths in the randomized trials. And, Dan, we have no assurances that these are safe over the long term.

Dr. Marty Makary, a surgeon and public policy researcher at Johns Hopkins University, also voiced concerns about the FDA and CDCs actions and criticized the data the health agencies cited as justification for their position.

There was NO STATISTICAL SIGNIFICANCE in the vaccine study cited by FDA &CDC to recommend the vax in babies through kids<5, Makary said in a tweet. Any respected medical journal would normally reject this study for publication. How does the CDC so vigorously recommend this with such strong language?

Makary later expanded upon his assessment in a recent Fox News op-ed, saying the studies cited by the federal government were too small to achieve statistical significance when evaluating efficacy against mild or severe COVID-19 infection.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis a recent press conference also highlighted the medical concerns about giving healthy babies Covid shots.

We are not gonna have any [state] programs where were trying to jab 6-month-old babies with mRNA. Thats just the reality, he said, while referencing several data points on the subject. The White House is bragging that were the only country that is trying to do mRNA shots for infants Theres nothing wrong with being the lone ranger if youre right, but the other countries in Europe that are going a different direction, similar to the direction Floridas gone, they have been right on Covid way more than [Dr. Anthony] Fauci and his crew have been throughout this whole thing.

Germany and France, along with Denmark, Finland, Sweden, and Norway, have all restricted the distribution of the Moderna Covid shots for individuals under the age of 30, all citing the documented risk of heart inflammation among young people as justification. Florida has also taken similar actions, with the states Department of Health becoming the first in the nation to recommend against the use of Covid shots for children back in March.

The willingness of DeSantis to listen to medical professionals who courageously raise questions about the CDC and FDAs decision-making process is a much-needed breath of fresh air. For too long, Americas health bureaucracy has operated with little oversight, with agencies like the CDC and FDA apparently functioning as rubber stamps for Big Pharma rather than legitimate scientific institutions.

While the decision to vaccinate ones child is an individual choice for parents, the blanket authorization from the CDC and FDA to jab infants against scientific evidence accepted by many scientists and peer nations deserves far greater scrutiny and investigation. Doing so, however, would mean acting in the best interests of their voters and the public, something Republicans frequently fail to do.

Shawn Fleetwood is an intern at The Federalist and a graduate of the University of Mary Washington. He also serves as a state content writer for Convention of States Action and his work has been featured in numerous outlets, including RealClearPolitics, RealClearHealth, and Conservative Review. Follow him on Twitter @ShawnFleetwood

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Why Aren't More Republicans Noting Risks Of Infant Covid Shots? - The Federalist

President Biden really does not want the public to know about his federal takeover of election administration. Dozens of members of Congress have repeatedly asked for details, to no avail. Good government groups, members of the media, and private citizens have filed requests under the Freedom of Information Act. Not a single one has been responded to. All signs indicate a concerted effort to keep the public in the dark until at least after the November midterm elections. The lack of transparency and responsiveness is so bad that the Department of Justice and some of its agencies have been repeatedly sued for the information.

When President Biden ordered all 600 federal agencies to expand citizens opportunities to register to vote and to obtain information about, and participate in, the electoral process on March 7, 2021, Republican politicians, Constitutional scholars, and election integrity specialists began to worry exactly what was up his sleeve.

They had good reason. The 2020 election had suffered from widespread and coordinated efforts by Democrat activists and donors to run Get Out The Vote operations from inside state and local government election offices, predominantly in the Democrat-leaning areas of swing states. Independent researchers have shown the effect of this takeover of government election offices was extremely partisan and favored Democrats overwhelmingly.

At the time the order was issued, Democrats were also hoping to pass H.R. 1, a continuation of the effort to destabilize elections throughout the country via a federalized takeover of state election administrations.

Biden gave each agency 200 days to file their plans for approval by none other than Susan Rice, his hyperpartisan domestic policy advisor. Yet fully nine months after those plans were due, they are all being hidden from the public, even as evidence is emerging that the election operation is in full swing.

There are several major problems with Bidens secret plan, critics say. Its unethical to tie federal benefits to election activity. Its unconstitutional to have the federal government take authority that belongs to the states and which Congress has not granted. And, given that all 50 states have different laws and processes governing election administration, its a recipe for chaos, confusion, and fraud at a time when election security concerns are particularly fraught.

Mobilizing voters is always a political act. Choosing which groups to target for Get Out The Vote efforts is one of the most important activities done by political campaigns. Federal agencies that interact with the public by doling out benefits can easily pressure recipients to vote for particular candidates and positions. Congress passed the Hatch Act in 1939, which bans bureaucrats and bureaucracies from being involved in election activities after Democrats used Works Progress Administration programs and personnel for partisan political advantage.

Executive Order 14019 ignores that the Constitution does not give the executive branch authority over elections. That power is reserved for the states, with a smaller role for Congress. With H.R. 1 and other Democrat Party efforts to grab more control over elections have thus far failed, Congress hasnt authorized such an expansion.

As with previous efforts to destabilize elections, the chaos and confusion that would occur are part of the plan. The Executive Order copied much of a white paper put out by left-wing dark money group Demos, which advocates for left-wing changes to the country and which brags on its website that it moves bold progressive ideas from cutting-edge concept to practical reality. Not coincidentally, Biden put former Demos President K. Sabeel Rahman and former Demos Legal Strategies Director Chiraag Bains in key White House posts to oversee election-related initiatives.

Rahman serves as senior counsel at the White House office that oversees regulatory changes, meaning he approves every federal agencys regulations and provides legal review of executive orders before theyre released. If you were looking to rush out constitutionally and ethically questionable orders, this post would be key to fill. Bains had been Demos director of legal strategies, helping write the paper that was turned into an executive order. He reports directly to Susan Rice, the hyperpartisan head of the Domestic Policy Council.

Rice has served in political positions in Democrat White Houses and the scandal-ridden Brookings Institution. She played a role in the spying-on-Trump scandal, blatantly lying about the same, lying about the Benghazi terrorist attack, and lying about Bowe Bergdahls military record.

Rice is described as President Obamas right-hand woman, and its been said she was like a sister to the former president. She was his National Security Advisor at the same time Hunter Biden was hitching rides on official White House aircraft to other countries for meetings with oligarchs and corrupt government officials. She spread conspiracy theories about the law enforcement officers in Portland during the violent BLM riots that besieged the city. Most worrisome, she was briefed on the Clinton campaigns Russia collusion hoax, which was used to destabilize the 2020 election and question its illegitimacy.

Conservatives may be in the dark, but left-wing activist groups are fully involved in the plot. The left-wing dark money group Demos put out press releases immediately after the executive order was issued, saying it would be happy to work with federal agencies on the project.

And then the group admitted publicly that it organized agency-based working groups and met with the staff in these agencies to provide technical expertise as they developed their initial voter registration plans, to ensure those plans reflect the knowledge and priorities of various agency stakeholders. It also admits it developed research and resources to assist and advance agency efforts to implement robust voter registration opportunities, including a slide deck explainer of the agencies potential for impact, best practices for conducting voter registration at federal agencies, and recommendations for modernizing and improving the accessibility of Vote.gov.

All of that information should be available to oversight authorities in Congress and the American taxpayers paying for its implementation, not just the left-wing groups that produced it. Yet as of this publication date, none of it has been shared.

Bidens plan raises serious ethical, legal, and constitutional concerns, wrote Rep. Ted Budd, R-N.C., along with three dozen Republican members of Congress on January 19, in a letter to the head of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), demanding more information by February 28 about the secret plot. It went unanswered.

The top Republican members of nine House committees and subcommittees likewise demanded information from Rice and the head of OMB in a letter they sent on March 29. They noted that election activity goes well beyond the scope of each agencys authorizing statute and mission.

One of the concerns shared by the members was that Biden was directing agencies to work with third-party organizations. Nobody knows which third-party organizations have been approved by Rice for her political efforts, nor which are being used. They also asked how much money is being spent on the effort, which statutory authorities justify the election activities, and what steps are being taken to avoid Hatch Act violations. They received no response.

The Foundation for Government Accountability filed a lawsuit on April 20th to compel the Department of Justice to respond to the FOIA request for information. And the American Accountability Foundation (AAF) filed suit on June 16 to compel Justice to comply. Those suits are ongoing.

While the White House and agencies are steadfastly refusing to share details about how theyre complying with the executive order, who they met with to develop their plans, or how theyre justifying their involvement in something Congress has not authorized them to participate in, some details are trickling out. Here are a few examples of the widespread and coordinated effort by Bidens political appointees to meddle in the state administration of elections.

The tactics being used by these agencies were almost certainly contained in the plans submitted to Rice that have been withheld from investigators and overseers who had hoped to have some transparency about what the plans were. Frequently, the agencies claim the tactics are in response to the executive order, yet information about how they were developed has been withheld from the public for much of the year.

It is unclear why Biden and his political appointees are being so secretive about the work that went into their plan to engage in a federal takeover of election administration.

Whatever the case, Americans have a right to know whether these bureaucracies that are meddling in elections have experts in for each states election laws, what type of training is going on to ensure that state laws are being followed, whether they are allowing inspections and oversight to ensure no illegal activity, how they are determining whether a third-party group is genuinely non-partisan, whether they are allowing state investigators to approve money, and how much is being spent on this federal takeover of elections.

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Yes, Biden Is Hiding His Plan To Rig The 2022 Midterm Elections - The Federalist

Its become painfully obvious over the past year that the Justice Department under Attorney General Merrick Garland has been weaponized and politicized to the point that it represents an active threat to the rule of law and the separation of powers. Its not too much to say that Garlands DOJ has become a threat to the republic.

Just take this past week. On Thursday, following an historic 6-3U.S. Supreme Court rulingthat struck down a New York law for violating state residents Second Amendment rights, a DOJ spokeswoman released a statement saying we respectfully disagree with the ruling.

The ruling is of coursea great victory for the Constitutionand a long-overdue vindication of New Yorkers Second Amendment rights. The law in question had been on the books for more than a century, and made it nearly impossible for ordinary people to obtain a concealed-carry license, The unconstitutional law forced New Yorkers to prove to a municipal bureaucrat that they needed a gun for self-defense. In practice, this made it almost impossible for law-abiding citizens in New York to exercise their constitutional right to bear arms.

But neither the law in question nor the Supreme Courts decision implicates federal gun laws in any way. There is no reason for the DOJ to weigh in on the matter or express any opinion whatsoever on the ruling. Only an utterly politicized Justice Department hoping to undermine the Supreme Courts constitutional authority and sow the seeds of nullification would issue such a statement.

But thats not nearly the worst thing Garlands DOJ did this week. In the pre-dawn hours of Wednesday morning, more than a dozen federal investigatorsraided the home of Jeffrey Clark, a former Justice Department official with the Trump administration. Why? Because Clark had the temerity to investigate claims of voter fraud during the 2020 election.

That made Clark a target for the House Democrats Jan. 6 committee, whose Soviet-style show trial spent a good deal of time Wednesday implying that Clark, who once oversaw 1,400 lawyers and two divisions at DOJ, is traitor who tried to overturn the results of the election.

This should come as no surprise, since the entireraison dtreof the Jan. 6 committee is to smear anyone who questioned the outcome of the election or raised concerns about its unprecedented irregularities as a coup-plotter responsible for the Jan. 6 insurrection. In fact, Clarks only crime is that in a sea of attorneys who didnt want to lift a finger to investigate the election, he looked for options and fought to uncover the truth.

Of course, hes not the only one the DOJ targeted this week. The same day Clarks house was raided, FBI agentsraided the home of Michael McDonald, Nevadas top GOP official.

His crime, according to the Justice Department and the Jan. 6 committee, was signing a document with five other Nevada Republican Party electors after the 2020 election signaling their support for Trump. Among the signatories of the purely symbolic document was state GOP secretary James DeGraffenreid, whom FBI agents tried but failed to find on Wednesday.

These are just a few of the people against whom the Jan. 6 committee has unleashed Garlands Justice Department. So far, the committee hassubpoenaed more than 100 lawmakers, local officials like McDonald and DeGraffenreid, internet and communications companies, Trump White House officials, and others. Make no mistake: the committee is using the DOJ as a weapon against its political enemies, and Garland is allowing it to happen.

We should have seen this coming. From the outset of his tenure, Garland has betrayed a willingness to use the DOJ as a partisan weapon. There was theraid on Project Veritas founder James OKeefes homelast November, and preceding thatmonths of illegal spyingon his organization.

Even worse, in some ways, was theunprecedented memoin October designed to threaten and silence parents whose only crime was to speak out about the teaching of critical race theory in schools. Garland smeared them as domestic terrorists and directed the Department of Justice and the FBI to launch a series of additional efforts in the coming days designed to address the rise in criminal conduct directed toward school personnel.

But this rise in criminal conduct was pure fiction. Garland got it from a letter sent to President Joe Biden by the National School Boards Association, which made vague and unsubstantiated claims about threats and acts of violence against school board members from parents opposed to critical race theory. Less than a week after the letter was sent, Garlands memo appeared. It was a transparent ploy to get the federal government to intimidate parents into silence and suppress their First Amendment rights, which Garland was happy to do.

At every turn, Garland has shown himself hostile to the Bill of Rights and to law-abiding Americans who exercise those rights, and beholden to Democrat partisans and left-wing advocacy groups. He has brazenly allowed political influence to direct the Justice Departments considerable powers.

If you think Garlands DOJ isnt a threat to the republic, then you need to start paying attention, because the weaponization of federal law enforcement under Biden and Garland is almost certainly going to get much worse.

John Daniel Davidson is a senior editor at The Federalist. His writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the Claremont Review of Books, The New York Post, and elsewhere. Follow him on Twitter, @johnddavidson.

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Merrick Garland's DOJ Is A Threat To The Republic - The Federalist

The Supreme Court has overturned its 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling and now the issue of abortion will be part of our national debate as much as ever. Here are some of the many reasons the usual arguments in favor of abortion are wrong.

Pro-Abortion Claim: The government should stay out of peoples private lives. This is a womans choice, not anyone elses, and a womens rights issue.

Why Its Wrong: Laws often restrict an individuals rights, including the right to hurt another person or infringe upon anothers rights. In taking the life of an unborn child, a woman is taking away the most basic of all rights.

An unborn child is not part of a womans body, but a separate, individual human being with his or her own rights. A child is not the mothers property, just as parents are legal guardians of children but not the childrens owners and are not allowed to abuse their children.

Pro-Abortion Claim: When most abortions take place, in early pregnancy, a fertilized egg is just a mass of cells, not a human being. It doesnt feel pain.

Why Its Wrong: A new life begins at conception and should not be destroyed by human interference.

First, one-third of abortions take place after nine weeks of pregnancy. Yet from the moment of conception, the zygote has its own unique DNA structure, is alive and growing, and is equipped to become a mature human being.

Six weeks after conception, the unborn childs heartbeat is detectable but began beating before then. At week three, neural development begins. At week four, the eye, ear, and respiratory systems begin to form. At week six, the mouth and lips are present. At week seven,the embryo looks like a baby.

The beginning of life could be defined by many different points of development fertilization (the fusion of the nuclei of the sperm and egg cell), implantation, the first movement, heartbeat, or brain waves, consciousness, or birth. Any point you choose could be just a days difference between life and death for an unborn child.

Drawing the line at the point of viability is also problematic that point will continue to get earlier in the pregnancy as medical advances create better means of keeping the unborn alive outside the womb; indeed, viability is now weeks earlier than it was when Roe was decided.

Yet the unborn child did not become a person because he could survive due to modern science. Newborns are not technically viable either, as they cannot survive on their own. By this logic, we should consider it acceptable to kill newborns.

Nor does the absence of pain at early stages make it moral to kill the unborn child, just as it would not with an adult. Abortion can involve sucking a baby out of the uterus (or as Planned Parenthood putsit, the suction machine is turned on and the uterus is gently emptied), causing a stillbirth by injecting a salt solution into the uterus, and other horrors.

Pro-Abortion Claim: Abortion cant be a crime against nature if fertilized eggs are spontaneously miscarried in nature.

Why Its Wrong: The occurrence of an event in nature does not justify deliberately mimicking that event. The elderly die of natural causes, but that doesnt make it right to kill them. And many miscarriages are associated with extra or missing chromosomes.

Pro-Abortion Claim: Birth control isnt 100 percent effective. When it fails, women have been responsible and need abortion as another method to avoid having a child.

Why Its Wrong: Seven percent of women report having sex without using some form of birth prevention in the past three months, not including 8 percent who have such sex but are seeking pregnancy or already pregnant. Many people who use birth control do not do so effectively.

The pregnancy prevention rate of birth-control pills used consistently and correctly is 99 percent. For that small portion who correctly used birth control but it did not prevent conception, they have to accept the risks of sexual activity, which include a child. Contraception is free with most health insurance plans and easily available.

Pro-Abortion Claim: In the case of rape or incest, when a woman was an innocent victim of an involuntary act, she should not be forced to carry a child. She would be forced to suffer even more.

Why Its Wrong: One percent of women say they want an abortion because they were raped, and less than 0.5 percent say they are pregnant as a result of incest. Even in such very rare cases, an unborn child should not be killed because of another persons evil deed. The pregnant woman needs love and support, not more trauma.

An estimated 800,000 abortions take place in the United States each year. Common reasons given for seeking an abortion are that a child would disrupt the mothers education (38 percent), interfere with job or career (38 percent), or be unaffordable (73 percent). About half of respondents said they didnt want to be a single mom or were having relationship problems.

About a third said they didnt want any more kids; 25 percent said they didnt want people to know they had sex or got pregnant; 32 percent said they werent ready for a child; and 22 percent didnt feel mature enough to raise children. More than half of those seeking abortion have had at least one previous birth.

Pro-Abortion Claim: Minors are too young for the responsibilities of parenthood.

Why Its Wrong: About 3 percent of females who get abortions are younger than 18, and 8 percent are 18 to 19 years old. Parents of minors should teach their children about the consequences of sex, the benefits of abstinence, and the limitations of contraception, among other things: Sex can lead to pregnancy and if it does the unborn child should not be killed.

Accepting truths that you dont like is part of maturity, and sex should be reserved for mature people ready to care for a child.

Pro-Abortion Claim: If abortion were made legal only in cases of rape or incest, women would lie.

Why Its Wrong: The court system could settle the truth of their claims and more reporting of rape and incest would help bring perpetrators to justice.

Pro-Abortion Claim: Abortion is safer than continuing a pregnancy to term.

Why Its Wrong: Even if abortion is safer than pregnancy, that doesnt make it right. But with modern medicine, the death risks for both abortion and pregnancy are very low.

Pro-Abortion Claim: It would be better for abnormal fetuses to be aborted than to live with poor health or a disability.

Why Its Wrong: In the case of the small minority of fetuses with a potentially life-threatening abnormality, a natural death may result, but, if not, the child should be given the benefit of the doubt, not be killed. Its wrong to kill disabled people for their disabilities.

Pro-Abortion Claim: If abortion were outlawed, women would just get riskier, dangerous abortions.

Why Its Wrong: People break other laws with repercussions too, but we dont avoid that outcome by not making those laws. Outlawing abortion would save millions of unborn babies lives.

It is difficult to know the number of abortions resulting in death before abortion was legalized, because many illegal abortions went unreported. Education is the best alternative, so women know the risks of trying to get an abortion illegally, how to effectively use birth control, and how they can receive assistance as mothers.

Pro-Abortion Claim: The right to an abortion has led to a more prosperous society as women have continued in their careers and low-income couples have not been burdened with an additional expense. Abortion has reduced the child abuse and crime that arise from unwanted children.

Why Its Wrong: Abortion has been bad for our society, as it devalues human life and the fulfillment that only family and children, not a job, can provide. If women want to put careers first or cant afford children, they should practice abstinence or correctly use birth control and make plans for accepting the consequences if that fails.

If women are poor and do have children, the government provides assistance. Adoption is also a better option than killing an unborn child. Many loving, screened, financially stable parents are waiting to adopt babies.

As for whether studies prove that abortion has reduced crime or abuse, this is a dangerous line of argument. Should we abort babies of certain groups more likely to be criminals?

Pro-Abortion Claim: A woman has a right to privacy, as recognized by the Supreme Court, and to make her own decisions about her life and happiness.

Why Its Wrong: Roe v. Wade was so strongly resisted because it was a deeply flawed decision.

The legal arguments are lengthy, but the short answer is that the constitutional right to liberty simply does not grant the right to kill another person, and an unborn child is a person.

Abortion is a deeply divisive issue, and about half of Americans consider themselves pro-life and half call themselves pro-choice. Overturning Roe will not end abortion rights but return the issue to the states, allowing for a more democratic process the debate will continue, but the truth remains the same.

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How To Win The Debate On Abortion In 12 Clear Counterpoints - The Federalist

During his tenure on the Supreme Court, Justice Clarence Thomas has questioned the constitutional basis with respect to the growth of the administrative state, whereby a federal agency amasses legislative, executive, and judicial de facto powers. He has raised concerns that this development is contrary to the Founders intentional design in the Constitution to separate the powers of those three branches, and this amassing of power is a threat to our liberty.

After three decades of service on the court, few know Thomas beyond his contentious confirmation and the surrounding media firestorm. The following interview is an excerpt from Created Equal: Clarence Thomas in His Own Words, where Thomas unpacks his views on the administrative state and much more.

Michael Pack: Let me ask you about another set of issues that have come up. Youve been a leader in the administrative state cases. What is at stake there? It seems to be a question of liberty again.

Clarence Thomas: The very people who say they dont want the government in their lives want this sort of expansive administrative state, which is in their lives, and then every aspect of their lives. And a lot of it comes at the expense of the very structure of the Constitution that is intended to prevent the government from coming in. The separation of powers, the enumerated powers, federalism. The whole point was to keep the government in this box. Justice Scalia and I often talked about that, that the structure was the main way to protect your liberty. The danger in the administrative state is seeing those powers all coalesce again in various agencies. If you think about your life today, theres very little major legislation that comes from the legislature. The legislation comes in the form of regulations from agencies. They tend to have all three powers. They have the executive power, the enforcement power, they have administrative judges to adjudicate, so they have all three. And the question for us is, where do they fit in the constitutional structure?

When a private right is somehow intruded upon by one of these agencies, what is the role of the federal courts? If we simply defer to the agencies, which is what we do now, in many cases, arent we doing precisely what happened when it came to the royal courts of the pre-Revolutionary era? How does that make us any different? Youve got this creation that sits over here outside the Constitution, or beyond the Constitution. How does it fit within our constitutional structure? Hows it limited and what is the risk that it will actually vitiate the constitutional protections that we have?

We have a form of government where weve limited the national government in what it can do. Weve separated the powers. Youve got enumerated powers. One of the ways that weve limited the national government is to divide the power. You said, Heres the legislative power, heres the judicial power, heres the executive power. That structure was very important to keeping the national government at bay. You also had federalism, in other words, that the states had most of the authority, and certainly the local authority, beyond what was in the Constitution and the rest remained with the individuals.

MP: I think it was James Madison who said that if you combine the executive, legislative, and judicial in one person, or branch, its the very definition of tyranny.

CT: Thats wonderful rhetoric, and it plays out that way when people look at agencies, and they think, Of course I have no way to defend myself against an agency. And what we have simply been trying to do is to raise the question of what are the limits of that. There are different views about it. But at least when you look back at guys like [Frank] Goodnow or Woodrow Wilson or the Progressives at the close of the nineteenth century and in the early twentieth century, at least you have the advantage of them being candid. To some extent, they meant progressto progress beyond the Constitution. And how that is consistent with the Constitution is something I think is worth discussing.

MP: They were clear, too, that they believed in experts and agencies rather than in traditional legislating by elected members of Congress.

CT: I think to some extent they thought that the quaint ideas that the Framers had were anachronistic, at best, and that you could have someone who understood how a government should operate or how a policy should operate. Once you lose the notion of self-governing, that of self-governance, then where are we? And I think the stark choices are between government by consent and being ruled. And perhaps some people think that we can have a little of both. But good luck! I think the tendency throughout history is that once people get authority to rule, they tend to rule more, not less.

MP: When people use the expression, the administrative state, what does that mean?

CT: I think thats their way of saying were being governed by administrative agencies. And its like affirmative action, who knows? You get a sense of what theyre talking about, but I think we have to be more precise in defining the relationship between, say, a specific agency and the constitutional protections. I think most people dont follow administrative cases and they dont think about the role of these financial boards or the environmental boards. People like a particular policy. Then theyll argue about the policy and not think about how you got to that policy. And I think how you got there, and by what authority, is the more important question for us, not the policy itself.

MP: The phrase the administrative state, itself, implies that each of these little agencies has some particular role, but when you accumulate all of them together, it looks like almost a fourth branch of government.

CT: I dont know which agencies are little anymore. I ran EEOC and it was small. But look at the reach and the effect that you could have. I ran that little Office of Civil Rights at the Department of Education, look at the reach and the things that it could affect. So the reach is nationwide.

Mark Paoletta and Michael Pack are co-editors of the forthcoming book "Created Equal: Clarence Thomas in His Own Words," taken from more than 25 hours of interviews with Justice Thomas conducted for the documentary of the same name. Pack produced and directed that film as well as over 15 other nationally broadcast documentaries. Paoletta is an attorney and worked on Justice Thomas confirmation.

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Clarence Thomas: Expanding The Administrative State Comes At The Expense Of The Constitution - The Federalist

Left-wing violence predictably erupted over the weekend after the Supreme Court ruled 5-3-1 on Friday to overturn Roe v. Wade. While pro-life advocates celebrated at the Supreme Court building, the weekend opened with a series of attacks, protests, and arson from pro-abortion radicals. Abortionists attacked state capitol buildings, burned pro-life pregnancy clinics, and even stopped freeway traffic, accosting cars that kept driving with sticks all on the heels of weeks of attacks on pro-life pregnancy clinics, intimidation campaigns outside justices houses, and even an assassination attempt on Justice Brett Kavanaughs life.

The decision, though it eliminates Roes concocted right to abortion, does not make abortion illegal as the abortionist narrative spins. However, its enabled state legislators to outlaw abortion if they see fit. Any laws restricting abortion on the books are now enforceable, and Utah, Alabama, South Dakota, Arkansas, Louisiana, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Kentucky outlawed abortion the day of the decision. Six other states are due to follow with standing abortion bans that have a month to go into effect.

Losing the bulwark of control theyve had since 1973 is proving a stroke too far for the baby-killing movement, and it didnt take long for abortionists to make the jump to anarchists. The night of the decision, thousands of abortion supporters attempted to breach the Arizona capitol building, beating the doors and windows. The police deployed tear gas into the crowd and no one breached the building, AZ Central reported. Four were arrested on Saturday but released on Sunday.

While the Department of Homeland Security highlighted concerns over potential targeting of state and federal officials, according to a memo obtained by NBC News, pro-abortion radicals are using a map created by two University of Georgia professors to target pro-life pregnancy clinics. The Crisis Pregnancy Center Map gives the very street address of pro-life pregnancy clinics throughout the country, Fox News reported. An anarchist group in Washington state posted a link to the map, encouraging viewers to find your nearest fake abortion clinic on the Crisis Pregnancy Map.

In Longmont, Colo., a Christian pregnancy clinic was torched on Saturday morning. Officers arrived on scene around 3:20 a.m. to flames and graffiti messages. If abortions arent safe neither are you, one message threatened, with an anarchy symbol next to it.

Early Saturday morning in Lynchburg, Va., a pro-life pregnancy center was vandalized and its windows smashed. Four people were visible damaging the building on the security camera.

Virginia Gov. Glenn Younkin condemned the crime in a tweet Saturday evening, saying, There is no room for this in Virginia, breaking the law is unacceptable. This is not how we find common ground. Virginia State Police stands ready to support local law enforcement as they investigate.

In Portland, Ore., on Saturday, the night after the ruling, a black-garbed crowd of 100 or more set out on the street at 10 p.m., vandalizing and destroying what lay in their path. A flier announcing the march read, If abortions arent safe then you arent either, OregonLive reported. A pregnancy clinic was vandalized and several businesses had their windows smashed in until the demonstrations subsided around 10:45 p.m.

The night of the decision in downtown Los Angeles, a pro-abortion supporter reportedly threw a flame thrower at a police officer during a protest. The officer, one of four to be injured that night, was treated for burns, and his assailant is being charged with attempted murder.

Also in Los Angeles, a group of pro-abortion demonstrators shut down the highway on Friday, stopping cars and beating those that didnt stop with sticks.

In Washington D.C., protesters burned the American flag.

Despite growing violence, President Bidens Department of Justice has shown little interest in prosecuting the perpetrators.

Beth Whitehead is an intern at The Federalist and a journalism major at Patrick Henry College where she fondly excuses the excess amount of coffee she drinks as an occupational hazard.

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Pro-Aborts Spread Arson, Vandalism, And Insurrection After Dobbs - The Federalist

It didnt take long after the shooting in Uvalde, Texas for Americas neo-Marxist left to reignite their full-fledged assault on the Second Amendment.

Before the victims families could even lay their loved ones to rest, calls were being made by some of the countrys most notable Democrats to bar and confiscate certain types of firearms from the American public. Look no further than President Joe Biden, who, in addition to advocating for a ban on rifles like the AR-15, has repeatedly stated that the constitutional rights of Americans are not absolute.

They said a .22-caliber bullet will lodge in the lung, and we can probably get it out may be able to get it and save the life. A 9mm bullet blows the lung out of the body, he said last month. So, the idea of these high-caliber weapons is, uh, theres simply no rational basis for it in terms of self-protection, hunting Remember, the Constitution was never absolute.

Massachusetts Democrat Sen. Ed Markey took his remarks a step further, arguing that his party should pack the Supreme Court in order to ensure that when [Democrats] put gun safety laws on the books they are not overrid[den].

Despite the glaringly obvious intentions to disarm the American citizenry through any means necessary, Senate Republican leadership was more than happy to jump in bed with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and his merry band of dystopian Democrats to negotiate a compromise on gun control legislation. Released on Tuesday, the bill provides increased funding to state mental health resources, as well as funding for states to implement red flag laws.

As previously noted by Federalist Senior Editor David Harsanyi, red flag laws are ripe for abuse, with authorities in states like California and Maryland able to confiscate weapons merely on the strength of an uncorroborated allegation by family members, coworkers, law enforcement officers, or others without any kind of genuine due process.

Senate Republicans have since faced well-deserved backlash from conservative voters since the frameworks release, with Texas Sen. John Cornynwho spearheaded the negotiations with Democratsgetting booed off the stage at the Texas GOP convention on Friday. In an attack on his own base, Cornyn proceeded to retweet a journalist that quoted the Texas senator as having referred to the upset crowd (many of whom likely voted for him in 2020) as a mob.

Youd think that with recent special election victories and polls indicating a red tsunami in the midterm elections, Republicans would be politically savvy enough to outright reject Democrats assault on Americans constitutional liberties. Such commonsense thinking, however, has always been absent from GOP leadership, who have routinely caved to the left on nearly every major policy issue and worked to stab their base in the back.

Take, for instance, the subject of immigration. In March of last year, when illegal immigration along the U.S. southern border was beginning to skyrocket, a group of congressional Republicans led by South Carolina Sen. Lindsay Graham and Florida Rep. Maria Salazar proposed legislation that wouldve provided a pathway to citizenship for illegal aliens living in the country. As reported by Breitbart News, the plan would have provided green cards to illegal aliens enrolled and eligible for former President Obamas Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program and gives work visas to the roughly 11 to 22 million illegal aliens in the U.S.

Specifically, the amnesty dubbed the Dignity Proposal would give legal resident status to anywhere from 1.5 to 3.5 million illegal aliens who are enrolled and eligible for DACA. Eventually, these illegal aliens can apply for green cards and obtain American citizenship, the Breitbart report reads.

Immigration is hardly the only issue where Republicans have ceded ground to Democrats. In recent years, the GOP has been complicit in helping Democrats raise the debt ceiling, fund the moronic Covid-19 lockdowns, and confirm Bidens radical, left-wing judicial nominees to the federal bench at a rate not seen since the presidency of Ronald Reagan.

Rather than put up a fight for their voters, many congressional Republicans have instead fallen in line with Democrats, thus helping the latter advance their neo-Marxist agenda and bid to exert greater control over the American populace.

Whether its our politics or our culture, many conservatives often wonder how America couldve reached the point where multi-trillion spending packages and choosing your sex have become normalized. What ever happened to that shining city on the hill that Reagan talked about? How has the left taken so much ground in such a short period of time?

The simple fact is that when only one side is playing to advance their values and ideology using the current framework, society tends to devolve pretty quickly. As a result of weak-kneed Republicans who have refused to fight for the ideals that have defined our country for generations, America has declined into the vapid and increasingly Godless state we find her in today.

Unlike President Bill Clinton, who declared that the era of big government is over after his party experienced tremendous losses in the 1994 midterms, dont expect todays Democrat Party to recant or move to the center on any major political or cultural issue when they get annihilated at the ballot box this November. For the left, election losses are seen as mere temporary setbacks. Democrats know that at the end of the day, the likelihood that Republicans will utilize any congressional majorities to advance or promote a pro-freedom agenda and reverse actions taken by their party is slim to none.

If conservatives wish to reverse this trend, it is incumbent upon voters to either consistently pressure elected Republicans into advancing our principles or throw them out of office if they dont. Any form of complacency will only continue this vicious cycle, wherein Democrats slowly destroy the country while Republicans just sit and watch.

Shawn Fleetwood is an intern at The Federalist and a graduate of the University of Mary Washington. He also serves as a state content writer for Convention of States Action and his work has been featured in numerous outlets, including RealClearPolitics, RealClearHealth, and Conservative Review. Follow him on Twitter @ShawnFleetwood

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America Won't Survive If Only The Left Is Playing To Win - The Federalist

WASHINGTON, D.C. This is not normal.

That was a phrase bandied about with some frequency during the Donald Trump years. You can still see it from time to time on the bumpers of cars, next to the fading Im With Her sticker.

The left has weaponized the word normal to the point of farce. A secure border, fair trade, and fair defense deals were abnormal, we were told. Meanwhile, the administration that campaigned for normalcy instead ushered inflation into our economy, kicked nicotine out of cigarettes, and invited transvestite strippers into elementary school classrooms.

It becomes difficult to sort reality when words lose their meaning, which is why its easy to miss just how insane the unsuccessful campaign against the Supreme Court truly was.

While sure, a sitting chief executive lashing out at any and all critics on social media is a real departure from the modern presidency, the campaign of judicial espionage, targeted terror attacks and planned street violence all either ignored or tacitly sanctioned by the leaders of the House, Senate and executive was so far outside of normalcy that we havent seen it since the eve of the Civil War. The problem is that in politics, words now mean so little we sometimes struggle to categorize how abnormal our situation is.

It began inside the Supreme Court a formal yet somehow collegial institution, where ideologically opposed justices clash on paper in an atmosphere of mutual respect and even friendship, and where ambitious clerks work tirelessly and professionally. For these very reasons, the courthas become the last major American institution that commands broad respect among the people. That gravitas was tarnished when a draft abortion decision by Justice Samuel Alito was leaked to Politico.

Despite the promise of an intensive investigation, we still dont know if the leaker was a justice, a clerk, or maybe even a clerk acting on behalf of a justice. But we do know this: The leak more than six weeks before the final decision went public was intended not simply to publicize the decision, but to alter it.

Worse yet, theres evidence this plan could have worked. Indeed, its amazing it didnt. Because while the Supreme Court of the United States has managed to maintain an honorable image (while even such vaunted and historically apolitical institutions as the U.S. military have become mired), that doesnt mean its immune to outside pressure on even the weightiest of cases.

Chief Justice John Roberts, for example, infamously reversed his opinion on the Affordable Care Act after an intense political and media pressure campaign. But while feelings ran high during the Obamacare debate, there was never any honest expectation of violence.

On a question as intrinsically violent as abortion, however? Well, thats another matter entirely.Left-wing street violence has been steadily building for years (all while This Isnt Normal bumper stickers flew off the shelves and onto leftist cars, mind you), including a convenientlyforgotten pipe bomb planted at the Republican National Committees headquarters on Jan 6. So to be clear: Left-wing violence following the leak wasnt just possible, it was virtually assured. The spy leaked it anyways or more than anyways, because of.

The violence that followed the leak wasnt minor. Instead, it was reminiscent of the backlash against civil rights. Its included 18 Christian crisis pregnancy centers firebombed or otherwise vandalized, written and recorded threats directed at volunteers, and the attempted assassination of a presumed anti-abortion justice in his own home.

In the days following the leak, the streets and neighborhood surrounding the Supreme Court were shut down by unruly mobs. Weeks later, police responded in force to a publicly planned attack that fought to blockade the entrances and exits to the court. While the building itself remains heavily guarded and deputies patrol outside justices homes the terrorist group Janes Revenge put up posters around D.C. expressly calling for a violent riot if the court dared to send abortion back to the states.

None of this violence happened in a political vacuum, either. From Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumerspromise on theSupreme Courts steps that justices have released the whirlwind and will pay the price, to Sen. Elizabeth Warrens hoarse and bug-eyed curbside tantrum, the top Democratic brass loudly cheered on the mobs.

Over weeks of attacks, President Joe Biden repeatedly declined to condemn the terrorism against Christians and his political opponents, instead sending his press secretary out to condemn all violence.

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi delayed a bill for weeks that further protected the justices and their families. That bill passed the Senate unanimously yet sat in the House, but at the White House,the former spokeswoman said, We certainly continue to encourage [peaceful protests] outside justices homes.

When asked why she delayed the bill the morning after the attempted assassination of Justice Brett Kavanaugh, the speaker said the justices werent under any immediate threat. She couldnt say the truth: that the pro-abortion campaign of violence and intimidation against the court was just heating up. It was just as the politicians of Northern Virginia couldnt adequately explain why they werent enforcing the law against protesting outside of judges homes.

To admit the truthmight be a step too far, even in an American political environment where words have been so thoroughly debased.

The professional left has long understood that if you debase words, you debase truth; and that very type of environment allows you to control truth: to decide what is riot and what is protest, what is mostly peaceful and what is violent, what is direct action and what is insurrection.

What is life, and what is choice.

What is normal, and what is not.

What is truth, and what is fiction.

Despite the howls, the lies and the violence, they failed; but it wont stop them. The Supreme Court persevered, and conservatives witnessed their most important victory since the defeat of the Soviet Union. We had to fight hard to get here, and we cant forget the hell they put us through to stop it.

The fight goes back to our people now, where it belongs. For America, that means the fight is just beginning.

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Never Forget How Vicious Was The Left's Anti-Court Campaign - The Federalist

A political tsunami is coming for Democrats. The resounding victory of Republican newcomer Mayra Flores in the special election for Texas 34th congressional district signals what most political pundits and election prognosticators already know: a red tidal wave will soon sweep away a Democrat Party in thrall to far-left radicals and progressive extremists.

However, as impressive as Flores seven-point victory was in the nations second-most heavily Hispanic congressional district a district which Joe Biden carried by four points the real impact will be felt in state legislatures.

What the red tsunami portends is not merely a coming Republican majority in Congress and state capitols, but a realignment that propels conservatives into power. All across the nation in one primary after another, conservative state legislative candidates are defeating milquetoast establishment and moderate candidates.

This is encouraging as it is in our home states where our freedoms and way of life will either be won or lost. The renewed focus on states from conservatives is a game-changing development. Indeed, the State Freedom Caucus Network was launched in December 2021 with this specific mission in mind: to create a bulwark outside Washington D.C. that will protect as many Americans as possible from both the neo-Marxist policies coming out of the modern Democrat Party and the fecklessness that is a hallmark of establishment elites in the Republican Party.

The strategy appears to be working.

For example, Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds supported a slew of conservative challengers against liberal Republican incumbents beholden to teachers unions and antagonistic toward school choice. Six establishment incumbents in the Iowa State House lost to pro-parent conservative challengers with all but one of Reynolds endorsed candidates defeating their entrenched opponents.

This stands in stark contrast to South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, a darling of the Washington elite, who conversely supported eleven moderate candidates. Incredibly, Noem even backed Democrats who recently switched parties against budding South Dakota Freedom Caucus members. Only four of her preferred legislators won their primaries.

For a sitting governor with a national profile, these results illustrate two realities: that Noem is fundamentally out of touch with her own electorate and that voters are backing candidates who will actually fight to preserve freedom.

In Georgia, members of the Georgia Freedom Caucus were targeted by establishment GOP forces seeking to rid themselves of meddlesome legislators with actual principles. David Ralston, the liberal Republican Speaker of the House, redrew district lines to punish conservative state legislators like Rep. Philip Singleton. While Singleton was forced to retire, Ralstons overall efforts largely backfired as voters propelled every other member of the Freedom Caucus to victory. They even tossed out Rep. Bonnie Rich, the loyal lieutenant who redrew district lines for Ralston to punish conservatives.

In South Carolina, thirteen out of the fourteen members of the South Carolina Freedom Caucus won their primaries while four establishment incumbents lost to freedom-minded conservative challengers. In Nevada, Freedom Caucus incumbents won all their races with only one that remains undecided.

North Dakota Gov. Doug Borgum spent over $1 million to back moderate or left-leaning Republican candidates. He suffered similar results as Noem with conservatives crushing their opponents in primaries across the state.

The undercurrents of the red wave are clear: voters are in full revolt against the cultural and economic progressivism that is ravaging families and threatening our ability to live free. Voters are equally tired of the Republicans who enable and empower radicalized Democrats to trample our rights with woke nonsense.

It is for this very moment that the State Freedom Caucus Network exists. The Network stands ready to support liberty-minded state lawmakers with the resources, policy knowledge, and procedural strategies they need to ensure the rights of their citizens are protected and the progressive policies crushing American households are dismantled.

Establishment Republicans push the oft-repeated talking points that only weak-kneed, or as they call them, moderate, GOP candidates are electable. This is, like most conventional wisdom, only conventional and not actually wise.

On the other hand, voters understand that the hour is late. Unchecked progressivism, which has fully captured Americas cultural and political institutions after a decades-long march, now threatens the very freedom that undergirds our republic. Conservative warriors are being summoned by citizens ready to fight for the things that they love.

The red conservative wave is indeed upon us and candidates who do not stand with the American people will be washed out to sea.

Andy Roth is the President of the State Freedom Caucus Network.

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The Red Wave Is Not Just Inevitable, It's Also Conservative - The Federalist

The United Statess education institutions were almost entirely formed for the major purposes of developing good citizens and, usually, faithful Christians. It is no secret that today most of Americas education institutions do the opposite. The result is an existential threat to the nation as its enemies work to destroy the most prosperous, most equal, and most free civilization in world history.

In a refreshingly positive, intellectually sound, and action-minded response to this national crisis, a group of top-notch scholars releases today a recommended curriculum blueprint for the K-12 study of American history and government. American Birthright is at once a redress of curricular grievances and a plan of action for the millions of American patriots who see the moral and intellectual injuries most American schools inflict on the rising generation and therefore the nation as a whole.

As the documents introduction notes, Too many Americans have emerged from our schools ignorant of Americas history, indifferent to liberty, filled with animus against their ancestors and their fellow Americans, and estranged from their country. This course of study seeks to address these major problems that result partly from a lack of accurate and patriotic American history instruction.

The document offers a set of academically robust guidelines for K-12 social studies curriculum that parents can ask their local and state school boards to adopt in the place of what now is largely anti-American curriculum standards. This is not just a K-12 curriculum outline, it is a bold American educational philosophy. The recommendations are a product of the Civics Alliance, coordinated by the apolitical and highly respected National Association of Scholars.

The alliance is a truly bipartisan coalition that includes highly respected scholars such as Glenn Loury of Brown University; Sandra Stotsky of the University of Arkansas; Stanley Kurtz of the Ethics and Public Policy Center; Harvey Mansfield of Harvard University; and Paul Rahe and Wilfred McClay of Hillsdale College (I am a more humble coalition supporter). You can also become a signatory here.

Whats inside this document? American Birthright provides the content knowledge in history, geography, civics, and economics that American citizens need to know so that they can preserve their liberty, the introduction states. The standards give recommended primary source documents, as well as biographies, American folk songs, literature, and other materials.

For example, the document recommends that fifth graders learn how town meetings and the common law affected the early development of American colonial governments. It recommends second graders learn the national anthem and other patriotic songs such as America, the Beautiful, as well as learning about the lives of significant Americans such as Whittaker Chambers, Rosa Parks, Sacagawea, Clarence Thomas, and Harriet Beecher Stowe.

American Birthright would have eighth-graders trace the development of Western Civilization back to the days of Hammurabi, to ancient Egypt, ancient Israel, and ancient Greece. It would have ninth graders read William Blackstone, the Rule of Saint Benedict, the Magna Carta, and Martin Luthers 95 Theses. Indeed, this curriculum blueprint aims at excellence, not just box-checking, and its recommended primary sources could be profitably studied by Americans of all ages and stations in life as an exercise in civic fidelity and growth.

I have read thousands of pages of what are called curriculum standards since the days of Common Core, and reading this set was a refreshing surprise. Its learning goals and plan for achieving those goals are clear and comprehensible to any literate person, which is in fact one aim of the enterprise.

Usually what pass for curriculum standards is essentially subliterate so full of meaning-lite education jargon as to be almost incomprehensible. Go read your own states so-called curriculum standards to see this yourself. Jargon is one way the education bureaucracy resists accountability to parents and voters. If principals, parents, and the like cant understand what teachers are supposed to do, they cant hold them accountable for it.

American Birthright, on the other hand, is readable, clear, and informative. Any parent could use the document to plan out his or her own course of after-school or homeschool study, as could any teacher or school district. And if a parent or school did so, they would graduate students far more civically minded and responsible than almost all American schools do today.

Thats why parents need to approach their schools, legislatures, and state boards of education and ask that start using American Birthright as their guide to U.S. history and government curricula immediately. It is also a useful document to use to measure the quality of civics and other instruction in a given school district.

Many school districts are considered to be good when they in fact add very little, if anything, to childrens natural gifts received from productive and intact homes. They coast on reputations that others work and virtues have earned. Measuring their curriculum and reading materials against this high-quality benchmark will give parents an accurate assessment of the actual quality of their childrens schools or potential schools.

Many will likely find that their schools do not measure up. Then its time to work to improve that situation, either by internal advocacy or leaving to find a truly good school, or both.

State lawmakers have zero legitimate excuses for failing to require this level of American history education in government-run schools immediately. Those who do not are failing to uphold their oaths to the U.S. Constitution and the people of their states by presiding over rampant anti-American instruction in American schools. These scholars have done a public service by carrying out all the substantive work needed; all policymakers need to do now is just say yes, thank you.

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Here's What Your Child's School Should Be Teaching About US History - The Federalist