Daily Archives: March 5, 2021

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Reporter 1: Now a time for mourning for a remarkable career and life well-lived.

Reporter 2: U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has died at the age of 87.

Trump: I stand before you today to fulfill one of my highest and important duties under the United States Constitution, the nomination of a Supreme Court Justice.

Preface

Noah Feldman: When Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died in September 2020, I knew one thing for sure.

The person that Donald Trump would nominate to replace her would be affiliated with a powerful organization called the Federalist Society.

As a constitutional law professor at Harvard University, I spend a lot of my time watching the Supreme Court its a big part of my job. But this prediction did not take much in the way of high-level expertise.

The two other Supreme Court Justices that Trump had already appointed, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh are both affiliated with the Federalist Society. So are 80% of the judges that Trump had already appointed to the courts of appeals.

The Federalist Society is a club for conservative and libertarian lawyers. Its focused on promoting conservative legal thought and on filling the American judiciary with like-minded allies.

It was founded about 40 years ago by a bunch of law students, nerds really, who felt ostracized on their law school campuses because of their conservative views.

Since then its grown to become the most influential legal organization in the United States ever, capable of dramatically redefining American jurisprudence for decades to come.

And sure enough Trump nominated Judge Amy Coney Barrett, who is closely affiliated with the Federalist Society:

CLIP

Barrett: I am honored and humbled to appear before you today as a nominee for associate justice of the Supreme Court.

With Amy Coney Barrett now on the Supreme Court, six of the nine Justices are current or former Federalist Society members.

This book, adapted from a series on my podcast Deep Background, is the story of what the Federalist Society stands for, how it took over the Supreme Court, and why now that it has achieved extraordinary success, it may actually be about to fall apart.

Chapter 1: How To Start a Revolution

Let me take you back, now, 40 years exactly, to the fall of 1980.

At that time it was not exactly cool to be a conservative law student.

CLIP

Gary Lawson: The atmosphere was, here's the best way I can describe it.

Any time a student in class said anything that could remotely be considered right of center a good chunk of the class would hiss.

Thats Gary Lawson. Hes now a law professor at Boston University. At the time, though, he was a first year law student at Yale.

And yes, you heard him right, he said hiss.

CLIP

Lawson: Literally vocal hisss, in fact one of my counter-lines to that, Is something wrong with the heating system?

And it wasnt just that most law students and professors were liberal, arguably aggressively so.

The Supreme Court was, too.

For the previous few decades, there had been a liberal majority on the Supreme Court, led by lions like William Brennan and later Thurgood Marshall. The Court had made a series of transformative decisions that had a profound impact on the country.

Of course, there was Brown against Board Education, argued by Thurgood Marshall before he actually became a Justice, where the Supreme Court ruled that school segregation was unconstitutional.

But there were others too the Court held that Bible reading in public school was unconstitutional. It ruled that criminal suspects had to be informed of their right to remain silent before custodial interrogation, the famous Miranda decision. And, in the landmark case of Loving against Virginia, the Court said it was unconstitutional for the state to ban interracial marriage.

Then, in 1973, shortly after Chief Justice Earl Warren retired and Chief Justice Warren Burger took over:

CLIP

Number 70, 18 Roe against Wade.

For liberals, these decisions were a march of progress.

But conservatives thought the Supreme Court Justices were going beyond their mandate to uphold the law.

Ronald Reagan agreed.

And maybe the public did too, because on November 4th, 1980, Reagan won the presidency in a landslide.

Read this article:

How the Federalist Society came to dominate the Supreme Court - Harvard Gazette

On this episode of The Federalist Radio Hour, Federalist Political Editor John Daniel Davidson joins Culture Editor Emily Jashinsky to discuss why, despite the Biden administrations firm denial, there is indeed a crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border and how it can be stopped.

Its a really sophisticated operation thats going on at the border, Davidson explained. These people arent coming by accident. Theres massive amounts of money that are changing hands. Theres incentives involved, and the Democrats and the Biden administration are juicing those incentives. Theyre the ones who are creating the incentives through their policies, and then the smugglers run with that.

While many on the left see the border as a place for performative moral outrage and virtue signaling, Davidson said that corruption and cartels run amok, causing danger to migrants and U.S. citizens, and will continue to threaten the nation if left unresolved.

The United States cannot just allow the Central American countries and Mexico to just implode because it creates irresistible incentives for those people to come north and to get into the United States to be able to provide for their families, Davidson said. We cant have failed states on our southern border and in Central America. It is not a long-term sustainable solution. We are going to have and continue to have border crises forever until we can figure out a way to help those places stabilize and reduce some of those incentives for people to come north.

Read more of Davidsons reporting on the border here.

See the rest here:

Yes, There Is A Crisis At The Border - The Federalist

On this episode of The Federalist Radio Hour, Federalist Senior Editor Chris Bedford joins Culture Editor Emily Jashinsky to discuss President Joe Biden and the lefts attempts to cancel Dr. Seusss books and the implications for American culture.

He wasnt a perfect man, but the books he wrote for children these are innocent, innocent things, Bedford said. For any expert or educator to overanalyze thisand to look at these memories in these childrens books and to draw anything but wanting to bring happiness, that shows you not whats in Dr. Seusss heart, it shows you whats in those experts hearts. We should have pity for these people who look at Dr. Seuss and put racial stereotypes, they put hate, they put things like that on him.

While uproar over a series of beloved childrens books might seem silly to some, Bedford said it is the lefts way of manipulating and targeting American values and requires pushback.

Will the left eventually destroy this country? Probably, Bedford concluded. We need to actually launch campaigns for our ability to read these books to our children and grandchildren because otherwise itll be forgotten, and the left is very good at this.

Read more of Bedfords thoughts on the Dr. Seuss debacle here.

Read more:

The Cancellation Of Dr. Seuss Is No Joke It's A Cultural Revolution - The Federalist

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio is calling for the state legislature to revoke Gov. Andrew Cuomos emergency powers, joining nine Democrats as well as the states Republicans in doing so. The State Legislature, his Sunday night statement reads, must immediately revoke the governors emergency powers that overrule local control. Great idea, mayor. But why now?

One reason de Blasio lists is Cuomos withholding of information on the deaths of over 15,000 people in the nursing-home scandal. That fact, you might notice, has been in the media spotlight for weeks now. Even before then, the mayor didnt seem to think the on-its-face-stupid-and-obviously-deadly decision was a good reason for removing extralegislative powers.

While last year Fox Newss Janice Dean, the New York Post, The Federalist, The Daily Caller, President Donald Trump, and others exposed and publicly detailed Cuomos abuses, the mayor kept silent. He also passed on the chance to sign on with nine members of his own party when they joined their Republican colleagues in calling for an end to the emergency powers more than two weeks ago. What else, then, could have provoked Sundays statement?

A second reason the mayor listed is multiple instances of intimidation. Those, you might also notice, have been obvious since Cuomo first entered politics.

Everybody knows that behind the scenes, he is the dirtiest, nastiest political player out there, and that is his reputation from years in Washington, former New York Gov. Elliot Spitzer told CNN in 2010. He had brass knuckles, and he played hardball. He has a lot of enemies out there. Nobodys been willing to stand up to him. Spitzer, some will recall, fled office amid a then-Attorney General Cuomo investigation of his frequent use of prostitutes.

Any other reasons, then? Yes, actually: Accusations of sexual harassment, which gained broader credibility five days ago after one accuser detailed her story in a long blog post, and were furthered this weekend when a second woman added her story. A third came forward Monday evening. New Yorkers, de Blasios statement opens up, have seen detailed, documented accounts of sexual harassment.

Sexual harassment is indeed terrible, particularly from a position of authority, and especially from a position of public trust. A proven charge stands alone as reason to fire a man.

But what about spending months lying and blaming others for 15,000 deaths in vulnerable elderly care facilities? Was that not enough to immediately end emergency authorities when it was exposed and then admitted? While its perfectly natural for reasons to pile up over time, gaining significance in the mind as gathering evidence establishes a pattern of behavior, thousands of dead citizens should alone be reason enough for censure.

Whats most striking is that de Blasios call to revoke the governors emergency powers comes after nearly an entire year of Cuomo publicly wielding his power to destroy his own state, closing schools, banning businesses, shuttering churches, prosecuting religion, and allowing rioters to run roughshod over citizens and police. So after all that, the abuse of power that cannot will not be tolerated is sexual harassment having nothing to do with those emergency powers? Is that the line were drawing here? Would the crushing of New York be OK if not for this latest revelation?

Of course, de Blasio and friends think those extraconstitutional abuses of COVID power were toward a noble cause. Indeed, the mayor is guilty of the same abuses, even letting his long feud with the governor once again spill into national headlines last year as the two fought over turf and other minor aspects in their individual plans to fight COVID by destroying New York.

An essential aspect of the reckoning coming for Cuomo from within his own party (and their allies in the corporate media) is it comes after a long year of agreement, praise, and adulation. Everything he is guilty of before accusations of sexual harassment, his former allies are also guilty of until now. Witness Sunday evenings similar condemnations of Cuomo by Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and the White House, cutting cleanly along the harassment line.

Killer orders, cover-ups, threats, sexual harassment, and the destruction of the state be damned. The real reason for Cuomos coming fall are that power and ambition have seen weakness and smelled blood. Just as Attorney General Cuomo once took down a wounded Spitzer, a man who had called himself a fking steamroller, before taking his place, a weakened Cuomo now finds himself in the cross-hairs.

The Democratic Party has the means and has now cited the moral authority to replace Cuomo with another of their own. His days as Americas boyfriend are officially over, and for the next act, his allies will wash their hands with his political career.

While its wonderful to see some semblance of political justice for the disasters of the past year, theres no reason to take heart from it: For the people in New York, and the rest of us living under the Biden-Pelosi-Schumer administration, nothing will change.

Read the original:

There's Only One Reason Democrats Are Turning On Cuomo. It Isn't Noble - The Federalist

On Thursday, the House of Representatives passed the so-called Equality Act by a vote of 224 to 206. While Democrats have marketed this legislation as a simple civil rights law designed to protect LGBTQ people from discrimination, it is far from that.

The statutory language instead provides for an extreme remaking of all aspects of society, destroys the promise of equality for women, and threatens religious liberty and the privacy rights of all Americans, especially children. The proposed law also will upend state and federal protections of the unbornyes, the Equality Act is about abortion too.

Here are the five facts about the Equality Act Americans need to know.

The statutory language of the Equality Act seems simple enough, with the proposed law adding sexual orientation and gender identity to the list of protected classes in the five major parts, called titles, of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Specifically, the Equality Act would add sexual orientation and gender identity to: Title II, which addresses discrimination in public accommodations; Title III, which covers public facilities; Title IV, which regulates public education; Title VI, which requires nondiscrimination in federally assisted programs; and Title VII, which prohibits discrimination in employment.

Sexual orientation and gender identity would also be added to the Fair Housing Act, the Equality Credit Opportunity Act, and Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972.

Adding sexual orientation and gender identity to the list of protected classes may seem straightforward enough, but the proposed law does moremuch more. These additional provisions will prove devastating on many levels.

The breadth of The Equality Act flows, in part, from the proposed laws expansion of various definitions throughout all titles of the Civil Rights Act. The term sex is redefined to include sex stereotype, sex characteristics, sexual orientation, and gender identity, as well as pregnancy, childbirth, or a related medical condition. Gender identity is defined broadly to mean[] the gender-related identity, appearance, mannerisms, or other gender-related characteristics of an individual, regardless of the individuals designated sex at birth.

The proposed Equality Act also redefines or expands several terms within each separate title of the Civil Rights Act. For instance, public accommodations will now include not merely stadiums but any other place of or establishment that provides exhibition, entertainment, recreation, exercise, amusement, public gathering, or public display, and any establishment that provides a good, service, or program, including a store, shopping center, online retailer or service provider, salon, bank, gas station, food bank, service or care center, shelter, travel agency, or funeral parlor, or establishment that provides health care, accounting, or legal services, as well as any train service, bus service, car service, taxi service, airline service, station, depot, or other place of or establishment that provides transportation service.

Of particular significance is The Equality Acts express statement that an establishment shall not be construed to be limited to a physical facility or place, as that language has the potential to reach federal, state, and private health insurance coverage and plans.

The Equality Act then adds four significant substantive provisions to federal law. First, the proposed law provides that pregnancy, childbirth, or a related medical condition shall not receive less favorable treatment than other physical conditions.

Next, The Equality Act provides that an individual shall not be denied access to a shared facility, including a restroom, a locker room, and a dressing room, that is in accordance with the individuals gender identity. Third, where sex is a bona fide occupational qualification, such as with personal caregivers in nursing homes, the act would require an employee to be considered qualified for that position, based on his or her gender identity, and not his or her sex.

Finally, the bill provides that The Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 shall not provide a claim concerning, or a defense to a claim under, under The Equality Act, or provide a basis for challenging the application or enforcement of a covered title.

The gender identity provisions of the proposed Equality Act are extreme in multiple ways. First, the statutory definition of gender identity incorporates language that is both anti-science and antithetical to Judeo-Christian teachings.

By casting an individuals sex as something merely designated at birth, The Equality Act ignores the scientific reality of the inherent, indelible biological differences between male and female [that] go far beyond external genitalia.Each cell in our body has a sexthesamesex, male or female. It also ignores the theological understanding of the human person as a unity of body and soul.

While Americans may shrug at The Equality Acts Orwellian use of language, they will be made to care because the proposed law defines gender identity so broadly that there is no limit to whom may demand to be treated legally as the opposite sex.

Gender identity, according to the act, means the gender-related identity, appearance, mannerisms, or other gender-related characteristics of an individual, regardless of the individuals designated sex at birth. Anyone, at any time, could declare a gender identity contrary to biological reality.

This conclusion is not some conservative conspiracy theory, either. Heres what the leftist Womens Liberation Front says about the broad definition of gender identity: The bill doesnt mention individuals with clinically diagnosed gender dysphoria, or undertaking surgical or hormonal transition, thus making clear that self-declared gender identity would be sufficient to claim protected legal status.

The broad definition of gender identity is but a part of the problem: The bills substantive provisions will devastate the privacy rights of all Americans, especially girls and women.

Under the proposed law, an employer would be required to treat a man who identifies as a woman as a woman for purposes of sensitive jobs, such as law enforcement officials involved in strip searches or supervisors of locker rooms, or handling intimate care in hospitals or long-term care facility. The law currently allows prisoners, patients, or customers to require the government, hospitals, or businesses to staff those positions with an individual of the same sex. The Equality Act would instead mandate that employers allow men who identify as women to perform such invasive tasks.

The law would also require virtually every restroom, locker room, and dressing room in America to be open to individuals of the opposite sex, in accordance instead with the individuals claimed gender identity. As the Womens Liberation Front explained:

This means that American women will no longer be able to expect any single-sex facilities when using or being required to stay in:

Shared hospital rooms or wards

Locker rooms and public or group showers

Multi-stall bathrooms

Jails, prisons, or juvenile detention facilities

Homeless shelters

Overnight drug rehabilitation centers

Domestic violence or rape crisis shelters

It is not just American womenit is American girls. Whether in elementary, middle, or high school, in gymnasiums or swimming facilities, young girls will no longer have a guarantee of privacy or security.

The Equality Act will also require sports competitions and scholarship programs designated for girls and women to admit males if they proclaim a female gender identity, further harming women.

Although not mentioned by name (or euphemism) in The Equality Act, abortion is also part and parcel of this proposed law. To understand this reality requires a brief legal primer on the current law concerning sex and pregnancy discrimination.

As Richard Doerfinger explained in his must-read article, The Equality Act: Threatening Life and Equality, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits sex discrimination. The Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978 amended that provision to prohibit discrimination based on pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions in employment, including in the provision of health insurance. Title VII, however, expressly provided that an employer was not required to pay for health insurance benefits for abortion, except where the life of the mother would be endangered if the fetus were carried to term . . .

In contrast, while the Equality Act also defines sex to include pregnancy, childbirth, or a related medical condition, it includes no exclusion related to abortion, as there was in Title VII. Significantly, The Equal Employment Opportunities Commission, and at least one federal appellate court have held that medical conditions related to pregnancy includes abortion. Thus, the Equality Acts ban on pregnancy discrimination is also a ban on discrimination related to abortion.

In the employment context of Title VII, this language had a minimal effect, given employers are expressly exempt from providing health insurance coverage for abortion. Yet the Equality Act would add a prohibition of discrimination related to abortion in public accommodations, public facilities, public education, and federal-assisted programs.

Further, the Equality Act makes clear that pregnancy, childbirth, or a related medical condition shall not receive less favorable treatment than other physical conditions. Finally, recall that the Equality Act expressly provides that the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 shall not provide a claim concerning, or a defense to a claim under, under the Equality Act, or provide a basis for challenging the application or enforcement of a covered title.

Together, these three aspects of the act would devastate the cause of life. States, local government agencies, educational institutions, and health-care organizations all receive federal funds, and under The Equality Acts plain language could be required fund abortions. As a federal statute, the Equality Act would trump state bans on such funding, and as a later adopted statute it could put the Hyde Amendment at risk. Private, and even religious, health-care facilities could be forced to provide abortions on equal terms with other medical care.

Of course, religious organizations could seek refuge in the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment, but it was the Supreme Courts cramped interpretation of that protection that prompted bipartisan passage of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993. The Democratic-controlled Congress, however, with passage of the Equality Act, would gut the protection of religious liberty.

Absent an outcry from average Americans, that is exactly the outcome our country faces.

President Biden campaigned on making passage of the Equality Act a legislative priority in his first 100 days of office. In May 2019 the House of Representatives passed The Equality Act, in a vote of 236 to 173, with the unanimous support of Democrats and eight Republicans crossing the aisle to vote in favor of the Bill. The Republican-led Senate kept the bill from reaching the floor, but the Senate companion legislation garnered 47 sponsors, including Republican Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine.

The bill has again passed the House, and President Biden has promised to sign it into law, leaving the Senate as the last hurdle. With Democrats now controlling the legislative agenda in the Senate, the bill will assuredly see the floor for debate. The question then becomes whether Democrats will retain the 60-vote requirement to end filibusters of legislation, and if so, whether Bidens party can reach 50 votes with the help of Vice President Vice Kamala Harris.

While things could go either way, given that Democrats have so far succeeded in framing the Equality Act as a civil rights law necessary to protect LGBTQ people from discrimination, passage seems likelyunless average Americans demand defeat of this extremist legislation. For there to be an outcry, however, the public must realize what is at stake. But will they before it is too late?

Margot Cleveland is a senior contributor to The Federalist. Cleveland served nearly 25 years as a permanent law clerk to a federal appellate judge and is a former full-time faculty member and adjunct instructor at the college of business at the University of Notre Dame.The views expressed here are those of Cleveland in her private capacity.

Continued here:

5 Things To Know About The Extremist 'Equality Act' The House Passed - The Federalist

The House of Representatives passed an extreme election bill on Thursday night meant to control state election processes and impose new regulations on political advertisements and donors so that Democrats in Congress have the ultimate supervisory power over federal elections.

If it passes the Senate, the For The People Act of 2021 will eliminate the opportunity for states to protect themselves against modifications weaponized in the 2020 election, such as expanded vote-by-mail options and lax voter ID laws. Provisions included in the 800-page legislation also give the federal government control over political speech online by expanding the definition of electioneering communications and expose political and nonprofit donors information to the public in connection to the causes they support.

The same party that wants to change Senate rules when they lose a vote pack the Supreme Court when they lose a case and throw out the Electoral College every time they lose the White House now wants to forcibly rewrite 50 states election laws from Washington, D.C., Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said on the floor of the upper chamber Thursday. Its unprincipled. Its unwarranted. Large portions of it may well be unconstitutional.

The corporate media, which more often than not runs cover for the Democrats political agenda, jumped at the opportunity to promote the bill as successful legislation that protects the voting rights of America from racist Republicans who want to restrict voter access.

House passes sweeping election bill that would counter GOP efforts to restrict voter access, one CNN headline brazenly stated.

House Passes Landmark Voting Rights Bill, the New York Times flaunted.

House Approves Major Election Reform And Voting Rights Bill, NPR wrote.

House passes sweeping voting rights, ethics bill, NBC News declared, taking the corporate media virtue-signaling one step further.

But there are many problems with HR 1 that are not necessarily highlighted in corrupt corporate media coverage. Not only will the bill give the federal government control to micromanage state election processes, a possibly unconstitutional offense, but one report suggests it would open the floodgates for partisan activity within the IRS and the Federal Elections Commission, hijack and pivot federal courts away from election criticisms, and violate the First Amendment with respect to a vast range of legal activity, all actions that satisfy portions of the Democratic Partys agenda. The attorneys general of 20 states also agreed that HR 1 would invert that constitutional structure, commandeer state resources, confuse and muddle elections procedures, and erode faith in our elections and systems of governance.

Former Vice President Mike Pence was one of the many GOP leaders to express grave concerns with the bill and urge immediate opposition to it. HR 1 mandates the most questionable and abuse-prone election rules nationwide, while banning commonsense measures to detect, deter, and prosecute election fraud, he wrote in an opinion editorial for The Daily Signal.

HR 1, the so-called For the People Act, will increase opportunities for election fraud, trample the First Amendment, further erode confidence in our elections and should be rejected by every member of Congress and opposed by every patriotic American, Pence continued on Twitter.

Others also warned their congressional colleagues and constituents about the hundreds of pages of legislation dedicated to nuking voting protections and called out the Democrats and their media henchmen for spinning their concerns to fit a narrative.

Lets be very clear. The arguments being distilled on the floor today is that Republicans, my colleagues and I, are bigots. Why? Because they use fancy words like voter suppression to say that we are wanting to tamp down peoples access to polls. And nothing can be further from the truth, Republican Rep. Chip Roy of Texas said on the House floor on Tuesday. Heaven forbid we want to use voter identification. Heaven forbid we want to honor the will of the people, through their legislatures in the states, passing rules to make sure that our system is actually working, using voter identification that the American people use to fly, that the American people use to do everything else. If I demand that, Im a bigot.

Every single American should be OUTRAGED by this: Democrats just voted to ban voter ID nationwide and force every state to permanently expand mail-in voting, House Minority Whip Steve Scalise, R-La., posted, prompting a trending topic on Twitter.

Even the American Civil Liberties Union raised concerns about parts of the bill, including the requirements for nonprofit organizations to disclose some donors, noting the provisions susceptibility to exploitation such as harassment and threats of violence to donors for what they believe in.

While Democrats say there are amendments to the original drafting of the bill, giving Republicans the chance to provide input or object to certain provisions, one Republican representative pointed out that 49 of the 56 alterations came from the left side of the political aisle, hand-selected by a small group in the rules committee. (One of these proposed measures, lowering the U.S. voting age to 16 years old, was promptly struck down in a bipartisan vote.)

The bills fate now lies in the hands of the Senate, where Democrats face an uphill battle against the 60 cloture votes required to upend a Republican filibuster.

Jordan Davidson is a staff writer at The Federalist. She graduated from Baylor University where she majored in political science and minored in journalism.

Original post:

Dems' 'Election Reform' Bill Is A Partisan Scam To Get What They Want - The Federalist

President Joe Bidens pick for Health and Human Services secretary, Xavier Becerra, received no votes from Republicans on the Senate Finance Committee on Wednesday morning, resulting in a tie that could toss the confirmation decision to Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and the rest of the upper chamber.

Now that the White House withdrew Neera Tandens nomination for the administrations top budget office following pressure and questions about her ability to project Bidens message of unity after she spent years hurling insults and mean tweets at conservative and even progressive politicians, congressional Republicans are shifting their focus to keep Becerra out of power.

Reasons for opposition to Becerras confirmation, especially by Republican legislators and conservative activist groups, continue to pile up, with many citing his lack of health experience and qualifications, his radical position and track record on abortion, his refusal to call for free and fair elections in Cuba after meeting with dictator Fidel Castro, his efforts to pursue legal action against the Little Sisters of the Poor for refusing to comply with Obamacares contraceptive mandate on religious grounds, and his promotion of Obamacare, open borders, gun control, and radical climate plans.

Some groups, including Heritage Action for America, are pouring money into television advertisements in states such as Arizona and West Virginia to call senators attention to some of these radical positions, while others are capitalizing on his weaponization of the power that came with his position as attorney general of California to target people of faith for their pro-life convictions and prosecute pro-life citizen journalists. Just last week, more than 60 pro-life leaders urged Senate committees to reject Becerra as the nominee based on his vocal pro-abortion advocacy.

Mr. Becerras confirmation would be divisive and a step in the wrong direction. We understand that the president needs to assemble a cabinet; however, Mr. Becerra has proven himself to be an enemy of the health of women and the unborn, the letter states. He cannot be entrusted with our national health programs and policies and is not qualified to serve as Secretary of Health and Human Services.

Reports suggest that certain Republican senators who may have been on the fence about Becerra, such as Sens. Rob Portman of Ohio and Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania, are now settled to vote against the HHS nominee, leaving space for the Republicans to possibly sink his nomination with more support.

Democrats and their activist allies, however, are also fighting to confirm Becerra, saying he possesses the leadership and experience they need to accomplish their agenda.

During his confirmation hearings, Becerra not only dodged Republicans questions about these issues, including his previous support of partial-birth abortions, but the former California attorney general also falsely claimedhe never sued nuns.

I have never sued the nuns, any nuns, Becerra said last week. Ive never sued any affiliation of nuns, and my actions have always been directed at the federal agencies.

Jordan Davidson is a staff writer at The Federalist. She graduated from Baylor University where she majored in political science and minored in journalism.

Original post:

GOP Ramps Up Resistance To Xavier Becerra After Tie Confirmation Vote - The Federalist

Whatever your views of Donald Trumps presidency, it is hard to dispute that he produced a stronger record of achievement across the board when it comes to protecting the American people from a range of foreign threats than any other president in at least a generation. His national security accomplishments in four short years included taking on China, forging the historic Abraham Accords in the Middle East, defeating the ISIS caliphate, countering Iran, and standing up the Space Force. So now, one month into his tenure, how is President Joe Biden doing in preserving and building on Trumps remarkable record?

One month ago, all presidential appointees in the White House wrote standard, end-of-office resignation letters to Trump. In my letter departing as deputy assistant to the president and spokesman for the National Security Council, I singled out 10 key accomplishments he achieved for the American people (most of which were accomplished in the last 18 months of his term, with new NSC leaders Robert OBrien and Matt Pottinger executing efficiently on his priorities across the government). The 10 accomplishments offer a good framework for scoring President Bidens effect on our national security in his first 30 days in office.

The bottom line: The jury is still out on where the Biden administration stands on most of these issues so early into the administration, but on a number of the items, there are worrying signs of a backslide on the historic progress Trump made. Following are each of Trumps key accomplishments and a couple of points from Bidens initial actions on each of them:

1. Building a new international consensus on China by standing up to its aggression in all its forms:

After Trump pulled the United States from the World Health Organization last year over the bodys working with China to cover up the virus, Biden rejoined the WHO on his first day in office, resuming full U.S. funding, and failed to demand specific reforms including the replacement of the disastrous leadership team headed by Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.

Further, Biden held a two-hour call with Chinese President Xi Jinping on Feb. 10, and while he echoed Trumps priorities on maintaining a free and open Indo-Pacific and pressing Xi on Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Uighur human rights, at a CNN town hall he later appeared to excuse the treatment of the Uighurs, saying, Culturally, there are different norms that each country and their leaders are expected to follow.

Biden also failed to confront Xi for his partys unleashing the China virus on the rest of the world and for continuing to cover it up.

2. Strengthening critical partnerships with allies such as India, Brazil, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, the Philippines, and Thailand on issues from counterterrorism to maritime security:

Here there is actually good news. In a Feb. 18 call with the Quad countries United States, India, Japan, and Australia Secretary of State Antony Blinken and his counterparts agreed to strengthen cooperation on advancing a free and open Indo-Pacific region, including support for freedom of navigation and territorial integrity. Good work so far. Lets hope that stands.

3. Signing a peace agreement with the Taliban after 19 years of war:

Trump pledged to withdraw the 2,500 remaining U.S. troops from Afghanistan by May 2021, in accordance with that agreement with the Taliban last year. There is a real question about whether Biden will either delay that pullout or cancel it entirely, leaving some U.S. troops in Afghanistan indefinitely.

As a reminder, President Barack Obama and then-Vice President Biden had more than 100,000 troops in Afghanistan in 2011, and it will be important to see whether Biden follows through on Trumps promise finally to end our presence in that country after two decades.

4. Bringing Irans economy to its knees and choking off funds to its terrorist allies:

Here there are real questions. No one was tougher on Iran than Trump, who in 2018 pulled us out of the disastrous Obama-Biden Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, commonly known as the Iran nuclear deal, that included $1.7 billion in funding for Iran, $400 million of which was airlifted into the country on pallets of cash. Now Biden wants to rejoin that widely criticized deal, although for the time being he is insisting on Iran halting the enrichment of uranium before lifting the Trump-imposed sanctions.

A positive move was Bidens decision to launch airstrikes on Iran-backed militia targets in eastern Syria this week in response to several recent rocket attacks against U.S. forces in Iraq, including one that killed a contractor. This response was welcome, if not somewhat surprising, given his strong criticism of Trumps decisive action against malign Iranian actors for similar misconduct a year ago.

5. Eliminating the ISIS physical caliphate, once the size of Great Britain:

Once again, this was a real victory for Trump, where under Obama and Biden, the force reached a peak of tens of thousands of fighters in 2014. Trump effectively eliminated the ISIS caliphate in December 2017, after less than a year in office.

Most notably, Trump made the bold decision in October 2019 to send U.S. troops into northern Syria to capture or kill ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, resulting in the terrorists death by suicide vest when he was cornered in a tunnel. Biden pointedly gave Trump no credit for launching the successful operation at the time, very much of a piece with Bidens opposition to the raid on Osama bin Laden eight years earlier. Needless to say, whether Biden exhibits the same decisiveness to keep ISIS from resurging early in his term remains an open question.

6. Forging a historic peace agreement between the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Israel, the most significant step toward peace in the Middle East in over 25 years:

In September of last year, Biden welcomed Trumps forging of the first of the Abraham Accords and noted that a Biden-Harris administration will build on these steps, challenge other nations to keep pace, and work to leverage these growing ties into progress toward a two-state solution and a more stable, peaceful region. Since that statement, Trump expanded the Accords to include Sudan and Morocco.

Needless to say, this pledge by Biden on the Accords is great news but whether he will, in fact, honor it remains unclear, both in his initial steps on rejoining the Iran deal and in his move in January temporarily pausing the landmark Trump sale last November of 50 F-35 stealth fighter jets to the United Arab Emirates that followed that countrys signing of the Accords.

7. Rebuilding our military and establishing the Space Force, the first new branch of the Armed Forces in 70 years:

Finally some good news here, but not without a push. After initially mocking a reporters question about whether Biden would keep Trumps signature new service branch formed last year, White House press secretary Jen Psaki stated the next day, in response to criticism from Republicans, We are not revisiting the decision to establish the Space Force. Cant anything be easy from this White House?

Whether Biden will continue Trumps rebuilding of our nations military is far from settled, as initial planning suggests he will recommend a flat Defense Department budget for 2022, at $696 billion, rather than Trumps planned $722 billion that included big increases for shipbuilding. Watch this space, as Bidens budget is scheduled for release on May 3.

8. Pressing NATO members to increase their defense spending, resulting in pledges of an extra $400 billion through 2024:

There are good initial signs here. In advance of last weeks NATO ministerial meeting, a U.S. official noted that Biden and his team expect all allies to live up to this commitment on defense spending for the alliance, even as they would seek a change in tone and approach from Trump, whose very tone and approach is exactly what brought the NATO allies to increase their spending massively beginning in 2018 after years of excuses.

Decorous calls for NATO allies to do more are nothing new. What was new under Trump was worrying less about the decorum but actually getting the allies to increase their defense spending.

9. Normalizing economic relations between Serbia and Kosovo:

To build on this important agreement forged by Trump in September, which provided for economic interaction between these two Balkan nations, Biden indicated earlier this month that he will press for the countries to recognize each other politically.

Mutual recognition and ultimate integration of the two countries into the European Union has been a shared goal of the United States and the European Union for the past decade, and Trumps approach was to broker an economic agreement between the two countries as a initial step to pave the way for that goal.

Biden deserves credit for building on Trumps progress bringing the countries together economically, but Serbian President Aleksandar Vucics response to Bidens overture indicates that political recognition of Kosovo remains dead on arrival in his country. This at least demonstrates shared interests between Biden and Trump on Balkan policy.

10. Reducing undocumented migration from El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Mexico by 85 percent:

No policy was arguably as important to Trump than securing our southern border, and he delivered on it starting early in his tenure, from building over 450 miles of a border wall, to instituting a remain in Mexico policy that mandated asylum-seekers remain outside the United States while they await their status.

Biden reversed both of those on his first day in office. He called the border wall a waste of money that diverts attention from genuine threats to our homeland security, and has long called the remain in Mexico policy inhumane.

The result? A surge of over 100 percent in illegal border crossings over this time last year. Now Biden is proposing an eight-year pathway to citizenship for millions of illegal immigrants that many fear will itself be a magnet for more illegal immigration as migrants try to get to the United States to benefit from it. Make no mistake, there could be no clearer contrast between Trump and Biden in the area of national security than on border policy.

The record is clear: Trump produced remarkable achievements on national security in four short years, achievements that many Americans are looking for Biden to sustain and build on. This early in his presidency, it remains unclear whether Biden will do just that, but a one-month examination of his initial moves on some of Trumps key wins raises some concerns on that important question.

John Ullyot served as Deputy Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs and NSC Spokesman from 2019-2021.

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Biden vs Trump On National Security: Here's The First Month Report Card - The Federalist

Washington Posts fact-checking department is running interference for President Joe Bidens Health and Human Services nominee Xavier Becerra, claiming he didnt actually sue a group of nuns during his tenure as attorney general of California.

Bidens pick for HHS sued the Trump administration, not a group of nuns, the fact check headline definitively states.

The corporate media outlets response follows an exchange between Becerra and Republican Sen. John Thune of South Dakota on Wednesday, in which the attorney claimed he never sued the nuns, any nuns.

It does seem like, as attorney general, you spent an inordinate amount of time and effort suing pro-life organizations, like Little Sisters of the Poor, or trying to ease restrictions or expand abortion, Thune said.

I have never sued the nuns, any nuns, Becerra replied. Ive never sued any affiliation of nuns, and my actions have always been directed at the federal agencies.

Becerra, however, used his position in California to sue a religious order of nuns, the Little Sisters of the Poor, to require their participation in Obamacares contraceptive mandate. Although the case is literally named for the group of nuns targeted by the states legal team led by Becerra, State of California v. Little Sisters of the Poor, the WaPo fact-checker claims that Becerra was technically suing the Trump administration.

Its misleading to say Becerra sued the nuns. The California attorney general has not filed lawsuits or brought enforcement actions against the Little Sisters of the Poor, a charity run by Catholic nuns, the fact-checker wrote, citing the defenses of both reproductive rights lawyers and a Biden administration transition spokesman.

The two sides are in court for a different reason. California is suing the federal government, challenging a Trump administration policy that exempts some employers from providing contraceptive coverage under the Affordable Care Act. The Little Sisters of the Poor voluntarily joined that case, taking the Trump administrations position that the exemptions were legally valid.

Thunes office, however, did not back down from their original comments noting that the technicality of the issue does not take away from the fact that the case was filed to challenge protections for religious organizations the Little Sisters of the Poor had been instrumental in securing, and after the Little Sisters of the Poor was named in the suit, Mr. Becerra pursued the case for an additional three years.

So, yes, Senator Thune does believe its fair to say that Mr. Becerra has sued them he has certainly been engaged in protracted litigation against them and the interests of those seeking to comply with their religious obligations, a spokesperson told the Washington Post.

The fact-checker concluded the article by claiming that legal complexities make it difficult to assign a Pinocchio rating.

Suffice it to say theres a difference between suing nuns and suing the federal government in a case that nuns decide to join, The Post determined.

Shortly after Becerras denial that he ever sued nuns, Twitter users called out the absurdity of his claim and the Posts fact check.

???

Fact-check: Becerra has sued a LOT of nuns.

This is outrageous. https://t.co/a9UYGOK2xB

— Matt Whitlock (@mattdizwhitlock) February 24, 2021

Jordan Davidson is a staff writer at The Federalist. She graduated from Baylor University where she majored in political science and minored in journalism.

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(1) Washington Post 'Fact Check' Claims Becerra Never Sued Nuns - The Federalist