Daily Archives: June 2, 2021

President Biden claims he wont raise taxes on families making less than $400,000 per year. But given Bidens twists and turns on taxeshe now wants to eliminate a loophole he and his wife exploited to avoid more than $500,000 in taxes the past four yearsAmericans have reason to take his campaign promises with a grain of salt.

Even if he does not levy taxes on middle-class families directly, Bidens free-money policies are beginning to impose a heavy indirect tax increase on families of modest means: Rising inflation. At a time the wealthiest Americans have gotten even richer due to booming times on Wall Street, pernicious inflation would give working families a crushing blow.

A recent Labor Department report noted that in April, the Consumer Price Index rose 4.2 percent on an annual basis compared to April 2020. From March to April of this year, prices rose at a 0.8 percent rate, which equates to roughly 10 percent inflation over an entire year. Both the annual and the monthly increases in April significantly exceeded the Federal Reserves 2 percent inflation benchmark.

The Federal Reserve considers this spike in inflation transitorya true enough statement, to a point. Some of the price spikes stem from anomalies due to the pandemic.

For instance, this time last year, oil prices tanked when much of the global economy shut down; that sharp spike downward last year will look like a big spike upward this year, as prices move toward higher, pre-pandemic levels. Other price increases could stem from pandemic-related supply chain issuesfor instance, the global chip shortagethat may resolve themselves as things return to normal.

But rising prices could also develop into a longer-term phenomenon. The trillions of dollars that the Federal Reserve continues to pump into the economy, coupled with trillions of dollars of federal spending pushed by Biden and congressional Democrats, could let the inflation genie out of the proverbial bottle, leading to sustained price increases.

A recent analysis in the Wall Street Journal explained in laymans terms the problem that prolonged Bidenflation would present: A fall in inflation-adjusted wages hits low- and moderate-income households especially hard, because they dedicate a larger share of their paychecks to covering daily living costs. The numbers might be temporarily skewed, but if inflation persists and is fueled by the Fed or the Biden administrations policies, it could raise questions about the costs and benefits of those policies for working Americans.

Ironically enough, even as the Biden administration has dismissed the idea of an explicit gas tax increase to pay for infrastructure spending, inflation would present a de facto increase in the price of fuelwhile also raising the price of food, clothing, rent, transportation, and other essentials that comprise a disproportionate share of working-class families budgets.

While many Americans were too young to have lived through it personally, weve seen this phenomenon before. In the 1960s and 1970s, the combination of high government spending, easy-money policies from central banks, and oil crises in the Middle East led to runaway inflation in the United States and many European countries.

In her 1979 election campaign, future British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher provided tangible evidence of how inflation harms the poor. At one famous photocall, Thatcherthe daughter of a grocer, who understood the struggles working-class families face in ways her wealthier colleagues often did notheld up two bags of groceries.

The very noticeable difference between the size of the two bags showed how five years of a Labour government had eroded the value of the pound in your pocket by sharply reducing the value of the goods Britons could buy with their currency:

Another way of looking at inflations impact: In April, real inflation grew at a 3 percent annual rateprices rose by 4.2 percent, while wages rose by only 1.2 percent. If that pace continues over the four years of the Biden administration, a worker earning a $50,000 salary in January 2021 will be able to buy only $44,265 worth of goods with that salary in January 2025.

Some people decided to brag about their $1,400 stimmy checks the federal government handed out earlier this year. But if those one-time checks lead to inflation persisting at the level we saw in April, middle-class families will end up thousands of dollars per year poorer.

The inflation spiral of the 1970s demonstrates how government policies end up harming those the left claims to help. As Thatcher famously said in 1976, socialists eventually run out of other peoples money. When they doand sooner or later, Biden and the Federal Reserve will run out of fiscal firepowerit could leave damaging effects. To put it bluntly, all this free money could end up driving American families into the poor house.

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Why Democrats' Inflation Is A Major Tax Hike On The Poor - The Federalist

President Joe Bidens $6 trillion spending proposal will force American taxpayers to fund abortions after removing the Hyde Amendment.

Since the 1970s, Congress has included the Hyde Amendment in spending bills to prevent taxpayer dollars from funding abortions except if the mothers life is in danger, she was raped, or there was incest. Bidens newest spending plan excludes this provision protecting Americans consciences and instead reinstates giving federal finances out to cover killing babies.

Studies show that Americans largely oppose funding abortions in the United States and overseas but Bidens commitment to appeasing pro-abortion activists and progressives appears to outweigh public opinion.

For more than four decades, the Hyde family of pro-life policies has kept American taxpayers out of the abortion business, with the Hyde Amendment itself saving nearly 2.5 million lives. The Biden budget throws that longstanding, bipartisan consensus out the window to fulfill a campaign promise to the radical abortion lobby, said Susan B. Anthony List President Marjorie Dannenfelser.

In 2019, Bidens campaign said he supported the Hyde Amendment. Shortly after receiving criticism from abortion extremists for his position, the campaign changed his agenda to oppose the policy, a switch that was frowned upon at the time by Bidens now-Vice President Kamala Harris as purely political.

Even after approximately 200 GOP legislators, as well as more than 60 pro-life activists,sent letters to leaders in the House and Senate asking them to preserve the Hyde Amendment, the risk that a Democrat-controlled Congress could follow Bidens lead and remove the bipartisan efforts of politicians for decades poses a great threat.

As Politico reports, Democrats who control Congress discretionary spending arent waiting for the White House to act, and have already begun quietly to draft a plan that would drop the Hyde amendment and allow Medicaid, Medicare, federal employee health insurance and the Indian Health Service to cover abortions.

Biden has also already taken drastic steps to expand American access to baby killing. The Department of Health and Human Services already began reversing former President Donald Trumps rules to reinstate taxpayer-funded abortion referrals last month, a decision that more than 20 pro-life groups have banded together to oppose.

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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Biden's $6 Trillion Spending Proposal Forces American Taxpayers To Fund Abortions - The Federalist

On this episode of The Federalist Radio Hour, Emily Domenech joins Culture Editor Emily Jashinsky to discuss how she banded with the Travis Manion Foundation to found The Honor Project and encourage Americans to gather to recognize the fallen on Memorial Day.

Part of what makes The Honor Project really magical is its a stranger recognizing a stranger from far away and honoring their names, saying their name, sharing it with the rest of the world, and giving a moment to remember that person, Domenech said. I think most people, most civilians, go into Memorial Day and they know what it means, they know how important it is, they appreciate the military, but they havent got a clue how to reach out to touch those families who have really lost someone and they dont have a clue how to really appropriately honor those who sacrifice.

I think the lesson for civilians looking atour service members who are coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan today is to talk to them, ask them how they wanttheir comrades to be remembered. Ask, ask them how they want their service appreciated,Domenech said. Because I think the Vietnam generation did not get that opportunity. And its only just now coming out how many of them sort of I think needed itand needed the ability to share with their family and friendstheir experience overseas. And I always find those stories to be really incredible.

Read more about The Honor Project here.

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Honoring Those Who Sacrificed Their Lives Should Never Be Overlooked - The Federalist

On this episode of The Federalist Radio Hour, Asra Nomani, VP for Strategy and Investigations for Parents Defending Education, joins Culture Editor Emily Jashinsky to discuss the proliferation of critical race theory in American schools and how parents from both the left and the right are banding together to stop it.

Its a theory. Its a philosophy. Its an ideology. Its an approach that assumes that race is critical to every single element of society and thats why you end up with this alphabet soup of weird buzzwords that they keep throwing around like the idea that its systemic racism that we have to dismantle, Nomani said.

Identity politics, Nomani said, can be exploited by both political parties so its up to the concerned families to take action.

We have to all stand up and just really refuse that kind of identity politics and really challenge it with moral courage in each of our communities because, you know, its shame that they use as a lever to silence us, Nomani said.

Do not allow their tactics of shame to silence you. Justremain dignified, live with grace, dont ever stoop to their tactics of degradation of another human beingbecause then we become what were trying to oppose. But stand strong against it, she said.

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The Proliferation Of Critical Race Theory Is Killing American Schools With Politics - The Federalist

In 2021, not a week goes by without Loudoun County, Virginia making the news as a result of its push to implement critical race theory in its schools. Parents are frustrated and looking for answers, while Loudoun County Public Schools (LCPS) remains largely silent as this affluent county outside of Washington, D.C. has become ground zero in the fight against critical race theory in schools.

The story of how this all happened seems relatively straightforward, but it is in fact a complicated story of gaslighting, big money contracts, and unfairly throwing teachers under the bus.

It all started in February 2019 when Loudoun County made national news after the president of the Loudoun County NAACP claimed that students at Madison Trust Elementary were instructed to pretend to be slaves during a gym class activity. This exercise was presented to the media as a runaway slave game.

The school was quick to issue an apology and then-Superintendent Eric Williams said the school system would take corrective action, which included hiring [a]n outside expert [to] conduct an equity audit, requiring all teachers to receive cultural competence and implicit bias training, and creating a new position related to equity and cultural competence.

LCPS immediately began taking action. In April 2019, it hired The Equity Collaborative, a consulting firm in California that specializes in critical race theory. LCPS paid that company $422,000 to conduct focus groups, coach and train teachers, and produce an equity assessment. That assessment was supposedly submitted to LCPS on June, 6, 2019. The report was titled: Initial Report Systemic Equity Assessment: A Picture of Racial Equity Challenges and Opportunities in Loudoun County Public School District.

On May 22, 2019, prior to the equity assessment release, the Loudoun NAACP filed a complaint with the Virginia attorney general alleging systemic racism at LCPS. On September 9, 2019, the Loudoun NAACP supplemented its complaint by submitting the $422,000 equity assessment.

This complaint triggered an attorney general investigation into LCPS in October 2019 and resulted in a November 18, 2020 determination by the Office of Attorney General Division of Human Rights that there was reasonable cause to believe that LCPSs policies and practices resulted in a discriminatory impact on Black/African-America and Latinx/Hispanic students. The AG report indicated that it relied heavily on the findings in the $422,000 equity assessment. Ultimately, in February 2021, LCPS settled the case with the attorney general.

As pointed out above, the event that triggered this course of events was the so-called runaway slave game at Madison Trust Elementary. When I first wrote about this as the origin of the LCPS critical race theory drama in October 2020, I said about the game played at Madison Trust: This was no doubt a misguided attempt at teaching about the Underground Railroad. Upon further research and discussions with teachers and parents across the county, I now realize that I bought into some serious gaslighting by LCPS and the Loudoun NAACP.

In reality, the exercise prepared by the gym teachers at Madison Trust Elementary is known as the Underground Railroad Simulation. It is a 30-year-old program derived from critical race theory studies that is part of the Dare 2 Be Real program, founded by anti-racism and equity coach Anthony Galloway. Dare 2 Be Real describes it as simulat[ing] southern slaves frightening and sometimes brutal experiences as they fled to the north and to freedom.

Courageous Conversation is a framework used by The Pacific Education Foundation for effectively engaging, sustaining and deepening interracial dialogue. The founder of Pacific Education Foundation is Glenn Singleton, who wrote a book entitled Courageous Conversations About Race, in which Galloway and Duffy contribute a chapter to discuss the Underground Railroad simulation.

Here is where things get very interesting as it relates to Virginia. In the Final Report of the Virginia Commission on African American History Education in the Commonwealth, released in August 2020 by Gov. Ralph Northam, Singletons book Courageous Conversations is listed as a resource to support implementation, as is the Pacific Education Foundation. Singletons book is also highlighted in at least one training presentation made by LCPSs director of equity.

Meanwhile, the head of the Loudoun NAACP was on the commissions Professional Development Subcommittee. That would be the very same person who said the Underground Railroad Simulation at Madison Trust Elementary was either willful ignorance, white privilege, intentional racist action, or a combination of all three.

Relatedly, the head of the Equity Collaborative that conducted the equity assessment for LCPS worked for Singleton as director of learning and teaching at the Pacific Education Group before starting The Equity Collaborative.

According to an anonymous source with direct knowledge of the planning and performance of the simulation, one of the teachers learned of the Underground Railroad Simulation at a featured session during the Virginia Association for Health, Physical Education, Recreation and Dance 2011 Convention. Further, according to documents reviewed by the author, the Underground Railroad Simulation was presented to the schools Project Based Learning (PBL) Committee in fall 2018, including all of the fourth grade teachers, and no issues were raised.

The lesson was on the agenda of all subsequent PBL Committee meetings leading into February 2019 and 21 staff members, including the principal and assistant principal, were aware of the lesson.

The simulation itself was divided into seven stations. Those stations were:

The principal and the schools dean came to watch the exercise, both said that it was awesome, according to a source present during the simulation. The principal also tweeted: TY for doing this with the students. They were 100% engaged in this learning experience. A second school staffer tweeted: This is amazing. Theyre going to love it. Thank you for working with us on our unit.

It wasnt until after the Loudoun NAACP complained that LCPS changed its tune. The Madison Trust principal deleted his tweet and apologized for insensitive physical education. The principal then sent out an email to the whole school stating that Loudoun County Public Schools does not endorse the use of instructional strategies that place elementary students in role-playing situations depicting the institution of slavery.

Several weeks later, after continued press coverage, six members of the Black Panthers of Virginia entered the school to protest the use of the Underground Railroad Simulation. Since that time, one of the gym teachers has left the profession and another has moved to a different school.

Meanwhile, money started flowing to consultants. The Equity Collaborative received an initial contract and is still under contract with LCPS. The Loudoun Freedom Center, run by the head of the Loudoun NAACP, also received a long-term contract for consultation in curriculum review that began the month after the Underground Railroad simulation.

Then the Loudoun NAACP leveraged the Equity Collaborative assessment to trigger an AG investigation and settlement to require critical race theory in Loudoun County Public Schools. All because two teachers used an exercise invented and used by anti-racist and equity coaches across the country. What an absolute scam.

Ian Prior is the cofounder of DailyMalarkey.com, a former principal deputy director of public affairs at the U.S. Department of Justice, and a Loudoun County resident.

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You Won't Believe How Activists Pushed Loudoun Into Critical Race Theory - The Federalist

Footage captured Tuesday on the anniversary of the death of George Floyd shows a Black Lives Matter demonstrator in Kansas City threatening to murder law enforcement.

Cause were tired of being shot and killed because were gonna get pulled over for air fresheners, the woman said. Im waiting for one of those motherf-ckers to pull me over. Cause, baby, where Im from, we dont give two f-cks about the police. Let them kill one of ours. Guess what we doing? We kill one of theirs in Chicago, baby, they continue. We gonna knock on your door. We gonna blow your motherf-cking head off.

Additional footage of the protest shows people in vehicles trying to make their way through the blocked-off intersection.

In addition to protests in Kansas City, police declared a riot in downtown Portland, Oregon, on Tuesday after rioters smashed windows and blocked traffic. Gunshots were fired in Minneapolis, where a festival had been planned, and caused reporters to scramble while live on-air. One person was reportedly injured in the incident.

Floyds family went to the White House to meet with President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, as Democrats seek to pass the Justice in Policing Act, a bill that was received in the Senate in March. The measure would ban chokeholds, which Rafael Mangual, a senior fellow and deputy director of legal policy at the Manhattan Institute, previously told The Federalist is a bad move.

Obviously no one wants to see excessive force used on anyone when its not necessary, Mangual said, but the mere fact that weve had a handful of controversial cases involving chokeholds, Im not sure that that should justify a blanket ban, particularly when you consider the fact that there are going to be situations in which using that kind of neck restraint could probably mean less force than what might otherwise end up being used because an effective grappling technique was taken off the table. Proposals like that kind of failed to appreciate some of the nuance involved in policing.

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BLM To Kansas City Police: 'We Gonna Blow Your Motherf-cking Head Off' - The Federalist

Republican California gubernatorial candidate Caitlyn Jenner contradicted a previous claim that biological boys should not be permitted to compete in girls sports. Jenner said on Fox News Wednesday that boys who identified as girls at a very young age ought to be able to do so.

Im not running as a trans activist, Im running as a California citizen that has lived there for 48 years, said Jenner. What I would do as governor is I would put together a commission. Trans women compete in the Olympics, they compete in the NCAA, but when it gets down to the high school level, theres no guide rules, theres no rules and regulations how they can.

And trans women who are truly trans, who at a very young age, you know, started proper medical treatment, theyve grown up as girls of course, they should be able to compete in girls sports, Jenner said. But yeah, some guy who hasnt done any therapy, hasnt done anything, there has to be a review board. And I would be the first governor to put together a review board to review each case, Jenner added. Such a small issue. Its like a nonissue thats out there. And I would be surprised if theres 30 trans athletes in the entire state.

These remarks are in contrast with Jenners espoused position in early May. This is a question of fairness, the former gold-medal Olympian said less than one month ago. Thats why I oppose biological boys who are trans competing in girls sports in school.

The candidate held an even different position in 2020. Every trans person should have an opportunity to compete in sports, Jenner said on a podcast at the time. And yeah, I want to, hopefully, theyll have the opportunity in the future to do whatever they can do. Im all for it. Im all for it.

Jenners campaign did not immediately respond to The Federalists request for clarification on the candidates position.

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Jenner Flips: Boys Who Start Trans Treatment Young Should Be Able To Play Girls' Sports - The Federalist

Hundreds of universities are choosing to mandate the COVID-19 vaccine for students and staff no matter their risk level or concerns about the shot.

Some schools are highly encouraging students and staff to get the COVID-19 vaccine while other universities are blowing past the potential legal issues that come with an immunization that only has emergency approval to mandate the shot for everyone who plans to enroll or set foot on campus. Vanderbilt University is one of the most recent colleges to join the ever-growing list of schools requiring the virus immunization shot.

Vanderbilt first sent an email to its students in mid-May informing them that they must receive the COVID-19 vaccine to return to the undergraduate and graduate programs in the fall.

To keep our community as safe as possible and help ensure our ability to continue to conduct in-person teaching and learning,we will require all new and returning students to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 for the 202122 academic year, the email stated.

The university later clarified that all faculty, staff, and even postdoctoral fellows are also expected to be fully vaccinated before returning to the school in the fall 2021 semester. Those concerned about the vaccines lack of FDA approval are allowed to appeal for an exemption for medical or religious reasons but all requests for the exception must be submitted by June 15, giving students just one month before their options expired.

The Tennessee university never specified what would happen to students or staff who refuse to take the COVID shot, have their exemptions denied, or even how the school plans to validate that someone is vaccinated.

This lack of communication paired with the looming threat that they might be able to return to school is frustrating for some students like Carolyn Kraft who is still grappling with taking an ethically questionable vaccine for a virus that has significantly low chances of killing healthy people in her age group.

I am constructively indebted to the school, and so is anyone else who has taken more than one year at the school. At this point, my option is to take the backseator get kicked out or drop out and lose all the money all the time and effort I put into this university to get the degree that I worked so hard to get and thatI honestly deserve, the Vanderbilt law student told The Federalist.

Like many universities, Vanderbilt has its fair share of leftist professors who control narratives and push partisan agendas in their classrooms. Political educators combined with the social pressures created by activist students on campuses all around present a new challenge to incoming and also returning students who may have grown accustomed to attending in-person classes during the fall 2020 and spring 2021 semesters. It also dampens and even discourages healthy discussion and debate about the COVID-19 vaccine and Vanderbilts mandate and even scared some students away from speaking to the media about their skepticism.

A lot of people are scared of losing friends, Kraft told The Federalist. I dont really care if people dont like me because of my opinion, but some people, they just havent had to deal with people disliking them for their opinions before in their life so theyre really apprehensive about that. They want to be invited to social gatheringstheyre scared that theyre gonna not be employed. Theyre scared that theyre going to get a bad grade [if they speak out].

Kraft is not alone in her skepticism and worry. Surveys show mixed results when it comes to students willing to take the COVID vaccine, especially if it is required. Forced vaccinations also raise questions about the disproportionate effect universities could have by barring low-income students, who as a whole, tend to be more skeptical about the COVID-19 vaccine than other groups, from returning to school until they get their immunization.

More than 100 other universities have issued vaccine mandates. Here is a state-by-state look.

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

Photo St. Leo University

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More Than 100 Colleges Are Requiring The COVID-19 Vaccine For Students On Campus This Fall - The Federalist