Daily Archives: November 23, 2021

Juhana Pohjola wouldnt be cast to play his own part if Hollywood made a movie about a bishop put on trial for his faith. The Finnish pastor has inherited a place in the church of Martin Luther, but it appears none of Luthers pugnacity or vitriol.

In person, Pohjola, 49, is forthright but unassuming, and gentle. Stereotypically, the Finn is thin and tall. He often pauses while speaking to carefully consider his next words. He listens attentively to others with far less impressive resumes.

In more than two decades as a pastor, Pohjola has ministered to congregations as small as 30. He has spent his life building a network of faithful churches across Finland, many of which started with a few people gathered for prayer, Bible study, hymn-singingand communion, if they can get a pastor. In an in-person interview with The Federalist, Pohjola urged fellow Christian leaders to be willing to seek out one lost sheep instead of crowds and acclaim.

This is the man who appears to be the first in the post-Soviet Union West to be brought up on criminal charges for preaching the Christian message as it has been established for thousands of years. Also charged in the case that goes to trial on January 24 is Pohjolas fellow Lutheran and a Finnish member of Parliament, Paivi Rasanen.

Rasanens alleged crimes in a country that claims to guarantee freedom of speech and religion include tweeting a picture of a Bible verse. Potential penalties if they are convicted include fines and up to two years in prison.

Rasanen and Pohjola are being charged with hate speech for respectively writing and publishing a 24-page 2004 booklet that explains basic Christian theology about sex and marriage, which reserves sex exclusively for within marriage, which can only consist of one man and one woman, for life. The Finnish prosecutor claims centuries-old Christian teachings about sex incite hatred and violate legal preferences for government-privileged identity groups.

Writer Rod Dreher pointed out the witch hunt nature of this prosecution: Rsnen wrote that pamphlet seven years before LGBT was added to the national hate-speech law as a protected class. She was investigated once before for the pamphlet, and cleared but now shes going to undergo another interrogation.

Rasanen and Pohjola both have adamantly affirmed the divinely given dignity, value, and human rights of all, including all who identify with the LGBTQ community. Christian theology teaches that all human beings are precious, as all are made in Gods image and offered eternal life through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

In advance of the trial, Rasanen and Pohjola have been interrogated by police for hours about their theology. Pohjola told me in the interrogation police treated Christian beliefs as thought crimes. In a statement, Rasanen noted that the police publicly admitted their interpretation of Finlands law would make publishing the Bible a hate crime.

It is impossible for me to think that the classical Christian views and the doctrine of the majority of denominations would become illegal. The question here is about the core of Christian faith; how a person gets saved into unity with God and into everlasting life though the redemptive sacrifice of Jesus. Therefore, it is crucial to also talk about the nature of sin, Rasanen told Dreher. As we are living in a democratic country, we must be able to disagree and express our disagreement. We have to be able to cope with speech that we feel insults our feelings. Many questions are so debatable and contradictory that we have to have the possibility of discussing. Otherwise the development is towards a totalitarian system, with only one correct view.

Humans rights lawyer Paul Coleman, who spoke to The Federalist from his Alliance Defending Freedom International office in Vienna, Austria, says Pohjola and Rasanens cases are a canary in the coalmine for freedom of speech across the West. ADF International is providing legal support for Pohjola and Rasanens cases.

Although all European countries have these hate speech laws, and these hate speech laws are increasingly being used against citizens for things that they say, this is the first time weve really seen Christians face criminal prosecution for explaining their biblical views, Coleman said. Its unprecedented. Weve not seen attacks on free speech on this level in Europe, and thats why they are extremely important cases, not just for the people of Finland and Paivi Rasanen and the bishop themselves, but for all of Europe. If this is upheld in one jurisdiction, we will no doubt see it in other jurisdictions as well.

Such hate speech laws exist in every European country and Western countries such as Canada and Australia, and descend from Soviet influence. Coleman called them sleeper laws, saying that in other countries they could be used any time just like they are in Finland. People need to mobilize against these laws and overturn them.

Legally privileging certain sexual behavior has thus broken western countries promises of equality before the law for all citizens, as well as enabling government discrimination against citizens who exercise their free speech and religious liberty, as in the Baronnelle Stutzman and Jack Phillips cases in the United States.

Establishing standards of identity also lets government meddle in theological controversies that are none of its business, said the Rev. Dr. Jonathan Shaw, who directs church relations for the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod (LCMS) and has known Pohjola for decades. Pohjolas church is an international partner of the LCMS.

From a natural law and historic Western perspective, the government isnt supposed to get into peoples brains and tell them whats right and wrong to believe and say, Shaw noted in a phone interview. Thats not their realm. Their realm is in externals, things like protect people in their bodies, go to war when necessary, and punish criminals This is really whats at stake [in the Pohjola case]. Government has lost its moorings and doesnt know its purpose.

After theological study in Finland and the United States, Pohjolas first congregation in Helsinki started with about 30 members, he says. It was only able to support him part-time at first. He remembered his wife accompanying the congregations hymn-singing on a piano while their firstborn daughter, a baby at the time, laid on a blanket on the floor nearby.

Finlands state church began openly disobeying Christian theology concerning sex differences amid the global sexual revolution of the 1960s. So Christians alienated by the state churchs embrace of anti-Christian cultural demands sought faithful pastors like Pohjola, who are known as confessional for adhering to historic Christian confessions.

The resulting growth of his tiny congregation gradually led to establishing a seminary, then dozens of mission churches, which grew as the theologically unfaithful state church shrank. In 2013, 25 of these new confessional congregations formed the Evangelical Lutheran Diocese of Finland. Today, that diocese oversees 45 congregations and missions and is training 64 pastors.

That growth has been accompanied by suffering, including persecution first from Pohjolas own church.

In 2009, Pohjola was awarded the theological journal Gottesdiensts Sabre of Boldness Award, which is granted for conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity on behalf of the Holy Church of Christ, while engaged in the confession of His Pure Gospel in the face of hostile forces, and at the greatest personal risk. The award honored Pohjola, with other faithful Finnish pastors, for standing firm as Finlands state church sought civil charges against them for refusing to disobey the Bibles commands that only men be sent to lead spiritual warfare as pastors.

Like Luther before him, Pohjola was expelled by his own church body in 2014 for adhering to Gods word on this matter. The notice of his discharge declared Pohjola was obviously unfit to be a pastor. At the time, he responded with grief but also by saying that he must obey God rather than men, lamenting: Instead of the Church being purged with Gods Word, she is being purged from Gods Word.

In the interview last week, Pohjola said being defrocked from his baptismal church grieves him to this day. On his mothers side, Pohjola said, his family includes Lutheran pastors in that church going back to the 17th century Reformation. But he could not disobey Gods commands to retain his social status or employment.

Pohjolas separation from Finlands state church also had the consequence of uniting him and his flock with other confessional Christians across the globe. The International Lutheran Council is a global network of theologically unified churches, and like the confessional churches in Finland, that network is growing.

Mathew Block, the ILCs communications manager, noted that the heightened contradictions between increasingly unnatural pagan practices and historic Christian teachings are causing a global confessional realignment. Its forcing people to make a real decision about where they stand rather than allowing them to inhabit the increasingly nonexistent, indecisive middle.

This is affecting churches all over the world. While it means divisions in some areas, it also is leading to unity in others. For example, despite other important theological differences, all the worlds largest Christian bodies agree with the doctrines for which the Finnish government is persecuting Pohjola. That allows them to speak in chorus to government leaders.

Already many dozens of top religious leaders across the world have formally raised their concerns with Rasanen and Pohjolas prosecution to the Finnish government and the United Nations. Several U.S. members of Congress have also asked U.S. agencies to take action against Finland for these human rights abuses.

I encourage Roman Catholic ecclesiastical leaders and all those who care for souls to speak up and join hands and lock arms with us as we talk about the absolute necessity of our historic Christian values of one man, one woman marriage, and the freedom to be able to believe it, to say it, to publish books about it, and find practical ways through hospitality, education, and other social engagement to make society strong that way, Shaw said. All churchesone could even say all religions but in particular the Roman Catholic faiththis reflects their historic commitments as well.

In August 2021, the international Lutheran church recognized Pohjolas steadfast leadership amid persecution by supporting his election to bishop of Finlands confessional diocese. The ILC hosted Pohjolas November 2021 speaking tour in the United States, and is raising funds across the world to raise awareness of his case.

Our mission has been that, if the shepherd sees that one sheep is missing, he knows, Pohjola said of the churches he oversees. He noted that many people coming to faithful Finnish churches are seeking love and connection from a church family as the secular world becomes increasingly isolated and family-less, in no small part because of pagan sexual behavior and beliefs.

People dont go to church for social capital now. This is a serious life and they want to be serious with God. So churches have to build communities that stand on solid Lutheran, biblical doctrine, Pohjola says.

While he may not share Luthers temperament, Pohjolas response to his own persecution by church and civil authorities does mirror Luthers simplicity four centuries ago: Here I stand. I can do no other. He adds a pastoral message to Christians watching governments turn on them today.

We have to learn from the past, Christians who have suffered under persecution, and be prepared, Pohjola said. But its not something to be worried about, because Christ remains faithful to His church and wherever he is leading us, He will come with us. He will provide everything that is needed for the future of His Christians and His church.

You can hear Pohjola talk about his case and its implications during his November visit to the United States here:

And watch a Federalist Radio Hour interview with Pohjola here:

Read more:

With Global Implications, Finland Puts Christians On Trial For Their Faith - The Federalist

On this episode of The Federalist Radio Hour, Federalist Political Editor John Daniel Davidson joins Culture Editor Emily Jashinsky to discuss the ongoing Southern border crisis and highlight veteran border officials thoughts on how President Joe Bidens radical policies are contributing to one of the nations top humanitarian catastrophes.

This administration has systematically shut down every program that was working to actually slow down the flow, former Chief of the United States Border Patrol Rodney Scott told Davidson on the banks of the Rio Grande in Texas. And this is a national security issue. Every time the agents here have to respond to a large group of illegal aliens claiming asylum or not, that takes them away from other mission sets.

Davidson said the medias coverage of the crisis might ebb and flow but the Biden administrations response will largely be chalked up to a lack of action.

Were just going to have to wait a matter of weeks or months for another flashpoint that will capture national headlines for a little while, that will illustrate the depths of the crisis that were in, but we are not going to see any policy change from the Biden administration. This, unfortunately, is the state of affairs that they have created and, at this point, knowingly are perpetuating on the border, Davidson said. And so were going to continue to see record numbers of illegal crossings, were going to continue to see efforts to process them as quickly as we can and release [them] into the country, and Im sure that we are going to see efforts by the Biden administration to stop state efforts like Operation Lone Star as limited and timid as it might be.

Read more:

The Biden Administration's Border Policy Is All Carrots And No Sticks - The Federalist

Massive corporations are pursuing a common and mutually agreed upon agenda to destroy American freedom, attorney Ashley Keller told a gathering of the most powerful legal organization in America last Saturday.

This conspiracy, Keller claimed, includes companies as varied as Facebook, Google, Amazon, Coca-Cola, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, Twitter, and Walmart, all of which have joined forces with the swelling ranks of so-called woke people, who are completely and unabashedly opposed to individual rights.

Defenders of freedom must face reality, Keller insisted, before adding the nations top advocacy group for big business to his list of enemies. The Chamber of Commerce is not our friend. The C-suite grandees who finance it are not our friends either. They were erstwhile allies of convenience and they are now the enemies of a freedom-loving people.

Its the sort of conspiratorial thinking one might expect to hear on the Alex Jones Show, or perhaps from disciples of QAnon. But Mr. Kellers audience was not an ordinary online crowd.

Keller is a Harvard graduate who clerked on the Supreme Court of the United States, and his audience was the Federalist Society, an organization whose members dominate the federal judiciary and especially the nations highest court. He spoke to a conference packed with some of the most influential lawyers and judges in the country the conferences speaker list includes more than two dozen sitting federal appellate judges, and I spotted numerous other judges just wandering the conventions halls.

When someone speaks at the Federalist Societys annual gathering, they speak directly to many of the most powerful people in the country, some of whom literally have the power to order the Societys enemies to comply with its wishes.

And while those wishes arent clearly defined yet, the enemy increasingly is. Over the three-day span of the Federalist Societys annual convention, attendees were warned of unprecedented threats to human flourishing, all driven by cultural leftists who have taken over public and private schools, universities, and even big business in order to impose their woke agenda on an unwilling public.

Even the theme of the conference Public and Private Power: Preserving Freedom or Preventing Harm? hinted that something has gone horribly wrong in the private sector.

Never before in nearly half a century, have we seen all levels of government so blatantly disregarding the Constitution and our civil rights laws, and at such a furious pace, said Kimberly Hermann, a lawyer who sues public schools on behalf of conservative causes, at a panel denouncing diversity, equity, and inclusion-based curricula.

Vivek Ramaswamy, a young biotech executive and author of Woke, Inc.: Inside Corporate Americas Social Justice Scam, claimed that the woke movement in the United States, and corporations that appeal to it, undermine Americas geopolitical standing against China.

Adam Candeub, a professor at Michigan State University College of Law, complained about Facebook and Twitters controversial decision to suppress content about a dubiously sourced story about President Joe Bidens son Hunter. Less convincingly, he complained about several big tech companies decision to temporarily block the conservative social media site Parler after January 6. As Amazon explained after it removed Parler from its web hosting service, it did so because the conservative social media site refused to pull down content that threatens the public safety, such as by inciting and planning the rape, torture, and assassination of named public officials and private citizens.

And yet, for Candeub, these incidents were proof that all conservatives are threatened and something needed to be done to rein in tech companies. If trends continue, Candeub told the Federalist Society audience, youll be de-platformed.

Its a stunning rhetorical shift from a fanatically pro-free market organization thats traditionally pushed a hands-off approach to business. Historically, the society has sought to undermine corporate regulation, and that has lionized decisions like Citizens United v. FEC (2010), which permits corporations to spend unlimited sums of money to influence elections. The Federalist Societys conference typically features panels warning about systematic regulatory overreach against regulated industries.

But now the society appears to have lost confidence in the very free market system it spent decades celebrating.

In a market society, economists Milton and Rose Friedman wrote in 1979, the consumer is protected from being exploited by one seller by the existence of another seller from whom he can buy and who is eager to sell to him. In theory, if one company adopts woke branding that offends its customers, then the market will deliver those customers into the waiting arms of a competitor.

Yet, rather than waiting for the hand of the market to deliver an invisible spanking to woke corporations, speaker after speaker at the Federalist Societys convention called for a central planner to intervene. As it turns out, the societys commitment to something as foundational as free market capitalism may be secondary to its desire to own the libs.

The conference featured an array of angry speakers raging against private sector leftism, but it was often hard to figure out what, exactly, they were so mad about. Though a mix of panels on woke corporations, universities, and secondary schools warned of a multi-institutional effort to impose this ideology on the nation, many speakers never explained what they think this ideology entails. Those that did often described a woke person in caricatured terms.

Newsweek opinion editor Josh Hammer defined the enemy and he very pointedly used the word enemy as the Ibram X. Kendi woke ideology extremists who are trying to poison and rot the minds of our children into hating themselves and hating their country to boot. Keller claimed that woketarians dont just oppose individual rights, they also believe that Americas founding was an immoral act and that the Bill of Rights is racist.

Numerous speakers deployed the most potent weapon in the anti-woke advocates toolbox: the unrepresentative anecdote. Three speakers pointed to the same two incidents the Hunter Biden article and the moves against Parler as evidence that big tech is out of control. Speakers on three different panels complained about an incident where a Yale Law School student and Federalist Society member felt intimidated after a mid-level administrator pressured him to apologize for an email advertising a Trap House party where Popeyes chicken and basic bitch American-themed snacks would be served.

Even when a speaker pointed to a specific incident that involved neither Yale nor Hunter Biden, moreover, they gave little reason to believe that any systemic problems exist.

Hermann, for example, alleged that a school district in Illinois separated white and non-white teachers and gave them different teacher trainings. She also complained about a childrens book likening white privilege to a deal with the Devil a book that has allegedly been taught in maybe a dozen classrooms and recommended to students in a few more. Yet, when she tried to show that these incidents were part of a broader pattern, her best evidence was that every single school district throughout this country is requiring teachers to take some sort of equity training.

Ramaswamy, the Woke, Inc. author, even implied that laws banning discrimination on the basis of race, sex, religion, and national origin should be repealed. Not many people are willing to revisit the question of whether the law should protect classes such as these, Ramaswamy said, but I am.

The conference, in other words, featured an array of speakers who created a general sense that values like diversity and inclusion have gone too far including several who seemed to reject the very idea that these values are worth championing at all. But it was often hard to pin down exactly what wokism is, or what the Federalist Society plans to do about it.

That said, many speakers brought up Milton Friedman, and specifically his views about the role of a corporation. Under the Friedman Doctrine, a corporate manager is the agent of the individuals who own the corporation, and thus must act in their interests a duty that many speakers claimed was inconsistent with corporations playing politics. Ramaswamy, for example, warned against the woke executive who uses his or her seat of corporate power, and the shareholder resources associated with it, to advance a particular agenda.

Its doubtful that the Federalist Society really wants to follow this argument to its logical conclusion. No speaker that I witnessed argued that corporations should be barred from lobbying law and policymakers. And the few speakers who mentioned Citizens United appeared to believe that it was correctly decided. For years, the Federalist Society elevated voices who believe that corporations should be free to spend money to elect Republicans or to lobby Congress to diminish the power of the EPA. And there is no reason to think that it will reverse course on these issues.

But so many speakers at this years conference appeared convinced that certain choices corporations have made present such a unique threat that the ordinary rules of free speech should not apply. The undergirding principle behind so many of these speeches was that corporate free speech and corporations ability to shape their own companies values does not extend to actions that promote whatever the Federalist Society means when it uses the word woke.

But even if we grant the premise that a corporation that promotes values like diversity is different in kind from a corporation that gives a million dollars to a Republican super PAC, its not even clear why corporate diversity initiatives and the like run counter to Friedmans theory of the corporation. Theres a perfectly plausible argument that when corporate executives make a woke comment, decline to provide services to a website that promotes political violence, or run an ad campaign featuring BLM supporters, theyre just exercising good business judgment.

The Societys rage against woke corporations only makes sense if you imagine wokeism to exclude any real concept of social and economic justice. Amazons decision to block a single extremist website does nothing to allay the harsh working conditions in its warehouses. Corporate America is replete with companies that denounce a regressive bill in public then donate to conservative groups that help reelect these lawmakers in private.

As the Roosevelt Institutes Kitty Richards told my colleague Emily Stewart, We should be skeptical of individual companies and their CEOs and shareholders talking about corporate tax rates or specific provisions that seem benevolent, because they are often trying to shape policy in a way that will affect their bottom lines positively.

But lets take the arguments against woke capital offered by people like Keller and Ramaswamy at face value. Yes, corporations have always advocated for their own interests in the political arena, and this corporate speech often promotes the laissez-faire values that used to animate the Federalist Society. But there are, at the very least, anecdotal examples of big companies taking actions that enrage conservatives and delight liberals and Democrats.

The assumption underlying so many of the Federalist Society speakers remarks is that, when companies hold diversity trainings or deny server space to websites like Parler, they are advancing the political views of corporate executives at the expense of the company itself. In Kellers words, woke capitalism is driven by CEOs who like the psychic income they get from virtue signaling, and who think that appealing to cultural leftists will appeal to all of the people who go to cocktail parties that New York Times folks like to go to.

Perhaps. But if companies as diverse as Google, Coca-Cola, JPMorgan, and Walmart are all engaged in the kind of wokism Keller despises, he should at least consider the possibility that they are doing so because it is good business.

The business case for wokism starts by looking at the political divide between younger and older voters. According to the Pew Research Center, President Joe Biden beat former President Donald Trump by 30 points among voters between the ages of 18 and 29. He won voters aged 30 to 49 by 11 points. Trump, meanwhile, won voters aged 50 and older.

This divide matters to corporate executives because young people wield a disproportionate influence over the market. As Ezra Klein has noted, advertisers are particularly interested in reaching the younger, Biden-supporting cohort of consumers because those younger consumers tend to have unsettled brand preferences. If you convince a young 30-something to buy a Ford truck, theres a good chance they will drive Ford trucks for the rest of their lives.

This focus on young consumers has several implications. For one thing, it means that television studios will tend to produce content that appeals to the younger, more liberal audience that advertisers want to reach thus causing Americas pop culture to embrace young peoples values. It also means that companies will try to market their products to people who share these values, even if such a campaign might alienate older consumers.

Consider, for example, Nikes decision to make Colin Kaepernick, the former NFL player and racial justice activist, the centerpiece of a 2018 ad campaign. This campaign mystified many older consumers an SSRS poll from that year found that just 26 percent of adults over 65 agreed with Nikes decision to feature Kaepernick.

But Nike also knew that two-thirds of the companys customers are under 35, according to a report by CNN, and a plurality of this age cohort supported Nikes decision to feature Kaepernick. The views of older voters didnt matter to Nike. From a purely capitalist perspective, woke branding helped Nike sell shoes.

Young people also care a great deal about diverse workplaces. A 2018 survey by the consulting firm Deloitte, for example, found that millennial and Gen Z employees working for employers perceived to have a diverse workforce are more likely to want to stay five or more years than those who say their companies are not diverse (69 percent to 27 percent). The same survey found that younger workers are more likely to remain at a company with a diverse management team.

So companies that want to attract new consumers and recruit a talented workforce must appeal to younger individuals who largely reject the Federalist Societys values. That may lead to a number of corporate policies that offend people like Keller or Ramaswamy. And it may mean that companies like Google or Amazon risk an uprising among their software engineers if those companies get in bed with a site like Parler. But its hardly evidence that corporate executives are engaged in a conspiracy to promote wokism at the expense of their shareholders.

Even if business leaders are wrong that appealing to young, left-leaning consumers is a good business plan, moreover, sanctioning these companies for doing so could require upending one of the most foundational principles of corporate law. Although corporate law typically does allow shareholders to sue the directors of a corporation if the shareholder believes that they are behaving counter to the corporations interests, corporate leaders benefit from something known as the business judgment rule, which ordinarily protects business-related decisions that are made in good faith.

The law, in other words, is built on the premise that companies should be free to experiment with business tactics that may annoy some individuals, and the proper remedy if a company makes bad business decisions is that it will lose consumers to its competitors. Let the market work, rather than turning businesses over to a central planner.

Although conservative rage against corporate wokeness was a centerpiece of the Federalist Societys gathering, its unclear what exactly the various speakers plan to do about it. Several speakers offered policy proposals, but there was no consensus around a single idea.

Although several speakers expressed skepticism about efforts to foster racial diversity, some of them supported policies to promote what Northwestern law professor John McGinnis referred to as intellectual diversity that is, policies encouraging institutions to hire political conservatives. That could mean affirmative action programs for conservatives, or something more akin to an anti-discrimination law protecting people with conservative views.

Several speakers at a panel on Private Control Over Public Discussion pointed to an opinion last April by Justice Clarence Thomas, which argued that social media websites should be treated as common carriers and subjected to special regulations, including a general requirement to serve all comers a standard that would require Twitter and Facebook to restore former President Donald Trumps accounts and that could potentially prevent these sites from refusing to link to disinformation or hate speech.

Randy Barnett, a Georgetown law professor, offered a slightly different solution: Strip many social media companies of their ability to curate most of their own content, and require them to adhere to the same rules that apply to government censorship. Under this approach, Twitter or Facebook could still remove fraud, incitement to imminent lawlessness, personal threats of violence, or other unlawful harassment, obscenity, or child pornography, but would be unable to remove hate speech. Or speech that induces people to commit a crime such as invading the United States Capitol, so long as the crime is not imminent.

At least one speaker suggested that lawmakers should rely on sanctions and menace to cow woke institutions into compliance. Hammer, the Newsweek editor, insisted that conservatives need to wield in state legislative chambers some degree of power to punish our enemies within the confines of the rule of law.

In any event, the Societys members appear to be in an early stage of brainstorming how to target woke institutions and remake them in a more conservative image. Its not yet clear which specific policies will emerge from this process or which ones will become law.

But thats no reason for anyone who fears such an agenda to remain complacent.

At the Federalist Societys 2015 convention, the speakers offered a similarly disjointed array of proposals to limit the power of federal agencies such as the Department of Labor or the Environmental Protection Agency. Though none of these proposals emerged as the Societys consensus view in 2015, the Federalist Societys views on agency power shaped the Trump White Houses decisions regarding who to appoint to the federal bench. By 2019, five members of the Supreme Court a majority had signed onto a doctrine known as nondelegation which could give the conservative Court a veto power over any regulation handed down by a federal agency.

And then, just this month, the Supreme Court announced it would hear a case that is likely to implement this nondelegation doctrine and that could gut the EPAs authority in the process.

When the Federalist Society identifies an enemy, in other words, it is very good at convincing its judges to target that same enemy. And those judges now control the Supreme Court.

See the original post:

The Federalist Society loses its mind over woke corporations - Vox

By Allen C. Guelzo, Ph. D., Gettysburg College Republicans, like Jefferson, sneered at the appointments of Federalists to fill 13 of the new judgeships, starting at the very top with John Marshall as the new Chief Justice. (Image: Chad Zuber/Shutterstock)Jeffersons Plan

Suspicious and unrepentant Federalists saw an iron hand inside Thomas Jeffersons velvet glove. That speech, snorted one Federalist newspaper, was but a net to ensnare popularity.

In 1799, Jefferson wrote to the chronically dissatisfied Elbridge Gerry to outline exactly the plan he meant to follow if elected president.

First, he would, he said, dismantle the administrative apparatus developed by Hamilton in his series of reports as secretary of the treasury. Secondly, he would not only demobilize the Additional Army but slice spending on national defense as a whole to the bone, since spending on armies and navies only created tax burdens which erased the independence of virtuous farmers.

Next, Jefferson promised he would show no favoritism in foreign policywhich, since John Adamss last important initiative had actually been to end the Quasi- War with France, meant that Jefferson would be showing no favoritism to the British in particular.

I am not for linking ourselves by new treaties with the quarrels of Europe, entering that field of slaughter to preserve their balance, or, joining in the confederacy of kings to war against the principles of liberty.

This made his anti-British sentiments clear.

Learn more about Whiskey Rebellion.

Jefferson in his inaugural address said, We are all republicans, we are all federalists. What he actually meant was having no parties at all.

If we can hit on the trueline which may conciliate the honest part of those who were called federalists, Jefferson wrote to Horatio Gates, I should hope to obliterate the names of federalist and republican.

In practice what that meant was eliminate Federalists and everyone become a Jeffersonian. But whether the Federalists went willingly or not, Jefferson was determined by the establishment of republican principles to sink federalism into an abyss from which there shall be no resurrection for it.

This is a transcript from the video series Americas Founding Fathers. Watch it now, on Wondrium.

Jeffersons first strategy for creating the Federalist abyss was to evict Federalists from federal office-holding, which he did with gusto. Of the 316 federal offices under Jeffersons direct appointment, Jefferson forced-out 146 incumbents46 percentmost, if not all, of whom were Federalists.

Tax collectors and inspectors, and the whiskey excise they had tried to collect were also eliminated; the Sedition Law was allowed to expire; individuals who had been indicted under the other anti-French acts were pardoned. The diplomatic corps was reduced to just three missions: to Britain, France, and Spain.

Jefferson then turned his eye on the federal judiciary. In the last weeksof the Adams administration, the Sixth Congress took the opportunity to adopt a Judiciary Act at almost the last minute that re-organized the structure of the federal judiciary, reducing the number of Supreme Court justices to five, and dividing the federal appeals courts into 19 district courts and six circuit courts.

What made this reorganization something less than a mere reshuffling of the deck was the opportunity the Judiciary Act provided to John Adams.

It, firstly, allowed for the more active enforcement of the Alien and Sedition Acts, and then to appoint a full slate of Federalists to fill 13 of the new judgeships, starting at the very top with John Marshall as the new Chief Justice. Republicans, like Jefferson, sneered at the appointments as midnight judges, since Adams was supposed to have stayed up late on his last evening in office to sign their appointment papers.

Jefferson could not,constitutionally,dismissfederaljudges.Butwith a 65 to 40 majority in the House and only two votes shy of a majority in the Senate, Jefferson was able to get the Judiciary Act repealed by the Seventh Congress, and replaced in April of 1802, with a new Judiciary Act.

Learn more about Jeffersons political philosophy.

The jobs of the midnight judges, appointed by John Adams, thereby simply ceased to exist. One Federalist Supreme Court justice, Samuel Chase, protested that the circuit Judges cannot, directly or indirectly, be deprived of their offices, or commissions, or salaries, during their lives; unless only on impeachment as prescribed in the Constitution.

In response, theCongressional Republicans, led by the acerbic John Randolph of Roanoke, impeached Chase on eight counts, and only fell three votes shy in the Senate of convicting him.

Thus, one way or the other, Jefferson was ever more unwavering in his resolve to establish firmly a government based on republican principles and sink federalism into an abyss from which there indeed was no coming back.

The first thing Thomas Jefferson planned to do was to dismantle the administrative apparatus developed by Hamilton in his series of reports as secretary of the treasury.

Thomas Jeffersons first strategy for creating the Federalist abyss was to evict Federalists from federal office-holding, which he did with gusto.

With a 65 to 40 majority in the House and only two votes shy of a majority in the Senate, Thomas Jefferson was able to get the Judiciary Act repealed by the Seventh Congress, and replaced in April of 1802, with a new Judiciary Act.

Continue reading here:

Thomas Jefferson: Creating the Federalist Abyss - The Great Courses Daily News

Even the leftist comedy sketch writers at Saturday Night Live recognize GOP Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney as a Republican in name only.

Over the weekend, SNL aired a game show skit where a panel of contestants had to guess whether subjects brought on stage were Republican or not.

The third and final guest whose political identity was in question was Rep. Cheney played by Cecily Strong.

Im a congresswoman from Wyoming, Im endorsed by the NRA, and have an 80 percent rating from the American Conservative Union, says Cheney.

After the contestants remained confused, the host emphasizes her family ties.

Shes the daughter of Dick Cheney, the moderator says.

Cheney is more straightforward.

Im a Republican, she says, which leadsthe panel to guess Cheney is a Republican.

Republican, she just said shes a Republican, one shouts.

No, sorry, again that is wrong! the host corrects. The Wyoming Republican Party actually voted Representative Cheney out this week for opposing Donald Trump.

But, I am a Republican, Cheney says on stage in a claim met with laughter.

You might tell everybody that, the host says. Like it or not, you are the Rachel Dolezal of the Republican Party.

Dolezal, who was NAACP president of the groups Spokane chapter in Washington from 2014-2015, captured national attention six years ago when she was outed as a white woman pretending to be black.

Despite being born to white parents, Dolezal became a champion of the transracial movement and continued to identify as black.

I identify as black, she said on NBCs Today in her first national television interview after a local reporter blew her cover. I definitely am not white. Nothing about being white describes who I am.

Indeed, Cheney claims to be Republican despite breaking from the party in some of the most defining moments of the prior 18 months, from promoting the fake news of Russian bounties placed on American soldiers at the height of the presidential election to coopting the Democrats domestic war on terror, i.e., political dissidents, in the form of House Speaker Nancy Pelosis Jan. 6 Committee.

No one will question, you know, my conservative credentials, Cheney said in a September 60 Minutes interview justafter an endorsement from the radical left-wing group Occupy Democrats.

Cheney now faces a competitive primary challenge from the Trump-endorsed Wyoming attorney Harriet Hageman.

Excerpt from:

SNL: Liz Cheney Is The Rachel Dolezal Of The Republican Party - The Federalist

Soon after Special Counsel John Durham indicted Igor Danchenko, the Primary Sub-Source of the Steele dossier, on five counts of lying to the FBI, the press paused to feign a moment of public introspection. The corrupt medias attempt to frame their failings as mere confirmation bias, however, holds no truer than the Russia-collusion hoax they peddled for five years.

The proof of this reality is seen in the prostitute sex tapes: the non-existent golden showers one and the verifiable, but ignored, Hunter Biden videos.

The first step of what appeared, at least momentarily, to be the kick-off of a mea culpa parade came earlier this month when the Washington Post amended large segments of two articles covering the Russia-collusion storyline, one from March 2017 and the second from February 2019.

Both articles had named Sergei Millian, a Belarusian-American businessman, as the individual identified as Source D in the Steele dossier. While Millian had long denied speaking with Danchenko or having any role in the dossier, it was only after Durham charged the Russian-born Danchenko and former Brookings Institute employee with lying about receiving a telephone call from Millian that the Post and other media outlets removed the claims.

Then, last week, The New York Times ran a guest essay by professor of journalism and former Columbia Journalism School dean Bill Grueskin, headlined, How Did So Much of the Media Get the Steele Dossier So Wrong?

To Grueskin the problem was multi-pronged. Grueskins prologue to why so many were taken in so easily was simple: The dossier seemed to confirm what they already suspecteda corruption of Donald Trump that spanned from dodgy real estate negotiations to a sordid hotel-room tryst, all tied together by the president-elects obeisance to President Vladimir Putin of Russia.

From there, Grueskin listed the problems, which amazingly all belonged to Trump. Trump had long curried Mr. Putins favor and he and his family were eager to do business in Russia. Then there was Trumps choice of Paul Manafort as his campaign chair that reinforced the idea that he was in the thrall of Russia.

Adding to the perfect storm that explained the press failures, Grueskin posited that journalists also had to deal with the fact that many of the denials came from confirmed liars. Further complicating the matter, Grueskin wrote, was that some reporters simply didnt like or trust Mr. Trump, and didnt want to appear to be on his side.

Here, Grueskin quoted from former Times reporter Barry Meiers book Spooked: Plenty of reporters were skeptical of the dossier, but they hesitated to dismiss it, because they didnt want to look like they were carrying water for Trump or his cronies.

Bunk. The corrupt media did not fall for the Russia collusion hoax. They were part of it.

How else to explain the scathing email Jake Tapper sent BuzzFeed editor Ben Smith after the latter published the dossier? I think your move makes the story less serious and credible[.] I think you damaged its impact, the CNN anchor wrote.

On that point at least, Tapper was correct. The actual dossieras opposed to select excerpts or word-smithed summaries pushed by the anti-Trump presswas a laughably fake document. When the public saw the source, they didnt buy it, and, really, neither did the press.

For all corporate medias ex post facto efforts to rationalize why they fell for the dossier, only one holds true: They didnt like Trump, personally or politically.

Now, Joe Biden, they like. So when weeks before the November 2020 election, when The New York Post published multiple stories revealing damaging information recovered from an abandoned laptop bearing a Biden Foundation sticker, social media silenced the story and corporate media spun it as Russia disinformation.

The same folks who supposedly bought anonymous claims that Trump had paid prostitutes to pee on a bed the Obamas had once slept in found the actual videos of Hunter Biden with prostitutes unbelievable. Likewise, we are to believe Trumps supposed shady business deals made the dossier plausible to the press, while unworthy of the medias trust were genuine emails discussing a 10 percent cut reserved for the Big Guy as part of a Biden family deal being plotted with a Chinese energy giant.

And we are to suppose that the press that pushed the Russia collusion hoax did so hesitantly and out of a desire not to carry water for Trump and his cronies, all while they carried Biden over the finish line, where he now sits as the commander-in-chief across the virtual table from Chinas Xi Jinping.

Sure, now the corporate media is expending some effort to report on Hunter Bidens partnership in 2016 with a Chinese state-backed company that gave the communist organization ownership of an African cobalt mine. That profitable investment by the younger Biden gave China control over much of the worlds production of cobaltan essential element for electric car batteries. With the Biden administrations latest spending proposal earmarking billions for promoting electric vehicles, we now see reporters beginning to probe whether the presidents son remains a financial beneficiary of that deal.

But that the corrupt media turned a blind eye to the evidence of a China-Biden scandal in 2020 lays bare the lie that journalists fell for the dossier and the Russia-collusion conspiracy theory because of a confirmation bias. There was no confirmation bias in playit was collusion, pure and simple.

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.

Originally posted here:

Media Did Not Fall For The Russia Collusion Hoax. They Were Part Of It - The Federalist

NBC News is the latest corporate media outlet to place the burden of dealing with skyrocketing inflation on American shoppers, recommending families forgo the turkey at their Thanksgiving celebrations this week.

The reason for abandoning such a staple dish at the holiday dinner table, NBC News seemed to suggest, comes from the rising prices of ingredients and food items in the U.S. due to inflation. This is evidenced by a recent Farm Bureau survey which found that the cost of Thanksgiving dinner is up 14 percent from last year.

Instead of examining just why the cost of a Thanksgiving meal is so much higher under the Biden administration compared to years past, NBC Newss Vicky Nguyen implored consumers to sacrifice a key edible element of the special holiday to make ends meet.

Perhaps forgo the turkeyI know that is the staple of the Thanksgiving meal, however, some people think turkey is overrated and so it tends to be the most expensive thing on the table. Maybe you do an Italian feast instead, Nguyen suggested on air just a few days before the holiday.

If you tell everyone youre having a Thanksgiving without turkey, some guests may drop off the list and thats a way to cut costs too, she added.

One day before Nguyens tone-deaf urgings, a CBS News poll found that 67 percent of Americans disapprove of President Joe Bidens handling of inflation.

Meanwhile, Biden and the White House continue to downplay their role in rising prices.

America is the only major economy the only one in the world where the economy is bigger today, and families have more money in their pockets today, than before the pandemic hit. Thats even after accounting for inflation, Biden said on Monday.

This narrative was easily adopted by other outlets in the corporate media such as Vox and The Atlantic which published pieces last month demanding that Americans stop shopping in an effort to absolve Biden and his administration of blame for the supply chain crisis plaguing the country.

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

Excerpt from:

NBC Proposes Americans 'Forgo The Turkey' To Deal With Biden Inflation - The Federalist

Whether baked, fried, or smoked, there is the turkey, the traditional center of the universe for the Thanksgiving meal. Ask anyone what his favorite part of Thanksgiving lunch, dinner, or both is and hell likely have a different answer, though.

Because on Thanksgiving, the side items are the true indulgences. You need some protein 365 days a year. Same on sleep, even if you dont achieve it via tryptophan.

But one thing you dont need on the regular is sweet potatoes so decadent they could serve as dessert, mashed potatoes so rich you might need to eat while wearing a blood pressure cuff, or a time-consuming two-step dressing, even if it is a springboard for the rest of your plate.

You may not need any of them, which is all the more reason to enjoy all of them on Thanksgiving, particularly in our land of plenty, inflation notwithstanding.

These recipes require varying levels of skill, patience, and belief in yourself, but theyre all eminently doable. One of the many beauties of Thanksgiving is that its not a day that requires perfection, just an exceedingly high level of satiety.

So, pick up the required ingredients, grab a candy thermometer, and throw on your apron. No matter who you spend the day with, the resulting meal will get at least nine thumbs up, even if you only follow our advice in the abstract sense.

To get us started, we all know sweet potatoes. Some of us, though, know yams. But do you know the difference, other than the fact that basically all recipes dont really care which you use?

Thats because most likely theyre the same thing, unless youre shopping for some heirloom breed at the farmers market. Moreover, this recipe likely calls for sweet potatoes even though it says yams, being that the recipe is from New Orleans and, as the article linked in the previous sentence shows, Louisiana was instrumental in blurring the distinction.

Either way, this is like having your dessert with your meal, before you have your proper dessert following the meal. Seemingly complicated, its really not. Just follow the instructions and youll be fine.

But what if you want regular mashed potatoes instead of sweet potatoes? To that, Brad and I would say, Why not both? and point you to this recipe his family reserves for turkey day. Yes, thats more informational than a simple recipe, but now you know why potatoes have become the staple they are. To that, Brad and I would say, Youre welcome.

But what about dressing? Or is it stuffing? The short answer is, yes, probably.

Whether you cook it inside the bird, as in stuffing, or separately, as in dressing, its a crucial component of the meal. It can be simple, it can be complex. It can be made of sourdough or a French loaf or cornbread. It can be vegetarian or vegetarian-ish. The important thing is that its there, serving as one of the cornerstones to a feast fit for the heirs of a people who risked it all so that we might enjoy it.

As this is a heritage meal, if not one that was wholly served at the first Thanksgiving, Im going into the vault and releasing my Granny McCoys recipe for dressing. Treat the privilege of getting your hands on this with the respect it deserves.

Cornbread for dressing:

1 cup regular cornmeal2/3 cup flour1 tsp salt1 Tbsp sugar2 Tbsp baking powder4 eggs6 Tbsp shorteningabout 1 cups milk

Mix dry ingredients and add wet. Bake in 9 x 13 pan at 425 degrees for about 30 minutes.

Dressing:

1 cup chopped onion1 cup chopped celery8 cups cornbread crumbs2 cups bread crumbs2 tsp sage (or to taste)2 tsp poultry seasoningblack pepper to tasteabout 1 quart chicken broth (or turkey) with 6 bouillon cubes dissolved in broth

Cook onion and celery in a little oil until done.

Add remaining ingredients except for broth.

Add broth to make a loose but not runny mixture.

Bake at 350 for an hour.

Trust us, youre going to enjoy it. Dont be daunted by the fact that its a two-stage recipe, just as there is no reason to be daunted by the candy thermometer required for the yamsthat is, sweet potatoes. Cornbread didnt become a staple because its complicated.

Its the rest of the meal that offers the opportunity for complication, in the meal timing sense. Because this aint a meat and two. Its not even a meat and three. Its a meat and so much more.

For these sides are but a start. Youll also need cranberry sauce, whether canned or homemade. Youll need some rolls. You can add some deviled eggs and pickles to take it up a notch. And dont forget about dessert, although that course should involve at least one pie offering. This is the day to go big, although likely while also going home.

Thats because Thanksgiving is about family, although its also about the feast, its about football, and its about enjoying a warm cuppa to keep you awake for the latter after the former. As such, you should enjoy it thusly.

If you have any questions about how best to indulge, feel free to reach out to us. But be warned that we may not answer too promptly if you wait until Thanksgiving Day to contact us. Coffee aside, well either be eating or in food comas at that time.

Richard Cromwell is a senior contributor to The Federalist. Follow him on Twitter, @rcromwell4.

Excerpt from:

Try These Thanksgiving Sides That Steal The Show - The Federalist

DEL RIO, Texas What happens in border states when the federal government refuses to enforce immigration laws amid a record surge of illegal immigration? Are those states, and the elected officials charged with maintaining law and order in them, supposed to stand back and accept the ensuing chaos in their communities? Or do they have a right, even a duty, to take action and fill the void left by the federal government?

In Texas, where the border crisis that began as soon as President Biden took office is still in full swing, the answer appears to be that in the face of federal inaction, states must act on their own.

Thats the idea behind Operation Lone Star, Gov. Greg Abbotts evolving and expensive plan to secure the U.S.-Mexico border using thousands of state troopers and Texas National Guardsmen. The operation, launched in March, was initially billed by Abbott as an effort to deny Mexican Cartels and other smugglers the ability to move drugs and people into Texas, but has since become a sprawling and controversial experiment in the use of state power to secure an international border.

Democrats have denounced it as illegal and unconstitutional, and called for a Justice Department investigation. Republicans have praised Abbott for taking a stand and pushing the envelope.

Abbott has not asked the Biden administration for permission because he does not believe he needs it. Indeed, the entire operation has been designed to operate exclusively with state resources and agencies, and within the existing confines of state law. Thats both a strength of Abbotts approach and, as I saw for myself in Del Rio, Texas, a major weakness.

Its a weakness because it severely limits what the operation can achieve. The basic idea is that Texas state troopers and National Guard troops will arrest illegal immigrants, who will in turn be prosecuted for misdemeanor criminal trespass in hopes that such prosecutions will serve as a deterrent. Whatever the merits of this approach to border security, it comes with a host of caveats and constraints.

To begin with, Texas is only arresting single adult men, not women, children, or family units, which means the state is targeting the migrant population most likely to be quickly expelled to Mexico under Title 42, the pandemic public health order that allows federal immigration officials to send migrants back over the border with minimal processing. The migrant men arrested by Texas law enforcement, by contrast, will remain in state custody for weeks or longer, rather than being sent back to Mexico.

Up until last week, migrant men arrested under Operation Lone Star who posted bond would be transferred to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which would typically expel them under Title 42. But last week ICE told the state it would no longer take custody of these migrants. That means Texas will have to transfer them to U.S. Border Patrol, and as of this writing it remains an open question whether Border Patrol will expel them as they would have under Title 42, had federal agents arrested them, or process them as asylum-seekers.

If the latter, then Operation Lone Star might have the unintended effect of rewarding migrants caught by state authorities: once theyre processed and released by Border Patrol to pursue their asylum claims, migrants have legal status, are allowed to work, and can remain in the United States as their case wends its way through federal immigration courts a process that can take up to five years.

But even before these problems arise there are strict conditions that have to be met before state authorities can even make an arrest. Migrants can only be arrested on private land where landowners have agreed to press charges, and only on those parcels of land where the Texas National Guard has managed to erect temporary barriers, usually some arrangement of concertina wire that migrants must cut or go over, to ensure the trespass charges will stick.

And before Texas National Guardsmen in particular can arrest anyone, theyre supposed to go through 40 hours of police training (in practice, Im told that its more like a day-long training). Also, the migrants who are arrested have to be transported to state prisons that have been retrofitted to comply with state jail standards, since migrants are being held in pretrial confinement. That in turn means all the corrections officers have to be trained as jailers.

On top of all these requirements, the entire operation depends on the willingness of local county attorneys to prosecute a deluge of misdemeanor criminal trespass cases arising from all these arrests. In Kinney County, which has a population of less than 4,000, the county attorney is a young man named Brent Smith who just took office in January and has never before worked as a prosecutor. He now has about 1,300 cases and counting thanks to Operation Lone Star. (For context, in normal times the Kinney County prosecutor would only take on a couple dozen cases per year.)

By contrast, in neighboring Val Verde County, the local prosecutor, David Martinez, a Democrat, has rejected nearly half the cases that have come through his office from Operation Lone Star. Last month, Martinez told a local news station he rejected the cases either because the migrants in question were seeking asylum or because there was some other problem with the case. (He cited one case in which state troopers re-directed a group of migrants to cross onto private property so they could arrest them for trespassing.)

For all this, out of about 1,500 criminal trespass cases filed since July through Operation Lone Star, only about 3 percent have resulted in convictions, according to a recent report by the Wall Street Journal, which also cited court records showing that of the 170 Operation Lone Star cases resolved as of November 1, about 70 percent were dismissed, declined, or dropped. The remaining cases ended in plea agreements, with most migrants sentenced to time already served.

Meanwhile, all of this is costing Texas hundreds of millions of dollars. Earlier this year, Abbott shifted about $250 million in the state budget to launch the operation, and the GOP-led state legislature later approved an additional $3 billion. In Del Rio, you can see these dollars at work all over town: every hotel parking lot is full of Texas state trooper trucks and SUVs. Uniformed National Guardsmen drive around in armored Humvees. Along some stretches of private land near the Rio Grande, sparkling new chain-link fencing topped by concertina wire stretches out for miles.

Locals seem to appreciate the effort and money being poured into their communities, especially landowners who feel betrayed and abandoned by the Biden administration. One woman told me her familys ranch has been repeatedly vandalized this year by migrants trashed, in fact, for the first time in generations. When they called Border Patrol, the answer came back that no one could be spared to come out and investigate. Their advice was, stay away from your ranch, or move. Their message was, incredibly, we cant protect you.

Indeed, under the direction of Biden and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, Border Patrol has for the past ten months been overwhelmed with the endless task of processing and releasing migrants as fast as it possibly can, with little time or personnel available for patrolling the border. In Del Rio, I spoke to former Border Patrol chief Rodney Scott, who was forced out by the Biden administration in August, and he said agents are demoralized because theyre unable to do their jobs. Instead of intercepting drug and human traffickers or arresting criminals trying to evade detection the actual job of Border Patrol agents theyre stuck processing and transporting asylum-seekers.

Scott sees the border as a national security issue, but says the Biden administration has a completely different set of priorities. Unfortunately since January 20, I havent seen a single action or even a single conversation while I was still in the chiefs position, to try to slow the flow to actually create a deterrent to illegal entry, he says. Every single action has been to basically be more welcoming. How can we process faster? And thats just going to continue to be an invitation worldwide.

Texas, then, really is on its own. Abbott is right that under the circumstances something must be done by the state, but so far his solution seems overly lawyerly and cautious, designed specifically to pass legal muster and win lawsuits rather than create a real deterrent to illegal immigration.

A cynic might suspect that Operation Lone Star, for all its complex interagency coordination and mass deployment of manpower and expensive price tag, is in the end mostly political theater. Its purpose might not be to secure the border so much as to secure Abbotts right flank against a pair of Republican primary challengers, former GOP Texas Chairman Allen West and former state senator Don Huffines, who accuse Abbott of being too soft on the border.

Given the resources at Abbotts disposal, West and Huffines along with plenty of Texas conservatives who are frustrated about the ongoing border crisis arguably have a point. Former Virginia attorney general Ken Cuccinelli, who led U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services under Trump, has argued that border states have a strong constitutional case for securing their own international borders in the face of federal inaction. Cuccinelli and others cite Article I, Section 10, Clause 3 of the U.S. Constitution, which stipulates that no state can engage in diplomacy or war without the consent of Congress, unless actually invaded, or in such imminent Danger as will not admit delay.

The ongoing border crisis, which has seen a record 1.7 million arrests at the southwest border in the last 12 months, constitutes both an invasion and an imminent danger that will not admit delay, the argument goes, and states have a right to act. Not only could border state governors like Abbott invoke emergency powers to return illegal immigrants directly to Mexico, state legislatures could pass laws making it more difficult for illegal immigrants to remain in those states, mostly through strict licensure and screening requirements for sponsors and refugee resettlement organizations.

All of these things, and much else besides, lie far outside the scope of what Abbott is doing in Texas. There is no question at this point that Operation Lone Star, whatever its merits, will not significantly change the situation along the Rio Grande. The border crisis created by the Biden administration is here to stay a new normal along the southwest border for as long as the White House desires it.

What could change that? Texas could. Abbott could. He has already demonstrated an impressive ability to mobilize and deploy thousands of Texas law enforcement and military personnel, along with every manner of vehicles, barriers, and transports. Nothing like Operation Lone Star has ever been undertaken, yet it is too little, too late too pinched and small-minded a response to a rolling crisis that now appears to be permanent.

Abbott could wield these tools to press the constitutional question about what border states can do when the federal government leaves them to their own devices. If he doesnt, he might find the people of Texas are ready to listen to someone who will.

See the rest here:

In South Texas, The Border Crisis Is Becoming A Constitutional Crisis - The Federalist

Despite his acquittal, the left continues to smear Kyle Rittenhouse as a bloodthirsty, Call of Duty-playing white supremacist. But if you were in the city of Kenosha, as I was, when the riots erupted, you would know that Rittenhouse was hardly a rogue vigilante. He was one of many brave Kenoshan men who took up arms to protect their families, businesses, and beloved city when the government failed to.

Indeed, despite desperate pleas for help, Gov. Tony Evers refused to deploy adequate numbers of national guardsmen to protect the city from rioters wielding guns and fire. After 24 hours of receiving requests for aid, Evers had still sent fewer troops to Kenosha than he did to Milwaukee during the NBA finals. Local law enforcement was quickly overwhelmed.

By the second night of rioting, streams of out-of-state professional Black Lives Matter and Antifa rioters had flooded into the city. At the time, I wrote that Kenosha looked like something I had only seen in photographs of war-torn countries.

Grossly outnumbered, law enforcement had only enough manpower to protect public buildings in the towns center. They were so busy down there saving their courthouse, well what about this? Im a taxpayer, too said Sam, an Indian immigrant who owns a torched family-run car dealership in downtown Kenosha, two blocks from the courthouse.

Evers watched thugs and arsonists destroy businesses and terrorize Kenoshans for another 48 hours before he reluctantly agreed to accept help from President Trump and the federal government. He let Kenosha burn because he thought he could blame the unrest on Trump and enhance the political fortunes of the Democrat Party in the 2020 presidential election.

When the political fire instead turned on him, he finally changed course, but for many residents, it was too late. Governor Evers has a huge sense of urgency for mask mandates, but when our town is burning to the flippin ground, he had zero sense of urgency, said Kimberly Warner, a single mom who owns two businesses in downtown Kenosha. He allowed our town to suffer and burn.

Everss inaction resulted in $50 million in property damage that affected 100 businesses, including 40 that were put out of business for good.

It was in the face of all this destruction and turmoil that Rittenhouse decided to defend his communityyes, contrary to what the hacks at MSNBC and CNN want you to believe, Kenosha is Kyles community. In the daylight hours of the fateful night that changed his life, Rittenhouse was volunteering to scrub BLM graffiti off a local high school. That night, he told a reporter why he was in Kenoshato offer medical assistance and be ready to run[] into harms way to protect people and property.

Rittenhouse was not alone. When I was in Kenosha, I observed countless men standing with baseball bats, handguns, semi-automatic rifles, and shotguns in front of their businesses and homes. In fact, my now-fianc, who accompanied me while I was reporting, was also armed. You had to be.

Chuck, a tire shop owner, spent every night of the riots on his roof guarding his shop with guns. An exhausted yet vigilant Chuck glared into my iPhone camera at the time and said to the rioters, Come to my shop and Ill blow your heads off.

One of the greatest examples of bravery during the riots was Robert Cobb, a 70-year-old long-time Kenosha man who was viciously beaten by BLM rioters. Cobb saw looters stealing from the 100-year-old Danish Brotherhood and simply could not stand by.

He tried to keep the horde of criminals at bay with a fire extinguisher, hoping to force them to take their masks off so they could be identified later. Rioters sneak-attacked him, though, leaving Cobb with a jaw broken in three places, a swollen eye, and stitches to a head wound. He was trying to defend his building and they beat the st out of him! the videographer sobbed in a clip that captured the assault.

Democrats in the corporate media want you to believe that citizens not only shouldnt arm themselves in defense of their communities but that they cannot legally do so. Make no mistake, this lie is meant to justify Democrats continued attack on the American peoples right to bear arms. Under the Second Amendment, the citizens of Kenosha were entirely justified and legally permitted to protect themselves and their hometown, especially because law enforcement could not.

More importantly, it was Rittenhouses moral duty and that of all able-bodied men over the age of 16 to defend Kenosha against the vandals, looters, and arsonists who were destroying the city.

That is why Democrats and their allies in the media want you to believe that Rittenhouse and other Kenoshans who stood up for themselves are murderous white supremacists. These brave citizens and their toxic masculinity represent an existential threat to the lefts authoritarian aims. They simply cannot allow average Americans to believe they can exercise their right to bear arms and protect themselves without the governments permission.

Rittenhouse found himself caught in the chaos. Video evidence showed him defending himself with a semi-automatic rifle against angry, gun-wielding, rioting convicted felons and child rapists. Rittenhouse ultimately fatally shot two men and wounded another, in what has now been ruled by a jury an act of self-defense.

I didnt intend to kill them. I intended to stop the people who were attacking me, Rittenhouse said. I did what I had to do to stop the person who was attacking me. The truth is, Rittenhouse could have been any of my fellow Wisconsinites that night. The city was in flames and the state had abdicated its responsibility to protect its citizens. In the face of this crisis, Rittenhouse did what he had to do.

The Kenosha rioting showed America that you dont have to cower in fear like people in Portland and Chicago. Kenoshans refused to be helpless victims when Marxist and race agitators descended on their city. Men like Rittenhouse tried to defend their hometown. For that, they should be commended as the heroes they are.

This story was originally published in the Chicago Thinker.

Evita Duffy is an intern at The Federalist, co-founder of the Chicago Thinker, and a senior at the University of Chicago. Follow her on Twitter at @evitaduffy_1

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Kyle Rittenhouse Had A Moral Obligation To Protect Kenosha - The Federalist