Monthly Archives: June 2023

I have never been one to jump on the boycott bandwagon. Sure, if I have a choice between a seller that shares my values and one that doesnt, I will choose to do business with the former. And if I turn on a program or walk into a store that assaults me from every side with the demand that I embrace something I cant, I will turn around and leave.

However, until recent backlash efforts like those against Bud Light and Target, I havent seen boycotts accomplish much.And I find it impossible, as a consumer, to keep all my choices pure. The world is too complex.

So when a report surfaced last week of a pride flag on the set of The Chosen, followed by a call for a boycott, I shrugged (setting aside my sadness that rainbows now more immediately stand for LGBT pride than Gods promise to Noah). Its a movie set, for Petes sake. I would be surprised if there were not someone working on the set who is celebrating pride month. As long as the show itself isnt explicitly pushing the agenda, I dont care what individuals on the set do.

I was also satisfied with the initial response from The Chosen creator Dallas Jenkins:

Weve made it clear from the beginning we dont have a religious or political litmus test for who can work on our show. I love our cast and crew, especially because even though they all come from different backgrounds and beliefs, they work their butts off for the show and the viewers. The shows official stance on anything is to be found in the content of the show.

That was good enough for me. It doesnt impede my viewing that someone on the set was displaying a pride flag any more than it has impeded my enjoyment of any number of presentations over the years that the people who worked on them probably engaged in all manner of behaviors I would not condone. I can appreciate an artistic creation without expecting every individual behind it to share my belief in the Bible as the actual Word of God.

But while the show says it doesnt have a litmus test for those it hires, several Chosen actors made clear, as the week went on, that it does have one for viewers:

Tolerance is apparently a one-way street.

In a nearly 20-minute video released Sunday, Jenkins responded to the weeks events, saying that nothing has changed with the show and that it has always followed a hands-off policy regarding its contracted workers personal lives.

Our cast and crew sometimes wear T-shirts and hats that go across the entire spectrum, from a pride flag or a MAGA hat or a Jesus saves shirt, he said. No one on our set minds.

Regarding the actors comments, Jenkins said, They said some things I wouldnt have said. But he stopped short of condemning the actors words or calling for them to apologize. He also said that the actors werent responding to all viewers who expressed concerns, only those who were being mean.

For the record, here is a sample tweet from Jon Root, whom Jordan Ross accused of hate, homophobia and ignorance:

Whos actually being hateful here?

I have some sympathy for Jenkins. A self-identified libertarian and conservative evangelical, he seems like a faithful Christian and a genuinely nice guy. I wouldnt want to be in his position right now.

But since he is in this position, its time for him to rise to it. The Chosen has so far been crowd-funded by tens of thousands of fans, who have given millions of dollars to a cause they believed in. Jenkins owes those people more than looking the other way when a few of his actors spit in their faces. He owes them the courage to say that calling sin sin is not hate. Its love, and its exactly what Jesus did throughout His earthly ministry and what He still does today in His Word.

As with pretty much everything I watch these days, I came to The Chosen late. However, once I started watching, I found much to appreciate. I have recommended the show to others. I have defended it against some of the concerns expressed by my fellow Christians.

But right now, Im not sure if I can go back. If I dont, it wont be because I have decided to join a boycott. It will be because watching simply makes me too sad.

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I Don't Want To Boycott 'The Chosen,' But I'm About To Walk Away - The Federalist

News reports on Chris Lichts sudden but predictable firing as chairman of CNN make it sound like his relatively brief tenure was marked by a series of blunders that cumulatively led to his demise. Its nonsense.

Licht was fired for one reason, and its that he actually believed CNN was a place he could revert back to something of a major news-gathering operation without a complete overhaul of producers, correspondents, and, most of all, the anchors.

After a year of tinkering with the margins moving drama queen Don Lemon from nights to mornings, firing the on-camera masturbator Licht ultimately failed to do anything that would steer CNN away from its current status as a patronizing, angry propaganda outfit toward something less hysterical and more even-handed. That would require terminating Jake Tapper, Anderson Cooper, Erin Burnett, and on and on. But for whatever reason, Licht thought he could get there instead with an endless series of internal memos on word usage and balance.

CNN, as a TV product, doesnt sell journalism or news, and it hasnt since 2015. CNN, as a TV product, sells made-up reasons for Americans to hate one another. The pandemic death ticker, the deadly BLM riots, the big lie, the violent insurrection all of it is promoted and repeated on air at CNN to give half the country a reason to hate their neighbors.

Its a large part of news journalism to cover political conflict. CNN doesnt cover political conflict. CNN creates it. CNN foments it. And then CNN tells its audience that violence from one political side is okay in order to resolve that conflict.

Making Don Lemon a morning show host wasnt going to change it. Getting rid of the on-camera masturbator wasnt going to change it. The only way to change it is to clean house.

Chris Licht did not clean house. Chris Licht assumed he was working with journalists who had simply made some shortsighted choices for ratings who could be guided back on track. There were no mistakes, and theyre not on the wrong track. This is CNN.

There is no other explanation for the calamity resulting from last months Trump town hall hosted by CNN. Donald Trump is a former president and is the leading candidate for the Republican nomination to be president again. Hosting such a figure should be seen as both a coveted opportunity and an obligation by any news operation. Licht probably thought he would be celebrated for the production. An article in The Atlantic said it was supposed to be the win Licht needed. Instead, CNNers denounced their own event.

Because CNN isnt a news operation. It doesnt want to be. Licht was hopelessly naive in thinking that it did.

Link:

Chris Licht Was Fired For Being Hopelessly Naive About CNN - The Federalist

New York-based corporate media elites have flown into hysterics this week over Canadian wildfires creating a blanket of hazardous air over the Northeast United States. The ongoing wildfire health crisis is the focus of hourly updates, with articles fretting over everything from the poor air qualitys impact onmental health to thecancellationof Broadway shows.

Yet these same outlets, along with U.S. government officials like Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, shamefully either ignored or downplayed the arguably more serious health crisis caused by Februarys fiery derailment of a freight train along the Ohio-Pennsylvania line in East Palestine. The derailment and the subsequent decision to set the spilled chemicals on fire created a hazardous mushroom cloud over the area, impacting residents health and livelihoods to this day.

CNN senior national correspondent Miguel Marquez dismissed residents frustrations with the Biden administrations nonchalance about the disaster by characterizing the area as hardcore Trump country.

TheNew York Timesmisinformation and disinformation reporter Stuart Thompson tried to downplay the disaster by straw-manning concerns about the chemical spill as wild speculation from conservatives. For many commentators from across the political spectrum, the speculation has gone far beyond known facts,Thompson wrote in an article published in February. Right-wing commentators have been particularly critical, using the crisis to sow distrust about government agencies and suggest that the damage could be irreparable.

Media Matters for America was willing to admit that national television coverageof this story has been minimal, yet slammed the few commentators who were drawing attention to East Palestine. Right-wing media weaponize the East Palestine train derailment to claim white conservatives are being persecuted, read Media Matters headline.

The East Palestine crisis was not fabricated by right-wing fear-mongering. It is very much real, according to the people who live there. When the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and local health officials told evacuated East Palestine residents it was safe to come home, breathe the air, and drink the local water two days after the burn, they began experiencing headaches and irritated eyes. Meanwhile, fish, pets, and wildlife were dying before their eyes.

Today, the residents in East Palestine are still suffering from the chemical spill. My stomach hurts. My face hurts. Its just constant pain, Courtney Miller, an East Palestine resident and mother of two told Environmental Health News (EHN). EHN reported that Miller left East Palestine in mid-March due to nausea and burning skin. With two bags of belongings, she is staying with a rotation of friends in neighboring counties.

Since February, the EPA has maintained that East Palestine is safe to live in, but residents like Miller are living proof that is not true. I cant answer all your questions. I certainly cant answer your health questions, the EPAs representative to the town reportedly told residents experiencing negative health effects during aMarch town hall.

Businesses are also suffering. My numbers were just heading to where they were pre-Covid, Susan Reynolds, an East Palestine tanning salon and gym owner, told EHN.

The East Palestine disaster was and continues to be a major news story, yet much of the coverage from self-interested corporate media either dismissed the disaster or blamed concerns about it on conservatives.

The propaganda press orbits stories that either are politically useful to Democrats or directly impact their coastal constituency. They will even purvey blatant falsehoods when it proves advantageous. Over the years, they peddled the Russia-collusion hoax, claimed the Hunter Biden laptop was Russian disinformation, and lied about nearly everything related to the Covid-19 pandemic, beginning with itsorigin.

The Canadian wildfires are directly affecting New York journalists and are useful as another climate change talking point, so the media are covering them. The story of a chemical spill impacting the natural environment and health of people living in a little conservative village in fly-over America, however, is not quite as useful.

Evita Duffy-Alfonso is a staff writer to The Federalist and the co-founder of the Chicago Thinker. She loves the Midwest, lumberjack sports, writing, and her family. Follow her on Twitter at @evitaduffy_1 or contact her at evita@thefederalist.com.

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After East Palestine Snub, Media Panic Over Wildfire Haze In NYC - The Federalist

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan sent a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland on Tuesday demanding documentation related to the FBIs raid of former President Donald Trumps Mar-a-Lago estate last year.

The raid which took place on Aug. 8, 2022 was reportedly aimed at retrieving any document Trump ever saw, read, or created for the entirety of his four years as commander-in-chief. Due to the unprecedented nature of the Biden DOJ conducting a raid on a former president and a potential 2024 rival, House Judiciary Republicans sent letters to Garland, FBI Director Christopher Wray, and then-White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain demanding records pertaining to the execution of a search warrant and the decision to seek a search warrant for Trumps estate. The affidavit released by the FBI later that month justifying the agencys warrant application to raid Trumps Florida residence was nearly all redacted.

In November, the DOJ appointedU.S. Attorney Jack Smith as a special counsel to investigate whether Trump violated federal laws related to the handling of presidential records.

The Judiciary Committee previously requested information and documents related to the FBIs raid on President Trumps residence and its subsequent investigation, Jordans letter to Garland reads. Because you have not provided this information, and in light of your appointment of Jack Smith as special counsel, we write to request an unredacted copy of the memorandum outlining the scope of Mr. Smiths probes regarding President Trump and any supporting documentation related to his appointment as special counsel.

In addition to the unredacted memo outlining the scope of Special Counsel Smiths investigations, Jordan is also seeking any other document describing, listing, or delineating the authority and jurisdiction of the special counsel. Garlands deadline for forfeiting such records to the House Judiciary Committee is June 20, according to the letter.

Jordans Tuesday letter to the DOJ is his second within the past week requesting additional information related to the FBIs Mar-a-Lago raid. On Thursday, Jordan sent a separate memo to Garland expressing concerns about the FBIs track record of bias and reckless disregard for truth, with the House Judiciary chair specifically referencing the report released by U.S. Attorney John Durham. Released last month, the bombshell report found the FBI possessed no real evidence that then-candidate Trump colluded with Russian government officials when it launched its investigation into the Trump campaign leading up to the 2016 election.

Meanwhile, House Republicans recently announced plans to hold contempt hearings for Wray later this week for allegedly violating a congressional subpoenaover an unclassified document that purportedly implicates President Joe Biden in a $5 million bribery scheme with a foreign national from Bidens time in the Obama administration.

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

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Jim Jordan Demands DOJ Forfeit Docs On The FBI's Trump Raid - The Federalist

This week Apple unveiled the next big thing in tech: Vision Pro, a $3,500 headset that heralds the era of spatial computing where digital content blends seamlessly with your physical space.

This isnt quite the same as virtual reality, which blocks out the real world and swaps in a virtual one. Vision Pro is basically a set of digital goggles that work as a mixed-reality platform, allowing users to see and hear the physical world even as they interact and manipulate digital content in front of them.

Apple is putting all its clout into this idea of spatial computing, which the company has been reportedly working on for years. Announcing the new product, chief executive Tim Cook compared it to the way the iPhone introduced the concept of mobile computing. Its the first product you look through, and not at, he said. You can see, hear, and act with digital content just like its in your physical space. Youre no longer limited by a display.

Thats almost true. In fact, youre still looking at a display, its just a display of the real world, a digital projection of reality. The headsets cameras capture the world and display it on two small digital screens directly in front of your eyes. So users arent really lookingthroughthe headset at the world, theyre looking at a digital recreation of the world around them. The world you see through the headset might seem real, but it isnt.

Apple calls it the most advanced personal electronics device ever, which is true in more ways than one, especially the personal aspect. Put bluntly, Vision Pro appears to be nothing so much as an incredibly powerful isolation device a means of immersing yourself in a sea of digital content in a way that physically cuts you off from other people and the real world.

That is to say, Vision Pro is precisely the kind of technology that will exponentially increase the isolation and misery of everyone who uses it. Its been obvious for years now that the proliferation of digital tech is creating a populace thats addicted to smartphones, porn, and social media and doing so in a social environment of ever-increasing isolation, anxiety, depression, deracination, and collapsing community. Whatever benefits there are to digital tech, its not at all clear they outweigh the heavy human costs.

The introduction video for Vision Pro unintentionally highlights these costs. It features various people wearing and using the headset. All of them are indoors, and with the exception of a single, brief, real-world interaction, all of them are all alone.

But even then, the real-world exchange doesnt convey what Apple wished quite the opposite, in fact. In a rather farcical scene, a woman sits on a couch wearing the headset and watching a video, and another woman walks in. The voiceover says, Foundational to Vision Pro is that youre not isolated from other people. When someone else is in the room, you can see them and they can see you. But thats clearly not true, as the goggles obscure most of the womans face, even as the pair talk and laugh.

Its obvious, even from the promotional clip, that that kind of interaction, in which someone wearing the headset talks to someone else physically present in the room with them, is the last thing Apples designers and engineers had in mind when designing this. The entire purpose, it seems, is to throttle such real-world interactions.

In another scene, we see a man sitting alone in a dark house, watching video clips of his daughters playing and blowing out birthday candles. The voiceover tells us that Vision Pro is Apples first three-dimensional camera and lets you capture and relive your memories in 3D with spatial audio.

That means this father was awkwardly wearing the headset when he recorded the clips hes now watching, alone, in a darkened house. Are we to assume that capturing memories so you can relive them later, in 3D with spatial audio, means wearing creepy, face-obscuring goggles to your kids birthday party?

And why depict this father alone in a dark house? Where is his family? Ben Thompson, a tech commentator otherwise effusive in his praise of the headset,said, Ill be honest: what this looked like to me was a divorced dad, alone at home with his Vision Pro, perhaps because his wife was irritated at the extent to which he got lost in his own virtual experience. Exactly right.

Aside from the isolating effects of such technology is its invasiveness. Sterling Crispin, an engineer who spent years working on foundational elements of Vision Pro,explained on Twitterthat much of his work involved detecting the mental state of users based on data from their body and brain when they were in immersive experiences, what he called basically mind reading.

So, a user is in a mixed reality or virtual reality experience, and AI models are trying to predict if he is feeling curious, mind wandering, scared, paying attention, remembering a past experience, or some other cognitive state. And these may be inferred through measurements like eye tracking, electrical activity in the brain, heartbeats and rhythms, muscle activity, blood density in the brain, blood pressure, skin conductance, and more.

He adds there were a lot of tricks involved to make specific predictions possible, like monitoring eye behavior to anticipate when a user was going to click on something, or quickly flashing visuals or sounds to a user in ways they may not perceive, and then measuring their reaction to it.

What Crispin is describing, albeit not in these terms, is a concerted effort to monitor, manipulate, and potentially control the user, all under the guise of predicting his behavior. Its not hard to imagine a near future in which AI is able to translate monitored brain activity and other biometrics into images. A user could be wearing an Apple headset thats continuously transmitting brainwaves and images and thoughts to the cloud, where corporations could mine them for profit and government censors could monitor them for wrongthink.

This already happens now, so why would it not happen with even more powerful technology? Worse, these recorded thoughts and images could be archived the way phone and email records are now, under federal surveillance laws. Were talking about a permanent digital record of your inmost thoughts, recorded and archived by the worlds most powerful corporations and accessible by government agencies whenever they want.

The blunt reality about Apples new mixed-reality platform, then, is that its designed to increase the soul-crushing isolation and loneliness of modern life, thus amplifying the ability of Big Tech and hence, government to exert control over us. The vision of the future offered by Apple is one of solitary men and women sitting alone in the darkened rooms of empty houses, their faces hidden behind shining black masks, reliving memories that were digitally mediated to begin with.

Its a profoundly anti-human vision, and we should resist it with all our strength.

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

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Apple's New Headset Is Designed To Isolate And Control You - The Federalist

The president of the United States has been accused by a credible FBI informant of allegedly taking $5 million in a bribery scheme with a foreign national while he was the sitting vice president. That seems like a pretty big story, but what do I know?

Apparently, theres a document laying out the accusation in some detail and not one cooked up by an oppo-research firm for the RNC and then disseminated to saps in the media to try to delegitimize a presidential election. No, its in an unclassified FD-1023 form, used by law enforcement to record credible tips. Granted, its not in the possession of Buzzfeed, but rather the vaunted FBI, which refused to hand it to Congress for some reason. And there is little curiosity on the part of establishment media to find out what it says.

I know, I know, its getting tedious asking people to imagine the thermonuclear media blast theyd be swept up in if a Republican president had been accused of bribery by an FBI informant. This is the way of the world. To this point, the debate over the proper pronunciation of Ron DeSantis last name has gotten more coverage than the president possibly pocketing millions of dollars through shell corporations.

Though, I suppose thats not exactly right. Bidens Praetorian Guard have begun to preemptively frame the chairman of the House Oversight Committee, James Comer, as some devious nut for demanding the FBI hand over documents. This is what they did to Devin Nunes, who turned out to be correct in his assessment of the Russia-collusion investigation.

There isnt a real journalist in the universe not a beat reporter or opinion writer or copy editor who wouldnt want to read an informants account of a sitting president taking a bribe. You can debunk it. You can prove it. But you want to see it. But therein lies the problem. There arent many journalists left.

Take Philip Bump, who contends that James Comers bribery allegations are out on a very shaky limb, even though Comer has never once made any bribery allegations. The House investigation is focused on the decision-making process that followed the informants accusation.

Last week, CNN ran a piece that might well have been sent verbatim from the FBI press shop. CNNs sources claimed that the form in question has origins in a tranche of documents that Rudy Giuliani provided to the Justice Department in 2020 and the investigation led nowhere. A big nothingburger.

Its this CNN story, and another version in The Washington Post (almost surely from the same sources), that allowed Jamie Raskin, ranking Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, to claim that Rudy Giuliani surfaced these allegations, and that a team had looked at the document and in August determined that there was no grounds to escalate from an initial assessment to a preliminary investigation.

None of that, apparently, is true. As my colleagues Margot Cleveland and Mollie Hemingway report, former Attorney General William Barr told The Federalist that the investigation had never been closed, it had merely been sent to an office in Delaware. And the document did not emanate from Giuliani the same ploy used to undercut the New York Posts reporting on the Hunter Biden laptop story but from a 2017 whistleblower report that showed up in a 2020 search. No one has come forward to accuse Barr of lying, so I assume the above is true.

Who knows what this is all about? Ive learned not to make too many assumptions. For all I know, this all leads to a rickety accusation and a dead end.

There is, however, already tons of circumstantial evidence that Joe Biden participated in his familys shady business, which makes the existence of this document highly newsworthy. We know that the president lied about his knowledge of Hunters relationships with Ukrainian energy concerns and Chinese interests. We have emails implicating the president as a participant in Hunters schemes emails authenticated by forensic specialists. We have witnesses, including a retired Navy veteran, contending that Biden is the big guy Hunter is talking about in those emails. Even the Obama administration was alarmed about the Biden family business.

Almost a year ago, former Trump White House adviser Peter Navarro was indicted and arrested by the FBI for ignoring a congressional subpoena by the Jan. 6 commission. He was handcuffed and reportedly denied permission to make a phone call to a lawyer. Today, its the FBI that is ignoring subpoenas. And there will be no one to arrest FBI Director Chris Wray for contempt.

There will also be no more sanctimonious speeches or grandstanding from Democrats regarding the sacred need for transparency and separation of powers. Democracy is no longer in danger, apparently. Of course, we expect jaw-dropping hypocrisy from politicians. We expect a politicized Justice Department to protect Democrats. Nowadays, we also expect the complete abdication of journalistic responsibility from a partisan big media. And thats a massive problem.

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Nothing To See Here But A Whistleblower Accusing Biden Of Bribes - The Federalist

The Federal District court for the Southern District of Florida in Miami is seen in October 2018. Photo: Joe Raedle/Getty Images

Florida District Judge Aileen Cannon is scheduled to oversee former President Trump's first court appearance next week, adding an unexpected twist to the historic case involving classified documents.

The big picture: Cannon was nominated to serve on the federal bench by Trump in 2020 and was criticized for ruling in his favor last year, allowing a special master to review evidence seized from Mar-a-Lago in the classified records probe.

Cannon, born in Colombia and raised in Miami, Fla., received her bachelors degree from Duke University and graduated from the University of Michigan Law School.

Of note: Cannon listed herself as a longtime member of the Federalist Society, first joining the conservative legal group in 2005.

Back in September, Cannon accepted Trump's bid for a special master to review evidence seized by the FBI in the search of his Mar-a-Lago residence.

Details: Cannon had also denied the DOJ's request to exclude classified documents from the special master review.

Federal judges are randomly selected to handle criminal cases.

Yes, but: The odds that Cannon would be selected for this case were fairly low.

What we're watching: Trump's first court appearance is slated for Tuesday at the U.S. District Court in Miami.

Link:

What to know about Aileen Cannon, the judge overseeing Trump's ... - Axios

Whole Womans Health Alliance just became Indianas first abortion facility to close following the Supreme Courts Dobbs v. Jackson decision last summer.

Since opening its doors in 2019, Whole Womens Health Alliance (WWHA) in South Bend, Indiana, executed more than 1,100 abortions. The facility still plans to refer callers to other abortion providers and to help pay and coordinate travel for out-of-state abortions but announced on Monday that it will permanently cease personally ending unborn lives immediately due to politically driven and medically unnecessary abortion restrictions.

Whole Womans Health has ended the lives of 1000+ preborn [H]oosiers and victimized thousands of women since opening in 2019, Voices for Life Executive Director Melanie Garcia Lyon said in a statement. This is a victory for human rights in our community.

Lyon, who is also the Sidewalk Advocates for Life leader for the South Bend chapter, told The Federalist that the closure feels really surreal given all of the time her organization spent praying for it to shutter its doors and offering life-affirming resources to pregnant women outside of the facility.

Weve been at the facility since it opened in 2019. I was there the first day it opened in June. And weve had a very consistent presence at the facility whenever its been open weve had volunteers there, she said.

Shortly after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb and the states Republican legislators acted swiftly to protect babies in utero except in cases of rape, incest, fatal fetal anomalies, or when the mothers life was at risk.

The pro-life law, which was supposed to take effect in September 2022, would have effectively shut down all seven of the states functioning abortion facilities. Instead, it was held up in courts by pro-abortion activists and organizations, including WWHA, which sent the state back to its 20-week gestation abortion limit. Despite this delay, abortions in Indiana still dropped significantly.

Nearly a year into the legal hubbub, the pro-life law is still under review by state courts, but the tide seems to be turning in favor of those protecting life in the womb.

[RELATED: Indiana Health Dept. Sits On Records Showing Two Babies Born Alive After Abortions, Three Women Dead]

Not only did WWHA shut down and rescind itself from the pro-abortion challenge against the states life-forward legislation, but rogue abortionists are also facing punishment from the state for violating state privacy laws.

In November 2022, Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita filed an administrative action against Indiana abortionist Dr. Caitlin Bernard for failing to uphold legal and Hippocratic responsibilities by exploiting a 10-year-old little girls traumatic medical story to the press for her own interests and immediately reporttheabuse and rape of a child to Indiana authorities.

Dr. Bernard violated the law, her patients trust and the standards for the medical profession when she disclosed her patients abuse, medical issues, and medical treatment to a reporter at an abortion rights rally to further her political agenda, Rokita said in a statement.

Bernard was the sole source for The Indianapolis Starsviral articledetailing how a 10-year-old rape victim in Ohio crossed state lines in 2022 to obtain an abortion in Indiana.

The Indiana Medical Licensing Board (MLB) agreed with Rokita last month that Bernard violated state privacy laws when she disclosed the story to the Star but did not act on Rokitas reporting failure allegations.

Like we have said for a year, this case was about patient privacy and the trust between the doctor and patient that was broken. What if it was your child or your parent or your sibling who was going through a sensitive medical crisis, and the doctor, who you thought was on your side, ran to the press for political reasons? Its not right, and the facts we presented today made that clear. We appreciate the Medical Licensing Boards extraordinary time and consideration. My team did a great job getting the [t]ruth out. Caitlin Bernard was found liable for violating state and federal patient privacy law on three separate counts, the AGs office said in a statement after the decision.

Bernard was fined $3,000 for her malfeasance, but the MLB did not immediately say whether it would suspend her license. A source in Rokitas office told The Federalist that the MLB has yet to issue a final order detailing disciplinary proceedings. The MLB still has a majority of its 90 days to issue that final order, and Bernard will have 30 days to respond.

The last time the MLB seriously punished a doctor for abortion violations came in 2016 when it stripped Dr. Ulrich Klopfer, a mass abortionist, of his license for violating several state care and reporting requirements. After Klopfers passing in 2019, authorities uncovered a gruesome collection of more than2,000 fetal remains in his home.

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

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Abortion Facility Closes In IN As AG Pursues Abortionists' Licenses - The Federalist

Well, they finally did it. The powers that be actually indicted Donald Trump.

After the regime weaponized a bogus dossier, spied on his campaign, hamstrung his policy, impeached him, impeached him again, defamed him as a racist Nazi, made his supporters fear isolation and employment retribution, lied about him in every way imaginable on every news station and in every paper every day, and rigged elections again him, theyre finally taking him down with some paperwork.

These papers are criminal, you see, because they have classification markings, were in Trumps possession, and were part of a documents dispute. Pay no attention to the fact that the DOJ wont even tell the court specifically whats in the documents, meaning they can claim this is a Very Serious Matter Scouts honor! with no evidence available to the contrary. Or that as president, Trump possessed declassification authority that wouldnt have belonged to, say, a secretary of state or vice president.

Speak of the devil, ignore that Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, Mike Pence, and Barack Obama all had their own documents disputes some more serious than Trumps without facing any criminal charges. And that the whole Mar-a-Lago fiasco, which involved the FBI sending dozens of plainclothes agents to raid the formers presidents estate and dig through his wifes closet, started when a disgruntled, backbench National Archives bureaucrat tattled because he didnt like the look of Trumps banker box.

As a result, Trump is being charged with 37 counts. But he isnt the only target here. So are you.

Bidens DOJ and FBI and their pals in the media wouldnt have to go no-holds-barred against Trump if you would just stop supporting him. Just like Trump didnt go away when the deep state staged its coup, you didnt repent of your patriotism when the current president stood in front of scary red lights and delivered his diatribe against ultra-MAGA Republicanism. Now the ruling class has no choice but to indict, because understand: Waging lawfare, lawlessness, and intimidation brutally and relentlessly against opponents until they crumple is the regimes whole offensive.

So the assaults keep coming, fast and hard, and America bleeds out from the wounds that have become all too familiar but no less painful: the lies, the retribution, the gaslighting.

Blue cities can openly flout pro-life laws restricting abortion, and pro-abortion nutjobs can launch molotov cocktails into life-saving pregnancy centers. But when the faithful Christians who do the most to care for single moms and pregnant women pray outside deadly abortion mills, they are arrested. Just to ensure onlooking pro-lifers are sufficiently intimidated, the feds also send agents to raid their homes and arrest them in front of their terrified children.

For those Christians who dont appear outside Planned Parenthood, just faithfully commune for weekly prayer and worship services, the same ruling regime simply shuts down their gatherings, citing public safety and love of neighbor. Oh, you think youre going to celebrate your Saviors resurrection? Weve got your license plate number and know where you live.

Meanwhile, leftists celebrating their favorite racist doctrines get a free pass to chant together in the streets and burn down buildings. Then experts explain why protesting in the faces of police officers is less dangerous than the deadly droplets of congregational singing, and media overlords define loving your neighbor as supporting BLM anarchists but streaming Sunday services.

When you demand that the government perform its most basic constitutional duty of protecting Americas borders, its partisans not only insult your intelligence by insisting the border is secure, but they ship busloads of migrants to your community. When any of the illegal invaders go on murderous rampages, the feds claim they were motivated by white supremacy. And while the Biden administration empowers corrupt cartels that traffic children, rape women, and profit off the most vulnerable, the media claim those advocating for a stronger national defense are the heartless ones.

Its not that the ruling class doesnt care about borders at all. Ukraines border dispute is of utmost importance to them. So they start or fund pointless wars that kill millions while accusing you of being a Putin stooge for opposing. Then they gift weapons to corrupt foreign oligarchs and terrorists while they try to ban you from defending yourself and your family here at home.

With Trump, it comes full circle, but its the same old play. Their hoaxes fail, so the feds interfere in elections and then censor you for noticing. When a presidential election with historic turnout, last-minute changes to the law, and countless irregularities shatters confidence in our whole self-governing enterprise, the federal government convicts fed-up grannies for waving flags in the Capitol and calls concerned voters a threat to democracy. To hide their own crimes, they charge and convict the people you elected for daring to challenge them.

The America you once loved and fought for, whose ideals many were willing to give their lives for, is dead. The people in the halls of power today are responsible for killing it and have faced zero accountability.

Few things can revive a lifeless country, especially when elections border on meaningless and shared values are a relic of the past. But any rebirth thats going to happen will start in your own heart and household.

First and more important than anything else: Repent and believe the Gospel. There is simply no enduring hope outside the good news that Jesus died and rose again to redeem the wretched souls of this sinful world who abandon their base desires in exchange for His righteousness and eternal life.

Then catechize yourself and your children. Teach them lasting truths about life and death, sin and salvation, worth and unworthiness. Instill in them the importance of hard work, the beauty of marriage and the sexes, the value of all human life, the pitfalls of pride, and their need for humility and forgiveness.

Join a church. Gather with believers who share your values and care about your spiritual state. Sing praise, pray, and read your Bible.

Care for the needy. Engage with your neighbors. Go outside and appreciate nature. Take good care of your body. Minimize screen time for yourself and your children. Keep an eye on their homework and library books. Run for school board and other local offices. Keep a garden. Buy a gun and learn how to use it responsibly. And dont cower from a worthwhile fight.

Nobody not Donald Trump, not Ron DeSantis, and not new FBI leadership can save America. Its up to you to save your corner of it.

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On Trump And Everything Else, The Regime Has Gaslighted ... - The Federalist

Ive been covering wildfires in the American west for three years now. On Tuesday, I moved outside of Denver to a property adjacent to Arapaho and Roosevelt National Forests west of Boulder.

The first thing I did while unpacking was pack a bug out bag in case of an emergency when a nearby wildfire threatens to light my new place up in flames. Wildfires are no longer some faraway problem that pollutes lungs every once-in-a-while. Theyre a very real risk to living at 9,000 feet, especially when surrounded by federally managed land. To Washington bureaucrats, forest fires are merely a consequential warning of a changing climate.

More than 61 million residents up and down the east coast got a rude education this week to the experience of their neighbors in the American west who choke on wildfire smoke every summer.

Western infernos have become so out of control in recent years that the California insurance industry is going up in flames along with Americans homes and livelihoods. While the beltway press is eager to blame climate change, the primary culprit is negligent land management.

[READ: Bad Governance, Not Climate Change, Jeopardizes California Home Insurance]

Maybe the wildfire smoke that cancelled classes and baseball games in the nations capital will now wake up Washington lawmakers to the annual haze that blocks out the summer sun in the American West. Western states have spent years calling on D.C. bureaucrats who manage a third of the nations land to get their act together and properly maintain federal forests going up in smoke.

More than 100 years of aggressive fire suppression has left federal forests overgrown as massive tinder boxes waiting to turn heavenly mountain towns into scenes from Hell at the first match. But there are a myriad of ways Washington can proactively reverse the consequences of a centurys-worth of disaster forest policy.

For starters Congress can roll back the Roadless Rule prohibiting road construction and timber harvesting across nearly 59 million acres of federal forests. The lack of roads block firefighters access to put out problematic blazes and hampers efforts to manage the land properly. Meanwhile the lack of timber harvesting contributes to the fuel buildup on Forest Service land.

Joe Reddan has spent nearly four decades as a forester including a prolonged stint at the U.S Forest Service. Reddan now runs his own forestry consulting firm and said federal land managers need to ramp up timber sales and accelerate forest thinning to prevent summer wildfires from becoming the mega-infernos that send pollution as far as Europe.

Trees come out of the woods in one of two ways, Reddan told me. One on a log truck and the other up in smoke.

Current land managers remain over reliant on prescribed burns to clear out excess debris that eventually fuel large fires. Reddan described prescribed burns, where an area is deliberately set ablaze to preventatively incinerate smaller wood fuels, as stone-age technology thats very indiscriminate and causes large scale mortality.

A prescribed burn in the Santa Fe National Forest that spun out of control last year ignited into the largest wildfire in New Mexico history.

[READ: Federal Incompetence Is Responsible For New Mexicos Largest Wildfire]

I dont know of anybody whos ever lost a house to an escaped timber sale, Reddan said, adding the forests need to be properly managed back to good health before prescribed burns should be used.

Washington lawmakers can increase timber sales by rolling back the Roadless Rule hampering development in rural areas. A resurgence in primary processing plants or, sawmills, offers not only medicine to land health but promises local employment in small western mountain towns deprived of economic opportunities at the behest of radical environmentalists.

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Washington Chokes On A Lesson In Empathy - The Federalist