Category Archives: Federalist

Thursday afternoon in a Washington, D.C., federal court, former President Donald Trump filed a motion to dismiss the case pending against him there for his alleged actions in the aftermath of the 2020 election. The motion cites presidential immunity as a ground to dismiss the case in its entirety.

The motion persuasively argues that the D.C. case should be dismissed, and if past practice is any guide all proceedings could and should be stayed while this issue is litigated fully, all the way up to the Supreme Court if necessary. Notably, this same reasoning should apply to the ongoing Georgia prosecution as well. A number of legal commentators have anticipated this move and have stated from the outset that presidential immunity should be an absolute bar to the prosecution of Trump for his alleged acts in office that underlie the federal prosecution in D.C.

In essence, President Trump is arguing that presidents, even after their terms in office are over, are absolutely immune from criminal prosecutions arising out of their acts in office that fall within the outer perimeter of their official responsibilities as president, unless they have first been both impeached and convicted by the House of Representatives and Senate.

He is arguing that all of the acts he is alleged to have committed fall within this absolute immunity. This view, as the motion filed Thursday makes clear, is deeply rooted in bedrock legal principles, in caselaw, in the Constitution, and in actual practice dating back centuries.

In Nixon v. Fitzgerald, the Supreme Court ruled that a president has absolute immunity from civil liability for acts within the outer perimeter of his official responsibilities. In short, you cannot sue a former president personally because his official acts harmed you. This is an unquestioned Supreme Court precedent, based on very serious, core separation of powers concerns.

If a president were susceptible to civil suit for his official acts, the court held that this would raise unique risks to the functioning of government in light of the singular importance of the Presidents duties. The purpose of presidential immunity, in the Fitzgerald courts view, is to prevent concerns about being sued clouding the presidents judgment and crippling his ability to act. Presidents need to be able to discharge their duties to the best of their abilities without having to worry about being hauled into court when their terms expire.

In fairness, this well-established immunity doctrine has never been tested in the criminal context, for the simple reason that no president has been subjected to the sort of relentless prosecutions that President Trump has now been faced with, but the motion persuasively argues that the reasoning in Fitzgerald should still apply, noting for example that judicial immunity, which is structurally similar, applies in both criminal and civil contexts.

This view is also rooted in the actual text of the Constitution. The impeachment clause of Article I provides that, although impeachment proceedings do not themselves carry a punishment beyond removal from office, a party convicted after impeachment, shall nevertheless be liable and subject to Indictment, Trial, Judgment and Punishment, according to Law.

By specifying that a president impeached and convicted could be subject to indictment, etc., the Constitution plainly and clearly implies that absent impeachment and conviction a president cannot be criminally prosecuted for his official acts. Democrats impeached President Trump twice, and on both occasions the Senate acquitted him. Absent a conviction at an impeachment trial, presidential immunity applies to all of President Trumps acts that fall within the outer perimeter of his official responsibilities, and for these acts at least he cannot be prosecuted.

If we accept that presidential immunity applies in the criminal context, the key question is whether the acts that underlie President Trumps indictment in D.C. fall within this outer perimeter of his official responsibilities as president. I think the answer is clearly yes.

First, it is very important to note that in the context of assessing immunity, the motive of a president is irrelevant. Why the president did something is immaterial; the question is what the president is alleged to have done and whether those acts were within this very broad outer perimeter of his official responsibilities. And because the scope of presidential authority and of presidential responsibilities is so vast, the catchment of presidential immunity is similarly expansive.

When you actually review the alleged acts that underlie the D.C. indictment, my view is that each and every one clearly falls within the outer perimeter of President Trumps official responsibilities. These acts include:

Remember, for the purposes of assessing the scope of immunity, intent and veracity/falsity are irrelevant. Your views on whether President Trumps views on the election were accurate are irrelevant. Your views on why President Trump did what he did are irrelevant. If the acts themselves were presidential acts, falling within the outer perimeter of presidential responsibilities, they cannot form the basis for a criminal prosecution of President Trump, because presidential immunity applies.

As a result, since the entire indictment in the D.C. case against President Trump is predicated on acts like these that he is immune from prosecution for, the case should be dismissed.

Lastly, one final note on timing: Any denial of this motion to dismiss, or any similar motion in Georgia, is likely immediately appealable, as is the case in where congressional legislative immunity is implicated. This means, depending on how long it takes Judge Chutkan to rule, this issue could be before the D.C. Circuit and potentially the Supreme Court before long.

In the meantime, an immunity argument like this one compels a stay of all proceedings, as would be the case in almost any action where immunity forms a potential basis for the avoidance of trial.

Will Scharf is a former federal prosecutor, who also worked on the confirmations of Supreme Court Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett. He is currently a Republican candidate for Missouri Attorney General.

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4 Things To Know About Trump's Presidential Immunity Defense - The Federalist

Ive been writing about Denver-area baker Jack Phillips for over a decade now. Its clear to me hes going to be badgered into the grave by authoritarians intent on punishing him for thought crimes. From the first time his name appeared in the news until this day, the media have misled the public about him, about the case, and about the law.

The latest chapter in Phillips Kafkaesque saga involves a transgendered lawyer named Autumn Scardina, who demanded Phillips create a pink cake with blue frosting to help celebrate a gender transition. As expected, Phillips, whod already spent years fighting government coercion, refused to participate.

The Colorado Civil Rights Commission agreed that Scardina had been discriminated against as a transgendered person. Then, the dishonorable A. Bruce Jones of the Second Judicial District upheld the commissions flagrant attack on free expression. Now, the Colorado Supreme Court has agreed to take up the case.

The entire case is built on ludicrous contortions of logic and law. The Colorado Court of Appeals, for instance, ruled in favor of Scardina, contending that the colors pink and blue arent really speech because, in and of themselves, they arent expressive of anything. The message, says the court, is generated by the observer.

Yes. Because Phillips isnt a complete idiot, he understands that context matters. The color white has no inherent meaning, either. If a known Klansman asks a tailor to fit him for some white sheets, it definitely does.

Then again, if you believe Scardina just happened to approach the most famous Christian baker in the country to create a transition cake the day after the Supreme Courts Masterpiece ruling was dropped in 2017, youre certainly an idiot. The entire Scardina episode, including the configuration of the cake using colors but no words was calibrated to set Phillips up.

In the initial complaint to the Civil Rights Commission, Scardina claimed to be stunned by Phillips rejection. It should be noted, because it isnt in any of todays media coverage, that Phillipss lawyers had very good reason to suspect Scardina, whose name appeared on a caller ID, first requested an image of Satan smoking marijuana. Later, an email was sent to the shop requesting a three-tiered white cake with a large figure of Satan, licking a [nine-inch] black Dildo that can be turned on before we unveil the cake.

Then again, Scardina admitted it was a setup. As Associated Press reported last year, according to the activists lawyer, She [sic] called Phillips Masterpiece Cakeshop to place the order after hearing about the courts announcement because she [sic] wanted to find out if he really meant it It was more of calling someones bluff.

There was no bluff to call. Phillips isnt going to create cakes to celebrate gay weddings or gender transitions or the grand openings of strip clubs or bawdy bachelor parties or for a happy divorce! or any other event that undermines his faith. And even if he was the biggest hypocrite in all of Christendom which he most certainly isnt it wouldnt change anything. Americans dont have to justify their free expression to anyone.

Scardina claims the lawsuit was intended to challenge the veracity of Phillips claim that he would serve LGBTQ customers.This is the central lie of the case. Phillips never once refused to sell a gay couple or a transgender person or anyone else anything in his store. But Phillips isnt Autumn Scardinas servant, and the government has no right to compel him to endorse or participate in any lifestyle.

Speaking of which, the media keeps contending that Phillips is looking for a religious carve out in anti-discrimination law or something along those lines. No such thing exists. It is unclear if the people who write those words are unfamiliar with the First Amendment or just instinctively dismiss it, but religious liberty and free expression are explicitly protected by law. Anything that infringes on those rights is the carve out, not the other way around. If anti-discrimination laws dictate that the government can compel Americans to express ideas they disagree with, as Colorado does, then anti-discrimination laws need to be overturned, tout de suite.

At this point, the best-case scenario is for Phillips case to reach SCOTUS, so the court can either repair the Masterpiece decision which basically provided the state and activists with a guidebook on bullying people of faith (basically, dont show public animosity while doing it) or shelve the First Amendment.

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Authoritarian Thugs Continue Their Persecution Of Jack Phillips - The Federalist

Should Donald Trump even be allowed on the ballot in 2024?

Some of the countrys most prominent legal experts, and a small number of activists and politicians, argue he shouldnt and some have filed lawsuits trying to strike Trumps name from ballots.

Yet most in the Democratic Party are keeping a wary distance from the effort. And other experts argue that such actions, intended to save American democracy, might in fact imperil it even further.

The argument for disqualifying Trump hinges on Section 3 of the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution, and its proponents argue that its plain language disqualifies Trump, who they say engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the Constitution, from holding office again.

Some go so far as to argue that secretaries of state should simply declare Trump ineligible and take him off their ballots but so far, none have been willing to do so. Instead, then, the hunt is on to find a judge who will do it.

To be clear: It seems extremely unlikely that Trump actually will be disqualified, since the Supreme Court will get the final say over any challenge, and theyll likely nix this whole endeavor.

Yet the very existence of the effort raises difficult questions about how a democracy should deal with the threat of a candidate like Trump, who retains a good deal of popular support, but who attempted to steal the 2020 election and talks constantly about having his political opponents imprisoned.

A Trump win in 2024 would be deeply dangerous for American democracy. Yet taking away voters option to choose him would pose its own perils. It would inevitably be seen as blatant election theft by much of the country which would trigger responses, both from Republicans in office and Trump supporters on the ground, that could degrade democracy even more severely.

The 14th Amendment was ratified in 1868, just after the Civil War, and was meant to deal with its fallout. Some of its provisions were later used as the foundation of modern civil rights law. Section 3 is about a different topic: whether former insurrectionists can hold public office. Its relevant text is as follows:

No person shall hold any office, civil or military, under the United States who, having previously taken an oath as an officer of the United States to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.

Days after the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol, some law professors began suggesting that this meant that Trump, and other Republicans whom they viewed as complicit in the insurrection, should be barred from office.

Liberal advocacy groups took up the charge in 2022, suing unsuccessfully to try to get Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and three Arizona Republican candidates taken off the ballot. Their arguments did prevail in one case, though: A New Mexico judge removed County Commissioner Couy Griffin from his post. (Unlike Greene, Griffin had unlawfully entered the Capitol on January 6 and had been convicted of trespassing.) That marked the first successful use of Section 3 since 1919.

This was all warmup to taking on Trump. This August, law professors William Baude and Michael Stokes Paulsen released a 126-page forthcoming law review article on Section 3. They concluded, after a year of studying the topic, that Section 3 sets out a sweeping disqualification standard that excludes Trump and potentially many others from holding office.

The article got enormous attention, in part because Baude and Paulsen are conservatives, and because it was quickly endorsed by liberal law professor Laurence Tribe and conservative former judge J. Michael Luttig, two of the countrys biggest legal names. Steven Calabresi, a founder and co-chair of the board of the Federalist Society, also initially said he was convinced though he changed his mind a month later.

Baude and Paulsen also raised eyebrows for arguing that, per their legal analysis, state election officials should act to take Trump off the ballot now rather than waiting for Congress or judges to do it. Section 3 is self-executing, they argue, so state officials need to obey it.

Democratic secretaries of state have not taken the initiative, though, saying this is a matter for the courts. And with a few exceptions Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) recently opined that Trump is disqualified from running most Democratic politicians have kept a wary distance from this effort.

As much as the party fears and loathes Trump, there is an evident concern that striking him from the ballot would be going too far. Either due to a commitment to democracy, a fear of the explosive backlash that would follow such a move, or a desire to make the effort look less partisan, Democrats like Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson are saying that its out of their hands, try the courts instead.

So now the hunt is on to find a judge who will declare Trump ineligible to be president. Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), a longtime progressive advocacy group, has filed suit in Colorado, where a judge has said she hopes to rule on Trumps eligibility by Thanksgiving. Free Speech for People, another progressive advocacy group, has filed suit in Minnesota.

Even before this came lawsuits from Texas tax attorney John Anthony Castro, who is, at least officially, a candidate for the GOP presidential nomination in 2024. Shortly after he registered to run, he filed a lawsuit citing Section 3 to try and get Trump taken off the ballot. Hes since filed similar suits in more than a dozen other states, and constantly hypes up his effort on the website formerly known as Twitter (They finally realized Im not fu**ing around. Too late, beta boys, he wrote recently). The Supreme Court recently declined to take up one of Castros appeals, but his other suits are still alive for now.

Still, the Supreme Court is the ultimate destination for all of this wrangling, and it has a six-justice conservative majority, three of whom were appointed by Trump. Even before getting into the legal specifics, thats enough reason to be deeply skeptical that the Court would ban Trump from running again.

The legal debates here can be abstruse. They feature attempts to divine the intent of politicians during the 1860s, discussions on how seriously to take an 1869 circuit court opinion by Chief Justice Salmon Chase, and slippery slope hypotheticals about how disqualification could later be abused in different situations.

So lets zoom out and ask the real question at the heart of all this: Would disqualifying Trump from the ballot in this way be a good idea, or would it be its own sort of affront to democracy?

Many democracies have struggled with the question of how to deal with a threat to democracy rising through the electoral system, and there are no easy answers. I spoke with Harvard political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, who just co-authored a book, Tyranny of the Minority, on the USs democratic crisis, about the options.

Ziblatt noted Hans Kelsen, an Austrian legal theorist in the 1930s, who he said made the case that if you really believe in democracy, you have to be willing to go down on a sinking ship and come back another day. In Kelsens view, the only defensible solution to authoritarians rising in the democratic system is to beat them at the ballot box.

With the rise of the Nazis, that thinking obviously didnt age well, said Ziblatt. I think thats naive, he said. This idea that we need to just stand by and let our democracy come under assault and hope everything will work out it turned out not to work out.

So the post-World War II German constitution set up a procedure and a legal framework by which certain politicians or parties deemed dangerous to the constitution could be restricted from running for office. Its a very complex and highly regulated procedure, said Ziblatt involving federal and state offices, a bureaucracy, court approval, and necessary legal steps because disqualification is such a potentially dangerous and powerful device.

Other countries have adopted similar approaches, which are known as militant democracy or defensive democracy. The idea is to protect democracy by excluding the threats to it from the political scene.

The thinking is: Trump tried to destroy American democracy in 2020. If hes allowed to try again, theres good reason to suspect hell do more damage. So why not stop him now? Supporters of disqualifying Trump, like Luttig, argue that he disqualified himself. The Constitution says insurrectionists cant hold office, and we have a duty to uphold the Constitution, they claim.

But the problem with the 14th Amendment option, both Levitsky and Ziblatt told me, is that the US did not establish a consistent procedure or institutional authority for excluding candidates after the Civil War. We have no agreed-upon institutional mechanism in place, no electoral authority, no judicial body with precedent and practice that all the major political forces agree should be empowered to make this decision, Levitsky said.

Long-standing institutions and procedures provide credibility; ideally, they help assure the nation that these decisions arent ad hoc, arbitrary, and politicized as they are in many countries. In Latin America, Levitsky says, disqualification is often badly abused to exclude candidates the powers that be simply dont want to win.

In Trumps case, what would look to some like dutifully standing up for the Constitution would look to many others like an unprecedented intervention by elites into the electoral process, based on a disputed interpretation of a 155-year-old, rarely used provision with the clear underlying motivation of preventing voters from making a particular person the president.

Both professors blanched at the idea of partisan secretaries of state taking Trump off the ballot on their own. Levitsky called this deeply problematic, and Ziblatt said it would be very fraught and dangerous and likely to lead to escalation.

Pro-Trump secretaries of state would surely respond with their own disqualifications of Democratic candidates in reprisal. Indeed, Trumps supporters already caused chaos at the Capitol when they wrongly believed the election was being stolen from him, and theyre already disenchanted with American institutions. What if Trump truly was prevented from even running by questionable means? Things can always get worse and more dangerous. Legal commentator Mark Herrmann compared secretaries of state disqualifying Trump to opening Pandoras Box.

Given the lack of precedent, the much healthier path, Levitsky said, would have been if the Republican Party had managed to self-police by convicting Trump during his second impeachment trial and blocked him from running again. They didnt and thats why were in this mess, debating whether democracy can even survive another Trump presidency.

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14th Amendment, Section 3: The debate over taking Trump off the ... - Vox.com

DENVER A popular gay bar in downtown Denver permanently closed its doors this week after city officials failed to address homeless encampments disrupting business.

On Thursday, one of the citys first gay establishments, Triangle Denver, sent a farewell email out to customers explaining doors will open one last time this Sunday before going under for good.

With heavy hearts we announce that, effective immediately, Triangle Denver is closing indefinitely thanks primarily to the ever-expanding encampments which have surrounded and suffocated the businesses in our neighbourhood, the email reads.

The bar cited a customer survey of more than 500 patrons, in which 75 percent reported visiting less frequently this year compared to last year. Nearby homeless camps were named as customers largest complaint, with more than 60 percent saying safety concerns discouraged them from repeat visits.

The city cleared out the disruptive encampments on Sept. 27.

For one single afternoon, we had our neighbourhood back, the email read. Less than 24 hours later, camps returned, and despite our pleas, have seen no action from the city to stop the re-entrenchment. We cant ask our guests or staff to continue to endure this health and safety nightmare. Our well of patience and resources has run dry.

A local ABC affiliate reported in August that nearby businesses on the same block are feeling under siege as homeless encampments now surround them on three sides. Sales for Triangle Denver dropped 40 percent over the summer.

Scott Coors, the bars owner, blamed incompetent city leadership for the closure claiming city hall has dragged its feet at every turn when asked to deal with the encampments.

We are disappointed and frustrated with the lack of urgency with which the mayors office is addressing the protracted public health and safety crisis downtown, Coors told The Federalist. Tents block sidewalks and parking areas our customers formerly used to access our establishment. They no longer feel safe or comfortable leaving their cars and walking to and from our entrance especially at night when we have the bulk of our business, and I dont blame them.

Mentally unstable individuals, rampant and openly observable methamphetamine and heroin use, human waste on sidewalks, and verbal and physical violence is common, Coors added.

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'Safety Nightmare': Homeless Camps Shut Down Denver Gay Bar - The Federalist

SET UP

This lesson offers several options for you to use with your students whether you are teaching in class, using a hybrid model, or engaging through distance learning. It can be completed in steps as a class or students can move at their own pace and complete the activities independently.

You can post links to the videos in the lesson along with the related handout and slides and engage in discussion to share responses on a discussion board or learning management system.

You can also save and share the following Google resources for students to use with this lesson.

Graphic Organizer: "The Federalist" (Google Doc)

Bingo Board Questions: "The Federalist" (Google Doc)

Bingo Board Answers: "The Federalist" (Google Doc)

In Google, choose "File" then "Make a Copy" to get your own copy. You can make any needed adjustments in the instructions such as which activities students need to complete, when it is due, etc. and then make it available to them via Google.

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Book That Shaped America - "The Federalist" - C-SPAN

Most of us are familiar with the infamous vanishing commissar photo of Stalin and Nikolai Yezhov, the secret police official who organized mass arrests, torture, and executions in the Soviet Union in the late 1930s, but was himself later arrested and executed. Yezhovs likeness was subsequently removed from all official photos, including the one of him and Stalin at the Moscow Canal. Today, Yezhov is the primary example of how the Soviet regime would make someone disappear, as if they never existed, literally erasing them from the historical record.

Disappearing people in this way is something tyrannical dictatorships do because they feel no accountability to the people over whom they rule. Whatever the regime says, no matter how outlandish or patently false, is reality. If you dissent, then you might be disappeared too.

A milder but nevertheless disturbing version of the vanishing commissar played out over Sunday and Monday in Washington, D.C. Heres what happened. During a series of contentious spending votes on Saturday ahead of a looming government shutdown, while House Democrats were trying to slow-walk a vote, Democrat Rep. Jamaal Bowman pulled a fire alarm in a House office building on Capitol Hill, forcing an evacuation.

Bowmans stunt, which is under investigation by Capitol Police, was caught on a security camera. Its clear he pulled the fire alarm as a delaying tactic, precisely to force the evacuation of the building and disrupt official congressional business (the kind of thing the media would call an insurrection if a Republican had done it.) Indeed, theres no other reasonable way to interpret his actions. Everyone who has ever attended school knows what a fire alarm is and what happens when you pull it including Bowman, a former school principal.

Heres where things get a little Soviet. In the aftermath of the evacuation, Bowman insisted it was an accident not that he pulled the alarm by accident, since the video footage clearly shows him doing so intentionally, but thathe didnt know what would happen when he pulled it. I was just trying to get to my vote, he said. The door thats usually open wasnt open. I didnt mean to cause confusion. I didnt know it was going to trip the whole building. I thought [the alarm] would help me open the door.

(On a side note, Bowman later called the Republicans trying to punish him Nazis, and thenpretended that was a mistake when it blew up in his face.)

But heres the important thing: Bowmans claim is that he thought pulling the fire alarm would open the door.That sounds like an outlandish lie, doesnt it? The sort of patently false thing no one in his right mind would ever believe or even try to explain. Just a bone-crushingly idiotic fiction that requires us to believe Bowman is mentally ill or psychotic. Every single person in Washington knows its not true.

And yet, every single Democrat and the entire corporate news media immediately responded as if it were a reasonable and acceptable explanation for Bowmans actions, like ofcoursehe didnt know what would happen when he pulled the alarm. He thought it would open the door, OK? How many of us have encountered a locked door and immediately pulled the nearest fire alarm? Right? The fire alarm going off took him by total surprise!

Heres Chris Hayes of MSNBC, for example, saying this whole thing is silly and embarrassing, and not that big a deal. But then he cites a Capitol Police statement, that Bowman tried to open the door before pulling the alarm, and claims it lines up with Bowmans explanation.

The purpose of this little legerdemain by Hayes is to lend Bowmans account credibility, to suggest that he is telling the truth that he was just trying to get out of the building, didnt do anything wrong, etc. In other words, Hayes wants you to suspend your judgment and common sense, and instead believe what is clearly, provably a lie.

Thats the real problem here the blatant lying with the expectation that you just have to accept it and pretend its OK. Over the last few years of the Biden administration, this sort of thing has become commonplace. Democrats, sometimes President Biden himself, will do or say something outrageous and unbelievable, and the press will either ignore it and pretend it didnt happen or offer an explanation so disconnected from reality that only a total lack of accountability or any respect for their audience can explain it.

Thats how you get major media outlets trotting out the line, amid mounting and undeniable evidence of Biden family corruption, that Hunter Biden only sold the illusion of access to his father. Thats how you get coverage that suggests 17 or 22 years in prison for participating in the Jan. 6 Capitol riot is somehow normal and justified. Thats how you get news panels debating the merits of the criminal charges against Trump, as if the charges themselves are the story and not the unprecedented targeting of the presidents chief political rival ahead of an upcoming election. And on and on.

When the government and the establishment press just spout the most outlandish lies and excuses, demanding we believe them, its much more dangerous and frankly tyrannical than a government and press that subtly or believably lies.

When governments and politicians and the media dissimulate reality in this blatant way, it suggests they no longer respect or feel accountable to the populace, and are confident that all pretense to the naked exercise of power can be dropped. They will simply tell you what to believe, what reality is, and you will accept it no matter what your lying eyes tell you.

If they tell you Bowman was trying to open the door by pulling the fire alarm, you will accept it. If they tell you Joe Biden never discussed or had any knowledge of his sons overseas business schemes, you will accept it. If they tell you Yezhov was never at the Moscow Canal with Stalin, you will accept it. Youd better accept it, or else.

More than jack-booted government thugs in the streets, more than a weaponized DOJ and FBI, that kind of lying is a naked exercise of power over and against the American people. And under Biden, its becoming the new norm.

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The Media's Lies About Rep. Jamaal Bowman Should Concern You - The Federalist

Paul Krugmans latest unhinged column in The New York Times wreaks of bad faith.

On Tuesday, the papers economic columnist from the City University of New York Graduate Center wrote a nearly 900-word piece outlining a false binary when it comes to aid for Ukraine. Republicans who oppose another multi-billion-dollar aid package to the war-torn country, he wrote, just want Putin to win.

They view the Putin regimes cruelty and repression as admirable features that America should emulate, Krugman told the subscribers of The New York Times. They support a wannabe dictator at home and are sympathetic to actual dictators abroad.

Opponents of the generous aid packages might also be trying to avoid American involvement in another overseas war, but for Krugman, that would be giving his political rivals too much credit.

Krugman penned the column after conservative Republicans successfully ripped out another round of funding for Ukraine in the latest budget showdown last week. The compromise bill to keep the government open for another 45 days passed both chambers Saturday with bipartisan support. Absent from the measure was another $6 billion for Ukraine demanded by both Democrats and Senate Republican leadership. Lawmakers have until Nov. 17 to come to another agreement before a government shutdown.

Krugman criticized the conservative effort to eliminate more Ukraine aid, arguing the amount of tax dollars sent to Eastern Europe is a small budget item.

Total federal outlays are currently running at more than $6 trillion a year, or more than $9 trillion every 18 months, so Ukraine aid accounts for less than 1 percent of federal spending (and less than 0.3 percent of G.D.P.), Krugman wrote, as if $6 trillion was nothing to sneeze at. With a national debt of more than $33 trillion and rising, it might be time to question whether spending $9 trillion every 18 months is really sustainable. Instead, his focus is on whether taxpayer spending is a good deal for Ukraine.

The Biden administration committed more than $113 billion in aid to Ukraine last year, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. How much more money does Ukraine need? A blank check, apparently.

[READ: While You Pinch Inflated Pennies, Congress Sent $900 Of Your Household Income To Ukraine]

Pay no attention to all those complaints about how much were spending in Ukraine, Krugman wrote. They arent justified by the actual cost of aid, and the people claiming to be worried about the cost dont really care about the money. What they are, basically, is enemies of democracy, both abroad and at home.

In other words, anything less than unchecked funding for the war effort, according to Krugmans view, is antithetical to democracy. But is Ukraine even a democracy? In March, Federalist Senior Editor David Harsanyi outlined how it isnt.

Ukraine which, before the war, regularlyslotted insomewhere beneath Burma, Mexico, and Hungary on those silly democracy matrixes left-wingers used to love isnt any kind of liberal democracy, Harsanyi wrote. Today Ukraine stillshutterschurches andrestrictsthe free press. Maybe you believe those are justifiable actions during wartime, but under no definition are they liberal. Ukraine has never been a functioning democracy.'

Supporters of unlimited funding, meanwhile, are touchy when it comes to substantive aid oversight. In December, then-Democrat House Armed Services Chair Adam Smith said claims over lack of oversight makes me a little crazy.

Number one, the focus on that is part of Russian propaganda. All these stories about how the money isnt being spent wisely, Smith said at the Reagan National Defense Forum. Second, Ukraine is spending the money really well Thats why theyre winning.

The fact that Ukraine hasnt lost the war, apparently, is all the evidence the Washington lawmaker needs.

In August, Democrats went on to block an effort to implement greater oversight of Ukraine funding. A leaked memo from the Biden administration published this week by Politico raised more concerns about where the tax dollars indeed went.

Biden administration officials are far more worried about corruption in Ukraine than they publicly admit, a confidential U.S. strategy document obtained by POLITICO suggests, the paper reported. The administration wants to press Ukraine to cut graft, not least because U.S. dollars are at stake. But being too loud about the issue could embolden opponents of U.S. aid to Ukraine, many of them Republican lawmakers who are trying to block such assistance.

Put simply, dont talk about the transparency of taxpayer aid. Its bad politics.

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Krugman Smears Anyone Opposed To Ukraine Aid As Pro-Putin - The Federalist

Perhaps you saw the news last week that two women in their 70s, Jean Marshall and Joan Bell, are eachfacing up to 11 years in federal prisonfor blocking the entrance to an abortion clinic in 2020. Federal prosecutors charged the pair for violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act, which Bidens Justice Department has been aggressively enforcing against pro-life activists, convicting 26 people last year alone.

You might have also seen, a few weeks earlier, that a 42-year-old North Dakota man who ran over and killed an 18-year-old kid for being a Republican wassentenced to just five years in prisonon a manslaughter charge, and with credit for time already served on house arrest, will spend only about four years behind bars.

Seeing these two things, maybe you wondered how it could be that two grandmothers might well spend twice as many years in prison for the nonviolent offence of sitting in front of an abortion clinic as a man who intentionally killed another man for his political beliefs. Maybe you thought, as @politicalmathput it on X(formerly Twitter), that the left needs to start looking at this situation and admitting that this is not justice. They need to shake themselves awake and realize that their team is utilizing the justice system for political punishment and that this is destabilizing our entire culture.

You might have thought the same thing recently about the Trump indictments. The hypocrisy is after all outrageous. Questioning an election is okay if Hillary Clinton and Democrats do it (as they did in 2016, 2004, and 2000) but its a criminal conspiracy if Trump and Republicans do it.

Or consider the draconian prison sentences for Jan. 6 rioters (22 years in one case) compared to the leniency shown to Black Lives Matter and Antifa rioters, one of whom wassentenced to just 10 yearsdespite setting a deadly fire in a Minneapolis pawn shop during the 2020 George Floyd riots and this only after federal prosecutorsinvoked Martin Luther King Jr. and asked the judge to show leniency.

Or again consider the role of Bidens Justice Department and FBI in protecting Hunter Biden and the president from congressional investigations that are, as of this writing, still uncovering damning evidence of corruption connected to Hunters overseas business schemes. Just this week we learned that two payments totaling more than a quarter-million dollars were wired to Hunter Biden from China, and the beneficiary address listed on the wires wasJoe Bidens home address in Delaware. (At the time the wires were sent,Hunter was living in California.)

Surely, you might be thinking, not even the most rabid partisans on the left can think that this is justice, or that this will end well for the country. Surely they see the danger of supporting a politicized federal law enforcement bureaucracy that criminalizes the opposition and uses the justice system as a weapon. Even if they dont denounce it publicly, certainly theyre talking amongst themselves about how terrible this is and how to stop it. Right?

Wrong. To think this way is to misunderstand Democrats and the left completely. No, theyre not worried about any of this. No, they dont want it to stop, they want it to continue and intensify. They dont want justice, they want power.

You dont have to take my word for it. Increasingly, Democrats will readily admit as much. For example, nearly half of them dont believe in freedom of speech. A recentRealClear Opinion Research pollfound that while solid majorities of Republicans (74 percent) and Independents (61 percent) believe speech should be legal under any circumstances, only 55 percent of Democrats agreed.

The same survey found that a third of Democrats think Americans have too much freedom, and a majority of them approve of the government censoring social media content under the rubric of protecting national security. Worse, about three-quarters of surveyed Democrats think the government has a responsibility to limit hateful posts on social media, and they are far more likely than Republicans or Independents to support censorship of political views.

Thats just one survey of course, but it captures a growing trend of authoritarianism on the left. We see it in polls, on college campuses and corporate boardrooms, on social media, and in how the left wields the power of the institutions it has captured, like the FBI and DOJ.

When you see these glaring disparities in how opponents of the Biden regime are treated by the Justice Department and the courts, when you see how corporate media cover the Trump indictments versus how they refuse to cover the Biden corruption scandal, when you see them calling for government censorship of misinformation on social media, understand that they are never going to take a step back and consider whether all of this is justice or injustice.

Despite the outdated moniker of social justice warrior, leftist Democrats arent interested in real justice. Theyre interested in gaining and using power. Once they have it, theyll use it against their enemies. Appealing to their desire for civil comity is futile. They have no use for comity so long as they have power.

This is to say, they wont stop this until what they are doing to their enemies is in turn done to them. You dont like left-wing district attorneys indicting the Republican frontrunner ahead of election season? Better find some GOP state attorneys general to indict Hunter and Joe Biden.

You dont like Attorney General Merrick Garland using the Justice Department to protect a corrupt Biden administration? Better impeach him along with Biden. Dont like a woke U.S. military funding abortions and gender surgeries on the defense secretarys say-so? Better do as Sen. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama has done anduse all available leverage to stop them.

Power is the only language the left understands. So if Americans on the right want to be anything more than a managed opposition and lets be honest, plenty of elected Republicans are happy to be exactly that they had better figure out how to wield the limited power they do have. And they had better hurry.

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Democrats Have Become The Party Of Authoritarianism. They Only ... - The Federalist

My dad is dying. This is a fact many American families will be sharing over the next few years as the last of the Greatest Generation and the first of the Baby Boomers ride off into the sunset. My father, Carl Westcott, is an 83-year-old veteran of the U.S. Army 101st Airborne and is mostly known in the business community for his successful entrepreneurial ventures.He was inducted into the Horatio Alger Society of Distinguished Americans in 2003, joining Oprah Winfrey, Henry Kissinger, and Michael Bloomberg.Not bad for a guy from Vicksburg, Mississippi, who grew up in a home without indoor plumbing and whose formal education was a GED.

Yet, like all human beings, age eventually caught up with him, rendering my dad elderly and frail. Adding to the burden, he also suffers from Huntingtons Disease, which hes been battling since 2015, symptoms of which include dementia. It is in this vulnerable state that he found himself ensnared in a heart-wrenching real estate contract that would soon pit our family against international popstar Katheryn Elizabeth Hudson, whose stage name is Katy Perry.

On July 18, 2020, in the aftermath of a serious back surgery, while experiencing extreme pain and under the influence of opioid painkillers and numerous drugs for pain and mental issues, my father sat in his dream home, which he had bought just two months prior as his intended final primary residence. On this day, in my fathers dream house and under the influence of pain medication, he formed a contract to sell the home to Bernie Gudvi, an agent for the real buyer, Perry.

Approximately two days later, after the fog of the opioid painkillers lifted, he realized what had happened and acted to cancel a contract that had been signed while he was not of sound mind.

My father wrote an email to Katy Perrys agents explaining the circumstances under which he had signed the contract. Brushing aside my fathers plea, his acknowledgment of his vulnerability, and his stated inability to properly consent at the time of signing, Perry did not care. Instead, she demanded the sale of the property and threatened to sue if my father did not comply.

As the legal battle dragged on for three long years, my fathers health deteriorated, leaving him bedridden. During a time when we should be cherishing our remaining moments with him, we find ourselves entangled in a fight against Perrys swarm of lawyers to preserve our familys legacy.

When his time comes, I want my father to be remembered for the years he spent serving his country, his numerous successful businesses, his robust family life, and his kind, caring heart. I dont want him to be remembered as Katy Perrys latest victim he wouldnt even be the first to die during a real estate battle with her.

Sadly, this story will be familiar to many sons and daughters.For our family, this tragic incident is no longer just a personal ordeal. It symbolizes the broader challenges faced by our aging society. I believe it is of the utmost importance that the law recognizes the vulnerability of elderly citizens and extends its protection in the wake of serious medical events and episodes of mental illness.Far too often, the unscrupulous take advantage of the elderly in moments of weakness or infirmity.

Nevertheless, the notoriety that her involvement tragically brings to my fathers condition can benefit all of us by underscoring the necessity of prioritizing compassion and fairness for the elderly in the law. We must ensure their voices are heard.My father has no voice and cannot speak clearly anymore because his mind has left him.What remains is a frail body and the beautiful, weathered soul of a man who lived a full life.My family will speak for him and for all others who find an elder family member in a similar situation.

Ultimately, we all share this common destiny: to grow old and infirm, and eventually depart from this world. I call upon California and all other state legislatures around the country to pass the Protecting Elder Realty for Retirement Years (PERRY) Act to give any party in a contract for sale of a personal residence, in which one party is over the age of 75, at least a 72-hour cool-down period in which either party has the right to rescind the contract. This would protect senior citizens from making an irreversible mistake during moments of medical vulnerability and would give their loved ones time to make sure they are making the right choice.

Let us treat our elders with the same courtesy and respect we hope to receive when we too are at the end of our lives. By protecting our elders and cherishing their contributions, we sow the seeds of a compassionate society for their grandchildren and our own.

Chart Westcott is a private investor and attorney. Mr. Westcott has a history of public service including a six-year term on the Texas Real Estate Commission and serving on the Board of the Dallas County Historical Foundation, which is the governing body of Sixth Floor Museum.

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Katy Perry Is Fighting To Kick My Dying Dad Out Of His Home - The Federalist

The corporate news media all but refused to cover the opening hearing of the House impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden on Thursday, and to the extent they did, it was only to repeat,at the behest of the White House, the exhausted mantra that theres no evidence connecting Biden to his son Hunters international bribery scheme.

(The New York Timesranwith a cursory and misleadingly headlined article, First Impeachment Hearing Yields No New Information on Biden, that boasted even their [Republicans] witnesses said the case for impeachment hadnt been made. Which, of course the case hasnt been made yet. Thats why you launch an inquiry, of which Thursday was day one.)

But if the media had actually covered it, the American public might have heard more about the mounds of damning evidencenow piling up by the day, includingthe release on Wednesday by the House Ways and Means Committeeof reams of text messages and emails between Hunter Biden, his uncle James Biden, and a colorful array of foreign oligarchs, business associates, and bagmen. All told, House Republicans presented more than two dozen pieces of evidence on Thursday linking Joe Biden to his sons overseas business dealings.

This evidence was the centerpiece of the hearing Thursday, which served to lay the groundwork for the impeachment inquiry. So far, the evidence suggests the Biden family business is exactly what it appears to be: an influence-peddling scheme on a scale never before seen in American history. George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley, who testified at the hearing, said that even though Washington, D.C., is awash in influence-peddling, hes never seen anything of this size and complexity, and that Congress has a duty to determine if the president is involved in what is a known form of corruption.

Based on what we already know, its hard to see how Joe Biden couldnt have been involved or couldnt have benefited from his sons corrupt dealings. Consider just a few items of evidence mentioned during Thursdays hearing. In one text exchange with his uncle in June 2017, Hunter refers to his father as his familys brand and only asset. That echoes something Devon Archer, Hunters former business partner, said in his July testimony to the House Oversight Committee, that the value of adding Hunter to the board of the Ukrainian energy firm Burisma was the brand clearly a reference to then-Vice President Joe Biden. (Hunter had no experience in the energy sector and brought no value to the company other than access to his father.)

Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolinabrought up an FBI memoreleased Wednesday by the House Ways and Means Committee about another former business partner of Hunters, Tony Bobulinksi. In an FBI interview, Bobulinksi said that in 2015-16 Hunter and Hunters uncle James did business with CEFC, a Chinese company with close ties to the Chinese government. But because Biden was still vice president, Hunter and James werent paid right away. There was a concern it would be improper, Bobulinksi said, because of the companys affiliation with the Chinese Communist Party.

But Hunter and James wanted to get paid. According to Bobulinksi, they believed CEFC owed them money for the benefits that accrued to CEFC through its use of the Biden family name to advance their business dealings. Once Biden left office, Hunter and James were paid more than a million dollars by CEFC. Now we know why, said Mace. Because it was back-pay.

Later in the hearing, Rep. Byron Donalds of Florida showed organizational charts of Hunter Bidens businesses created by the IRS team investigating the presidents son, including from 2014, when Joe Biden was vice president, and 2018, when he was a private citizen. The charts show a dizzying array of interrelated companies none of which involved real estate or any other industry where you would typically see this kind of complex matrix of different business entities and shell companies. Donalds then shared a text message between Hunter and James Biden in which Hunter, discussing a business deal, tells his uncle, Youve been drawn into something purely for the purpose of protecting Dad.

This is just a sample, but you get the idea. Hunter was engaged in a patently corrupt scheme that involved selling access to his father, one of the most powerful politicians on the planet. The question the impeachment inquiry has to answer is whether Joe Biden knew about the scheme, whether he profited from it, whether he intentionally helped Hunter, and whether he changed U.S. policy as part of rendering that help. On every count, there is mounting evidence that the answer is yes.

But dont expect Democrats to take any of this more seriously than the corporate media are. Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, never one to miss an opportunity for self-parody, gravely asked all three Republican witnesses whether they were presenting any firsthand witness account of crimes committed by the president of the United States, as if the only evidence that counts is video footage of Joe Biden stuffing cash into a duffel bag marked $$$ from China.

Not to be outdone in performative stupidity, Rep. Jasmine Crockett, a Democrat from Texas, went ona bizarre, emotional rantclaiming President Biden is only guilty of loving his child unconditionally, which is the only evidence Republicans have brought forward. She added, And honestly, I hope and pray that my parents love me half as much as he loves his child. Ah yes, Joe Biden loved his son so much that he made him the frontman of an international bribery scheme and money-laundering operation.

So much for the opposition (including the corporate press). They arent going to take this seriously, even if the impeachment inquiry turns up audio recordings of Joe Biden saying, Why yes, I did fire that Ukrainian prosecutor for $5 million from Burisma. Democrats and the media dont care about Bidens corruption and wont tell the truth about it, no matter what evidence comes to light. After Thursdays hearing, at least that much is clear.

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Biden Impeachment Hearing Had Ample Evidence Of Corruption - The Federalist