Category Archives: Federalist

Controversy over critical race theory (CRT) in Americas public schools has been a flashpoint in our nations culture wars since at least 2020. In Virginia, parents outcry against it determined the 2022 governors race, and red states such as Florida and Texas are doing their best to restrict it. In this charged climate, blue states are stealthily adopting a dangerous new disguise for CRT ethnic studies which incorporates all that worries Americans about CRTs ideology, and plenty more, in a deceptively appealing package.

To see whats coming, look at Minnesota, where this spring lawmakers enacted what are likely the most radical education measures in the nation. This is ethnic studies in its liberated form, which not only teaches race-based identities and white privilege, but incites students to take action to disrupt and dismantle Americas fundamental social and political institutions.

Minnesotas new K-12 social studies standards now in the final stages of rulemaking approval exemplify this ideology. The standards add ethnic studies to the core social studies disciplines of history, civics, economics, and geography, and incorporate its concepts throughout. One ethnic studies anchor standard, titled Resistance, is typical. It requires students to organize with others to resist systemic and coordinated exercises of power against marginalized, oppressed groups.

These new standards and their related benchmarks prime youngsters to view American institutions with suspicion and hostility from the earliest grades. Kindergartners, for example, must retell a story about an unfair experience that conveys a power imbalance. First-graders must identify examples of ethnicity, equality, liberation and systems of power and use those examples to construct meanings for those terms.

High school students will be required to analyze how caste systems based upon race, social class, and religion have been used to justify imperialism, colonization, warfare, and chattel slavery and to examine the construction of racialized hierarchies based on colorism and dominant European beauty standards and values.

Even subjects like geography are shot through with extremist ethnic studies ideology.

For example, fourth graders will no longer be required to learn the names and locations of continents, the Atlantic Ocean, the Amazon, England, or China. Instead, they will describe places and regions, explaining how they are influenced by power structures. When they study states and capitals, they must include a recognition of indigenous land these places were built on.

The ethnic studies-driven campaign to discredit American institutions as illegitimate is most clearly evident in the standards that focus on criminal justice. Students will study our police departments and justice system in connection with an ethnic studies standard that requires them to understand the roots of contemporary systems of oppression and eliminate injustices.

Fifth graders, for example, will examine contemporary policing and its alleged historical roots in early America. (The claim is that our police departments sprang directly from slave patrols of the Old South.) Sixth-graders will study the impact of Minnesotas juvenile justice system on youth from historically disenfranchised groups. High school standards suggest the notion of criminality itself is racist: Explore how criminality is constructed and what makes a person a criminal.

Biased, misleading instruction of this kind will likely convince many young people that policing and the very idea of criminality are oppressive, racially constructed, and among the many things schools are instructing them to resist.

Remarkably, the activist campaign to transform Minnesotas public schools has generated minimal public pushback. A key to its success was the promotion of ethnic studies as a unifying cultural learning experience, while in fact it stokes interracial hostility and delegitimizes authority. This deceptive strategy is likely to become a national model for activists seeking to transform our K-12 education system.

Across the country, students exposure to CRT think The New York Times 1619 Project initially came in piecemeal fashion, through outside interests such as teachers unions and professional associations. In contrast, ethnic studies advocates aim to impose this corrosive ideology through government action, either weaving it through all subjects as a lens or requiring an ethnic studies course as a discipline comparable to history or civics.

In 2021, California became the first state to make an ethnic studies course a high school graduation requirement. Though education officials there adopted a deeply flawed, leftist curriculum, they did so after rejecting an initial liberated draft as too radical.

Ironically, Minnesota lawmakers have now injected this extremist version not in one required course for teens but in academic standards for all subjects, including math and science, from kindergarten through 12th grade. In addition, the ideology has been hard-wired into teacher licensing requirements and fundamental school mechanics, so the transformation will be difficult to reverse.

Today, ethnic studies may be easier than CRT to sell as a cover for radical ideology because it remains largely free of the political baggage that CRT has accumulated, and sounds appealing to American ears in a multi-ethnic society that values fairness and cultural understanding. A 2022 poll by the Minneapolis-based Center of the American Experiment found a majority of Minnesotans approve of ethnic studies in schools until they become aware of its extremist agenda.

In Minnesotas 2023 legislative session, Democratic leaders and leftist activists took advantage of this goodwill by mounting a coordinated bait-and-switch campaign to deflect public scrutiny. The campaign was spearheaded by a coalition of activist teachers and community organizers, whose parent organization is the Minnesota chapter of the Education for Liberation Network, which has California roots.

The goal of EdLib MN is to be a political force to contend with the status quo of colonial education that prioritizes Eurocentric curricula and predominantly white educators and administrators, according to its website. During the legislative campaign for an ethnic studies mandate in Minnesota schools, the organization retweeted a graphic that called for the abolition (not reform) of policing, and declared that defunding the police means abolishing the social order and building a new society.

EdLib MN leader Brian Lozenski, a St. Paul-based professor who serves on the board of the national EdLib Network, has been candid about Ed Libs endgame of political upheaval. In an article titled The Black Radical Tradition Can Help Us Imagine a More Just World, which he wrote in June 2020, he described the George Floyd riots in Minneapolis as mass uprisings against racialized state violence, which portend the inevitable death of the American social order that prioritizes vulgar economics. After Covid closings, Lozenski declared, Schools need only reopen if they join the social unrest and actively combat the greater public health crisis of systemic racism.

At the state capitol in St. Paul, however, savvy activists and their Democratic legislative allies lobbied for liberated ethnic studies using a benign, inclusive kumbaya message. They framed ethnic studies as unifying: An unequaled opportunity to bridge the ethnic and cultural divide in Minnesota classrooms by invit[ing]students to more deeply explore the states many diverse cultures and histories.

When everyone gets a chance to learn about everyone in their community, read one promotional piece, it brings us closer. A legislative sponsor portrayed ethnic studies as a way to cultivate the sort of cultural pride her children felt when encouraged to bring their Lebanese food and gowns to school.

Ed Libs Lozenski served as a chief testifier for the primary ethnic studies bill. He did not disclose his radical agenda or connections but held himself out as a concerned parent who favors ethnic studies because it will provide Minnesota students with the intra- and inter-cultural knowledge they need in a globalized world.

Ethnic studies advocates entire legislative strategy was marked by calculated deception and lack of transparency. Sweeping proposals to infuse liberated ideology through K-12 schools were subtly woven throughout bills that were pushed through at breakneck speed, using slickly packaged testimony and often omitting examination of the legislations actual text. Earnest students flocked to the capitol to appeal to legislators in person in line with Ed Libs national strategy of portraying the campaign for ethnic studies as student-led.

The final omnibus bill not only entrenched ethnic studies throughout Minnesotas K-12 education system, it also created a permanent Ethnic Studies Working Group at the Minnesota Department of Education to implement the mandate. By law, the members of this powerful group which will design a statewide ethnic studies framework, recommend teacher training, and develop instructional resources must be chosen with input from EdLib MNs Ethnic Studies coalition. As a result, going forward, the political extremists who launched the crusade to hijack Minnesotas public education system will play a central role in determining what students learn in history, civics, language arts, math, and science classrooms across the state.

To see whats coming for Minnesotas roughly 500 district and charter schools, look at the St. Paul Public Schools, where a critical ethnic studies course became a graduation requirement in 2021. School officials designed the curriculum in consultation with Lozenski and other ethnic studies activists.

The St. Paul curriculum does not cultivate mutual understanding but pushes students to form tribalized identities and stokes defiance of authority. It exhorts 16-year-olds to build a race- and ethnicity-based narrative of transformative resistance, to challenge and expose systems of inequality, and to resist all systems of oppressive power rooted in racism through collective action and change.

Related artwork, labeled seeds of resistance, announces school-approved targets of politicized resistance. This artwork promotes the liberated abolitionist agenda, and features protest signs that read No Bans/No Walls and Abolish Prison.

Today, St. Paul students and parents lament growing disrespect for teachers and dangerous hallways. Youth crime in the city is rising, and in a recent survey, a majority of St. Paul high school faculty and staff report that they feel unsafe or very unsafe at school. What will happen as ethnic studies further delegitimizes authority there?

Similar campaigns are underway in other states, not only California where activists are now going school district to school district to sell the liberated version that failed at the state level but in Washington, Oregon, Vermont, and elsewhere. Minnesota provides a cautionary tale. Unless legislators and citizens understand liberated ethnic studies real agenda, many more states will follow.

Katherine Kersten is a senior policy fellow at the Center of the American Experiment.

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'Ethnic Studies' Is A Sneaky New Way To Stoke Racial Division - The Federalist

Updated Sept. 19, 2023. Two hundred and fifty lies and counting.

More than two and a half years into President Joe Bidens White House tenure, his fabulism is on repeat. Hes told more lies than anyone could ever quantify, but weve done our best to document his serial falsehoods. Here is part four of The Federalists rigorous coverage designed to hold Biden and his administration accountable with substantive fact-checking throughout the rest of his presidency.

You can find part three of The Full List Of Every Lie Joe Biden Has Told As President here.

In a call with Jewish faith leaders on Sept. 14, 2023, Joe Biden claimed he was raised in the synagogues in Delaware.

I you might say raised in the synagogues in my state.You think Im kidding.Im not, Biden said during his greeting.

Just like Biden was not raised in a black church or a Puerto Rican community, Biden was not raised in a synagogue. Instead, he grew up in a Catholic home and attended an all-boys Catholic school.

Im as much a cultural Catholic as I am a theological Catholic. My idea of self, of family, of community, of the wider world comes straight from my religion. Its not so much the Bible, the Beatitudes, the Ten Commandments, the sacraments, or the prayers I learned. Its the culture. The nuns are one of the reasons Im still a practicing Catholic, Biden wrote in the first chapter of his biography Promises To Keep.

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The Definitive List Of Biden's Lies As President: 250 And Counting - The Federalist

Amanda Marcotte, a feminist writer infamous for describing Hallmark movies as fascist propaganda, penned an article in the Salon on Tuesday warning young women not to marry young. Using the Lauren Boebert Beetlejuice theater scandal as a hook, Marcotte argued that, Marrying someone off before theyve grown up doesnt confer maturity and happiness.

One could say that about just about anything. Nothing in this life, not even blissful feminist singlehood and child-free eternities, always confer maturity and happiness.

Take it from a 23-year-old woman a little over a year into married life: getting married young is a beautiful thing with real benefits. Here are five of them.

Marriage makes financial sense, especially when youre young. Newly married couples usually have double incomes. This means more savings and therefore the ability to save up a downpayment on a home and other investments.

Couples with different employers can choose the better of two health insurance plans. Car insurance and home insurance are cheaper, and couples are sometimes put in a lower tax bracket than the higher-earning spouse would pay as an individual.

Marriage also reorients peoples financial and social priorities in a positive way, meaning, contrary to Marcottes assertion, it does make people more mature. Studies show that men who get married work harder, smarter, and make more money than their single counterparts.

Marriage naturally encourages people to spend their money more carefully because they have another person (or people) to look out for. And whether Marcotte agrees or not, peoples money and time are better spent on family rather than Jell-O shots and girls trips to Nashville or guys trips to Vegas.

As The Federalists Peachy Keenan says, Strike while the ovaries are hot. Getting married and having children in your prime reproductive years leads to easier pregnancies and healthier babies.

It also means less demand for assisted reproductive technologies, such as intrauterine insemination and in vitro fertilization, which are unreliable and unethical.The use of reproductive technologies sidelines the rights of children by prioritizing the desires of adults, regardless of the consequences, explains The Federalists Jordan Boyd. That leads to the unregulated buying and selling of biological matter, embryos, and wombs to make babies, transactions which make human existence seem dispensable.

For young couples who do struggle with infertility, marrying young also gives them more time to naturally conceive without pressure from the biological clock.

A 2018 study found that a career and financial independence are top priorities for single women, while getting married and having children are decidedly not. For this, we can thank the feminist movement, which has instructed young women to spend their 20s and early 30s focusing on their professions, not their love lives.

The result is that Americans are tying the knot a decade older now than they did in 1950. The problem with waiting until youre in your late 30s and older to get married is that the dating pool is limited when youre older. Women have to look for a spouse in their age range who hasnt already gotten married. But every year the pool of eligible bachelors gets smaller and lower in quality. Not to mention these older women have to compete with women in their 20s for the older, available men.

Ironically, this forces many women to do more of exactly what Marcotte fears: settle. Those who dont are left with the lonesome prospect of never having a family. This also fuels the unreliable, morally bankrupt, multibillion-dollar assisted reproductive technologies businesses, which allows women to freeze their eggs and use sperm donors instead of husbands to generate a child.

The longer you wait to get married, the more likely you and your spouse are to have more past sexual partners. According to Marcotte, this is a good thing. One of the best parts about putting off marriage for a time is that you get to make mistakes and have your adventures in your youth, when the stakes are low, she wrote, adding that women need to sow wild oats, just like men.

In reality, colorful sexual histories hurt people and marriages. Research consistently shows that having multiple sex partners prior to marriage increases the odds of divorce, and, in the case of women, significantly reduces their sense of marital quality.

Marcotte argues that opting out of STD-charged hookup culture in exchange for a loving, committed spouse will breed a desire to make up for lost time. But what exactly is Marcotte so worried women like myself are missing out on getting trashed on the weekends? Having a series of sexual rendezvous with men who wont remember my name the next day? Those adventures arent fun at all. In fact, theyre usually traumatic.

Hoeing around may be a hallmark of modern young adulthood, but rarely do people report feeling happy and fulfilled after a one-night stand. Getting married young avoids all that. It means fewer exes, less insecurities, and less emotional baggage.

As people get older, they become more stuck in their ways. Getting married young and starting a life together early on means couples can learn to compromise and live cohesively while their habits are more malleable. Couples who marry young also experience milestones, like buying a house or getting a promotion, together, allowing them to share their youths and memories.

Marcotte claims young people are too immature to get married. She paints all young husbands as substandard, assuming their rash young brides only married them due to pressure from people like Bari Weiss and Nicholas Kristof.

No one is arguing for marrying young for the sake of marrying young. Who you marry is the most important decision you will ever make, and must be done wisely with careful consideration of your potential spouses character and values.

What people open to marrying young are saying is that once you find someone you love, are attracted to physically and emotionally, and who shares your values, you should take the plunge and get married. You dont need to sow wild oats or take your future spouse for a test drive before you make your vows. In fact, studies suggest that couples who do not cohabitate before marrying in their 20s have the lowest odds of divorce in America.

Theres no need to engage in the most depressing and debased aspects of modern culture. Its not a rite of passage to get crossed and hook up with a guy you met at the bar. What is a rite of passage that stretches back centuries in human history is marriage, particularly marrying young.

Young women should ignore Marcottes advice. If you find a good person, dont wait. Choose wisely, have faith, and take the leap.

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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5 Benefits Of Marrying In Your 20s - The Federalist

Former President Donald Trump has broken his deal with pro-lifers. The bargain was that pro-lifers would provide Trump political support in exchange for Trump giving the pro-life movement political wins. And it paid off. Trump got to be president, and pro-lifers got originalist Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe v. Wade.

Now as Trump seeks the Republican nomination for a third time, he is making it clear that the alliance is over. Pressed on abortion in a recent interview, Trump blasted his rival, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, for signing a law banning abortions after the baby has a detectable heartbeat. Trump declared, I think what he did is a terrible thing and a terrible mistake.

Trump is being honest. There is no reason to doubt that he said what he really believes: that restricting abortion to any meaningful extent is a terrible mistake and that he has no will to fight to protect human life in the womb. Before denouncing DeSantis (and, implicitly, every other Republican governor and state legislator who has protected babies from being killed in the womb, along with the voters who supported them), Trump insisted he would be able to cut a deal with Democrats to bring peace on this issue. However, in promising this peace he refused to commit to even a 15-week limit on abortion.

Trump wants the issue to go away, along with the pro-life voters who refuse to stop standing up for the innocent lives ended by abortion. Trumps disdain for the pro-life cause is no surprise. Trump was very pro-abortion until he ran for the Republican nomination, and his conversion to the cause was always obviously one of convenience. It is not surprising that he views significant restrictions on abortion as a mistake, and that he and his allies have denigrated pro-life laws as a waste of political capital. Indeed, Trump and his loyal supporters have been acting like the worst of the old Republican establishment that they love to denounce treating pro-lifers as suckers to string along for votes, rather than as a constituency to be rewarded in victory.

Now he no longer makes any pretense of caring for the pro-life cause; Trump thinks we should take the Dobbs v. Jackson Womens Health Organization win and go home satisfied. But for pro-lifers, the goal of ending Roe was to be able to start winning political victories without having them negated by the federal courts enforcing an invented constitutional right to abortion. We have had wins and losses since the Dobbs decision overturned Roe, but it is a genuine political fight in which we have secured real victories for life and have hope for more in the future.

Trump wants to abandon that fight in pursuit of some illusory deal that will bring peace on the issue. But Democrats will not accept anything short of total victory, and Trump has shown that hell happily give it to them if it allows him to pretend to have struck a great deal.

Genuine pro-lifers likewise will not weary and will not rest until we win. Of course, we know we have to accept some compromises in the interim, working to achieve the best we can get now, saving as many lives as currently possible while we work to create the political conditions in which more lives may be protected. What we must not accept and never will accept is a peace in which children in the womb are legally murdered in perpetuity.

Trump did not need to be personally pro-life in order to form a political alliance with pro-lifers. But that alliance cannot survive his public announcement that our wins since Dobbs are terrible. It is clear that Trump would have no further use for us if he were elected to a second term.

Therefore, pro-lifers cannot trust Trump. We cannot trust that he would appoint good judges again, given that his commitment to doing so was purely political and the political motivation for doing so would disappear as soon as he won. If Trump wins he will never run for anything ever again, so the leverage to get him to do anything he doesnt want to do disappears.

We could not trust Trump to sign any pro-life laws, given that he is currently denouncing those passed by Republican-led states. We could not trust him to direct his administration to enact pro-life policies, or to roll back the many pro-abortion policies put in place by President Joe Biden. We certainly could not trust him to use his position as president to make the case for life and against abortion.

Trump has decided that pro-life policies are political liabilities but is betting that pro-life voters will stick with him even as he publicly denounces their goals as terrible. His offer in return for our continued support is nothing. And he thinks well take it. We will see if the pro-life movement has enough backbone left to prove him wrong, and if other conservatives are wise enough to learn the lesson before Trumps capricious treachery comes for their priorities.

Nathanael Blake is a senior contributor to The Federalist and a postdoctoral fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.

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Pro-Lifers Shouldn't Trust Trump - The Federalist

An in-depth investigation into Ad Fontes Media, a media literacy organization, found that the for-profit company is making money by actively encouraging Big Tech platforms, advertisers, and educators to deplatform, boycott, and exclude conservative commentators and media organizations, including The Federalist.

Masquerading as a media literacy organization, Ad Fontes Media is the lefts newest weapon to erase conservative speech while bolstering legacy media, wrote the investigators at Media Research Center (MRC) Free Speech America.

Ad Fontes, founded in 2018, claims to be impartial. According to its website, it is continuously updating its Media Bias Chart, which includes over 3,000 media sources graded on their own bias and reliability metrics. The organization insists it is objective because its evaluations stem from the consensus of anonymous analysts who are supposedly politically diverse. This couldnt be further from the truth.

Ad Fontes analysts evaluate individual news articles and other forms of media content in groups of three. Even though the three analysts are supposed to include one individual on the left, one on the right, and another in the center, Ad Fontes founder and CEO Vanessa Otero brags that 99% of the time, the three allegedly diverse analysts arrive at a single score.

Purportedly Impartial Ad Fontes promotes indisputably false left-wing narratives, such as the claim that the highly credible Wuhan lab leak theory is a baseless and fringe theory. Indeed, Ad Fontes gave the infamous 2020 Washington Post article debunk[ing] the lab leak theory its highest reliability rating.

Ad Fontes also gave a reliable rating to an article from The Root, which claims that Stacey Abrams won the 2018 Georgia gubernatorial election, which she did not. It gave another reliable score to a story from The New York Times that said, Theres no evidence of a wiretap at Trump Tower. Trump Tower was indeed wiretapped.

Ad Fontes gave a perfectly balanced rating to an article by the CCP propaganda publication, China Daily, which lobbied for a reduction in trade restrictions between the United States and China. Ad Fontes also gave a perfectly balanced score to a New York Times puff piece on former YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki headlined The Most Measured Person in Tech.

By the time the article was published, Wojcickinow infamous for her farreaching censorship policieshad already been caught targeting pro-life groups, demonetizing journalists critical of the left, and systematically removing Republican campaign ads, reported the MRC.

MRC found that Ad Fontes executives rigged a cherry-picked and condensed version of its Media Bias Chart to fool clients into thinking the organization is unbiased. The colorful chart makes it appear like Ad Fontes is critical of just as many left-wing sources as it is critical of right-wing sources.

MRCs analysis, however, shows a completely different story. The majority (64 percent) of media Ad Fontes labeled left was deemed fully reliable. These reliable sources include CNN, The New York Times, ABC, CBS, and NBC. Only one-third of media labeled right was deemed reliable.

Ad Fontes is 10 times more likely to give its lowest rating of unreliable to media on the right as it is to give this badge of shame to media on the left, reported the MRC. According to the MRC, only 2.9 percent of media it considered on the left as unreliable, while it rated 29 percent of media it labeled on the right as unreliable.

For instance, Ad Fontes describes The Federalist as Unreliable, Problematic, whereas CNN is Reliable, Analysis/Fact Reporting.

Ad Fontes cherry-picked Media Bias Chart is described by the MRCs Free Speech America Vice President Dan Schneider as a veneer of objectivity. It draws advertisers in and then persuades them to spend their money on left-wing, predominantly legacy media organizations.

Both Otero and her top lieutenant Brad Berens are documented left-wing political activists, reported the MRC. Both admit to being political ideologues and have consistently contributed to leftist political candidates.

Berens has referred to Tucker Carlson as a sexist pig and called President Trump a white supremacist and the worst president in the history of this great country.

He even wrote an open letter imploring Big Tech platforms to permanently ban then-President Trump, saying in the letter that he has a persistent fantasy of seeing Donald Trumps favorite color on a jumpsuit he is forced to wear.

Berens political views on Trump appear to be shared by Ad Fontes as a whole. After Trump was indicted in Georgia, Ad Fuentes sent out a gleeful email that read, The wheels of justice, however slow, had turned in the general direction that they are supposed to turn.

Ad Fontes has recently added a Diversity Equity and Inclusion (DEI) media filter. This new feature allow[s] advertisers to segregate media by race and sexual orientation of both ownership and audience, reported the MRC.

To benefit from the DEI filters, sources have to identify the racial composition of its ownership, hosts or target audience, and then champion it so as to ensure Ad Fontess diversity scorers could spot it.

Since emphasizing peoples immutable qualities rather than their merits is generally considered immoral by conservatives, the filter acts as just another way to penalize conservatives voices while elevating leftist ones.

The MRC notes that the DEI filter is also in contradiction to Ad Fontess pledge to focus on analysis of content, rather than preconceptions and prejudices about the medias speaker or viewer.

Ad Fontes is present in public schools, has contracted with major advertisers, and partners with tech giants like Meta and Microsoft. Tragically, concludes the MRC, every firm bamboozled into outsourcing its advertising decisions to Ad Fontes is complicit in the defunding of real journalism and turbocharging the revenue stream for legacy media propaganda.

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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Ad Fontes Is The Left's Newest Tool To Destroying Conservatives - The Federalist

Democrat Gov. Josh Shapiros decision to unilaterally implement automatic voter registration (AVR) in Pennsylvania likely violates the Constitution and state law, several election experts told The Federalist.

On Wednesday, Shapiro announced that the commonwealth would join over 20 other states in implementing AVR through its Department of Transportation (PennDOT). According to a press release from the governors office, Pennsylvania residents who are eligible to vote and can obtain[] new or renewed driver licenses and ID cards at facilities such as the DMV will be automatically taken through the voter registration application process unless they opt out of doing so.

Individuals must be U.S. citizens, Pennsylvania residents, and residents of their district at least 30 days before the next election to register to vote, according to the directive. Eligible voters are also required to be 18 years old on the date of the next election.

While legacy media have gone out of the way to regurgitate Shapiros talking points, hyping Pennsylvanias launch of AVR, almost none of these so-called news organizations have bothered to question the legality of the governors directive. While speaking with The Federalist, Hans von Spakovsky, a senior legal fellow at The Heritage Foundation, suggested that Shapiros decision to implement AVR via executive fiat appears to violate state law, which stipulates that a voter registration application completed at the DMV shall serve as an application to register to vote unless the applicant fails to sign [it].

In other words, [the] DMV cant register someone to vote unless they first fill out an application and sign it, von Spakovsky said. That doesnt allow [the] DMV to simply take the name from a drivers license application and register that individual to vote without their permission or signature, von Spakvosky said.

Heather Honey, the CEO of Verity Vote, separately told The Federalist that Shapiro likely doesnt possess the legal authority to unilaterally implement AVR, citing Article 1, Section 4 of the U.S. Constitution and several provisions of state law regarding voter registration. The statute cited by Honey makes clear that the voter registration form presented to voters by a government agency includes [b]oxes for the applicant to check to indicate whether the applicant would like to register or decline to register to vote and explicitly states: IF YOU DO NOT CHECK EITHER BOX, YOU WILL BE CONSIDERED TO HAVE DECIDED NOT TO REGISTER TO VOTE AT THIS TIME.

According to Honey, by unilaterally implementing AVR, Shapiro is unlawfully changing the aforementioned registration process without approval from the legislature.

Changing the registration process at PennDOT is inconsistent with Pennsylvania law, Honey said. Governor Shapiro doesnt have the authority to change or ignore language in the statute just because he doesnt like it.

Despite Shapiros assertion his order will help ensure free and fair elections in Pennsylvania, AVR ensures the exact opposite. Multiple analysesof AVR have shown the system to be ripe for human error, such as the entering of incorrect voter information by inexperienced DMV officials and the registration of non-U.S. citizens.

In Pennsylvania, lawfully present non-citizens are already permitted to apply for a REAL ID drivers license or ID card. State Democrats have introduced legislation in recent years to expand this allowance to include all commonwealth residents regardless of immigration status.

Its also worth mentioning that a district court judge previously ordered Pennsylvania last year to forfeit records regarding a glitch within PennDOT that allowed non-citizens to register to vote in the state for decades. In his March 2022opinion, Judge Christopher Conner ruled that under the National Voter Registration Act,the Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF)is entitled access to documents detailing the severity of the problem and actions taken by the commonwealth to address the errors in the states voting files.

A PILF representative who spoke with The Federalist said that the state has since appealed the district courts ruling to the Third Circuit Court of Appeals.

AVR doesnt just jeopardize the accuracy of voter rolls, however. It also inflates voter registration lists to the benefit of Democrats.

For years, Democrats have cultivated an election machine funded by leftist billionaires, in which left-wing nonprofits abuse their tax-exempt status to conduct massive voter registration and get-out-the-vote campaigns geared toward Democrat-leaning voters. As Hayden Ludwig previously wrote in these pages, AVR instantly and dramatically expand[s] the pool of registered voters for the left to cynically tap into.

In a statement criticizing Shapiro, Ken Cuccinelli, the chair of the Election Transparency Initiative, said that Pennsylvanias adoption of AVR is the antithesis of Election Integrity and warned that Shapiros actions threaten to undermine the trust of voters in fair, secure, and transparent elections.

Like other schemes including same-day registration, permanent absentee voter lists, and the automatic mass mailing of absentee ballots and/or absentee ballot request forms, automatic registration leaves virtually no time to verify the accuracy of voter information, Cuccinelli said. If you want to increase the likelihood of fraud, multiple or duplicate registrations, and participation of ineligible voters look no further than the process of dumping government data onto the voter rolls.

Cuccinelli also called on the commonwealths Republican-controlled Senate to launch a comprehensive investigation into the matter.

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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Automatic Voter Registration Is 'Inconsistent' With PA Law - The Federalist

California became the first state on Sept. 14 toofficially callfor a constitutional convention to allow states to approve an amendment to raise the age of gun ownership to 21, impose background checks on private transfers of guns, require waiting periods for buying guns, and enact an assault weapon ban. This proposed 28th Amendment to the Constitution is CaliforniaGov. Gavin Newsoms idea.

Democrats may not realize they are conceding that they must amend the U.S. Constitution before passing their gun control wish list. But they dont have the votes. Democrats control the governorship and state legislature in only 17 states far short of the 38 states needed to ratify a constitutional amendment. Nor do they have the votes in Congress.

Gun control groups claim California has thecountrys strictest gun control laws, but it shouldnt hold itself out as a model for the rest of the country to follow.Californias per capita rate of mass public shootings has consistently exceeded that of the rest of the country. The rate is much lower in Texas, but gun control groups give Texas anF grade.

Since 2010, Californias mass public shooting rate per capita has been 43 percent higher than Texas and 29 percent higher than the rest of the United States. From 2020 on, it has been even worse. Californias rate was 276 percent higher than Texas and 100 percent higher than the rest of the country.

Democrats primary argument for raising the gun ownership age is that 18, 19, and 20-year-olds commit firearm-related crimes at relatively high rates. That is true, but the issue is whether those who can legally buy guns commit crimes.

About90 percentof murderers already have a violent criminal history and are banned from buying guns. Data show thatyoung people who can pass background checks tend to be at least as law-abiding as older people. A ban only affects those who could otherwise pass a background check and legally buy a gun.

Gun control advocates say they push federal background checks on the private transfer of guns to stop mass public shootings, but those measures wouldnt have stopped even one mass public shooting this century. They also claim they have stopped 4 million dangerous people from buying guns. But they should say that there were 4 million initial denials.

A system that looks for roughlyphonetically similarnames (e.g., Smith and Smythe) and ignores middle names doesnt allow for much accuracy. It is one thing to stop a felon from buying a gun. It is quite another to stop a law-abiding citizen from buying a gun because his name looks like a felons name.

There is no reason for these mistakes. Private companies could never do employee background checks this way, because the errors overwhelmingly discriminate against black and Hispanic males.

Gun control advocates keep telling us there is90-plus percent supportin polls for expanded background checks, but the support ismuch less solidthan the media and gun control advocates would have you believe.

The Crime Prevention Research Center (CPRC), which I head, hired McLaughlin and Associates tosurvey 1,000 likely votersabout their support for background checks on all gun sales or transfers. Likely voters expressed support for such a law by a whopping 86 to 11 percent margin, with strong support outweighing strong opposition by 70 percent to 5 percent. All incomes, education levels, and demographics supported such a law.

Two follow-up questions were asked.

First: These laws are called universal background checks. Lets say a stalker is threatening a female friend of yours late on a Saturday night. She asks you if she can borrow your handgun until she has a chance to buy one. She is trained and has no criminal record. If you loaned her the gun, this law would make you a felon. Would you support or oppose this law?

Respondents now opposed these background checks by a 44 to 42 percent margin. Democrats, liberals, singles, those living in urban areas, and blacks still strongly supported these laws, but Republicans, moderates, married people, people in non-urban areas, and whites opposed them.

Second: A Boy Scout troop is going for their skeet shooting badges. If you lend the scoutmaster your shotguns, you would commit a felony. Would you support or oppose this law?

Voters now opposed the policy by a 45 to 42 percent margin, with a similar demographic breakdown.

Its important to let people know the implications of policies that may sound reasonable. Waiting periods may seem helpful because they provide a cooling off period in which people can think twice about their decision to buy a gun. But waiting periods also prevent people who need protection from obtaining it.

Even short waiting periods of a few days areassociated with higher rape rates. If women are being stalked or threatened, they may not be able to wait to protect themselves.

Assault rifle bans may sound reasonable, but they are ineffective at best. You would not know it from following the news, but only2 percent of murders involve any type of rifle. Less than 15 percent of mass public shootings are committed solely with any kind of rifle. The federal assault weapon ban that was in effect from 1994 to 2004 producedno beneficial effect.The share of mass public shootings that used assault weapons increased while the federal ban lasted from 1994 to 2004.

While Democrats constitutional amendment isnt going anywhere, it still serves a useful purpose. It shows everyone that Democrats dont believe in the right to self-defense, and that they have lost the constitutional argument.

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California Calls For Constitutional Amendment To Weaken 2A - The Federalist

This weekend, ABC News and the Washington Post released a poll showing former President Donald Trump with a commanding 10-point lead over President Joe Biden in the 2024 presidential election.

The Washington Post was clearly embarrassed by its poll, and scrambled to come up with reasons readers should ignore it. Democrat analyst Larry Sabato, who confidently predicted Hillary Clinton would win 352 electoral votes in 2016 (she received 227 in her loss to Donald Trump), asked the Washington Post, How could you even publish a poll so absurd on its face? Will be a lingering embarrassment for you.

Other Democrats also composed panicked posts for social media.

Now, on the one hand, like all polls, the ABC News/Washington Post poll should be viewed skeptically. Its the poll that had Biden up 12 points in 2020, overestimating his support by eight points. The media outlets last Wisconsin 2020 poll predicted Biden would win by 17 points. In fact, he eked out a win by seven-tenths of 1 percent.

The poll systematically privileges Democrat candidates in dramatic fashion, both nationally and at the state level. But that just makes this weekends results more frightening for Democrats.

Further, the Washington Post is clearly sounding the alarm about Biden in particular. It published David Ignatius dispatch from the Deep State telling Biden to get out of the race and take the politically toxic Kamala Harris with him. In case their perspective wasnt clear, the left-wing propaganda outlet followed it up two days later with a missive from the deputy editorial page editor saying much of the same.

The poll could be a legitimate snapshot of public opinion or an attempt to shape public opinion. But a wide range of other polls is also showing Biden weakness. Josh Kraushaar points out that President Bidens disapproval rating is at 56 percent in multiple polls, dangerous territory for any incumbent.

Langer Research, which conducted the poll for ABC News and the Washington Post, speculated that voters might be trying to send a message about their frustration with Bidens policies.

Susan Glasser, a left-wing writer for The New Yorker, stumbled around this point in a social media post venting her frustration that Americans werent siding with Biden:

Take away the unhinged ranting about insurrections and personal revenge and note the underlying point: Biden and other Democrats took a speedboat across the Rubicon and had their main political opponent indicted four times in an attempt to prevent his election, and its completely backfiring.

Democrat activists up and down the Eastern Seaboard have indicted the former president on an overwhelming number of charges, some serious and the vast majority patently absurd. In so doing, they violated norms kept by every president up to Trump himself of not prosecuting defeated candidates.

Biden let his desire to target his top political opponent be known through an April 2022 story placed in The New York Times, these days something of an in-house Democrat newsletter. Democrats in New York, Atlanta, and D.C. followed through. Its not just Jack Smith, Fani Willis, and Alvin Bragg. As Chris Bray reports, its also New York Attorney General Letitia James, who campaigned on a pledge to prosecute Trump:

Attorney General Letitia James is waging scorched-earth economic warfare against a political enemy, using governmental power in an attempt to crush multiple generations of a family that disagreed with her about party politics. You can win an election, sure, but then your family starves, so.

While politics-addled leftwingers love what Democrats are doing to their political opponents, most Americans are absolutely shocked and appalled by what theyre witnessing. Its not just Trump who is being targeted by the regime, but other Republicans and their grassroots supporters. Attacking the right to legal representation, free speech, the right to redress, and freedom of the press is popular with Democrats, yes, but horrifying to many other Americans.

Are we the baddies? you can see the few self-aware Democrats asking.

The strategy of indicting political opponents was supposed to help Democrats wage political warfare in an environment where their policies have led to open borders, endless war, pro-crime district attorneys, and economic malaise. These outcomes are exceedingly unpopular. On top of the policy failures, theyre trying to imprison their top political opponent and keep him off the ballot.

They rushed headlong into the campaign strategy of indicting their political opponents without realizing it would be difficult to change course if that backfired. They cant very well drop the charges at this point, but the more aggressively they prosecute them, the more it reminds Americans of how absolutely reckless and dangerous theyre being.

The Democrat proposal is to vote for open borders, inflation increases, energy dependence, rampant crime, and actual imprisonment of political opponents. In this light, the polls arent so surprising. Even people who dont love Donald Trump, however much they enjoyed his presidency, are saying they think its Democrats who are the real threat to the republic, and its not even close.

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Polls: Democrat Campaign Strategy Of Indictments Has Backfired - The Federalist

U.S. Attorney, now Special Counsel, David Weiss did not have full charging authority during the bulk of his federal investigation into Hunter Biden, Attorney General Merrick Garland slyly admitted in his testimony to the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday.

Garlands confession contradicts his previous under-oath insistence that Weiss possessed all of the authority he needed to properly charge President Joe Bidens youngest son with various tax and gun crimes, some of which extended to other jurisdictions.

You said [Weiss] had complete authority but hed already been turned down. He wanted to bring an action in the District of Columbia and the U.S. attorney there said no, you cant. And then you go tell the United States Senate under oath that he has complete authority, Chairman Jim Jordan explained during the hearing.

No one had the authority to turn him down, Garland claimed. One second later, Garland divulged that those U.S. attorneys in fact could refuse to partner with him.

Even after acknowledging Weisss attempts to charge Hunter were hampered by a U.S. attorney acting on behalf of the DOJ, Garland doubled down on his claims that the attorney has full authority to conduct his investigation however he wishes. He repeatedly invoked Weisss position as a Donald Trump appointee as proof that he was acting independently of the AG.

Despite the potential penalty of perjury, Garland claimed during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on March 1, 2023, that the U.S. Attorney in Delaware has been advised that he has full authority to bring cases in other jurisdictions if he feels its necessary.

In a June 7 letter to Jordan, Weiss appeared to confirm that I have been granted ultimate authority over this matter, including responsibility for deciding where, when, and whether to file charges. In a subsequent June 30 letter, however, Weiss reversed his claim and declared that his charging authority is geographically limited to my home district.

Weisss June 30 clarification is consistent with testimony from IRS whistleblowers, including email documentation they recorded in 2022, and testimony from FBI agents.

During the hearing, Garland attempted to discredit the agents attestations that the DOJs cumbersome bureaucratic process made it difficult for Weiss to charge Hunter by claiming their description of the process as cumbersome is an opinion, not a fact. He also claimed that Weisss letters reflect that he had never asked me to be special counsel and that he understood the process for asking for a signature on a Section 515 form, the form which Garland needed to sign for Weiss to prosecute outside of Delaware.

Weisss lack of jurisdiction was further confirmed in August when Garland named Weiss special counsel, an authority that allows the prosecutor to charge Hunter outside of Delaware. If Weiss truly did possess full autonomy in the Hunter case, as Garland dubiously declared on numerous occasions, he wouldnt have needed the special counsel appointment to prosecute the presidents son.

Garland still claimed he had made it clear that Weiss could bring a case in any jurisdiction with the attorney generals blessing via a Section 515 form.

For most of the hearing, Garland tried to appear as a hands-off department head who let Weiss independently conduct his investigation. Republicans quickly saw through that facade when Garland immediately refused to disclose whether he had communications with Weiss about Hunters case.

He also claimed could not recollect whether he discussed the investigation with anyone at the FBI.

There is no question that he can answer whether such conversations occurred, legal scholar Jonathan Turley noted on X, formerly known as Twitter. When Bill Barr testified as Attorney General he confirmed subjects even in communications with the President while declining details on conversations.

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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Garland Accidentally Admits DOJ Thwarted Weiss's Hunter Probe - The Federalist

It is just shy of one year since my dream of being a broadcast journalist ended. I was hired as a multimedia journalist in 2017 by Gray Media after being a stay-at-home mom for 25 years. I was a homeschooling mom and a student myself. I was also a freelance writer, journalist, and portrait photographer. To inspire my kids, I finished my bachelors degree. I received my bachelor of science in leadership and started at the Nebraska NBC affiliate KNOP-TV in September 2017.

I rose quickly to morning producer/anchor by 2018. Not long after, I was promoted to producer and co-evening anchor. As I grew in the industry, my personal life was filled with struggle. My mother died of cancer just three months after I started in 2017, and in 2019, my 25-year-old daughter and her unborn son died unexpectedly.

It was the most difficult time of my life. I immersed myself in my family and my job. I kept my mind busy by finishing my masters degree in international security and intelligence from Bellevue University, and I started my Ph.D. in forensic psychology. Covid-19 hit not long after.

In May 2020, KNOP-TVs news director left the station for a Mississippi Gray station, and in June 2020, I became the news director. I continued to produce and anchor the 6 p.m. show, and sometimes the 10 p,m, show. When Covid was in full swing I lost employees who either moved away or quit rather than getting the mandatory vaccine. So, I taught myself how to produce and anchor weather with the help of my weatherman.

For one full year, I had no contact with the outside world of Gray Media. No one came and no one went. I was the boss (hiring, firing, managing payroll, overseeing office management, and so forth.). I was also producing, anchoring, sometimes doing the weather, and occasionally reporting. I did not miss a day of work during the pandemic.

In 2021 I was still doing these things, and sometimes even produced and anchored the morning show. I had a makeshift cot in my office for days when it did not make sense to drive home after the 10 p.m. show.

I live in Curtis, Nebraska, which does not get the KNOP-TV television signal. I grew up in small-town Nebraska where being a news director doesnt really mean much to the average person. I dont think people realized the extent of my job responsibilities in North Platte.

In 2022 an elder at St. John Lutheran Church started a petition to let voters decide if Curtis should be a sanctuary city for the unborn, a movement started by Mark Lee Dickson of Texas. A reporter from the Flatwater Free Press inquired about my involvement.

The reporter asked me a few questions one morning while I was getting my kids ready for school. I told her I was active in my church and pro-life. I answered her questions and volunteered that I had notarized petitions and witnessed signatures made. I assured her I never reported on my involvement or my actions in my church.

After our conversation ended, she asked me if I did or did not realize that as a journalist, I should never do what I did. I was confused. In my view, I had done nothing wrong. The issue of life is nonpartisan. There are pro-life people who are Republicans and pro-life people who are Democrats.

The reporter pressed me, and I said in frustration, You know what, youre right, I shouldnt have done it. I responded in duress, and it wasnt even a coherent sentence. Yet it was the only quote she took from me for her story.

On the morning of September 30, 2022, the news article crossed news desks in Nebraska. By 6 p.m., I was no longer employed by Gray Media.

My Lincoln-based Gray Media bosses called me into my office in North Platte on my day off to tell me it would be my last day. I was escorted out. And while it may be a law in Nebraska that an employer may fire an employee, or an employee may leave employment, without reason, my former employee gave me a reason: I was told I was being fired for practicing partisan politics. I did not have a contract when I was fired.

Ironically, pro-life groups in North Platte later told me they thought I was pro-choice because I reported in a nonbiased manner. Furthermore, about a week after I was fired, nearly 30 articles written by me about abortion were all removed from the companys website after I publicly asked people on my own social media to read the stories and tell me if I was reporting in a biased way. Nearly 300 stories I wrote covering other topics remain on Gray Medias websites today.

Today, I continue to write stories on my own platform. I now have about 8,500 followers on Facebook. And I am unapologetically pro-life.

I have been given a lot of support by the community of North Platte and surrounding areas I am still treated like a journalist by most.I sat at an anchor desk for EWTN (a Catholic Network) in Washington D.C. during the pro-life march in January 2023 and was interviewed by Lifesite News. I was on podcasts across the nation and have been given a couple of awards, most recently a Freedom Fighter Award in Hastings, Nebraska.

None of these activities pay, however. I am also completing my Ph.D. in forensic psychology. I had the honor of serving on a floor committee in St. Louis, Missouri for the Missouri Synod Lutheran Church prior to 2023s 68th Regular Convention in Milwaukee. After Milwaukee, I was on Issues, etc. in St. Louis during the evening drive-time hour.

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is currently reviewing my firing by Gray Media, and then I will be given a right to sue letter. I am praying about the course I should take.

Im not sure what God wants me to do. I pray a prayer of thanksgiving and a prayer for clarity every day, among my other daily talking and walking with Him. I know that He strengthens us and draws us closer to Him in heartbreak and despair.

I always thought I was very close to God through the life and death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, my baptism and confirmation, and now He must be rendering me for something important. I know that being fired in this way was a direct attack by the enemy. But we know what Jesus meant in John 19:30 when he said, It is finished. All that is important is indeed already finished in Him, and Christ has done all the work. I trust Him to know how He plans to use me to encourage others to know these truths.

To deny that life is life from conception to natural death is to deny Christ. And that, I will never do.

I still live in Curtis, Nebraska. My husband is a truck driver. I have four kids still in school, and the others are in various stages of their adult lives. I have six living grandchildren. My biggest dream now is to be salt and light in a dark, tasteless world. I want to write and make a difference where God will allow. Then I will rest in Him and with hope spend eternity praising Him where I will be with Him and my family in Heaven forever.

This story has been updated to reflect that the Flatwater Press has multiple offices in Nebraska.

After the story was published, Matt Wynn with the Nebraska Journalism Trust claimed in an e-mail to The Federalist that the reporter did not specify that the conversation, a recording of which Wynn said he listened to, was off the record.

Melanie Standiford is an independent journalist.

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I Was Fired From Corporate Media For Being Pro-Life - The Federalist