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Days before the Capitol riot provoked a years-long effort to impeach, prosecute, and politically malign former President Donald Trump, Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney coordinated efforts to deter the very actions she now claims haunt the former president.

Cheney has blamed Trump for not ordering the National Guard to defend the Capitol complex, even though multiple sources confirm that he authorized their deployment days prior to the Jan. 6 rally at the White House and riot at the Capitol. Security officials in charge of the Capitol declined to call up troops to protect it, government records show.

Yet Cheney herself seems to have orchestrated opposition to use of the military to quell election-related unrest, allegedly organizing a Washington Post op-ed on Jan. 3, 2021, signed by every living former defense secretary.

All 10 living former defense secretaries: Involving the military in election disputes would cross into dangerous territory, the headline read. It went on to threaten any military official who thought any use of the military might be a good idea. Civilian and military officials who direct or carry out such measures would be accountable, including potentially facing criminal penalties, for the grave consequences of their actions on our republic, the op-ed warned.

The op-ed was allegedly organized by Cheney, whose father was secretary of defense under President George H.W. Bush before serving as President George W. Bushs vice president. Eric Edelman, a national security adviser to Dick Cheney, told the New Yorker the Wyoming lawmaker was the one who generated the piece for the Post.

Now Rep. Cheney has adopted Trumps supposed inaction on the National Guard as a primary line of attack. On Fox News Sunday, Cheney again depicted Trump as an apathetic leader who dismissed pleas to deploy the National Guard while the Capitol was under siege.

There are several witnesses who say they met with President Trump on January 4th, said Bret Baier, and he offered some 20,000 National Guardsmen to protect the Capitol building on January 6th but the offer was rejected. Is that true?

His own acting secretary of defense says thats not true, Cheney said, highlighting committee testimony from former Acting Secretary Christopher Miller who told the panel Trump made no order to deploy the National Guard. So the notion that somehow he issued an order is not consistent with the facts.

Except the president did issue authorization for D.C. leaders to call up the National Guard for pre-emptive reinforcements days before the Capitol riot. While Mayor Muriel Bowser took limited advantage of the extra troops, House Speaker Nancy Pelosis sergeant at arms rejected or stonewalled the offer six times, according to former Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund. Pelosis office was reportedly concerned the guards deployment was bad optics after having spent the prior summer decrying the use of federal law enforcement to put down left-wing insurrections.

When Trump sent reinforcements to secure federal buildings under attack in Portland, Pelosi condemned the extra law enforcement as stormtroopers. After days of sustained riots wreaked havoc across Washington D.C., Pelosi called the sight of uniformed troops protecting the Lincoln Memorial stunning and scary.

The campaign to fight any use of troops to restore order during the lefts widespread and coordinated summer of rage was so effective that Gen. Mark Milley issued an abject apology for merely appearing in uniform at a site that had been ravaged by leftist arsonists.

My presence in that moment, and in that environment, created a perception of the military involved in domestic politics, Milley said about appearing in front of a historic church across the street from the White House. The night before, left-wing arsonists had targeted the church as part of a riot that besieged the White House and led to the injuring of dozens of Park Police and Secret Service officers.

Bowsers use of guard troops on Jan. 6 extended to unarmed troops restricted to traffic control and removed from protests.

[N]o DCNG personnel shall be armed during this mission, and at no time, will DCNG personnel or assets be engaged in domestic surveillance, searches, or seizures of [U.S.] persons, she directed to law enforcement.

Although Cheney and her colleagues with the Select Committee have sought to indict Trump as responsible for a slow response from the National Guard on Jan. 6, the panels own findings have undermined the probes point. In December, the committee released a trove of private communications from former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, who pledged the National Guard would be ready to maintain order.

Mr. Meadows sent an email to an individual about the events on January 6 and said that the National Guard would be present to protect pro Trump people and that many more would be available on standby, the committee wrote, as if revealing some grand scandal to help their case.

In June, Miller and former Chief of Staff of the Department of Defense Kash Patel went on Sean Hannitys program to dispel committee accusations that the president was indifferent to the National Guard.

Mr. Trump unequivocally authorized up to 20,000 National Guardsmen and women for us to utilize, Patel said.

Miller, whom Cheney cited as evidence of Trumps negligence, corroborated Patels testimony on air.

To be clear, Miller said, the president was doing exactly what I expect the commander in chief to do, any commander in chief to do. He was looking at the broad threats against the United States and he brought this up on his own. We did not bring it up.

Tristan Justice is the western correspondent for The Federalist. He has also written for The Washington Examiner and The Daily Signal. His work has also been featured in Real Clear Politics and Fox News. Tristan graduated from George Washington University where he majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow him on Twitter at @JusticeTristan or contact him at Tristan@thefederalist.com.

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Liz Cheney Is Lying About Trump's Inaction On The National Guard - The Federalist

Last week, House Democrats forced a snap vote on a bill that aims to codify same-sex marriage and more in federal law. The House passed the Respect for Marriage Act (RMA) 267-157. Forty-seven Republicans joined the majority.

The bill could come up for a vote in the Senate in the next two weeks. If enough Republican senators join the Democrats to overcome a filibuster, President Biden could sign it into law before the 2022 election.

The RMA seeks to repeal the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which defined marriage in federal law as a legal union of one man and one woman and protected states that sought to do the same.

But this is old news. In Windsor (2013) and Obergefell (2015), the Supreme Court gutted DOMA. In the latter decision, they struck down the federal definition of marriage and forced all states to recognize and facilitate same-sex marriage.

Same-sex marriage is already a legal reality in all 50 states. So, why have Democrats in Congress decided to push this bill? At a time of record-high inflation, an epidemic of fentanyl overdoses, a war in Europe, surging violence in cities, and illegal immigrants pouring across our southern border, why burn precious time to shore up same-sex marriage, which isnt at risk?

The Democrats excuse for this diversion is a comment by Clarence Thomas. In his concurring opinion in Dobbs in June, Justice Thomas suggested that, in the future, the court should revisit its use of substantive due process in cases including Obergefell. Some speculate that perhaps a future court could follow Thomas thread, overturn the decision and return questions of marriage to the states. The horror.

This logic seems strained. In his majority Dobbs opinion, with which Thomas concurred, Justice Alito insisted that the Dobbs ruling did not implicate Obergefell and other cases that do not involve questions of unborn human life.

Besides, conservatives are not rallying to overturn Obergefell. There are no cases working their way through the courts that could threaten that 2015 decision.

So why the hype about Obergefell at risk? The answer, in two words: political panic. The Democrats fear an electoral blowout in November. RMA is their attempt to fire up the progressive base and force Republicans in more liberal districts to cast an awkward vote. A vote against the bill could anger certain swing voters. A vote in its favor could dispirit the GOP base.

But RMA does more than just repeal DOMA.For starters, it creates a private right of action. In effect, it deputizes activists to sueanyone who holds that marriage is between one man and a woman and operates under color of state law. In the past, the Supreme Court has suggestedthat acting under color of state law might apply to private groups that participate in a joint activity with a state.

So, for example, religious foster care and adoption agencies may be sued if they perform state functions through child placement. Indeed, Philadelphia already tried to ban religious foster care providers from its programs for these reasons. Should RMA pass, its not a question of if activists will sue religious groups but how often.

The bill also would provide what are known as national policy grounds for the Internal Revenue Services to deny tax-exempt status to nonprofit religious organizations that believe in natural marriage.

Its no accident that this bill comes amid the administrations efforts to redefine sex under Title IX and Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act. It serves to further weaken the recognition of meaningful differences between males and females in federal law.

Moreover, the bill is a Trojan horse for ideas even more radical than same-sex marriage. As written, the bill would require the federal government to recognize polygamy as marriage if even one state legalizes it. This would touch many federal laws and regulations on marriage, from welfare to parental rights.

The nature of marriage did not change after 2015, when the Supreme Court decided to follow the drift of elite opinion rather than follow nature, history, and common sense. Marriage is a social institution ordered toward the bearing and rearing of children. It formalizes a natural truth: that it takes exactly one man and one woman to reproduce. And we know that children flourish best in a stable home with both mom and dad because the two sexes complement each other.

This is why the state has a special interest in marriage and monogamy. The family, headed by a married man and woman, is the most basic unit of society. When it is strong, that strength radiates outward to the body politic. When marriage decays, so does the family and the body politic with it.

The state has no clear interest in romantic feelings, sexual orientations, and the like. These generally fall outside the reach of law and politics. Thats why legal recognition of natural marriage is not and never has been discrimination against single people or against people who identify as gay or lesbian.

Liberals can read polls and scroll through social media. They surely know their views on abortion (up to the moment of birth) and gender (teenagers consenting to their own sterilization) are unpopular. Democrats are trying to get media attention off their ghoulish views and the Biden administrations manifest failures and onto something that polls more in their favor.

Most people say they favor same-sex marriage. But how many will view it as a make-or-break issue in the next election especially since same-sex marriage is not even at risk? Some may fall for the Democrats fearmongering. But its much more likely that people in the GOP base will see this as a gratuitous slap to the face of people of faith. And theyd be right.

The Democrats have set a trap. They hope to catch 10 GOP senators and avoid a filibuster on the bill. The question is whether there are 10 gullible enough to fall for it.

Jay Richards is the Director and William E. Simon Senior Research Fellow at the HeritageFoundations DeVos Center for Life, Family, and Religion. Jared Eckert is a research assistantin the same center.

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Democrats Fixate On Gay Marriage While The Country Crumbles - The Federalist

The year was 1984. President Ronald Reagan was cruising to reelection. Van Halens 1984 was second on the Billboard charts. George Orwells 1984 hadnt yet become an instruction manual. Top Gun, inspired by a 1983 article titled Top Guns and published by California magazine, was then but a gleam in Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimers eyes, though it would go on to become a classic tale of how reckless men are a testament to Americas greatness in the face of Soviet aggression.

Life was good, particularly after Reagan had successfully battled both Jimmy Carters stagflation and the malaise it brought on. Mullets were a hot hairstyle for men. For women, it was ozone-depleting bouffant bangs teased toward the heavens with massive amounts of hairspray. Gen X kids were off starting fires, sneaking into drained pools to skateboard, and otherwise engaging in all kinds of shenanigans about which our parents had very little clue. Joe Biden was merely a senator.

Today, mullets are back, if not the bangs. Top Gun: Maverick, the long-awaited sequel to the original, is making money hand over fist. Joe Biden, first elected to the Senate in 1972, is still in the swamp, this time as the ostensible leader of the free world and heir to Jimmy Carter. Russia is being belligerent. Stagflation and malaise again rule the day.

In other words, life is not so good right now, but as Mark Twain never said, History does not repeat itself, but it rhymes. And in the couplet that is Top Gun to Top Gun: Maverick, there is hope.

When Top Gun was released in May of 1986, it was not an immediate success. At the time, Tom Cruise, the anhedonic real-life iteration of Dorian Gray, was not yet the superstar he is today. The movie was competing with a raft of other stellar films including Ferris Buellers Day Off, Back to School, Aliens, Big Trouble in Little China, and the early Marvel Cinematic Universe entry Howard the Duck, just to name a few.

But Pete Maverick Mitchell quickly inspired legions of fans with his rakish good looks and indifference toward remaining alive and pushed the movie to the summers top spot. To say women wanted to be with him while men wanted to be him is an understatement. Following the movies success, applications to the United States aviation forces increased by 500 percent.

Rewatching it ahead of Top Gun: Maverick, however, I was reminded that the critics complaints had some merit. The original movie is kind of a chick flick, which helps explain why my wife was so anxious to see Maverick during its opening weekend. I opted to grill while she went with our oldest. It would be a few weeks before I would take her to her second viewing and realize the folly of my thinking.

If the original was a chick flick, though, Maverick is the action-packed sequel for the dudes. But being a movie that appeals to the opposite of dudettes is not what makes it such a movie for the times. Instead, its that after watching it, you come out of the theater ready to pump your fist and shout about Americas greatness. Sure, its all nonsense and, spoiler alert, Maverick would have died in the opening sequence had it been real, but the film makes no apologies. It doesnt equivocate or attempt to explain why its okay to cheer for the good guys. Its just ridiculous and reckless Americans being ridiculous and reckless, inviting us along for the ride, and saying, This is who we are and what we can do.

In 2022, thats a bold choice. Its not cool to celebrate America because systemic this and institutionalized that. And there arent a lot of things to cheer about at the moment, particularly when it comes to our national mood, soaring prices, and energy shortages. In those lights, though, Maverick could also be a harbinger that the pendulum is about to swing in the other direction, much as it did in the fabled decade during which the first installment was released.

For as David Lee Roth sang on Jump, the first single from 1984s 1984, And I know, baby, just how you feel/You got to roll with the punches and get to whats real. And while none of us would have chosen the punches were currently rolling with, the chance for history to rhyme is looking good.

Having said that, though, its not time to get out the hairspray and tease those bangs back toward the heavens, ladies. While we may take inspiration from the past, weve got to live for the future.

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'Maverick' And Why We May Be Close To A Return To The '80s - The Federalist

Teachers unions are pushing a radical Marxist-inspired agenda that is destroying public education in America.

Over the past several years, the left has aggressively infected the minds of the youngest children with the tenets of critical race theory (CRT) and gender ideology, while academic excellence has been shoved to the back of the bus. As a result, public schools are hemorrhaging students.

In my home state of Minnesota, 2022 marks the second consecutive year the states public school system has lost thousands of students, the Center of the American Experiment, a Minnesota think tank, reported in February. Why should parents in Minnesota or any other state keep their children in public schools?

In 2021, the Minnesota Department of Educations statewide test results showed another drop in the number of students meeting or exceeding grade-level criteria. Overall, reading scores fell 7 percent, math scores dropped 11 percent, and science scores shrank 8 percent.

In another example, New York City public schools which compose the nations largest school district have already lost about 50,000 students over the past two years and are expected to lose nearly 30,000 more by the time school begins this fall.

Minnesota Education Commissioner Dr. Heather Mueller explained the poor student achievement outcomes thus: The statewide assessment results confirm what we already knew that the COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted our students learning and they need our help to recover.

The problem with blaming poor student outcomes in Minnesota on Covid is that the states public schools actually had little to show for decades of increased spending, wrote Catrin Wigfall of the Center of the American Experiment in a July 2020 report titled Allergic to Accountability.

The consistently increased flow of dollars into Minnesotas public schools has not translated into improved student achievement outcomes or more learning, Wigfall wrote.

For insight, look to what the Minnesota Department of Education now values in professional teacher training when it comes to hiring licensed teachers.

In 2021, Minnesotas professional educator licensing and standards board proposed an addition to what proficiency standards for teachers to be licensed. Proposed requirements include:

After shutdowns and the abysmal remote learning results, mask mandates, and a further decline in students academic performance, the response of the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers (MFT) was to go out on strike for more than two weeks in March, cancelling classes once again for 28,000 students.

In addition to demanding increased wages, the MFT stated they are at war against capitalism. At a rally with her union members, Greta Callahan, president of the teachers chapter of MFT, asserted, Our fight is against patriarchy, our fight is against capitalism, our fight is for the soul of our city.

American Federation of Teachers (AFT) President Randi Weingarten told her delegates at their convention in mid-July that the union is working hard on the issues keeping families up at night, from climate change, to accessible healthcare, to the crushing crisis of student debt, to the terrifying safety issues plaguing too many workplaces.

Its highly unlikely that parents who endured teachers union-directed shutdowns, mask mandates, vaccine shaming, CRT, and the new hyper concern with students gender identity have been up nights worrying about climate change.

Instead, many parents are fast coming to the realization that public education as they knew it is a thing of the past.

Its amazing what we accomplished in our public schools and universities when we had little more than classic literature, chalkboards, and chalk in our schools.As centralized education and the teachers unions have gotten bigger and stronger, the quality of education and student performance have declined.

Public schools are no longer the place to send your children to prepare them to succeed in life, or to learn critical thinking skills or high standards of excellence. Nor will they be taught the concept of judging people by the content of their character, not the color of their skin.

Its time for all Americans to reject the woke agenda that has permeated all aspects of society including public schools. We must find alternative solutions before the damage is irreversible.

Some people still believe we can get our public schools back if we can get control of school boards, eliminate CRT, and the eradicate gender indoctrination fluidity programs. But, even if we are successful in achieving these feats, the DNA within the school systems has been radically altered along with administrators, teachers, and many students.

Its time for parents and local leaders to make decisions that are best for their children. Passing school choice legislation is a starting point. Lets make quality alternative solutions for education broad and accessible.

Kendall Qualls is a former Republican Candidate for Governor of Minnesota and was recently reinstated as President of TakeCharge. He is a former Army officer and healthcare executive. Kendal has been married for 35 years and has five children.

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Public Schools Are Irreversible Cesspools Of Wokeness - The Federalist

Following the Supreme Courts reversal of Roe v. Wade, abortion activists and their friends in the media rushed to attack pro-life states, not by defending abortion itself but by deceiving and distracting. Directly talking about abortion means proponents must answer what (or whom) is being aborted. Abortion activists seek to avoid the question entirely and instead scare Americans into supporting their position by conflating abortion with other issues, the most tragic of which is miscarriage.

Leftists and the corporate media wasted no time in disseminating harmful information about the threat abortion bans pose to women who suffer miscarriages or ectopic pregnancies. Their propaganda campaign is not about saving women; instead, it highlights how they will go to any length necessary to preserve the ability to kill the babies nestled safely within the womb with impunity.

Elective abortion is the termination of a pregnancy by intentionally causing the death of a living unborn child. In a miscarriage, the child passes away naturally. Miscarriage care often involves similar terminology, drugs, and procedures as elective abortions. In a clinical setting, miscarriage is even referred to as a spontaneous abortion. They are differentiated, legally and morally, by intent. If a doctor prescribes mifepristone or uses a D&C procedure to treat a miscarriage, the intent is to remove the deceased childs body. The doctor does not cause the childs death in a miscarriage.

The media likes to point to Texas for their scare campaign because Texas, more than any other state, modeled a post-Roe America by enacting the Texas Heartbeat Act, which took effect in 2021. This law bans elective abortion once the preborn childs heartbeat becomes detectable. However, Texas law is exceptionally clear: Miscarriage treatment does not constitute an abortion.

As stated in the Texas Health and Safety Code, a procedure is legally considered an abortion if it is done with the intent to cause the death of an unborn child of a woman known to be pregnant. The definition further clarifies that [a]n act is not an abortion if the act is done with the intent to remove a dead, unborn child whose death was caused by spontaneous abortion.

This means that if a procedure is done to remove a deceased child who passed away by spontaneous miscarriage, there was no intent to end that childs life, and it is therefore not defined as an abortion. Additionally, under Texas law, removing an ectopic pregnancy is not considered an abortion. Texas law also does not prohibit removing a living child with the intent to provide treatment to the child or to save a mothers life, such as in an early induced delivery or a C-section.

Claims that miscarriage and ectopic pregnancy treatments are prohibited in states where elective abortion is banned or restricted are not only legally incorrect but also cause confusion among medical practitioners, policymakers, and pregnant women.

If the unfounded and blatantly false hysteria continues to proliferate, especially with the corporate media as the biggest accomplice, dangerous confusion can occur among pregnant women and physicians. We know the abortion-at-all-costs crowd wont let a little truth stand in their way of a useful narrative, so pro-lifers and the medical community must fill the gap.

National and state medical associations from the American Medical Association to the state-specific chapters such as the Texas Medical Association not only have a powerful lobbying presence in our legislatures but also have a responsibility to release guidelines and clarifications for practitioners when new legislation impacting the practice of medicine goes into effect. Unfortunately, these organizations have not used their vast financial and institutional resources to push back against the false narrative that has spread like wildfire in the pro-abortion media.

Instead of being silent or adding fuel to the fire, these organizations should pointedly educate the medical providers regarding their respective state laws. State legislatures across the country have anticipated these circumstances and included explicit provisions. Equating tragic situations such as miscarriages and ectopic pregnancies with elective abortion peddled by Planned Parenthood and radical leftists is despicable.

Miscarriages are incredibly heartbreaking to expectant families. Ectopic pregnancies are tragic and terrifying experiences, catching women and families by surprise, accompanied by very complex feelings. The emotional, physical, and psychological turmoil inherent in such instances deserves to be respected and acknowledged for what it is: an absolute tragedy.

These tragic situations do not deserve to be the rallying cry of woke leftists who demand abortion on demand for whatever reason, paid for by taxpayers, through all nine months of pregnancy.

Emily Cook is the General Counsel of Texas Right to Life.

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Abortion Activists Are Lying To Scare Americans - The Federalist

Kansans head to the polls Tuesday to vote on the proposed Value Them Both constitutional amendment that seeks to overturn the Kansas Supreme Courts decision in Hodes & Nauser v. Schmidt that declared that the state constitution guarantees a fundamental right to abortion. Many Kansans may not realize, however, that the votes they cast on Tuesday may have been heavily influenced by out-of-state abortion apologists who contributed a whopping 71 percent of the $6.54 million spent by the lead group campaigning against the amendment.

The proposed Value Them Both amendment passed the Kansas House and Senate in January 2021 by the two-thirds threshold required under the state constitution to place the proposal on the ballot for the citizens of Kansas to decide. The amendment would overturn Hodes holding that a state constitutional right to abortion exists by adding to the Kansas Bill of Rights a section defining the propriety of abortion regulation, stating:

Because Kansans value both women and children, the constitution of the state of Kansas does not require government funding of abortion and does not create or secure a right to abortion. To the extent permitted by the constitution of the United States, the people, through their elected state representatives and state senators, may pass laws regarding abortion, including, but not limited to, laws that account for circumstances of pregnancy resulting from rape or incest, or circumstances of necessity to save the life of the mother.

At the time of the Hodes decision, Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey remained the law of the land under the federal Constitution. Pro-life Kansans nonetheless responded to the opinion by pushing for the Value Them Both amendment for two reasons.

First, the Kansas Supreme Courts Hodes opinion created a so-called right to abortion even broader than the then-controlling right established in Roe and tweaked in Casey a state constitutional right so expansive it would guarantee a right to taxpayer-funded abortions.

Second, pro-life Kansans wanted to ensure that if the Supreme Court overturned Roe and Casey, its legislature would regain the right to regulate abortions. While opposition to the amendment by Kansass supposedly pro-life Democrat lawmakers initially delayed the state legislatures approval of the Value Them Both amendment, early last year, the proponents of the amendment garnered the votes necessary to put the proposal on the August primary ballot, which occurs tomorrow.

But then came Dobbs, in which the United States Supreme Court overturned Roe and Casey and held there is no federal constitutional right to abortion. The Dobbs decision makes the outcome of Tuesdays vote crucial to the question of whether Kansans will now be able to decide on the appropriate regulation of abortion through their elected officials or whether it will be a Midwest abortion haven.

While politicians and pundits see the outcome of Tuesdays vote on the Value Them Both amendment as registering the pulse of the public on abortion policy, the disparity in out-of-state money flooding the airwaves with the deceptive talking points of abortion apologists, and the reality of the actual issue on the ballot, render the outcome less prophetic then billed.

For the period of January 1, 2022, through July 18, 2022, campaign finance reports summarize the source of donations to the two competing campaigns. The Value Them Both Campaign, led by Kansans for Life, Kansas Family Voice, and Kansas Catholic Conference, supports passages of the amendment, while a group calling itself Kansans for Constitutional Freedom heads the anti-amendment campaign.

The anti-amendment campaign group raised $6.54 million during the approximate half-year reporting period, of which 71 percent of the donations came from out of state and only 29 percent came from in-state sources. In contrast, the Value Them Both Campaign received donations of $4.69 million during the same time period, with less than 1 percent of the donations originating from out-of-state and more than 99 percent of the donors residing in Kansas.

One would think Kansas politicians would resent such out-of-state influence, but rather than condemn the outsiders interference in a matter of state law, Kansas Democrat Sen. Cindy Holscher attacked Catholic churches and dioceses in Kansas for donating money to support the Value Them Both Campaign. In a Friday op-ed for the Kansas City Star, titled Kansas Constitutional Amendment on Abortion is a Bailout for the Catholic Church, Holscher argued the church doesnt value them both. No, she wrote, the support for the amendment is the church valuing its bottom line.

Beyond Holschers dizzying logic and nonsensical thesis that Kansas Catholic churches want to ban abortion in their state so they wont lose more pro-abortion parishioners yes, that truly is her argument the Kansas senator completely ignores the donations made by the Planned Parenthood Action Fund ($850,000) and Planned Parenthood Great Plains Votes ($492,000) to the Kansans for Constitutional Freedom campaign. Now there you have a money motive.

Even more appalling is the false framing of the amendment Holscher posed in her op-ed, inaccurately claiming that the Legislature currently has the power to pose limits on abortion. To date, there are dozens of restrictions. What the Legislature cant do is ban the procedure, as the Kansas Constitution currently guarantees access. Thats what this amendment is about, contrary to the confusing language that appears on the ballot.

It is not the ballots language that is confusing, however, but rather the spin put on the Value Them Both amendment by Holscher and her fellow Kansas Democrats. As the Democrats know full well, a state constitutional guarantee to abortion access means virtually every law passed by the legislature will be declared unconstitutional by the state courts. Waiting period: struck. Parental notification: struck. Informed consent provisions: struck. But taxpayer funding of abortions to ensure access for poor women that will be required. Conversely, the passage of the amendment merely means that the authority to regulate abortions will be returned to the legislative branch, where it rightly belongs.

Many of the political advertisements funded by out-of-state donors repeat the same false claims about the Value Them Both amendment as peddled in Holschers Friday op-ed. And it is not merely the Planned Parenthood types flooding Kansas with money in the hopes of defeating the amendment. An out-of-state billionaire heiress who promotes left-wing causes contributed 15 percent of the total raised by the anti-amendment group, or $1,000,000. A further 23 percent of the donations to the anti-amendment Kansans for Constitutional Freedom campaign came from liberal super-PACS, including groups that the Atlantic and Politico have classified as leftist dark-money networks, such as the 1630 Fund and the North Fund. North Fund operates an umbrella group for various left-of-center advocacy organizations and has spent millions to promote causes that included opposing a 22-week abortion ban.

With such huge influxes of cash from outsiders, those pushing to defeat the Kansas amendment have been able to blanket the airways with distortions about the legal import of the Value Them Both amendment. And according to Danielle Underwood, the director of communications for Kansans for Life, out-of-state, radical activists and politicians in Washington, D.C., are trying to force their extreme pro-abortion agenda on the people of Kansas. These unwelcome intruders include the Biden administration and far-left congressional members like Nancy Pelosi and Elizabeth Warren, Underwood told The Federalist, and they do not represent the people of Kansas or our values.

At this critical moment, Underwood added, Kansans can and must fight back against outside interests aggressive tactics by voting yes on the Value Them Both Amendment. It is the only way to safeguard the common-sense abortion limits we already agree on and show the world our state believes in protections for both women and babies.

Kansas voters may not recognize the outside influences in play, however, but if they take the time to actually read the proposed amendment before marking their ballots tomorrow, theyll realize that the no side of the debate has been lying to them for the last year-and-a-half. Or Kansas voters can instead learn the truth the hard way when, once the amendment has been defeated, abortion activists turn to the state courts to start striking the current abortion regulations on the books and obtain taxpayer-funded abortion. Conservative Kansans will then learn what so-called abortion access really means.

Correction: This article has been updated to reflect that the reporting period during which the anti-amendment group raised $6.54 million was approximately a half-year, not one-and-a-half years.

Margot Cleveland is The Federalist's senior legal correspondent. She is also a contributor to National Review Online, the Washington Examiner, Aleteia, and Townhall.com, and has been published in the Wall Street Journal and USA Today. Cleveland is a lawyer and a graduate of the Notre Dame Law School, where she earned the Hoynes Prizethe law schools highest honor. She later served for nearly 25 years as a permanent law clerk for a federal appellate judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Cleveland is a former full-time university faculty member and now teaches as an adjunct from time to time. As a stay-at-home homeschooling mom of a young son with cystic fibrosis, Cleveland frequently writes on cultural issues related to parenting and special-needs children. Cleveland is on Twitter at @ProfMJCleveland. The views expressed here are those of Cleveland in her private capacity.

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Out-Of-State Dems Dump Millions Into Kansas Election Because Abortion Is On The Ballot - The Federalist

I have led the fight in the Senate to hold Big Tech platforms such as Google accountable for their manipulation and use of machine learning that unfairly censor communications from political campaigns and rob the electorate of their options. Our latest demands for transparency and fairness apparently spooked Google. But instead of moving to treat all political emails the same and filtering Republican versus Democrat communications as they are now, the tech giant has proposed a pilot program in the form of an Advisory Opinion, currently with the Federal Election Commission.

This proposal would eliminate all spam filter algorithms for participating candidates and organizations. While this proposal may appear to be in the best interest of all political emails, Gmails current deliverability practices have disincentivized Democratic campaigns from joining the program due to the increased chance of unsubscribes. Further, Google has created a loophole in the program allowing them to change the rules whenever its convenient to them, requiring participants to adhere and comply with no exception.

Let me be clear: Googles pilot program is the wrong approach. We should have the expectation that if a voter signs up for a Republican campaigns email, they should receive those emails in their inbox.

I know political bias in Silicon Valley better than most; as someone who was branded a terrorist by an engineer at Google and whose pro-life campaign video was removed by Twitter for being inflammatory, Ive learned when to laugh it off and when to stand my ground. This is a case of the latter.

Email is the norm for how we conduct business, stay in touch with friends and family, learn about sales from our favorite retailers, and receive updates from political campaigns and organizations. Millions of Americans have signed up to receive emails from political candidates through campaign websites, petitions, surveys, or events, signaling their interest in receiving updates and information from the campaign trail.

But this is unfortunately not how its been playing out. Though email communications have been normalized on campaigns for several election cycles and email use continues to grow globally, the disparity between Democratic and Republican email inboxing has reached a breaking point this year. Google, the most dominant email provider, has been a particularly bad actor. Unfairly gatekeeping inboxes and censoring the voices of hundreds of conservative candidates, committees, and causes by sending their emails to spam or, worse, failing to deliver messages. A recent study by North Carolina State University found that nearly 80 percent of emails sent by conservatives ended up in spam folders.

Meanwhile, the Democrats had a banner year in 2020, with the Democratic National Committee flaunting best practices and recommendations by emailing a list of dormant email addresses, and instead of triggering spam filters, reactivating 875,000 supporters. In a Substack post written a month after the 2020 election, the DNC Mobilization Team bragged they sent every single emailable inactive at least two emails and reactivated millions of supporters who accounted for 16% of our online fundraising revenue in the last quarter of the election. These levels of engagement and activity are unheard of.

Its clear that the liberal elites in Silicon Valley are once again placing their thumb on the scale, manipulating communications that could lead to consequential outcomes. When a conservative supporter goes to a Republican website to sign up to receive emails, we should be confident that they will get the emails they signed up to receive. But even after consultation with top email specialists to achieve and execute best practices, Republicans still cannot guarantee that to be the case. This is shameful and wrong.

Its absurd, isnt it, that in 2022, Big Tech elites have made the practice of delivering an email from point A to point B so complicated and polarized?

Conservatives are not asking for the ability to send unsolicited emails in an unchecked manner. We believe in the protections used to defend consumers against malicious attacks, bad actors, and unwanted communications. We are simply asking that Google treat Republican emails the same as those of our Democratic counterparts, and to make transparent the rules used to place emails in inboxes.

When I ran for Senate, I vowed to the people of Tennessee that I would never back down from a fight. I never thought one of those fights would be about something as simple as email, but this just demonstrates how out of control Silicon Valley and the liberal elites are and why this fight is more important than ever. If email is under attack now, whats next?

Marsha Blackburn is a United States senator from Tennessee.

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Google's Solution To Its Campaign Email Problem Is A Phony Fix - The Federalist

The corporate media had a collective meltdown this week after realizing that the Republicans they love to bash and smear are no longer giving members of the press the benefit of the doubt. Much to their dismay, some GOPers are even refusing to engage with or acknowledge journos desperate to write hit pieces.

In one New York Magazine Intelligencer article, headlined Why Republicans Stopped Talking to the Press, David Freedlander complains that former President Donald Trump ushered in a new era of media disdain in GOP politics that encourages actively courting the medias scorn while avoiding anything that may be viewed as consorting with the enemy.

One anonymous GOP adviser explained bluntly, We know reporters always disagreed with the Republican Party, and outlets now are just chasing resistance rage-clicks.

Freedlander, however, rejects those valid concerns and suggests that there is really not much Republicans can say after supporting Donald Trump. (Maybe Freedlander and the New York Timess Bret Stephens, who recently penned a disingenuous article further exposing his contempt for Trump supporters, are friends?)

According to Freedlander and his pal New York Times writer Jeremy Peters, Republicans dont want to have to defend Donald Trump and his falsehoods about the election.

Freedlander notes that most top 24 contenders are media-makers in their own right, hosting their own podcasts or, at minimum, building out robust social-media feeds. Instead of acknowledging thats because conservatives have faced endless political censorship from Big Tech and grave dishonesty from the press, Freedlander says thats because Republicans want to find places where they dont have to face any questions about Trumps election integrity concerns.

Vanity Fair published a similar article on Tuesday whining about the Republican Party of Floridas decision to limit which media outlets were allowed to cover their Sunshine Summit, a conference headlined by one of the most skilled media rejectionists, Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis.

GOP politicians are increasingly shirking sit-down interviews, barring journalists from 2022 events, and skipping debatesan aversion to media scrutiny that could upend how the next presidential election cycle is covered, the subheadline warns.

Vanity Fair, which has had no shame in attacking DeSantis and other Republicans before, clearly published the article with the intent to spark fear about the growing distance between the party and the press. Thats why the headline asks, Will Republicans Shut Out The Press in 2024?

I sure hope Republicans shut out the press, especially if that means red legislators will refuse to cede ground to corrupt actors who have no problems meddling in elections to fulfill their political aims.

After all, history proves that the corporate media is hostile toward the GOP and red voters. When journalists bother to try to talk to Republicans, they are more likely than not acting in bad faith. Why should Republicans, who know the corporate media have a clear left-wing bent, buy into the Democrat-informed narratives peddled by media activists?

Even normal people know the media are not to be trusted. Recent polling suggests Americans confidence in media is at an all-time low. Only 16 percent of Americans claimed to have a great deal/quite a lot of confidence in newspapers. That confidence falls even lower to 11 percent for TV news.

As GOP strategist Dave Carney bluntly put it for Freedlander: No one gives a f-ck what the New York Times writes.

And neither should Republican politicians.

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 and Fox News. Jordan graduated from Baylor University where she majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow her on Twitter @jordanboydtx.

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Republicans Are Finally Done Obsessing Over The Media. Good. - The Federalist

In a New York Times/Sienna College Research Institute poll this month, only 1 percent of participants said that the most important problem facing the country today is climate change. Twenty percent of those polled, the highest percentage, said that the economy (including jobs and the stock market) was the greatest problem, and 15 percent said that inflation and the cost of living were their greatest concern.

Republicans were the demographic most likely to name the economy as their top priority, at 29 percent, with Hispanics right behind them at 28 percent. In comparison, exactly 0 percent of Hispanics said that climate change was at the top of their list of pressing problems. These numbers grow in significance when you consider that major heat waves had just struck much of the country around the time the poll was conducted.

Ten days after finishing the poll, The New York Times commented on these numbers, displaying some confusion at such low numbers of the publics concern for an issue they describe as widespread and catastrophic. Even among voters under 30, the group thought to be most energized by the issue, the Times reported, that figure was 3 percent.

Their only explanation was that people are distracted from significant issues like climate change by the daily economic issues that eat into their pocketbooks. The Times quoted former Republican Rep. Carlos Curbelo from South Florida, saying, In healthier economic times, its easier to focus on issues like this [climate change]. Once people get desperate, all that goes out the window.

Despite spending the entire first half of the article outlining a supposed climate crisis occurring throughout the country, the Times quoted Curbelo noting that these crises are not things that most people face every day, while issues like inflation are readily apparent to anyone who pulls up to the gas pump.

Beth Whitehead is an intern at The Federalist and a journalism major at Patrick Henry College where she fondly excuses the excess amount of coffee she drinks as an occupational hazard.

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As Dems Go All In On Climate, 1% Of Americans Call It Top Fear - The Federalist

Former Trump White House Communications Director Alyssa Farah Griffin is reportedly the new permanent co-host of ABCs The View. Since Meghan McCains departure from the show, the network has struggled to find someone to fill the conservative seat, apparently searching for someone who claims to hold conservative values but is willing to abandon and even assail those values for the sake of The Narrative. It seems Farah Griffin finally proved to producers she was up to the task.

When Farah Griffin made her first appearance at the Hot Topics table last October, she began by desperately apologizing for serving in the Trump administration and bent the knee with nervous laughter to every insult her co-hosts threw at her.

She attempted to distance herself from Trump by noting that she was initially working under Vice President Pence. Co-host Sunny Hostin shot back, So youre not working for Darth Vader, but youre a stormtrooper.

Corporate media outlets called the exchange embarrassing for Farah Griffin, and it was, but not for the reasons they assume. Whats embarrassing is disowning your own previously held beliefs, convictions, and careers work in exchange for seal claps, media attention, and the approval of Whoopi Goldberg.

In Farah Griffins subsequent appearances on The View, as well as on CNN and MSNBC, she contradicted her own publicly stated opinions on voter fraud, Jan. 6, Hunter Biden, and even former President Trumps Covid response.

Secondhand embarrassment aside, this isnt so much a loss for conservative media representation or even for Farah Griffin herself. The real mistake here is on ABC producers and their failure to understand their audience and their major ratings problem.

Under Meghan McCains reign in the conservative hot seat, The Views ratings skyrocketed. The New York Times lauded it as the Most Important Political TVShowin America, and appearing as a guest on the show became a must for any politician running for office. Yet, the permanent talking heads and producers cant see where that success was derived.

Even while remaining staunchly anti-Trump, McCain was never bullied into submission by her far-left co-hosts. Of course the heated exchanges and must-see-TV catfights drove ratings, but more than that, McCain represented the opinions of millions of American women who do not see their views shared anywhere else on network television. With McCain gone, and a weak-kneed Trump defector filling her place, whats to keep those women tuning in when they can hear the same earful of leftist talking points from literally every other form of corporate media?

Perhaps now that Farah Griffin has earned her permanent spot (and her paycheck), she can grow a spine without worrying so much about nailing the audition, but I wouldnt hold my breath. For people like Farah Griffin, Mediaite headlines and Twitter seal claps are far more rewarding than the affection of women in Middle America.

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Alyssa Farah Griffin Gets Conservative 'View' Slot By Trashing Conservatism - The Federalist