Category Archives: Federalist

By JOHN DANIEL DAVIDSON / THE FEDERALIST

Next month, Alaskans will vote in a special primary election for the states single congressional seat, left vacant by the death of Republican Rep. Don Young in March. Young, the longest-serving Republican in the history of the U.S. House, was Alaskas sole congressman for 49 years, so the election to replace him is in some ways an historic event for the state.

But its also historic in another way: it will be Alaskas first ever statewide mail-in primary election. That is, there will be no in-person voting at all. Every single voter on the statesbloated and error-riddled voter rollswas automatically mailed a blank ballot.

Whats more, there will be no verification requirements for these mail-in ballots. Voters will simply need to fill out their ballot and have a witness observe them sign the envelope. The states Division of Election has explicitly saidit will not verify the authenticity of the signatureson the ballots.

Normally, to vote by mail in Alaska you have to submit an absentee ballot application ahead of time, which includes a signature that can be used to verify the signature on the completed ballot. But not for this special mail-in election, which is already a chaotic and confusing mess, with48 names on the primary ballotand a new ranked-choice voting process in place that will send the top four vote-getters from the primary to the in-person general special election in August (which is on the same day as the regular statewide primary election for the November midterms).

By any measure, Alaskas special election is a mess. But why should the rest of the country care? Because Alaskas insane statewide mail-in election is a template for how the left wants to run elections nationwide. Democrats and left-wing activists would love nothing more than to hold elections entirely by mail with as few safeguards in place to prevent ballot fraud.

Indeed, Alaska presents a unique and in some ways ideal test case for the left. For one thing,Alaskas voter rolls are a mess. As of 2020, voter registration was 118 percent of the estimated vote age population, meaning there were more registered voters than actual people who could vote (this problem is getting worse in Alaska; in 2018 it was only 103 percent). Making matters worse is a 2016 Alaska law that automatically registers residents to vote when they submit an application for the states Permanent Fund dividend.

Read the rest of this column at The Federalist.

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The Federalist: Alaska election is template for how the Left wants to rig the vote - Must Read Alaska

In Joe Bidens painful and inaccurate speech about inflation on Tuesday, he finally shifted from blaming racism for everything to blaming Covid for everything to now blaming the supply chain and Mr. Putins war in Ukraine (that Biden baited Putin into) for everything.

These supply chain disruptions, as everyone is painfully aware, are doing everything from starving babies to shooting up the price of everything, as Wednesdays 8.3 percent annual inflation number affirmed again. They are also not random, and theyre not a viruss fault. Theyre the direct and foreseeable consequence of ill-advised global lockdowns that nearly all of our nations political leaders refused to take into account when they and corporate media colluded to gaslight the world into accepting them.

Our historic supply chain problems are not the result of happenstance. They are the result of cowardly, ignorant, and just plain malevolent leadership throughout the entire Covid era.

Lockdowns never needed to happen. Global lockdowns were never before advised or attempted for much worse pandemics, they were based on faulty models, and the Information Age doesnt change their imprudence. The supply chain consequences alone, as well as many of the other horrific medical and social consequences, should be enough evidence for all rational people to conclude that we must never, ever lock down again.

Focused protection of the most vulnerable during the next pandemic? Absolutely. Voluntary prudential health measures that allow societies to keep normal life going? Sure. But never, ever again lockdowns of the kind Americans were forced to endure in Covid-tide, which have resulted in massive, evil social consequences that are only now beginning to be visible.

The supply chains are only the tip of this dark iceberg. As I pointed out this March on the two-year anniversary of the beginning of this human rights catastrophe, there are many consequences, including:

A June 2021study by world-renowned scientists across 43 countries, for example, found that lockdown length and strength were correlated with excess deaths, often due to delayed or missed medical care. A January 2021study also by world-class scientists found that lockdowns did not reduce Covid deaths.

Besides their at best negligible effect at reducing Covid hospitalizations and deaths, lockdowns caused additional and completely unnecessary deaths from delayed or foregone medical care, as well as through starvation due to drastically increased world poverty. According to also-vindicated legitimate experts like Dr. Martin Kulldorff, lockdowns may have also caused additionalCoviddeaths due to prolonging the outbreak. In short, lockdowns cost lives, while at best saving none.

Variousstudies estimate lockdowns will have causedmillionsmore malaria and tuberculosis deaths, as well as untold increases in cancer severity and deaths, hundreds of thousands more AIDS deaths, and likely millions more starvation deaths and children living hungry long-term. One study in The Lancetestimated up to 2.3 million additional deaths of children globally per year from lockdowns.

The reality is, it is impossible to just hit pause on an economy. An action like this must have millions of unforeseeable effects, and the phrase people are using to summarize some of these butterfly effects now is supply chain issues. Justin Hart gives an example of the effects of shutting down the manufacture of just one item toilet paper.

Now imagine youre an executive down at the fictitious TP supplier Wipe World. The call comes in for the shutdown and you have some serious decisions to make. Production managers at the Big Roll Mill (your supplier for industrial reems of TP) have shut down and will eventually furlough most of the staff. Your shipping contracts will go into default, trucks with slabs of TP rolls tightly wrapped and ready to be dispensed will be called back or even mothballed. The proverbial target of your product is about to hit the fan.

So a national shutdown leads to a run on toilet paper, caused by a sudden drop in at-work wiping, leading to massive manufacturing rework, supply-chain shifts, and a janitorial staff forced to walk the halls of vacated buildings like Jack Torrance fromThe Shining,simulating a proxy population doing their business to keep everything from falling apart.

Anyone who had any familiarity with the insane complexity of making anything or any cooperative activity such as education should have logically deduced that pausing an entire society is entirely impossible and idiotic to even suggest. The pause will always have its own effects that make a restart at best really complicated and possibly never able to occur.

Thats already visible in the labor market. We all see the evidence that the shutdowns dampened working-age Americans already weak willingness to work. There are help wanted signs everywhere and yet another record high number of able-bodied, working-age people refusing to fill positions needed to resolve the problems lockdowns created.

Yes, the stimulus hush money played into that another Covid response failure perpetuated by those in power but so did the insane panic and the refusal to tell the truth that most working-age people were not at high risk from contracting Covid. So did the lockdowns, which like masks were used not as a health tool but as a manipulation tool, to frighten and control people. Thats also going to have effects that can never be fully undone, including deepening distrust of authorities and public institutions among the minority who were aware of the truth and its mass manipulation in the era of Covid.

This foolish Covid cure of lockdowns will end up being much, much worse than the disease. And it never needed to have been foisted on Americans and the entire West in the first place.

All it would have taken was a few more courageous leaders or a less demonic press to protect the American people from responding to a natural disaster with even bigger man-made disasters. But we dont have either, so Americans punished themselves by suffering 10 times what was in store had we just followed common sense and ridden out the storm with more courage and honesty.

The least we can do to help rectify and correct our shameful behavior is be honest about what weve done. Acknowledging that one did wrong is the first essential step towards repentance, which is the first essential step towards restoration and wholeness.

One way would be to stop blaming Covid-19 for our irrational response to it. Instead of saying Covid or the pandemic caused the supply chain issues, like Biden does, we can start saying that lockdowns did so. To go a step farther, we can stop calling them supply chain issues at all, and call them lockdown consequences. That is the truth.

We can all also etch in our memories who exactly was complicit in leading us into panic and devastation, and hold them accountable. That is going to require some electoral changes, starting with the man at the top and going right down through state and federal health agencies. No funds for them until they clean house.

It also includes never again believing in any media outlet or writer who proved willing to lie and coerce others with lies. These people have forfeited their moral and professional authority.

Until there is accountability rooted in truth, which starts with telling the truth now and going forward and acting upon it prudently, our societys vulnerability to mass hysteria will only get worse. That should keep up at night every person who has the power to hold these charlatans accountable and hasnt yet used that power for its just ends.

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'Supply Chain Disruptions' Really Mean 'Lockdowns To Never Allow Again' - The Federalist

Examples of LGBT activist teachers seem to be pouring in weekly. One gaining attention comes from Cape Coral, Florida where, as LGBTQ Nation describes it, Pansexual art teacher fired after allowing students to draw Pride flags.

Casey Scott, a middle school art teacher, described the incident as simply a discussion that happened in class in which students volunteered details about their sexuality and gender identity. Initial reporting indicated she decided to take the opportunity to provide details about her own sexuality and then asked her students to draw pictures.

In another state, teachers in San Francisco held a Zoom meeting in which the question came up as to how to handle a parent who asks teachers to use her childs given name and biologically correct pronouns. One teacher answered by conveying an experience in which a parent stated to them, I know you were using a different name than my childs given name at birth and the pronouns we gave them, and Im respectfully asking that you use the name and the pronouns that we gave them.

The teacher proudly described their defiance saying in return, So, in my classroom, I will refer to your child by whatever name and pronouns that theyve told me they feel most comfortable with.

When I was outed in high school in 1998, I attempted to talk to a sympathetic teacher, who firmly explained this was simply not something she could discuss with me. I even decided to force the issue by bringing it up in class and she, again, firmly instructed me to stop, recognizing that the classroom was not an open forum for me to express my personal issues.

Yet another example, shared by Libs of Tiktok, displays a teacher excitedly announcing the teacher came out to peers, supervisors, and students, showing the teacher dressed up as a woman with a full beard.

Many teachers now seem to feel an obligation and certainly a sense of entitlement to use their classroom as a group therapy session, viewing students as peers they can share secrets with. Unfortunately, this has grown into its own culture in which teachers position themselves as the sole source of safety for vulnerable students, who are assumed to have no one else to turn to. Many in this generation of teachers see themselves as an underground railroad of sorts to ensure students can freely express their true selves without the judgment or restrictions of their parents.

This has been demonstrated by the growing discovery of Transition Closets, where schools offer students the opportunity to change into opposite-sex clothing once out of the watchful eye of their parents. The entire system seems to be designed to hide children from their parents and teach them to rely on teachers or other administrators for protection and validation.

The motivation behind all of this can be seen in my own generations experience with coming out in the late 90s and how we felt isolated, abandoned, and stigmatized, often by the adults who were supposed to be teaching us about life. We grew up to become teachers ourselves or professors educating a new generation of teachers, and we wanted to make sure students never experienced that again.

The problem that manifests is the teachers behave as activists rather than educators, seeing their defiance of school policy, parental requests, and even the law as a righteous battle for the greater good. Either arrogantly entitled or defiant, activist teachers seem to believe they have free reign in the classroom.

Casey Scott, for example, argued she was not made aware of any restrictions on topics of discussion with the students, saying, Not once did anyone from my administration ever explain to me any topic that I was not to allow or discuss as a first-year art teacher in a reinstated class with zero art teaching experience it is reasonable to expect a mentor to help oversee and give me guidance but, none was offered?

But why would she think it would possibly be appropriate to discuss complex ideas of sexuality and gender identity with students aged 13 and under? The pictures drawn by the students were of pride flags, which Scott took a picture of for the news. These photos show a lesbian pride flag, an asexual pride flag, a genderfluid flag, and a rainbow flag, among upwards of 10 crumpled pieces of paper. She herself boasted of going into details of what being pansexual meant for her as an educational exercise.

In the San Francisco school Zoom discussion, a teacher argued, in my school district, LGBTQ+ students have a bill of rights and the fourth one is that they have the right to be referred to by their gender pronouns and a name that fits their gender identity. She went on to brag that when a parent complained about the policy, the school responded saying, No, sorry. Like, our district-wide rule is that the student determines that, not you.

Teachers and many school administrators have lost sight of their fundamental purpose and their obligation to parents. There was no reason for a teacher to explain that she is pansexual and what that means for her. There is no reason for a teacher to come out as though he is a teenager, in order to gain approval and validation from students.

Students are being taught to explicitly lie to their parents, with full school administrative support. Non-LGBT students also feel the impact of this, as they are made to feel excluded from these special activities.

Think for a moment of the situation in which the teacher allegedly encouraged her students to draw pride flags. There are hundreds of flag variations representing the full extent of gender and sexuality, except for 95 percent of the population who are heterosexual and accept their physical sex as fact. Imagine being a middle school student with a teacher who announces she is queer and begins encouraging queer classmates to draw pictures of how special and celebrated they are. Imagine the pressure they must feel to find something, anything, to fit in and be a part of the activity.

Sadly, LGBT organizations support the efforts of these teacher activists and the overwhelming message that all students should explore their potential sexuality and gender identity. GLAAD, for example, explicitly encourages teachers to change their language, ask their students for pronouns, provide LGBT resource materials and openly defend student identities.

The answer to all of this is more transparency for parents and for those parents to be active in their childrens schools. There is no justification for keeping school projects, discussions, or curricula from parents. Parental rights, especially in education, must continue to be a top priority for Republican leaders. The more examples like this that are discovered, the more active we all must become in ensuring children are learning appropriately in school rather than being indoctrinated by left-wing ideologies.

Chad Felix Greene is a senior contributor to The Federalist. He is the author of the "Reasonably Gay: Essays and Arguments" series and is a social writer focusing on truth in media, conservative ideas and goals, and true equality under the law. You can follow him on Twitter @chadfelixg.

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Left-Wing Teachers Are Ditching Teaching For Sexual Indoctrination - The Federalist

Can you imagine living in mortal fear of a 90-year-old man who preaches peace and love? If so, you know what it is like to be a senior member of the Chinese Communist Party. On Wednesday, communist authorities in Hong Kong arrested Cardinal Joseph Zen on a phony national security charge.

Zens immediate offense was his alleged involvement in a dissolved fund to defend those harmed by the ruthless crackdown on pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong. His real crime is his unwillingness to overlook Beijings broken promises about establishing democracy with universal suffrage in Hong Konga promise it made to get the former colony back from the gullible British.

I had the honor of meeting Zen in the early 2010s. Already technically retired at the time, he lived and spoke meekly. That is the irony of his arrest: he is not particularly political and has never called for the downfall of the Chinese government.

Pope John Paul II made Zen bishop of Hong Kong. Unfortunately, the incumbent Red Pope has given Zen no support and cut a deal with Beijing to give the Chinese government veto power over the appointment of church officials in China. The Vaticans foreign ministry is almost as bad as the ruling elite in the USA in selling out to China under the guise that doing so will tame its aggressive government.

Despite having to fight a two-front war against both the Vatican and officials in Hong Kong, Zen has kept his cool reserve and determination. He refused to abandon his people as they took to the streets in an attempt to preserve the freedoms they had and seek the ones they were promised.

That calm persistence probably terrified Beijing the most. Zen will not be corrupted or bullied. Both he and Beijing know the final chapter on Hong Kong has not yet been written.

Zen now joins other persecuted pro-democracy figures like jailed publisher Jimmy Lai, the founder of the pro-freedomApple Dailynewspaper, which authorities shut down last year.

Why does any of this matter to the United States? While our bipartisan ruling elite clearly deny it judging by their actions, China is our foremost adversary in the world. Yes, Irans government has seen itself as being at war with America since it came to power in 1979, and political Islam, which drives violent jihad, has not gone away. But China with its large economy, military, and population, its advanced technology, and its deep penetration of the American economy, poses a critical threat.

Dissidents like Zen and Lai pose a serious political challenge to the Chinese government. If they didnt, Beijing would not go to such great lengths to silence them.

Free ethnically Chinese societies like Singapore and Taiwan today and Hong Kong before the crackdown of the past three years also pose a threat. They expose the lie that is at the heart of the Chinese Communist Partys legitimacy: that democracy is impossible for China and that the only alternative to communist rule is anarchy.

Washington should understand this reality and embrace it. Forget about promoting human rights in the abstract, which in recent years has become more about attempting to spread neoliberalism globally. That woke form of human rights advocacy, which now includes hanging rainbow flags on U.S. embassies and holding up arms sales to longtime allies, has put us at odds with important partners like the Arabian Gulf monarchies, Singapore, and Hungary. It has comforted truly repressive adversaries like China and Iran.

Instead, we should back the political forces that are causing the most concern to our Chinese adversaries. We need to give strong support to dissidents and governments standing up against Beijing and Tehran, not a woke version of the ComIntern.

Of course, Washington in its current political composition will do nothing of the sort. The House just voted to spend $40 billion more that we do not have on a war in Ukraine where no vital U.S. interests are at stake. Fifty-seven Republicans voted against the handout, but a majority of both parties in Washington still thinks it is 1991, where we are the sole superpower, have money to burn, and havent racked up an appalling string of foreign failures.

Democrats are hopingincreasingly elusive successin Ukraine will cause people and governments around the world to forget the humiliating loss Joe Biden achieved in Afghanistan last summer. Its anyones guess why Beltway Republicans are joining them.

It will take a new president to set things straight. We need a larger military in the Pacific, but nearly as important, we need a coherent and determined political warfare effort against the Chinese Communist Party. In devising one, we ought to take into consideration the brave men and womenand the governmentswho terrify Beijing.

This article is reprinted, with permission, from the authors Substack.

Christian Whiton was a State Department senior advisor in the Trump and Bush administrations. He is a senior fellow at the Center for the National Interest.

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While Communist China Menaces, DC Is Still Acting Like It's 1991 - The Federalist

Recent polls confirm the majority of Americans care about election integrity. And history proves that if you dont, youre a bad American.

The 2020 general election revealed this realityand not because Joe Biden prevailed or because the election was stolen from Donald Trump, but because our constitutional republic cannot survive without election integrity. That is not just the judgment of the MAGA crowd, or even conservatives or the political rightor at least it didnt use to be.

Less than two decades ago Americans so universally believed that election integrity mattered that when the bipartisan Commission on Election Reform issued its 100-plus page report, Building Confidence in U.S. Elections, the twin goals of election integrity and voting access received equal treatment. While Co-Chairs Democrat Jimmy Carter and Republican Jim Baker explained that not all members of the Commission necessarily support every word or recommendation, all members, they stressed, endorsed the judgments and general policy thrust of the report in its entirety.

The bipartisan-endorsed fundamentals underlying the report included two unanimously accepted judgments related to election integrity. First, elections are the heart of democracy and if elections are defective, the entire democratic system is at risk. Second, and a corollary to the first: confidence in elections matters equally, and in fact is central to our nations democracy.

On this latter principle, the commission elaborated: Democracy is endangered when people believe that their votes do not matter or are not counted correctly. Little can undermine democracy more than a widespread belief among the people that elections are neither fair nor legitimate, the report stressed.

That same bipartisan report also recognized that while the losing side may be unhappy with the results, there is something new and dangerous taking place in the United States: Supporters of the losing side are beginning to believe that the process is unfair. And this is true of both parties.

Yet, while the Carter Commission declared that having a fair electoral process transcends any individual partisan interest, today, Democrats have not just abandoned any care over election integrity, they have declared such concerns racist, and that is with voting access never higher.

In light of the lefts attempt to castigate election integrity, every citizen should revisit the bipartisan judgments and policy pronouncements that formed the foundation for the Building Confidence in U.S. Elections report, which hold even more true today than in 2005. That report proves vital to exposing both the current lack of election integrity in America and the danger our nation faces absent a quick correction.

Further, because the Carter Commissions report came when Democrats held a heightened concern over election integrity because of Al Gores loss in 2000, and because the analysis spoke to Americans without the shadow of Trump obscuring the danger, the lengthy reports discussion of election integrity reveals the reality of the situation facing our country today that partisans seem unable to see.

Specifically, the 2005 report reveals that every concern the commission identified as threatening the legitimacy of elections played out in November 2020, notwithstanding the bipartisan commissions declaration more than 15 years ago that the need for election reform was urgent. Likewise, the aftermath of the 2020 election reveals that the problems and concerns that the Carter Commission proclaimed more than 20 years ago that needed immediate redress have instead multiplied and mutated.

While the anti-Trump contingency blame the former president for prompting distrust in the 2020 election results, the Carter Commission recognized that a fair electoral process was vital to assure[] the winning candidates the authority to legitimately assume office, and that the losing candidate can accept the decision as the will of the voters. If you juxtapose what happened in 2020 with the defects in our electoral system of which the commission warned, the reality becomes clear: Trump was not the problemsystemic defects in our electoral system were.

Bloated and inaccurate voter rolls, nonexistent or faulty voter-identification procedures, and a lack of private votingall issues the bipartisan commission warned threatened elections and our democracytainted the last election. Misconduct by partisan election officials, the use of inconsistent procedures in different precincts, and an overall lack of transparency added to the problems in 2020.

Again, these are issues the Carter Commission stressed threatened our democracy. The 2005 report also warned that absentee and mail-in voting come with the risk of fraud which, without limitations and adequate protections, would undermine the faith in our elections.

The widespread and chaotic use of mail-in and absentee voting in 2020 proved the bipartisan commission prescient. And while todays Democrats blame Trump, less than two decades ago both sides of the aisle saw the ultimate test of an election system is its ability to withstand intensive public scrutiny during a very close election.

Our current electoral system fails that test, and every citizen who loves this great country should demand reform. If you dont, you are a bad American.

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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If You Don't Care About Election Integrity, You're A Bad American - The Federalist

Looking at the way Democrats have reacted to the leak of the Supreme Court draft opinion on abortion, its almost funny to remember that a core promise from their most recent presidential nominee was that if elected, he would lower Americas collective blood pressure.

We need a president who will lower the temperature and bring the country together not one who raises it and tears us further apart. Joe Biden, Twitter, Sep. 1, 2020

Weve got to calm this whole situation down. Joe Biden, CNN, Aug. 27, 2020

My hope and prayer is that all of our leaders will work to lower the temperature in our public dialogue. Joe Biden, University of Buffalo, Oct. 25, 2018

To wit, the entire Democratic Party was selling itself in 2020 as Americas choice for calm, cool and collected.

Make America relaxed again: Democrats promise less stress if elected CNN, Sep. 2, 2020

No doubt you fondly recall that the people who whipped up mass Covid hysteria and instigated months of violent Black Lives Matter rioting were the same ones who insisted that they were the party you should trust to settle everything down.

Almost two years later, the left is as obnoxious and bitter as ever. Winning the White House and taking full control of Congress didnt assuage their resentment. It made it worse.

After the leak of Justice Samuel Alitos majority opinion draft last week that would fully open abortion to state and federal regulation, Democrats immediately began reminding us how uncomfortable things can be when they dont get their way.

At a protest last week in New York City, one woman told a journalist for New Yorker magazine, If we really scare the shit out of them (the justices) theyll change their minds.

Four days later, a mob descended on the Washington-area home of Justice Brett Kavanaugh to scream outside his door. Beforehand, a protester smiled as she told a reporter, You dont get to take away our bodily autonomy and enjoy your Saturday night at home. You get to do one or the other.

The next day, a pro-life groups headquarters in Madison, Wis., was set ablaze and defaced with menacing graffiti declaring, If abortions arent safe then you arent either.

There is no sense of shame or even discretion when any policy dispute doesnt land in their favor. Ian Millhiser at the left-wing Vox.com wrote on Twitter last week, Seriously, shout out to whoever the hero was within the Supreme Court who said f-ck it! Lets burn this place down.

So much for wanting to lower the temperature. The same people who put that guy in office now talk about turning the country into the pits of hell because they didnt get their way. And they mean it.

It was always a lie that the left had any interest in bridging divisions and promoting civility. No, what they intended was to take power, push their policies, and crush all dissent. It can be very civil in America when political opposition is either thrown in prison or coerced through threats of violence.

Theyve done it before. It worked. Theyre doing it again. The angry, vindictive left is here to stay.

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Vindictive Left's Reaction To The SCOTUS Leak Proves They're Staying - The Federalist

Edit buttons, open-source algorithms, long-form tweets, and stopping scam bots are just some of themodificationsElon Musk suggested he would implement in the run-up to his successful bid to buy Twitter. All of those sound like interesting ideas.

But none of them will directly improve the prospects for free and open dialogue on the platform, which appear to be Musks overarching reason for buying the company. As he has rightlysaid, Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated.

Musk also recently tweeted, By free speech, I simply mean that which matches the law. I am against censorship that goes far beyond the law. He is on the right track. Twitter should do what matches the law by modeling its policies after First Amendment standards.

Musks commitment is a breath of fresh air for those who value free speech. He seems to comprehend that free speech is essential to preserving a free society, and that social media has replaced the physical town square as the primary place for debate and expression.

So how should Musk practically implement his promise to improve free speech on Twitter? He should revise the platforms policies based on the lessons of First Amendment case law the worlds richest repository of practical wisdom on protecting free speech.

As a private company, Twitter is not legally obligated to follow the Constitution as a government actor would be. Nevertheless, the First Amendmentslegalprotections are valuable guidelines for how private actors can help create acultureof free speech.

Here are two actions he can take that will directly improve the prospects for free and open debate and dialogue on the platform: One, eliminate private speech codes policies that contain vague and imprecise terms that threaten free speech. Two, adopt a robust anti-censorship policy.

What are speech codes? They are rules that control the content of what people can or cant say. In addition, these regulations commonly contain unclear and imprecise terms that give enforcement officials unbridled discretion to censor speech they dont like.

In the First Amendment context, courts routinely strike down government speech codes because of the plain threat they pose to free speech. Unfortunately, these types of policies now proliferate on private social media platforms, including Twitter, and significantly contribute to the censorship problem in the digital public square.

Musk can spot speech codes by looking for vague or imprecise language two tell-tale signs of looming censorship. One basic guideline on how to spot these problematic terms is to look for vague terms.

A term is vague if it (1) forces an individual of ordinary intelligence to guess at what it means, or (2) invites arbitrary and discriminatory enforcement due to a grant of unfettered discretion or lack of objective standards. Terms that lack clarity and grant broad discretionary powers to those in control threaten free speech because officials can use them to suppress whichever viewpoint they disfavor.

Another thing to look for is imprecise terms: A term is imprecise if it fails to narrowly target the specific harmful activity it is designed to prohibit. Imprecise terms imperil free speech because they reach beyond the harmful activity they purport to target and instead censor and chill speech.

Hate speech, hateful conduct, misinformation, and disinformation are some of the most common terms in speech codes. They are also notoriously unclear and imprecise. Twitter has numerous policies containing these terms. Each of these terms is a threat to free speech because they can be wielded to silence any viewpoints those in authority choose.

Take, for example, how these policies affect the free exchange of ideas on the ongoing national debate over gender ideology and its effects on female athletics, privacy, religious freedom, and free speech. This issue is, borrowing from Musks words, a matter vital to the future of humanity. Yet time and again, Twitters policies have hampered the freedom of people to freely discuss this critical issue.

Specifically, Twitter has wielded its hateful conduct policy to censor or deplatform users on one side of this debate. Among other things,that policysays, You may not promote violence against or directly attack or threaten other people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, caste, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, or serious disease. It also bars targeted misgendering or deadnaming of transgender individuals.

Prohibiting hatefulconduct or targeted harassment is a noble objective. But, as applied to speech, Twitters speech code allows for disproportionate application and censorship. And thats exactly what has happened.

For example, in late January 2021, Twitterlocked outThe Daily Citizen, a Christian news outlet, from its account for stating that one of President Joe Bidens nominees is a man who identifies as a woman. The full tweet said: On Tuesday, President-elect Joe Biden announced that he had chosen Dr. Rachel Levine to serve as Assistant Secretary for Health at the Department of HHS. Dr. Levine is a transgender woman, that is, a man who believes he is a woman.

The tweet linked to an article on The Daily Citizens website. This tweet addressed a matter of dramatic importance whether identifying as a woman is what makes a person a woman and expressed the position that many reasonable people hold: that identity is not the only thing that makes someone a man or a woman.

The tweet neither expressed any hatred nor encouraged any violence toward Levine. Nevertheless, Twitter informed The Daily Citizen that the tweet violated its hateful conduct policy because it promoted violence, threatened, or harassed Levine. Twitter denied The Daily Citizens appeal and imposed a four-month ban.

Similarly, The Federalists Senior Editor John Daniel Davidson was locked out of his Twitter account for saying Levine was a man. Twitter refuses to unlock Davidsons account unless he deletes the offending tweet, a common practice Twitter applies disproportionately to conservative commentators.

Similarly, during the 2021 summer Olympics, Twitter banned several commentators for questioning Olympic rules that permit males to compete in womens categories. For example, when New Zealand transgender weightlifter Laurel Hubbard exited the competition after failing all three attempts, Allie Beth Stuckeytweetedthat Laura [sic] Hubbard failing at the event doesnt make his inclusion fair. Hes still a man, and men shouldnt compete against women in weightlifting.

In response to Stuckeys 12-hour ban, Erick Ericksontweeted, This is absurd. Laurel Hubbard is a man even if Twitter doesnt like it. He also received a 12-hour ban. Both times, Twitter invoked its hateful conduct policy.

More recently, Twitter has censoredThe Babylon BeeandU.S. Rep. Vicky Hartzlerfor expressing their views on gender identity ideology and its impact on women. These examples of viewpoint discrimination against high-profile users only scratch the surface of the distortion Twitters hateful conduct speech code does to Twitters town square in cyberspace.

The same free speech threats spring from policies barring so-called misinformation and disinformation, which have both been wielded to silence ongoing conversations about public health, gender identity ideology, voting integrity, and more. For example,one current Twitter policy defines informational harmas follows: Harm that adversely impacts the ability for an individual to access information fundamental to exercising their rights, or that significantly disrupts the stability and/or safety of a social group or society including medical mis-information i.e. COVID-19.

Its difficult to imagine policy language that grants more discretion to restrict speech than the terms of this policy. There are no standards at all. The policy will inevitably be enforced based solely on Twitter employees subjective judgments about which views impact the ability of a person to access information, or significantly disrupts the stability of society. Those who control access to a speech forum, and what you are allowed to say, have no business wielding this kind of unchecked power over the exchange of ideas.

Twitters current policies fail to appreciate a critical First Amendment maxim: The answer to speech you dont like is more speech, not censorship. As U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis wrote in a 1927decision, If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies, to avert the evil by the processes of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence.

Thankfully, Musk appears fully cognizant of Twitters policies propensity to squelch free speech. He seems motivated to make good on Twitterspromiseto give everyone the power to create and share ideas and information, and to express their opinions and beliefs without barriers. To do so, he must eliminate Twitters speech codes, starting with the policies outlined above. Any essential limits on content should be shaped with surgical precision to give users clear notice of the boundaries and prevent employees biases from infecting their enforcement decisions.

Musk should take one additional step to restore free speech on Twitter. He should adopt a policy that bars censorship and expressly states that it will not enforce any of its policies in a manner that restricts the free exchange of ideas. By doing so, he will provide his content moderation team a workable roadmap to implement his guiding free speech principles across the enterprise.

Here is model language Musk should consider for a new free speech policy:

Twitter does not discriminate against users,censor users or a users expression, or interfere with users ability to receive the expression of another based on the viewpoint of the user or another person,regardless of whether the viewpoint is expressed on the platform or through another medium.

No Twitter policies will be enforced in a manner that restricts expression on matters of public concern because of the expressions viewpoint, even when some may find the expression offensive, hurtful, misguided, upsetting, or otherwise objectionable.

By following the steps outlined above, Musk can make important strides toward realizing his goal of aligning Twitters policies with First Amendment free speech protections.

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Musk Can Use The First Amendment To Make Twitter Free Speech Again - The Federalist

Within an hour of a leaked draft opinion revealing a Supreme Court prepared to overturn Roe v. Wade, Californias left-wing governor pledged to fight like hell to save abortion access with the same three words that provoked a snap impeachment of former President Donald Trump.

Our daughters, sisters, mothers, and grandmothers will not be silenced, said Gov. Gavin Newsom. This world is about to hear their fury. California will not sit back. We are going to fight like hell.

Newsom pledged California would become a sanctuary for out-of-state abortion, surrounded by states with trigger laws restricting access to the deadly procedure upon the repeal of Roe v. Wade. The state had already been gearing up for Roes reversal after the 6-3 conservative Supreme Court heard arguments in a case to contest a Mississippi abortion ban beyond 15 weeks last December, Dobbs v. Jackson Womens Health Organization. The Guttmacher Institute, a pro-abortion research non-profit, estimates out-of-state abortions in California could swell from 46,000 annually to more than 1.4 million, primarily from Arizona.

Here are four bills California lawmakers are determined to pass to make Newsoms vision of the Golden state as the abortion capital of the country a reality:

The left-ward lurch provoked by the elimination of Roe v. Wade as standing precedent has led California lawmakers to propose legislation that not just expands abortion access but decriminalizes infanticide.

Assembly bill 2223, proposed by Oakland-area Rep. Buffy Wicks in February, removes safeguards for unsupervised abortions and bars the criminal investigation of fetal deaths even after birth. The bill, now on its way to the Committee on Appropriations, already passed the Assembly Judiciary Committee and the Assembly Health Committee.

Rep. Wicks and her allies in the left-wing press have sought to dispel claims her legislation opens the door to legal infanticide, arguing instead the bill protects reproductive freedom by clarifying that the Reproductive Privacy Act prohibits pregnancy criminalization.

The bills text, however, is explicit with a prohibition on using the coroners statements on the certificate of fetal death to establish, bring, or support a criminal prosecution or civil cause of damages against any person, related to deaths from a known or suspected self-induced or criminal abortion. Criminal liabilities are also eliminated for actions or omissions associated with pregnancy or pregnancy outcomes.

Section 7 of the bill outlines the extent of protections for individuals who terminate their own pregnancies stretching to after-birth.

The Legislature finds and declares that every individual possesses a fundamental right of privacy with respect to personal reproductive decisions, which entails the right to make and effectuate decisions about all matters relating to pregnancy, including prenatal care, childbirth, postpartum care, contraception, sterilization, abortion care, miscarriage management, and infertility care.

Notwithstanding any other law, a person shall not be subject to civil or criminal liability or penalty, or otherwise deprived of their rights under this article, based on their actions or omissions with respect to their pregnancy or actual, potential, or alleged pregnancy outcome, including miscarriage, stillbirth, or abortion, or perinatal death due to a pregnancy-related cause.

Legal experts hold varying definitions of perinatal period but all include some time after birth. The California Welfare & Institutions Code defines the term as the period of the establishment of pregnancy to one month following delivery. The California Department of Public Health regulates perinatal services up to 60 days after birth.

The Sacramento Bee rated claims that Wicks legislation would legalize infanticide as false while conceding in its own description of the ruling the perinatal period extends beyond birth by the California Welfare & Institutions Code.

On Wednesday, Newsom announced with assembly leadership that state lawmakers would pursue an amendment to the California Constitution protecting access to abortion.

We cant trust SCOTUS to protect the right to abortion, so well do it ourselves, Newsom wrote on Twitter.

Passage will require supermajorities in both houses of the Democrat-dominated legislature by June 30 to make it in front of voters by November as a statewide ballot measure.

Adoption would mostly be symbolic, given abortion is unlikely to ever become illegal in the state unless Congress were to pass a federal ban in the absence of Roe as standing precedent. Republicans, however, have largely expressed the issue as one that belongs to the states to regulate, a position reiterated in the draft opinion authored by Justice Samuel Alito.

Democrat State Sen. Nancy Skinner of Berkeley introduced legislation in March to empower out-of-state residents to travel to California for abortions funded by state tax dollars.

The proposed law, Senate Bill 1142, establishes a government website to navigate access to abortions in California while offering taxpayer dollars to out-of-state residents who seek the procedure. The state travel fund offered to both in- and out-of-state residents covers airfare, lodging, ground transportation, gas money, meals, dependent childcare, doula support, and translation services, to help a person access and obtain an abortion.

Skinners bill passed both the state Senate Health and Judiciary Committees in April.

In March, California State Senate Pro Tempore Toni Atkins, a Democrat from San Diego, proposed a law to lower supervision requirements for abortions in the first trimester.

Senate bill 1375 allows certified nurse practitioners to execute abortions within the first trimester of pregnancy without a supervising physician. To qualify for carrying out the procedure, nurse practitioners must have practiced medicine for at least three years or 4,600 hours.

After Texas passed one of the most restrictive abortion laws in the country last fall without interference from the Supreme Court, California lawmakers proposed legislation to counter the rival states policy that empowers residents to enforce the measure on behalf of the unborn.

In Texas, citizens may sue abortion clinics for violating the states ban on the fatal procedure after six weeks of pregnancy. Citizens who press charges may earn $10,000 per violation from the culprit clinics or providers if successful.

One month after the Supreme Court refused to strike down the law, California Democrat Rep. Rebecca Bauer-Kahan proposed a bill to offer civil protections for patients and providers, shielding them from out-of-state retaliation in California.

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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Five Pro-Abortion Bills CA Wants To Pass In Light Of Draft Roe Opinion - The Federalist

It appears the Republican Party will maintain Iowas first in the nation status for its 2024 presidential caucus, but uncertainty remains whether Democrats will continue to have Iowa leadoff their partys nominating process. Iowas first in the nation presidential caucuses have become a tradition and are an integral part of the states political culture. As a reminder, Donald Trump won Iowas Republican caucus in 2020 and Pete Buttigieg was the choice of Iowa Democrats that year.

Even now, more than two years out from the next Presidential election, prospective candidates are visiting Iowa to test the waters and increase their visibility. The caucuses are important and both political parties in our state should continue to fight to hold onto their pole position. Although the presidential nominating process is separate from the Electoral College, both are significant in providing Iowa with a distinct political voice. More importantly, though, Iowas legislature needs to make a stand to defend the Electoral College.

The Electoral College is perhaps the most misunderstood component of our Constitution. Increasingly, the Electoral College is under attack with calls for its elimination, usually from progressives and liberals, because it is claimed to be anti-democratic. The National Popular Vote (NPV) movement is an effort to get state legislatures to pass legislation to join an interstate compact that would commit their electors to support the winner of the national popular vote. The map below illustrates the 15 states (and the District of Columbia) that have passed legislation to join the NPV compact. This means that 195 electoral votes have been pledged and NPV will only need 75 more electoral votes to reach 270, which is what is required to win the presidential election.

The effort to undermine and eventually eliminate the Electoral College by replacing it with a national popular vote is being disingenuously promoted as a better, more democratic process to elect the President. However, proponents of NPV and those critical of the Electoral College fail to understand why the Founding Fathers selected this unique system for selecting the president in the first place.

When the Founding Fathers met in Philadelphia in 1787, our Constitution created a republican form of governance that limited the powers of the federal government. In Federalist Paper 45, James Madison wrote: The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite. The 10th Amendment further solidified what Madison wrote in Federalist 45. Historian Allen Guelzo correctly points out that the Constitution never set out to create a streamlined national government.

The American Founders did not wish the states to have a diminished role under the Constitution. The late constitutional scholar James McClellan wrote that the entire Constitution is actually honeycombed with provisions designed to protect the residual sovereignty and interests of the states and to give them influence in the decision-making process at the national level.

This certainly includes the Electoral College. In considering the election of the executive, the Founders rejected outright a direct, national election. In designing the Electoral College, the Founders wanted to ensure that the selection of the executive was independent of Congress and included the states; the Electoral College was designed to protect the interests of the states and the people.

Although the presidential election is viewed as a national election, it is technically an election conducted separately by the 50 states. When a voter casts their ballot for a presidential candidate, they are actually voting for that candidates electors, who are chosen by political parties. The presidential candidate who wins the state wins that states full slate of presidential electors. Maine and Nebraska are exceptions as electoral votes are allocated proportionally in those states.

Americans need to understand the importance of federalism to our constitutional republic. Federalism is as essential as separation of powers and checks and balances, allowing the states to maintain a level of sovereignty from the federal government. The Electoral College is the final Rock of Gibraltar defense of federalism. Federalism is in the bones of our nation and abolishing the Electoral College would point toward doing away with the entire federal system, Guelzo argues.

It would be a loss for our state if Iowa didnt maintain first in the nation status for both parties, but it would be a bigger loss for the country if the Electoral College was eliminated. Policymakers in Iowa should help preserve the Electoral College and at the same time help to preserve federalism. If the Electoral College was eliminated, Iowa would be ignored by presidential candidates and the voices of Iowans would be drowned out as elections would be decided by large urban centers.

One way to defend the Electoral College would be for Iowas legislature to pass a resolution committing Iowa to preserve the Electoral College. This resolution could also clearly state the benefits of the Electoral College and the danger of NPV. Additionally, Iowa could consider a constitutional amendment that would not only commit to the Electoral College, but also prevent the states electoral votes from being manipulated by possible outside sources such as the NPV if enough states had signed on to the compact.

Iowa should fight to defend our first in the nation status, but more importantly, policymakers should take a stand in defending constitutional government by working to preserve the Electoral College. If the Electoral College falls, then much more will be at stake than the status of the Iowa caucuses.

John Hendrickson is Policy Director for Iowans for Tax Relief Foundation.

Continued here:

Op-Ed: The fight to preserve Iowas voice - The Center Square

A majority of U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS) justices allegedly still maintain that the 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade, which federally legalized abortion in the United States, is unconstitutional. According to a Saturday report from The Washington Post, as of last week, the majority of five justices to strikeRoeremains intact, according to three conservatives close to the court.

Published in Politico last week, the leaked February draft opinion written by Justice Samuel Alito makes clear that Roe must be overruled, with the high court noting how itwas egregiously wrong from the start and that its reasoning was exceptionally weak, and the decision has had damaging consequences.

It is time to heed the Constitution and return the issue of abortion to the peoples elected representatives, Alito wrote.

In addition to Alito, the majority is comprised of Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett, according to the Politico and Post reports.

Noticeably absent from the majority opinion, however, is Chief Justice John Roberts, who is reportedly set to join the Democrat-appointed justices in opposing the rectification of the high courts previous rulings on abortion.

A person close to the most conservative members of the court said Roberts told his fellow jurists in a private conference in early December that he planned to uphold the state law and write an opinion that leftRoeandCaseyin place for now, The Washington Post report said in reference to the Dobbs v. Jackson Womens Health Organization case. But the other conservatives were more interested in an opinion that overturned the precedents, the person said.

In the past, Roberts has notably joined the leftist justices of the court in opposing laws that restore legal protections to the unborn. In June 2020, the chief justice was the deciding vote in a case striking down a Louisiana law requiring that individuals who performabortionsat clinics have admitting privileges in a nearby hospital, with the majority arguing that the law place[d] an undue burden on women seeking abortions.

Roberts also joined his fellow constitutionally illiterate colleagues last year in opposing Texas six-week abortion ban, with the chief justice laughably implying that women have a federal right to an abortion under the U.S. Constitution.

The Texas law has had the effect of denying the exercise of what we have held is a right protected under the Federal Constitution, Roberts wrote. The laws clear purpose and actual effect has been to nullify this Courts rulings The nature of the federal right infringed does not matter; it is the role of the Supreme Court in our constitutional system that is at stake.

As if his faulty jurisprudence on the issue wasnt bad enough, Roberts is also reportedly attempting to prevent the court from overturning Roe, with reports alleging that the chief justice is actively trying to persuade Coney Barrett and Kavanaugh to take a more incremental approach to allowingabortion restrictions.

Such actions are not unheard of for Roberts, who in 2012 attempted to convince Justice Anthony Kennedy to switch his position on the unconstitutionality of Obamacare to obtain the leftist corporate medias approval of Supreme Court jurisprudence. After initially siding with his fellow Republican-appointed justices, Roberts cut a last-minute deal with the leftist justices to preserve the Affordable Care Act by falsely deeming the laws individual mandate as a part of Congresss taxing power.

Roberts pays attention to media coverage. As chief justice, he is keenly aware of his leadership role on the court, and he also is sensitive to how the court is perceived by the public, reported CBS News Jan Crawford in 2012. There were countless news articles in May warning of damage to the court and to Roberts reputation if the court were to strike down the mandate It was around this time that it also became clear to the conservative justices that Roberts was, as one put it, wobbly.'

Whether its the Obamacare decision or Dobbs, Roberts overtly political actions arent preserving the image of the court in the eyes of the American people; theyre destroying it. The primary responsibility of a judge is not to center judicial decisions on either the prejudices of the leftist press or the whims of the American public, whose opinions fluctuate on a regular basis, but to ignore such political noise and interpret the Constitution as written. Anything short of this is merely political gamesmanship.

Roberts bid to play politician is not only professionally grotesque, but its no different than what past justices have done in some of the most highly contentious SCOTUS cases in U.S. history. Just as the justices ruling in Plessy v. Ferguson and Dred Scott v. Sanford allowed their personal views to obstruct proper jurisprudence and adherence to the Constitution, Roberts prioritization of his public image over his role as a judge is no different.

Shawn Fleetwood is an intern at The Federalist and a senior at the University of Mary Washington. He also serves 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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John Roberts Should Follow The Constitution In Dobbs Decision - The Federalist