Category Archives: Federalist

Many people on the right are seeking ways to escape the dumpster fire of Twitter. Since its Screen-Free Week, this seems a good time to ponder strategies for reducing our consumption of the propaganda and biased garbage proliferated by leftist corporate media and disseminated on social media.

While I still read publications like the Washington Post regularly, I really do try to limit my consumption of such outlets for my mental and emotional health. Actually, my personal rule applies to all digital media, regardless of political affiliation.

Thats for good reason, given the ever-growing evidence of how digital media affects us and even reshapes our brains. Its for this reason that I take time every day often in the evenings when Im trying to wind down to consume good, intellectually stimulating print media. Below are some of my favorite print magazines that are well worth the price of an annual subscription.

At a recent small gathering of prominent conservatives, a friend I trust and admire declared the Claremont Review of Books to be the best magazine in print today. Its increasingly difficult to argue otherwise. The quarterly review of politics and statesmanship has been around in its current form for more than 20 years, under the helm of conservative academic Charles R. Kesler.

Recent editions certainly can claim their fair share of big names on the intellectual right: Victor Davis Hanson, Michael Anton, Christopher Caldwell, Nathan Pinkoski, Helen Andrews, Sohrab Ahmari, Kyle Smith, Amy Wax, Charles Murray, Hadley Arkes. And thats just in the most recent issue! Perhaps more than any other publication, the CRB in recent years has provided intellectual ballast to conservative repudiations of the activist lefts obsession with racial, gender, and sexual identity politics, while providing a plethora of interesting and sometimes surprising book reviews.

Worth mentioning, it published one of the most important pieces of opinion journalism in the last ten years: Antons 2016 The Flight 93 Election, which made a compelling case for Americans to elect Trump that year.

I have been a faithful subscriber to First Things longer than any other print magazine 20 years now, since my grandfather first ordered me a student subscription while I was a first-year at the University of Virginia. Then, as now, it has continued to offer some of the most insightful religious-based commentary on the public square. Indeed, as a religious studies minor, I found First Things to often provide me with the intellectual ammunition to debate my leftist, a-religious fellow students, and even professors, in the classroom.

First Things also features some of the most important voices in conservatism, including R.R. Reno, Mark Bauerlein, Darel Paul, Carl Trueman, Gary Saul Morson, Theodore Dalrymple, Glenn C. Arbery, Matthew Rose, and Algis Valiunas, among many others. Some of the best critiques of critical race theory and the 1619 Project have appeared in its pages, as well as some of the most thoughtful and spiritually uplifting theological commentary. As an ecumenical journal, it has something for everyone, including Catholics, Protestants, Orthodox, and Jews.

Im also an old supporter of The American Conservative, beginning my subscription while still at the University of Virginia. At the time, I was a confused and frustrated conservative, a wayfarer looking for an intellectual home among friends who were all supportive of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, conflicts I detested (although, little did I know, I would in a few years serve in the former one, more than once). A fellow student suggested I try TAC. I was in love from the first issue.

TAC promotes what it calls Main Street Conservatism, by which it means a conservatism that is focused on the values of communities, families, and faith. Always opposed to benighted foreign interventionism (something that made it an ostracized outsider in conservatism for many years), it was also years ahead of its time in arguing for economic policies that would protect American workers and their families.

Indeed, one of its founders, Patrick Buchanan, ran for president (unsuccessfully) on that agenda twice in the 1990s. TACs content in the print edition is not only engaging, but intellectually provocative, daringly willing to put ideas over ideology.

Think of The New Criterion, published out of New York, as the more stolid, artistically knowledgeable counterpart to CRB. It features many of the same writers, but its content is much heavier on the arts: not only poetry, but theater, sculpture, art exhibits, music, etc.

Nevertheless, the New Criterion always has something for everyone the monthly review by Roger Kimball and James Bowmans reflections on the media are alone worth the price of admission. So too are Kyle Smiths witty and often hilarious reviews of the theater scene in New York (lets just say theres not much in contemporary drama to recommend itself!).

I wouldnt be a very good contributing editor if I didnt put in a plug for the place where Im a contributing editor: New Oxford Review. Of all the magazines Ive mentioned, its the oldest, founded in 1977.

Although a conservative Catholic monthly, it has featured the work of a wide variety of intellectuals, writers, and even politicians, including Walker Percy, Sheldon Vanauken, Bobby Jindal, Stanley L. Jaki, Peter Kreeft, Avery Dulles, James V. Schall, John Lukacs, Robert N. Bellah, L. Brent Bozell Jr., Christopher Lasch, and Robert P. George. It has also been willing to feature diverse content with sometimes opposing viewpoints something I believe to be a sign not only of intellectual health but moral courage.

For the sake of intellectual honesty and journalistic professionalism, it is willing to take the risk of offending even its most loyal readers. Not many journals can claim to do that in 2022!

These magazines, and a few others (e.g. The Spectator, The Lamp), provide me the intellectual and spiritual stimulation and comfort to help guide me through the confusion and anger-inducing emotions of the daily battles in the digital realm. All are worth paying their very affordable subscription fees, which are all well under $100 per year.

All should be read with a hearty cup of tea or coffee, or, in the evenings, a good beer or whiskey. For those looking for a break from or perhaps a counter to the grind of our digital age, consider one of the above excellent print magazines. You wont be disappointed. Happy reading!

Casey Chalk is a senior contributor at The Federalist and an editor and columnist at The New Oxford Review. He has a bachelors in history and masters in teaching from the University of Virginia and a masters in theology from Christendom College. He is the author of The Persecuted: True Stories of Courageous Christians Living Their Faith in Muslim Lands.

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5 Print Magazines That Will Make You More Informed - The Federalist

According to evidence presented in court, actress Amber Heard lied within the first moment she stepped onto the witness stand last week, saying: I am here because my ex-husband is suing me for an op-ed I wrote.

The Washington Post op-ed at the heart of the defamation lawsuit from actor Johnny Depp carried the byline, By Amber Heard, and Heard should be held responsible for putting her name on its contents, but the op-ed was anything but written by Heard.

In fact, in a disturbing breach of journalistic and nonprofit ethics, testimony in the tragic trial of Johnny Depp v. Amber Heard reveals Depp should put two other defendants on trial: the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the Washington Post. The two organizations raise millions of dollars on brand reputations that hinge on values of transparency, honesty, and ethics that they violated in writing and publishing the allegedly defamatory op-ed.

In a carefully orchestrated operation, extensive documentation of which Ive detailed on Substack, we now know from testimony and email evidence that the communications, development, artist engagement, and legal teams of the ACLU crafted, wrote, lawyered, and placed the salacious 765-word Washington Post op-ed that implied Depp was a wife-beater with a 26-word assertion: two years ago, I became a public figure representing domestic abuse, and I felt the full force of our cultures wrath for women who speak out.

The ACLU was a co-conspirator with Ms. Heard, Depps attorney, Ben Chew, said during his arguments on Tuesday. Of course, Mr. Depp chose not to sue them, responded Heards lawyer, Benjamin Rottenborn. Heards and Depps PR firms didnt comment further. The ACLU and Washington Post didnt return several requests for comment.

Two slips-of-the-tongue during the recorded deposition of ACLU Chief Operating Officer Terence Dougherty shared in court reveal exactly how the ACLU and the Washington Post were complicit in a hit job against Depp.

In the first Freudian slip, 14:30:51 into his deposition, Dougherty explained that emails in Exhibit 41 documented ACLU staffers from its fundraising development department discussing the placement of Ambers ad

He quickly tried to correct himself: Not ad. Sorry. I mean op-ed.

No, he said it: the placement of Ambers ad.

Thats what the op-ed was: earned media, as they call it in the media industry, for the ACLU, Heard, and the release of the Warner Bros. film, Aquaman.

Then, in the second slip, at 14:40:35 in his deposition, Dougherty explained how Stacy Sullivan, deputy director of editorial and strategic communications at the ACLU from September 2014 through October 2019, according to her LinkedIn account, emailed Michael Larabee, the Posts op-ed editor and top boss in the opinions section, then Larabees colleagues Michael Duffy and Mark Lasswell when she got an automatic out-of-office reply from Larabee.

In the second slip, Dougherty said about Sullivan: She reached out to him first about placing the ad from Heard. This time, he didnt even correct himself.

Everyone involved in this situation used Depps cachet for private gain. The ACLU used Heards relationship with Depp to win earned media, which is much more lucrative and trustworthy than a paid advertisement. The Washington Post sold newspapers and got clicks. The ACLU got a donation. Heard earned status as a womens rights activist.

In my 35 years of professional journalism, the last 20 of them writing op-eds, I have never before witnessed a more explicit example of deception. Some years ago, I taught a course on writing the reported op-ed at Georgetown University, and if any of my students had tried to pull off what Heard and the ACLU did, I would have had to fail them for the serious ethical violation of passing off somebodys work as their own.

Publishing an op-ed that someone else has written for you is no different than going online and buying a term paper. I get it, not everyone is a writer. We all benefit from editors. Ive used editors and wordsmiths to help me with drafts, but as authors we have an ethical duty to be the ones to first put words down in writing.

But, in the fall of 2018, Heards op-ed was the brainchild of communications staffers at the ACLU. The ACLU had published a blog post in August 2016, following Heards divorce from Depp, with this positive headline: Actress Amber Heard Donates Millions to Support the ACLU and Its Work Fighting Violence Against Women. The page featured a banner image, Speak Freely. The tags on the post were Violence Against Women and Womens Rights.

In the hallmarks of a pay-to-play operation, Heard had donated $350,000 to the ACLU in August 2016, pledging $3.5 million. Of that, Dougherty testified he believes only $1.3 million was paid, with Depp paying $100,000 and billionaire Elon Musk, who dated Heard after her divorce, attributed to a June 2017 payment of $500,000 and a December 2018 payment of $350,000.

On Nov. 6, 2018, at 2:22 p.m., Gerry Johnson, who according to his LinkedIn was then an ACLU staffer in communications strategy, sent an email to Heards publicist at the time, Jodi Gottlieb. It said, Id like your and Ambers thoughts on doing an op-ed in which she discusses the ways in which survivors of gender-based violence have been made less safe under the Trump administration and how people can take action.

Johnson even framed the piece as depicting Heard as a gender-based violence, or GBV, survivor, writing: If she feels comfortable, she can interweave her personal story, saying how painful it is as a GBV survivor to witness these setbacks.

After her colleague, Johnson, planted this idea, Robin Schulman, a communications strategist at the ACLU, took on the task of writing the first draft of the op-ed, according to Doughertys testimony and ACLU emails used as exhibits in court.

Over the next 23 days, through Nov. 29, 2018, the ACLUs communications, legal, and development teams went back and forth with Heards PR team and lawyers on the details that would be shared about her relationship with Depp in the op-ed.

That day, Nov. 29, 2018, at 1:12 p.m., Jessica Weitz, director of artist engagement at the ACLU, sent an email to Heard, identified as A H, with an attachment, marked as the eighth version of the op-ed, and the subject line, amber op-ed viii.docx. She noted the op-ed had to pass through quite a few lawyers [sic] first.

Two hours later, at 3:20 p.m., Schulman sent a new draft of the op-ed to Weitz to forward to Heard with the note: I tried to gather your fire and rage and really interesting analysis and shape that into op-ed form. Incredibly, in this game of deception, she said, I hope it sounds true to you.

She added, Your lawyers should review this for the way I skirted around talking about your marriage. Again, Heard did not even write her own draft.

From the office of communications strategy at the ACLU, Johnson offered some media outlets to pitch the piece: the Washington Post, the New York Times, USA Today, and Teen Vogue, which has become a go-to for hard-left content.

On Dec. 11, 2018, another 12 days after the first draft was shared and just more than one month since the ACLU first planted the idea of an op-ed, according to a reading of the email in court, it was Weitz who pitched the timing of the op-eds placement. In an email, Weitz wrote to the ACLU team: The goal is to get this out this week to capitalize on the tremendous campaign for Aquaman. (The emails havent been filed yet as court records, but are read on the deposition videos.)

According to court testimony, Weitz also said in an email that Heard wanted to get her temporary restraining order into the op-ed. Is there an artful way to do that? Weitz asked.

It was left to the ACLUs Sullivan to pitch the op-ed. According to Doughertys deposition, she emailed the pitch toLarabee and others at the Washington Post.

Starting off with casual familiarity, she punctuated her pitch with a juicy parenthetical phrase: Hey Michael, wondering if we might interest you in a piece by Amber Heard (who as you may recall, was beaten up during her brief marriage to Johnny Depp), on what the incoming Congress can do to help protect women in similar situations. She just slipped in that serious allegation about Depp.

When Sullivan got an out-of-office reply, she forwarded the pitch to Duffy and Lasswell at the Post. After the Post accepted the op-ed, according to court testimony Weitz celebrated, writing in an email: Its going to the Washington Post!!!

Then on Dec. 17, 2018, in an email with the subject line, Re: Language TIME SENSITIVE, the ACLUs Shulman continued to massage the op-ed with Heards attorney, Eric George. A H was just on the CC line, copied in the messages.

The next day, Dec. 18, 2018, the Washington Post published an op-ed in its Opinions section with the headline: Amber Heard: I spoke up against sexual violence and faced our cultures wrath. That has to change. It included the words crafted artfully and deliberately by the team at the ACLU: I became a public figure representing domestic abuse, and I felt the full force of our cultures wrath for women who speak out.

Larabee, Duffy, and Lasswell should have all known better. Getting a pitch from the deputy director of editorial and strategic communications at the ACLU is a huge red flag that they wrote the piece. Did the Washington Post editors even ask?

It was reckless, irresponsible, and defamatory to imply without a conviction that Depp had been a domestic violence abuser. Thats journalism 101. And Heard, the ACLU, and the Washington Post are responsible for the headline that ran, alleging sexual violence.

No matter the verdict of the case, they need to fix their misconduct. To right their wrongs, they should do three things: apologize to Depp for publishing the fake op-ed that wasnt even written by Heard, retract the op-ed, and donate to charities that actually fight domestic violence.

In 2011, the UKs Guardian published an op-ed headlined, The ghostwritten op-ed: an unacceptable deception. Author Dan Gillmor asked: If Id fail a journalism student for a paper written by another, why does the media give a pass to the rich and powerful?

Its that same breach of trust the ACLU and Washington Post are silent about today. We dont need closing arguments in the case against Heard to issue a verdict on the unethical breach of the public trust by these two institutions of power. Guilty.

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How The WaPo And ACLU Helped Amber Heard Attack Johnny Depp - The Federalist

In the lefts furor over a leaked draft opinion from the Supreme Court that would, if finalized, overturn Roe v. Wade and send abortion law back to states jurisdiction, its impossible not to notice how many men really, really dont want to let abortion go.

I have sympathy for a nave woman whos been fed the lie that shes trapped and abortion is the only way out. Shes wrong, of course, and still responsible for her act. But shes often the victim of pressure and exploitation if not from people around her, then certainly from the abortion industrial complex that profits from murdering children and carelessly scarring would-be mothers.

But I harbor no such sympathy for men who melt into panic at the idea that they could no longer pressure their girlfriends, wives, or daughters into killing their babies. There is no more blatant act of cowardice, nothing that flies so directly in the face of the most basic obligations of manhood, than a man who wants to have his way with a woman and then force her to shoulder all of the consequences.

This selfish attitude is part of why we as a society find rape so heinous. Only the cruelest of cowards would force his appetites on a woman, then slink away to leave her with the physical, emotional, and psychological burden of their actions. A man who impregnates a woman and then tries to force her to kill their child is, in some sense, doing the same thing hes leaving her with the physical consequences, the emotional trauma, and the psychological guilt of taking an innocent life, for his own convenience.

Abortion allows a man to shirk the basic responsibility of taking care of and providing for his child and the mother of his child. In some cases, a man may see it as his ticket out of being obligated to marry the woman with whom hes conceived a life. It allows him to continue his behavior without fear of biological consequences.

Thats why its so infuriating and telling to see men rushing to keep women on the abortionists table and babies in the medical wastebasket.

CNN brought on an expert in such cowardly coercion to help lead its coverage after the courts draft decision leaked. While Jeffrey Toobin earned infamy for playing with himself on camera, in 2009 he had a child with Casey Greenfield, his former colleagues daughter. Toobin, who is married to a different woman, pressured Greenfield to abort the child and reportedly even offer[ed] money to terminate the pregnancy.

So of course Toobin was panicked at the idea that his ability to pressure his sexual partners into aborting his offspring might be eroded. This is a constitutional earthquake if it stands, he fretted, and American life, not just American law, will be very different if this is the law of the land.

But even men who, as far as we know, dont have such intimate experience with such matters have been just as adamant about keeping state legislators from limiting or banning abortion.

ABC News senior national correspondent Terry Moran had an unhinged meltdown directed at a tactful and collected Mallory Carroll of the Susan B. Anthony List on Tuesday.

Do you believe, if abortion is murder, women should be punished as criminals? he asked just before his freakout.

When Carroll explained that abortion is an exploitation of women and a way for men to cover up crimes of rape and infidelity and other sexual behavior, Moran interrupted her with a nonsensical rant noting Charlie Mansons dad beat him before accusing her of infantilizing women who are pressured into abortions.

Carroll highlighted that abortionists are the ones taking the childs life, subjecting the mother to guilt and trauma, and profiting from it, but Moran continued his minutes-long breakdown by condescendingly claiming The poor women cant make up their own minds like adults, and should be coddled, but thats, I guess thats your position. The whole exchange is worth watching its even more awful and cringe-inducing than it sounds.

Its really something to watch Moran browbeat a woman with disingenuous assumptions and patronizing interruptions, all supposedly in the name of womens rights. He cant stand an intelligent woman challenging his paradigm that women should shut up and kill their babies so men like him wont be inconvenienced.

Instead, he willfully distorts her argument, snaps at her, talks down to her, and then has the audacity to present himself as being on the side of women. Its a dead giveaway of his panic about men losing power to exploit women if not exploiting them on a personal level, then at least exploiting their fears about the abortion debate for political gain.

Toobin and Moran arent the only ones making cowardly fools of themselves this week, either.

California Democrat Rep. Eric Swalwell went into full conspiracy mode to preserve mens ability to pressure women into abortions. The Republicans wont stop with banning abortion. They want to ban interracial marriage. Do you want to save that? he asked on Twitter, ignoring the fact that conservative Justice Clarence Thomas is in just such a marriage, and potentially violating ethics laws with the tweet.

President Joe Biden, who claims to be a devout Catholic, is also fighting hard to keep women subjugated by the horrors of abortion, even pledging to use his administration to fight a potential Supreme Court reversal of Roe (though even he couldnt help a verbal slip admitting that abortion takes the life of a child).

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer called the potential court decisions abominable in a joint statement with fellow Democrat and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, adding that it would inflict the greatest restriction of rights in the past fifty years not just on women but on all Americans.

The list of examples from Bill Gates to Barstools Dave Portnoy goes on. Why are all these men so obsessed with having women kill their babies and subjecting those women to a lifetime of trauma and guilt? We hardly have to wonder why Toobin wants to ensconce abortion. But why so many others, if not for similar reasons?

Responsibility for others is an intrinsic part of masculinity as God designed it. Forcing a woman to abort a child not only takes one life and ruins another, it rebels against the very essence of what a man is supposed to be.

Its one of the most cowardly, evil, petulant, selfish, abusive, smarmy things a man could do and defending a mans license to do such a thing isnt much better.

Elle Reynolds is an assistant editor at The Federalist, and received her B.A. in government from Patrick Henry College with a minor in journalism. You can follow her work on Twitter at @_etreynolds.

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Why Are So Many Men Desperate To Kill Babies And Traumatize Women? - The Federalist

The Biden administrations efforts to impose transgender ideology on the nations children and schools are going into overdrive, and leading the charge is Dr. Rachel Levine, the U.S. assistant secretary for health.

Levine, a man who became a physician and raised a family before transitioning, has been celebrated by leftists and the corporate media as the first female four-star admiral in the history of the U.S. Public Health Service and a Woman of the Year. But the debate about this has gone beyond such absurdities or the willingness of Big Tech censors to punish those who mocked or denied Levines pretensions to being one of Americas most prominent females.

Levine has gone on the offensive against states that seek to enforce parental rights over the willingness of schools to push transgender ideology on children or to ban treatments for minors that amount to life-altering decisions or mutilations. These laws, passed by Texas and Florida, amount to a retaking of the public square for sanity and traditional norms about the way the medical profession deals with children. But Levine refers to them as insidious actions that are politically motivated and really harm the children involved.

Unlike leftist ideologues and media companies like Disney that have sought to normalize the indoctrination of transgender ideology on students as young as kindergarteners, Levine isnt just advocating for dangerous policies. As a fawning interview with NPR made clear, the full force of the federal government is now behind the threats issued by the pediatrician-turned-admiral to go after anyone or any state that seeks to protect children from such dangerous policies.

Characterizing efforts by states to prohibit life-altering surgeries on minors as political attacks against trans young people, Levine said that we encourage trans and gender-diverse youth and their families [who] are feeling they are being discriminated against in Texas or any other state [to] contact our office.

In the NPR article, Levine doesnt just falsely claim that no qualified or respected doctor disagrees with the idea of pushing hormone treatments that will render children sterile or surgery that will mutilate them. There is no argument among medical professionals, he said, thereby dismissing the justified concerns of Florida Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo and the studies he has cited that point to serious problems with allowing children to choose sterilizations and mutilations with no chance of reversal.

Levine also threatens that anyone who opposes such practices may also be investigated by the federal governments Health and Human Services Departments Office of Civil Rights.

Going even further and without a trace of irony, Levine suggests that the U.S. Department of Education would also regard efforts to stop transgender indoctrination as somehow a violation of Title IX of the Civil Rights Act. This is despite the fact that fealty to transgender myths has made a mockery of the law that paved the way for more women to take part in sports by allowing biological males to compete and dominate in competitions solely intended for females. Instead of using Title IX to protect women as it was originally intended, Levine says, it will be employed for sexual and gender minorities.

Levine makes much of the anguish experienced by youths who believe they ought to be a different sex and says that the power of the state should be employed to help them transition. Gender dysphoria is real, but as authors like Abigail Shrier have pointed out and as Dr. Ladapo argues, many if not most of those who experience these feelings find that their dysphoria subsides either before or after they become adults. Ladapo says that 80 percent of young people who claim to be transgender give up such desires because they either are homosexual or come to accept their sex.

Levine suggests those who disagree with authorizing schools and physicians to proceed with medical and surgical services that cannot be reversed are ignorant, insensitive, or bigoted. But this dispute goes beyond efforts to compel people to call those who assert that they are transgender by their preferred pronouns. Nor does it have anything to do with the right of adults to make choices about their lives or to call themselves whatever they like.

Levine isnt merely endorsing education curricula that facilitate the efforts of the transgender lobby to introduce children to concepts about their options for choosing a different sex than their own.

The federal governments guidelines that Biden has promulgated and the threat of civil rights lawsuits and prosecutions seek to intimidate states, school boards, educators, and parents. Claims by minors of being transgender are not merely to be encouraged. Local authorities and doctors must, according to Levine, comply with the demands of suffering children going through years that are difficult for everyone to prevent them from, as Levine puts it, going through the wrong puberty.

The idea that children can order up life-altering surgeries or treatments is unheard of as a matter of law in civilized societies. Or at least it was in the United States until Levine and the transgender lobby gained the sort of power that puts the federal government behind their agenda. That is why Florida and Texas were right to ban such treatments for minor children.

Yet what is equally disturbing about this controversy is the ability of ideologues like Levine, supported by woke corporate media outlets, to silence debate about the issue by treating all dissent from their positions as bigotry. That is why social media companies enforcement of diktats from the transgender lobby is so pernicious.

Its not just the injustice of shutting up journalists and publications that wont bend their knees to the new woke catechism. Their goal is to silence all dissent and forestall any debate about the impact on children of dangerous treatments put forward by fashionable gender affirming quacks, in spite of the massive pushback from outraged parents who are rising up against such toxic policies.

This makes the willingness of states to resist the federal guidelines all the more important. It also is one more piece of evidence that shows that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis decision to take on the Walt Disney Company in favor of parental rights and against transgender indoctrination isnt just good politics, but also absolutely necessary if children are to be protected against the damage that Levines guidelines are inflicting on them.

Jonathan S. Tobin is a senior contributor to The Federalist, editor in chief of JNS.org, and a columnist for the New York Post. Follow him on Twitter at @jonathans_tobin.

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Trans-Crazed Quacks Want Your Kids And Will Win If You Don't Fight Back - The Federalist

A KGB term of tradecraft is now part of U.S. Department of Homeland Security governance.

The new Biden administration Disinformation Governance Board, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told CNN, is a small working group to address threats, the connectivity between threats and acts of violence without infringing on free speech and while protecting civil rights and civil liberties, the right to privacy. The board has no operational authority of its own, Mayorkas said.

Mayorkas denied that the board will cause American citizens to be monitored, saying, we, the Department of Homeland Security, dont monitor American citizens.

That might be true. But Mayorkas went on to say the Disinformation Governance Board is mandated to provide best practices and communicate those best practices to the operators in agencies that do have operational authority.

Never before has disinformation governance been part of the official U.S. government terminology for defending the internal security of the country.

Disinformation is not a word from the English language. It is a direct translation of the Russian word dezinformatsiya. It is a KGB form of tradecraft from the Red Banner Institute of the KGB First Chief Directorate, otherwise known as the KGB foreign spy academy.

Disinformation is definition 159 in the KGBs Lexicon of KGB Terms, published internally by the Soviet foreign intelligence service before 1984. Here it is: Misleading by means of false information; A form of intelligence work in the Active Measures field, which consists of the secret channeling towards an adversary of false information, especially prepared materials and fabricated documents designed to mislead him and prompt him to take decisions and measures which fit with the plans and intentions of the Intelligence Service.

Active measures is another KGB term of tradecraft. The KGB lexicon defines active measures as Agent operational measures aimed at exerting useful influence on aspects of the political life of a target country which are of interest, its foreign policy, the solution of international problems, misleading the adversary, undermining and weakening its positions, the disruption of his hostile plans, and the achievement of other aims.

Disinformation is a component of active measures. Foreign agent operational measures make the defense against disinformation and active measures a counterintelligence function, not a homeland security one. DHS has no statutory counterintelligence authority. That authority, as well as the authority to combat foreign disinformation and propaganda, rests by law with the FBI.

Whether the FBI remains fit for this role is another matter. The point is that combating foreign disinformation domestically is counterintelligence, which by law is not a DHS responsibility.

Even if the Disinformation Governance Board did have such a legitimate purpose, it would rest in the DHS Office of Intelligence and Analysis. Instead, this disinformation board is housed in the very political DHS Office of Strategy, Policy, and Plans, and therefore is a potential domestic political instrument.

Thus the board, as Mayorkas explained it, will not spy on American citizens free speech per se, but will provide the best practices and policy guidance to those who do.

Disinformation did not enter into widespread use in English until the 1980s, when the Reagan administration, with bipartisan support in Congress, launched a State Department-led Office to Counter Soviet Active Measures and Disinformation to combat Soviet political warfare worldwide, without impinging on the free speech of American citizens. (References to that office have been practically wiped from online search engines.) The State Department retains a small office to monitor foreign disinformation.

KGB Major Anatoliy Golitsyn, Czechoslovakian intelligence officer Ladislav Bittman, KGB Major Ladislav Levchenko, and others shed more light on disinformation after they fled to the United States between 1961 and 1979 during the Cold War. All agreed that disinformation was a purely KGB term of tradecraft. All wrote books on the subject.

The origin of disinformation as an operational word is rooted in Joseph Stalins NKVD secret police, with some references to the earliest days of World War II. The Oxford English Dictionary has no definition of the word prior to 1947, when the Cold War began. Merriam-Webster traces disinformation to hearings on Communist subversion in 1953, and to Nazi and Soviet techniques as early as 1940. Occasional usage of the word appeared in the 19th century as an infrequent, contrived, non-standard synonym of misinformation.

Misinformation, of course, isnt the same as disinformation. It is a mis-statement, or the inadvertent or careless spreading of inaccuracies or untruths, without malign intent. Yet Mayorkas and others have used the two terms interchangeably. So have many public experts.

Under the Trump administration, DHS created a Countering Foreign Influence Task Force within the departments Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. The Biden administration morphed it into the Mis- Dis- and Malinformation (MDM) team whose stated job is to build national resilience to MDM and foreign influence activities.

Note the modification: keeping the old countering foreign influence function and adding what MDM calls false or misleading information in general. MDM thus became a federal government influence operational entity of its own. The Disinformation Governance Board is an interagency add-on within the DHS policy shop.

While it does explain the distinctions between misinformation and disinformation, the DHS MDM Team has sanitized the origins of disinformation as a KGB term of tradecraft. Indeed, it erased the distinction between disinformation as a foreign active measures technique and the simple use or abuse of words in domestic American political discourse.

Last year, DHS re-defined disinformation as follows: Disinformation is deliberately created to mislead, harm, or manipulate a person, social group, organization, or country.

So DHS re-defined disinformation, sanitized the term of its KGB roots, and expanded the definition by removing the foreign element and applying the label to First Amendment-protected political discourse. DHS then officially adopted the KGB word as its own to create a political board for governance of disinformation whatever that is to guide agencies to monitor American citizens free speech.

J. Michael Waller is senior analyst for strategy at the Center for Security Policy. His areas of concentration are propaganda, political warfare, psychological warfare, and subversion. He is a former professor at the Institute of World Politics, a graduate school in Washington, DC. A former instructor with the Naval Postgraduate School, he is an instructor/lecturer at the John F Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School at Fort Bragg.

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Biden's 'Disinformation' Board Is A Tool Straight From Soviet Russia's KGB - The Federalist

When Justice Samuel Alitos draft majority opinion for the Supreme Court in Dobbs v. Jackson Womens Health Organization was leaked to the news media, it came as a shock. How could such a thing happen? Are the norms that keep our government together unraveling? For those who have followed the Supreme Court over the last several years, there is unfortunately more continuity to outrageous behavior than is often recognized.

Immediately after the leak, we learned that the sort of left-wing dark money groups that brought the Supreme Court confirmation process to new lows with their antics with Justice Kavanaughs hearings are at it again. An outfit calling itself Ruth Sent Us has posted a map with the home addresses of what it calls the six extremist justices and organized protests next week at their personal homes.The radical left is now doxxing Supreme Court justices.

Do you remember the circus of obstruction and vilification that the left inflicted on the nation in opposition to Brett Kavanaughs 2018 nomination? We documented it in our book, Justice on Trial.Protesters funded by dark-money groups, including Planned Parenthood, shouting down the Senate Judiciary Committee and having to be dragged out by police, with over 200 arrests? Protesters dressed like handmaids converging on Capitol Hill to communicate that Kavanaughs confirmation would hurl America into a dark dystopia?

And how about the Democratic senators who went along, waging scurrilous arguments to try to delegitimize the nominee from the outset and interrupting their own hearings on the Senate Judiciary Committee 63 times before the first lunch break? Through a week of hearings, they tried one stunt after another, sometimes operating in jaw-dropping lockstep with the protestors. The Senates final vote on the nomination was taken amid repeated interruptions from yet another brigade of protesters who had to be taken out of the Senate gallery by U.S. Capitol Police. Other protesters crossed police lines at the Capitol Building or stormed up the steps of the Supreme Court to pound on its doors. 164 arrests resulted.

Once Kavanaugh officially joined the Court, he did not make the traditional walk down the marble steps of the Court out of concern for his safety.

The left failed to defeat Kavanaugh in 2018, but they did not shed their radicalism they only got more strident. Less than a year went by before Democratic senators threatened the Court in an amicus brief with restructuring if it did not rule the way they preferred. In 2020, then-Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer threatened Justices Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch by name in front of the Supreme Court after oral arguments in an abortion case, warning that they would pay the price for a disagreeable decision.

Now that the Court appears poised to finally overturn Roe v. Wade and correct one of the greatest acts of judicial arrogance in Americanhistory, the radical Left appears intent on following through with Senator Schumers threat.

When asked whether President Biden supports the doxxing of Supreme Court justices, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki refused to criticize the tactic, glibly remarking that I think the presidents view is that there is a lot of passion. What an appalling abdication of responsibility.

There are a number of unanswered questions about the Ruth Sent Us group. Its website notes, Stipends [are] available for protestors. Who exactly is paying for these stipends? Recall that during the Kavanaugh hearings, left-wing groups also provided financial incentives for protestors, including offering lodging to traveling protesters and jail and bail support if necessary.

The website links to a different organization, Strike for Choice, which shows connections to groups including Black Lives Matter, Code Pink, Womens March SF, Kavanaugh Off Our Court, and Rise Up 4 Abortion Rights. How exactly are these groups connected?

Similar to Bidens White House, the Ruth Sent Us website purports to advocate for peaceful protests. Is that like the mostly peaceful protests burning down cities across the country two years ago at the BLM-organized demonstrations? Already this week pro-abortion protestors and police clashed in Los Angeles when a group of protestors began to throw rocks and bottlesin a demonstration in front of the federal courthouse. At least one officer was injured.

Will groups like Demand Justice condemn these protests at justices homes? So far, they have been silent. What about Demand Justice board member Elie Mystal, who called the Constitution kind of trash?Demand Justices executive director Brian Fallon has instead criticized the increased security measures being taken at the Supreme Court itself, stating that the Court needs more accountability, not less. Sounds a lot like Psaki yesterday.

Psakis stunning comments yesterday should come as no surprise given that she herself worked for Demand Justice before joining the White House this is after all the White House that left-wing dark money built.Demand Justice was launched by the Arabella Advisors network, which spent over one billion dollars in the 2020 election cycle to help elect Joe Biden president and win a Democratic Senate.

Since its launch, Demand Justice has led the charge to pack the Court and bullied Justice Stephen Breyer off the bench so that a younger activist could take his place.We dont know if Ruth Sent Us is also funded by groups in the expansive Arabella network because they have yet to disclose their donors but it certainly resembles the kind of pop-up groups that Arabella is known for.

The parallels between this planned protest and the disgusting antics we saw from left-wing dark-money groups during the Kavanaugh confirmation are striking. Even the handmaids are going to be making a return. In these days before whatever they have planned for the justices homes, they are already disrupting Catholic churches.

It is as if there is no institution left in American society that leftists are not willing to destroy if they think that is what they need to do to achieve their policy goals.

Get ready for the next iteration of the Kavanaugh circus. Indeed, protecting Roe is what that circus was about in the first place. Now, with Roe itself facing its imminent demise, the left has made itself more dangerous than ever before.

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The Kavanaugh Circus Continues, More Dangerous Than Ever - The Federalist

Just two weeks before the Pennsylvania primary election, GOP Senate candidate Kathy Barnette said she is alive today because her mother, who was only a pre-teen when she was raped, decided not to end the life in her womb.

I am the byproduct of a rape, the veteran revealed during the Republican primary debate on Wednesday. My mother was 11 years old when I was conceived, my father was 21. I was not just a lump of cells. As you can see, Im still not just a lump of cells. My life has value.

Barnette said that regardless of whether the premature release of the Supreme Courts Dobbs v. Jackson draft opinion was a leak or a tactical operation, she is pro-life because she believes life in the womb is just as important as life outside it.

My life is valuable, and so are the many lives that find themselves in the womb of their mother, whether in the womb, or towards the end of that life, she said.

Barnette also cast doubt on her opponent Dr. Mehmet Oz for saying he is pro-life. Up until recently, Oz, who garnered an endorsement from former President Donald Trump, expressed hesitancy at laws restricting abortion and lamented that before Roe v. Wade, women who endured traumatic events and wanted abortions had to turn to coat-hanger events.

That is one of the reasons why it was so very disturbing when I saw Mehmet Oz running for this particular race, when Ive seen him on numerous occasions, specifically at the Breakfast Club, saying that my life was nothing more than an acorn with electrical currents, Barnette said. I am wondering if the doctor has now since changed his position on that.

Oz responded that he believes life begins at conception and that I would never think of harming that child or even nine months earlier, but just a few months prior, he endorsed abortion in cases of rape, incest, and if the mothers life is at risk.

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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Senate Candidate Kathy Barnette: I'm The Product Of Rape But Was Never A Clump Of Cells - The Federalist

Democrats are outraged that, according to a leaked version of the Dobbs v. Jackson opinion, the United States Supreme Court is poised to strike down Roe v. Wade but their hypocritical insistence that abortion is the law of the land is fueled by the partys determination to codify abortion without any restrictions.

Polling suggests that a majority of Americans are opposed to killing babies in the womb up until birth. A 2021 survey from The Associated Press and NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that 80 percent of Americans believe abortion should be illegal in the third trimester of pregnancy. A more recent Fox News poll conducted shortly before the Dobbs opinion leak found that 54 percent of registered voters support laws restricting abortion after 15 weeks.

Despite the fact that American voters are hesitant to endorse unlimited abortion, many elected Democrats have made it a key part of their partys platform going into the 2022 midterms.

When asked if he supports any legal limits on abortion, Democrat Sen. Raphael Warnock refused to answer directly and instead said, I support a womans right to choose.

Pennsylvanias Democrat Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, who is running for a chance at a U.S. Senate seat, was even more straightforward about what he believes about unlimited abortions.

Are there any limits on abortion that you would find appropriate? a reporter asked.

I dont believe so, no, Fetterman replied after pledging to nuke the filibuster to codify Roe v. Wade.

Democrat candidates have also joined the frenzy of leftists scrambling to proclaim their belief that women have a right to choose to end the life of an unborn baby at any time without question.

When Fox Newss Bret Baier asked Ohio Democrat congressman and Senate nominee Tim Ryan whether he supports any limits on abortion, Ryan tried to skirt the question.

I think what we had established in Roe, is something that we can continue to work with, and I think those could be the parameters, Ryan began.

My question is about any limits to abortion? At any point? Late-term? Anything? Baier asked.

You gotta leave it up to the woman, Ryan said.

When Baier pressed him again, Ryan said you and I sitting here cant account for all the different scenarios

Similarly, when NBCs Chuck Todd asked Ohio Democrat gubernatorial nominee Nan Whaley where do you draw limits on the issue of abortion? she deflected.

I think that we need to make sure we have access. Ive fought with Pro-Choice Ohio and Planned Parenthood to keep our clinics open, she said. I dont think government should be involved in it.

Texas gubernatorial candidate Beto ORourke admitted on Thursday that when it comes to legal restrictions on abortion, he believes this is a decision for a woman to make.

Pennsylvania Senate candidate Conor Lamb acknowledged his support for unlimited abortion during his states Democrat debate this week.

If your right is a right, its your right the whole way through pregnancy, Lamb said. This is a constitutional right that women have, and that they deserve to have.

Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution this week that My support of abortion is grounded in the belief that this is not the role of our government, it is not the role of lawmakers.

It is the responsibility of women and their doctors, women and their families, women and whomever they choose to bring into the conversation, but it is not the conversation for government to be having, she said.

Arizona gubernatorial candidate Katie Hobbs also insisted in a local interview that she is not a fan of imposing limits on abortion.

What would your limits be on this? This limits nearly all abortions after 15 weeks. Where do you draw the line? the host asked.

Well, women deserve access to abortion care. Abortion is health care. Ive been very clear on my position on that throughout my time in the legislature. So if Im elected governor, thats what folks are getting. And I will work with the legislature thats in place to ensure that women have continued access to reproductive health care, she said.

The host once again pressed her on the issue.

But where do you draw the line though? he asked. I mean, if its not 15 weeks, is it 24 weeks? Where do you draw the line where you say, okay, abortions after this point of time, no, its a no go?

Abortion is a personal decision between a woman and her family and her doctor. And thats something that needs to be discussed in the medical exam room, not by politicians, she replied.

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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It's Not Just Roe. Dems Want The Unlimited Ability To Kill Preborn Babies - The Federalist

Diesel prices reached a nationwide average of $5.54 per gallon on Monday, setting a new all-time record, according to AAA travel agencys gas tracker. In March, the cost of regular unleaded fuel remained less than half a cent from its record high of $4.33 per gallon, at $4.328 on Monday.

These high fuel costs are just the first devastating drop, the negative effects of which will ripple throughout the entire economy, with increased transportation prices adding stress to inflationary pressures already shooting up the cost of goods and services. In March, the year-over-year inflation was marked at 8.5 percent, the highest rate since 1981. Bloomberg Economics predicts that U.S. households will spend another$5,200 this year, or $433 a month, for the same basket of goods as last year.

While diesel prices might not immediately alarm many consumers who rely on regular unleaded gasoline for routine transportation, tankers, trains, trucks, farming machinery and other industrial equipment rely on diesel.

Diesel is the fuel that powers the economy, Patrick De Haan, the chief petroleum analyst at GasBuddy, told CNBC. These increased costs are certainly going to translate into more expensive goods.

Despite the price increases, the Biden administration has continued to antagonize the oil and gas industry with a cascade of new taxes and regulations that hamper production.

In April, President Joe Bidens Department of the Interior released plans to resume oil and gas leases on federal lands in compliance with a court order following a 15-month suspension. The agencys compulsory sales offered only 20 percent of the lands that were initially nominated and approved for leasing, complemented by a 50 percent spike in royalties from minerals extracted.

Despite moving forward, the administration has been clear about its desire to shut down the federal lease sales. These sales were only scheduled after a federal judge in Louisiana deemed the administrations pause on them illegitimate last summer.

We dont feel they are needed, explained White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki, even as Psaki and the president repeatedly blame Russias war in Ukraine as the reason for rising prices with the motto Putins price hike.

White House climate adviser Gina McCarthy has been even more explicit.

President Biden remains absolutely committed to not moving forward with additional drilling on public lands, McCarthy said on MSNBC.

The lefts animosity to oil and gas exploration has chilled investment in the labor- and capital-intensive industry, cooling production in the process even as prices skyrocket. To suppress gas prices ahead of the November midterms, President Biden ordered the self-proclaimed unprecedented release of stored crude from the nations emergency stockpile, with 1 million barrels put on the market daily for the next six months beginning next week.

The president has offered no plans to restock the emergency reserves.

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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Diesel Prices Hit All-Time High, Meaning So Will The Costs Of Everything - The Federalist

After years of using vague language to couch their quest to end the lives of preborn babies, the left is finally admitting that abortion means killing a child in the womb.

One day after President Joe Biden threatenedto use his executive authority to fight a potential Supreme Court decision in Dobbs v. Jackson that would spell the end of Roe v. Wade, he admitted that abortion ends the life of a child.

The idea that were going to make a judgment that is going to say that no one can make the judgment to choose to abort a child, based on a decision by the Supreme Court, I think goes way overboard, Biden told reporters on Tuesday.

Unlike his allies at Planned Parenthood, Biden seems to understand that abortion doesnt just involve the life of a woman, it also involves the life of a kid. That fact, however, didnt stop him from sullying the courts tentative move to hand decisions about killing babies back to the states as radical.

The Views Whoopi Goldberg, another leftist icon, also declared this week that abortion involves a preborn child.

My doctor and myself, and my child, thats who makes the decision, Goldberg said.

The ACLU similarly implied that abortion is the decision when and if to have a child.

However the decision ultimately comes down, the ACLU will never stop fighting for the right to choose when and if to have a child, the group tweeted this week.

Pro-abortion demonstrators at the Supreme Court this week seemed to understand that abortion takes the life of a baby too, with one person shouting to kill those f-cking babies.

The lefts confession that babies in the womb are in fact children and not a clump of cells is something that conservatives and pro-lifers have said for decades.

Even Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas lamented the courts double standard on language surrounding the grisly act of murdering unborn children.

It is curious how the Courts view of the maturity of minors ebbs and flows depending on the issue, he wrote in his concurring opinion in Jones v. Mississippi last year.

Thomas said the court wants to consider juvenile criminals children but when it comes to young girls having abortions, the court pretends they are responsible enough to make life-ending decisions.

When addressing juvenile murderers, this Court has stated that children are different and that courts must consider a childs lesser culpability, Thomas wrote. And yet, when assessing the Court-created right of an individual of the same age to seek an abortion, Members of this Court take pains to emphasize a young womans right to choose.

Its not lost on the people who support, fund, and run the abortion industry thatmedical textbookshave recognized that biological life begins at conception. Most of them are aware that, in the womb, babies develop a heartbeat, a functioning brain, working organs, touch, taste, and the capacity to feel pain. In later growth stages, preborn children even learn to breathe, hear, and see.

The difference between the pro-life community and the left is no longer about whether babies in the womb are indeed children. Its that, even though Biden, Goldberg, and the ACLU seem to understand that abortion ends a babys life in utero, they and the rest of the abortion lobby are still advocating for the destruction of preborn lives.

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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The Left Is Finally Admitting That Abortion Means Killing Children - The Federalist